Images of bloodshed and war have taken over our social media recently, with the Russians, Ukrainians, Palestinians and Israelis amongst others. It is impossible not to feel empathy for the mothers, children, fathers, grandparents and all innocent civilians that are being bombed and killed at a rate faster than our Facebook newsfeed can get updated.
It’s scary, heavy, hurtful and hard to see how we can make it stop.
According to brain studies, there is a way…you can just visualize peace.
Visualization is now being taught by hospitals throughout the world as a powerful tool in overcoming serious illness.
One of the most dramatic applications of imagery in coping with illness is the work of Dr. Carl Simonton, a radiation cancer specialist in Dallas, Texas. “By combining relaxation with personalized images,” as reported in an article in OMNI magazine, “he has helped terminal cancer patients reduce the size of their tumors and sometimes experience complete remission of the disease.”
A study done a few years ago looked at the brain in weightlifters and found that the patterns activated when a weightlifter lifted hundreds of pounds were similarly activated when they only imagined lifting. This research revealed that mental practices are almost effective as true physical practice, and that doing both is more effective than either alone. Guang Yue, an exercise psychologist from Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio, compared “people who went to the gym with people who carried out virtual workouts in their heads”. He found that a 30% muscle increase in the group who went to the gym. However, the group of participants who conducted mental exercises of the weight training increased muscle strength by almost half as much (13.5%). This average remained for 3 months following the mental training.
So basically our thoughts can produce the same mental instructions as the actual actions.
As Paramhansa Yogananda said, “Remember that you are unhappy generally because you do not visualize strongly enough any of the great things that you want, nor do you employ steadfastly your will power, your creative ability, and your patience to materialize them.”
This materialization can be applied then to the macro model of our world.
So what if, instead of breeding fear, we visualize world peace?
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi agreed. It was this vision, excuse the pun, that he saw to create with the Maharishi Vedic Pundits many years ago. From a young age, students from the traditional Vedic families of India followed systematic training to become these peace professionals. From the ages of 10 to 20 they follow a special program of study designed by Maharishi.
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A large group of Maharishi Vedic Pandits is still being assembled in the geographic center of India to create and influence peace for the world. Their organization has run more than 40 years of scientific research by the Trancedental Meditation movement’s efforts which has established that a sufficiently large group of specially trained peacekeepers can raise the level of coherence and harmony in global collective consciousness and turn the tide towards peace for the whole world with their future goal of 9,000 pundits, (they currently have about 2,000).
The ancient text, The Yoga Sutras, describes how peace can be created through this collective:
TAT SANNIDHAU VAIRATYAGAH
“In the vicinity of Yoga, hostile, conflicting tendencies are eliminated.”
– YOGA SUTRA 2.35
Interpreted as through advanced meditation, enlivened by a large group, the ‘vicinity of Yoga’ being the region benefiting from the peaceful influence can extend to the whole world.
Nikola Tesla once said, “The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence. To understand the true nature of the universe, one must think it terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”
It’s this very vibration that is the core of the Global Consciousness Experiment, which you may have heard of. It is an international, multidisciplinary project between multiple scientists and engineers, started in Princeton University with over 15 years of data.
What is used in the study is a random number generator, RNG. The machine would essentially mimic a coin flip and record the results over time. The machine performed 200 flips per second and produced an average mean of 100 as one would expect. Left unattended, the machine would continue to produce results that suggested a 50/50 chance of producing either heads or tails. The interesting results came when human intention started to interact with the machine. What was once a random 50/50 chance of producing heads or tails began to deviate from expectation as the observer began to intend for the numbers to be higher or lower.
Essentially RNGs are systems that are sensitive to and respond to the intentions of individuals, in other words, the influence of consciousness. They also respond to marked shifts in attention occurring in their environment. Peaks of order are commonly recorded during moments of shared attention and emotions. RNGs also responded, and had the largest effects ever recorded by the Global Consciousness Project during major world events, like 9/11. Other large recordings have occurred on presidential inaugurations, tsunamis and the deaths of public figures. They allow us to find a possible link with our nature of consciousness and it’s connection to our physical material reality.
Dr. Konstantin Korotkov, professor of physics at St. Petersburg State Technical University, found that when we think positive or negative thoughts, each have a different impact on our surrounding environment. He stated:
“We are developing the idea that our consciousness is part of the material world and that with our consciousness we can directly influence our world.”
Go ahead, try it.
When you visualize peace, try to picture it clearly in your mind’s eye. See and feel the world going through the entire process in a completely successful manner. Repeating your visualization several times daily. And it’s no secret that it truly can’t hurt to visualize peace. So…
“Give peace a chance.” – John Lennon
References:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/flourish/200912/seeing-is-believing-the-power-visualization
http://vedicpandits.org/peace-creating-group/maharishi-vedic-pandits/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14998709
http://archive.org/stream/omni-magazine-1989-11/OMNI_1989_11_djvu.txt
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/09/05/mind-over-matter-princeton-russian-scientist-reveal-the-secrets-of-human-aura-intentions/
Wonderful read, thanks Puja!
On the point of our thoughts producing the same instructions as actual actions… is there any research showing what happens when you combine the two? In reference to peace, possibly meditation and small acts of peaceful kindness could quickly produce massive results.
Often I think we feel helpless to contribute to peace, however what if it was as simple as reading further into what is actually causing the war in the first place… Meditation for peace is one thing, meditation on the differences separating two religions and asking (God, Universe, Energy) for a specific conflict resolution could be quite another.