One day, during the Nixon administration, my teacher was flying on an airplane with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
He and another young guy, who later went on to write a very famous book about men and women and Mars and Venus, were commiserating about the state of the world, the war in Vietnam, and how things needed to change.
Maharishi overheard them, turned around, and asked “so what is the conclusion?”
My teacher and his co-commentator replied “well, that this is just the world we live in.”
“No, the conclusion is this is the world you have to change,” Maharishi said.
“And what are you personally doing about it right now?” he challenged.
It’s easy to find yourself disillusioned this week, wondering how things got this bad, worrying whether it will get worse, and complaining about the state of your government and the world at large.
But talking about darkness doesn’t remove darkness.
Introducing light removes darkness.
We each have a responsibility to radiate light in the face of collective darkness.
And we each have the agency to start making a difference in our own lives.
In just a few weeks, people will start resolving to make change by going to the gym, eating healthier, cutting back on social media, going to sleep earlier, and so on.
I would like to propose a more important New Years’ resolution for 2025.
While it may sometimes appear as though change starts with government and works its way down to the people, the reality is that change starts at the individual level and works its way up.
A government is simply the reflection of the average state of consciousness of it’s constituents.
Maybe not yours personally, but the average of the collective.
After all, we, as a collective, elect them—even if unwittingly.
We choose our leaders not only with our votes, but with our actions every day—how we spend our time, how we spend our energy, and how we spend our money.
“There is no ‘leader’ without enthusiastic followers.”
—Thom Knoles
Before Adolf Hitler could begin his reign of terror, which made its way down to tragically impact the lives of millions, he first had to consolidate power by tapping into the average state of consciousness of the collective, and reflecting back to its people the type of leader they thought they wanted. While he wasn’t elected to power by popular vote, the conditions of the collective consciousness in Germany at that time were ripe for someone like him to take it.
Government itself is an effect, not the cause.
Governments change regularly—yet when do we ever see those regime changes accompanied by sweeping social change?
It works the other way around—massive social change brings about massive policy change.
And massive social change starts with YOU.
Change starts with the individual and then works its way up to the governing bodies.
If we are going to wait around for any government to deliver happiness to us, we’re going to die waiting as every single person who lived on this Earth before us did. Heed this overwhelming body of research.
For a forest to be green, each individual tree needs to be made green. It is grass-roots activity, and it is the only way.
If only 50% of the trees are green, the forest is going to look pretty brown.
Individual peace is the basis of national, and world peace.
As in the micro, so in the macro.
This means we don’t have to paint the entire forest green.
We simply have to undertake the humble, yet vital work of keeping our own tree green.
“The ideal individual is the basis of ideal government.“
—Thom Knoles
By practicing Vedic Meditation, we systematically remove our own stress, which is a net reduction of stress in the collective.
But we can’t change the world simply by meditating.
After we go within, we come out ready for action.
The extent to which we minimize our stress is the extent to which we maximize our potentiality.
Once we’ve rid ourselves of the reactive stressbag mentality, we start to see solutions instead of only problems.
The more people we have doing this, the faster the collective forest turns green.
A regular meditation practice also makes things a lot more bearable in the meantime, until the “revolution by evolution” as my colleague Susan Chen calls it, finally gets some traction.
It helps us stay calm, collected and creative during heavy times.
But it all starts with having a plan to live an exemplary life.
If Vedic Meditation isn’t for you, then what is your plan?
It can’t be “I’m waiting for a better leader to take over, and they’ll fix everything.”
Last time I checked, Jack Johnson was still “waiting on the world to change” in 2005 and that was four presidents ago.
Buffalo Springfield challenged us to “look what’s going down” in 1966 and that was 11 presidents ago.
Billie Holiday described “blood on the leaves” in 1939, and that was 15 presidents ago.
If you want to create an ideal society, become an ideal person.
This is how we become the change we wish to see.
Start now.
And then, share what you’ve learned to help others do the same.
Share the gift of Vedic Meditation with those around you and help them turn their trees green too.
Our approach every day has to be:
“Who am I at my core?”
“What do I stand for?”
“To what extent am I, individually, doing my part to catalyze change?”
“And to what extent am I inspiring others to do the same?"
For my part, I’ll be exploring each of these questions in more depth in the next four letters, as a four-part mini-series, in hopes of inspiring you to do the same.
What can you do right now to help raise the average?
Learn Vedic Meditation from a qualified instructor and invite your friends and loved ones to learn too. I’ll be teaching in Miami from December 9-12, and my colleagues are teaching all over the world every week.
Talk to friends or loved ones and encourage them to learn this technique for revolutionary rest and maximum capability. Start by sharing or forwarding them this message. Anyone who is curious is invited to join a free intro talk with me on Zoom on Sunday November 17th at 1pm (directly after group med) to hear how it all works. Book a spot here.
Listen to my teacher’s excellent and definitive podcast episode The Crisis of Governance and Your Role In It, and related episodes The Misguided Search for Happiness, World Peace Is An Inside Job, and The Rising Tide of Anxiety: Cause and Solution.
Let’s discuss these and other ideas during Collective Effervescence, our online group meditation series, this Sunday November 17 at 12PM ET. Drop in for meditation only (first 30 min) or stay for discussion + Q&A on this and other life topics from the Vedic perspective. Join the WhatsApp group to receive reminders 24 hours before each session, or use the below links to have all upcoming dates automatically sync to your calendar.
iCal / Google Calendar / Office 365 / Outlook / Outlook.com / Yahoo
Legendary artist-activist Gil-Scott Heron pioneered the phrase “each one reach one, each one teach one” on this record, alongside lyrics like ”We’ve got to work for peace, peace ain’t coming this way”