Originally published in The Frontier Post on 17 October 2009.
Give India the Best Defence System in the World
By Dr. John Hagelin and Dr. David Leffler
US President Barack Obama won the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize this year just two weeks after shepherding a resolution through the 15-member UN Security Council calling upon all countries, including India, to participate in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The reduction or elimination of nuclear weapons is clearly an important goal. But how can this goal be achieved in today’s hate-filled, high-tension political climate? Both India and Pakistan have acquired their nuclear weapons as protection or deterrence against attack.
The word “deterrence” comes from the Latin root meaning “fear.” In theory, war is deterred by instilling fear in potential enemies, and to this end, India has amassed tremendous destructive potential. But this same fear incites other countries to acquire their own nuclear arsenals, further inflaming regional tensions and hatred. For this reason, no country committed to defence solely through destructive power is likely to generate a trust-based, peaceful atmosphere.
Diplomacy and economic sanctions likewise have not been sufficient to resolve the fear crisis – which is driven by human behavioral dynamics that cannot be controlled by such methods alone.
War and conflict are human problems requiring human solutions. The underlying cause of conflict is accumulated social stress. Today the military of India has an opportunity to address this fundamental cause of war by deploying a new, scientifically verified technology of defence beyond nuclear weapons.
A New Solution
This new technology of defence is based upon the latest discoveries in the fields of physics, neuroscience, and physiology. Ultimately, it is based on the discovery of the unified field of all the laws of nature – the most fundamental and powerful level of nature’s dynamics. Technologies based upon this unified field of natural law have such concentrated power that they can render obsolete and irrelevant every previous objective technology and destructive means of defence.
Modern science has probed deeper levels of nature’s functioning, from the macroscopic world of classical physics to the underlying atomic, nuclear, and subnuclear levels, culminating in the discovery of the unified field, the unified source of the diversified laws of nature governing the universe. Because this unified field is vastly more powerful than any other level of nature’s dynamics, a technology of defence based upon the unified field is of historic importance. It is already changing the whole science and technology of defence.
Accessing the Unified Field Within
Since the unified field is the source of the objective world, its power cannot be harnessed through objective technologies. A new approach is needed-one that draws upon the world’s subjective traditions of meditation. Properly understood and property practiced, meditation throughout the ages has been a systematic technology to turn human awareness within to experience finer levels of thought, deeper levels of human intelligence that correspond to deeper levels of intelligence in nature. This inward exploration culminates in direct experience of the deepest level of consciousness – the simplest, silent, settled state of human awareness, sometimes called the state of pure consciousness – in which the human mind identifies with the unified field. By turning the attention systematically within, human awareness explores deeper levels of nature’s functioning and ultimately experiences the unified field at the source of thought-the field of unity at the basis of mind and matter.
The Vedic tradition of knowledge from India is the most complete and highly developed tradition of meditation in the world, yet this ancient approach of gaining knowledge and experience of the unified field has become the focus of intense scientific research over the past 50 years. The late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi revived, from the ancient Vedic science of consciousness, systematic technologies for experiencing the unified field, including the Transcendental Meditation program and its advanced techniques. These meditation practices are known as Invincible Defence Technology (IDT) in military circles and have been successfully applied by members of many faiths to eliminate conflict in the recent past. If the military of India were to apply this human resource-based technology, which is non-lethal and non-destructive, it could reduce the collective societal stress that is fueling the rising tensions between India and Pakistan.
The Prevention Wings
A Prevention Wing of the Military would be the ideal way to achieve this goal. Less than 1% of the military of India would participate in this wing. The remaining personnel would carry out their normal military duties. The Prevention Wing would be trained in the primary components of IDT. They would practice these technologies in large groups, morning and evening.
The Maharishi Effect
Over 50 research studies confirm that when the required threshold of IDT experts is crossed-approximately the square root of 1% of the size of a given population-crime goes down in the affected population, quality of life indices go up, and war and terrorism abate. Scientists have named this phenomenon the Maharishi Effect in honor of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who first predicted it. The causal mechanism appears to be a field effect of consciousness – a spillover effect on the level of the unified field from the peace-creating group into the larger population.
For instance, in 1993, a two-month Maharishi Effect intervention was implemented and studied in Washington, DC. Predictions of specific drops in crime and other indices were lodged in advance with government leaders and newspapers. The research protocol was approved by an independent Project Review Board. The findings showed that crime fell 23.3 percent below the predicted level when the peace-creating group reached its maximum size. Temperature, weekend effects, or previous trends in the data failed to account for changes. This research was published in the peer-reviewed Social Indicators Research (1999, vol. 47, 153-201).
The Maharishi Effect was documented on a global scale in a study using Rand Corporation data and published in the Journal of Offender Rehabilitation (2003, vol. 36, 283-302). When assemblies of IDT experts exceeded the Maharishi Effect threshold for the world (about 7,000 at that time) during the years 1983-1985, terrorism globally decreased 72%, international conflict decreased 32%, and violence in nations was reduced without intrusion by other governments.
The Opportunity for Permanent Peace
The military of India is charged with the constitutional responsibility to defend the country. It can now succeed in this mission simply by creating a Prevention Wing of the Military – a coherence-creating group of IDT experts exceeding the square root of 1% of the population of India – approximately 3,415 soldiers.
As part of its responsibility to protect the nation, India’s military is obligated to thoroughly examine realistic, scientifically proven methods for preventing war and terrorism. IDT is such a method. Moreover, since the military and military personnel are funded by the government, a Prevention Wing of the Military would not be subject to the fluctuations in size that often affect civilian IDT groups, where participation may be influenced by finances, job demands, graduations, and optional activities.
All areas of society will be simultaneously enriched by this holistically life-supporting, life-benefiting technology. It is enormously effective and cost-effective, and the results are immediate. All that is necessary is to provide the proper training for a group of military personnel – or indeed, any large group within the country. India has the opportunity today through IDT to create national security, invincibility, and peace. But the time to act is now.
About the Authors:
Dr. John Hagelin is the Director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy (ISTPP), an organization in the United States that advocates scientifically proven, prevention-oriented solutions to critical global problems. He is a Harvard-trained quantum physicist who won the prestigious Kilby Award, which recognizes scientists who have made “major contributions to society through their applied research in the fields of science and technology.” Dr. Hagelin also serves as the Executive Director of the International Center for Invincible Defense and as International Director of the Global Union of Scientists for Peace. A video of Dr. Hagelin (1:13:00) explaining the scientific research on IDT is available online as well as from a transcription with full-sized images from his presentation at StrongMilitary.org.
David Leffler, Ph.D. a United States Air Force veteran, is the Executive Director of the Center for Advanced Military Science (CAMS) at ISTPP. Dr. Leffler received his Ph.D. from The Union Institute & University in Cincinnati, Ohio where he did his doctoral research on the topic of IDT. His other academic degrees include: a B.A. in Education and an M.A. in the Science of Creative Intelligence from Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa and an M.M. in Education from New Mexico State.
