| Abstract | | This paper replies to a critique (Fales & Markovsky, 1997) of a study
reporting that group practice of the Transcendental Meditation program had a
measurable effect on objective measures of the quality of life in Israel and the
war in Lebanon (Orme-Johnson et al., 1988). The critics proposed various
cultural/political events as alternative explanations for the results. These events
could not explain the results, as indicated by (1) simple inspection of the published
data; (2) statistical analyses controlling for these events; (3) analyses of
reduced data sets that completely eliminated the days of the events from the
analyses; and (4) analyses of six random samples of 50% of the data. Although
some of the cultural/political events suggested did have a significant effect on
a composite index of crime, traffic accidents, fires, war intensity, stock market,
and national mood, the effects of these events were independent of the effect of
the meditators and could not explain it. We argue that Maharishi’s theory of collective
consciousness provides a unifying framework that explains these results
through a logical structure of clearly defi ned, operationalized terms grounded in
physiological and behavioral research, which makes specific quantifiable and
socially important predictions that have been extensively replicated. |
