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CHAPTER 2 AN ADDRESS BY HIS HOLINESS MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI The Inspiration The inspiration to bless every nation with invincibility comes from ever-growing proof of the great benefits of the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programme in the life of the individual, and of society as a whole. It is a very great joy to think about the benefits of Transcendental Meditation on the collective basis. For the last twenty years we have talked of the benefits of Transcendental Meditation around the world in terms of the benefits to the body, mind, and individual behaviour. We now have scientifically validated proof, from the experience of hundreds of cities across the globe, that Transcendental Meditation also produces a powerful influence of harmony and positivity in the whole of society. When the number of people practising the Transcendental Meditation programme rises to about one per cent of a city’s population, the one per cent effect* comes into play immediately. Crime, illness, and all other negative aspects of social life diminish sharply, and an influence of coherence and harmony spreads throughout society.
When I heard of this one per cent phenomenon, my thoughts went to a bigger level, to the entire nation, and from there to the whole family of nations. When criminal tendencies in a community become less through Transcendental Meditation, then we can obviously extend the phenomenon to the collection of communities, which is the nation. We feel confident that it is possible to raise the level of harmony and coherence in a nation to such a level that it enjoys invincibility. If this can happen in one country, it can also happen in every other. We are only extending a verified phenomenon. When we talk of community consciousness, we merely put together the consciousness of all the individuals who make up the community, or the nation. Because of the one per cent effect, we find that negative tendencies drop in the community. In other words, nature becomes more balanced in that community, and this is seen as greater balance in community consciousness. Greater balance in nature is demonstrated by an absence of natural disasters and collective calamities, such as earthquakes, tornadoes, and famine. Calamities illustrate imbalance in nature, because nature fails to provide whatever people need to live happy lives. That means there is lack of coherence in collective consciousness. This lack can be set right only
on the individual level, because society is a collection of
individuals and is therefore governed by the behaviour of individuals.
The happy discovery is that to make national behaviour harmonious
we need to restore coherence and orderliness to only one per
cent of the population of any collective entity, including any
nation. It was this knowledge which prompted me to declare the
dawn of the Age of Enlightenment in January 1975. We have so
much evidence of the one per cent effect today, that we now
feel confident enough to offer Invincibility to Every Nation. |