How can Transcendental Meditation help the economy?

In the short term, Transcendental Meditation, and especially its group practice, can boost the markets. The calming effect of meditation has a spillover effect into the surrounding society, according to extensive published scientific research. And this calming effect and sense of stability and optimism and confidence buoys the markets, which are extremely sensitive to the national mood. So, because the markets are such a sensitive barometer to the collective consciousness, the level of collective fear or confidence, the markets move virtually immediately with increases in the number of people meditating in these peace-promoting groups. This is something that has been long established and carefully studied and published in the world’s foremost scientific journals, this correlation between the markets and the national mood, which is familiar to most people in the economy of course, and the relationship between the national mood and the presence of meditating groups in any given city, for example, or if the group is large enough, even on a national scale.

There are deeper principles involved here that would take a little time to unfold. My area of research as a quantum physicist is the influence of the individual on society and the collective effects of meditation. So there are deep principles of quantum mechanics that would help us understand the magnitude of the influence of one person upon another, or a group of people on the surrounding society. But even at a common-sense level, everybody knows that we affect one another, and there is a spillover of the calming effect of meditation into family and the world environment, and even society as a whole if enough people are involved. Just as panic can spread through a whole city, such as South Central LA, calm can spread through a city, or even can pervade an entire country, if the square route of one percent of the population or more is practicing these advanced and very specific technologies of consciousness, meditation practices, that have been developed to produce calm and social order.

Could you describe the project that you are doing on Wall Street right now, and how you got the idea to do it?

The idea of creating groups emerged over the past 20 years, when surprising research correlated significant drops in crime rate with cities where about one percent or more of the population had learned Transcendental Meditation. And this phenomenon has now been measured and published in about 240 different cities. So the societal effect of meditation was becoming extremely well known and has been used on many occasions to reduce social stress and even political violence, and religious and political tensions in war-torn areas. So, it’s a scientific fact, over the last quarter century, that group meditation can calm social stress and bring stability to society. To apply it to the markets was fairly common sense, and has emerged in particular over these last weeks, when the market turmoil has been maximum.

So because fear results in a bearish phenomenon, when people withdraw from the markets, sending markets lower, and because the drop in prices amplifies the fear, which in turn sends the prices lower still, the markets are extremely unstable and almost hypersensitive to the collective mood. So our idea was, let’s create calm and stability in Wall Street first, where decisions are being made constantly that affect the financial well-being of the country and of the world. If banks, for example, are too apprehensive to lend, then the whole economy can grind to a halt, causing a recession and possibly even a depression if you believe some people. So if we can calm the jitters on Wall Street first, that will have a far-reaching implication, and about a thousand people in this New York City area practicing Transcendental Meditation and its advanced techniques as a group would be enough, according to extensive published research in the world’s foremost journals, to really calm the jitters on Wall Street, the irrational and disproportional reaction to the fiscal realities, which are real. I mean, a correction is a natural and in this case probably long overdue phenomenon that’s healthy for the economy — but when a correction starts to generate excess fear, inordinate amounts of fear, which can propel the economy into a tailspin, this leads to an unfortunately amplified effect. That excess reaction, born of fear, can be quelled through group meditation. That was the logic that caused us to introduce this program of meditation to Wall Street.

Many top corporate executives use Transcendental Meditation in their own lives to combat stress and maintain peak mental performance. Now corporations are beginning to introduce Transcendental Meditation to the entire company, to combat stress within the corporation, to promote health within the corporation and also to produce this inevitable spillover effect into the surrounding neighborhood, into the surrounding city, this calming effect on the markets that is so helpful right now.

So what has the response been since you announced this new initiative on Wall Street?

We had really a great response from the press who seemed to understand this message better than I thought they would. This is a novel approach. This is a scientific approach, it’s a proven approach, but it’s still novel. It’s not something that’s been used before in this way. We’ve had tremendous response from some of the top executives of major firms that surround us here. We all know the names. We’ve had interest and even action in terms of financial support, to support a group of this size, to engage people actually who could dedicate themselves to producing this calming effect, and also companies who have already introduced TM to benefit their employees, but also to benefit the economy.

You ran against John McCain in 2000. As a candidate, how do you think he has changed since then?

John McCain has in some ways been a bit of a political maverick. He has fought against corporate control of the government from what really had been quite a corrupt system of campaign financing, where the biggest contributors really do control the politics that govern the country. He was sensitive to that problem, and I respected him for his work there. But the problem with John McCain and most candidates is that their solutions are old. And they, like most politicians, are unaware of the most innovative and modern and effective solutions to critical social problems. And there are today effective solutions to spiraling health costs, to the unstable markets — as we have discussed — to falling educational outcomes, that are just not part of the campaigns of these candidates. Some of the third-party candidates like Ralph Nader and Bob Barr are talking about a few of these. The purpose of my candidacy back then was really just to inject into the political dialogue critical discussion of innovative solutions that are scientifically sound — let’s call them evidence-based solutions — to crucial social and economic problems. So I’m a little bit disappointed, but not surprised, that some of today’s candidates, and perhaps particularly McCain, because he is definitely schooled in an earlier era of political thought and political solutions, are not yet backing the sort of solutions that would really rescue healthcare, for example. There’s a problem in this country with financing healthcare, and competing for limited healthcare dollars and trying to extend healthcare to the millions of Americans who don’t have it. But the best way to cut the costs of healthcare is by keeping people healthy through effective preventative medicine, which is now illegal in the United States. Prevention is actually banned from Medicare and other government healthcare programs, and it’s on the basis of effective prevention that healthcare costs can be prevented. It’s kind of an old school of thought, I must say, and I wish there were more third-party candidates out there voicing innovative, but scientifically proven solutions to problems in the economy, healthcare, education, energy policy, and so forth, and we’re not seeing enough of that.

Given that there isn’t the strong third-party voice in this election, which of the two options that we have before us do you think would be the best for the peace that, on your website and in your organization, you say you are striving for?

I would like to see a fresh new leadership in the country, and I personally think Obama, while he may lack a certain amount of experience, will be open to innovative, new solutions, and will chose, I believe, advisers and cabinet members who are competent. That’s a hope. I’m also concerned that John McCain is one of the biggest hawks, together with Joe Lieberman, in the history of American politics since Teddy Roosevelt, and that concerns me. I don’t believe that war should continue to be such a routine instrument of international policy. War should be nothing other than an absolute last-ditch option of desperation. We actually have talked about in this interview proven methods that have worked repeatedly, and in fact have never failed in any scientific study, to prevent war, and even stop warfare in war-torn areas like the Middle East, because war and terrorism are the consequence of mounting tensions — political, ethnic and religious tensions, among rival factions in critical hot spots throughout the world, like the Middle East. Those tensions, unchecked, can build to the boiling point and inevitably erupt as war and social violence. But this meditation approach, especially practiced in groups, can directly target and neutralize these mounting tensions so that war simply does not erupt and open warfare can be quelled in a matter of days. So this is something that works to prevent war, in preventing political, economic and ethnic tensions from reaching the boiling point, and providing a fertile field for diplomatic efforts to work. As long as the tensions are so acute, as long as the desire for vengeance and revenge are foremost in the hearts of the rival peoples, then paper treaties and ceasefires among elected representatives of those factions are really not worth the paper they are written on. You’ve got to target the basis of war and social violence, which is mounting tensions. And those can be directly targeted and diffused.

There are many solutions to prevent war, to reduce health care costs, solutions in the field of energy technology and agriculture, and certainly education, that are not really being embraced by politicians, and I don’t think that John McCain in this stage in his career is going to be sufficiently open to novel solutions that are evidence-based.

Copyright Last Exit 2008