JMVRI Issue Number 5
JMVRI Issue Number Five includes a study, part of a comprehensive empirical evaluation of the results of a prospective four-year quasi-experiment, that sought to reduce rates of homicide and violent crime at urban murder rates in the U.S.A. through the effect of the practice of the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program. The second paper examines the effect of coherent collective consciousness on national quality of life, while the last paper looks at the impacts of climate change and the contribution to solution of this global problem through Maharishi Vedic Science.
JMVRI Paper 5.1
Researching U.S. Urban Murder Rates and Group Practice of the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi Program: Evaluation of a Prospective Quasi-Experiment
Authors: Kenneth L. Cavanaugh and Michael C. Dillbeck
This paper can be downloaded via the following link:
Citation: Cavanaugh, K.L., & Dillbeck, M.C. (2017). Researching U.S. urban murder rates and group practice of the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program: Evaluation of a prospective quasi-experiment. Journal of Maharishi Vedic Research Institute, 5, 11-40.
Summary
Creation of a sustainable society ideally should include promotion of an enhanced overall quality of life, including freedom from crime, violence, and other key indicators of social stress. This study is part of a comprehensive empirical evaluation of the results of a prospective four-year quasi-experiment that sought to reduce rates of homicide and violent crime as well as to improve other measures of the U.S. quality of life and public health. The current research tests the hypothesis that group practice of the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program by a group of theoretically predicted size would be sufficient to reduce collective stress in the larger population, as reflected in decreased rates of homicide in a sample of 206 large U.S. urban areas. Time series regression analysis of monthly data for 2002–2010 using a broken trend intervention model found significant reductions in trend for the urban homicide rate during the 2007–2010 intervention period. Controlling for pre-intervention trends, seasonality, and autocorrelation, the estimated total reduction in homicide rate was 28.4% (7.1% annually). The practical significance of these findings is also indicated by an estimated 4,136 murders averted by the reduced trend in murder rate during the intervention. Diagnostic tests are satisfactory and indicate that the results are unlikely due to “spurious regression.” The mechanism for these macro-social effects is discussed in the light of possible alternative hypotheses.
JMVRI Paper 5.2
The Effect of Coherent Collective Consciousness on National Quality of Life and Economic Performance Indicators: An Analysis of the IMD Index of National Competitive Advantage
Authors: Guy Hatchard & Kenneth L. Cavanaugh
This paper can be downloaded via the following link:
Citation: Hatchard, G., & Cavanaugh, K.L. (2017). The effect of coherent collective consciousness on national quality of life and economic performance indicators: An analysis of the IMD Index of National Competitive Advantage. Journal of Maharishi Vedic Research Institute, 5, 41- 77.
Summary
The scores of New Zealand and Norway on the Institute for Management Development (IMD) Index of National Competitive Advantage increased significantly when they passed the predicted coherence group threshold in 1993 (1% of a population practicing the Transcendental Meditation program or the √1% practicing the advanced TM-Sidhi program in a group) when compared to 44 other developed nations as shown by cross-country panel regression analysis robust to serially correlated errors, heteroskedasticity, and contemporaneous correlation of residuals. Subsidiary analysis and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) data confirmed that the changes were unusually broad-based, sustained, and balanced in nature with five years of high growth, low unemployment, and low inflation. Taken as a whole, the findings suggest a prescription for balanced and sustained growth based on a method to enhance quality of life and innovation among the population.
JMVRI Paper 5.3
Responding to Climate Change: The Contribution of Maharishi Vedic Science
Authors: Geoffrey Wells, Lee Fergusson, David Kettle and Anna Bonshek
This paper can be downloaded via the following link:
Citation: Wells, G., Fergusson, L., Kettle, D., & Bonshek, A. (2017). Responding to climate change: The contribution of Maharishi Vedic Science. Journal of Maharishi Vedic Research Institute, 5, 79-120.
Summary
The scope and reach of the climate change challenge is clearly unprecedented, as is its level of global urgency. We review the broad results of the scientific program associated with it. These results identify serious impacts on physical, biological, and human systems, as separate systems and as cascading through them. The global risks associated with these impacts are daunting. Modern analytic approaches to this order of complexity and uncertainty have so far made only a limited contribution to its understanding and resolution. In particular these approaches identify a crucial gap: the understanding and modelling of the whole, rather than the parts, of the system. We then advance the promise of Maharishi Vedic Science in providing this missing scientific knowledge, in principle and in practice. In particular we explore a framework presented by Maharishi Vedic Science which describes eight levels of Natural Law to embrace all the complex diverse systems of which the global climate system is comprised. Further we review the technologies through which Maharishi Vedic Science offers to restore balance, integration, and orderly growth to all systems from their foundation in the Unified Field of Natural Law. We outline the extensive scientific research program which has provided robust support for the predictions of Maharishi Vedic Science with respect to both individual and collective life; which extend, we suggest, to the global community and to the global challenge of climate change.