An Objective Technology to Create World Peace
June 8, 1974 was a life-changing day for me. It was the day I learned the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique. It quickly became my most powerful intervention for personal development and my greatest business tool. The Transcendental Meditation technique is also a technology that can create world peace. Prior to June 8, 1974, at the tender age of 21, I had little hope for the future of mankind. But on that auspicious day, after transcending for the first time, my view of the world changed permanently.
Fast forward to December 1983, in Fairfield, Iowa, USA, the home of Maharishi University of Management, I had the opportunity to participate in an extraordinary research project. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of the Transcendental Meditation programme, brought together a group of 8000 advanced practitioners of TM from around the world to demonstrate the use of this technology to create world peace.
The actual number of practitioners required was only 7000. This was the square root of 1% of the population of the planet at that time. This number was calculated by the application of principles in modern physics and it was hypothesized to be the number required to create coherence in collective consciousness of the world, creating world peace.
We were watching world events very closely during this two-week experiment for signs of rising coherence in the collective consciousness of the world, as evidenced by reduced negativity and increased positivity. Most notably, we saw major conflicts in the world come to an end – including the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a seven-year war between Iran and Iraq that had killed millions, and, most notably and unexpectedly, the Soviet-American Cold War that had threatened the world with nuclear annihilation for forty years.
In 1993 the TM creating coherence experiment was replicated in Washington, DC. Government leaders and police were advised of the effects this large group was to have on the city and surrounding area. During this time, violent crime rate was down 16%. The maximum decrease was 23.3% when the size of the group was largest during the final week of the project.
When the prestigious Journal of Conflict Resolution was presented with the data, they were not satisfied and asked that the data be rerun with more rigorous criteria before they would publish the results. To the chagrin of the Journal of Conflict Resolution, the results were even better.
Since 1993, large TM peace-creating groups have participated in over 23 scientifically validated peer-reviewed research projects in the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. The results produced by temporary TM peace-creating groups (lasting weeks or months) have been consistently positive—with nearly immediate reductions in war deaths averaging better than 70%.
With only a small group of people creating coherence in their own consciousness through the TM technique, practitioners can affect the collective consciousness of the region thereby reducing negative tendencies and increasing positive tendencies in the area.
One day this technology will be implemented on a large scale and permanent TM peace-creating groups will be resident and every nation – or at least a couple of large groups with a capacity to create world peace.
By: Roy Anderson is a certified teacher of the Transcendental Meditation Programme (randerson@tm.org).