16
Creating a True Peace-Keeping Force
We are all caught in an epidemic of stress of global proportions. Stress manifests as a deadly plague that cripples the individual-heart disease, drug addiction, domestic violence, etc.-and whole societies. From the inner-city violence of southeast Washington, D.C., to the rampant bloodshed of Bosnia, to the explosive tensions of the West Bank, to the threat of all-out war with Iraq-one fundamental component is deeply-rooted social stress, tension, hatred, fear. The primary difference is degree. Just as modern medical science offers no cure for individual stress, modern social science offers no cure for social stress. In both cases, however, there are approaches that have proven effective. And, it turns out, the approaches are basically one and the same.
January 20, 1998 I am talking with Greg Spitzfaden in an office that is a testimony to the heaven and hell of human nature. In the middle of the room, on a light-gray pedestal with wheels, is an incubator that will sustain the life a newborn infant. Next to it, in a partially opened cheerful yellow box the size of a computer monitor, is an autopsy kit. Both units are headed to Sarajevo this week.
There are papers everywhere, citations everywhere for jobs well-done, photos of Spitzfaden's wife, Linda, and their two girls. There are orders for 60 tons of powdered milk to go to North Korea, for truckloads of vegetable seeds and agricultural tools to Angola, for cases of medicines to Rwanda and Haiti. The office is a mess. It looks like what it is-an office that directs disaster relief efforts.
Spitzfaden, 50, heads a company in Peterborough, New Hampshire, that provides humanitarian relief to disaster areas, both manmade and natural. His is a commercial venture, a business, but his clients are all nonprofit relief and development agencies. The agencies raise millions of dollars, and his company helps them by supplying goods and services at the best possible prices, and shipping them overseas, and often goes onsite to coordinate their use. For short-term relief, Spitzfaden's company provides medical supplies, food and shelter, and emergency aid. For the long-term, it provides health programs and agricultural goods, and organizes for the rebuilding of the physical structure of blighted areas-anything that can help a country or a people get back on their feet.
I am talking with Spitzfaden today to get his response to President Clinton's announcement before Christmas last year that he will keep U.S. troops in Bosnia beyond June 1998, the return date he had promised last year. The President admitted it was a mistake to set such a hard-and-fast date. Now he won't speculate when they will return. Peace-keeping forces have stabilized the peace, the killing has stopped, and if they leave it will flare up again, the President said. He asked the American people for their support for the troops. The appeal worked. Only a few months earlier, polls showed voters wanted American troops out of Bosnia. But new polls show a 20 percent swing in the President's favor. The possibility of a return to the wholesale slaughter of human life among the Bosnian Serbs, Croats, and Muslims is too much for Americans to bear. The troops should stay.
No one in the U.S. wants American troops to be the world's policemen, but what are the choices? Nothing else works. Right now 200,000 American soldiers-one sixth of our standing military-are deployed in hot spots, or potential hotspots, around the world. Trained to fight and kill, now our men and women in uniform must play a strange new role-global peacekeeper. According to U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen, we should get used to the role because it may be ours for a long time.
Beginning in January 1996, shortly after the Dayton Peace Accords were signed, Spitzfaden traveled for several weeks throughout Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia to evaluate the needs for relief and rehabilitation. He says that he was relieved when President Clinton sent troops, and he supports their presence in Bosnia today. "If we had not gone, the accords would have meant nothing. And if we leave now, the accords will mean nothing," he says.
But two years have passed since Spitzfaden left Bosnia and he is still trying to make sense of "the senseless death and destruction-and the limited long-term influence of our relief and peacekeeping efforts."
Even though he has traveled on similar assignments to the Sudan, Angola, Rwanda, and Ethiopia-ushering in medical supplies and construction materials-for some reason the Bosnia experience hit him the hardest. It made him realize most clearly that "the U.S. is doomed to be the world's cop unless we can do something to intervene on a level that scales back the white-hot stress and tension that have a grip on these regions."
Spitzfaden's wife, Linda, president of a publishing firm in Peterborough, was a candidate for U.S. Congress with the Natural Law Party in 1994. So Greg Spitzfaden is aware that the only political party to even consider such an intervention is the Natural Law Party. This is one of the reasons that, Spitzfaden, a conservative New England businessman, supports the Natural Law Party.
I am here to talk to him about that, and also to hear more about his experiences in Bosnia. Spitzfaden begins with the memories. He talks about Bosnia with immediacy, as if he had returned home only yesterday.
"I had seen television news reports coming from Sarejevo, in which a reporter would be standing in front of a building which had been blown up in a section of the city that had been ruined. When I drove into Sarejevo, I saw that the whole city was like that. The town of Mostar was even worse; it looked like Godzilla had stepped on it-half the town was completely flattened. There were makeshift cemeteries everywhere. After a few days it became the norm to see destruction. I had gone into the heart of darkness."
The arrival of U.S. troops saved the day, he says.
"The people were so grateful. I was never prouder to be an American," Spitzfaden says, recounting two stories.
"I sat down for lunch at a cafe in Sarejevo. On the wall behind me were shells and pock marks from gun fire. Opposite that wall, on the wall in front of me, there was nothing but a small framed American flag."
Spitzfaden caught the eye of a waiter, and gestured at the flag. "Without the Americans we would still be fighting," the waiter said.
Another time he had tea with an elderly couple in their apartment in Zenica, a small town 40 miles outside of Sarajevo. The fighting had passed by the town, but nevertheless thousands in it had starved to death.
"This elderly couple-the husband was a Muslim, the wife a Croat-had survived by eating grass and by selling their furniture to buy drinking water," he says. "The woman started crying when she saw me. She gave me a big hug, rocked me in her arms, and said that she loved me because I was an American.
"'Without Americans we'd be still fighting and killing each other,'" she said. "'Please never leave.'"
The phone rings and blasts us both out of the nightmare.
Spitzfaden takes the call and then turns back to our conversation. We have to leave sometime. What will happen?
"No one knows," he says. "No one in government, in the military, in international relief. It's frightening," Spitzfaden says.
"We are good at keeping people from getting killed. And we are good at getting buildings rebuilt and taking steps to begin normalizing people's lives. But we don't know how to reduce the deeply rooted stress-the hatred, the hurt, the anger, and the bad blood that seems to go on from generation to generation. There's no relief agency, there's no U.N. that can do anything about that. The problem runs so deep. There were people I met who were very forgiving, who said, 'Let's just forget it and move ahead.' But there were others who said, 'Wait till we get our weapons, we'll do the same thing to them.'"
Spitzfaden recalls a comment from a colleague in the relief effort, Boris, who had been an officer in the Croatian army and lived through the worst of the battles. "Boris said that there was just too much negativity, too much negative energy, and people had to fight."
Spitzfaden says it's a simple, yet telling analysis of what sparked the war, and it also provides a glimpse of where we should look for answers.
"I believe the UNESCO charter had it right when it said: 'Wars begin in the
minds of men,'" he says. "And it is in the minds of men where we'll find the
solution. We'll never find it anywhere else."
Preventive Defense
"Over the past 3000 years, there have been more than 5000 peace treaties, each of which has lasted an average of nine years. History shows that paper agreements among nations are not a foundation for lasting peace." - John Hagelin
February 8, 1998 It's been less than a month since I spoke with Greg Spitzfaden. Bosnia has gone from the front pages to a scant mention in the press. Focus has shifted from the peace-keeping forces in Eastern Europe to the massive military build-up in the Persian Gulf and the spectre of war with Iraq. Saddam Hussein's brinkmanship with the United States, which, as of this writing, has been put on hold by an agreement hammered out by U.N. Secretary Kofi Annan, has revealed-at least to the public mind-the changing balance of power in the world. So-called "rogue" regimes, such as Iraq, Iran, and Libya, can hold the world hostage. Such countries have already developed-or are working hard to develop-chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, and the missiles to deliver them, that will forever alter defense strategies-both international and domestic. Now any well-financed and determined group can build a nuclear bomb using instructions off the Internet and carry it in a suitcase. How do you defend against that? It's the same with chemical weapons. Anyone can build one of those deadly weapons using equipment that makes agricultural chemicals. U.S. air strikes in Iraq could blow up much of the country, but they wouldn't eliminate all biological or chemical weapons manufacturing plants. Besides, if it's not Iraq, then it can just as easily be some other country or terrorist group. The strategy in defense must shift to prevention: prevention of tensions, prevention of hostilities, prevention of conflict. Those who are responsible for maintaining the peace know this all too well.
William Perry made the point clearly during a speech at Harvard University, on June 3, 1996, when he was U.S. Secretary of Defense. He said, "Preventive medicine creates the conditions which support health, making disease less likely and surgery unnecessary. Preventive defense creates the conditions which support peace, making war less likely and deterrence unnecessary."
What constitutes prevention? According to military experts, the best ways to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction are export controls and nonproliferation regimes; diplomatic initiatives; confidence-building measures, such as educational and military exchange programs; seizure of proscribed materials necessary to the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction; and the threat of economic sanctions or diplomatic isolation. Other analysts, less optimistic, talk of providing everyone in, say, Manhattan, with a gas mask, in case terrorists explode canisters filled with deadly anthrax.
Such efforts are sure to help, but most experts agree, they are also likely
to fail, at least once-and that one time could be catastrophic. John Hagelin
spoke often about these problems during the 1992 and 1996 campaigns. He also
spoke about a unique, but scientifically proven, solution. One press conference
stands out in my mind.
December 6, 1995 Washington, D.C. is awash with press conferences on the Dayton Peace Accords. I know this because this week, the Associated Press' "Day Book"-a daily and weekly calendar of media events in Washington-is packed with news events that offer reporters ample opportunity to hear the Republican and Democratic reaction to President Clinton's decision to send U.S. troops to Bosnia. Most of those press conferences will feature politicians arguing the merits of the peace accord and the wisdom of putting American lives on the line. Is this another Vietnam? those in opposition are demanding to know. Are we getting in over our heads?
At about the same time that Greg Spitzfaden is preparing to fly to Sarajevo to organize aid for that war-ravaged country, John Hagelin is at the National Press Club for a news conference to discuss a proposal that he says would help bring peace to the region. It's a good press turnout that includes several wire services, the Chicago Tribune, and CNN.
Hagelin opens the news conference by commenting on the impact of sophisticated new weapon systems and a rapidly changing balance of power. He says that the U.S. is more vulnerable than ever to attack, and for that reason we must explore all possible avenues for preventing hostilities and conflict.
"There is no viable defense against today's high-tech weaponry," Hagelin says. "Once a single MIRVed ICBM is launched, there is no missile defense system in place that can prevent the wide-scale destruction of cities. Even after substantial reductions in global arsenals, thousands of nuclear weapons remain. At least 46 weapons are believed to be missing from the former Soviet arsenal, and recent nuclear tests in China have stirred fears in the international community of runaway nuclear proliferation.
"Furthermore, regional and ethnic conflicts in the Middle East and Eastern Europe have shown that even small nations can imperil world peace and stability, holding other nations hostage through terrorism, biological warfare, and weapons of mass destruction.
"In light of the wholesale destruction threatened by such weapons, the role of diplomacy and other means to prevent the outbreak of war has become especially crucial," Hagelin says. "Unfortunately, history shows that neither treaties nor threat of arms can ensure lasting peace and security. When stress builds up in collective consciousness, inevitably it erupts as violence, conflict, and war among nations. Then it doesn't matter what treaty has been signed. Over the past 3000 years, there have been more than 5000 peace treaties, each of which has lasted an average of nine years. History shows that paper agreements among nations are not a foundation for lasting peace."
Hagelin then levels a blast at Congress for making America second only to Russia as the world's leading arms merchant.1
"In 1998, U.S. taxpayers will underwrite $6 billion in subsidies for the purchase of U.S. weapons and services by foreign governments2-and many of these governments are unstable and undemocratic," Hagelin says. "This global arms peddling has tarnished America's reputation as a promoter of peace, fostered deep-seated international ill-will, and led to an increasingly dangerous world in which American soldiers are forced to confront our own weapons on the battlefield.3 Heavy lobbying by the defense industry, including large financial contributions to Congressional campaigns,4 has perpetuated America's enormous peace-time military budget which exceeds the combined military expenditures of every other nation in the world."5
Hagelin pauses. He is about to introduce a pivotal idea in the Natural Law Party's platform that he knows will stir some controversy. It will be taken seriously by some members of the press and not by others. But he knows the first step in making public policy is public debate, and he is confident that his idea has the backing of a growing number of researchers, sociologists, and criminologists.
What is it? The effects of stress-reducing meditation on society. Specifically, Hagelin wants to talk about research showing that collective meditation has been used to reduce stress and conflict in violence-ridden and war-torn areas. He takes an objective, science-based position. We live in a scientific age, he says, and no matter how unusual something may sound, if there is enough scientific evidence to support that it works, we should try it.
The principle is this: wherever there are large numbers of meditators, violence and crime in the entire population is reduced. "War breaks out when the escalation of tensions among rival peoples and nations leads to a catastrophic breakdown in negotiations,"˙he says. "Look at Bosnia. Look at the West Bank. Look at Iraq. Until recently, there has been no reliable means to diffuse such escalations of stress and to avert diplomatic breakdowns. This situation has changed dramatically. During the last 20 years, there has been more scientific evidence on the effects of collective meditation for diffusing social stress and resolving international conflict than any previous approach in the history of the social sciences."
Hagelin brings reporters up to speed.
"We already know from research sponsored by the National Institutes of Health that the Transcendental Meditation technique dramatically reduces stress in the individual," he says. "Now, on the basis of more than 40 studies, we know that collective practice of this technique produces the same effects throughout society."
Hagelin refers the reporters to several studies in their press kits that show crime rates, sickness, violence, conflict all fall sharply.
"For example, seven consecutive interventions by such coherence-creating groups during the peak of the Lebanon conflict each brought highly significant reductions in the level of conflict-in war deaths, and war-related injuries-and brought significant progress towards peace. Specifically, war deaths fell an average of more than 70 percent during these interventions, and the decreased tension and significantly more peaceful atmosphere allowed diplomatic initiatives to succeed where they had previously failed."6
The findings may sound unusual, Hagelin says, but research on collective meditation has been published in some of America's most respected, peer-reviewed scientific journals, including the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Social Indicators Research, Journal of Mind and Behavior, and the Journal of Crime and Justice.
"The research has employed the most sophisticated statistical methodologies and has been subjected to rigorous examination through peer-review. It comprehensively controlled for alternative explanations and other confounding variables," he says.
I look around the room and I can almost hear reporters thinking: renewable energy, yes; natural medicine, yes; meditation to lower high blood pressure, yes; but group meditation to reduce violence and conflict?
There is ample research to confirm that this approach works, Hagelin says. However what's been missing is an understanding-a model-of how it works. That's what he wants to discuss now.
"The idea that the coherent influence of meditation could transform society is one that has many precedents in nature," he says. "There are natural amplification mechanics that are found throughout society and in nature that can leverage even small influences into a striking transformation."
Hagelin takes the microphone out of the podium stand and walks across the stage to an easel. He points to a chart with drawings of two blocks of iron. Each block is filled with tiny circles that represent iron atoms. The block on the left has atoms with their north-south poles pointing in random directions. The block on the right has atoms with their north-south poles aligned with each other. The block on the left is an ordinary piece of iron. The block on the right is a powerful magnet. The only difference between the two-and it's a big one-is the alignment, or coherence, of the atoms.
"A block of iron with many atoms is an example of what is a 'many-body' system. A many-body system displays different phases of 'collective behavior.' In this case," he says, pointing to the chart, "the block of iron can be in a magnetized phase or a de-magnetized phase. Depending upon even minor changes in environmental conditions, the behavior of the iron may be completely transformed. And at a certain temperature, through natural amplification mechanisms, as few as one percent of the atoms in the iron block, when they are aligned with each other, will create a transformation throughout the entire piece of iron, causing all the atoms to line up and produce a very strong magnet.
"A society is a more complex many-body system than a magnet," Hagelin says with a smile. "It follows that even minor variations in temperature, climate, natural resources, and environmental influences gives rise to totally different societies-with different languages, mores, cultures, and traditions.
"Research similarly shows that even very minor increases in temperature can significantly impact crime rates," he says.
"So it is not surprising that when you lower the social stress level-or lower the 'social temperature'-and increase the coherence of society even slightly by a group of individuals practicing these technologies of consciousness, that this would produce broad transformations throughout society."8
As Hagelin speaks, I recall my own experiences talking to reporters about this research. It either fits into their picture of the universe or it doesn't. One science writer at a large metropolitan newspaper read through the research and told me he thought the whole idea "made good sense." But another reporter told me, "I don't care how many studies you show me published in how many reputable journals, I don't believe it and I never will believe it."
For many people the idea that collective meditation influences anything other than the meditators themselves runs counter to everything our senses tell us. We don't see the connection. The music coming from the broadcast station across town reach our car radios are carried by radio waves-ripples in the invisible but very real electromagnetic field. But a question I heard a lot was, What connects people together? What is the mechanism, what is the field, that allows people meditating in one place to create an influence on people everywhere else?
Hagelin is a quantum physicist. He is talking about how nature functions. He says that while our senses may tell us one thing-that we are separate individuals-the underlying reality is different. Nature may appear in discrete units, but just beneath the surface, nature is seamless, interconnected. In fact, according to modern physics, everything in the universe is more than closely correlated-everything, in fact, is one.
"At the most obvious and concrete levels of human existence, we are distinctly individual in character-our body, appearance, personality, etc. But deeper levels of human nature are more universal," he says. "At the level of quantum mechanics, the body is just a localized excitation of the electron, quark, electromagnetic, and gluon fields-universal fields which we have in common with every other individual. And at the very deepest level, the individual is just a fluctuation of the unified field, the field of consciousness. It is at this deepest, most universal level of natural law that the technology of collective meditation works."7
And that is why the influence is so powerful.
Hagelin is asked how scientists react to the research? "It depends upon how carefully they have studied it," he says. He refers the reporter to a statement from one scientist, David Edwards, Ph.D., a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, who has followed the research closely for the past 20 years.
Dr. Edwards, who does not practice the TM technique, said: "I think that the claim can be plausibly made that the potential impact of this research exceeds that of any other on-going social or psychological research program. The research has survived a broader array of statistical tests than has most research in the field of conflict resolution. I think this work, and the theory that informs it, deserve the most serious consideration by academics and policy-makers alike."
Hagelin is asked if what he is proposing is prayer. No, he says. It doesn't involve prayer or any religious attitude, nor does it require belief or coaxing or cajoling of people to be kind or forgiving or open-minded. It is a scientific approach that produces a physical influence of peace. It reduces built-up social stress and tension in the collective consciousness.
For these reasons, Hagelin says he would support the establishment of a "coherence-creating group" of one or two thousand experts in Transcendental Meditation and its advanced techniques* in Bosnia to help reduce stress, violence, and conflict. He calls it "A Group for a Government."
A reporters asks for specifics. Who would comprise these groups?
Hagelin says that anyone could be trained: students, the unemployed, refugees "but the most practical implementation would be to establish a 'prevention wing' of the military.
"Already, 200,000 men and women in our armed forces are on dangerous peace-keeping
missions around the globe," he says. "They have already been dispatched to trouble
spots throughout the world to prevent the escalation of tensions and the outbreak
of armed conflict. They are often under tremendous stress themselves. To reduce
their own stress, while simultaneously helping to create a tangible influence
of peace in their environment, a small percentage of these troops could be easily
trained in these peace-promoting technologies.9
This would make their efforts even more effective. Local citizens could then
be trained to take over once the violence had been significantly reduced and
peace had been created."
February 8, 1998 I am driving John Hagelin to the airport in Charlotte, North Carolina. We are in a fierce rainstorm that has the traffic on I-77 moving at a crawl. On the radio, the newscaster is talking in surprisingly matter-of-fact, almost eriely blas‚, terms about the prospect of war with Iraq. In the car, Hagelin is dictating quotes into a tape recorder for a press release on the Iraq crisis that will go out to 400 newspaper editors and radio and television news desks across the country. In a week the release will be outdated-at least in the short term-because of a U.N.-brokered peace agreement. But the problem will really never go away. It will erupt again and again in other parts of the world.
I ask Hagelin how he would explain to the American people the decision to establish a coherence-creating group in Iraq-or any other potential hot spot in the world?
He pauses for a moment. "I would say that before we commence with the horror of exposing our servicemen and women to bodily risk, and before we rain terror from the skies and kill tens of thousands of civilians, we're first going to try a peaceful approach. We do it out of a sense of human conscience in our effort to leave no stone unturned and to pursue all peaceful alternatives. This approach has proven effective in multiple replications involving the Middle East. Its total implementation would cost less than a single B-1 bomber."
What about criticism from members of the scientific community? I interject.
"We are living in a scientific age, in which the truth or falsehood of any hypothesis stands or falls on the basis of scientific evidence,"˙he says. "And the evidence overwhelmingly supports that we try such an approach first. So we will proceed on with full scientific confidence and with the backing of criminologists, sociologists, and experts in conflict resolution who are familiar with the research and endorse its efficacy."
What would he foresee happening if such a group were established, I ask.
"If the results of previous applications are any indication, we would see a softening of the tensions, followed by an openness to negotiate in a constructive atmosphere, one not governed by intransigence and brinkmanship. And out of this we would hope to see an agreement that's satisfactory to the U.S. and our allies, to the international community, and to Iraq itself; a solution that would be in everyone's long-term best interests."
And if it doesn't work?
"We can always fall back on a measured military response that would be sufficient to prevent Saddam Hussein's development and deployment of weapons of mass destruction. But we should follow this military action with a concerted effort to diffuse the long-standing tensions in the area that have given rise to this crisis-and to the 1991 Gulf War. This could be done through a combination of diplomacy and the application of a smaller, permanent coherence-creating group similar to the one that we're proposing now for the Gulf."
Hagelin is interrupted by a call on his cell phone. I think back on conversations I've had with reporters on the idea. This is what I say: Nothing else has worked to prevent violence and conflict, at least over the long term-not treaties, not coercion, not a "credible threat of war," not economic sanctions. If group meditation can work, then it makes sense to try it out. If it fails, then it will be just another thing that has failed in the long history of failed peace efforts. But if it works, if it succeeds, then we have something powerful that can help us create a safer, more peaceful world during this very precarious time.
Hagelin is off the phone. He says basically the same thing.
"William Perry [the former U.S. Defense Secretary] was right when he said that we need a preventive approach to defense that creates conditions that support peace," Hagelin says. "Reducing built-up social stress is key. If this approach can do that-and the research shows that it can-then it's worth a try. It's the humane thing to do."
We're at the airport. The crashing thunder storm has passed, leaving a hard rain, but nothing that will keep the jets on the ground. Hagelin grabs his overnight bag from the back seat and heads into the terminal to catch a U.S. Airways flight to Kansas City where he'll hold a series of party-building meetings with local organizers. I turn on the radio and now the news is on violent flare-ups tearing apart the Serbs and Kosovo Albanians in Yugoslavia, fanning fears of a new Balkan war. It's the same with the Israelis and Palestinians. I think of Greg Spitzfaden, working under relentless pressure in his office in Peterborough, New Hampshire, to send emergency supplies to war-ravaged lands throughout the globe. I think he would agree with John Hagelin: It's worth a try.
Research Findings
Final Note: Criminologists and social scientists have been unable to adequately explain the dramatic and widespread reduction in violent crime throughout the U.S. during the past five years. The standard explanations-changing demographics, increased police surveillance, community policing, stricter sentencing, reduced crack cocaine usage, etc-cannot account for such an unexpected decline after decades of sharply rising crime rates. In fact, many experts do not believe the drop in crime will last. They project a significant increase in violent crime within the next ten years as the younger generation reaches adolesence.
Based on the above research and other findings, John Hagelin offers a far different
perspective. He predicts that crime rates will continue to fall-even accelerate
in their decline-because the reduction is not due, in the main, to any of the
conventional crime-fighting approaches. But rather, the decrease is due to something
more fundamental-the reduction in levels of built-up social stress brought about
by millions of people throughout the country practicing technologies of consciousness,
including large groups of experts in the TM-Sidhi program. Just as people who
pollute the environment inevitably produce a cumulative damaging influence on
the whole environment, so, too, research shows that individuals who reduce stress
and create coherence in their own lives from the level of the unified field
produce a cumulative positive effect on society as a whole. Hagelin adds that
crime rates in America remain unacceptably high, particularly among the youth.
To fully address this problem also requires-particularly for lower income citizens-improved
health care, education, and career opportunities; better housing; and, in the
field of corrections, more effective rehabilitative measures. Nevertheless,
the ground is being created for a transition towards a less stressful, less
violent society through these programs to reduce social stress. The Natural
Law Party's policies would accelerate this positive trend by addressing all
levels of the problem.
*It didn’t come up in this news conference, but reporters would sometimes ask about an advanced technique known as Yogic Flying. “It’s an exotic name for a very simple procedure derived from the classical texts on yoga that dates back 3,000 years,” John Hagelin would say. “These ancient texts maintain that the long-term practice develops the ability to levitate—thus the name—but it’s widely practiced today for its scientifically proven effects in creating EEG brain wave coherence, increasing mind-body coordination, and producing a profound influence of reduced stress and increased coherence that extends into the social environment.”8 (back)