Research Update on the 2025 Study of the Global Maharishi Effect and Most Violent Countries in the World
Kenneth L. Cavanaugh, Lee Fergusson
Journal of Maharishi Vedic Research Institute November 3, 2026 DOI: 10.66743/iisq2710 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Quasi-experimental time series analysis (state space-time series modelling) Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Monthly intrastate political violence events in Palestine, Myanmar, and Syria (ACLED data) |
| Duration | Two-week Assembly (29 December 2023 to 14 January 2024); analysis covered three years before and one year after the Assembly |
| Measures | Armed Conflict and Location Event Data project (ACLED) monthly counts of violent events |
| Key findings | The authors report that the Assembly of 10,000 for World Peace was associated with a statistically significant reduction in the trend of monthly intrastate violence (p < 0.001) across the three countries, with a 29.2% reduction from December 2023 to January 2025. They conclude the Assembly was the likely cause of the shift from a steeply rising to a sharply declining trend, based on Maharishi's theory of collective consciousness. |
Abstract
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. The study considered the potential impact on this violence of a large group of a theoretically predicted size engaged in group practice of the Transcendental Meditation and TM–Sidhi program during the Assembly of 10,000 for World Peace held in India. The two-week demonstration Assembly from 29 December 2023 to 14 January 2024 was promoted as a temporary ‘gateway’ event when 10,000 participants came together to create the Global Maharishi Effect, with larger and more permanent meditation groups expected to follow. A time series impact-assessment analysis based on state space-time series modelling was used to evaluate data on intrastate violence from the Armed Conflict and Location Event Data project (ACLED, 2024) for countries experiencing the most extreme levels of violence—Palestine, Myanmar and Syria. Empirical support was found for the hypothesis that the Assembly was associated with a statistically significantly reduced trend (p < 0.001) of intrastate violence as measured by the total combined monthly number of violent events three years before and one year after the Assembly.The 2025 article reported a 29.2% reduction in monthly political violence from December 2023 to January 2025. From these results, supported by a sound and well-reasoned theory advanced by Maharishi, about how coherence in collective consciousness affects the behaviour of societies at a national level, plus a substantial body of expanding empirical evidence on the Maharishi Effect and how it works, we concluded the Assembly was the likely cause of the observed significant shift from a steeply rising trend of monthly political violence for the three countries in the world experiencing the most extreme violence to a sharply declining trend beginning in the last quarter of 2023, just before the Assembly in January 2024.