Women for Natural Law present Tessa Jowell MP With a Plan to Create Peace in Kosovo

28 April, 1999

Deeply moved by the tragic consequences of the Kosovo crisis, hundreds of women have come together to form a new group which will promote a peaceful, nourishing and evolutionary approach to national and world affairs. The new group launched today - Women for Natural Law - is a branch of the Natural Law Party. Their first action will be to present The Rt. Hon. Tessa Jowell MP, parliamentary spokesman for Women, a thoroughly tested plan to create peace in Kosovo backed up by a 12-inch pile of research.

"Government leaders generally see two alternatives in dealing with the Kosovo crisis - military action or diplomacy, but there is a third alternative - one which actually works," said Patricia Saunders, President of Women for Natural Law. "How many scientists would accept that you can reduce war deaths and crime by having large groups of people practising Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation and Yogic Flying? Surprisingly perhaps, many of them. More than a dozen carefully conducted scientific studies have been published in leading academic journals, including the Journal of Conflict Resolution (edited at Yale University and usually considered the leading journal in the field of peace studies), and the International Journal of Neuroscience. (For full list see references at end of press release.)

Scientific research supports peace-making effect Dr David Edwards, Professor of Government at the University of Texas, has commented, "I think it's important that we take this research seriously. These studies are based on sophisticated statistical analysis, and its impressive to see how consistently the data is all in one direction."

Patricia Saunders continued: "Because the idea of creating peace through a simple meditation technique is so unusual it's easy for people to dismiss our claims without taking a proper look at the evidence. Because something is not widely accepted doesn't mean that it doesn't work. A group of Yogic Flyers creates an indomitable effect of positivity and coherence that radiates throughout the collective consciousness of society neutralising negativity, stress and conflict. This is a 'field effect' on the level of human consciousness - an effect similar to the long-distance effect of electromagnetic radiation such as TV and radio waves which are so familiar.

"In the mid 1980s, when large numbers of Yogic Flyers assembled in Jerusalem, deaths in the civil war in Lebanon reduced by an average of 70%. One study in Lebanon found that the chances of such a dramatic fall in violence occurring at random for such a long time (during 7 separate assemblies held at intervals over an 821 day period in a variety of locations) were less than one in ten million million million. The figures have been scrutinised more rigorously than ordinary research due to the revolutionary nature of the concept.

With such clear evidence for Natural Law programme, nobody can claim that this is a "just" war "With such clear evidence, WOMEN FOR NATURAL LAW feel compelled to say to Tessa Jowell that because there is now a viable, tested and practical alternative no politician can rightly claim that this is a "just" war. We want a permanent group of 10,000 experts in Yogic Flying to be set up. The evidence is that this size of group would be sufficient not merely to reduce war deaths, but to bring lasting peace.

"The cost of keeping such a large group of Yogic Flyers together would be a fraction of 1% of the cost of the NATO action. WOMEN FOR NATURAL LAW place peace-making at the top of their agenda. We feel that peace cannot be created by dropping bombs, as violence only begets violence. Therefore, every country needs a peace-keeping group of Yogic Flyers to prevent violence of any form from breaking out, and to reduce crime - what is happening in the Balkans can happen anywhere at any time."

WOMEN FOR NATURAL LAW is an organisation whose members come from all walks of life. The purpose of our organisation is to promote the policies and programmes of the Natural Law Party to women, and through them and their families to society as a whole.

 

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References: academic journals in which studies on the societal effects of the Transcendental Meditation technique and the TM-Sidhi programme including Yogic Flying, have been published:

The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 32, 776-812; Journal of Crime and Justice,4, 25-45; Journal of Mind and Behaviour, 9, 457-485; Social Indicators Research, 22,399-418; Journal of Mind and Behaviour, 8, 67-104; Society for Neuroscience Abstracts, 14,372; Social Science Perspectives Journal, 2(4),127-146; Proceedings of the American Statistical Association, Business and Economics Statistics Section, 1988 491-496; Social Science Perspectives Journal, 2(4),90-94; International Journal of Neuroscience, 16, 203-209; Presentations to the American Psychological Association and American Political Science Association (2 papers).

Tessa Jowell will also receive four volumes containing 500 studies from 200 institutions on Transcendental Meditation published in more than 150 academic journals including Science, Lancet, Scientific American, American Journal of Physiology, British Journal of Psychology, etc.

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