Transcendental meditation for peace--Jonathan Rowson

We cannot solve the problems we have created with the same thinking that created them.

The Salience of ‘Societal Stress’ and an Emerging Paradigm for Peace

Peace can be regarded as ‘absence of violence’…Violence is present when human beings are being influenced so that their actual somatic and mental realizations are below their potential realizations.

A peaceful individual is the unit of world peace…structured in a specific pattern of neurophysiological functioning…We have in our possession a technology to structure the neurophysiological basis of world peace.

A score of new centuries plus one, this one, and still the world is volatile. Conflict is ubiquitous. It spans an increasingly interdependent planet, implicating soldier and civilian alike. From nuclear discord in the Korean peninsula, to attrition in the valley of Kashmir, from a calamity in a behemothic American metropolis, to cavernous hideaways in Afghanistan, and now from the holy sites of Israel, to the bleeding deserts of Iraq.

There is no end to conflict in sight, and this is partly because there is no beginning to view. It is hard to imagine a world without violence, for perpetual peace was prehistoric, if it ever existed at all. Indeed the evidence from history suggests that ‘peace’ is at best a problematic idea, and at worst an impossibility. The following analysis seeks to address this issue, firstly by clarifying the concept of peace, and secondly by considering whether we need to change our world view to fully accommodate this concept and make it a living reality.

The matter at hand is precisely the relationship between peace, war and human nature. Our understanding of human nature is based on our philosophical and scientific understanding of the world, and our epistemic commitment to a certain form of human nature will shape our understanding of the causes of war and the prospects for peace. It is widely acknowledged that the way we frame contested concepts like ‘peace’ ‘violence’, ‘society’, and ‘stress’ has a direct bearing on the theory and practice of conflict resolution, it is rarely acknowledged that our framing of these concepts depends, in turn, on our most fundamental views about the fabric of reality. Indeed, even within a pluralistic western society, most policy makers don’t question the path from metaphysics(what is the relationship between mind and matter; what is consciousness?) to science(what is possible; what is provable?) to policy(what is workable; what looks credible?) to peace(why does it elude us?).

It is normal to start at the level of policy, taking the prevailing view of human nature as a given. In most cases this is expedient and, from a societal point of view, a wise division of labor. It makes sense that abstract and scientific questions should be dealt with by philosophers and scientists rather than politicians. However, when we take a global perspective, it seems that the policies stemming from the dominant world view have made no dent on intractable conflicts.[4] In most cases our policies are not giving rise to peace, and this might be because they are based on a view of the world and of human nature that may be partly erroneous, or somehow incomplete.

More specifically, most policy is delivered in the context of an unresolved philosophical issue, captured by the popular quip: “What’s the mind? Doesn’t matter. What’s the matter? Never mind.” A central contention of this analysis is that one’s understanding of the nature of consciousness, and the meaning of ‘collective consciousness’ has a direct bearing on beliefs about the causes of conflict and strategies for peace. Therefore, the aim is to demonstrate, as far as possible, how having a theory of consciousness does matter for conflict resolution, and why anyone who cares about peace should mind.

All We are Stressing, is Give Peace a Chance

Stress is the gap between how we would like our life to be, and how it actually is.

A promising link between theories of consciousness and prospects for peace is the concept of stress. [6] Conscious individuals experience stress, and the more stress they experience the more inclined towards violence they become[7]. If this is the heart of the matter, the first task is thus to establish some conceptual space for the concept of ‘stress’ in the main currents of peace discourse and then to introduce some ways in which the concept of ‘societal stress’ and techniques of stress reduction might be used in conflict resolution.

However, the biggest challenge is to show how ‘society’ can ‘experience’ ‘stress’, without doing violence to the meaning of these terms. This analysis will consider one radical way of meeting this challenge, based on a social ontology in which ‘collective consciousness’ is central. A further question is whether the arguments in favor of this ontology are strong enough to represent the early stages of a Kuhnian ‘paradigm shift’. The paradigm in question is cognitive science, and the prevailing view within that paradigm, that consciousness is either reducible to brain states or is an emergent property of certain brain states[8]. There are at least some good reasons to call this view into question, and propose that consciousness is a field, and that society, and the whole world, share a ‘collective consciousness’. A corollary of this view is that ‘peace’ comes about through increasing coherence in collective consciousness.[9]

In his seminal article on peace research, Johan Galtung engages in philosophical labor to bring some clarity to the concept of ‘peace’. His primary claim is that peace can be regarded as ‘absence of violence’.[10] Galtung gives a rich account of violence in which the distinction between personal violence, perpetrated by a single actor, and structural violence, where violence cannot be attributed to any single actor, is central. He attempts to clarify the relationship between these forms of violence, but, by his own admission, does not fully succeed. The aim here is to show why establishing the nature of the relationship between personal and structural violence is important, propose a possible way to do so, and then consider the implications of what has been achieved.

The first step is to argue for the claim that the relationship between the individual and societal levels of violence can be thought of as different manifestations of the same type of ‘stress’. The argument is that although stress is not a sufficient condition for violence to occur, it is a necessary condition. In other words, stress will not always give rise to violence, but, if we can eliminate stress, we can eliminate violence too.[11] The second aim is to show that, if it is granted that a fuller understanding of stress might enrich our current notions of violence, then it would be incumbent upon us to look for a way to address personal and structural violence simultaneously and systematically, by targeting the stress underlying violence directly. [12]

Does ‘Structural Violence’ Need a Structure?

Galtungs’s provisional definition of violence is rather broad. He writes, “Violence is present when human beings are being influenced so that their actual somatic and mental realizations are below their potential realizations.” The gap between ‘actual’ and ‘potential’ realizations is in some sense inevitable, given that humans can never attain perfection, so the use of ‘influenced’ here implies any involuntary or coercive influence that increases the distance between the potential realization and the actual realization of human beings, or impedes the diminution of this distance. A simpler way to state this is that violence is preventable suffering.[13]

Galtung’s path to the distinction between structural and personal violence is instructive. It begins with the development of the idea that ‘violence as influence’ requires an idea of the ‘influence relation’, presupposing an influencer, an influence and a mode of influencing. He adds that in the case of persons this takes the form of a subject, object, and action triune. However, there are also influence relations where no clear subject or object seems to be present. This leads Galtung to the concept of ‘structural violence’. He proceeds to make six distinctions with respect to violence, of which two, the distinction between structural and personal and between manifest and latent violence, are the most pertinent here.

Galtung is trying to separate violence committed by an actor and violence that cannot be attributed to an actor. However, he makes a leap from a morphological/formal distinction used while separating the two forms of violence –“We shall refer to the type of violence where there is an actor that commits the violence as personal or direct, and to violence where there is no such actor as structural or indirect.”- to a much more normative distinction when explaining structural violence –“The violence…shows up as unequal power and consequently as unequal life chances… Above all the power to decide over the distribution of resources is unevenly distributed.” From an empirical perspective, Galtung might be right that indirect violence typically manifests itself as unequal distribution of power or resources, but this is not logically entailed by his initial definition, and ‘violence’ can be built into a structure in other ways.

If this conceptual matter was just a question of Galtung missing an expository paragraph, the point would have limited utility, but by moving from structural violence as ‘indirect violence’ to structural violence as ‘social injustice’ to structural violence as ‘unequal power over the distribution of resources’ Galtung actually precludes certain ways of thinking about structural violence.[14] In particular, he overlooks the possibility that structural violence could be present where society has access to knowledge that might significantly decrease the gap between actual and potential realizations[15].

For instance, if something other than an actor prevents this knowledge from circulating in the public domain, whatever this ‘something’ is could be considered the (indirect) perpetrator of violence. So if we do have a radically misconstrued notion of consciousness, and there is something about the nature or structure of science or society that prevents a more accurate view from coming to light, then structural violence exists. Violence is there is the form of the gap between actual and potential realizations, and while there is way to close this gap, no single perpetrator prevents it from happening.

Moreover, when Galtung later tries to clarify the relationship between personal and structural violence, he has already limited himself with unnecessary content in his conception of structural violence, which does not readily dovetail with the more formal nature of the ‘subject-object-action’ influence relation of personal violence. In order to resolve this issue, Galtung’s distinction between manifest (observable) and latent (unobservable) violence is helpful because both personal and structural violence have manifest and latent aspects. However, his analysis might be further improved by considering something that might unite structural and personal aspects of violence.

In this respect, Galtung’s rich taxonomy can be improved by thinking about where ‘stress’ might fit in to his model. I believe it can be shown that the latent aspects of violence inhere in ‘stress’, which is qualitatively the same phenomena whether manifested in societal ‘structure’ or personal behaviour. Conversely, the manifest aspects of violence, personal and structural, are qualitatively distinct. This is not the approach that Galtung takes, but in some ways it is surprising that he identifies social injustice with structural violence because the effective formulation of the relationship between the individual and society is at stake, and Galtung seems to care about acknowledging that there are manifold ways of formulating this relationship. Most formulations contain an implicit libertarian or communitarian perspective but Galtung himself[16] gives three formal interpretations of this relationship which prima facie, are value-neutral. Territories (nation-district-municipalities-individuals);Organizations(factory-sub-factories-assembly lines-workers) and Associations (local chapters-individual members).

Structural violence takes different forms depending on which of these morphologies applies to a given situation, and this will often be a matter of choice of perspective taken by any given theorist. However, the most important point here is that Galtung states, “In all these systems there is interaction, and where there is interaction, value is exchanged.” This last point, which reveals that the interaction of the individual and society are based on the experience of shared value, is consonant with a theory of stress called the Conservations of resources (COR) theory and gives rise to the following provisional definition of stress: “Stress occurs in circumstances that represent a threat of loss or actual loss of the resources required to sustain the individual-nested-in family-nested-in social organization. Furthermore, because people will invest what they value to gain further, stress is predicted to occur when individuals do not receive reasonable gain following resource investment, this itself being an instance of loss. Hence stress occurs when 1) resources are threatened with loss, 2) resources are actually lost or 3) there is a failure to adequately gain resources following significant resource investment.” [17]

These last three elements apply equally to individuals and society at large. This places stress in a biological context situated in a socially derived culture, which is crucial because it provides a potential way to bridge individual personal physiology and psychology with societal dysfunction. If this link can be established, it will be easier to show an etiological link between stress and violence. At this stage we can only state that, with structural violence restricted to ‘indirect violence’ and thinking of stress in terms of the COR theory, the relationship between personal and structural violence is a relationship involving the exchange of value in which stress is likely to occur.

From ‘Societal Stress’ to ‘Collective Consciousness’

There is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious experience, but there is nothing that is harder to explain. -David Chalmers[18]

Both aspects of violence are susceptible to stress because both persons and the society at large have certain goals. Goals are sought in diverse areas of life, and typically the goals sought are mutually beneficial for individuals and society: from family (successful marriages), work (wealth creation), health (longer and healthier lives), class (minimal class conflict), and race (minimize racism). These are goals sought at both personal and societal levels, and they are sources of ‘psychosocial’ stress because of the inevitable[19] gap between the desire for these goals and the achievement of these goals. Kaplan defines it as follows:

“Psychosocial stress reflects the subject’s inability to forestall or diminish perception, recall, anticipation, or imagination of devalued circumstances, those that in reality or fantasy signify great and/or increased distance from desirable (valued) experiential states, and consequently, evoke a need to approximate the valued states.” [20]

This view shows stress to be a matter of a subject experiencing certain phenomenological states. The question is whether we can make any sense of ‘society’ as a subject experiencing these states or whether we can simply view ‘societal stress’ as an aggregate of individual levels of stress.

Even if we could think of society as a subject with phenomenological states[21], we would have major problems measuring these states. Personal stress levels can be assessed physiologically with measures like galvanic skin response, EEG readings, levels of neurotransmitters like serotonin, and hormones like cortisol. Some social science researchers think that ‘societal stress’ can be measured in a similar way by measuring the number of traffic accidents, hospital admissions, violent crimes committed etc. However, while this has a certain allegorical plausibility, it does not look scientifically valid to equate the two forms of measurement.

Thus the equivalence between personal and societal stress seems to break down when it comes to measurement. Indeed, it is highly non-trivial to measure ‘stress’ on a societal level in any way that might inform policy making, or by which to gauge the likelihood of personal violence emerging. This is a strong objection to the claim that societal stress is effectively the same thing as personal stress but it is not a decisive one, for the measurement problem applies only to manifest stress. Even so, if the same thing, stress, manifests in two different ways, it is necessary to explain in what sense stress was the same thing when it was latent. In other words, if stress is the same thing in both cases, why does it looks so different?[22]

A promising answer is that stress inheres in consciousness, and that consciousness is fundamentally the same phenomena in the individual as it is across society.

Deeper Levels of Stress

The implications of this new technology are far reaching, extending beyond the individual to include the whole of society. At the basis of individual consciousness is a field of collective consciousness that underlies the coherent behavior of society. By aligning individual consciousness with the unified field it is possible not only to bring individual life in accord with natural law but also to positively influence the overall quality of live in all areas of society. –--Dr. R.K. Wallace.[23]

This is where the analysis takes a radical turn, but there is good reason to think that a radical turn might be called for. Firstly, peace is elusive, and this might be because our strategies for peace are based on an incomplete view of human nature. Secondly, ‘structural violence’ is present when society somehow withholds information or knowledge that would decrease the gap between actual and potential realizations and there is some evidence that this is currently happening. Thirdly, the concept of stress is a good way to clarify the relationship between personal and structural violence, but we need a way to give formal expression to our intuitive idea of ‘societal stress’.[24]

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of the Transcendental Meditation technique, has written and spoken extensively on consciousness and stress. He refers to the subtlest level of society as ‘collective consciousness’ - the sum of the consciousnesses of all the people in the society. Collective consciousness is extremely difficult to study scientifically, because it cannot be readily isolated nor experienced. Maharishi has tried to clarify the concept of collective consciousness by claiming that we have not only an individual physiology, but a collective physiology-the physiology of society-in which each of us is like one cell in a large super-organism. According to Maharishi, this is not merely a metaphor. The physiology of society has its own physiology of matter. The claim is that the physiology of consciousness encompasses the collective consciousness of all the individuals in society and its physiology includes all material activities of all individuals[25].

What are we to make of this? Clearly there are a lot of fundamental assumptions behind these claims and we cannot make sense of them without having at least some knowledge of the theory of consciousness on which they are based. A full account of this theory is not required here, but the essence is that ‘consciousness’ is a physical field and a quantum mechanical phenomena. At the most subtle level of consciousness, which is transcendental consciousness, it is identical with the ‘unified field’ of modern physics. It is curious that the TM-movement has gone to such lengths to give their theories scientific credibility. This is mainly because they want to popularise their approach, but also because they see it as being grounded in the nature of reality, and have sufficient confidence in the scientific method that they expect it to confirm what they already know experientially.[26]

Whatever one thinks about the role of using ‘science’ as the means to approach a practice that looks mystical or esoteric, it is worth mentioning that those who practice TM consider that the phenomenal experience during TM is self-evidently more real than normal waking consciousness, in the same way that normal waking consciousness is more real than the dream state. This makes the idea of collective consciousness highly plausible for TM practitioners, because they have a sense of ‘pure consciousness’[27] and can see that consciousness of this sort is not bounded by the brain, or by the individual nervous system, but rather that the human nervous system, together with the TM technique allows us to experience something that is real.

However, most people who have never had an experiential glimpse of transcendental consciousness might find it hard to even begin to take the idea seriously as a basis for conflict resolution. Therefore, perhaps this whole argument needs to be brought down to earth. In this respect, think of how it feels to walk into a room where two people have been having a fierce argument. Many would agree that not only do you pick up cues from body language that something is amiss, but that the room feels qualitatively different. You are conscious of tension in the room that goes above and beyond the perceptual data. Then notice that if you are in a calm state of mind the atmosphere gradually changes, as the two protagonists cool down.

Now consider whether a larger number of people having a heated argument or conflict might suddenly reduce hostility with the introduction of the presence of a significant calming influence. On an intuitive level this seems highly plausible, and most readers will have first hand experience of this kind of diffusion effect. One way to look at it is that the conflicted group would have higher stress levels before the introduction of the calming influence and that, as the stress levels are lowered, the intensity of the conflict is reduced. The initial cause of the conflict may or may not be addressed, but the degree to which that conflict takes a violent form is minimized. The question then becomes whether this can be achieved more systematically with larger scale conflicts and the answer seems to be a tentative yes. Given that stress is experienced at the level of consciousness, stress reduction should be targeted there also. There is a technique available that can reliably reduce stress at least at the level of the individual, and possibly for society at large.

The Transcendental Meditation technique is practiced by millions of people around the world. It has been shown beyond doubt that this technique significantly reduces stress at the level of the individual[28]. It has also been shown that, as the stress level of one member of a group is decreased, this creates a positive influence on the group as a whole. This is fairly intuitive; in a family of four for example, arguments over dinner are likely to be less antagonistic if one member of four is significantly less prone to stress. The TM movement extrapolated from this idea, and imagined placing a large group of meditators near an area of violent conflict, in order to provide a calming influence and contribute towards peace in the area. However, this might seem a real stretch for some, because, unlike the family dinner table it involves action at a distance and the idea that one’s proclivity for violence can be influenced by a stranger meditating in a nearby area sounds far fetched. [29]

‘The Maharishi Effect’

It has always been the characteristic of great scientific discoveries to produce unforeseen technological breakthroughs of immense benefit to human life –Dr. R.K. Wallace[30]

Yet there is some empirical support for these claims, which have been published under peer review. The most notable paper was published in The Yale Journal of Conflict Resolution and was based on a study showing a statistical correlation of drops in violent hostilities and the presence of meditators nearby in Lebanon 1984. For instance, given a certain number of meditators present, the number of war deaths dropped by 76%.[31] Of course, this does not make the theory of collective consciousness true, but the strength of the correlation does suggest we should give it a closer look. From the perspective of the history and sociology of science, it is fascinating that this paper only appeared in the journal after extra-extensive peer review. Moreover, it finally appeared alongside an unusual addition of “Editor’s comment” which was the editor’s justification for publishing the paper. He acknowledged that the hypothesis was highly unusual, but argued that the findings deserved to be published because the investigation had been carefully scrutinized and met all standards of scientific method. Since then, there has been further evidence of the ‘Maharishi effect’ in reduced crime rates in Washington DC, and reduced violent crime in Delhi, Puerto Rico and Manila[32].

The Global Consciousness Project

Recently there has been additional empirical evidence that might tentatively support the idea of collective consciousness. We often use EEG (electroencephalogram) measurements to analyze patterns of brain activation in individual brains. Since 1998, the Global Consciousness[34] Project has used REGs (electronic random event generators) to measure patterns of activation[35]in regions across the world. These different sites are called 'eggs' or 'Electrogaiagrams'[36] and they generate random data continuously. This data is sent for archiving and analysis to a dedicated server in Princeton, USA. Princeton then analyzes the data to determine whether the typically random array of values shows any structure correlated with global events.

The most striking result was the nature of the data just before, during and after the terrorist attacks on September11^th. There has also been highly correlated (non random) data in response to the NATO bombings in Serbia, Lady Diana's funeral, and other events where there were intense and shared emotions concerning the same event. [37] The project is not fully developed yet, and requires more volunteers around the world to make their findings more compelling, but the data following 9/11 was sufficiently impressive to be reported around the world.

The fact that Princeton is the locus for the project probably helps to draw attention to the findings of The Global Consciousness Project, but it strikes me that even if the scientific evidence for global consciousness was more compelling, it wouldn’t make much difference to the way the idea has been received by most policy makers and peace researchers. I think the reason for this lies way beyond the given arguments and evidence, and lies, sadly, in a failure of imagination, at the level of both politics and ontology. This is not to say that the given theory of collective consciousness, and what it implies for conflict resolution is true, but rather that if we are serious about peace we need to be willing to ‘think the unthinkable’ and question the assumptions on which our best efforts for peace are based.

Moreover, given that we came to analyse the idea of collective consciousness via Galtung’s analysis of peace, it is worth stating that Galtung himself acknowledge that there may be strategies towards peace that go beyond our current attempts. Indeed, he states we may need “a systematic search for the steepest gradient (decrease in violence) possible, even for a descent route hitherto unknown to man.”[38] He also states that our definition of peace is part of a ‘scientific strategy’ and that it should depict a state of affairs not on the immediate political agenda. While it is far from clear that Galtung would endorse the analysis presented here, he might well agree that it deserves more attention than it is currently receiving.

Paradigm Shift?

Clearly, the idea of ‘collective consciousness’ is not given much credence in the dominant paradigm of cognitive science. In fact it is not deemed a ‘scientific’ issue at all. Rather it is assumed to be a mystical idea with some allegorical and emotional pull. So why does it matter that it be taken seriously by the scientific community, and what would it take for this to happen?[40]

It matters because at the beginning of the twenty-first century, science has immense power to influence public opinion and this is the relevant ‘influence relation’ here, the fulcrum that might make a difference to our efforts to promote peace. If it is the case that the theory of collective consciousness is essentially true, and there is something about societal structure that prevents the scientific community from acknowledging this, then we have a case of structural violence, in Galtung’s original formulation of the term.[41]

Kuhn noted that other historical periods lack uniform adherence to a particular paradigm. During these periods, which he terms, ‘abnormal science’, the activity of puzzle solving reveals anomalies within the paradigm. Kuhn uses the word ‘anomaly’ to refer to discrepancies between what the paradigm predicts should be observed, and what is actually observed by scientists. When the anomalies become acute enough to raise questions in scientists’ minds, competing schools arise which begin investigating fundamental premises of the paradigm. This displacement of one paradigm by another constitutes a ‘scientific revolution’ e.g. the displacement of the geocentric astronomy of Ptolemy with the heliocentric solar system of Copernicus.

Kuhn was particularly struck by the fact that, during periods of normal science, the texts and labs of the prevailing paradigm supply the group with preferred or permissible analogies and metaphors. By doing so, they help to determine what will be accepted as an explanation and as a puzzle-solution; conversely, they determine of the roster of unsolved puzzles and an evaluation of the importance of each. Kuhn argues that the background knowledge brought to the verification procedures in science, built on tacit knowledge gained in labs, therefore restricts investigation of the fundamental premises about the nature of the world, and influences the way in which observations are made and interpreted. He emphasizes that the world is interpreted by the mind and interpretation depends upon “...education, language, experience, and culture.” That is, Science is not properly conceived of as a purely objective process. Kuhn’s model of science is useful for understanding how the idea of ‘collective consciousness’ is viewed by the scientific community, and the public at large.

During the past century, a new interdisciplinary science, cognitive science, has emerged. One of the many strands of this new science, and arguably the most important, is the understanding of human consciousness. [42] Cognitive science consists of researchers from such diverse areas as cognitive psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, and artificial intelligence. In cognitive science, the current dominant analogy for the brain is the computer.[43] There is constant reference in the literature to information processing, neural networks, the hardware and software of the brain, and so forth. In general, cognitive scientists subscribe to the idea that either subjective experiences can be explained as by-products of physiological activity, or that mental states are distinct and somehow emerge from the combination of physical states.[44]

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of the TM-movement, comes from the Vedic tradition in India, and operates outside of this paradigm.[45] He proposes that the individualized qualities of waking state experience are actually a partial reflection of a field of pure consciousness-pure in the sense of unmixed with any content like sensations, thoughts, feelings, perceptions, etc. It consists solely of awareness itself. He further explains that the reason only a partial reflection of this field is experienced normally is because of chemical and structural abnormalities in the nervous system and physiology as a whole, created by the stress of life experiences. Without a completely normal or pure functioning of the nervous system, the enduring experience of pure consciousness is hidden or lost. Transcendental Meditation is a technique which, in this context, serves as a method to both give a deep level of rest that allows the body to repair deep-rooted chemical and structural abnormalities and, at the same time, allow the mind to examine consciousness by introspection, to gauge which of these two explanations of consciousness seems to be correct.

During TM many individuals have reported experiencing pure consciousness, that is, consciousness devoid of any particular thoughts, feelings or sensations, but experienced as an unbounded field of awareness or knowingness.[46] This research may give us confidence that the experience of pure consciousness is as real as waking, dreaming, or sleep states, but it does not, in itself, help us decide whether the experience of pure consciousness is created by the brain, or whether pure consciousness has its own independent reality. Indeed, certain subjective experiences even of a field of consciousness would be associated with unique physiological parameters in other theories of consciousness too. Evidence from some other area of objective research would be needed to decide this question. This is where the peer-reviewed evidence of ‘The Maharishi effect’ and the early evidence from the Global Consciousness project come in. They do not yet prove that there is a field of consciousness which has an independent reality but they do present two anomalies with respect to the dominant views of consciousness.

However, if these anomalies were uncovered in the mainstream scientific community, a large community of cognitive scientists would be much more interested in researching the theory further, but because the research has been conducted not in response to anomalies occurring with the field of cognitive science, but by a small group of scientists whose main interest was in objectively understanding what happens during Transcendental Meditation, and whether there might be a global consciousness, there is little reason for mainstream cognitive scientists to be interested in this research unless they are already interested in meditation practices. Cognitive scientists in the main paradigm are experiencing success in their puzzle solving activities and are not running across anomalies in the course of their research so they have little motivation to take seriously anomalies of an entirely different magnitude that are being discovered by a very small group in the field, representing a different paradigm.

Conclusion

He called it ‘Utopia’, a Greek word which means ‘there is no such place’.

In this analysis the relationship between personal and structural violence was examined through the lens of ‘stress’. The perspective of COR theory was initially useful in this respect, but given the complicated nature of the concept of ‘societal stress’ there were good reasons to consider looking at stress from a more fundamental perspective. It was argued that we need a good theory of consciousness to have a fuller grasp of ‘stress’. This led to the idea of thinking about societal stress in terms of incoherence in ‘collective consciousness’. There are lots of unanswered questions about the existence and nature of collective consciousness, whether it can be influenced by groups of meditators and whether this can have any enduring impact on peace, but it was argued that the idea has at least some scientific plausibility and should be given more attention.

So at present, the ‘scientific revolution’ based on the theory of collective consciousness is still underground, and there is no particular reason to think that it will surface soon, or that it will be a panacea when it does. Indeed, this analysis has not shown that we need a scientific revolution in order to create world peace. However, it has shown that a fuller understanding of the fabric of reality, and our own place in it, might assist us in our efforts to bring about a less stressful, more peaceful world.

Endnotes

[1] This title originally came from the transcript of a talk given by Sam Boothly to Kamalazoo College in September 2002.

[2] Violence Peace and Peace Research 1969, p167-191, International Peace Research Institute, Oslo.

[3] Wallace 1993, The Physiology of Consciousness, Maharishi International University Press.

[4] It would be a mistake to say that there is a single world view shared by everyone, but it seems fair to say , broadly, that ‘scientific materialism’ is the dominant paradigm of the day, and the one with the most intellectual authority.

[5] www.stress-counselling.co.uk

[6] Especially Galtung’s(1969) concept of peace as ‘absence of violence’.

[7] See Galtung below- ‘peace is the absence of violence’.

[8] This is certainly not the only approach to consciousness currently propounded, but the main currents in philosophy of mind and cognitive science are the attempts to show correspondence between brain states and mental states and that the latter can be derived from the former. This is the view most consonant with scientific materialism, and follows an essentially reductive model of reducing mind to matter. A notable exception to this trend is David Chalmers, who argues that this does not address the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness-namely accounting for the existence of subjective experience. Chalmers argues that experience is a fundamental property of the universe, in the same way that matter, time and space are. See http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/

[9] To say that consciousness is a field is to say that it is not localized or limited by individual brain states. The field might be electromagnetic (see http://unisci.com/stories/20022/0516026.htm) or, it might be a unified field which comprises all the others(electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces, gravity). See the discussion below for an account of the meaning of ‘coherence’.

[10] Galtung makes reference to positive and negative peace. The analysis of Galtung is limited to his idea of ‘negative peace’ where peace is the absence of violence.

[11] This is a big ‘if’ of course, but the point is that even in stressful conditions personal violence cannot be committed without the means and desire to be violent. Moreover, in order for Galtung’s ‘structural violence’ to occur there needs to be a political economy where resources are scarce. In other words, the relationship between stress and violence is abstract, and requires certain concrete conditions for it to become manifest.

[12] And therefore our notions of peace too.

[13] Galtung does not use the language of ‘prevention’ or ‘suffering’, but I think this is implied by his reference to ‘avoidable’, and the ‘gap’ between potential and actual realizations, respectively.

[14] Photograph shows Johan Galtung at a conference in Hamburg, Germany.

[15] In the context of this article, the relevant ‘knowledge’ would be the technique of Transcendental Meditation, and the scores of peer reviewed scientific journals showing that it improves concentration, raises IQ and decreases stress. Many think of these claims as exaggerated or contestable, but there is every reason to think of them as compelling.

[16] Galtung 1968. ‘A Structural Theory of Integration’

[17] Hobfall 1988. Quoted in Hobfall 1998 Stress, Culture and Community-The Philosophy and Psychology of Stress

[18] Chalmers David, 1995 Facing up to the problem of consciousness, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2

[19] The view that some personal and social stress is inevitable is supported by social choice theory, particularly Condorcet’s paradox and Arrow’s impossibility theorem. These theories show that there will always be some dissatisfaction in a society containing multiple and overlapping preferences, or to put it in popular language: “You can please some people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.”

[20] Kaplan 1996, Psychosocial Stress, perspectives on structure, theory, life course and methods, San Diego Academic Press

[21] We do refer to towns as ‘subdued’ or ‘sleepy’, and cities as ‘vibrant’ or ‘literate’. This is merely suggestive, but it seems relevant that such descriptions are not opaque or meaningless, in the same way that we can say that ‘America’ was shocked by 9/11 when strictly speaking only individual Americans were shocked.

[22] It is not enough to gauge societal stress on the basis of aggregates and standard deviations of individual levels of stress because that would make it very difficult to establish a significant relationship between the two. For instance, if we are trying to show that reducing stress at the level of the individual will lead to a reduction of societal stress, we cannot then claim that by measuring reduced individual levels of stress, we can show that societal stress has also been reduced.

[23] Wallace(1993)

[24] Some might say that there is no intuitive notion of societal stress, but the ‘intuitive notion’ merely amounts to our understanding that there is a difference between a society that seems orderly and peaceful and a society that is disorderly and fractious. Not everyone would choose to analyze this difference in terms of stress, but it seems perfectly coherent to do so.

[25] Wallace 1997.The Neurophysiology of Enlightenment.

[26]Wallace,1993and1997 gives an account of these theories, as does Dr. John Hagelin: http://www.permanentpeace.org/foundation.html

There are three main parts to the theory that transcendental consciousness is equivalent to the unified field of modern physics (Hagelin 2000).

1)The role of DNA: The claim is that consciousness has its roots deep within the DNA and the unique intra- and extra-cellular environment created by the DNA, which is a biological macromolecule, whose properties are governed by quantum mechanics. Schrödinger was among the first to point out that many of the unique characteristics of living organisms are consequences of the microscopic origins of life and its quantum mechanical roots within the DNA-among these characteristics there is the phenomenon of consciousness.

2)The process of super-unification-it is claimed that the unification of the strong and weak nuclear forces, electro-magnetism and gravity gives rise to a field which has properties of intelligence, dynamism and self-interaction- those qualities deemed to be defining qualities of consciousness by most neuroscientists.

3) A fourth major state of consciousness- has been discovered by physiologists and it is a unique state of consciousness—subjectively and physiologically distinct from waking, dreaming, and sleeping. In this hypo-metabolic, physiological state, the body is deeply rested (several times deeper than sleep) while the awareness is alert and subjectively “unbounded.” A constellation of physiological and electrophysiological changes are associated with this experience of inner wakefulness, including high alpha power and global EEG coherence. We cannot stay in this state for indefinitely long periods, but the process of TM allows the meditator to approach this state and experience it for several moments at a time.

If consciousness is, fundamentally, the unified field (or more generally if consciousness is linked to any Bose field), then one would expect that:

The de-excitation of consciousness would be associated with an expansion of individual awareness.

There would be predictable societal consequences of collective experience of the unified field.

These points are most graphically demonstrated by the recent, 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Professors Cornell, Ketterle, and Wieman. Their work graphically demonstrates how classically isolated systems (2000 separate atoms) coalesce to form a single, macroscopic quantum fluid. Using state-of-the-art laser techniques, individual Rubidium atoms (which are bosons) were super-cooled. As a consequence of the reciprocal relation between momentum and wavelength (the “uncertainty principle”), their atomic wavelengths expanded. Once the individual wave functions overlapped, they spontaneously transitioned into the same quantum state (a natural predisposition of Bose particles). With all the individual wave functions identical, these wave functions behaved as one global wave function known as a Bose-Einstein condensate. In this macroscopic quantum-coherent state, the individual atoms lose their individual identities, creating a single quantum fluid with extraordinary properties. (Hagelin 2002)

[28] Wallace 1997, The Neurophysiology of Enlightenment

[29]This is now a widely accepted phenomena in physics whereby the mass of the earth exerts a force over the distance, effecting other objects of mass, even if they are far away. Here it is rather different, but no less counter-intuitive.

[30] Wallace, 1997

[31] If we grant that this idea has some plausibility, it remains unclear just how large the group has to be with respect to the size and population of the afflicted area. The hypothesis is that it requires 1% of the population to practice TM, or the square root of 1% of the population to practice the advanced TM siddhi program. While these numbers are not scientifically validated, they are not entirely random and are consistent with the theory as a whole. There are similar field effects in physics. See http://permanentpeace.org/foundation.html for further information (‘detailed mechanics of the invincible defense technology’).

[32] http://permanentpeace.org/research/index.html

[33] Eddington was a famous 20^th century British Astrophysicist. I cannot find the reference for this quotation, but it is widely cited and can be found all over the web.

[34] It is not clear whether we need to distinguish between ‘global consciousness’ and ‘collective consciousness’ beyond noting that the terms come from different sources. It seems they refer to the same ‘thing’, as far as it is possible to say that there is such a thing, so for now I will use the terms interchangeably.

[35] Using Quantum Indeterminate noise. See http://noosphere.princeton.edu/terror.html

[36] This is a tentative reference to James Lovelock's Gaia theory in which planet earth is viewed as a self-regulating organism.

[37]http://noosphere.princeton.edu/terror.html

[38] Galtung(1969)

[39] Nietzsche (1908), Ecce Homo.

[40] Hopping for Peace or just hoping for Peace? The given image shows the advanced TM Siddhi practice of ‘yogic flying’. This stage of flying, where the subject propels himself in the air and remains there momentarily before coming back down is known as ‘frog hopping’. While it is possible to perform this action physically, it is extremely difficult on a purely physical basis, and yet those practicing yogic flying claim that the experience is not only extremely blissful, but also happens almost without effort. The frame this with the saying: “The body is involved, but it’s the mind that does it.” This is considered the first of three levels of yogic flying, the second of which allows the subject to remain suspended in the air, and the third where eh can literally fly. This sounds fanciful to put it mildly, but again these ideas fall into some of the gaps and anomalies of modern science. The biggest problem in modern physics is that the two most powerful theories- Quantum Mechanics, at the micro level, and Relativity theory at the macro level are not consistent because there is currently no compelling theory of quantum gravity. The theory behind yogic flying is that it is not possible with classical gravity, but requires quantum gravity, which they believe is only present at the level of the unified field.

[41] It is important to note that this wouldn’t make individual scientists the perpetrators of the violence, but rather the institution of science in a particular societal context. The ‘influence relation’ remains indirect in that no single actor causes the violence.

[42] See Gardner 1984. ‘The Mind’s New Science’. In what follows I use ‘cognitive science quite loosely to refer to those scientists with a research interest in consciousness.

[43] Fodor’s theory of modularity is perhaps the clearest statement of this idea. See Fodor, 1983, Modularity of Mind.

[44] What we experience subjectively as thoughts and the sensation of being in control of our actions, can be completely reduced to electro-chemical firing in the brain.

[45] Maharishi Mahesh Yogi studied Physics at university in India before focusing on spiritual matters. It is not clear how important this in terms of the validity of the theories, but it might help to account for his desire that the theories look scientifically credible.

[46] Is this a delusion, a kind of collective dream or collective expectation effect? To answer this question, Maharishi University of Management have also created a number of ongoing objective research programs to complement the subjective research during TM. One example: In the past several decades, physiological research on waking, dreaming, and sleep has demonstrated that each of these unique states of consciousness has correspondingly unique physiological parameters, such as EEG, biochemistry, etc. One approach taken at M.U.M. to verify claims about the existence of pure consciousness (which Maharishi indicates is a state of consciousness as unique as waking, dreaming, or sleeping) is to predict that individuals claiming to experience pure consciousness will have corresponding physiological parameters accompanying the experience that are quite different from those observed accompanying waking, dreaming, or sleep. There have been many studies in this area that verify this hypothesis and document the unique EEG and biochemistry associated with this. Studies on meditators who signalled just after they had clear experiences of transcendental consciousness show, for example, a unique suspension of breath during those periods. These physiological studies provide some degree of confidence that the experiences of pure consciousness reported during TM practice are not illusory psychological experiences and that they reflect a universally available experience that is supported by a unique functioning of the human nervous system, but in patterns that are different from the common experience of waking state.(Sam Boothby September 2002).

[47] Quoted by J.L Borges in The Book of Sand

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Do We Need a ‘Scientific Revolution’ in Order to Create World Peace?[1]

Jonathan Rowson, May 2003