The Maharishi Effect
Key Milestones and Developments
- 1974: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi posits the theory of the Maharishi Effect.
- 1976: The first empirical study demonstrating reduced crime rates in cities where 1% of the population practiced TM ispublished.
- 1983: Maharishi evolved the concept into the “Square Root of 1%,” suggesting that the square root of 1% of a population practicing the TM Sidhi Programme can have a significant impact on societal well-being.
- Present Day: There are numerous groups growing towards 10,000 worldwide.
The principle of the Maharishi Effect asserts that when a enough individuals experience deep inner peace, this spontaneously creates a more peaceful society. As Maharishi liked to put it: ‘If you want a green forest, you must grow green trees’. In other words, we can have a peaceful society if enough individuals within society are peaceful themselves. However, the threshold for success in this respect is surprisingly low at just 1% of the total population.
At its core, the Maharishi Effect emphasizes the innate interconnection between individual consciousness and the collective consciousness of society. This principle is drawn from both modern unified field physics and ancient Vedic science. The concept suggests that at a deep level, our awareness is not confined to our individual selves. Consciousness is not just localized but part of a universal field of intelligence. In effect, both sciences perceive that, at the transcendent level of the Unified Field, there is a reciprocal relationship between a person’s individual consciousness and the collective consciousness of that same person’s surrounding population. In summary then, science and modern science now agree that both individual and collective consciousness interact fluidly with each other, just as drops of water interact to form an ocean.
Eight Research Studies demonstrating the 1% effect
Since the 1970’s, researchers have observed that when individuals experience the transcendent, as happens during the practice of Transcendental Meditation, they are in effect tapping into the Unified Field. On a personal level the experience is both profoundly peaceful and stress reducing. But, amazingly, this personal experience ripples outward through the unified field. And it is this ripple effect that influences the surrounding environment, even extending to some distance away.
How do we know that it actually works this way? Well fortunately during the 1970s, there had been enough TM teaching in the USA to create numerous urban areas that had actually reached the magic 1% threshold. This presented researchers with an opportunity to test the theory in real life.
Landmark study showed a decrease in crime of 8.2%
Improved quality of city life through the Transcendental Meditation program: Decreased crime rate; 1976
Borland and Landrith’s study in the 1970s examined the impact of TM on crime rates in eleven US cities. This must be read in the context that in the early 1970s the USA was experiencing a prolonged growth in crime.
Observers in the media and social sciences couldn’t help but expect this increase to continue on into the eighties. Despite massive government sums being spent on crime prevention methods of one sort or another, neither the causes of crime nor the means to reduce it seemed clear. But in this study the researchers found that when 1% of a city’s population practiced TM, crime rates significantly decreased by an average of 8.2%. In stark contrast, 76% of comparable towns in the control group showed an increase in crime; the average increase being 8.3%.
This landmark study was the first to demonstrate that, all that was needed, to reverse the trend of crime was 1% of people meditating.
Less than a third of 1% is needed to starting pushing the dial
Influence of the Transcendental Meditation programme on Crime Rate in Suburban Cleveland; 1977:
Hatchard’s study expanded on Borland and Landrith’s previous work. This study demonstrated that when about a third of 1% of numbers of people practicing TM in a population the dial towards positive societal harmony would start to move. In effect Hatchard study of forty suburbs, showed that the ten suburbs with higher percentages of TM practitioners experienced notable drops in crime rates. On the other hand, the other thirty suburbs continued to experience the inexorable rise in crime.
Study shows that the Maharishi Effect is the ‘causal factor’ in reversing the trend
The Transcendental Meditation Programme and crime rate change:
A causal analysis; 1982: Dillbeck, Landrith, Polanzi, and Baker’s study built on the earlier 1% studies. As such they reviewed 40 randomly picked cities and 80 standard metropolitan statistical areas (SMSAs). In this case, the study covered a 24 year period. The idea was to eliminate the possibility that the cause of the reducing crime rate in USA urban areas was due to alternative unmeasured variable factors. To achieve this aim they adopted multiple regression analysis to assess the contribution other social variable factors had on crime trends. These other factors included education attainment levels, unemployment rates, per capita income, and poverty levels.
Their findings underscored the robustness of the Maharishi Effect on societal well-being. In other words, they could find no other possible causal factor behind the significant drop in crime in the towns under study.
The implications of the Maharishi Effect today
In summary, the research shows that the Maharishi Effect provides an exciting breakthrough. It means that a tiny percentage of us can become genuine agents of positive change. And all some of us have to do is simply take up Transcendental Meditation and quietly practice it on a regular basis.
Just think, by sitting at home or at work in peaceful tranquillity a relatively few of us can foster peace, harmony, and well-being in the rest of society. As the research demonstrates, a tiny fraction of the population embracing inner peace can reverse the current negative trends. And this will pave the way for a brighter, more peaceful future for us all.
“Whenever one percent of the people in any community practise Transcendental Meditation, balance in nature increases … values of society become more positive..”
– Maharishi, 1978
Empirical Studies and Data
Research over the past few decades has sought to empirically validate the Maharishi Effect. Notable studies include:
- Washington, D.C., 1993: A study during which a group practised the TM Sidhi Programme. The results indicated a significant drop in crime rates during the period of collective meditation.
- Merseyside, UK, 1987-1991: A study showing reduced crime rates in areas where TM groups were established compared to control areas. The results indicated a significant drop in crime rates during the period of collective meditation.
Today we need multiple groups of 10,000 (10,000 is just over the square root of 1% of the world population) and there are many groups growing all over the world such as the group below
