John Hagelin on the Intention Download Series

In Dr. Hagelin's study regarding the 1993 National Demonstration Project, the incidence of violent crimes served as a social indicator of the level of collective stress in Washington, D.C.—one of the most crime-ridden cities in the United States. Violent crimes against the person (i.e. homicides, rapes, and assaults) decreased at an accelerated rate as the coherence-creating assembly grew in numbers.

A 27-member Project Review Board approved the research protocol, arbitrarily setting the experimental period from June 7 to July 30, 1993, and monitored the research process. This independent review board was composed of sociologists and criminologists from six leading universities; representatives from the police department; civic leaders; and District government officials. The research protocol was publicly announced in advance to government leaders, as well as to the national and international news media, and the data were collected independently by the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department. This study detected a clear “lead-lag” relationship by using a sophisticated statistical system developed by Liu and colleagues along with a comprehensive control for possible confounding variables.

Interesting findings arose from the time-series analyses:
• Violent crimes fell 23% below the predicted level when the coherence-creating group reached its maximum size of approximately 4,000 participants (p < 2 × 10-9 for weekly data).
• The time-series model included a statistically significant decay parameter, which indicated that the effect due to the group’s size was carried over from week to week, and hence, an appreciable effect could be detected, albeit in a gradually diminishing manner, for some weeks following the end of the intervention period; this particular finding implies that the reductions in violent crime lagged behind changes in group size, and hence, that the group had a leading effect.
• Moreover, as group size increased the level of violent crimes decreased significantly, thus indicating a type of dose-response relationship.

The analysis to assess the significance of the observed dose response yielded a correlation of – 0.76 and an effect size of – 2.3 standard deviation units, thus indicating a strong statistical effect.

The following are major points to keep in mind from the published work by Hagelin and colleagues:
• The possibility that the intervention period happened to coincide with an annual drop in violent crime levels during the summer of 1993 was rejected for these reasons: (1) time series analyses of violent crimes occurring during June and July in each of the five previous years did not show any significant decreases; (2) average weekly temperature was a potent predictor of weekly violent crimes throughout 1993, (p < 3 × 10-26); (3) the direct relationship between violent crimes and temperature was still highly statistically significant—as were the intervention parameters—in the differenced model, thereby ruling out the possibility of a spurious outcome; and (4) the levels of violent crimes during the intervention period were lower than the May-June average for year 1993, despite unusually higher temperatures.
• It was deemed unlikely that an unknown underlying third variable could account for the reduction in violent crimes since this variable would have had to affect crime in the District of Columbia, in the same stepwise manner as the sharp incremental increases in group size, during the same time intervals as well.
• The effect of the group’s size appeared to be highly robust due to the significant results obtained with all the different models that had been constructed based on a wide variety of alternative assumptions. These models used a range of specifications, and accounted for variations in confounder relationships once actual data for the periods during and after the intervention could be analyzed; the maximum decrease in violent crimes obtained with such models was of similar magnitude.
• A maximum decrease of 23.3% was reported because the base model, which was selected according to the Akaike Information Criterion and which used prior crime data only, minimized the influences of random noise reflected in actual crime, and thus was likely to yield a more accurate estimate of the crime reduction.
• Using a substantially longer baseline, based on weekly data from 1988-1993, the maximum decrease was 24.6% (p < 3 × 10-5); in this analysis, temperature was again highly significant as a control variable and the model successfully accounted for any cycles and trends in violent crimes, including annual seasonality and the influences of crime levels in the previous year.
• Reverse causation was rejected following a cross-correlation analysis that showed no evidence that changes in crime levels led changes in group size.

That crime rates increasingly fell as the group’s size became increasingly larger is, in itself, a strong indication of a causal relationship—this observation is analogous to a dose response in clinical trials. This study, which involved a very short intervention period, has made considerable progress in establishing a causal link between the coherence-creating program and improvements in behavioural norms at the city level. It has demonstrated the plausibility that the social environment can be rendered more conducive to the unfoldment of human potential through the reduction of social stress made possible by the large-scale application of the technology of consciousness.

The impact of the social climate on individual behaviour is an important point to emphasize, because it clarifies that the coherence-creating group does not itself aim to generate the observed interconnectedness between human beings. Rather, the effect of this group arises simply from the enlivenment of the most fundamental field of consciousness, which clears away the social stress that has been clouding the already existing collective consciousness through which human beings influence each other on a daily basis.

As more people endeavor to be informed, the more widespread will be the awareness of such a technology to reduce crime and violence not only in our country but also throughout the world. This in turn will eventually lead to the establishment of real homeland security once and for all.

May peace and joy be with you and your loved ones.

This was good! A very profound dialogue. Dr. Hagelin was very informative and inspirational in "What the Bleep"

I really wanted to believe what John Hagelin is saying about the power of group meditation to reduce social problems, and even change the weather, but for some reason, doubt kept creeping in. Perhaps it's because it seems to good to be true. Perhaps it's because of the controversy surrounding TM and it's founder, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

So I decided to check up on his claim about the lack of Atlantic hurricane landfalls in 2006 and it's relationship to TM. I checked the hurricane records for 1981 through 2006. 2006 was somewhat unusual in that no Atlantic Hurricanes made landfall on the Continental U.S. or anywhere else (although 3 tropical storms did). "Somewhat" is the key word because there have been 9 such years out of the past 26 with no U.S. landfalls and 4 with no landfalls anywhere. 8 of those 9 no-U.S. landfall years had less than 3 tropical storms make landfall. Even using the lowest number (4 years with no hurricane landfalls anywhere), there is over a 15% chance that a year like 2006 will occur based on 26 years of data. I'm not sure if I'm missing something, but one occurrence of an event like this does not seem to be even close to statistically significant.

A little searching revealed that there is also much controversy around the quality of the studies that claim crime and violence reduction for Washington DC, Lebanon and other places.

My searching also revealed that the participants in these studies pay large amounts of money to get trained in the Transcendental Meditation ™ technique and the results of the studies are used to sell TM to more people. That system feels just a bit too self serving to me to be comfortable with it.

I must say that my doubts have only grown. While group meditation may have positive effects on the larger community, I suspect it's not quite as simple and easy as proponents of the "Maharishi Effect" claim, and certainly not restricted to TM only.