Consciousness-Based Education - Maharishi University of ...

consciousness-based education and Governmentcontributed to a significant improvement in superpower relations overthe period December 1983 through 1986. This improvement was measuredby increased cooperation and decreased conflict in Soviet behaviortoward the US. The finding of a favorable impact of the group practiceof these technologies on US-Soviet relations is further supported byearlier related research. These earlier studies found a significant impactof the permanent TM-Sidhi group in the US on American presidentialstatements concerning the Soviet Union as well as on US foreign policyactions toward the USSR (Gelderloos et al. 1990a, 1990b; Gelderloos etal., 1988, 1999).One possible implication of this body of research on US-Soviet relationsis that the influence of the group practice of these technologies ofconsciousness may have helped to dissipate perhaps the most seriousdanger of nuclear war between the superpowers since the Cuban missilecrisis of 1962. According to a high-ranking Soviet defector, KGBColonel Oleg Gordievsky, the superpowers came perilously close tonuclear war in 1983–1984. President Reagan’s virulently anti-Sovietrhetoric after he assumed office in 1981 and the subsequent US buildupof nuclear arms led the Kremlin leadership, including Soviet leader YuriAndropov, to conclude that the US was actively preparing for nuclearwar (Andrew and Gordievsky, 1990: 581–605).The Kremlin fear of US nuclear attack was heightened in the tenseatmosphere generated by the Soviet downing of a Korean Airlines passengerjet in September 1983 and the deployment of US Pershing missilesin Europe in November 1983. According to Gordievsky, Sovietparanoia about surprise nuclear attack reached its peak during NATOexercises November 2–11, 1983. During these military exercises, theKGB concluded (falsely) that American forces had been put on alertand might have begun the countdown for nuclear war. Without realizingit, in the fall of 1983 the world had come frighteningly close tonuclear war, “certainly closer than at any time since the Cuban missilecrisis of 1962” (Andrew and Gordievsky, 1990: 605).During this period of tense superpower relations in the early fall of1983, a group of several hundred experts in the Transcendental Meditationand TM-Sidhi program was established just a few blocks fromthe White House in Washington, D.C. Preparations were begun forthe first global World Peace Assembly to be held beginning in Decem-484