In 1976, researchers associated with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi first described that in communities where there were large numbers of serious meditators, crime rates went down as the number of meditators went up. This has become known as the “Maharishi effect,” and some of this research has been published in highly reputable journals. You can see a summary of some of the research here. I also discuss this whole fascinating issue in more detail in Healing, Meaning and Purpose.

As you can imagine, it is controversial and has stirred up some heated arguments. But mounting research is pointing to evidence of a global consciousness that is developing and evolving.

More data on this effect was presented at a news conference on Wednesday, November 1, at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa. Scientists reported on a rigorous, controlled econometric analysis of the first 100 days of a $12 million scientific demonstration project to monitor the effects of 1200 advanced Transcendental Meditation practitioners on quality of life indicators.

The research is said to show that since the project began on July 23, 2006, the Dow Jones Industrial Index and the S&P 500 have posted total gains of approximately 12%, and the NASDAQ has climbed nearly 18%. The Dow has repeatedly hit all-time record levels, the S&P reaching a 5.5-year high, and the NASDAQ climbing to a five-year high.

If true, this is astonishing.

I don’t doubt the sincerity or scientific expertise of any members of the research teams. I’ve checked out some of the other work that each has done, and it has all been of the highest order. The one problem is that this is like a pharmaceutical company having a press conference to tell the world about a new wonder drug before anyone outside the company has had a chance to check out the research. Yes the data is out there, but there are a hundred and one messy little details that need to be checked over.

We have no reason to doubt, except that doubt has to be the perpetual mind set of the scientist. Many factors can make the markets go up and down. And until the research has been checked and validated by every interested person in the world we have to remain skeptical.

Let me tell you how this checking is done. Last week I was sent a research paper by a prestigious journal with a personal note from the editor asking me to see what I thought of the research. I read through the paper in great detail, checking the citations, the methodology, statistics and even the spelling.

This is a task undertaken by every senior academic, often once or twice a week. We don’t get paid for doing it, and the whole process is anonymous: I don’t know who did the research and they don’t know who is passing judgment on their labors. We do this work for the common good. Earlier this evening I completed my report to the editor. But it doesn’t stop there. One or two other experts will have done the same with the paper and then the editor decides based on all of our reports.

Then there are two more steps. If the editor decides to publish, then the global scientific community will crawl all over the research to see if we reviewers have missed anything and if the research looks okay. Finally others will have to replicate the study.

This is why research often seems to progress at a snail’s pace. In actual fact it isn’t. It is going very quickly, but each step is being checked extremely carefully. Even with all of this conscientious effort, research regularly gets published that turns out not to be correct after all.

And with such extraordinary claims we require extraordinarily good proof.

If, as I suspect, the research is indeed found to be correct, it could change the world forever.

I’ve spent my professional life trying to empower people, to give them the tools to help them cope with illness or adversity and to help them see that conquering a problem is only the half way stage. We have to try to understand the meaning and purpose of an accident, illness or sudden death.

One of the things that has dismayed me is the way in which so much self-help advice is grounded in nonsense. Pop psychology that is flatly contradicted by empirical data; misunderstandings about basic science and misquotations of elements of the Ageless Wisdom.

When people are only given bits of a story they cannot use the information: they can only follow a set of formulae. The direct result is that a lot of what passes for self-help does not help free people and make them independent of the opinions of others. Instead it makes them into followers who hope that the next book, CD or seminar will reveal the missing pieces of the puzzle.

The trouble is that many of the most charismatic self-help gurus don’t have those missing pieces themselves.

I was thinking about this after reading a nice article by Dudley Lynch whose blog I have recommended before. Dudley instroduces a dose of reality into some of the statements made by guests on a recent Larry King interview. He also recommends some books, to which I would add Steve Salerno’s book SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless.

There is an antidote to all of this. Earlier this year I wrote about what I call the "Changing Landscape of Self-help."

We are now in a fourth age of self-help in which the recommendations of self-help are firmly rooted in empirical research. We also need to recognize a constant danger of all the exhortations to be happy and creative. I read an article the other day by someone whom I like very much. But it was the usual fare: a story about the Wright brothers, another about Bill Gates, and then on to a rousing, "If they could do it so can you." But these people have a unique grouping of talents. Not everyone can be a creative powerhouse anymore than everyone can sing. That’s just fine: everybody has some gift and purpose in life. But I cannot tell you how many times I’ve had to pick up the pieces because some self-help speaker has told people that they would be able to achieve something. The person couldn’t and was left feeling flat, inadequate and depressed. The speaker was long gone, and had no idea of what he had done.

Before following some self-help, health or wellness program, I would suggest that you ask ten questions:

1. Who is promoting the program and why?
2. What are his or her qualifications for producing and teaching this program?
3. How is he or she going to benefit: are they just doing it for the money?
4. Is the program specific to my needs?
5. What is the evidence for claims made for the program?
6. Have independent people critically evauated the material?
7. Have other people been helped by the program?
8. Is the material updated regularly?
9. Is there some system for providing ongoing support?
10. How will I be better able to serve others once I have done the program?

If you spend a couple of minutes looking at the items on this blog and in my books and articles, I think that you’ll see for yourself that it’s absolutely feasible to ask and give positive answers to all ten question.

There are still a great many mysteries about memory:

• The molecules in neurons are constantly changing, as are many of the connections between cells. So how can memory be maintained for a lifetime in an environment that is in a constant state of flux?
• Why is it that you can remove large regions of the brain yet memories are not lost? Even in the late stages of Alzheimer’s disease, some long-term memories are maintained even when much of the brain is taken over by plaques and tangles.
• How much memory is there outside the brain and in the body?
• Is some memory maintained not in the brain itself but in fields associated with the body?

Gradually some questions are being answered not just by technology, but by asking new questions and bringing new types of expertise to bear on these problems.

A very interesting new study was published last week in the Journal of Neuroscience. The paper was not by neurologists, but by two mathematicians from the Brain Institute at the University of Utah. Their research suggests that memories are held in our brains because certain proteins serve as anchors, holding other proteins in place to strengthen the connections between nerve cells known as synapses. The anchors keep proteins in place, and these proteins in turn determine how strong a synapse is. And the strength of the synapse is a key to forming and retaining memories.

Synapses function by electrical activity in a neuron releasing a chemical neurotransmitter that affects another neuron or an organ.

One of the primary neurotransmitters involved in learning and memory is called glutamate, that binds to a number of receptors. But the most important for memory are the "AMPA receptors" that are embedded in the receiving ends of neurons. The AMPA receptors are held in place by special scaffolding molecules.

The mathematicians were able to make several predictions about the way in which AMPA receptors stay in place and how repeatedly learning something strengthens the connections between neurons.

The key to learning and remembering is anchoring AMPA receptors on our neurons.

I went into the technical side a bit, because this finding may help us get closer to understanding what goes wrong in Alzheimer’s disease.

It also ties in with some other research out this week in the journal Neuron. A team from the Univesity of Oxford has been trying to work out why adults may find learning more difficult than children. The young learn things more easily, but older brains stiore information more efficiently. They also focused on synapses, and  seem to have found the mechanisms involved.

Young brains have many "silent" synapses that don’t do anything unless called upon to learn something. Older brains have to reuse synapses that have already been used, boosting the strength of connections with increased amounts of neurotransmitters.

So as we get older, our brains adopt different strategies for learning new material, and we should get ever better at organizing and integrating information.

That also fits with the strategies that we have used for improving people’s ability to learn and remember. We use connections as in Mind mapping, multiple sensory associations inclusing music, color and smells, and a sophisticated method for asking constant questions to see if new information fits with material that we have already asimilated.

The Psilocybin Molecule

We have discussed mystical experiences a couple of times recently. They are important not only because of what they may teach us about altered states of consciousness, but because they may contain genuine revelations about the nature of reality and they are invariably profoundly meaningful to the person having them.

Earlier this year there was a paper that seemed to come in under some people’s radar, though several heavyweights in the world of psychopharmacology spoke approvingly of the research.

The paper was entitled, “Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance.” There are also some superb commentaries on the original paper, all of which are available for free download if you click on the links above.

So what got everyone so excited?

Psilocybin is a psychedelic alkaloid that has been used for religious purposes for centuries. The researchers conducted a double-blind study on the acute and longer-term psychological effects of a high dose of psilocybin. What was particularly important was that the 36 experimental subjects had no previous experience of hallucinogens but who were regularly participating in religious or spiritual activities.

It is also important that the experiments were performed in comfortable, supportive surroundings. The last thing that anyone wanted was for people to have a “Bad trip” and to be left without care and support.

They were given psilocybin and methylphenidate (Ritalin) in separate sessions, the methylphenidate sessions serving as a control and active placebo; the tests were double-blind, with neither the subject nor the administrator knowing which drug was being administered. The degree of mystical experience was measured using a questionnaire on mystical experience developed by Ralph W Hood.

61% of subjects reported a “complete mystical experience” after their psilocybin session, while only 13% reported such an outcome after their experience with methylphenidate. Two months after taking psilocybin, 79% of the participants reported moderately to greatly increased life satisfaction and sense of well-being.

About 36% of participants also had a strong to extreme “experience of fear” or dysphoria (eg, a “bad trip”) at some point during the psilocybin session (which was not reported by any subject during the methylphenidate session), with about one-third of these (13% of the total) reporting that this dysphoria dominated the entire session. These negative effects were reported to be easily managed by the researchers and did not have a lasting negative effect on the subject’s sense of well-being.

The observation that psilocybin reliably elicits a transcendent, mystical state tells us that investigations of these drugs may help us understand molecular alterations in the brain that underlie mystical religious experiences.

But the key point to be made is that finding a biochemical basis for mystical experiences does nothing to belittle them. The biochemical and neurological approaches have nothing to say about the personal meaning and the cultural and social components of the experience. To use Ken Wilber’s terminology, this research is only addressing the Upper Right Hand Quadrant.

Important work to be sure, but it would be a mistake to try to reduce mystical experiences to 5HT2A,C receptors alone.

“For what is Mysticism? It is not the attempt to draw near to God, not by rites or ceremonies, but by inward disposition? Is it not merely a hard word for ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is within’? Heaven is neither a place nor a time.”
Florence Nightingale (English Pioneer of Nursing Known as the “Lady with the Lamp,” 1820-1910)

“The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write. …I have always considered myself a voice of what I believe to be a greater renaissance - the revolt of the soul against the intellect.”
– William Butler Yeats (Irish Poet, Dramatist, Writer and, in 1923, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1865-1939)

I wonder how many readers have ever been in a social setting and been a bit depressed by how good-looking everybody else seems to be? I’ve seen quite a number of people who by anyone’s standards were attractive individuals, but who were quite convinced that they were not.

At this point most proponents of pop psychology would jump in and say, “Well he’s got low self-esteem and we need to fix that.” They would probably recommend some exercise involving a mirror and telling him or herself how beautiful, attractive, valuable or special they are.

And they would be dead wrong.

This misperception about the attractiveness of other people is an evolutionary trick that will not be much helped by any number of affirmations.

A very interesting and well-executed study from the University of Texas will be published in next month’s issue of Evolution and Human Behavior. Sarah Hill, a psychologist in David Buss’ evolutionary psychology laboratory. Her research has shown that people of both sexes believe that the sexual competition that they face is stronger than it really is. She beieves that this is useful: it makes people try harder to attract or keep a mate.

What Sarah did was to show heterosexual men and women photographs of people. She asked them to rate both how attractive those of their own sex would be to members of the opposite sex, and also how attractive the members of the opposite sex were. She then compared the scores for the former with the scores for the latter, seen from the other side. Men thought that the men they were shown were more attractive to women than they really were, and women thought the same of the women.

She had predicted the outcome of the study based on a theory developed in the same laboratory by Martie Haselton and David Buss. It is called error-management theory: the idea that when people make errors of judgment hey always tend to make the error that is going to be least costly. Research has shown something to which many women can attest: men often tend to misinterpret innocent friendliness as a sign that women are sexually interested in them. Haselton and Buss reasoned that men who are trying to decide if a woman is interested sexually could err in one of two ways. They can mistakenly believe that she is not interested, in which case they will not bother trying to have sex with her; or they can mistakenly believe she is interested, try, and be rejected. Trying and being rejected comes at relatively little cost. However, form an evolutionary perspective, not trying at all could lead the major cost of not being able to spread their DNA around.

The theory is that there is an opposite bias in women’s errors: They tend to undervalue signs that a man is interested in a committed relationship. The evolutionary argument would be that if she guesses wrongly about a man’s intentions, she might have to raise a child on her own.

However, when it comes to assessing physical attractiveness, man and women make the same errors.

We always need to be a bit wary about pushing the perspectives of evolutionary psychology too far. I think that they are valuable, but that we can get into trouble if we apply their insights too liberally: humans are complex creatures who are continuing to evolve rapidly. We are different in every way from the people of a thousand years ago.

But this is a very useful insight into why some many people feel to see themselves as they are.

The moral of the story: have courage in initiating new relationships, and look at the whole person: physical, psychological, social, subtle and spiritual.

And don’t forget to use your intuition: the surest guarantor of making the right steps in relationships.

“I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.”
–John Constable (English Landscape Painter, 1776-1837)