In 2025, these authors published a study titled “Quantification of the Global Maharishi Effect: A Quasi-experimental Study of the Three Most Violent Countries in the World” (Cavanaugh & Fergusson 2025). That study included a four-year time series of monthly intrastate political violence in the three countries in the world that were experiencing the most extreme levels of violence at that time....
Maharishi Vedic Science identifies, beyond the commonly experienced waking, dreaming, and sleeping states of awareness, a fourth and fifth state of consciousness—among other higher states of consciousness— Transcendental Consciousness and Cosmic Consciousness. In his Vedic Science, Maharishi, renowned sage and scientist of consciousness, has provided both practical techniques and knowledge to...
This study develops a mathematical framework for analysing composite groups of Transcendental Meditation and TM–Sidhi practitioners with reference to the creation of the Maharishi Effect. Building on established formulae that associate the creation of the Maharishi Effect with either 1% of the population practising Transcendental Meditation in isolation or square root of 1% of the population...
International studies conducted around the world have considered important human traits such as wellbeing and self-esteem. The present study seeks to add further insight to that body of understanding. The research group consisted of 399 people—187 Europeans, 138 Americans, and 74 people from other countries. Participants were assigned to five personal development study groups, engaged in one or...
In the last 30 years, the most prevalent and deadly form of armed conflict in the world has been violent conflict within states. However, the continued prevalence of so-called ‘intrastate’ collective violence indicates standard approaches to the prevention of collective violence—such as mediation, negotiated settlements and peacekeeping operations—have often provided little more than temporary...
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is renowned for his holistic vision of knowledge of Veda and the Vedic Literature. Over more than 50 years, from 1955 on, Maharishi revived this ancient knowledge in its completeness and presented it as a new science-Maharishi Vedic Science-centred on the practice of Transcendental Meditation. Maharishi's teaching is laid out in lectures and in books, incorporating both...
This research explores the efficacy of transcending through the practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique in reducing symptoms of obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). ‘Transcending’ is defined as the conscious mind effortlessly going beyond all mental activity (i.e., thoughts or states of mental excitation) to experience the inner Self, a state of inner peace or Transcendental...
This list of 92 scientific papers and books documents the Maharishi Effect—the effect of individuals or groups practicing the Transcendental Meditation and/or TM-Sidhi program on conflict-related variables and other social and economic indicators. Thirty-eight research papers have been published in peer-reviewed journals or professional conference proceedings. An additional 18 papers have been...
This article is a moving tribute to the life and work of Dr Dillbeck by his friend and colleague Dr David Orme-Johnson and covers three main phases of Dr Dillbeck’s output: 1) an extensive record of published research on Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program; 2) a similarly extensive record of publishing research on the Maharishi Effect, including the first study on this...
For many years it has been predicted that group practice of Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program alleviates social stress and that this phenomenon is measurable using specific social indicators. This study examines this prediction in two parts: Part I: To test the prediction in an Australian context; and Part II: To relate the significance of the outcomes of Part I to...
Most of the literature that has emerged about the impacts of home isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic suggests it causes mildly to acutely adverse psychosocial and physiological responses, particularly in children. Such responses relate to the separation children experience from their normal routine, including loneliness, anxiety, and depression, and adversities associated with school...
Approximately 2,000 indigenous students at Institución Educativa Privada Prescott in Puno, located in the Andes high on the Altiplano of Lake Titicaca, have been instructed in the Transcendental Meditation technique since 1996. In this study, we examine the impact of home isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic on physical, cognitive, and emotional health, and school performance for a group of...
Practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique has been well-documented in the published literature since the 1970s. However, the significance of the practice in South America generally and Perú specifically has been unrecorded, except for the recently published study on parent and teacher perceptions of Aymara children who meditate in Puno, despite its widespread use in schools,...
The court system is one of society’s principal mechanisms for processing the consequences of trauma. Traumatic events may arise from criminal behaviour or give rise to civil proceedings and those coming before the courts as parties such as defendants or victims may have dysfunction in a number of life domains due to unresolved trauma from the past. Historically courts have failed to use...
We now come to the last step in our journey of the ‘pathless path’, described in Maharishi’s great teaching of the seven states of consciousness. In the sixth state of consciousness, as we have seen in the previous chapter, pure consciousness, the Self, continues to be lived as a permanent reality throughout all the relative states of consciousness, as it has been ever since the onset of Cosmic...
Maharishi has always presented his teaching as a science. Our approach to it has therefore been framed from the outset in scientific terms. In Chapter One we noted that all the descriptions Maharishi gives of the field of pure intelligence are validated and made meaningful by direct experience through his Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program. It is just the possibility of this...
We have emphasised Maharishi’s description of Transcendental Meditation as a technique. In this context, we have described some of the remarkable and beneficial changes it brings to both mind and body during the period of practice. Maharishi also, however, speaks of his. Transcendental Meditation program. This refers to the fact that Transcendental Meditation is practiced twice a day, in the...
We come now to the final steps in Maharishi’s supreme vision of the possibilities open to human life: the sixth and seventh states of consciousness. Here, Maharishi teaches, is found the pinnacle of human development, the state of glorified life that the human mind and body are designed to live, which, through his simple technologies of consciousness, is open to anyone. Maharishi’s published...
In this chapter, we will explore further the relationship between action, impression, and desire and consider their relation to living Cosmic Consciousness. Such considerations illuminate the nature of ignorance as well as the nature of enlightenment and the means by which the former is transformed into the latter. Action, impression, and desire were constant themes of Maharishi’s teaching in...
Currently, 25 empirical articles published in independent peer-reviewed journals or in scholarly conference proceedings have reported that the collective, or group, practice of the Transcendental Meditation and TM- Sidhi program enhances the societal quality of life and reduces violence, conflict, and war. The present study retrospectively investigated the impact of this program on U.S.-Soviet...
World peace is the urgent goal of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s revival of the consciousness-based technologies of ancient Vedic India. Towards this end, Maharishi created a worldwide organisation, founded universities in several countries, and trained over 20,000 teachers of the Transcendental Meditation technique who in turn have taught it to approximately ten million people, which for five decades...
This study empirically tests the hypothesis that during the years from 1979 to 1986, the Cold War climate of superpower relations was significantly improved through the reduction of global stress and tension produced by four large groups of experts practicing the Transcendental Meditation-Sidhi program, an advanced aspect of the Transcendental Meditation technique. The number of group...
Wars in the Middle East and conflicts throughout world history display the failure of government leaders to achieve peace, either at the negotiation table or on the battlefield. It is a failure that will continue without end if the existing methods of attempting to create peace are the only ones tried. Indeed, government leaders have repeatedly ignored knowledge of a peace-creating technology...
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...
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has explained that with ‘Support of Nature’ individuals find desires and wishes are fulfilled in a way that seems to be caused by fortunate coincidences—that circumstances come about without their direct action, to fulfil their desires. Maharishi has extolled Support of Nature as a consciousness-based management tool to ‘do less and accomplish more’ in fulfilling personal...