According to a collective meditation experiment conducted in Washington, D.C. in 1993, the violent crime broke the record of continuous rising during the research period, declined by 23.3% instead.

The famous quantum physicist, John Hagelin and his research team developed a large-scale forward-looking social research. This research was to demonstrate how simple and easy it is to reduce social crime and stress through meditation.

The way to reduce crime is to use a group of meditators called TM-Sidhas.

(TM-Sidha is a terminology used to describe the Transcendental Meditation(TM) practitioner who is a professionally trained meditator. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of Western TM, developed a training program for TM-Sidhas in the late 1970s. It had been proved that the place where TM-Sidhas did collective meditation had produced a dramatic positive impact on crime, violent conflict, terrorism and even public war.)

In the early days, about 40 researches had shown that the collective meditation effect of TM-Sidhas could create an impact on social consensus.

While this time, the researchers' goal is to create an impressive event in some of the world's most important capital cities. The idea is to attract the attention of the authorities, make them aware of the possibility of using meditation teams to fight crime and prevent war.

Part of the program is to develop a research program that can withstand all serious challenges, in order to ensure the fairness and thoroughness of the experiment.

In consideration of this point, a program review committee consist of 27 members including independent scientists and leading citizens is formed. Their task is to review and approve the research program first, and then monitor the entire research process to ensure the objectivity and rigor of the research.

The research team itself is made up of a wide range of people to ensure that there is no bias. In addition to scientists from the Maharishi Management University, members of this team are also from the Management Development Center and Conflict Management Center, the University of Maryland, the Humanities and Social Sciences Department, University of District of Columbia, the Department of Planning and Research, and Police Force of District of Columbia.

This program was conducted between June 7 and July 30, 1993. Based on the past experience, the researchers predicted in advance that the TM-Sidha team was able to reduce crime rates by more than 20% in this city. The researchers confirmed that this task was able to be achieved without any verbal, social, political, or physical contact between the meditator and the local community. This positive impact was generated quietly and cautiously from the field of consciousness.

At that time, the local police forces laughed at this prediction. The police chief also said that unless 20 inches of snow would be fallen this summer in Washington, then the crime rate was expected to be reduced. The police had become accustomed to the rising crime rate year after year and every summer when the weather is hot.

800 meditators had not been affected by the sneer, and they attended the event on the first week together. The emergence of the crowd had brought a comfortable energy field to Washington. During the last two weeks of the two-month event, the number of meditators had increased to 4,000.



Calculate the number of TM-Sidhas meditators

In general, the number of collective meditators required is equal to or more than 1% of the square root of the local population (√1%). In Washington, about 173 meditators are required).


Due to the prominent position of Washington, DC as the capital of the major superpower country in the world. The city includes not only the presidential palace, the Supreme Court, Parliament and other national institutions and government organizations nearby, but also the Pentagon, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters. All these powerful national institutions have a great influence on the world.

So in this case, instead of attracting 173 meditators, the research team had attracted more than 1,750 meditators, which is about √1% of the US population.

Washington’s crime rate is three times of the national average level

Therefore, researchers regarded this city as the focus of national and social collective pressure. They concluded that this was due to the accumulation of global collective pressure, resulting in such a high crime rate in this region - three times of the average national crime rate.

In other words, the researchers believed that in order to lower the local crime rate rapidly, what the meditators needed to deal with was not only the collective pressure generated by the local.

The history of rising of recent crime rates

Recent history record in Washington showed that violent crime had been rising five months before the research. In the first two weeks of the program, this trend was still rising, the murder cases were increasing continuously.

(To help to standardize the statistical research, the researchers used the FBI's unified crime statistics to define crime or personal injury crimes: homicide, rape, and severe assault - HRA）

But with the start of the initial stage and as the number of meditators increased, the HRA violent crime began to decline sharply. From the start to the end of the two-month experimental program, the HRA violent crime was much lower than the forecast for that year.

HRA crimes broke the history of rising, declined by 23.3% instead when the program was conducted.

The biggest influence was the unprecedented 23.3% decline of HRA crimes rate. This effect occurred in the final stages of the program and was also the time when the number of meditators reached the peak.

This result reflected that the statistical probability of the crime rate change was less than two - billionths (p < .000000002).

Just as what the researchers speculated, HRA's crime began to rise once the program was over.

The researchers also tested other causes that could lead to a decline, such as temperature, rain, weekends, and anti-crime activities by police and community. They found that the decline of the crime rates could not be attributed to those other possibilities.

Contrary to the police chief’s prediction, Washington did not benefit from the 20-inch snow. In fact, the weather in this city was very hot throughout the program. The crime cycle in Washington was that crime rate will increase with the rising of temperature day after day, but the collective meditation program had broken this cycle record.

Most importantly, when the research team analyzed the same period in the previous five years, no significant reduction in HRA crime was found. However, in 1993, there was a distinct crime decline record.





Other series of improvements

In addition, just as what the researchers speculated while the program was conducting, there was still a series of improved events during the research.

  • President Clinton’s support rate had improved （p = 5.29 x 10-8）
  • Positive report to President Clinton from media presented a growth（p = .01）
  • Emergency Psychiatric Help Call had reduced （p = .009）
  • Hospital trauma cases had reduced （p = .02）
  • Complaints against the police had reduced（p = .01）
  • Accidental deaths cases had reduced（p = .05）
  • Life quality index had improved （p = 3.22 x 10-5）
     

Reference:
http://www.worldpeacegroup.org/washington_crime_prevention_full_article.html