|
MAHARISHI'S PROGRAM TO CREATE WORLD PEACE: THEORY AND RESEARCH
DAVID W. ORME-JOHNSON and MICHAEL C. DILLBECK
Department of Psychology,
Maharishi International University, Fairfield, Iowa, U.S.A.
Modern Science and Vedic Science, vol. 1, no. 2, 1987, pp. 207-259,
Abstract
This paper presents experimental evidence that world peace can be achieved through the Maharishi Effect. The Maharishi Effect is the phenomenon of increased positive change in society and world events that is observed when the requisite number of individuals participate in the Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field. Part I of the paper gives an introduction to Maharishi's theory of collective consciousness, Part II is a comprehensive review of twelve years of empirical research on the Maharishi Effect, and Part III presents Maharishi's description of
life in world peace, which is possible through the application of the principles of collective consciousness.
Maharishi's theory of collective consciousness is outlined in Part 1, addressing the relationship between individual consciousness, collective consciousness, and the unified field of natural law; the relationship between violence and stress in collective consciousness; the relationship of government and collective consciousness; and the creation of coherence in collective consciousness at all levels of society through the Maharishi Effect.
The research reviewed in Part II indicates that one percent of a population participating in the Transcendental Meditation program, or the group practice of the TM-Sidhi program by the square root of one percent of the population, is sufficient to raise the level of coherence in collective consciousness, thus providing a stable basis for a lasting world peace.
Increases in societal coherence have been operationally defined in this paper by such changes as decreases in armed conflicts, crimes, traffic fatalities, fires, suicides, hospital admissions, notifiable diseases, infant mortality, divorce, alcohol consumption, cigarette consumption, inflation, unemployment, and pollution; and increases in international cooperation, stock market indices, and GNP. Some of these variables have been studied individually, and others in the context of comprehensive indices of quality of life. The research has provided strong evidence that the practice of the Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field in sufficiently large numbers is the cause of the observed increases in coherence (1) by statistically controlling other demographic variables; (2) by using causal analyses which have shown that increasing numbers practicing the TM program in the population are followed by positive changes in society; (3) by employing time series analyses to control for seasonality, trends, drifts, and rival hypotheses and to demonstrate temporal relationships among variables that support a causal model; and (4) by experimentally creating large groups of TM-Sidhi participants in various populations to observe effects on specific social indicators as predicted in advance. The Maharishi Effect has been replicated on city, state, national, international, and global scales and in many cultural settings, including the United States, India, Puerto Rico, Holland, and the Philippines. The holistic influence of the Maharishi Effect on diverse social indicators and its universal applicability across different populations support the field-theoretic model of Vedic Science that it operates on the deepest, most universal level of nature, the unified field.
|
