Living Standards, Transcendental Meditation and the Perúvian Miracle: A 41-Year Study of Social and Economic Factors

Abstract

More than 60 well-controlled empirical studies since 1974 have indicated there is a statistically observable causal link between the number of people who practice the Transcendental Meditation technique and the state of order, harmony and prosperity in a city, region, country or the world. Such a phenomenon is based on the level of brainwave coherence generated by the practice and the effect this increased coherence has on spontaneously stimulating similar neurophysiological responses in others, even at a distance. The brainwave coherence produced during Transcendental Meditation, measured by electroencephalography (EEG) and other procedures such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), reflects high-level synchronicity or orderliness in the functioning human brain, particularly in areas associated with higher-order thinking, reflective ability, and critical reasoning. The sociological effect of stimulating neurophysiological responses in meditating practitioners and others, mediated by an unmanifest field of collective consciousness, has been theoretically explained as well as quantifiably measured in individuals and small groups, as well as in larger populations, such as cities and countries. Beneficial effects in neighbouring countries have also been measured. Studies on this phenomenon in Cambodia, Canada, Israel, Lebanon, Mozambique, United Kingdom, and United States, for example, have used a range of rigorous research methodologies, including interrupted time series regression analysis and independent assessment analysis and transfer functions. This preliminary descriptive study seeks to determine if there is prima facie evidence to suggest the phenomenon has also occurred in Perú. If so, further investigation using sophisticated statistical measures may be warranted.

Since 1996, more than 53,600 Perúvian children and adolescent students have been trained in and regularly practice Transcendental Meditation in groups as part of their school’s curriculum. However, whereas extensive prior research by these authors suggests a range of both short- and long-term personal and educational benefits from this practice in Perú, the association, should it exist, between group practice of Transcendental Meditation and broader sociological factors related to living standards has yet to be explored. We therefore ask whether any data in the public record indicate such practice has had an observable impact on Perúvian living standards and whether, after 25 years of practice by these children and adolescents, any evidence suggests Perú has achieved a higher living standard than other Latin American countries as a result. In this study, we compare the cumulative number of children and adolescent students who learned Transcendental Meditation between 1995 and 2020 to annualised data from 1980 through to 2020 on 20 dependent variables organized into four categories: society; health; education; and economy. Specific variables include data on poverty, undernourishment, deaths and disappeared people, violence against civilians, pregnant women receiving prenatal care, yellow fever deaths, gross domestic product (GDP), per capita GDP, GDP per person employed, short-term national debt, unemployment, and inflation. Our goal is to determine if a prima facie relationship between the number of children and adolescents taught Transcendental Meditation and changes in Perúvian living standards can be observed in these data. Comparative data on eight summative variables in 2020 and 2021, which consider the relationship between living standards in Perú and its neighbours, have also been examined.

To all appearances, the present 41-year study in Perú provides relevant data to suggest the coherence generated by practice of Transcendental Meditation over a 26-year Impact Assessment Period (1995 to 2020) may have had a salutary effect on, or at the very least appears associated with, a range of measurable social and economic factors which can reasonably be called surrogates for improved living standards when compared to a Baseline Period (1980 to 1994) before Transcendental Meditation was introduced. That Perú’s citizens are now among the most prosperous in Latin America and the third most optimistic people in the world further support this inference.