Until I met John Davies I hadn't given much thought to the notion that meditation practice might have an effect beyond my personal life. Sure it would be great if more people meditated, and sure if more people meditated we would be better off as a society. Most of us can recite a list of benefits of meditation: stress reduction, cheerfulness, creativity; the list goes on and it's convincing. But these are the affects of meditation on individuals. John Davies and his colleagues have been thinking bigger, much bigger. Dr. Davies is an internationally recognized expert in conflict management at the University of Maryland, and his concerns these days are large scale violent conflicts, wars, and the collective consciousness. As a young man in Australia, interested in psychology, science, and spiritual practice, Dr. Davies is one who took the claims of Maharishi, the colorful guru of the '60s, seriously. His first studies were promising, and lead to work at Harvard University during the war in the Middle East. He recently spoke at the Sacred Link Freedom From Fear conference at the Himalayan Institute, where I had the good fortune to question him further about his work.
I was particularly intrigued by your heartening story of the village in Lebanon that stayed safe through violent times because a physician had taught his patients to meditate.
That was a wonderful little study we did with a Lebanese medical doctor, Tony Nader. He had taught his patients in a village in the Schouf mountains to meditate. It was a small village, and before long, more than one percent of the population was meditating. This was a village previously subject to the continuous violence that plagued the whole area. But then there were just no more bombs in that village, even though the level of bombing continued, and even increased in both Muslim and Christian villages nearby. Because Dr. Nader was aware of the Harvard-led research in the area on the impact of meditation, he checked out the statistics maintained by the police on bombing. The only thing that had slowed the bombing over the last several years was heavy snow in the winter. People would pack up their guns for the winter when there was snow in the mountains. The statistics showed that when one percent of the population meditated, the bombing stopped, and relative peace was sustained from then on, snow or not.
Why one percent? And how does one percent affect the rest of the population?
Maharishi started to talk in the seventies about the results of a critical proportion of the population practicing meditation. He stated that one percent would have impact not just upon themselves and people immediately around them, but also they would have an impact on the collective consciousness. His prediction was that practice of meditation techniques would result in reduced violence in the community, and enhance positive cooperative behaviors.
I thought, okay, here’s a guy who’s making a claim that is extremely radical and he's made this technique accessible to research. There’s a challenge here. He even gave us numbers: 1% of a population at large, the square root of 1% if they practiced together in a group.
The idea is that once you have a number of people coming together in a group you intensify the impact of changes in consciousness that happen during meditation. The body, brain, mind, and heart are all aligned. In that state we can also align much more readily with each other. And we align more with those close to us, and that amplifies the effect. There’s literally a coherence not only in consciousness, but also that coherence is reflected in brain wave patterns, for example. With a large group you can have a constructive interference. It’s a common phenomenon in physics with waves of any type. A laser is a good example. If you have light wave emitting diodes emitting the same frequency then they’ll all fall into synchrony with each other so you get a much more powerful wave. That's why the square root of one percent is all you need in a group.
My initial studies in the small town in Australia where I did my Masters degree supported Maharishi's claims. Then, working with leading researchers at Harvard, I had a chance to test his assertion on a big scale under tough conditions.
In 1983 Israel was deeply caught in the war in Lebanon. Beirut and the surrounding mountains were the main area of fighting. We were able to bring in a group of more than 200 meditators from all over the world trained in the Transcendental Meditation tradition. This group of people, combined with individual meditators in the country was enough of a critical mass to theoretically impact accroding to Maharishi's assertations, at least the southern half of Lebanon where the fighting was, and the whole of Israel.
Lebanon was a great place to do research. You couldn’t do this research in Congo or Sudan, for example, because in most war zones there’s no one who can say how many people were killed on this day. But in Lebanon the police were trained to keep careful statistics on how many people were killed and how many people were injured every day and how many bombs were dropped on each village every day. So there’s wonderful data available. We made precise predictions publically in advance to the press and to a panel of independent scientists about what would happen while the meditators were in the country and what would happen when they leave the country. This was a tightly controlled critical study.
The timing of the experiment was dictated by the funding and when people were available, it had nothing to do with whether or not things looked favorable in Lebanon. We were able to control for weather. We were able to control for holidays--Jewish holidays, Lebanese holidays, Muslim holidays. We were able to control for weekly, monthly, and yearly cycles. We were able to control for all these things statistically. There was nothing in the Lebanese press about our advance predictions, and there was not a big splash in the Israeli press either. So there was no way the press created expectations.
Were the meditators concentrating on Lebanon? Was it their intention to change conditions in Lebanon and bring peace?
No, they are not even thinking about Lebanon. Just doing their stuff. Just practicing their meditation program together. They practiced mantra meditation--a technique of Transcendental Meditation derived from the Vedic tradition. They’re thinking nice thoughts but not focusing on Lebanon or peace.
Did those 200+ meditators make a difference in the war?
Yes, absolutely, beyond a shadow of doubt. The level of violence in Lebanon was significantly less during the course of the study. We replicated this result seven times over during a two and half year period from 1983-1985 with seven different meditating groups. On the average war fatalities were twelve per day--twelve people were killed every day as a result of the war during the two-year period of the study. During the seven experimental periods fatalities were just over three per day. That's a 70% drop. Each one of the seven interventions was highly significant. The probability values were like one in millions. This is not just one percent significant levels. These are very high significance levels. And it wasn't just acts of war in Lebanon. The level of violent crime in Israel was also affected.
A similar pattern showed up with the measure for conflict. Interestingly, the conflict measure was not highly correlated with the number of deaths per day because the conflict measure is heavily impacted by clashes here and there, which are not particularly deadly, whereas fatalities come from big car bombs or a hotel being blown up. So the correlation between fatalities and overall conflict level was low. And the correlation with both of those with the level of cooperation which we also measured was also very low. But all three changed in extremely close correlations with the group meditation.
If one measure such as war intensity changes direction, that’s significant. When other measures like violent crime in Israel, and the number deaths from auto accidents and fire accidents, which have no correlation at all with the level of violence in Lebanon, also shift in the same direction at the same time –then there’s something very broad and very fundamental happening.
The results showed a broad societal impact that only has one reference point that makes sense--the meditation intervention. The implication is that when you have coherence in collective consciousness, it creates an environment that allows people to approach the issues differently. It provides an enabling environment. People are able to come together to perceive the possibilities for cooperative work and partnership with their enemies. In terms of quantitative measures the increase in the cooperation parameter across the seven assemblies was 66%. But that hides the richness of what was actually happening on the ground. War deaths are war deaths but cooperation is a little bit more qualitative. Nevertheless, translating the effect into a quantitative number of 66% increase in cooperation, indicates a huge change, resulting in real breakthroughs for peace. During one of the assemblies of meditators, the Lebanese government finally agreed on a security plan for all of Lebanon and was able to obtain the support of Syria and Israel. During another assembly, Syria agreed to a gradual withdrawal of its forces from Lebanon. During another, substantial progress was made in finally implementing a security plan for Beirut. Unfortunately, without the continued support of a coherent collective consciousness, they couldn’t sustain progress, and you can see in the data how the momentum for each of these huge breakthroughs fell apart once the group disbanded. Once the group ended or their numbers dropped significantly below the threshold size, then you got a return to the low cooperation pattern.
With evidence that strong, it seems like there would be a motivation to continue this kind of work. On the other hand, it does sound a bit fantastic to the ordinary person. Was your study well-received?
We were able to get the results of the first group published in the journal General Contract Resolution in 1988, (need reference), but it created such a stir that it took another 15 years to get the other six replications published. The results were challenging to many people, including scientists, who mistakenly think the validity of science is somehow tied up with the objective world, that science and spirituality are totally separate. This was threatening to people.
You mean there is no way to explain how it works? How do you explain the results? How can a group of meditators, completely unknown to the perpetuators of violence, influence their behavior without leaving the comfort of their meditation cushion?
Well there is a way to explain it. It's just not part of the conventional world view which is very materialistic; everything else is dismissed as sort of flaky and left to the province of religions and the yogis. But to be able to take the best tools of science and say this has a more profound impact in reducing violence than anything in the scientific paradigm about the material world-- that’s challenging for the scientific paradigm to accept.
So what are the scientific paradigms that could explain this dynamic? We spent some time delving into the best scientific theories to understand action at a distance, which is how conventional science would frame this process. The most profound scientific theories of science do transcend distance. Once you are talking about unified quantum fields or any quantum fields then the essential nature of distance changes. In a unified quantum field theory, such a string theory or flipped SU5 theories or super gravity theories, distance is not primary. In fact, even the electromagnetic field allows action at a distance. That’s how we get on the web and how we get television and radio. We’re used to action at a distance. It’s no big mystery. The technological and scientific level is one quantum field. A deeper quantum field emerges at even more fundamental levels than the electro-magnetic, and that field is responsible for the nuclear forces. The most profound is the gravity field. You can’t define space and gravity apart from each other. We just need to understand the dynamics of it. Unlike the whole of the rest of science, at the unified field level, by definition, you have no distance between observer and observed.
Sounds like meditation.
It’s exactly transcending the duality of the observer and observed. The unified quantum field is both a field of subjective consciousness and the underlying space of which the universe is an expression or an interpretation. The classical Newtonian physics which explains the every day physics of objects is simply an interpretation of much deeper quantum dynamics.
In meditation, awareness settles below that Newtonian external behavioral level of separation and objectivity. Awareness settles down to subtler levels of experience which correspond to much subtler time and space levels. You can even measure this in terms of brain activity. When you react to a sudden stimulus, the first interactions with the brain are completely pre-conscious. They have to do with our overall feeling tone--is this a good thing or a bad thing?
Like your hand jerking away from a hot plate before you realized that it was hot?
Exactly, that’s right. So if you flash words like love, happiness, or friendliness, meditators will pick those up much faster than they will pick up words like hate and kill, with which they don’t resonate as easily. Their ability to pick up the negative words is the same as the rest of the population. What happens with people that are meditating, and I’m sure this is true no matter what vehicle you are using for transcendence, that your ability to pick up the finer and more uplifting qualities around you is much enhanced.
Whatever you cultivate within yourself is what you easily relate to outside.
Yes, so the qualities you are alert to are the ones that attune you to a coherent relationship with the people around you; that allow you to give to people around you, to uplift people around you rather than fighting with them.
It would take a month to get a grip on this. I’m just giving you a taste of the reasoning. During meditation you’re working at a much more profound level. You’re awake and active and functioning coherently at a much more profound level than we normally are. As a result we have an impact on our surroundings at a much more profound level than we do if we’re only conscious and operating coherently at a surface level.
Quantum field theory is one way of reminding us that we’re not stepping outside science. We’re stepping outside of conventional 'sciencetism.' And there’s a difference. Too often people misuse science as a way of saying "Oh, we can ignore all this internal subtle stuff. It's not scientific."
Well, guess what – it is scientific. Furthermore, scientists have a responsibility to look at this phenomena, because potentially the implications for peace are much more profound than we can accomplish by focusing on the level of power dynamics.
More studies would help establish the credibility I suppose. What do you see as the most important work to be done now at this point in time?
What is needed is to add the spiritual approach to more conventional peace-making work. We need critical masses of people meditating in all traditions. In Lebanon we had Muslims and Christians meditating together even in war conditions. Transcendental Meditation is the technique we used in our research, but it is not the only vehicle. TM is a good research vehicle because it is systematically taught, reliable, and effective.
I work with cross-religious lines in the conflict resolution work I am doing now. We need Muslims understanding what they can get through Sufism as well as through their more conventional remembrance practices. It will take them to that level of unity in their own tradition. We need Christians understanding the mystical roots of their own practices and being open to the meditation of the heart. And we need the same within Buddhism and within all of the different traditions. All of these major traditions are caught up fighting in the name of their religion. It’s wrong. It’s just simply wrong.
You can work with people that have been caught up indirectly in violence and provide the techniques to them on a personal level. These are complimentary levels of operating to improve the quality of life in society. We need to recognize that we are all in alliance here, using different complimentary and necessary layers of the same process. And we need everything now.
Interestingly now I’m working with some beautiful Sufi teachers to promote the idea that we need one percent of people on the planet living from this level of what the Sufis call the Unity. We were just talking in terms of transcendence. Transcendence doesn’t translate for everyone. It’s not just conventional scientists. A lot of traditions don’t understand transcendence. They prefer to talk about immanence. I prefer to talk about opening of the heart. They prefer to talk about their relationship with God. The Sufis don’t use transcendence, they use the unity. But that the inner reality is the same.
In my personal life, it’s been a gift on so many levels to be exposed to the best of so many different traditions. The challenge in my life is I need is to allow my life to be an expression of that unity, and not to be see those traditions as mutually exclusive. Yes, there has to be an integrity in each of the traditions so that you don’t mix your practices, and a commitment also that you don’t just bail on one because you feel uncomfortable.
So I am completely supportive and enthusiastic of what is happening within the Vedic and yogic traditions, and also within the Islamic world, the Christian and Jewish worlds, the Buddhist and other traditions. I keep coming to the same realization that there is no difference on the inside at the deep level. There’s one truth – you want to use the G-word that’s fine. If you don’t want to use the G-word that’s fine but the reality is the same. Words get us caught, but words are relative to our culture and our time. But on the inside it’s one reality, and it’s one percent for the whole planet. The more people meditating the more impact you have. At the same time there are critical transitions. There are critical masses where things significantly shift. The one percent level is one of those critical transitions, as is the square root of one percent. One percent is not something that came out of Maharshi’s head. It’s mentioned in other traditions, including the Bible. And I’m sure that there are other transition points that I don’t know about. But these are two that I’ve been able to test and that hold up under very tight conditions.
It makes you want to go and teach one percent to meditate.
People in all traditions need to recognize that this is our responsibility. It doesn't fall on any one group. We all have to do it. It has to be sustained at all levels. If more people can do the research in different traditions that would be great. The risks are very high in the world right now. The stakes are very high. The United States is in an impossible situation in Iraq right now. Not to mention Iraq itself is in an impossible situation. We have to move beyond that type of morass. Not to mention the continuation of what’s going on in Sudan and the Congo and a dozen other countries around the world that I could point to.
There's a well-known Vedic maxim that says that in the vicinity of the Enlightened there’s no violence. That’s the core principle. If there is enough coherence in the United States consciousness as a whole, 9/11 won't happen again. That’s what we need as our war on terror. It needs to be fought on the inside.
The real jihad is not fought with weapons. The real jihad is to create inner peace, to create the inner unity, and slay the inner demons that hold us in separation. That’s the war on terror. Then we really slay terror literally instead of getting caught in this trap of going after terrorists, and thinking, it’s these bad people that are the problem. It’s a complete fantasy and a tragic waste of resources to get caught in that way of thinking. We need to be able to speak plainly about it and not to blame anyone because people at every level of responsibility are using the best techniques that they understand. It's our responsibility to share what we know. It’s a big jump. You’re not going to suddenly change United States policy on the basis of this study until there's a broad enough understanding in the collective consciousness of the country. Politicians are rational people. They’re not going to do something which immediately gets them voted out of office because people don’t understand what they’re doing and they feel frightened. So there’s no blame here. But nevertheless there’s a massive waste of resources compared to what could be done to this real war on terror. I think that’s the challenge for us now.
John Davies is Co-Director of the Partners in Conflict and Partners in Peacebuilding at the Center for International Development and Conflict Management at the University of Maryland.