Maharishi International University President John Hagelin sent the following message to the campus community on October 24:

Dear MIU students, staff, faculty, and community members,

Our hearts go to all those who have suffered because of the violence unfolding in the Middle East. Most especially, we mourn the suffering of innocent people caught in the crossfire of the war, many of whom are children. Every human life is precious. The loss of any human life is lamentable.

Violence begets violence, and that is what we are seeing. The whole situation is immensely complex. It did not begin on October 7. This area of the world has been a focal point of acute societal tensions for millennia. Nothing has succeeded in bringing lasting peace to this fraught region. 

Most regrettable to me personally is that this could have been avoided.

For nearly fifty years now, we have been demonstrating a method for neutralizing the social stress that gives rise to conflicts, terrorism, and war. To date, 56 empirical studies conducted around the world, including 28 published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals, have demonstrated the effectiveness of the Maharishi Effect — created by group practice of the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs — in reducing social stress in all its forms: from crime, substance abuse, and suicides to terrorism and open warfare.

For the first time in history, we now have a scientifically validated technology of peace. It remains only to be implemented on a global and permanent scale.

I also regret that despite study after study, proposal after proposal, demonstration after demonstration, our world’s governments and philanthropists have not yet taken advantage of this approach — what the Global Union of Scientists for Peace (gusp.org) has declared the most powerful antidote 

to terrorism and war: a “Brain-Based Approach to Peace” that addresses the problem at its source.

Yet we must continue forging ahead. I, and I hope all of us, recommit ourselves to doing everything possible to practice and promote this simple, profound, low-cost solution to the age-old problem of war and violence.

The upcoming 10,000 course in India aims to create a world-wide surge of peace and harmony, calling attention to this proven approach and laying the groundwork for a permanent large peace-creating group in India. My gratitude to all those in our community and across the country who are planning to attend.

During those same two weeks, December 29–January 13, we are holding a simultaneous “satellite” course here at MIU, hoping to gather 2,000–2,500 TM and TM-Sidhi practitioners to generate coherence for the whole country and — if we reach 2,500 — for all North America. 

I hope you all will participate. This is one of our university’s central missions. 

There is a solution, and it’s in our hands. This is what we can do. 

Let us come together and give this every possible support, starting with our own personal practice in the Golden Domes, and let us radiate peace and harmony to our dear world family.

With my profound gratitude and best wishes to all of you.

John Hagelin, President