Dr. Larry Dossey, who has studied prayer in medicine says, “Many action-oriented people equate prayerfulness with inactivity, giving in and giving up. They may even accuse inner-directed, prayerful people of “doing nothing” in the face of illness and crisis.” There is evidence from studies of prayer and meditation that shows powerful positive results from what is essentially a state of being.
The Hopi prophecy recommends prayer for changing the course of world events, saying “…when prayer and meditation are used rather than relying on new inventions to create more imbalance, then they (humanity) will also find the true path.”
The Power of Prayer
Studies of twenty-four U.S. cities with populations over 10,000, in 1972, observed statistically measurable reductions in crime when as little as one percent of the population engaged in some form of meditative practice. This came to be known as the “Maharishi Effect” as many of the participants were engaged in Transcendental Meditaion as taught by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
A later study during the Israeli-Lebanese War in 1983, placed individuals trained in transcendental meditation in strategic locations within Jerusalem. The purpose of the study was to determine if the reduction of stress in a localized population (those meditating) would be reflected as less violence and aggression in the whole region. Quality of life in the population was measured using incidence of fires, traffic accidents, crime, and stock market fluctuations. The study showed a direct relationship between the number of participants and various measures of the quality of life. When the number of people praying was reduced, the incidence of crime, fires and accidents increased.
The studies were repeated in major cities in the United States, India, and the Philippines during the mid 1980s. When a critical proportion of the population prayed or meditated, there were decreases in crime rates that could not have been due to other trends or changes in police policies in those areas.
How Powerful is Prayer?
Gregg Braden, in The Isaiah Effect, claims that early sages and prophets suggested that one tenth of one percent of humanity could shift the consciousness of the world. The studies suggest the critical number is even smaller than this. The studies in Jerusalem and other cities showed effects from mass prayer began to be measurable when a very small proportion of the population was involved in meditation or prayer.
The square root of one percent of the population was the threshold at which changes were seen in measures of well-being in the larger population. This gives a new perspective on the mustard seed symbolism used by Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus said, in Matthew 17:20, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you. So some believe that a very small number of people in prayer and meditation can affect a larger population.
Sources:
Braden, Gregg. The Isaiah Effect. New York: Three Rivers. 2000.
Dossey, Larry. Healing Words. San Francisco: Harper. 1993.
Fairfield, CN: Maharishi, Maharishi Effect: Increased Orderliness, Decreased Urban Crime. Scientific Research on the Maharishi Transcendental Meditaion and TM-Sidhi Programs: A Brief Study of 500 Studies, University of Management Press. 1996.
New American Standard Bible. Matthew 17:20.
Thurston, Mark. Millenium Prophecies. New York: Kensington Books. 1997.
Ruth Wilson Zamierowski - Ruth Wilson Zamierowski researches and writes on topics including health and bodywork, effective thinking strategies (NLP), metaphysics ...
