Coherence, Consciousness and Organizations 2.0

by James Hea, January 29, 2025

Coherence Creates New Possibilities

The idea for a laser beam is credited to Albert Einstein in 1916 (Hecht, 2024). His premise was that through stimulation, atoms could release their excess energy as light or photons.? After some significant breakthroughs, several scientists found a way to isolate certain frequencies of light and amplify them into a single phase, thus creating laser light*. Lasers are a hyper-orderly state that produces effects which are not predicted by the normal behaviour of light particles. Hyper orderliness is also called coherence.

Organizations are not hyper-orderly. We would say that because individual human beings are not hyper-orderly. And yet, research over the past 50 plus years has established two things: one that there are technologies of consciousness that create hyper-orderly brain behaviour in human beings and two that there are collective practices of these technologies that create hyper-orderly social effects. These are also known as coherence: brain wave coherence and coherence in collective consciousness. Just as there are quantum states (discrete energy states) there are four higher states of consciousness that are created out of the repeated experience of coherent brain wave functions: transcendental consciousness, cosmic consciousness, God consciousness and Unity consciousness. ?These higher states of consciousness are evidenced by high states of brain wave coherence and the spontaneous expressions of higher human capabilities. Groups practicing these technologies together have been shown to reduce negative trends in the whole society such as reduced homicides, traffic accidents, hospital admissions, etc. ?The most well researched of these technologies are the Transcendental Meditation? technique and its advanced programs.

Coherent Brain Waves Signal Extraordinary Benefits

So, what does this have to do with organizations? The metaphor is important. Just as coherence in light produces another form of light, laser light, we are seeing another form of coherence that is transforming individual and organizational performance. Over 750 studies documenting the positive effects of coherent consciousness on mental health and well-being, mental performance including creativity, problem-solving and intelligence, physical health and well-being including reversal of the aging process and social relationships including improved personal and professional relationships signify a completely different human experience.

Collective Coherence Predicts What Was Thought to Be Impossible - Social Change

The collective effect is, perhaps, even more stunning. When TM and its advanced programs are practiced in a group, they create a coherence effect in society. This effect, prior to Transcendental Meditation, was completely unknown. It was, however, predicted by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the early 1960s. Maharishi has been called the Einstein of Consciousness. The first breakthrough study came in 1974. Subsequent studies have shown that crime, sickness and accident rates go down when 1% of a city population practices TM.?Not only do negative trends decrease, but positive trends increase.In a landmark study by Orme-Johnson, Cavanaugh, Dillbeck and Goodman (2022) an unprecedented sociological effect was demonstrated showing reduced murder, rape, assault, robbery, infant mortality, drug deaths, vehicle fatalities and child deaths by injuries during the demonstration period.

Another example of coherence

Recently, Colossus, the supercomputer of xAI, had a breakthrough in its compute power. Compute, the noun, is the function of artificial intelligence processers, known as GPUs, to function together to process a problem. Getting computer processors to function together without losing the context of the problem is a huge leap forward in artificial intelligence. This functionality is known as coherence. The breakthrough means that Colossus, which is already scaled at 100,000 GPUs, will allow Colossus to scale to one million GPUs. This will make it the most powerful supercomputer on the planet.? It is the compute power needed for AI to run vehicles, robotics, satellites, rockets and more. This, however, will not be the biggest breakthrough for mankind. It will be when the collective consciousness of human society reaches coherence. And this is already starting to happen.

What’s It Like?

Describing the benefits and experience of brain wave coherence and collective coherence can be quite abstract, which is why the 750 studies provides a powerful backdrop of objective validation. Here are a just a few quotes of people who have enjoyed transcendental consciousness and other higher states of functioning.

“Everyone who learned to meditate at that company said that it was a life transforming experience; in fact, it pulled many people in that group back from taking a long-term sick leave! A lot of money was saved for the company, and human suffering avoided.” – Dr. Charlotte Bech, doctor

“My whole life settled down, there was no clutter in my mind anymore, and I started to do things in a lot less time; something that used to take three hours now takes one.” – Heather Hancock, CEO

“I have to say, it has so many implications. It guided me to create, for example—and this is very important to me – a setup with my team, with the people I work with, that is happy. I have to say, a lot of people that come to my office, the first thing they say is, ‘My God, this office has such a great energy!‘” – Italo Zucchelli, fashion designer for Calvin Klein

Paradox Resolved

When we talk about coherence, the orderly functioning of the brain, we may think that it decreases creativity. It is quite the opposite. Chaos inhibits creativity. Coherence amplifies it. Sometimes people think that calmness means loss of passion. Quite the opposite again. By being in touch with your most settled Self, one has the freedom to express oneself more openly, freely, and boldly. It is stress that inhibits and constrains these passionate qualities.

Those who practice TM also find that many opposite values are supported together; the artist and the scientist, the athletic and the cerebral, friendliness and being able to spend time alone. TM practitioners are more able to focus sharply on tasks and yet be more open to others’ feelings and concerns. They have a fluid facility to move from the visionary and open functioning of the default mode network of pre-frontal cortex to the precision and focus of the task-positive network of the brain. They are healthier, happier and engaged. These are qualities essential to high performance individuals and high-performance organizations.

Culture the Culture

Culture, the noun, requires culture, the verb. To improve organizational culture, daily practices to develop coherence within the individual and the organization are essential. Fortunately, the twice-daily practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique and its complementary technologies are enjoyable and require minimum effort to achieve significant results. By incorporating the twice daily practice into the workday of your leadership, management and staff, collective coherence can be established very quickly, opening new possibilities of achievement and growth for the individual and the organization.

Organizations 2.0

What will a second level organization look like? Being a coherent organization does not mean that there is not a diversity of opinions and options in moving the organization forward. It does mean that the tendency to work things out harmoniously will increase while the tendency towards emotionally unintelligent behaviors will decrease. It is found that every point of view helps refine the performance of the organization, spontaneously incorporating what is timely and useful and spontaneously releasing that which has lost relevance or importance. There is more focus and yet more joyfulness. There is enthusiasm and creative intelligence. Then there are the super phenomena. There is a spontaneous singularity of focus on achievement. The organization can tap into the organizing power of nature. Nature operates from a unified field where all observable behavior in the universe originates. This level is self-organizing. The organization gains support from this self-organizing dynamic and finds it is fulfilling its unique purpose when the group practice is regularly performed on a twice daily basis. Opportunities are drawn to the organization like iron filings to a magnet. Each individual finds opportunities to leverage their strengths and engage their interests. The focus, at every level of the organization, from leadership, management and staff, is on what can be done. There is no hesitation to create what is needed. There is a superfluid response to challenges and opportunities. Like starlings flying in formation, the organization seems to be able to collectively turn on a dime without explicit orders or communication from the top. There is a collective awareness and uniform commitment to the organization’s mission. It is a stunningly beautiful thing to witness and even more so to be a part of it.

Invitation

Would you like to run a pilot project with your organization? Ideally it would start with your C-Suite or top management. It can start with as few 6 or 12 people. The benefits could be monitored over a 3-month period and then expanded as desired. There are currently projects scaling in the thousands of participants. We can have a complimentary call to discuss the viability of a project within your organization. [email protected].

*laser – light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation

References:

Hecht, J. (2024) “Laser/History”, Britannica, [Online] Available from:? https://www.britannica.com/technology/laser/History (Accessed January 6, 2025)

Shilov, A. (2024) “Elon Musk plans to scale the xAI supercomputer to a million GPUs —currently at over 100,000 H100 GPUs and counting” , MSN, [Online] Available from: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/elon-musk-plans-to-scale-the-xai-supercomputer-to-a-million-gpus-currently-at-over-100-000-h100-gpus-and-counting/ar-AA1vl9nQ(Accessed 29 January, 2025)

Transcendental Meditation (unknown) “Quotes on business success and meditation”, ?Switzerland Blog, [Online] Available from: https://blog.ch.tm.org/uncategorized/quotes-on-business-success-and-meditation/ (Accessed January 29, 2025).