Last week, my article in the Sunday Pioneer spoke about the deep need for peace, discussing the acute awareness of Pune educator, Professor Dr Vishwanath D Karad, of the need to make us all understand the importance of actively promoting peace, and of ensuring that such peace is lasting. Last week’s article was written under the shadow of POTUS Donald Trump’s announcement of aid for Pakistan and retribution for India’s purchases of Russian oil.
Today, the world is waiting for more detailed news of the results of yesterday’s meeting between Trump and Putin at the US Air Force base outside Anchorage in Alaska. To operate under such dire circumstances, with the whole world anxiously watching, is no way to attempt to create such a fundamentally important condition as peace. These acts by leaders of the world’s most militarised powers can only achieve so much — and not very much at that.
The needs of our planet are much greater: A means by which wars become a thing of the past, so that extremists with passionate views — whether in the Middle East or the former USSR, whether Islamists in ASEAN countries or in Sub-Saharan Africa — cannot bring our world to its knees; not by bloodshed, nor by creating ever-rising numbers of refugees.
And then, what about the problems caused by drug barons in the Americas, and their operations across the globe — said even to include Mother India? Previous articles discussed scientific research on Yoga, particularly research on the system of genuine Yoga-Dhyana: The Transcendental Meditation™ technique of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Some years after its initial publication in 1970, Maharishi asked scientists working with him to investigate the possible effects on society at large if 1 per cent of that society practised his TM technique. Sections of the ancient Vedic literature, he said, attest to peace-creating effects. At that time, long before today’s understanding of how brain function supports consciousness, and its changes during Dhyana meditation, such a prediction seemed completely impossible — a scientific hypothesis with no chance of validation. Imagine how astounded those scientists felt when the prediction turned out to be correct, and in a variety of ways. If a fraction of the population of a society or social unit — numbering about 1 per cent — practise Dhyana, many social indices improve. Crime rates decrease; so does domestic violence; suicide rates fall, as do car accidents, and so on.
Furthermore, if practice is undertaken in groups, subtle-level interactions between those meditating multiply the effects. The number in the group multiplies the effect of each individual. The effect of a group is equivalent to the square of the number of meditators in the group. Suddenly, it becomes possible to create a peaceful society, not just for a town or city, but for an entire nation or continent — even for the whole population of Earth.
At first, this possibility may sound like wild optimism. But systematic research conducted in the 1970s and 1980s showed it to be achievable. For the whole of India, with a population of 1,480 million, the number in the group needs to be almost 4,000. Before he passed away in early 2008, Maharishi obtained a facility at the geographical centre of India, its Brahmasthan, that could accommodate just such a number.
Today, graduates from his pundit schools — such as Maharishi Nagar in Noida outside New Delhi, or Maharishi Veda Vidya Peeth south-east of Bhopal — live there. These young pundits participate in the necessary large-group meditations morning and evening, and during the day they conduct various Vedic Yagyas, such as Graha Shanti or Rudra Abhishek, for the benefit of those who employ their services. A means to guarantee World Peace without the need for difficult or impossible negotiations is at hand. That is not to say that governments will not have to negotiate, but their chances of success will be greatly increased. Let us pray that our world will soon become one family; that Gandhi’s principle of Ahimsa, and Christianity’s ‘Peace that Passeth Understanding’, can be achieved for all. Shalom! Salaam! Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti !
(The author is a MA Cantab, PhD at MIT, DSc Hon Causa, Professor Emeritus of Biology, MIT World Peace University)