The Maharishi Effect

The Maharishi Effect is the phenomenon of the rise of coherence in the collective consciousness of any community. Scientific research has clearly demonstrated that when one per cent of the population of a city or town practices Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation Programme, the crime rate significantly decreases. Similarly, when groups of individuals practicing Maharishi’s TM-Sidhi programme with Yogic Flying equal at least the square root of one per cent of a population, there is a significant reduction of crime and accidents, as well as an increase in stock prices, decreased pollution, decreased unemployment, and decreased hostilities between nations.

When I first signed on with The Heart Coherence Team, I was wondering how we were going to get 10% of the world's population hooked up to Gizmo. That's about 700 million units, and a daunting task for any relatively unknown corporate venture, and an impossibly lofty goal for a humble street musician. However, the square root of 1% of Earth's population is about 7000. Now THAT'S a manageable short term goal!

One of the things that Gizmo does, is it quantifies the meditation process in individual and group settings. Meditation produces internal coherence and, according to scientific studies of the Maharishi Effect, also tends bring coherence to surrounding systems, including the collective consciousness. Excerpt:

Just as a radio transmitter can create waves in the electromagnetic field, individuals constantly create influences on all parts of creation simply because consciousness permeates every aspect of the material universe. To illustrate, if a stone is thrown into a pond, waves are produced that travel throughout the pond. Each wave produces some effect in every part of the pond. Similarly, the wave of individual life, through its activity, produces an influence in all parts of the cosmos.

On the basis of this same principle, the direct experience of self-referral consciousness influences every aspect of the universe, enlivening it with the perfect order and harmony inherent within self-referral consciousness. For this reason, groups of individuals can create very powerful effects in the environment...through their self-referral practice, they enliven every aspect of the universe by stimulating its most fundamental constituent, consciousness, and they especially enliven the collective consciousness of the city or province or nation in which they are located.

I found this Iowa experiment very interesting:

Another researcher found in 1990 that a significant decline in crime rate, traffic fatality rate, and unemployment (also combined in an index) in the state of Iowa, USA, as a result of the coherence creating group at Maharishi International University (p’s < .05 for each variable). This researcher employed Box-Jenkins time series transfer function analysis of the effect of group size on quality of life.

Effects on National Life

A number of studies have demonstrated significant effects on the quality of life in an entire nation from a coherence creating group. These include decreased crime and accident rates in Holland during three intervention periods (all p’s < .025); increase in the British stock market index (1983); using Box-Jenkins time series impact assessment analysis, researchers in the U.S.A. found a decrease (p = .005) in traffic fatalities when a coherence creating group in Iowa exceeded the square root of one per cent of the nation’s population (1984).

So over the course of a still undetermined amount of time, "Team Gizmo" will place 7000 units worldwide and gather them into the Global Heartlink. (We are currently at about the square root of 1% of the population of Holland.) My guess is that along the way we will be conducting experiments in what the focused intent of a group is capable of in real time. That should be fascinating!