The Global Peace Village with six new townhouses was inaugurated on Friday, June 30, with MIU President John Hagelin and Dr. Howard Settle presiding, fulfilling a plan years in the making.

Each townhouse has two stories and two bedrooms. They’re contained within two buildings, three townhouses to a building. Both buildings were designed according to Vastu architecture and are within walking distance of MIU’s two Golden Domes, the Golden Dome Market, and the campus swimming pool.

When completed, the Global Peace Village will comprise one thousand townhouses.

The project provides deeply subsidized housing to those who commit to regular participation in MIU’s peace-creating programs in the Golden Domes — and marks the beginning of a systematic plan to create a permanent group of 2,000 people practicing the Transcendental Meditation and advanced TM-Sidhi programs together as a group to create peace and harmony for the nation.

WATCH A SHORT VIDEO OF THE INAUGURATION HERE

Dramatic results nationwide

Dr. Settle and his wife Mickey supported a group of that size from 2007 to 2010. With that support, creating peace became a profession. It enabled hundreds of people to commit to practicing these programs together for many hours each day, creating a more powerful effect.

The results were stunning. As a half dozen peer-reviewed published studies have now shown, these people transformed the quality of life in the United States.

During those four years, the US homicide rate plummeted more than 21%, violent crime more than 18%, traffic fatalities more than 20%, all other accidental deaths more than 13%, drug-related deaths (including opioid deaths) more than 30%, and infant mortality more than 12%. This translates into 70,000 lives saved and 186,000 fewer violent crimes. The financial savings are almost incalculable, to say nothing of the savings in human suffering.

And these were only the most recent results in a series of studies that began in 1974 and continue to this day. More than fifty studies have been published on the Maharishi Effect, as it’s called. It has been tested in all parts of the world and at all scales of society — cities, states, countries, the world as a whole. Every experiment has produced consistent positive results. zehere open warfare was present, the intensity of fighting dropped and war deaths plummeted. 

Creating a permanent group of peace-creating professionals

Dr. Settle and his wife were unable personally to sustain this support indefinitely. After 2010, they were compelled to dial it back. With declining financial support, the size of the group grew smaller — and so did the coherence-creating effect, much like a light being turned down. Though unfortunate, there was an important benefit — the causal relationship between the group size and US quality of life became undeniably clear.

With such striking results, Dr. Settle determined to create a permanent group — which in fact had been a widespread decades-long desire.

So he went to work.

“It was obvious to me that sustaining any large group on a permanent basis would require some form of endowment to provide the required support to the participants,” Dr. Settle said. “Another critical need was adequate housing for the participants.”

He started by creating financial models identifying the up-front infrastructure costs as well as the ongoing costs of maintaining the infrastructure and supporting the participants.

“I realized that subsidized housing for participants was its own form of endowment — it took care of both infrastructure and participants’ compensation at the same time,” Dr. Settle said.

He developed a grand financial model that supported five goals:

• Building the housing, 1,000 units altogether, housing 2,000 peace-creating experts
• Ensuring the homes will be well maintained over time
• Providing quality subsidized housing near the Golden Domes (with rent about half of Fairfield’s current rate)
• Supporting scholarships for students in MIU’s Enlightenment Leadership program (bachelor’s) and Enlightenment & Leadership program (master’s) — training for the future leaders of Transcendental Meditation initiatives around the world
• Contributing income to MIU.

In April 2021, financial model complete, he worked with President Hagelin to establish the Institute of Permanent Peace at MIU. Its mission: “To implement the technologies of consciousness to create permanent peace using the Maharishi Effect.” They announced the plan publicly.

Under the institute umbrella, Dr. Settle spearheaded a fundraising campaign. Phase 1 raised enough money to build the six townhouses that opened with inaugurating the Global Peace Village.

“The beginning of a total renewal”

“This is the beginning of a total renewal of the northern side of our campus,” said MIU President John Hagelin during the inauguration ceremony. “The growth of our community has been bottlenecked by a lack of housing in town and especially near the Golden Domes.” “This is a great boost,” he added, for our long-standing efforts to create a large, permanent group of peace-creating experts practicing the TM and TM-Sidhi programs together in the Golden Domes. 

President Hagelin expressed his deep appreciation to Dr. Howard Settle, who had traveled to Fairfield from his home in Lexington, Kentucky, for this occasion.

“This was his vision,” President Hagelin said. “This is his plan. This is the first really concrete leap forward in this plan.”

“My life has been transformed since moving in”

So what’s it like to live in the new townhouses? 

“I love my new Vastu townhouse in the Global Peace Village,” said DeArmond Briggs, long-time Fairfield resident and tennis coach. “My life has been transformed since moving in. I have noticed an uplifting feeling of lightness, softness, and comfort in my unit. My sleep has been better, deeper and more peaceful. I have experienced more periods of transcendence during meditation, activity, and sleep. I have received more support from nature too. There is something unique about the experience of living in the Global Peace Village that will only get better as the village grows and the number of participants in the Golden Domes increases.” 

If you’re interested in living in the Global Peace Village as further buildings are constructed, please write Bob Markowitz (bmarkowitz@tm.org) or phone at 641-919-7045.

To make a donation to the Institute for Permanent Peace, go to https://giving.miu.edu.

Thank you to Dr. Howard Settle for his contribution to this story. Aerial photo by Werner Elmer.