Psychologist · Entrepreneur · Chairman

Paul Gelderloos

1953

Earned a doctorate in meditation research, built a telecom company, and investigated whether the collective practice of meditation could shift the relationship between two superpowers.

Portrait of Paul Gelderloos
Dr. Paul Gelderloos
Born
Hilversum, 1953
Education
Clinical psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (1977); doctorate, Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, now Radboud University (1987)
Transcendental Meditation
Practitioner since 1 February 1974, TM teacher since 1977
Research
Twenty-six publications, Maharishi European Research University (Seelisberg) and Maharishi International University (Fairfield, Iowa)
Entrepreneur
Founder of Scarlet (1992), sold to Belgacom (2008)
Now
Chairman of Stichting Maharishi Vedisch Instituut (Transcendental Meditation Netherlands) and Stichting Gelderloos Foundation; lives in Amsterdam
The beginning

It started with a calculation

In 1992, calling abroad through an American switchboard turned out to be far cheaper than calling through the Dutch PTT, and anyone who organised that difference cleverly could offer the same call for a fraction of the price.

Paul Gelderloos had no network in telecom. No seed capital, no experience as an entrepreneur. What he did have: a doctoral thesis on meditation, years as a research psychologist behind him, and a callback arrangement.

An experience at fourteen

Entrepreneurship came late, and it came from somewhere else. At fourteen, Gelderloos had an experience he himself calls mystical and has never been able to explain away. It set a search in motion.

Psychology and meditation, side by side

The search led to clinical psychology at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. Midway through that degree, on 1 February 1974, he learned Transcendental Meditation — a technique that appealed to him precisely because it could be measured. He graduated in 1977 and trained as a TM teacher immediately afterwards.

I am quite rational, a bit of a doubting Thomas.The Optimist, 2012

In years

1953

Hilversum

Born.

1967

An experience at fourteen

The start of a search he himself calls mystical.

1974

Transcendental Meditation

On 1 February he learns the technique he has practised twice a day ever since.

1977

Vrije Universiteit

Graduates in clinical psychology. Trains as a TM teacher immediately afterwards.

1979

Clinical psychologist, then researcher

Work at Maharishi European Research University in Seelisberg, Switzerland — two years in Maharishi's immediate circle — and at Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa.

1987

Doctorate

Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, on Valuation and Transcendental Meditation.

1990

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi moves to the Netherlands

The collaboration, begun in Seelisberg, continues in Vlodrop.

1992

Telegroup, later Scarlet

International calling through a callback arrangement.

2001

Countercyclical through the dot-com crash

More than twenty-five companies acquired while the market collapsed.

2005

National chairman of TM Netherlands

Official host and representative of Maharishi in the Netherlands.

2008

Scarlet to Belgacom

Sold for 175 million euros.

Now

Stichting Maharishi Vedisch Instituut

Chairman. Twenty centres, some thirty-five teachers.

Scarlet, 1992–2008

No spreadsheet could beat his intuition

Becoming known

The advertising campaign with Beau van Erven Dorens made the company known to people who had never thought about their phone bill. Scarlet One then brought the first all-in-one package in the Netherlands to market.

Buying while everyone else sold

When the dot-com bubble burst in 2001 and competitors went under, Gelderloos bought up more than twenty-five of them. It earned him the reputation of a countercyclical investor: buy when everyone is selling, and have the patience to wait. In 2008 Scarlet went to Belgacom for 175 million euros.

We have always been countercyclical.Management Scope, 2009
Paul Gelderloos around the time of the bond market listing
Figure 1 Around the bond market listing. In sixteen years Scarlet grew from a callback arrangement into a national provider.Photo: Peter Boer / De Beeldunie
Portrait of Paul Gelderloos, 2007
Figure 2 Rotterdam, February 2007, as head of Scarlet and chairman of TM Netherlands.Photo: Stijn Rademaker
1992
Founded without a network or capital
25+
Acquisitions during the crash of 2001
€175 m
Sale price to Belgacom, 2008
#201
Quote 500 in 2005, estimated wealth 100 million
Paul Gelderloos on the trading floor of Euronext Amsterdam, with the AEX chart of 22 February 2005 on the screen
Figure 3 Euronext Amsterdam, 22 February 2005: the day Scarlet's bond loan was listed on the exchange.Photo: Peter Boer
Scientific work

Twenty-six publications, and one question

Twenty-six scientific publications carry his name, as author or co-author. They range from schoolchildren to superpowers.

Where the work was done

As a research psychologist, Gelderloos worked at Maharishi European Research University in Seelisberg, Switzerland, and at Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa. The second place returns in the next chapter: the meditation group whose size was tracked month by month gathered there.

The most-cited publications

Three of his publications have passed two hundred citations on Google Scholar. The meta-analysis on meditation, self-actualization and psychological health, written with Charles Alexander and Maxwell Rainforth, stands at nearly six hundred. The 1995 article on stress reduction and preventing hypertension has passed three hundred, and the 1991 review of TM and substance misuse two hundred.

26
Publications as author or co-author
3×200+
Publications with over two hundred Google Scholar citations
1987
Doctorate, Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen
2
Research institutes: Seelisberg and Fairfield
Maharishi European Research University in Seelisberg, Switzerland
Figure 4 Maharishi European Research University, Seelisberg, Switzerland.Photo: Roland Zumbühl, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
Campus of Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa
Figure 5 The campus in Fairfield, Iowa, with the domes where the group gathered.Photo: Keithbob, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Principal publications

1987
Field independence of students at Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment and a Montessori schoolPerceptual and Motor Skills
1987
Cognitive orientation toward positive values in advanced participants of the TM and TM-Sidhi programPerceptual and Motor Skills
1987
Valuation and Transcendental MeditationDoctoral thesis, Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen
1988
Creating world peace through the collective practice of the Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field: Improved U.S.–Soviet relationsSocial Science Perspectives Journal 4(2), 80–94 · with Frid, Goddard, Xue and Löliger
1988
Topographic EEG brain mapping during Yogic FlyingInternational Journal of Neuroscience 38(3–4), 427–434 · with Orme-Johnson
1989
The Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program and reported experiences of transcendental consciousnessPsychologia · with Beto
1990
The dynamics of U.S.–Soviet relations, 1979–1986: Effects of reducing social stress through the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programProceedings of the Social Statistics Section, American Statistical Association, 297–302 · with Cavanaugh and Davies
1990
Transcendence and psychological health: Studies with long-term participants of the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programThe Journal of Psychology 124(2), 177–197 · with Hermans, Ahlström and Jacoby
1990
Influence of a Maharishi Ayur-Vedic herbal preparation on age-related visual discriminationInternational Journal of Psychosomatics 37(1–4), 25–29 · with Ahlström, Orme-Johnson, Robinson, Wallace and Glaser
1991
Transcendental meditation, self-actualization, and psychological health: A conceptual overview and statistical meta-analysisJournal of Social Behavior and Personality · with Alexander and RainforthNearly 600 citations
1991
Effectiveness of the Transcendental Meditation program in preventing and treating substance misuseInternational Journal of the AddictionsOver 200 citations
1991
Stress and serotonin turnover in normal subjects: Relation to serotonin deficiencies in mental disordersInternational Journal of Psychophysiology 11, 31–32 · with Walton, Pugh, MacRae, Goddard, MacLean and Levitsky
1995
Stress reduction and preventing hypertension: Preliminary support for a psychoneuroendocrine mechanismThe Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 1(3), 263–283 · with Walton, Pugh and MacRaeOver 300 citations
2018
Group practice of the Transcendental Meditation-Sidhi program and improved U.S.–Soviet relationsJournal of Maharishi Vedic Research Institute · with Cavanaugh and Dillbeck
2019
Warming U.S.–Soviet Relations During the Cold War as Measured by U.S. Presidential Statements: Impact of the Group Practice of the Transcendental Meditation-Sidhi ProgramJournal of Maharishi Vedic Research Institute · with Cavanaugh, Frid and Xue

All 26 publications on ORCID, with DOI links →

The furthest he went

A prediction you can falsify

Maharishi claimed that a small fraction of a population transcending regularly would have a measurable effect on that population as a whole. When the more advanced TM-Sidhi programme was added, the prediction became sharper and uncomfortably precise: not one percent, but the square root of one percent, provided the practice took place in a group.

Why a threshold makes the research possible

That is the attractive part. A threshold is testable. You can point to the calendar and say when a group went above that number, and then look at what happened in exactly that period in independently collected data. If nothing shifts, the hypothesis is in trouble.

Figure 6 Why the prediction is so sharp: the square root of one percent is an absolute number, not a percentage. Seven thousand people for the whole world; just over fifteen hundred for the United States. That makes it possible to establish, month by month, whether the threshold was reached.

Four assemblies, seven years, three analyses

Between 1979 and 1986, four large World Peace Assemblies were held at which the number of participants approached or exceeded the worldwide threshold. With changing co-authors, Gelderloos carried out three analyses of the same period, each time with different data and different methods, so that the results could contradict one another.

Study 01

The four assemblies against the course of the Cold War

Gelderloos, P., Frid, M.J., Goddard, P.H., Xue, X. & Löliger, S. (1988). Creating world peace through the collective practice of the Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field: Improved U.S.–Soviet relations. Social Science Perspectives Journal, 4(2), 80–94.

The hypothesis: the climate between the superpowers improved in the years 1979 to 1986 because four large groups reduced the tension in world consciousness. The number of participants at those assemblies approached or exceeded seven thousand.

Thirty years later the question was taken up again: in 2018 Cavanaugh, Gelderloos and Dillbeck published Group practice of the Transcendental Meditation-Sidhi program and improved U.S.–Soviet relations in the Journal of Maharishi Vedic Research Institute.

Study 02

Seven years of behavioural data from Zurich

Gelderloos, P., Cavanaugh, K.L. & Davies, J.L. (1990). The dynamics of U.S.–Soviet relations, 1979–1986: Effects of reducing social stress through the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program. Proceedings of the Social Statistics Section, American Statistical Association, 297–302.

Data that came from someone else

This is the analysis that matters most. The data come from the Zurich Project on East-West Relations: a Swiss database in which events between Washington and Moscow were coded monthly for cooperation and conflict, by people who had nothing to do with meditation research and did not know what their figures would be used for.

What the analysis showed

The size of the group in Fairfield was divided into quartiles. In the highest quartiles, where the group exceeded the threshold of roughly fifteen hundred, U.S. behaviour towards the Soviet Union became significantly more positive. Soviet behaviour towards the United States likewise: more cooperation, less conflict.

What about Gorbachev

The question everyone asks first is Gorbachev, who took office in March 1985. He is included in the model as a separate variable, together with seasonal patterns and existing trends. The reported effect of the assemblies came out at 1.7 times that of the Gorbachev effect.

Data source
Zurich Project on East-West Relations — independently coded event data
Period
1979 – 1986, monthly
Method
Time-series analysis, group size in quartiles
Controls
Gorbachev, seasonal cycles, prior trends
Study 03

What the American president said, month by month

Gelderloos, P., Cavanaugh, K.L., Frid, M.J. & Xue, X. (2019). Warming U.S.–Soviet Relations During the Cold War as Measured by U.S. Presidential Statements: Impact of the Group Practice of the Transcendental Meditation-Sidhi Program. Journal of Maharishi Vedic Research Institute.

All presidential statements in the register of the U.S. Office of the Federal Register, from April 1985 to September 1987, were analysed for tone. Box-Tiao intervention analysis was then used to examine whether the size of the group in Fairfield was related to shifts in that tone.

Data source
U.S. Office of the Federal Register
Period
April 1985 – September 1987
Method
Box-Tiao impact assessment
Figure 7 In the model in which both variables stand side by side, the effect of the assemblies comes out 1.7 times larger than that of Gorbachev. This is a ratio within one model, not a statement about the history of the Cold War.

What honestly belongs here

This research has gained no foothold in the mainstream field of international relations, and the objections are serious. There is no accepted physical mechanism explaining how meditation in Iowa could influence the behaviour of the Kremlin. The researchers themselves practised the technique they were studying. And with time series spanning seven years, alternative explanations are always lurking.

Gelderloos disputes none of those objections. His answer is narrower: the behavioural data came from a Swiss database that had nothing to do with it, the statistical methods are the standard ones, the assumptions are stated in the papers and the analysis can be recomputed. Anyone who wants to refute it can do so — that is exactly why it was written down this way.

The movement

Twenty years close to Maharishi

When Maharishi Mahesh Yogi moved to the Netherlands in 1990, they had known each other for years. At Maharishi European Research University in Seelisberg, Gelderloos had worked two years in his immediate circle.

That work simply continued in the Netherlands: two years in Seelisberg, eighteen years in Vlodrop. From Switzerland to Limburg, from research to organisation.

In 2005 Maharishi asked him to become national chairman of the Dutch TM organisation. Maharishi was still living in Vlodrop at the time. From then on Maharishi regarded him as his official host and representative in the Netherlands. For Maharishi, that was no formality, but something precious.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Figure 8 Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of Transcendental Meditation and of the research programme Gelderloos contributed to.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi during a visit to the university in Fairfield, 1979
Figure 9 Maharishi during a visit to Fairfield, 1979 — the year in which the studied period begins.Photo via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
The movement's headquarters in Vlodrop, the Netherlands
Figure 10 Vlodrop, Limburg. From 1990 Maharishi lived and worked in the Netherlands.Photo: Markus Schweiss, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
Five hundred young men in Lelystad

In Lelystad he placed an advertisement for five hundred young men who would meditate together for a year, with the aim of turning the Dutch collective consciousness ‘from negative to positive’. Within a week there were a hundred responses. The plan did not go ahead: a year proved too long and seventeen thousand euros too much. Quote ran it under the headline ‘Gelderloos confused?’

No religion, no sect

About the technique itself he speaks strikingly unromantically, and that is also the part he lets himself be judged on, because twice twenty minutes can be checked and a higher collective consciousness cannot. So no religion, no sect, but a technique that has to be practised twice a day for twenty minutes. Training your brain, he calls it.

Research shows that when one percent of people meditate, it has a positive effect on the rest of society.Omroep Flevoland
What went wrong

Not everything worked out

Curaçao

At the sale to Belgacom, Gelderloos kept the Curaçao part of Scarlet. That company ran into trouble and was eventually declared bankrupt, after which the court ruled that he was personally liable for one and a half million Antillean guilders to Digicel, over payments that had been promised between 2015 and 2017.

How he reads it himself

Not everything goes well, and in his own reading that is no accident. In spiritual development it is a familiar phenomenon that outer circumstances are made harder, precisely so that one can grow faster inside. The pressure then does not replace the development; it is part of it.

It is an explanation you accept or you don't. Those who don't are left with a business setback and not much more to say about it. Gelderloos accepts it.

The Quote 500, and out again

In 2005 he stood at number 201 on the Quote 500 with an estimated wealth of one hundred million, two years later at 223 with one hundred and thirteen million, and dropped off the list when he began paying off debts of his telecom company. When once asked whether his meditation work damaged his business reputation, he said Scarlet offered a fine product and that people should keep what Mr Scarlet does in his spare time separate from it.

Today

Chairman, and still a practitioner

Gelderloos is chairman of Stichting Maharishi Vedisch Instituut, the organisation that offers Transcendental Meditation in the Netherlands.

The organisation

Twenty centres and some thirty-five teachers pass on the technique, from Groningen to Maastricht. He also funds projects of the movement, including a permanent meditation centre in India.

As a teacher

He has taught the TM technique to more than 5,000 people, in India, Russia, Thailand and the Netherlands. He still teaches the course in Amsterdam, in Dutch and in English.

His own practice

He has meditated since 1 February 1974, twice a day. Today he practises the advanced TM-Sidhi programme, about an hour and a half each time. He lives in Amsterdam. In his spare time he sails, and pilots a canal tour boat in Amsterdam.

20
Centres in the Netherlands
~35
Teachers
50+
Years of daily practice, since 1974
3 hours
TM and TM-Sidhi programme per day
Someone meditating by a window
Figure 11 Twice a day, since 1 February 1974. Today with the TM-Sidhi programme, about an hour and a half each time.
Frequently asked questions

In short

Who is Paul Gelderloos?

Paul Gelderloos (Hilversum, 1953) is a psychologist, entrepreneur and chairman of Stichting Maharishi Vedisch Instituut, the organisation behind Transcendental Meditation in the Netherlands. He received his doctorate in 1987 from the Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen (now Radboud University) for Valuation and Transcendental Meditation, founded the telecom company Scarlet in 1992 and sold it to Belgacom in 2008.

What was Scarlet?

Scarlet was a Dutch telecom company that Paul Gelderloos founded in 1992, initially under the name Telegroup, built on cheap international calling through a callback arrangement. With Scarlet One the company brought the first all-in-one package in the Netherlands to market. During the dot-com crash of 2001 Gelderloos acquired more than twenty-five companies. In 2008 Scarlet was sold to Belgacom for 175 million euros.

What scientific research has Paul Gelderloos done?

Twenty-six publications as author or co-author, written at Maharishi European Research University in Seelisberg and Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa. The most cited is the 1991 meta-analysis on Transcendental Meditation, self-actualization and psychological health, with Charles Alexander and Maxwell Rainforth, with nearly six hundred citations on Google Scholar; two other publications have also passed two hundred. In addition, three studies on U.S.–Soviet relations between 1979 and 1986 in relation to large meditation groups.

What is the Maharishi Effect and what did the research find?

The Maharishi Effect is the prediction that a group of the square root of one percent of a population practising the TM-Sidhi programme together has a measurable effect on that population as a whole. In the study by Gelderloos, Cavanaugh and Davies (1990), behaviour between Washington and Moscow, independently coded by the Zurich Project on East-West Relations, became more positive in the months when the group in Fairfield exceeded roughly fifteen hundred participants. In the same model that effect was 1.7 times as large as the effect of Gorbachev taking office. The research has not been accepted in the mainstream field of international relations; the objections are set out openly on this site.

Does Paul Gelderloos practise Transcendental Meditation himself?

Yes, since 1 February 1974, twice a day. Immediately after graduating in 1977 he became a TM teacher. Today he practises the advanced TM-Sidhi programme, about an hour and a half twice a day.

Is Transcendental Meditation a religion?

No. Gelderloos describes Transcendental Meditation as a technique practised twice a day for twenty minutes, not a religion and not a sect. He calls it training your brain.

What does Paul Gelderloos do now?

He is chairman of Stichting Maharishi Vedisch Instituut, with twenty centres and some thirty-five teachers in the Netherlands, and of Stichting Gelderloos Foundation. He funds projects of the movement, including a permanent meditation centre in India. He lives in Amsterdam.