More and more governments and governmental institutions are discovering that this simple meditation technique not only works, but it is in many cases the only solution, of which it has ever been proven that it really works.
The list of success stories is long, very long. We have divided it into different social applications under “Applications” in the menu. Here are some examples of how government institutions support the Transcendental Meditation technique.

Education

The purpose of education is to create the leaders of tomorrow, so if there is a method that allows the youth to develop their full intellectual and creative potential and to create at the same time a very high standard of moral thinking, then it seems that the purpose of education is fulfilled.

Of all the people practicing Transcendental Meditation, the technique has the most dramatic effect on young people. As young people, with their brains in full development, get the regular experience of their true unlimited nature, then this will have a dramatic effect on their brain development (see brain development). This appears all too clear from the success stories that you can find in the applications/education section.

The results were so dramatic that, when the New York Times published their annual list of “the best ideas of the year” in their magazine at the end of 2005, the idea to bring Transcendental Meditation to schools appeared at the top of the list. See New York Times article: “Accredited bliss”

These success stories have resulted in more than 700 public and private schools around the world including Transcendental Meditation as part of their curriculum. And this is only a small beginning. In England, the government now supports the Maharishi schools. In the U.S. alone, there are more than 1,000 schools on the waiting list to include TM. In Brazil, the government has even decided to include Transcendental Meditation in all 38,000 public schools. Also, in San Francisco pilot projects are so successful that they want to include the technique in public schools as soon as possible.

Scientific research

The National Institute of Health (NIH) in the U.S.A. is the largest and one of the most prestigious research institutes in the world. They only support studies of the highest quality. The NIH has so far spent more than $24 million to support research on Transcendental Meditation especially research on the effect of TM on cardiovascular disease. This research shows that TM is equally or more effective than methods from the conventional medicine, and this without the negative side effects. (See Heart problems, Hypertension, Diabetes, Cholesterol, and Atherosclerosis)

Reimbursement by health funds or health insurance

Rather than to support patients after they made themselves sick, it is much more logical and very much cheaper, to help them to keep themselves healthy and to prevent diseases. According to all the research, Transcendental Meditation is the most successful (and cheapest) method to cure many chronic health problems, but it is even more effective in preventing them. A large-scale study in de U.S. with over 1.500 TM practitioners showed that they spent 50% less time in hospital than a control group. For the older group (over 40 years), the difference was even 70%. A similar study in Canada showed that before people learn TM, their health expenses are at the same level as those of the control group, but after they start with the technique, the costs go down continuously; up to a level that is 50% lower after 5 years.

Given the problem of the ever rising costs of modern medicine, more and more openness is coming from both government institutions and private health insurance companies to (partially) reimburse the cost to learn TM. This is already happening in Switzerland, with some insurers in the U.S. and even in South Africa.

Prison rehabilitation

Transcendental Meditation is the only method of which could be proven that it really works to put prisoners back on the right path. For these reasons projects were started in a number of countries to bring Transcendental Meditation to prisons. The biggest project so far was in Senegal, where more than 10.000 prisoners have been taught the technique, and where it was so successful that several prisons could be closed. In the U.S., the Transcendental Meditation technique was introduced in 28 prisons, and the same happened in Sri Lanka, India, Kenya, Chile, Spain, Paraguay, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Brazil and Korea.

Transcendental Meditation at the FBI

Transcendental Meditation is proving to be so effective in reducing stress in police officers, that the FBI recently published an article about TM in the magazine they are sending to all their agents. See FBI Magazine (page 26 of the PDF)