Our Mission

The Age of Enlightenment Foundation of the Philippines is a non-stock, non-profit educational organization. Our mission is to reduce stress for individuals and society as a whole and the improvement of the quality of life.

Stress is the cause of so many problems today, both in terms of physical and mental health, as well as relationships and success at work. Scientific research around the world over the past 50 years has shown that Transcendental Meditation (TM) can provide a unique and exceptionally effective solution for reducing individual stress.

“No other stress management technique even comes into the close to the amount of hard data TM can present to confirm its effectiveness”
Norman Rosenthal, MD, U.S. National Institutes of Mental Health

Stress doesn’t just affect the individual. If someone is very stressed and then gets mad at someone else, that second person gets stressed too. That’s how stress spreads in our community. Scientific research has also shown that TM helps to reduce this collective stress so that even people who do not practice the technique themselves will benefit from the general stress level in their community being reduced.

The TM technique is very easy to do and anyone can learn it because the technique is taught individually by highly trained teachers who have the knowledge and experience to adapt the technique to each individual. After the personal instruction, there are several small group meetings over the next three days to delve deeper into the experiences and provide additional knowledge. After this basic course there is a lifelong follow-up and this is included in the course fee that someone pays to learn the TM technique.

The finances within our organization in the Philippines are managed on the basis of the “Robin Hood” principle : a course contribution is requested for individual courses for the general public and the majority of this contribution is used to cover the costs (time of the teachers for the course and the lifelong follow-up, rent of TM centers, costs of marketing, costs of national administration etc). Part of this contribution is used to financially support people who are not so well off. For example, scholarships are offered to people with financial problems and the organization supports projects where certain groups in society can learn the technology for free. In this way, the organization does not depend on donations to help society, but can create its own finances (under the motto “it is better to learn to fish yourself than to get a fish from someone”). We are also connected to an international non-for-profit organization that supports global charity projects.

In terms of the finances of the organization, please find here the 2020 financials.

Since 1981, more than 15,000 people in the Philippines have been able to learn Transcendental Meditation for free as part of these charity projects, most of them in schools. The projects consist of TM teachers teaching TM for free as part of an effort to uplift that community. As children or teachers or others learn TM, they are able to combat the stress from the past and the present better and build more stress resilience. They benefit from this themselves of course. But as stress travels in a community and gets passed from one person to the next, other members from the community that don’t practice TM also benefit from the overall reduced stress level around them.
Please find below some numbers and pictures of some of these projects in schools showing teacher Poli Castillo teach a group of teachers and showing teachers and students practice TM together afterwards at school.

-School Projects
1981-1983: 5,110 students
1984: 6,700 students
1986-2011: 2,160 students
Total: 13,970 students

-Other charity projects
1984: 1,280

-Overall Total: 15,250

And here is a video that highlights some charity projects on a global level.

Sometimes, our national and international organisations also partner with other organisations to share the costs of the research and the awareness building required to support the world in this way. Example of this include:
-Over the past few decades, the US National Institutes of Health has provided more than $20 Million US for scientific research on the TM Technique, specifically in the context of Cardio-Vascular Disease. Based on all this research, in 2012, the American Heart Association made a formal recommendation to American doctors to consider the prescription of TM (and no other form of meditation or relaxation) as an option for the treatment of hypertension. Ref.Brook RD et al., Beyond Medications and Diet: Alternative Approaches to Lowering Blood Pressure. A Scientific Statement from the American Heart Association. Hypertension, 61:00, 2013.
-Recently, the Erasmus Programme of the European Commission has provided 2 grants in the context of the EUROPE Project and the FRIENDS project where they paid ~80% of the costs for research studies in schools. In total close to €1 Million was provided by the European Commission and about 4,000 students and teachers were able to learn TM for free as part of this project. Below is a video of a Swedish school that participated in this project.

-The US Department of Defense recently funded a $2.5 Million randomized controlled trial with more than 200 participants showing that TM showed a significant improvement in PTSD symptoms in 61% of the participants while only 43% of the test subject that received Prolonged Exposure treatment (the gold standard offered to veterans) showed a clinically significant improvements. Ref.https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(18)30384-5/fulltext

Thanks to all this work in the past 60 years, awareness is growing and various organizations are starting to support the cost for people to learn TM, for example:
–Switzerland: leading health insurance provider Swica is now reimbursing part of the TM course fee
–Belgium: Flemish government subsidises part of the course fee for people working for small and medium-sized companies in the context of burnout prevention through the KMO Portefeuille program
–US: US Veterans with PTSD can now get 100% of the TM course fee funded.