Consciousness-Based Education - Maharishi University of ...

quality of life in the us (1960–1984)ity of life for the society as a whole would start to improve. Maharishidescribed this new trend as the Dawn of the Age of Enlightenment,which he inaugurated in 1975 (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 1976). Thefirst aim of this study is to analyze whether the quality of life in theU.S. has improved since 1975 as a function of the proportion of meditatorsin the population.Since April 1979, Maharishi International University (renamedMaharishi University of Management in 1992) in Fairfield, Iowa, hashad a program in which the students, faculty, and staff practice theTM-Sidhi program together in a group every day, morning and evening.The goal was to have a group of at least 1600 practitioners, thesquare root of 1% of the population of the U.S. and Canada, the predictedthreshold for creating a phase transition to a higher quality of lifein North America (the square root of 1% of the population of the U.S.alone is 1530). In 1982, 1983, and 1984, the size of the group involvedin the Maharishi University of Management program reached the 1530and 1600 thresholds on many occasions so that further impact on thequality of life in the U.S. was expected. Thus, the second aim of thisstudy is to examine whether the collective practice of the TM-Sidhiprogram at the Maharishi University of Management had affected thequality of life in the U.S. from 1982 to 1984.METHODIndependent VariablesThe major independent variable in this study was the Maharishi EffectIndex, consisting of the percentage of the population practicing theTranscendental Meditation technique plus the estimated impact of thegroup of practitioners of the TM-Sidhi program at Maharishi Universityof Management:Maharishi Effect Index = 100(# TM Prac./pop) + 100((# Coll. TM-Sidhi Pract.) 2 /pop) 1The construction of this index was based on the theoretical predictionthat when 1% of the population practices the TranscendentalMeditation program, or when the square root of 1% of the population541