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John Hagelin (born June 9, 1954) is an American particle physicist, three-time candidate of the Natural Law Party for President of the United States, and a leader of the Transcendental Meditation movement in the US.

Hagelin was a researcher at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), and is now Professor of Physics and Director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy at Maharishi University of Management. He has conducted research into unified field theory and the Maharishi Effect.

In 1992, 1996, and 2000, Hagelin ran for US president on the Natural Law Party ticket, appearing on the ballot in as many as 44 states and gaining up to 0.1% support.

Hagelin was appointed Raja of the Invincible America by the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and is also the President of the US Peace Government, two positions at the head of the TM movement in the US. He is Executive Director of the International Center for Invincible Defense, Executive Director of Global Financial Capital,^[1] Executive Director of the Center for Leadership Performance,^[2] Director of the Board of Advisors for the David Lynch Foundation,^[3] Honorary Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Maharishi University of Management,^[4] and International Director of the Global Union of Scientists for Peace.^[5]

Early life and education

John Samual Hagelin was born June 9, 1954, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.^[6] During childhood, he played soccer, hockey and excelled at the piano.^[7] Hagelin won a scholarship to the elite Taft School for boys, where he earned a reputation as both a genius (receiving a perfect score of 165 on a school-administered IQ test) and a dare-devil.^[7] In 1970, while at Taft, he was involved in a motorcycle crash that led to hospitalization and a full body cast. During this time, one of his teachers introduced him to quantum mechanics, and he also learned the Transcendental Meditation technique, both of which had major impacts on his life.^[7]

Hagelin later graduated from Taft and attended Dartmouth College on a scholarship. After his freshman year, a continued interest in Transcendental Meditation led him to Vittel, France, where he completed the studies necessary to become a qualified teacher of the Transcendental Meditation technique. While at Dartmouth, he earned an undergraduate degree in physics in three years with highest honors (summa cum laude). He also co-authored and published papers in physics research and won a fellowship to study physics at Harvard. While at Harvard, Hagelin worked under the noted physicists Howard Georgi and Sheldon Glashow, best known for their work in Grand Unification theory (GUT). He received a Master's degree from Harvard in 1976, and a Ph.D. in 1981.

Professional careers

Academic

By the time Hagelin had received his Ph.D. from Harvard, he had already published "several serious papers" on particle theory.^[8] In 1981, Hagelin won a postdoctoral research appointment at CERN (the European Center for Particle Physics) in Switzerland, and in 1983 was recruited by SLAC (the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center), CERN's North American counterpart.^[7]

In 1984, Hagelin shifted his appointment from SLAC to Maharishi International University (MIU), where he continued his research in physics, pursued a long-time interest in brain and cognitive science research, and established an accredited doctoral program in theoretical physics.^[9] Hagelin’s move to MIU in 1984 surprised and puzzled his colleagues.^[7] Howard Georgi and John Ellis tried to talk him out of it. But, according to Georgi, Hagelin "continued to do good physics anyway”.^[7] Nobel Laureate, Sheldon Glashow was quoted in a 1992 article as saying, “His papers are outstanding. We read them before he went to MIU and we read them now.”^[7] Hagelin remained in contact with colleagues from Harvard, Stanford, and CERN, and continued to collaborate with them. While at MIU, his contributions to the field of theoretical physics were supported by funding from the National Science Foundation.^[7]

Currently, Hagelin teaches physics as Professor of Physics at Maharishi University of Management (formerly MIU) and serves as Director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy at that institution.^[10] Hagelin is also identified as the Founding President of Maharishi Central University,^[11] which was announced in 2007.^[12] Central University was under construction in Smith Center, Kansas at the site of a previously-announced Peace Palace until early 2008, when, according to Hagelin, the project was put on hold while the TM organization dealt with the death of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.^[13]

Grand unification research

During his time at CERN, SLAC and Maharishi University of Management (MUM), Hagelin worked on supersymmetric extensions of the standard model and grand unification theories and also collaborated with many of the leading figures in his field.^[8] In the years 1979-1996, Hagelin published more than 70 papers in the fields of particle physics and cosmology, most of them in prestigious scientific journals.^[8][14] Several were described as “core papers” that were among the 20 most cited references in physics in their respective years, according to Current Contents magazine.^[8][15] This includes his work on the "flipped SU(5), heterotic superstring theory” that is considered one of the more successful unified field theories or “theories of everything” and was highlighted in the cover story of Discover magazine.^[16]

Hagelin co-authored a 1983 paper entitled "Weak symmetry breaking by radiative corrections in broken supergravity",^[17] which is included in a list of the 103 articles in the physical sciences that were cited the most times during the years 1983 and 1984.^[18] A 1984 study titled "Supersymmetric relics from the big bang" had been cited over 500 times as of 2007.^[19]

Critics of Hagelin have included physicist Peter Woit and journalist Christopher Andersen. Peter Woit in his book, Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and The Search for Unity In Physical Law, precedes his critical remarks by acknowledging Hagelin as having published papers in prestigious journals that would eventually be cited in over a hundred other papers.^[20] Christopher Anderson wrote in a 1992 news article in Nature that Hagelin, co-developer of one of the "better-accepted" unified field theories known as the Flipped SU(5) model, "is by all accounts a gifted researcher well known and respected by his colleagues".

Maharishi Effect research

In 1987 and 1989, Hagelin published two papers in the Maharishi University of Management's Journal of Modern Science and Vedic Science on the relationship between physics and consciousness.^[21][22] These papers discuss the Vedic understanding of consciousness as a field and compares it with theories of the unified field derived by modern physics. Hagelin argues that these two fields have almost identical properties and quantitative structure, and he presents other theoretical and empirical arguments that the two fields are actually one and the same—specifically, that the experience of unity at the basis of the mind achieved during the meditative state is the subjective experience of the very same fundamental unity of existence revealed by unified field theories.^[21]

Hagelin has presented evidence for this explanation is the body of research on the effects that practitioners of the Transcendental Meditation technique and of the more advanced TM-Sidhi program (which includes a practice called "Yogic Flying") have on measured parameters in society. This phenomenon is called the "Maharishi Effect". In these two papers he cites numerous studies of such effects, and in the summer of 1993, he conducted a large scale study of the same type. Approximately 4,000 TM-Sidhi program practitioners gathered in Washington D.C., where they practiced the TM-Sidhi techniques twice daily in a group for several weeks. Using data obtained from the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department for 1993 and the preceding five years (1988–1992), Hagelin and collaborators followed the changes in crime rates for the area before, during, and after the 6 weeks the group was gathered in Washington D.C.^[23] In 1999, the study, which showed a highly statistically significant drop in predicted crime and controlling for effects of temperature changes, was published in Social Indicators Research.^[24] During the eight weeks of the study, the overall level of violent crime (homicides, rapes, and assaults) decreased by 23%, with rapes declining by 58%. Homicides averaged 10 a week during the study—the same as in the weeks preceding and following the study. For most of the eight weeks of the study the homicide rate declined, but gang fighting resulted in ten murders in a 36 hour period. Robert L. Park, research professor and former chair of the Physics Department at the University of Maryland and well known skeptic of paranormal claims, dismissed the study as a "clinic in data manipulation" and accused Hagelin and his team of scientific misconduct.^[25][26] Maxwell Rainforth, Assistant Professor of Physiology and Health and Statistics at Maharishi University of Management and a coauthor of the Washington, D.C. study, characterized Park's criticisms of the study as "superficial, highly polemical" and "willfully misleading".^[27]

Reception of Hagelin's connection of unified field of physics to the Maharishi Effect

Hagelin's interest in the connection between quantum physics and the Maharishi Effect has been discussed by both colleagues and critics. Hagelin was invited to be a plenary speaker at the 2007 Quantum Mind conference in Salzburg, Austria, organized by Stuart Hameroff (University of Arizona) and Gustav Bernroider (University of Salzburg). Hagelin was a featured scientist in the popular movies, What the Bleep Do We Know!?^[28] and The Secret,^[29] which renewed interest in the quantum mind paradigm.^[30]

Both Woit and Anderson have commented critically on Hagelin's interest in and publications on consciousness research. Woit says identifying a unified field of consciousness with a unified field of superstring theory is wishful thinking. He also asserts that most physicists think Hagelin's views are nonsense.^[20][31] Anderson says Hagelin's investigations into how the extension of grand unified theories of physics to human consciousness could explain the way Transcendental Meditation is said to influence world events "disturbs many researchers" and "infuriates his former collaborators." Dallas Observer political reporter Jonathan Fox wrote that "Once considered a top scientist, Hagelin's former academic peers ostracized him after the candidate attempted to shoehorn Eastern metaphysical musings into the realm of quantum physics." ^[32] According to Woit, Hagelin began connecting consciousness and the unified field in the late 1970s as a Ph.D. student at Harvard. Hagelin's collaborative work in particle physics continued until 1994.^[33] Anderson says that John Ellis, director of CERN, was worried about guilt by association. Anderson quotes Ellis as saying "I was afraid that people might regard [Hagelin's assertions] as rather flaky, and that might rub off on the theory or on us.”^[34]

Hagelin's linkage of quantum mechanics and unified field theory with consciousness was critiqued by University of Iowa philosophy and sociology professors Evan Fales and Barry Markovsky in the journal Social Forces. They wrote that Hagelin's equating consciousness with the unified field relies on a similarity between quantum mechanical properties of fields and consciousness, and that his arguments rely on ambiguity and obscurity in characterizing these properties. They dismiss Hagelin's parallels between the Vedas and contemporary unified field theories as a reliance on ambiguity and vague analogy supported by constructing arbitrary similarities.^[35] David Orme-Johnson and Robert Oates, retired colleagues of Hagelin from MUM, replied to this critique in the Journal of Scientific Exploration and said, in part, that Fales' and Markovsky's accusation of "vagueness" and "ambiguity" on Hagelin's part are in themselves vague and ambiguous and that there is no standard against which they can be evaluated.^[36]

Enlightened Audio Designs

In 1990, Hagelin founded Enlightened Audio Designs Corporation (EAD) with electronics engineer Alastair Roxburgh in Iowa.^[37] As President and Director of Research of EAD, Hagelin designed and manufactured high-end digital-to-analog (D-to-A) converters that were critically acclaimed.^[38] In 1996, EAD was the first company in the world to develop and commercialize home theater surround-sound processors incorporating multi-channel digital surround-sound technologies, such as Dolby Digital and DTS.^[39] In 2001, EAD Corporation was sold to the Oregon-based company Alpha Digital Technologies.^[40]

Awards

In 1992, Hagelin was honored with a Kilby International Award for his work in particle physics leading to the development of supersymmetric grand unified field theories, for his innovative applications of advanced principles from control systems theory and optimization theory to digital sound reproduction, and for his research on human consciousness.^[41] Chris Anderson questioned the value of the award in an article about Hagelin published in Nature.^[34]

In 1994, Hagelin received the Ig Nobel Prize for Peace, an annual parody award presented at Harvard University. Master of ceremony and the award's founder Mark Abrahams calls it the world's most "(un)coveted award for achievements that cannot or should not be reproduced" which are given to "honor the world's largely overlooked scientists and other contributors to modern culture, who bring smiles and guffaws to others, whether intentional or not." ^[42][43] Hagelin received the prize for his "experimental conclusion that 4,000 trained meditators caused an 18 percent decrease in violent crime in Washington, D.C." ^[44]

Natural Law Party

The Natural Law Party (NLP) was founded in 1992 in Fairfield, Iowa by a group of educators, scientists, business leaders, and other professionals who desired a more scientific approach to national administration that would promote field-tested solutions to the nation's problems.^[45] It chose Hagelin and Michael Tompkins as its presidential and vice-presidential candidates in 1992 and 1996.^[46] Hagelin ran for President again in the 2000 Presidential election, being nominated both by the NLP and by the Perot wing of the Reform Party, which disputed the nomination of Pat Buchanan.^[47] Hagelin’s running mate in the 2000 election was Nat Goldhaber, an entrepreneur who, like Hagelin and Tompkins, was a practitioner of Transcendental Meditation.^[48]

Hagelin's party platform included preventive health care, sustainable agriculture and renewable energy technologies. Hagelin favored abortion rights without public financing, campaign-finance law reform and improved gun control. He proposed a flat tax and no tax for families earning less than $34,000 a year.^[49]

After a legal battle with Buchanan supporters over party leadership and federal election funding, the Federal Election Commission ruled in September 2000 that Buchanan was the official candidate of the Reform Party, and hence, was eligible to receive federal election funds.^[48][49] As part of the ruling, the Reform convention that nominated Hagelin was declared invalid.^{[citation needed]} In spite of the ruling, Hagelin remained on several state ballots as the Reform Party nominee, due to the independent nature of various state affiliates. He also was the national nominee of the Natural Law Party, and in New York was the Independence Party nominee.^[48]

Hagelin's Presidential electoral results:

• 1992 - Ballot status in 32 states - 39,000 votes - 0.04%
• 1996 - Ballot status in 44 states - 110,000 votes - 0.1%
• 2000 - Ballot status in 39 states - 83,000 votes - 0.08%

In 2002, Hagelin said that he met with officials at the White House, the National Security Council, the Department of State, the Department of Defense, the Army, the House, and the Senate on the issue of terrorism.^[50] Hagelin has also worked on Capitol Hill to improved health care, crime prevention, education and the environment. In 1998, Hagelin gave testimony to the National Institutes of Health, DNA Advisory Committee on germ-line technologies stating that recombinant DNA technology is inherently risky because of the high probability of unexpected side-effects.^[51][52]

In April 2004, the U.S. Natural Law Party officially disbanded its national organization, although a few state parties may still be active.

In the 2004 primary elections, Hagelin endorsed Democratic candidate Dennis Kucinich.^{[citation needed]}

US Peace Government and Invincible America

The American Bank Note Company Building in Lower Manhattan, headquarters of the Center for Leadership Performance. When traveling to New York City, John Hagelin resides in one of the luxury apartments on its upper floors.^[53]

Hagelin established the US Peace Government (USPG) on July 4, 2003,^[54] as an affiliate of the Global Country of World Peace. The US Peace Government and the Global Country of World Peace were created to promote evidence-based and sustainable solutions as well as policies of governance that are aligned with Natural Law.^[55] As president of the USPG,^[55] Hagelin presides over a national assembly of USPG state representatives or governors, who in turn preside over US Peace Government assemblies and capital buildings in their respective states.^[55] The USPG has announced plans to build a national capital in Washington Township, Smith County, Kansas, near the geographic center of America.^[56] The office of the President of the U.S. Peace Government is at The Jefferson hotel, Washington D.C.^[57]

Hagelin is the founder and International Director of the Global Union of Scientists for Peace, an international organization of prominent scientists opposed to nuclear proliferation and war. ^[58][59]

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi appointed Hagelin as the "Raja of Invincible America" on November 19, 2007. In his role as Raja of America, Hagelin oversees all of the U.S. organizations created by the Maharishi including the Maharishi Invincibility Centers, and the Peace Palaces.^{[citation needed]} Hagelin organized an Invincible America Assembly in Fairfield, Iowa which began in July 2006. The assembly consists of a group of individuals practicing the Transcendental Meditation and the TM-Sidhi techniques in a group, twice daily. Hagelin stated in a press release announcing the project that "for the United States, with a population of just over 300 million, the required number of peace-creating experts is 1730".^[60] According to the Global Good News website "on 28 November 2006, the United States achieved invincibility and are stabilizing the number of Yogic Flyers—rising from 1,600 to 1,730—assembled at the Invincible America Assembly in Fairfield, Iowa".^[61] In addition, Hagelin's Institute for Science Technology and Public Policy web site says that the Invincible America Assembly in Iowa "is rising quickly toward its target of 2,500".^[62]

In July, 2007, Hagelin predicted that when the number of assembly participants reached 2,500, which he said would happen within a year, America would have a major drop in crime, and see the virtual elimination of all major social and political woes in the United States.^[63] Hagelin said that the Assembly was responsible for the Dow Jones Industrial Average reaching a record high of 14,022 earlier that month, and predicted that the Dow would top 17,000 within a year.^[63][64]

Other

Hagelin has appeared on ABC's Nightline and Politically Incorrect, NBC's Meet the Press, CNN's Larry King Live and Inside Politics; CNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, C-SPAN's Washington Journal, and others.^[65]

Books

• Manual for a perfect government : how to harness the laws of nature to bring maximum success to governmental administration. Fairfield, Iowa: Maharishi University of Management. 1998. OCLC 39366340. 

References

Further reading

• Hagelin, J.S., Rainforth, M.V., Orme-Johnson, D.W., Cavanaugh, K. L., Alexander, C.N., Shatkin, S.F., Davies, J.L, Hughes, A.O, and Ross, E. 1999. Effects of group practice of the Transcendental Meditation program on preventing violent crime in Washington D.C.: Results of the National Demonstration Project, June-July, 1993. Social Indicators Research, 47(2): 153-201. For a summary, see [4]
• Hagelin, J.S. Manual for a Perfect Government: How to Harness the Laws of Nature to Bring Maximum Success to Governmental Administration. Maharishi University of Management Press, 1998.
• Freedman, David H: The new theory of everything. Discover, 1991, pp 54–61.
• Hagelin, J: Is consciousness the unified field? A field theorist’s perspective. Modern Science and Vedic Science 1, 1987, pp 29–87.
• Hagelin, JS: Restructuring physics from its foundation in light of Maharishi’s Vedic Science. Modern Science and Vedic Science 3, 1989, pp 3–72.

External links

• Official site
• MUM Faculty
• PBS Bio
• Invincible America Assembly daily tally