Consciousness-Based Education - Maharishi University of ...

quality of life in the us (1960–1984)tested for autocorrelations (Ljung-Box = 7.735, df = 4, p = .102; Runsabout-the-meantest = -1.58, p = .114, and the departure from the normaldistribution was not significant.The correlations of the Quality of Life Change Index with the indicatorvariable (Analysis 2) and with the Transcendental Meditationpractitioner rate taken together indicate that the quality of national lifeis directly proportional to the rate of individuals practicing the TranscendentalMeditation technique in the U.S. Figure 1 shows that thecorrelation between the Transcendental Meditation practitioner rateand the Quality of Life Change Index was largely due to a shift in theQuality of Life Change Index from negative to positive values correlatedwith the rapid rise in the Transcendental Meditation practitionerrate in 1975 and 1976.The issue of causality was addressed by a cross correlation analysis tosee if the rate of individuals practicing the Transcendental Meditationtechnique leads the Quality of Life Change Index in time. The crosscorrelation function, shown in Figure 3, indicates that the TranscendentalMeditation practitioner rate is a leading indicator on the Qualityof Life Change Index: All the cross correlations from lags 0 to 5 werestatistically significant (p < .05), whereas none of the cross correlationsfrom the negative lags were significant, showing that the TranscendentalMeditation practitioner rate could predict the national quality oflife over the next five years, but that increase in quality of life did notpredict an increase in the Transcendental Meditation practitioner rate(Figure 3). This pattern of cross correlations together with the graphicrepresentation of the data seen in Figure 1 suggests that the increase inmeditator rate in 1975 and 1976 caused the transition from a decliningtrend in the quality of life in the U.S. prior to 1976 to a positive trendseen thereafter.551