Study 18: Decrease in crime and deaths in Manila, Philippines

In December 1979 a business man in Manila decided to create a group of Yogic Flyers among the employees of his company. As part of their working hours, employees could practice TM, the TM sidhi programme and Yogic Flying in the morning and evening. It was then decided to organise a new experiment, with predictions up front that crime and deaths would decrease significantly both in Manila and the Philippines as a whole. The number of Yogic Flyers taking part in the experiment was 400, which was more than what was required for Manila alone (300) but less than required for all of the Philippines (750). It was therefore decided to make an index with numbers for both.

What was interesting about this experiment was that the group was formed spontaneously in December 1979, but that, due to circumstances, several employees had to leave the location, causing the group to shrink over the following 2 years, until only about half remained at the end of the study in December 1981. When the numbers of the Index were studied, a significant decrease in the number of crimes and deaths showed in December 1979 (p<.025), followed by a gradual increase until December 1981, which seemed to quite precisely follow the number of Yogic Flyers (p<.001).Ref.The Journal of Mind and Behavior  8: 67–104, 1987,Scientific Research on Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation, Collected Papers vol. 5, no. 401, pp. 3151-3171