The Effects of the Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field

Abstract

This article replies to a methodological criticism of Orme-Johnson et al., (1988). The original study reported that participants in the Transcendental Meditation (TM) and TM-Sidhi program located in Jerusalem significantly reduced tension in “collective consciousness” and behavior as measured by decreased conflict in Lebanon and improvement on several social indicators in Israel. Specification of the independent variable on the basis of political boundaries rather than geographical distance alone was shown to be consistent with both theory and forty other studies. It is explained how “reverse causation” cannot account for observed effects. Also, reanalyses show that the results are robust across fourteen alternative transfer function models. Using a purely objective criterion for model selection, the Akaike Information Criterion, the optimal model yields the most significant result (t=5, p <.0001). Liu's linear transfer function approach yields similar results. Other robustness checks (substituting “pseudo” independent or dependent variables) do not yield spurious results.