Measurements of the Effects

1. Worldwide Effect on Computers
The events of the Global Peace Meditation and Prayer Day will be monitored worldwide for their effect on specially programmed computers located in different parts of the world. The computers will generate a constant series of numbers (zeros and ones) in a random sequence. Roger Nelson is the former director at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratories and is currently heading the Global Consciousness Project, his own research program. Roger Nelson will monitor through his REG network the numbers generated by the computers and search for possibly significant deviations from randomness during the meditation/prayer events, with special attention to the intense and hand-holding phases. (The monitoring will not be communicated to the participants in order to avoid any possible bias due to conscious expectations or intentions.) The findings will be verified and subsequently released to the press and public.

2. Effect on the Local and Regional Communities
Social cohesion, individual and interpersonal fulfillment, also concomitant impact on the environment are strongly dependent on people’s values and priorities. People influence each other’s values and priorities within communities: those with well-adjusted, healthy mind sets generate a collective will that positively affects all people in the community. Joint meditation and prayer by well-intentioned and well-adjusted persons intensifies this effect. They were found to produce a significant impact on the social community of the mediators: crime rates diminish, suicide rates drop, levels of satisfaction rise, negative effects on the environment are reduced. (These effects have been predicted by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in 1960, and are known as the Maharishi effect.) Nearly 50 scientific research studies conducted over the past 25 years using rigorous research methods and evaluation procedures have confirmed the effects. In the framework of the Global Peace Meditation and Prayer Day, the Global Coherence Feedback system headed by Joseph Giove, a Californian engineer and human development specialist, will use a specially designed application to monitor the social impact of the meditation/prayer events on each of the communities and the environing social and cultural regions.