Food for Thought: Group Meditation Reduces Terrorism

hinduism.about.com

A new book by U.S. Army Col. Brian Rees entitled "Terrorism, Retaliation and Victory: Awaken the Soul of America to Defeat Terrorism Without Casualties" discusses a study published in the Journal of Offender Rehabilitation showing 72% reduction in international terrorism using Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Invincible Defense Technology.

The remarkable findings show that large groups of peace-creating meditation experts decrease international conflicts, including deaths and injuries due to terrorism. The study reports that group practice of the Transcendental Meditation(TM) and TM-Sidhi program by 7,000 people decreases terrorism and international conflicts worldwide.

 On three different occasions during 1983-1995, groups of approximately 7,000 meditators were formed for periods lasting from 8 to 11 days, twice in the United States and once in Holland. The effects were studied using terrorism data collected completely independently by the Rand Corporation, the renowned California think tank. Five days after the assemblies started, terrorist activities in the world calmed down, the study reports. The study also found that warfare due to national and international conflicts decreased by approximately 30%. Assessment of the effects on warfare came from reports appearing in the New York Times and London Times.

"Our formula predicts that the square root of 1% of the world population meditating together

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would be needed to create a worldwide effect. That number was approximately 7,000 at the time of the study," said study author Dr. David Orme-Johnson of Maharishi University of Management. "We found that the effect could not be explained by any trends or cycles in the data, or by the time of year or other factors. Nothing else was happening that could have explained the sudden drop in armed conflicts throughout the world at that time," said the study's coauthor Dr. Michael Dillbeck, also of Maharishi University of Management.

Group Meditation Produces Coherence

So how does it work? According to the researchers, the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs take the mind to its innermost state of silence, which is the unified field of natural law, the source of order in the universe. When enough people in society experience this level of awareness, then the coherence of the unified field is spread throughout the world, softening ancient ethnic, political, and economic stresses that are at the basis of war. "Fifty studies have shown that the influence of Transcendental Meditation on the larger society is to replace crime, hostility and fighting with mutual respect and cooperation," said Dr. Orme-Johnson.

Experts Emphasize Importance of This Approach

According to Professor Ved Nanda, Director of International Legal Studies at the University of Denver College of Law, "These studies provide a great hope for humanity, a breath of fresh air. We have repeatedly seen that international law, treaties, and even the United Nations cannot prevent war, or even contain it within certain rules such as the Geneva Convention. Can we afford to overlook this research? It breaks my heart that so many people are being killed every day, including many fine young Americans, when we haven't even tried this first."

Another proponent of trying this approach is Dr. David Edwards, Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. "Although I myself have not been directly involved in this research, from my perspective of almost 40 years of study of foreign policy, arms control, and theories of social change, I can say that this is extremely significant research. I have participated in urging members of Congress and other government leaders to try it. The cost of implementing a permanent coherence creating group in the world is less than a single B2 bomber."

"Peace Palaces" Being Established

So far, the U.S. government has not added this approach to its arsenal of defense strategies, so Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who pioneered this approach to peace, is organizing a permanent group of 40,000 in India and 3,000 Peace Palaces throughout the world. Peace Palaces are places where these techniques are taught and practiced to generate coherence in their local region. A Peace Palace was inaugurated on April 10 in the Catskills of New York. In addition to creating coherence for the New York area, it will serve as a place where members of the United Nations can go to learn more about this approach.

Related:
50 different scientific studies have confirmed the Meditation Effect is real.
7000 people get together and meditate -- and global terrorism goes down by 72 percent.
Similarly dramatic decreases were seen in war, fatalities and violent crime.
Even if skeptics want to argue about whether or not this is "real," the fact is that all other variables have been ruled out -- including weekends, weather, holidays, et cetera.
This effect has been documented in numerous peer-reviewed publications, including the Journal of Offender Rehabilitation. - http://divinecosmos.com/start-here/davids-blog/1123-boston
Transcendental Meditation and Offender Rehabilitation: A New Approach to Crime Prevention
In September 2003, the Journal of Offender Rehabilitation devoted all four issues of its annual publication to a special volume entitled “Transcendental Meditation in Criminal Rehabilitation and Crime Prevention” (J Offender Rehab 36 (1-4), 2003). This special volume presents a wide range of research showing that the practice of Transcendental Meditation can significantly reduce crime, criminal aggression, violence, recidivism, terrorism, and even international conflict, while simultaneously developing higher levels of psychological functioning—higher states of consciousness—in TM practitioners (see article titles and abstracts below).

The Journal of Offender Rehabilitation is one of the nation’s leading academic journals for research on rehabilitation programs and their impact on prisoners and substance abusers. This special volume was conceived by Dr. Charles Alexander, guest editor and late Institute Senior Fellow and Chair of the Psychology Department at Maharishi University of Management. Dr. Alexander’s groundbreaking doctoral work at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Walpole, Mass., served as the foundation for the project.
The section on prevention reviews innovative educational approaches utilizing the TM program, including an overview of Consciousness-Based education and the psychological results from projects in the Netherlands Antilles. Also included are research studies on the social impact of large peace-creating groups practicing TM together, including results showing reduced terrorism and international conflict. - http://istpp.org/rehabilitation/index.html
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A remarkable series of scientifically credible studies has shown a link between group meditation and lowered incidents of violence and crime. And why not? argues Hagelin: If meditation is good for the individual, it should also be good for the collective. From June 7 to July 31, 1993, up to 4000 participants of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi Programs gathered together in Washington, DC, to form a Group for a Government Global Demonstration Project. Under the direction of Dr. John Hagelin, violent crime in Washington, DC was significantly reduced as predicted during the time of this World Peace Assembly. The study presenting these findings was published in Social Indicators Research. What follows is a report of that study presented in the context of a talk Dr. Hagelin gave in a Holland videocast to the Noetic Sciences (IONS) regional conference on February 18, 2007, in Tucson, Arizona, titled: “A New Science of Peace: The Effects of Group Meditation on Crime, Terrorism, and International Conflict.” The editor of Shift magazineexcerpted, abridged, and edited that talk into this article, The Power of the Collective, for their June-August 2007 issue on The Mystique of Intention. You can download a PDF of the complete article Shift-The Power of the Collective. - http://theuncarvedblog.com/2011/06/15/the-power-of-the-collective-by-john-hagelin/#comment-81568
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