What is the primary cause of terrorism and war?

The UNESCO charter reads in part, “War begins in the minds of men.” In the Vedic science of consciousness, moreover, war is said to begin not in the individual minds of politicians or generals, but rather in the collective consciousness of entire societies.

In this usage, collective consciousness means roughly what news magazines mean by national mood, stock brokers mean by the investor climate, and historians mean by the German word Zeitgeist (spirit of the times). In the Vedic science of consciousness, as brought to light by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the collective consciousness of any society is described as an overall social atmosphere that arises from the individual members of a society, and which then has a reciprocal influence on those same individuals, modifying their thought and behavior. If stress and tension build up in this collective consciousness, the resulting social incoherence agitates individuals and groups—and directly fuels social violence, including crime, terrorism and war. In Maharishi’s explanation,

“All occurrences of violence, negativity, conflicts, crises, or problems in any society are just the expression of growth of stress in collective consciousness. When the level of stress becomes sufficiently great, it bursts out into external violence and war, or internal crime, accidents, and disorder.”

In theory, therefore, peace-creating groups act to prevent terrorism and war by dissolving stress in the collective consciousness before it can break out as social violence.