A Scientifically verified durable and sustainable peaceful means to end violence
Thu, Jan 01 2009
"A lasting solution to the situation in Gaza can only be attained by peaceful means."
-- UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon --

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was "working for a ceasefire that will be fully respected, durable and sustainable"
-- US State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid --

The attacks by Hamas show that Israel, despite its advanced technologies and valiant efforts, still struggles to eliminate violent extremism and cannot guarantee peace for its nation. Lebanon and Palestine are in similar situations. Clearly, a new strategy for peace in the Middle East is desperately needed.

Violent extremism is a human problem requiring human solutions. The underlying cause of extremist social violence is accumulated social stress. Therefore, to protect their civilian populations effectively, the armed forces of Israel, Lebanon and Palestine (the Palestinian Authority maintains an official uniformed armed service that is officially termed a "police force") need first to reduce the collective societal stress in their localities.

A new technology of defense now exists that can accomplish this goal. It is based upon the latest discoveries in the fields of physics, neuroscience, and physiology. Ultimately, it is based on the discovery of the unified field of all the laws of nature -- the most fundamental and powerful level of nature's dynamics. Extensive research has confirmed its effectiveness. This new technology is easily applied and highly cost-effective. It can prevent disruption and attack from within the country or outside the country.

This approach is known today as Invincible Defense Technology (IDT). It has its roots in ancient technologies of consciousness, revived in modern times by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi as a non-religious approach to peace. These technologies of consciousness directly access and harness the unified field on the deepest level of human experience -- pure consciousness itself. Extensive scientific research indicates that this approach reduces collective societal stress, eliminates extremism and thereby snuffs out war and terrorism. Over the past three decades, it has been quietly and successfully used by members of many faiths to defuse and eliminate conflict.

The approach involves the creation of large groups of peace-creating experts practicing Invincible Defense Technology together. A Prevention Wing of the Military consisting of approximately 2% to 3% of the military of each country could easily achieve this goal. These special units would be trained in the technologies of consciousness revived by Maharishi -- the Transcendental Meditation (TM) and TM-Sidhi programs -- and would practice these techniques in large groups, twice a day.

Extensive research shows that the size of the group needed to reduce social stress in a given population should exceed the square root of 1% of the population size. Israel would therefore need to train approximately 269 soldiers; Lebanon and Palestine will each need approximately 205 soldiers as IDT experts. Alternatively, a larger group of 2,829 IDT experts established in the region would be enough to reduce social stress and thereby bring peace to the entire Middle East. (Source: www.SquareRootOfOnePercent.org)

Studies show that when the required threshold of IDT experts is crossed, crime rates go down in the affected population, quality of life indices go up, and terrorism and war abate. Scientists refer to this phenomenon as the Maharishi Effect in honor of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who first predicted it. As an example of this effect, in 1993 a two-month Maharishi Effect intervention was implemented in Washington, DC, the capital city of the US. Predictions of specific drops in crime and other indices were lodged in advance with government leaders and newspapers. An independent Project Review Board approved the research protocol. The findings showed that crime fell 24 percent below expected levels when the group size reached its maximum. Temperature, weekend effects, and previous trends in the data failed to account for these changes. The study was published in Social Indicators Research (1999, vol. 47, pp. 153-201).

A day-by-day study in the Journal of Conflict Resolution (1988, vol. 32, #4, pp. 776-812) of a two-month-long coherence-creating assembly in Israel showed that, on days of high attendance, war deaths in neighboring Lebanon decreased by 76%. On the same days, a composite quality-of-life index showed decreased crime, traffic accidents and fires in Jerusalem, and decreased crime accompanied by improvements in the stock market and national mood throughout Israel. Other possible causes (weather, weekends, holidays, etc.) were statistically controlled for and could not account for the results.  A follow-up day-by-day study in the Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, (2005, vol. 17, #1, pp. 285-338) of more than two years showed that during seven different coherence-creating assemblies, war deaths in Lebanon decreased by an average of 71%.

The research results on the effects of coherence-creating assemblies on the Lebanese conflict are of particular significance to UN peacekeeping forces. One study covered the period from July to August 1983, and the other covered the two-year period from 1983-1985. During these periods, international peacekeeping forces were on duty with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. The research indicates that during the coherence-creating assemblies, decreased stress and increased coherence in regional collective consciousness may have diminished violent outbursts in Lebanon and facilitated more co-operative interaction among typically antagonistic factions. This research provides strong evidence for the reliability of coherence-creating groups even under extreme conditions of protracted political violence.

Over 50 studies have shown that IDT works. The causal mechanism has been postulated to be a field effect of consciousness -- a spillover effect on the level of the unified field from the peace-creating group into the larger population. On this basis, a study in the Journal of Social Behavior and Personality (2005, vol. 17, #1, pp. 339-373) additionally offers a proposed explanation of causality in biological terms. Research conducted on the powerful neurotransmitter serotonin shows that it produces feelings of contentment, happiness and even euphoria. Low levels of serotonin, according to research, correlate with violence, aggression, and poor emotional moods. The IDT study showed that higher numbers of IDT experts correlated with a marked increase in serotonin production among other community members. These results were statistically significant and followed the attendance figures in the IDT group. This finding offers a plausible neurophysiologic mechanism to explain reduced hostility and aggression in society at large.

The Maharishi Effect has also been documented on a worldwide scale in a study published in the Journal of Offender Rehabilitation (2003, vol. 36, #1-4, 283-302) using data provided by the Rand Corporation. When large assemblies of IDT experts exceeded the Maharishi Effect threshold for the world during the years 1983-1985, terrorism decreased globally 72%, international conflict decreased 33%, and violence within nations was reduced without intrusion by other governments.

In the 1990s, the military in Mozambique used IDT to end its civil war. Today, The Netherlands, Bolivia, Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Peru have enough practitioners of IDT to create the Maharishi Effect. The United States of America is close to achieving the requisite number of IDT experts through its Invincible America Assembly in Fairfield, Iowa. And a group large enough to have a global effect is planned for India. But these are all civilian groups, and most require financial support.

Since the armed forces of Palestine, Lebanon and Israel are funded by their governments and their personnel are paid to perform their duties and protect their citizens, IDT groups in these armed forces would not be subject to fluctuations of donors, jobs, student graduations, and optional activities. They would be permanent peace-creating groups.

The armed forces of Israel, Lebanon and Palestine are responsible for protecting their respective civilian populations, and are obligated to thoroughly examine realistic, scientifically proven methods for ending war and terrorism. IDT is such a method. Therefore, we feel it is their duty to each create a Prevention Wing of the Military and truly protect their civilian populations.

Even if the leaders of Israel, Lebanon, and Palestine fail to implement IDT immediately, the UN and the US government can use this technology to end the conflict in the Middle East in a non-invasive way. Scientific research has confirmed that large enough IDT groups can create measurable positive effects across national boundaries. For this reason, UN peacekeeping forces trained in IDT could be deployed in Middle Eastern countries adjacent to the conflict in order to reduce or eliminate the conflict regionally.

In addition, although the strongest IDT peace-creating effects have been attained with the establishment of one large group of participants, measurable positive outcomes are still observed when participants gather in several smaller groups. Therefore, even sea-based Prevention Wings are theoretically possible. Carrier battle groups deployed to the Persian Gulf could train their onboard military as IDT experts and thereby create a stress-reducing, peace-promoting influence throughout the entire Middle East.

As a scientifically validated, field-tested approach, the Invincible Defense Technology is the most realistic strategy to root out and combat the menace of terrorism. It therefore represents, in the words of US State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid, a “fully respected, durable, and sustainable” peaceful means to end the protracted violence in the Middle East.


About the Authors:

Maj Gen (Retd) Kulwant Singh, UYSM, PhD leads an international group of generals and defence experts that advocates Invincible Defence Technology.

John Hagelin, PhD is the Director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy (ISTPP), an organization in the United States that advocates prevention-oriented technologies. He is a Harvard-trained quantum physicist who won the prestigious Kilby Award, and appeared in the feature films The Secret and What the Bleep Do We Know? Dr. Hagelin also serves as the Director of the Union for Concerned Scientists.

David Leffler, PhD a United States Air Force veteran, is the Executive Director of the Center for Advanced Military Science (CAMS) at ISTPP. www.StrongMilitary.org
Copyright Center for Advanced Military Science (CAMS)