Read an Excerpt

Building a Better Brain
 
Promise me you’ll always remember: You’re
braver than you believe, and stronger than
you seem, and smarter than you think.
A. A. Milne
 
Are we smarter than we think, as A. A. Milne suggests? And if so, how do we gain access to the assets we have and make the most of them? Throughout this book, we will encounter people who say that TM has boosted their capacities, enabling them to live fuller, more successful, and more enjoyable lives. In this chapter we will examine some of the evidence, both anecdotal and experimental, suggesting that TM may indeed enhance certain brain functions. If so, that would explain some amazing stories.
 
REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST—AND PRESENT
 
The house was packed at the upscale Urban Zen in New York City, where Cameron Diaz was guest of honor at an event hosted by the David Lynch Foundation. Looking as radiant as ever, Diaz, a regular TM practitioner, was dressed casually in black, her blond hair swept across her cheek, as she engaged warmly with the audience about her experiences with TM—such as this one:
 
It was about ninety degrees in the Valley, at the Los Angeles Zoo parking lot, under a tent, in a car, under lights, with the windows up and no air-conditioning. It was about a thousand degrees in the car. And I had a monologue and I couldn’t remember my lines—lines that I knew. I knew I knew them. I’d said them a million times, and I couldn’t access them. They’re completely lost in . . . wherever they go. And I realized all of a sudden, I went, “No, I need twenty-five minutes. I just need twenty-five minutes.” I ran back to my trailer and I rebooted. I did my twenty-minute meditation. And I came back to the car and I could see all those poor grip guys—they’re all sweating, holding heavy equipment. They’re looking at me like, “I hate you. Get your lines right, woman, so we can get out of here.” I mean really like the evil eye. And I didn’t want to let them down, and I wanted to be able to do my lines. But after I had gone back to my trailer and rebooted, I came back and I nailed it. I was like, Done, thank you very much. And we were out of there, I have to say, in like twenty minutes.
 
Diaz held the audience at Urban Zen spellbound as she described the power of TM as a technique for mining memory.
 
Her description of retrieving her lost lines is at once foreign (After all, how many of us have been on a movie set at the Los Angeles Zoo?) and scarily familiar. How often have you searched for a word, telephone number, or the first line of a familiar poem, only to find that it is . . . sometimes there and . . . sometimes not. We are left asking: where did it go and how can we bring it back?
 
Diaz’s story also resonates because most of us have a sense that our brains hold a vast storehouse of buried treasure, and that if we could only unearth it more efficiently, we’d be far better off. It is this sense, perhaps, that has led to the urban myth (thoroughly debunked) that we use only 10 percent of our brains (though many are the self-help tomes that promise to unlock the missing 90 percent for the price of a few lattes). Although these percentages seem silly to anyone with even a modest knowledge of the brain, the idea contains a germ of truth that has perhaps given traction to the myth: we do have untapped potential, so perhaps we can be smarter than we think.
 
Although nobody can say for sure why a person forgets something at one moment, then remembers it later, we do know that stress can affect memory in ways both good and bad, and we have some ideas about the underlying brain structures at work. In fact, once again our old friend the prefrontal cortex (PFC) appears to be involved. Studies in animals have shown that specific neurochemical pathways, when activated by excess stress, cause profound impairment of the PFC.1 Specifically, too much dopamine and norepinephrine are implicated. By reducing stress, TM may lower the concentrations of these two key neurotransmitters in the PFC, thereby improving cognitive functions—such as remembering lost lines in a movie script.
 
This effect of improved brain function when stress is reduced may remind some of you of the so-called inverted U-shaped curve, which shows how small amounts of stress or anxiety can boost performance but large amounts can make it worse. If you consider the declining limb of the inverted U (that part of the curve where anxiety is increasing but performance is decreasing), it is easy to see how TM could decrease stress and reduce key neurotransmitters in the PFC, thereby making the brain work better.
 
Whatever brain mechanisms were at work on that memorable day at the LA Zoo, we will never know. But the bottom line is that twenty minutes of TM restored Cameron Diaz’s memory rapidly and completely. She had instinctively reached for the right remedy, and it worked.
 
Many other performers who practice TM have recommended doing meditation before tackling a stressful task. Megan Fairchild, principal dancer for the New York City Ballet, does her TM before every performance, as does Tony Award–winning actress Katie Finneran. So does actor, singer, and dancer Hugh Jackman, who says: “I meditated before I hosted the Oscars. I meditate before I go onstage. I meditate in the morning and lunchtime when I’m on a film set. It’s like it resets.” And director Martin Scorsese routinely meditates before facing another grueling day on the movie set.
 
But here is an obvious fact: You don’t have to be well-known or a performer for TM to work. Anybody who has learned TM can take advantage of these observations. I can imagine an architect, schoolteacher, first responder, librarian—anyone, really—benefiting from TM at the start of the day. If you are a regular meditator, you are already at an advantage because the stillness of the Super Mind is already part of you, residing alongside your everyday activities. And if a crisis comes up, you can expand that advantage by taking a TM time-out.
 
DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION: ADHD AND THE SUPER MIND
 
Before leaving the topic of memory, let’s consider a few other examples of improved memory apparently resulting from TM. A woman friend of mine, a medical student, has found that TM greatly improves her ability to remember the volumes of information her course work requires—but for a different reason. She has been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, a condition that makes it hard to maintain focus. As you can imagine, if you have trouble focusing on something, you will not do well at remembering it. Problems with attention interfere with both storage and retrieval of memory. One benefit of TM has been to still her overactive mind—even when she is not meditating—which has helped her focus better and thereby be more successful in retaining what she studies.
 
Although there have been no large controlled studies of TM specifically for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) at this time, one small pilot study on ten distractible students between the ages of eleven and fourteen was conducted by Sarina Grosswald, Bill Stixrud, and colleagues at a school in the Washington, D.C., area.2 Although the study was small and uncontrolled, its results drew rave reviews from the staff, who observed that the students not only concentrated better but were less impulsive. One boy, for example, who could barely sit still in his chair at the beginning of the study, was able to concentrate long enough to read an entire book—to the astonishment of his mother. Another boy told Bill Stixrud, a D.C.-area neuropsychologist and longtime TM practitioner, “Before learning TM, when someone would bump into me in the hall, I would hit him. Now I ask myself, ‘Should I hit him or not?’”
 
In a separate controlled study, Fred Travis and colleagues investigated the effects of TM on the EEG in eighteen students, ages eleven to fourteen, who had been diagnosed with ADHD .3 In prior work on ADHD in adolescents, it had been established that the severity of symptoms is highly correlated with a certain EEG function known as the theta/beta ratio (a simple ratio between two EEG wavelengths): the worse the symptoms, the higher the ratio.4 In the study by Travis and colleagues, the eighteen students were randomly assigned to practice TM or wait for three months before learning TM. Their EEGs were measured at the start of the study and at the end of three months (just before the controls learned TM). As predicted, the researchers found that the theta/beta ratios in the TM group declined significantly over the first three months compared to the control group (see figure 6 below). Once the control group learned TM (after three months), its theta/beta ratios also declined.
 
Bottom line: the effects of TM on both ADHD symptoms and the EEG are apparent after three months of practice.
 
THIS CRAZY WORLD OF OURS
 
You don’t need a formal diagnosis of ADHD, however, to lose focus in a world that offers so many distractions. As one of my friends puts it, “These days I think we all have a little ADHD.” The old adage, “More haste, less speed,” is part of the problem. In our attempts to “multitask,” we often get less done, not more. But inefficiency in multitasking may be the least of our worries. Worse still is a common tendency to sacrifice essentials when we try to juggle less important things at the same time—like making sure that the text we are sending our BFF (best friend forever) is sufficiently witty while driving through a red light. When you multitask, you lose perspective—a potentially fatal mistake. Research shows that we think we can multitask and stay effective, but we’re wrong. The fragmentary attention paid to each task makes it more likely that no task gets done correctly. And that’s where the Super Mind comes in: It slows us down, making us less frantic while sharpening our alertness and focus. The result is improved concentration and ability to prioritize.
 
Bill Stixrud rails against the “mind-racing, mind-scattering, and mind-numbing effects of our extensive use of technology” that he sees in his daily practice. He adds, “We need to build in antidotes to constant stimulation, and TM is a hugely important antidote.” He knows this not only from clinical observation but from his own experience. Here’s how he describes it:
 
As I meditate, I remember what’s important. Sometimes I think I should stop my program early to take care of urgent matters, but then I realize that there will be time to take care of everything, and the most important thing is for me to finish my meditation. As I do so, things sort themselves out in my mind and fall into better perspective. It always pays for me not to interrupt my meditation, but to see it through and reap its rewards.
 
On a personal level, I can’t believe how nowadays I can usually locate my cell phone and other important objects that once would have gone astray in a fog of distraction. While my ability to retrieve lost objects is still far from stellar, somehow I am more attentive and less often mislay them. Also, I enjoy slowing down enough to do things properly. It feels less frenetic, more satisfying. We will explore the issue of attentiveness further when we address the relationship between transcendence and mindfulness in chapter 14.
 
WORKING MEMORY
 
Even working memory, which many regard as difficult to improve, may yield to the powers of TM, as evidenced in a patient of mine, David, a successful businessman. David has always prided himself on his excellent working memory—a function required, for example, to remember a telephone number long enough to find a pencil (Where did that pencil go? I know it was here just a minute ago!) and write the number down. David came to me because he was depressed, and I treated him with antidepressants and psychotherapy. After a few months, both he and I considered him fully recovered in every way—except for his working memory, which had previously been excellent. Now his memory was perfectly adequate for everyday life, but when it came to remembering long strings of numbers for short intervals, he realized he had lost his old talent—until he learned TM. Within the first few weeks of practice, his memory skill came back, and the timing of its welcome return coincided exactly with his starting to meditate.
 
REMEMBERING THINGS YOU DON’T KNOW YOU’VE FORGOTTEN
 
My last example of the beneficial effects of TM practice on memory is quite unusual. How often have you remembered something that you didn’t know you had forgotten? That actually happened to a friend of mine who, along with her husband, had traded in their old car for a new one two days before the event I’m about to describe. Both highly competent professionals, they had methodically swept through the old car (once at home and once at the garage) and removed all trash and debris, as well as everything they wanted to keep—or so they thought. Two days later, while doing her morning TM, my friend suddenly remembered the E-Z Pass attached to the windshield, hidden behind the rearview mirror—and still in the car. It was a job to retrieve it, but well worthwhile to prevent further expenses from accruing.
 
I find this story a good example of Super Mind functioning because it is a simple and clear illustration of how things sometimes surface during meditation that elude us in the clear light of day. As the Super Mind develops, such insights occur more frequently even outside TM sessions. This story is a good bridge to our next section, on creativity, a function that depends in part on the unexpected insights and novel connections that arise unbidden and mysteriously, and may be critically important to solving problems.
 
THE SUPER MIND AND CREATIVITY
 
Creativity is intelligence having fun.   --source unknown
 
One highly prized aspect of intellectual functioning that many of us would love to cultivate is creativity. And certainly many creative people seem drawn to TM—raising the question of how this practice, and the resulting Super Mind, might contribute to creative development. By “creative” I mean having the ability to make unexpected connections, either to see commonplace things in new ways—or unusual things that escape the attention of others—and realize their importance. The next phase in the creative process is the audacity to hold on to this new realization—often in the face of opposition or ridicule—and then pursue and realize the idea despite obstacles.
 
I have had the good fortune to discuss creativity with some highly accomplished and creative TM practitioners. To a person, they credit TM with making them more creative—at timesdramatically so. Among others, I interviewed the great classical guitarist and longtime TM practitioner Sharon Isbin. She had told me exactly the best time to meet in her apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, overlooking the Hudson River, so as to avoid the banging and drilling of construction workers remodeling nearby apartments. After discussing the value of TM in softening her response to the incessant racket, we moved on to a wide range of topics. When I asked whether she thought TM had enhanced her intelligence and creativity, here is what she had to say:
 
I suppose intelligence is hard to quantify, but whether you’re writing an article, learning or performing a piece of music, or preparing a speech, all those things require tremendous focus and access to your talents and abilities at the highest possible level. And I do feel that TM has not only made me better able to use my own inner resources but has also made me more creative. Very often in a TM session, either in the middle or at the very end, I suddenly have the answer to a question I’ve had. Or I get an idea that I’ve never thought of before, and I think it’s a fantastic idea! And it happens during TM. So for me that proves that TM is a process that enables and encourages and nurtures creative thinking.
 
As a musician, I ask, what is creativity? It’s a complex thing to explain, but somehow when you’re writing or speaking, you suddenly think, “Well, that was a good idea. I never connected this thought with that thought before.” And it’s just flowing and it’s happening and you’re kind of amazed yourself at what’s coming out of you. The same thing happens with music—I’ll be playing and suddenly there is a twist of a phrase or a nuance and you just feel that melting sense of beauty. It might be something that you’ve never done before, and it just happens. That’s creativity as a performer. As a composer, creativity is different because you’re actually dreaming up these notes, as a writer would words on a page. So all of these things, I feel, reflect the power of TM.
 
Creative works sometimes advance by great leaps, but more often by a series of small decisions, each one guided by the creator’s overarching vision of the desired outcome. The details cumulatively fall into place to achieve the completed work. That is what I learned from two TM practitioners who are creative giants in their respective fields: Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, and Martin Scorsese, a great American film director. Both are longtime TM practitioners, and both attribute their creative success to TM’s influence. Dalio points out that in his chosen career—dealing with the world’s financial markets—success comes from making a number of good decisions over time. Likewise, Scorsese talks about the importance of getting all the details right—for example, picking just the right piece of music to accompany a specific scene—in order to make a great movie.
 
UNBLOCKING CREATIVITY
 
My personal experience resonates with these stories. It is impossible to count the number of insights, both small and large, that have occurred to me while meditating or shortly thereafter. Here’s another curious observation along these lines. Sometimes I sit down to write but the words just won’t come. As writer William Styron put it, “The syrup won’t pour.” Often when this happens, I do my TM, and when I return to my desk, something has come unblocked. Mysteriously, the syrup pours freely. Over a longer time frame, within the eight years since starting to meditate, my efforts at writing have become steadily smoother. I am clearer about what I want to say, the right words flow, and the writing gets done more easily. And many others in widely varying fields have told me similar stories about how they rely upon TM to unblock them when they feel creatively stuck.
 
In an important controlled study performed in Taiwan and published by David Orme-Johnson and Kam-Tim So, three groups of adolescents were assigned to practice TM versus a control condition.6 The details of this important set of studies are presented more completely later in this chapter. At this point, however, it is worth noting that one of the tests used to measure the effects of the different interventions was the Test for Creative Thinking–Drawing Production, which is considered a measure of whole-brain creativity. Based on the three studies, the participants who practiced TM exhibited a far greater increase in creativity than the controls over the course of the study.
 
An obvious question is, what is happening at the level of the brain? Some clues may come from the work of Fred Travis and colleagues, whom you met in chapter 5. You may remember that these researchers showed that transcendence during meditation develops within months of starting TM, along with the associated brain-wave changes, such as increased alpha waves and increased frontal alpha coherence. On the other hand, TM-associated brain changes that show up when the eyes are open—that is, in the presence of dynamic activity—take longer to develop. This latter group of brain changes include:
 
• EEG coherence in the frontal parts of the brain, not only in the alpha frequency but also in the faster beta and gamma frequencies, which are associated with performing a task.
• Increased alpha power—which suggests internal stillness even when people are performing tasks—a key feature of the Super Mind.
• More efficient use of the brain, as measured by its electrical responses to various types of tasks (these are covered in greater detail in chapter 18).
 
It is important to realize, however, how much we don’t know about brain function and how much remains to be discovered to explain the amazing cognitive effects of TM. I emphasize EEG changes because that is where most of the brain-related TM research has focused. But it is worth considering the possible role of other brain systems—including some not yet described. Take, for example, the recently described “glymphatic system”—a term coined by Danish biologist Maiken Nedergaard, who has led the research into this area at the University of Rochester medical school—which rapidly drains waste products, such as amyloid, from the brain. Studies in mice have shown that such clearance of the brain’s waste products speeds up during sleep, which researchers have hypothesized may explain why sleep is so restorative. For all we know, TM may exercise its effects via this system—and/or a myriad of others. But even without any understanding of its mechanism, the remarkable cognitive effects of the technique are obvious, as many TM practitioners will attest.
 
FIELD INDEPENDENCE
 
One quality that creativity requires is “field independence”—the capacity to generate ideas from within, without being unduly dependent on the influence of others. It is this aspect of brain functioning that has struck Walter Zimmerman as most improved since he began TM. A decades-long meditator and former TM teacher, Zimmerman saw this effect a few years into his meditation, when he scored high on a test that assesses the extent to which people are independent of distraction in their visual fields.
 
Now a highly successful energies trader, Zimmerman finds his field independence to be an invaluable asset. He sees the bulls carried away by their euphoric belief that stocks will never stop rising—until a sharp market decline lands them in despair. He sees the bears selling too soon or investing on the short side for too long, only to end up crestfallen when shares keep rising. Field independence enables Zimmerman to watch the market with both interest and detachment, as emotions rage on all sides. He makes his calculations on particular buys and sells based on experience and the ever-changing data as he watches events play out—a type of creativity that involves insight into patterns, numbers, and human psychology.
 
As you may have noticed, field independence sounds a lot like the Super Mind, where stillness enters the psyche and a person is unshaken by external fluctuations. Zimmerman compares himself to the central figure in Hermann Hesse’s famous novel The Glass Bead Game. In this novel, an elite group of intellectuals play out a game of enormous complexity. So it is that Zimmerman describes his field independence, which allows him to retain a valuable measure of calm detachment while at the same time actively and successfully engaging in his complex profession. The parallel between his work and his life was clear to me (as I’m sure it is to him).
 
CREATIVITY AND THE CIQ
 
To close our examination of expanding consciousness and creativity, let us evaluate our findings from the Consciousness Integration Questionnaire. A great majority (83 percent) of respondents reported increased creativity since starting to meditate, of whom 57 percent and 30 percent said their creativity was enhanced very often or often, respectively. Here are some of their narrative responses, selected because they highlight various aspects of the creative process, which the respondents linked directly to practicing TM.
 
• I’ve always had a lot of ideas running through my head, but I could not pin them down when I needed them. Everything would get jumbled, and then I would get overwhelmed. Now I feel like I have a filter or filing system in my head that helps me sort through my ideas and organize them. After my meditation my creativity increases.
• I’m much more productive and have begun creative works that I had only imagined in previous years. I had a concept for one film almost ten years ago, but only after meditating for a few years was I able to complete it—and it all came about effortlessly.
• Before I started meditating, I was a music composition student who had a really hard time composing. Shortly after learning to meditate, that changed, and these days there is very little difficulty in any kind of creative work. It just flows out all the time.
• I get more done in less time—less procrastination. I do things well the first time so there is less do-over. Now I’m doing three jobs and writing a book, and somehow it all gets done.
• I always wanted to be an artist. I graduated from high school at sixteen, went to college at seventeen, and wasn’t prepared for it at all. I was afraid of failure and afraid of success. I dropped out and didn’t make any art again until I learned to meditate. Now I’m a nationally exhibited sculptor and I hope one day to earn my living with my art.
• Since meditating, my creativity has grown from the spewings of a distressed person to the outpourings of a wealthy imagination. My creativity is no longer needed for personal catharsis. It comes instead from insight, delight, and deep feeling. I am more productive because I know what doesn’t matter and what does.
• Psychiatrist and New York Times columnist Richard Friedman sees a clear improvement in the quality of his columns since starting to meditate. One aspect that distinguishes his more recent columns is that they are “more provocative and intriguing, creative and daring. I’m less worried about whether others think they’re interesting and haven’t checked as much with others. I just do them.”
• One painter said, “When an artist makes a mark on a canvas, he feels a resonance with that mark—whether it works or not, produces the desired effect, pleases or disturbs. Since starting to meditate, I have felt a greater resonance and connection with my paintings, which has given me a lot of pleasure.”
 
LET US, THEN, COUNT SOME OF THE WAYS BY WHICH PEOPLE SAY TM HAS IMPROVED THEIR CREATIVITY:
 
• It helps them sort out and organize information, turning sketches of ideas into fully formed works of art.
• It gives rise to new ideas, new connections, and new emphases (Wow, that thought is more important than I realized!).
• It helps the creative person figure out where to begin (the leading edge of the problem) or what to do next.
• It helps people get started (overcoming procrastination) and complete projects—both common impediments to creativity, which are often related to anxieties (such as fears of failure or success).
• It promotes the flow of ideas and actions (more on this subject can be found in chapter 10, “Being in the Zone”).
• It shifts the axis of motivation from fear (if I don’t succeed, something bad will happen) to enthusiasm (won’t it be great to have my first show?).
• It gives people the confidence to take risks.
• It enhances the joy of connection to one’s creative works.
 
Clearly, many different brain functions must be involved in expediting these happy outcomes. The controlled studies described and discussed below provide some insight into what these specific brain functions might be.
 
Anecdotes aside, let us consider now two of the most impressive studies that connect meditation to various brain functions. They were conducted in two countries thousands of miles apart, Taiwan and the United States. Both sets of researchers were interested in the same basic question: If one takes a group of essentially normal young people and teaches half of them to practice TM while the matched other half receives a control treatment, what differences, if any, will you find in their psychological function six to twelve months later? Put differently, can TM not only normalize brain functioning in people with problems—as has been shown in numerous studies (for example, in people with anxiety)—but also enhance brain functioning in healthy individuals? Two sets of studies in two different countries sought to answer this question.
 
A TRIO OF TAIWANESE STUDIES
 
Three remarkable experiments were conducted by psychologist David Orme-Johnson and his graduate-student collaborator, Kam-Tim So (both associated at the time with Maharishi University), who published their results in 2001. These three studies involved three separate groups of Taiwanese students: Two groups were in high school, while the third attended a technical school just above high school level. A total of 362 students were involved. In all three studies, conducted over six to twelve months, the same six standardized psychological tests were used.
 
Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI): Anxiety, both as a state (the mood of the moment) and a trait (a more stable index).

Cultural Fair Intelligence Test (CFIT): Fluid intelligence, which correlates with executive functions mediated by the prefrontal cortex and also with academic achievement.

Inspection Time (IT): Speed of information processing at the step where a stimulus is transferred to short-term memory.

Constructive Thinking Inventory (CTI): “Practical intelligence,” which is thought to predict success in love, work, and social relationships.

Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT): Field independence, which means the tendency to generate thoughts and ideas based on internal, as opposed to external, processes. This test predicts academic achievement if one controls for fluid intelligence.

Test for Creative Thinking–Drawing Production (TCT–DP): Said to measure whole-brain creativity.
 
Let us consider each of these experiments in turn. In the first, 154 students of average age 16.5 years were divided into three groups: Those who were interested in participating in the TM study were randomly assigned to TM practice or napping (for an equal amount of time), and those with no interest in learning TM constituted a third group. After six months of TM practice, those in the TM group significantly outperformed the nap takers on six of the seven measures (remember that the STAI yields two measures of anxiety) and the no-interest group in every respect—seven out of the seven measures.
 
In the second experiment, also in Taiwan, 118 slightly younger female students (average age 14.6 years) were randomly assigned to three groups: TM, contemplation meditation, and a no-treatment control. The two types of meditation were taught by two different teachers, both of whom practiced and believed in the form of meditation they taught, which helped control for expectation and placebo effects. After six months, the TM group significantly outperformed the no-treatment control on six of the seven measures, and proved significantly superior to the contemplation group on five out of seven measures (including state and trait anxiety). The contemplation group outperformed no-treatment students on two out of seven measures. Besides replicating several findings of the first experiment, this experiment tends to confirm that not all types of meditation produce equivalent results.
 
In the third experiment, 99 male vocational guidance students (average age 17.8 years), all of them majoring in technical drawing, were randomly assigned to two groups: TM or no treatment. After one year, the TM group significantly outperformed the no-treatment
group on all seven measures.
 
To put these results in perspective, it is highly unusual in behavioral studies for an intervention to outperform the control condition across the board, on most if not all measures, and in three separate studies. In other words, these strongly positive studies essentially replicated one another. As someone who has looked at many behavioral studies, I find these results astonishing, both in the breadth of their findings and their consistency across studies.
 
In order to assess the effect of TM versus control, the researchers pooled the data from all three studies. You may recall that in behavioral sciences, an effect is considered to be large at 0.8 units or more, medium at 0.5, and small at 0.2 units.11 The effect of TM versus controls ranged in magnitude from 0.77 to 0.34, as shown below, with the order of effect size being from highest to lowest:
 
• Creativity (0.77)
• Practical intelligence (0.62)
• Field independence (0.58)
• State anxiety (0.53)
• Trait anxiety (0.52)
• Inspection time (0.39)
• Fluid intelligence (0.34)
 
Overall, then, after six to twelve months of TM practice, there was a large effect on creativity; a medium effect on practical intelligence, field independence, and state and trait anxiety; and a small-to-medium effect on inspection time and fluid intelligence.
 
The researchers sent the paper documenting their findings to Intelligence, one of the top journals in the field. My guess is that the reviewers thought the data looked too good to be true, because they took two years to publish it! One value of publishing in a high-profile, peer-reviewed journal is that it enhances one’s confidence that the data are genuine.
 
Besides the credentials of the authors, the prestige of the journal, and the diligence with which the reviewers scoured the data before accepting the manuscript, there are other reasons why I find these findings credible. Over the past decade, I have seen hundreds of TM practitioners (myself included) who have improved—sometimes dramatically—in creativity, field independence, and practical intelligence. In addition, when it comes to intelligence, it is not only important how smart you are but also how well you deploy your intelligence. As we have already discussed with regard to memory, being overstressed, frenetic, or distracted seriously impairs function. The same applies to other aspects of intelligence—and all can benefit from slowing down one’s internal pace while retaining alertness and acuity.
 
MEDITATING AT A MILITARY ACADEMY
 
Norwich University—the military college of Vermont—is the oldest private military college in the United States. You might not expect it to be the site of a study on the potential benefits of TM on officer trainees—but it was. In 2011, Carole Bandy, associate professor of psychology at Norwich, began a randomized controlled study by inquiring which entering cadets might be interested in participating. A total of seventy fresh recruits, familiarly known as “rooks” (short for rookies), expressed interest. Of these, sixty (about three-quarters of whom were men) were entered into the study and randomized either to receive TM training or to serve as controls. Both groups received their military training and other studies as usual.
 
By way of background, here is how Bandy describes freshman training at Norwich:
 
It is an incredibly stressful time for the students, and they must undergo training that is very unfamiliar in our culture. A lot of it is psychologically unfamiliar as well. They have to look straight ahead, to obey commands, and they can’t look at their officers. They have to walk and eat in certain ways. And they do all of this while at the same time beginning their college courses, which are considerably harder than high school.
 
Those in the TM group were taught to meditate in the week before they started training, andthey went on to practice TM twice a day, seven days a week, as a group. At baseline, both meditators and controls took a large battery of tests. These included questionnaires and physiological tests, such as EEGs, eye tracking, and behavioral tasks. Follow-up data were obtained on both groups after two and six months of TM training. At the same time, EEG and eye-tracking measurements were also repeated.
 
A full replication study was carried out in the second year on a new batch of cadets.
 
At the time of this writing, only the questionnaire data are available for discussion, but it is already possible to say that the results are remarkable: In the first year, at the two-month mark, every instrument showed significant changes in favor of the TM group. Specifically, there was a significant decrease in self-reported depression (as measured by the Beck Depression Inventory), 13 as compared with controls—even though these scores were normal at baseline. In other words, there was no evidence that these cadets were depressed on arrival at the college. There was also evidence of decreased stress (as measured by a stress scale), and state anxiety (as measured by the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, or STAI,14 which is mentioned above). Although most differences between TM practitioners and controls became evident after two months, trait anxiety (another output of the STAI) took a little longer to register a difference, which showed up at the six-month mark.
 
The widely used Profile of Mood States (PO MS)15 showed a highly significant decrease in overall mood disturbance for the TM group. At the same time, all positive aspects of personality improved.
 
Positive affect (feeling) was associated with increased constructive thinking. Not surprisingly, cognition (thinking) and affect were found to be interrelated. There was evidence of increased emotional coping, as measured by the constructive thinking inventory and increased behavioral coping.
 
Those in the TM group were also found to have increased resilience at the two-month mark, as measured by the Dispositional Resilience Scale (DR S-15), 16 which is a very stable scale. Interestingly, at baseline the Norwich University students scored in the same range as US and Scandinavian college students on this measure. In other words, regular TM practice appears to boost levels of resiliency significantly above levels normally found in college students.
 
Overall, constructive thinking as well as behavioral and emotional coping (as measured by the Constructive Thinking Inventory) increased significantly as well.
 
Almost all the changes in the TM group were apparent at two months,
and all continued and increased as of six months. And here is an amazing fact: all the findings obtained in the first-year study were replicated in the second-year study.
 
At the end of the first year, the TM platoon was graded number one out of sixteen platoons, which is not all that surprising when you think of the ways in which they outstripped the controls. It is, however, a nice validation of the pencil-and-paper tests.
 
David Zobeck, the TM teacher who taught the cadets, was kind enough to share some of the experiences of those who had been assigned to the TM group and are now progressing in their military careers. Here are a few typical comments.
 
• Todd, a rising senior, who since the study has become a regular meditator, says that during stressful situations and under duress, he is able to slow down his mind and make more thoughtful decisions
as opposed to being influenced by emotions. (Do you detect the strengthened prefrontal cortex at work here?) He also says that his exam results improve when he meditates, and that he needs less sleep. (Zobeck adds that the candidate officers can get to bed as late as 11:00 p.m., have to be up by 5:00 a.m., and are generally sleep deprived.) Todd concludes that TM will be a “magnificent tool for active duty” when he enters the navy.
  • James, one of the first rooks to learn TM, has since graduated from his training and course of study. He says: “It’s really clear to me there’s a tremendous energy boost after meditation. TM contributes to my resiliency and stamina. It removes a fog from my brain. It acts as a reserve for me; I never get tired. There’s no doubt in my mind that TM makes me clearer in everything I do.” At the time of this writing, James is in the US Navy and getting his master’s degree online.
• Forrest, a lieutenant, finds that TM helps with his physical training: “When I meditate before I do my physical workout routine, I always have better results because it removes stress from me. TM brings me profound calmness of mind.”
• Andrew, currently a second lieutenant, reports similar improvements in focus and academic work, but adds: “The thing I most note is that TM increases my creativity. I write music, poems, and stories. When I meditate my writer’s block disappears immediately, I am more organized and am able to get in touch with
more expanded levels of my mind.”
 
As Zobeck talks, extolling one candidate officer after the other, his devotion to his students is obvious. “I can’t separate them,” he says. “It’s like looking at a galaxy—they’re all stars. If I made fifty more phone calls, I could give you fifty more sparkling results.”
 
I find it interesting that all these study subjects were not troubled people to start with. They were normal students in Taiwan and officer candidates in Norwich, the latter group being chosen for particular hardiness (and validated as normal according to standardized tests). In all these cases, a simple conclusion is inescapable: the regular practice of TM—and the resulting development of the Super Mind—can boost positive psychological qualities (such as positive mood, cognitive functioning, and resilience) and decrease negative ones (such as depression and anxiety). To a behavioral-science researcher, these five data sets, replicating one another as they do, are astonishing.  In fact, I would say that Transcendental Meditation is one of the most potent interventions for enhancing well-being and functioning that I have encountered in more than thirty-five years as a researcher and practicing psychiatrist.
 
In the chapters that follow, we will further explore the gifts of the Super Mind. As we do so, bear in mind the many physical and psychological (brain-related) benefits of TM, which are the basis of these gifts. Before proceeding further, it may be useful for us to review some of the highlights of this chapter:
 
• Based on two sets of controlled studies, conducted on two continents and more than a decade apart, TM has been shown to outperform a variety of control conditions in boosting a wide array of psychological skills in physically and mentally healthy young people.
• These studies, performed in Taiwanese schools and at a US military university, found that TM enhanced the following mental abilities: creativity, practical intelligence, field independence, state and trait anxiety, mood, resilience, and coping.
• Numerous anecdotes suggest beneficial effects of TM on creativity and memory.