JMVRI Issue Number 1
JMVRI Issue Number One features three articles on different topics. These range from the effect of the group practice of Transcendental Meditation and the Transcendental Meditation-Sidhi Program on social indicators in the Middle East, a paper considering Darshan or Vedic cognition in the light of artistic sight or vision, and, finally, a paper on therapeutic jurisprudence, the criminal justice system, and Transcendental Meditation as part of a program of empowering offenders to rehabilitate.
JMVRI Issue Number 1
JMVRI Paper 1.1
Factor Analysis of Social Indicators in the Middle East: Effects of Cultural, Military, Political, and Climatic Events and Group Practice of the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi Program
Author: David W. Orme-Johnson
This paper can be downloaded via the following link:
Citation: Orme-Johnson, D.W. (2016). Factor analysis of social indicators in the Middle East: Effects of cultural, military, political, and climatic events and group practice of the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi Program. Journal of Maharishi Vedic Research Institute, 2016, 1, 5-39.
Summary (excerpt)
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has proposed a fundamentally new theory of society, which posits a field of collective consciousness as the causal level of social organization underlying all patterns of relationships between and among individuals and social groups. The purpose of the present study was to use factor analysis to examine the inter-correlation patterns among the dependent variables used in our previous research set in Israel. We wanted to reduce them to two composite factors for the purpose of seeing what these factors might tell us about collective consciousness and how it reacts to cultural, military, political, and climatic events in the country, as well as to a group practicing the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program there.
First, we studied the effects of the various salient events in the country on the Overall quality of life index used in our previous research. Vacations improved the Overall index (effect size d = 1.25, p < .00001). Summer heat and the resignation of Prime Minister Begin both decreased the index (d’s = -.78 and -.89, respectively, p < .004). These findings validate that our quality of life index was sensitive to a variety of events, and therefore is a good reflection of the collective consciousness of the country. The effect of the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi group (the “TM Group”) on the Overall index was stronger than any of the cultural, military, political, or climatic events studied. Moreover, the effect of the TM Group on the index was robust under different conditions. These results support the theory that the Maharishi Effect operates on the fundamental level of the unified field of natural law, which is transcendental to the relative changing values in cultural, political, military, and climatic events. The next phase in this study was to examine how the different social indicators might cluster into higher order factors and to study how the Maharishi Effect might differentially influence these factors. Factor analysis of the dependent variables yielded two factors that accounted for 57% of the variance. Factor 1 loaded on the Lebanon-war variables, the national mood, and stock prices. Factor 2 loaded on crime, fires, and auto accidents. Factor 1 may be interpreted as a collective-actor dimension of social indicators, which reflects the motivations and actions of society as a whole. Factor 2 appears to represent individual-actor variables. This interpretation of the results suggests that the effect of the TM Group was stronger on society as a holistic entity than on the personal behaviour of individuals within society. This suggests new directions of study for this as well as for other areas of social indicators research.