Xixax Film Forum

The Director's Chair => David Lynch => Topic started by: MacGuffin on February 02, 2005, 04:16:47 PM

Title: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: MacGuffin on February 02, 2005, 04:16:47 PM
Lynch article in Sun-Times - The Chicago Sun-Times recently featured an article on Lynch and his interest in transcendental meditation:


Lynch: ‘Bliss is our nature’
BY Cathleen Falsani - Religion Reporter

LOS ANGELES -- The word critics use most often to describe director David Lynch's films is "dark."

"Weird" is a close second.

The cinematic otherworlds Lynch creates, whether they're the quirky Lumberton and Twin Peaks, industrial Victorian England, or the shadowy underbelly of the Hollywood Hills, are surreal, sordid, nightmarish.

One might expect the soul behind such celluloid visions to be just as dark. But as Lynch explains what motivates him spiritually -- in his life, in his art -- he peppers the conversation with concepts such as "light," "peace" and "bliss."

Much has been written about the stark contrast between the 58-year-old director of films such as "Eraserhead," "The Elephant Man," "Blue Velvet," and "Mulholland Drive," who looks like a classic clean-cut everyman -- think a fair-haired Jimmy Stewart -- and the bizarre, brutal characters he creates in his movies.

But the greater contrast, perhaps, may lie much farther beneath Lynch's surface.

"Negativity is like darkness -- it goes away when you turn on this light of peace and unity," Lynch says, between sips from his ever-present coffee mug and drags on his American Spirit cigarette. "Bliss is our nature. Bliss. We should be like little puppy dogs. So happy. ... And that includes unbounded, infinite intelligence, creativity, consciousness."

Puppy dogs and consciousness? Where is this coming from? It seems so . . . unlikely.

"Pretty much everything I'm going to tell you I've learned from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi," Lynch says, staring off into the middle distance of his screening room. "I've been practicing transcendental meditation, the Maharishi's transcendental meditation, for 31 years."

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is an octogenarian Hindu monk from India best known for being the Beatles' guru in the 1960s. Nearly 60 years ago, Maharishi, as he is known, developed a simplified meditation technique based on the Indian Vedic spiritual tradition, that is supposed to help its practitioner "transcend" to a higher state of consciousness and profound relaxation by silently repeating a one-syllable Sanskrit mantra for about 20 minutes a day.

Lynch, who describes Maharishi as "a holy man who teaches you how to become a holy person," says he was introduced to transcendental meditation by his sister in the early 1970s, around the time he was making his first feature-length film, the black-and-white cult favorite "Eraserhead."

Blissed out

Transcendental meditation and the Maharishi's guidance have transformed his life, Lynch says. A framed picture of the smiling guru sits next to the phone and several bottles of Ayurvedic herbs on the desk in Lynch's industrial art studio, where abstract artwork -- one piece included what appeared to be a baby doll's arm protruding from the canvas -- hangs on the walls.

Before he began meditating twice daily, "I had anger, I had fears, I had anxieties," Lynch says. "I still have them. I'm not enlightened. But it's much, much, much, much better. Life is so beautiful.

"Maharishi says there is an expression, 'The world is as you are.' They use the example that if you have dark-blue, dirty sunglasses on, that's the way the world is to you. If you have rose-colored glasses, that's the way the world is to you. Change from within."

Born in Missoula, Mont., the son of a research scientist and a language tutor, Lynch was raised as a Presbyterian Christian.

He says his earliest memory of God was "a feeling of happiness," and that he still believes in God, in a slightly less abstract form.

"The kingdom of heaven, God the almighty merciful father, is that totality," he says, when asked to define who or what God is. "It's that level. It's the almighty merciful father, and the divine mother, the kingdom of heaven, the absolute, divine being, bliss consciousness, creative intelligence. These are all names, but it is that.

"It is unchanging, eternal. It is. There is nothing. It's that level that never had a beginning, it is, and it will be forever more," he says. "That, I think, if you said that's God, you wouldn't be wrong."

'Not mind control'

Transcendental meditators insist theirs is simply a spiritual practice or discipline, and not a religion unto itself. There are transcendental meditators of every religion and of no religion. In bucolic Fairfield, Iowa, the transcendental meditation capital of the United States and home to Maharishi University of Management, the mayor, a meditator, is a practicing Roman Catholic.

"It's not mind control," Lynch says of transcendental meditation. "Anybody in any religion who practices transcendental meditation generally says that it gives them deeper appreciation of their religion, greater insight into their religion. The bigger picture starts unfolding and things that used to bug you stop bugging you so much.

"It's not that you go dead or numb. It's, there's just too much happiness and consciousness and wakefulness and understanding growing for you to be, you know, suffering so much, or caught up in some narrow little thing. It just starts getting better, and better, and better, and better."

A twice-divorced father of two sons and a daughter (all of whom are transcendental meditators), Lynch says while he adheres to no particular religion himself, he respects all religions.

"I sort of think that the great religions are like rivers. Each one is beautiful and they all flow into one ocean," he says. "It's like a mystery. I love mysteries. And they lead somewhere. And once in a while you're going along, feeling the mystery, and you become a seeker. It just happens. I don't know quite how it happens, but you want to know. You want to experience, and you learn about things.

"That's what happened with transcendental meditation. I heard about it and I said, 'I've gotta have it.' And I'm glad I took that."

Flying high

Lynch's resume is long and varied.

Film director. Screenwriter. Painter. Furniture designer (he often designs pieces for his sets). Composer. Actor. Photographer ("I shoot nudes and factories," he says).

And, most recently, flier.

Yogic flier, that is.

Advanced transcendental meditators, known by the Sanskrit term siddha, practice what they describe as a dynamic form of meditation, where they are physically lifted off the ground in a state of profound bliss.

In reality, so-called yogic flying looks a lot more like hopping on one's knees than levitating. In the Golden Domes of Pure Knowledge in Fairfield, Iowa, more than 1,000 siddhas spend hours a day "flying" on foam rubber cushions, spontaneously hopping in the lotus position, eyes closed, giggling blissfully.

"I'm not a great flier," admits Lynch, who has been a siddha for about three years and usually practices alone. "But the experience, when it kicks in, is so phenomenal, it's not funny. It's intense bliss. And I've seen the unbounded ocean pour into me and it's so beautiful.

"It is what they call 'bubbling bliss,' and it is so intense and so fantastic. Bliss is physical, emotional, mental and spiritual happiness. It's so beautiful it'll make you laugh like a little kid. It's like we're light bulbs, it just fills you up with light. And then an offshoot of that, as we see in the light bulb, the light goes beyond the bulb. So it affects the environment, and this is the principle that will being perpetual peace on earth."

Lynch is talking about the theory of constructive interference in physics, which is exemplified by stereo speakers. If there is a single speaker on each side of a room, the sound produced is in stereo. But if the two speakers are pushed together, the sound is amplified exponentially.

Maharishi, who trained as a physicist before becoming a monk, says constructive interference can be applied to transcendental meditation as well. Many of his devotees, including Lynch, believe that transcendental meditation not only produces positive effects in its practitioners -- lowering blood pressure, reducing stress, increasing focus -- it does the same for society, reducing crime rates and even ending war.

The greater the number of people meditating together, the greater the effect, Maharishi and his scientific researchers say. A few years ago, after the events of Sept. 11, he devised a plan to establish "peace palaces" around the world with thousands of full-time meditators, to bring about peace.

It's a cause to which Lynch says he is personally devoted.

"Large groups of yogic fliers . . . together produce an exponential effect of bliss, coherence, peace," he says, matter-of-factly. "The square root of 1 percent of the world's population, in a group, going day in and day out, will bring about peace.

"And that's what I've been trying to do in talking to people about this, and trying to raise the money to make it on a permanent basis, and I haven't had a whole lot of luck, but I'm still trying," he says.

Recently, the filmmaker established the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace to ensure that any child who wants to learn transcendental meditation can do so. The foundation will cover the costs of meditation instruction (about $2,500 per person), and will provide some scholarships for students who want to attend colleges where transcendental meditation is taught, such as the Maharishi's university in Iowa.

"We're just this little ball of people floating near the edge of what we call the Milky Way galaxy," Lynch says, "and there ought to be enough power to light this little ball up with peace."

Loving the abstract

Lighting up yet another cigarette -- a no-no for most hyper-health-conscious transcendental meditators, many of whom are strict teetotaling, caffeine-free vegetarians -- Lynch explains that meditation has allowed him to tap into a deep well of creativity.

"It's the field of pure creativity," he says, his voice rising. "For artists, it seems to me, to be the greatest thing to be able to dive in and go to the source of creativity. Ideas come from there, creativity comes from there. All these anxieties and fears and things that just kill us, all of those start going away. It becomes like a fluid, pure open channel of ideas. It is REALLY GOOD."

Many of Lynch's films have surreally complicated plots -- "Mulholland Drive," for example -- and can be difficult to explain to the uninitiated. Is it easier, perhaps, to describe how his films feel than what they're about?

"That's very good," he says, clearly pleased with the question. "That's very good because the things that I love in life are abstractions. I don't think a film should be totally abstractions, but I think a story that I love holds those abstractions."

"Ideas inspire me. Ideas, to me, are everything. They're all seeds, and, in a lot of ways, they're like the Vedas, the laws of nature," he says.

Does he try to infuse his films with lessons he's learned from Maharishi and transcendental meditation?

"No, no no. They say, if you want to send a message, go to Western Union," he says, wryly. "Film is a different thing. I love painting, I love photography, and I love music. And you know, if it comes through there, it comes through there in an innocent way. I'm not about to make a film to sell this thing.

"I want to make films based on ideas that I've fallen in love with."



DAVID LYNCH

Age: 58

Raised: Presbyterian

Now: Nothing in particular

Attends: He's practiced twice-daily transcendental meditation for the last 31 years and is a siddha, or "yogic flier"

Words to live by: "Change from within."
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: NEON MERCURY on February 03, 2005, 10:58:22 AM
Quote from: MacGuffinLynch article in Sun-Times - The Chicago Sun-Times recently featured an article on Lynch and his interest in transcendental meditation:


"I want to make films based on ideas that I've fallen in love with."


well please hurry up.
you know you are slacking off when terrence malick has made a follow-up to a film before you have..............
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: Gabe on March 23, 2005, 11:03:11 PM
I prefer Krishnamurti

.
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: MacGuffin on September 28, 2005, 01:41:35 PM
Words From the Front
Interview With David Lynch
by Kristine McKenna

In person, David Lynch bears only the vaguest resemblance to the image most people have of him. He is, of course, an artist of extreme complexity, but he's not a weirdo and the people who work with him adore him because he's respectful and appreciative of their contributions to his art.

Lynch has been working under the radar on his latest film, Inland Empire, for quite a while; it commenced principal photography two years ago in Lodz, Poland, and features Polish actors Karolina Gruszka and Krzysztof Majchrzak, along with Laura Dern, Jeremy Irons, Harry Dean Stanton and Justin Theroux. It's his first digital film, but it won't be his last as he loves the freedom digital affords. "Film is over for me," declares Lynch, who's thus far handled the financing of Inland Empire, which is being produced by his longtime partner, Mary Sweeney.

I've been interviewing Lynch semi-regularly for 25 years now, and each time I see him I'm struck by his ability to retain the best parts of his personality; he remains an enthusiastic, open and very funny man, and he never fails to tell me something useful and inspiring. Herewith, some excerpts from our latest conversation.

You've said in the past that your daily meditation practice is what enables you to maintain such a high level of creativity. What was going on in your life at the point when you were able to commit yourself to meditation?

I was 27 and I was in the middle of the first year of Eraserhead and things were going great. I had this unbelievable place to work—the stables at AFI—I had all the equipment I needed, I had people helping me, I had money to do it, and it was like a dream come true, yet I wasn't happy. That saying 'happiness comes from within' started making sense to me and meditation seemed like a good way to go within. I'd always thought yogis sitting cross-legged in the woods were wasting their time, but I suddenly understood that all the rest is a waste of time. Meditation is the vehicle that takes you to the place where you can experience the unified field and that's the only experience that lights the full brain. It's a holistic experience and it's not a foreign place—it's a field of pure bliss consciousness and it's the whole enchilada. People think they're fully awake when they wake up in the morning but there are degrees of wakefulness, and you begin waking up more and more when you meditate, until finally one day you're fully awake, which is the state of enlightenment. This is the potential of every human being and if you visit that unified field twice a day, every day begins to feel like a Saturday morning with your favorite breakfast, it's sunny, and you've got the whole weekend ahead with all your projects that you're looking forward to doing.

There are many types of meditation. Why did you pick transcendental meditation?

I lucked into it. My sister was doing it, then one day she mentioned it to me and I don't know why—maybe it was the sound of her voice and the time that I heard it—but bang! I said I've gotta have that. Transcendental meditation is the way of the householder in that it allows you to stay in the world. Some people like the recluse way and want to go into the cave, and there are mantras that will take you right out of activity and put you into that cave. But transcendental meditation is a way of integrating these two worlds and activity is part of it. It's like dipping a white cloth into gold dye; you dip it and that's meditation, then you hang it on the line in sunshine and that's activity. The sun bleaches it until it's white again, so you dip it and hang it again, and each time you do that a little more of the gold stays in the cloth. Then one day that gold is locked in. It isn't going anywhere no matter how violent the activity, and at that point two opposites have been united at a deep level. In the west people think yeah, like I'm really gonna give up my dental practice and go to the cave, but you don't have to quit dentistry. Meditate before you go to work and you'll start liking the people that come in and you'll start getting ideas about dentistry. Maybe you'll invent something and get into the finer points of a cavity and honing that bad boy. Things get cooler.

If you were running the world, what's the first thing you'd do?

I'd get people going on consciousness-based education. Stress levels in children are going way up and there are so many bad side effects to stress. Kids are on drugs, they're overweight—they are not happy campers and being a kid should be a beautiful thing. Kids take to meditation like ducks to water. The so-called knowledge we try to cram down their throats is useless and that's why there are things like cheating—it's all a bunch of baloney. It's a sick, twisted, stupid world now. It's ridiculous.

What's America's problem?

It's locked in an old, ignorant way of thinking. Things are pretty low right now but lots of people are working to enliven that field of unity in world consciousness. John Lennon described meditation as 'melting the iceberg,' and when that heat starts coming up some people love it, but it can be too much for some people and they fly apart. So, it's gotta come up gently—it has been coming up pretty gently, too, but the bunch running the show here in America are working overtime in a negative way.

How did you interpret 9/11?

You don't get something for nothing and America's been up to a lot of nasty business for a long time. But Maharishi says instead of fighting darkness you should just turn on the light, so lets turn on the light and start having fun.

What makes you angry?

There's an increasing amount of censorship in America and that is not a good sign. It really makes you wonder what's going on with this country.

Is man on the road to extinguishing himself?

No. Quantum physics has verified the existence of the unified field and Vedic science understands how it emerges—in fact, Vedic science is the science of the unified field. There's a whole bunch of trouble in this world but the way to get out of it is there; just enliven that field of unity. It sounds like magic but it's science—it's the real thing and the resistance to it is based on fear. But it's not something to be afraid of—it's us.

Your beliefs are deeply optimistic, yet many people find darkness in your work. How do you explain that?

Films and paintings reflect the world and when the world changes the art will change. We live in a world of duality but beneath it is unity. We live in a world of boundaries but beneath it it's unbounded. Einstein said you can't solve a problem at the level of the problem—you gotta get underneath it, and you can't get more underneath than the unified field. So get in there and water the root then enjoy the fruit. Water that root and the tree comes up to perfection. You don't have to worry about a single leaf if you get nourishment at that fundamental level.
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: Pubrick on September 29, 2005, 10:10:17 AM
so is anyone actually into this?
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: MacGuffin on October 17, 2005, 05:06:38 PM
Mahatma Lynch
David Lynch finds enlightenment -- The quirky ''Mulholland Drive'' director talks about transcendental meditation

''If you have a golf-ball-size consciousness, when you read a book you'll have a golf-ball-size understanding. But if you can expand that ball, then you read with more understanding,'' director David Lynch recently told a group of NYU students. Since September, he's been touring East Coast campuses touting meditation-based curricula (he goes west in November). A transcendental meditator for 32 years, he hopes to raise $7 billion to endow seven universities of world peace. Said Lynch: ''[Meditation] turns up our light. And like a lightbulb, we can enjoy the inner peace but also spread it—that's the key to world peace.'' Yes, he was serious.


Dates for Lynch's West Coast Tour Announced

The west coast dates and locations for Lynch's "Consciousness, Creativity and the Brain" tour have been announced. Tickets are free for all talks, but they've filled up quickly so if you plan on going we suggest getting their very early. Here are the dates:

Thursday, November 3 • 7:30 PM
University of Southern California
Bovard Auditorium
Los Angeles, CA

Friday, November 4 • 7:30 PM
University of California at San Diego
Price Center Theater
La Jolla, CA

Saturday, November 5 • 7:30 PM
University of California at Irvine
Crystal Cove Auditorium
Orange County, CA

Sunday, November 6 • 7:30 PM
University of California at Berkeley
Wheeler Auditorium
Berkeley, CA

Monday, November 7 • 7:30 PM
University of Washington
130 Kane Hall
Seattle, WA

Tuesday, November 8 • 7:30 PM
University of Oregon
Columbia 150
Eugene, OR
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: GoneSavage on October 19, 2005, 11:46:53 PM
Mac forgot to include this link (http://www.davidlynchtour.org/).  No new information but the website has a picture.
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: matt35mm on November 06, 2005, 12:18:01 AM
Quote from: MacGuffin on October 17, 2005, 05:06:38 PM
Saturday, November 5 • 7:30 PM
University of California at Irvine
Crystal Cove Auditorium
Orange County, CA
I saw this.  There was a live webcast to UC-Santa Cruz.  It was interesting because he answered any question--lots of questions about his films and process were answered, which was great.  The transcendental meditation thing was sorta interesting, but it was basically advertising his Foundation, and so the specifics of it were not given at the webcast.  I've yet to visit the website for his foundation so I don't know if there'll be something requiring pay or anything.

At least worth it for his film discussions.  Interesting guy.
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: Pubrick on November 06, 2005, 12:28:38 AM
Quote from: matt35mm on November 06, 2005, 12:18:01 AM
I don't know if there'll be something requiring pay or anything.

that's what it's all about.
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: matt35mm on November 06, 2005, 01:24:12 AM
Ah yes.  Well... I won't be doing that, but the Lynch thing itself was interesting for the movie discussion, anyway.
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: w/o horse on November 06, 2005, 12:55:00 PM
Quote from: matt35mm on November 06, 2005, 12:18:01 AM
Quote from: MacGuffin on October 17, 2005, 05:06:38 PM
Saturday, November 5 • 7:30 PM
University of California at Irvine
Crystal Cove Auditorium
Orange County, CA
I saw this.  There was a live webcast to UC-Santa Cruz.  It was interesting because he answered any question--lots of questions about his films and process were answered, which was great.  The transcendental meditation thing was sorta interesting, but it was basically advertising his Foundation, and so the specifics of it were not given at the webcast.  I've yet to visit the website for his foundation so I don't know if there'll be something requiring pay or anything.

At least worth it for his film discussions.  Interesting guy.

I was there.  Maybe you saw me.  I didn't ask a question but I was plopped in the middle in the middle.  My picture with David is in the famous people thread.

He was like grandpa.  It was good times.  I learned that I'm like a lightbulb and that the Lost Highway dvd isn't coming soon.  Also, KFC afterwards.
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: brockly on November 17, 2005, 09:05:33 PM
watch one of the sessions here (http://www.davidlynchfoundation.com/tour/lynch_en_01oct2005_125.wmv)
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: MacGuffin on April 10, 2006, 03:43:30 PM
Lynch Talks During Iowa Lynch Weekend are Online Now!

All clips have been added to the official LynchWeekend.com site. David offers some very cool information about TM and his films. He also gives his thoughts to the inspiration behind the title of his latest film, INLAND EMPIRE.

http://lynchweekend.org/replays.html
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: MacGuffin on June 16, 2006, 12:59:58 AM
David Lynch Wades Into Deep Waters
The director talks about business, meditation, happiness, and how to make a good movie that withstands the test of time. Lend an ear.
Source: Business Week

David Lynch has never broken box office records, but that's fine with him. Since 1978, the iconoclastic director of such films as The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, and Mulholland Drive, and TV series Twin Peaks, has persuaded studios, networks, and investors to provide backing for over 15 very un-Hollywood projects -- and come back for more.

Along the way, he has earned three Academy Award nominations for best director, a Palme d'Or from the Cannes Film Festival, worldwide critical acclaim, and a devoted following. In 1990, Time magazine proclaimed him a genius on its cover. Artistically uncompromising, Lynch, 60, is one of the few Hollywood directors who insist on -- and receive -- final cut on all films. He has developed one of the most unique and recognizable styles in world cinema.

To get his projects financed and distributed, Lynch has had to innovate in business as well as in filmmaking. As a graduate student at the American Film Institute in the late 1970s, he took a paper route delivering the Wall Street Journal to help fund the completion of his first feature film, Eraserhead. During that period, he discovered transcendental meditation, which has become integral to his creative process.

In 2005 he founded the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-based Education & World Peace, which is dedicated to teaching transcendental meditation in U.S. classrooms. Lynch frequently lectures on using meditation to enhance creativity and decision-making in business. BusinessWeek correspondent Justin Hibbard spoke with Lynch at the TiEcon 2006 conference in Santa Clara, Calif.

Most people don't associate meditation with business. Why are you talking to businesspeople about meditation?
For business, you need ideas. If your consciousness starts expanding, you've got a better chance of catching more ideas, bigger ideas. The analogy is fishing. The little fish are on the surface. Then you go deeper, and they get bigger and bigger down there. Big fish, big ideas.

You recommend that businesses offer meditation to employees in the workplace. Why would a company invest in that?
There are businesses that are run on fear. And then on the other side, there are businesses that are run in a much more humane way. Businesses that are run on fear are the theater of the absurd. You go to an office filled with fear, you begin to hate your work, hate turns to anger, you begin to be angry at your work, and your life is like a hell. You don't go the extra mile for that business. And it affects your home life, it affects everything.

Now, if I was running a big business, I would say to every employee, "You have a chance to learn to dive within." And within a couple of months, you start seeing people come to work brighter, happier, with way more eagerness to go the extra mile for you. It would become like a family. And the ideas would flow. For businesses, it's money in the bank.

How has meditation helped your ideas flow?
I'll give you an example from [my 2001 film] Mulholland Drive. It was built for an open-ended TV pilot. ABC hated it. So I got the opportunity to make it into a feature. Now an open-ended pilot needed to be closed suddenly. I sat down to meditate one night, and literally, like a string of pearls, all the ideas came. Normally, you meditate, and then you think after meditation. But this just happened to zip up, and I wrote those bad boys down as soon as I finished meditating, and that was it.

Is it unusual for ideas to come during meditation like that?
Yeah, it is. Your meditation is to go within, transcend, and experience pure consciousness. You come out refreshed, wide awake, and energetic. You can now focus on those problems, focus on your business, focus on your film. It's easier to focus, and it's a more intense focus.

Do ideas often come to you completely developed as they did in the Mulholland Drive example?
Yes, a lot of times they do. But a lot of other times you get a fragment. You get like a Rosetta Stone idea. And you fall in love with this fragment, and it is now the little idea that attracts all the other ideas to it. It's like bait at the end of the hook. It may end up being part of one scene, or it sets a tone for the whole film. Then you begin to focus on that, and more fish swim in and connect to it, and now you've got two or three scenes.

The more you have, the more easily the rest swim in. It's like there's more bait. And then one day, it's complete in script form. Then you go out and make the film, being true to those ideas.Now some other fish can swim in. You never turn down a good idea, or a good fish, but you don't want to take a bad idea, or a bad fish. So you go back and see how everything is progressing based on those original ideas. And if new ideas come in, you see if they really and truly marry to what has gone before.

How do you know whether an idea is good or bad?
Intuition. There's emotion and intellect, and then there's intuition, which is kind of emotion and intellect together. In business, you might not be able to explain an intuitive feeling to others, but you say, "I know that is the right way to go for me. I know that feels right. That is intuitively right." And you go that way. And maybe everybody else is telling you you're crazy, but you've got to take a risk.

You also say meditation helps with making decisions. Can you give an example from your work?
One night while we were making Lost Highway, we had a scene underneath a covering at an indoor-outdoor '50s kind of diner with a parking lot in the background. Everyone in the scene was dressed in dry clothes and didn't have wet hair. We came there and it started raining. We had already established a dry look. Now the parking lot in the back was wet.

There was a real indication that we were going to all go home. We would have lost a night and lost a lot of money. I decided to continue to shoot. I pictured the scene shot by shot and thought, what would make that parking lot wet other than rain? And so I put kids in the background shooting garden hoses, and therefore the rain looked like it came from that. The hoses idea saved the day.

So you used visualization?
Yeah, a lot of times it's that. You needed a solution, and solutions come more easily with the more consciousness you have. If consciousness is pure gold, all you need is the key to open up that big vault door, and all that gold is yours.

Your films have a unique and recognizable style. Do you do anything deliberate to avoid the obvious and clichéd?
No, because that's a false overlay. I'm just true to those ideas that thrill me. There is some thought to the audience toward the end of the process. You see a film with many people and you can learn a lot. You just sit with them. You can feel all the places where it's slow or there's no understanding or a reaction you didn't expect.

That's fine-tuning the whole thing near the end. But to do some false thing that's not really part of the idea is wrong. A film will live throughout time, and a lot of these false things are done for today's audience right now to make money, and they don't hold up. If you're true to the idea, then it will hold up.
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: MacGuffin on September 21, 2006, 11:48:20 AM
Lynch Book Available for Pre-Order

Lynch has written a book entitled "Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity" and will be available in Hardcover on December 28th, 2006. You can pre-order it from Amazon.com by clicking here. (http://www.amazon.com/Catching-Big-Fish-Consciousness-Creativity/dp/1585425400/sr=1-5/qid=1158807764/sycamorerecords)

Book Description
In this rare work of public disclosure, filmmaker David Lynch describes his personal methods of capturing and working with ideas, and the immense creative benefits he has experienced from the practice of meditation.

Over the last four decades, David Lynch has created some of the best-known and widely discussed screen works of our time. This distinctive writer-director's art bears not only the mark of box-office success but also criticalacclaim and cultural posterity.

Yet Lynch generally reveals little of himself, or the ideas behind his work. Now he provides a rare window into his methods as an artist and his personal working style. In Catching the Big Fish, Lynch writes candidly about the tremendous creative benefits he has gained from his thirty-two-year commitment to practicing Transcendental Meditation.

In brief chapters, Lynch describes the experience of "diving within" and "catching" ideas like fish-and then preparing them for television or movie screens, and other mediums in which Lynch works, such as photography and painting.

In the book's first section, Lynch discusses the development of his ideas-where they come from, how he grasps them, and which ones appeal to him the most. He then shares his passion for "the doing"-whether moviemaking, painting, or other creative expressions. Lynch talks specifically about how he puts his thoughts into action and how he engages with others around him. Finally, he discusses the self and the surrounding world -and how the process of "diving within" that has so deeply affected his own work can directly benefit others.

Catching the Big Fish provides unprecedented insight into Lynch's methods, as it also offers a set of practical ideas that speak to matters of personal fulfillment, increased creativity, and greater harmony with one's surroundings.

The book comes as a revelation to the legion of fans who have longed to better understand Lynch's deeply personal vision. And it is equally intriguing to anyone who grapples with questions such as: "Where do ideas come from?" and "How can I nurture creativity?"
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: MacGuffin on October 24, 2006, 05:06:52 PM
No TM at TL: Filmmaker David Lynch pulls grant for high school

A controversial plan for a Transcendental Meditation program at Terra Linda High School was dropped Wednesday after the David Lynch Foundation withdrew a $175,000 grant.

Principal Carole Ramsey said a few people created such a stir over the issue that it became a distraction. Nonetheless, she is encouraging students to pursue their interests in meditation because it remains an effective way to reduce stress.

"I don't regret bringing it (to students) at all," she said.

Ramsey recently announced the school would start a Transcendental Meditation club as part of a new wellness program that also encouraged students to eat balanced meals and exercise more. But she abruptly ended an informational meeting for about 75 parents last week when opponents raised a ruckus over claims the program is linked to a religious movement.

Transcendental Meditation was founded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to improve mental and physical health. Maharishi was a spiritual adviser to the Beatles in the 1960s.

It is not, supporters claim, a religion or philosophy and practitioners do not change their lifestyles or experience any type of mind control even though the founder, Maharishi, is referred to as "His Holiness."

Ramsey attended a lecture by Lynch, an Oscar-nominated filmmaker who established a nonprofit organization to spread Transcendental Meditation in schools, after more than 60 students expressed interest in a meditation program.

Shortly thereafter, she applied for and received the $175,000 grant, which would have been the organization's first program in California.

Participants would have taken several workshops, including 90-minute classes for four consecutive days. The program involves sitting silently with eyes closed for 15 to 20 minutes twice a day.

A consultant with the state Department of Education did not see a problem with the program in a public school.

Bob Roth, a 1968 graduate of Redwood High School who is a spokesman for the Lynch Foundation, said pulling back was the best thing for his organization and the school following the outcry. He said the grant will go to another school.

"There's a long waiting list," he said.

Ramsey said that, aside from a few opponents, most parents either supported the program or were open-minded. But the deep-seated beliefs held by critics threatened to overshadow what she set out to accomplish.

"This is a program that was supposed to reduce stress," she noted.
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: Ghostboy on December 24, 2006, 06:07:00 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fec2.images-amazon.com%2Fimages%2FP%2F1585425400.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_V39120424_.jpg&hash=7e4b27cfcc0050e645fe109146752512f2a5de03)

This was the first Christmas present I received this year (one of my friends got an advance copy of it). It's a fast read (an hour or two, tops), and it could have been subtitle 'The Wit And Wisdom Of David Lynch.' A lot of what he has to say can be found in his interviews over the past year or so, so if you enjoy reading those, you'll probably get a kick out of the book. I love his metaphors - we've all heard the fish thing and the ideas-as-string-of-pearls analogy, but he has this one great bit where he describes transcendental meditation as a bunch of golden robots cleaning the empire state building. There's also a really great chapter (and the chapters are all, for the most part, one or two pages, or sometimes even paragraphs or sentences) about the moment when Eraserhead started to make sense to him.
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: Pubrick on December 24, 2006, 10:28:58 PM
Quote from: Ghostboy on December 24, 2006, 06:07:00 PM
but he has this one great bit where he describes transcendental meditation as a bunch of golden robots cleaning the empire state building.
that's also on one of the countless hours of TM seminars he's given. i did an assignment on it in march and watched them all (as many as were available at the time), and he repeats himself a lot. the best part is when he stops talking about TM and just goes on about creativity and ideas in general, or personal revelations such as eraserhead.

cool present.
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: MacGuffin on January 05, 2007, 01:32:14 AM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fgraphics8.nytimes.com%2Fimages%2F2006%2F12%2F31%2Ffashion%2Flynch.190.1.650.jpg&hash=0c84f3121a38e8bec07574c031418953928ea599)

David Lynch's Shockingly Peaceful Inner Life
Source: New York Times

IF you were looking for a Tom Cruise to preach to a new generation the gospel of Transcendental Meditation, a hippie-era spiritual practice espousing inner harmony, David Lynch would be one of the least likely candidates.

As the director who conjured the reptilian mutant baby of "Eraserhead" and the dancing dwarf of "Twin Peaks," Mr. Lynch has built his career by imposing his nightmares on the rest of us.

The idea of the inscrutable David Lynch, Hollywood's leading surrealist and eccentric, reborn as the guru of bliss seems a little odd even to Mr. Lynch himself.

Now 60, he remembers how he recoiled from the concept when he heard about it in the late 1960s, when the movement — founded by the Indian spiritual leader Maharishi Mahesh Yogi — was experiencing its first wave of popularity among young people in the West thanks to proselytizing by pop stars like the Beatles and Donovan.

"The word 'harmony' would make me want to puke," recalled Mr. Lynch, speaking on a clear, chilly afternoon in the glassed-in painting studio atop his Modernist concrete-walled house in the Hollywood Hills. Even as an Eagle Scout and a popular student at a public high school in Alexandria, Va., he composed paintings, influenced by the grotesqueries of Francis Bacon, in a studio with walls that he and a friend painted black.

"Meditation would be a sickening thing to consider, because you want that edge to create," he said, wearing worn khaki trousers and a tattered black sports jacket with a hole in the right elbow the size of a saucer. "I don't want to be a namby-pamby."

Besides, he added, "you would get chicks when you're angry."

That all changed in 1973, when the future filmmaker discovered meditation, which he believes allowed him to quiet — and exploit — his inner demons. He said that he has not missed a day since.

And now, the low-key auteur is emerging as the most visible, even fiery, proponent of the resurgent practice, which is being used increasingly in schools and in the workplace, as well as by a new generation of stars, including Heather Graham, Laura Dern and the record executive Rick Rubin.

In July 2005, Mr. Lynch began the David Lynch Foundation, which finances Transcendental Meditation scholarships for students in middle schools and high schools to study the practice. Later that year, he embarked on a series of lectures on college campuses that attracted significant attention in the news media.

This winter, Mr. Lynch is taking the message to the masses. His autobiography-cum-self-help book, "Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity" (Tarcher/Penguin), will be released this week. Next month, he will preside over a series of readings and discussions, in tandem with concerts by Donovan, at Lincoln Center in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington and the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles.

"It's weird," said Mr. Lynch, in the flat folksy accent of his native Missoula, Mont., speaking of his increasing involvement. "I guess it's as simple as this: I wish I had heard it earlier."

The idea of David Lynch serving as the spokesman for anything is a bit of a stretch. Mr. Lynch suffers from a lifelong fear of public speaking— "I still hate it," he said — and will happily recount how he has tape-recorded speeches at home for awards ceremonies, then played them into the microphone at the podium.

"I call him 'the reluctant yogi,' " said Robert Roth, a spokesman for the Transcendental Meditation organization and the vice president of the foundation. It was Mr. Roth who initially nudged Mr. Lynch onto the college lecture circuit. He added: "If I didn't say, 'Please ask questions,' David would just stand up there. He doesn't care how awkward anyone else feels."

Transcendental Meditation is a trademarked mental technique introduced by Maharishi in 1958 based on the proposition that a practitioner, by repeating a private mantra throughout two 20-minute sessions a day, can achieve a state of "restful alertness"— and, theoretically, tap into a "unified field" of energy. The training process involves working with personal instructors over five days at one of about 1,000 Transcendental Meditation centers worldwide, and it costs about $2,500.

In the '60s, adherents posed Transcendental Meditation as a natural alternative to mind-expanding drugs like LSD. Now, proponents, including Mr. Lynch, argue that it can serve as an antidote to a stress-filled world, particularly for adolescents. Mr. Lynch cites his increasing concern for young people as the primary reason he launched his crusade.

"David has become a huge promoter of T.M.," said Donovan, whose real name is Donovan Leitch. Mr. Leitch learned the practice from Maharishi himself, along with the Beatles, Mia Farrow and Mike Love of the Beach Boys, in Rishikesh, India, in 1968. Mr. Leitch added that Mr. Lynch has been able to "capitalize" on his fame and "redirect meditation back where it belongs, with the students."

Transcendental Meditation faded from the pop culture landscape after the '70s. Before Mr. Lynch, a marquee celebrity advocate was the illusionist Doug Henning, who died in 2000. But it hardly disappeared. Maharishi, now believed to be 90, still directs the movement, which claims more than 6 million adherents, from a log house on a 65-acre compound in the Dutch village of Vlodrop. The organization operates the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa; its own incorporated town, Vedic City (population 325), is nearby.

Over the years, the practice has been the subject of numerous scientific studies, including one by the University of Michigan Health System in 2003, which indicated that sixth graders who were practicing such meditation appeared to score significantly higher on tests of self-esteem and emotional competence.

But critics allege that it can inspire an unhealthy devotion. Rick A. Ross, who operates a nonprofit research organization in Jersey City called the Rick A. Ross Institute for the Study of Destructive Cults, Controversial Groups and Movements, said that the evidence he has studied indicates that Transcendental Meditation can be relaxing when not practiced excessively. But the movement fits some criteria he uses to define cults. It is "a personality-driven group, with Maharishi as its totalitarian leader," Mr. Ross said, which at its extremes "can be seen as one in which people lose much of their ability for critical thinking."

But Mr. Lynch, who was raised Presbyterian, insisted that Transcendental Meditation is neither a cult nor a theology, but simply a practice one learns, then pursues in private.

As an artist, Mr. Lynch said, it has allowed him to unleash his imagination and be, in a word, weirder. He said that many of his ideas — the "big fish" of his book's title — come to him during meditation. Among these big fish are the sitcom-starring rabbits and the Greek chorus of prostitutes in his fantastical three-hour new film, "Inland Empire," now showing in limited release.

Of course, artists are allowed their quirks, and Mr. Lynch revels in his. Last month, to campaign for an Academy Award nomination for Laura Dern, the star of his new movie, Mr. Lynch sat on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and La Brea with a cow and a giant poster of Ms. Dern's face.

Early in his career, while other Hollywood hopefuls were losing themselves to cocaine, Mr. Lynch got strung out on milkshakes, visiting a Los Angeles Bob's Big Boy almost daily for seven years. Now more health conscious, he favors the veggie burgers at Astro Burger. "To be a grown-up and to do what you want to do is the most beautiful thing," he said, his gray-flecked hair pomaded into what looked like a tangle of swaying prairie grass. "But this doesn't happen for most people. Sadly, they have to make ends meet."

For these people, Mr. Lynch argues in the book, meditation can be a way out. For example, an unhappy insurance salesman who learns to "dive within" will find his soul-crushing commutes and stale breakfasts enlivened by ideas. Little by little, Mr. Lynch said, the salesman will find his weekdays "becoming more like Saturday morning — the sun is coming out, this beautiful warmth, with his favorite breakfast, birds chirping."

"If you were a burglar, you'd become a much better burglar," he added. "But after a while, you would probably say, well, wait a minute. You would probably have compassion for people you were burglarizing. You might even bring some stuff back."

The director's goal is to raise $7 billion to help open seven "peace universities" around the world. He also endorses Maharishi's belief that a mass demonstration of "yogic flying" — a so-called "advanced technique" in which meditators, seated in the lotus position, begin hopping in unison and theoretically start to hover — can radiate peaceful energy out to the world. (Asked if he had tried this, he responded: "Yes." Did it work? "No.")

Mr. Lynch writes in his book that he began meditating on the recommendation of his sister, Martha. At the time, Mr. Lynch was a year into a torturous five-year quest to complete his first feature film, "Eraserhead," which was released in 1977, and was separating from his first of three wives, Peggy Lentz.

"There was a hollowness inside," he recalled. "I thought, something is drastically wrong."

He dropped in on a Transcendental Meditation center. After 20 minutes, he felt a weight lifted.

"The side effect of growing that consciousness," he explained, "is, negative things start going away. Like fear. It's like the suffocating rubber clown suit begins to dissolve." Certainly, the teachings of gentle-voiced Maharishi never made Mr. Lynch go soft. "You don't have to suffer to show suffering," he said of the violence in his movies. The filmmaker sees no contradiction between inner harmony and external edginess.

"I heard Charles Bukowski started meditation late in his life," Mr. Lynch said, referring to the poet laureate of Skid Row, who died in 1994. "He was an angry, angry guy, but he apparently loved meditation."

Of course, just as meditation never got Mr. Lynch over a taste for the macabre, it never quenched Mr. Bukowski's famous thirst for whiskey. "Well, maybe in time, it would have," Mr. Lynch said with a smile. "In the meantime — just more enjoyment of the whiskey."
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: I Don't Believe in Beatles on January 18, 2007, 12:12:58 PM
Quote from: MacGuffin on January 03, 2007, 01:39:32 AM
David Lynch's Catching the Big Fish Tour Dates
Check out Lynch's Tour dates below. You can also view his tour schedule over at the Official Catching the Big Fish Website (http://www.myspace.com/davidlynchbook).

  Jan 18 2007 7:30P Book signing at Barnes & Noble @ Berkeley 

So is anyone else going to this?  Also, I'm 99% sure it's at the B&N in Bay Street, not the one on Shattuck.  The employee I spoke to says he'll be there at 8. 

P.S. Lucid, if I get a chance to talk to Lynch, I'll ask him about the screening tomorrow.  No idea if he'll know where it is though... or if I'll get to talk to him.
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: Mikey B on January 18, 2007, 08:08:56 PM
Going to the signing in Los Angeles and I will try to get into the Donovan performance he is going to be at the day before.
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: modage on January 22, 2007, 10:13:07 AM
Quote from: MacGuffin on January 03, 2007, 01:39:32 AM
Jan 11 2007 7:00P Book signing at Barnes & Noble @ New York 
if anyone would like to listen to this David Lynch Q&A i went to, its now online...

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/flash/vdo.asp?pubID=948575&aud=1&nav=1
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: MacGuffin on January 22, 2007, 09:51:37 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.calendarlive.com%2Fmedia%2Fphoto%2F2007-01%2F27508250.jpg&hash=d8f237aa6a693fbcfac442a5be08f2698d93f5c6)

Donovan, Lynch: Mellow fellows
The master of subconscious cinema and the Hurdy Gurdy Man promote Transcendental Meditation with freewheeling reminiscences.
Source: Los Angeles Times

Since word got out that David Lynch and Donovan would appear together in three cities — New York, Washington and Hollywood — people have been buzzing about the unlikeliness of the pairing. What could the master of subconscious cinema share with the flower-power Hurdy Gurdy Man, beyond a devotion to Transcendental Meditation (TM), the spiritual path this mini-tour promoted? It was like putting Anne Rice and Bob Newhart on tour together because they're both Catholic. But Sunday at the Kodak Theatre, some signs emerged that Lynch and Donovan share more than a spiritual path.

The free event opened with Lynch in an "Actors Studio"-style Q&A, responding to questions from the audience read by his muse, actor Laura Dern. Then Donovan, whose music, Lynch declared, "conjures magical feelings," played his hits interlaced with anecdotes culled from his recently published memoir. Proselytizing was kept to a minimum, with each artist instead using the evangelizing tool of personal reminiscence.

What the night revealed in both men is an immovable innocence — a belief that art can and should be free from over-intellectualism or aesthetic second-guessing. This conviction takes Lynch into weird, disturbing psychic corners; for Donovan, it's connected to childlike wordplay and storytelling. Though one operates in the rarified world of art cinema and the other is a pop star, each has produced bodies of work that don't quite fit into traditional canons, serene in their outsiderness.

Fielding questions seemingly chosen to split the focus between his filmmaking and TM advocacy — his new foundation, featured in a glossy handout available at the theater doors, seeks to provide schoolchildren with scholarships to pay for the $2,500 TM instruction fee — Lynch took the folksy, direct tone that dominates his new book, "Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity." Much of what he shared, from his love of sawing pine logs to his preference for digital video over film to his credo that "the artist does not have to suffer to show suffering," appears almost verbatim in the book.

Still, he managed to seem unrehearsed. Compulsively fluttering his right hand as if it were a lost character from "Eraserhead," he spoke in friendly, oddly Reaganesque tones about how meditation has helped him shed "the rubber clown suit of negativity" and could do the same for America's youth. "Ramp up the light of unity and all diversity is appreciated," he said. It's an uncomplicated solution to America's education crisis, more "The Straight Story" than "Lost Highway." But this was an evening of appreciation, not debate. The crowd cheered his every word.

Donovan set himself up for maximum approval too, structuring his set around irresistible hits like "Jennifer Juniper" and sharing tales of hanging out with the Beatles and Bob Dylan (he even sang a "lost verse" George Harrison wrote for "Hurdy Gurdy Man"; too bad it was nothing special). After his career cooled in the 1970s, Donovan suffered accusations of being an imitator, but in recent years his reputation has been repaired. With sunshine pop back in vogue, his hook-happy songs now sound sweet instead of corny, and he can mention his famous friends without seeming like a hanger-on.

As he wiggled his hips and finger-picked his guitar, Donovan showed himself more the heir to Buddy Holly than Woody Guthrie. His great gift is for irresistible hooks and meaningful free association.

"Happiness runs in a circular motion," he crooned, getting the ultra-cool Hollywood crowd to sing along with a fa-la-la. Like most of his lyrics, it sounded a bit like a Zen koan, a bit like a schoolyard chant.

Not every tune Donovan trotted out was as light-filled and charming. An obscure number about a wild week in Mexico fell flat. (Another, "Young Girl Blues," had a nice cynical edge.) A meditator's hymn that will appear on his next album was ponderously literal. His bassist and percussionist didn't stand out, though his daughter Astrella, who joined him on several songs, offered a wistful self-penned ballad, "Dream," that would fit better on a David Lynch soundtrack than anything her dad has written.

Fellow TM enthusiast Mike Love of the Beach Boys wandered onstage to join in a finale of "Mellow Yellow," and then Lynch strolled out. The filmmaker read a version of a Buddhist loving kindness prayer from his book as his pal softly picked his guitar. Then they locked arms and left the stage, two soldiers of innocence decamping for the night.
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: SiliasRuby on January 24, 2007, 03:56:22 PM
Got my book signed by him last night and got to answer a question. They were filming it so it might be up on his site if any of you guys subscribe. It was pretty nice.
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: matt35mm on January 24, 2007, 04:53:02 PM
Mof's got a pretty firm handshake, doesn't he?
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: MacGuffin on March 12, 2007, 12:11:55 PM
Cinematography
by David Lynch

The Death of Film


I'm through with film as a medium. For me, film is dead. If you look at what people all over the world are taking still pictures with now, you begin to see what's going to happen.

I'm shooting in digital video and I love it. I have a Web site and I started doing small experiments for the site with these small cameras, at first thinking they were just like little toys, and they were not very good. But then I started realizing that they're very, very good — for me, at least.

You have forty-minute takes, automatic focus. They're lightweight. And you can see what you've shot right away. With film you have to go into the lab and you don't know what you've shot until the next day, but with DV, as soon as you're done, you can put it into the computer and go right to work. And there are so many tools. A thousand tools were born this morning, and there'll be ten thousand new tools tomorrow. It happened first in sound. Now everybody's got ProTools, and you can manipulate these sounds, just fine-tune them unbelievably fast. The same thing's happening with the image. It gives you so much control.

I started thinking and experimenting. I did some tests from DV to film, because you still have to transfer to film to show in the theater. And although it does not look exactly like it shot on film, it looks way better than I would have thought.

Once you start working in that world of DV with small, lightweight equipment and automatic focus, working with film seems so cumbersome. These 35mm film cameras are starting to look like dinosaurs to me. They're huge; they weigh tons. And you've got to move them around. There are so many things that have to be done, and it's all so slow. It kills a lot of possibilities. With DV everything is lighter; you're more mobile. It's far more fluid. You can think on your feet and catch things.

And for actors, to get down into a character in the middle of a scene and then suddenly have to stop while we reload the film cameras after ten minutes — often, this breaks the thing. But now you're rolling along; you've got 40 minutes down in there. And you can start talking to the actors, and instead of stopping it you can move in and push it. You can even rehearse while you're shooting, although I start goofing up the soundtrack, because they've got to chop out all my words. But many times I am talking to the actors while we are shooting and we are able to get in deeper and deeper.


Reprinted from Catching the Big Fish by David Lynch by arrangement with Jeremy P. Tarcher, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc.
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: Pubrick on March 13, 2007, 09:34:48 AM
you could transcribe the whole book in one afternoon if you really wanted to. the vast majority of it is already printed elsewhere online in interviews and what not.

it's still the best gift i ever received though.

        (https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi5.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fy154%2Fpubrick%2Femoticons%2Flanguage_book.gif&hash=ecc994491b0e25acea74e02e20e730c332288452)
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi5.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fy154%2Fpubrick%2Femoticons%2Fcosby.gif&hash=0e4b6d1ca64a5495aba216ea9e635b492cc0bf50)

not to be confused with best gif.
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: MacGuffin on May 02, 2007, 06:06:55 PM
David Lynch Live Webcast on School Violence
David Lynch was part of a live webcast about school violence and his Foundation's efforts to end it:

http://www.davidlynchfoundation.org/video/2006_05_01_pressconference.html
Title: Catching the Big Fish
Post by: homesick alien on August 02, 2007, 12:53:26 PM
I managed to come across Lynch's most recently released book, Catching the Big Fish, on audio book, and it was very enjoyable. He reads it himself, written siimply written but it gives some detail into his creative process. It also noticeably reveals a bit more about Inland Empire, in once instance where he talks about two dominant states of mind, describing someone who is unable to explore their consciousness as being stuck in  "a rubber clown suit", and one, through meditation, who is capable of diving into their consciousness as being truly free. He also has such funny catch phrases like "Holy Jumpin' George!" and "it makes me crazy in a good way". He's like a brilliant big kid, and it's refreshing to listen to. I recommend it.
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: MacGuffin on October 15, 2007, 03:15:08 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fus.ent3.yimg.com%2Fentertainment.tv.yahoo.com%2Fimages%2Fent%2Fap%2F20071015%2Fjrl112_mideast_israel_palestinians.sff.jpg&hash=9991e834da554f023a9da58f610e8519f70b6d3f)

Lynch Promotes Meditation on Israel Trip

David Lynch, on a five-day visit to Israel to encourage transcendental meditation, met with Israeli President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shimon Peres.

"Lynch is one of the greatest directors of our generation and a giant artist on his own, and it is a great honor for the state of Israel to host you and listen to you," Peres said Monday. "The whole of Israel recognizes your work and is proud to host you."

The 61-year-old director, who has received Oscar nominations for "The Elephant Man," "Blue Velvet" and "Mullholland Dr.," is visiting Israel to encourage transcendental meditation as a new approach to eliminating violence in schools and creating a peaceful world.

"Real peace is not just the absence of war, but the absence of all suffering, all negativity," Lynch said at the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem. "Change comes from within. From the first meditation, boom, you're there."

Lynch has been meditating for more than 30 years.

He started the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace to promote transcendental meditation as a way to aid students in violence-ridden schools and bring about world harmony.

With meditation, Lynch said, the "black cloud of negativity dissolves."

Meditation can aid not only schoolchildren, but also bring tranquility to troubled regions of the world, he said.

"The experienced gardener doesn't worry about the leaves. Get at (the problem) from its roots," he said. "A peace on the surface it doesn't address the seeds of war ... it's a `peace' of paper."

Lynch said if he had to choose between meditation and filmmaking, meditation would win.
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: The Sheriff on October 16, 2007, 11:46:16 PM
anyone into meditation, id like to hear your thoughts after this:

"Spirituality" Cements Childhood Blindness
by Barbara Rogers
Wednesday September 12, 2007
Part 1 – How we learn to judge human feelings – the most vital messengers of our souls with a protective purpose

Human feelings are vital messengers that are meant to have a protective function. They convey important information as our bodies and souls respond to the world around us, to the actions and attitudes of others and to the experiences that we make, most powerfully to traumatic experiences. But many people do not try to contact and understand all their feelings – instead they judge some of them as "negative" or "bad." This manipulative distortion of unwelcome feelings begins in childhood. Parents, teachers and religious authorities, among others, want "good" – uncomplicated, obedient and pleasing children that display "good feelings" – but no criticism and protest stemming from feelings of pain, discontent, doubt and anger. Children who speak up and express their feelings are often ignored, condemned and punished, even physically, and the child that suffers and rebels does not encounter respect and compassion.

For adults, this attitude lives on in spiritual concepts. People who learned as children to suppress their feelings will go on to discard their "bad" feelings as "negative emotions." They continue to present to the outside world the likeable, pleasing facade that their earliest experiences forced upon them. By the time they have grown up, many people are deeply afraid of their feelings, especially if they feel anger and hatred; and the condemnation of their "negative emotions" enters their philosophical, religious or spiritual beliefs.

whole thing here (http://alice-miller.com/articles_en.php?lang=en&nid=106&grp=12)
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: Sleepless on October 24, 2007, 08:02:24 AM
From www.independent.co.uk

The Big Question: What is transcendental meditation, and is it the cure for society's ills?
By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
Published: 24 October 2007

Why are we asking this now?

Film director David Lynch and Sixties pop star Donovan have teamed up to launch a campaign to encourage children to meditate in school. In a series of talks , the pair will promote the technique of transcendental meditation practised by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and popularised by the Beatles 40 years ago.Another TM convert to have just emerged is Joaquim Chissano, the former president of Mozambique, who has been honoured with the Achievement in African Leadership award.

Has David Lynch done this before?

Yes. Lynch is reported to have persuaded 20,000 US pupils to take twice daily transcendental meditation lessons with their teachers. He has also donated millions to the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education. He said: "The technique of transcendental meditation has seen a drop in stabbings, violence, depressions, suicides and the use of illegal drugs in some of the worst schools in the US you can imagine." Lynch has also spoken of the benefits he has gained from TM: "When I started meditating I had a real anger in me, and I would take this out on my first wife. Two weeks after I started meditating, this anger lifted."

The rest is just about TM in general, no Lynch.

What does Donovan say about TM?

He claims it is the secret of his success as a musician. Last year the Scots-born troubadour, famous for hits such as "Mellow Yellow" and "Jennifer Juniper", said he was planning a world tour to reawaken people to the mind-expanding wonders of meditation. "I had all the western trouble of the psyche: anxiety, anger, stress and fear which all cause illness. Over the past 40 years I have experienced the way this system has absolute healing benefits."

How many people practise TM, and what does it involve?

About 6 million people worldwide, according to the official TM website. The technique involves a form of concentrated attention in which the mind is turned inward and focused on a single point of reference. This is achieved by uttering the mantra, a word given to the student during the initiation ceremony which is chanted silently over and over. The aim is to empty the mind of thoughts, feelings and fantasies, not by blocking their intrusion, which is impossible, but by observing them as they intrude and then always returning to the central task of attending to the mantra. In this way a state of inner peace is achieved.

With practice, it is said, the mind can transcend thought, is no longer bound by feelings or fantasies, and experiences "awareness of itself alone." Hence "transcendental" meditation.

Is there evidence that it is beneficial?

Yes. Scores of scientific studies have been published since the 1970s, a number of which have shown benefits in lowering stress, blood pressure, cholesterol, smoking, drinking and anxiety. In 2005, the American Journal of Cardiology reported that among 202 patients with raised blood pressure who were followed for 18 years, those who practised TM had a 23 per cent lower death rate. In 2006, a study in Archives of Internal Medicine found patients who practised the technique for 16 weeks had improved blood pressure, insulin resistance and nervous system. The National Institutes of Health in the US has found that people practising meditation have lower breathing and heart rate yet "higher EEG coherence" indicating greater concentration and alertness. Long-term practitioners speak of an experience of "unboundedness."

Why was TM so popular in the 1960s?

It started with the Beatles. George Harrison had become intrigued by a sitar he had seen on the set of the film Help! and flew to India for lessons from the master, Ravi Shankar. His wife, Patti, who accompanied him, learnt of the Maharishi's work, who by then had spent a decade on the road promoting the technique around the globe in an effort to "spiritually regenerate the world". After the Harrisons' visit, the Maharishi travelled to Bangor in north Wales where he was visited by the Beatles, among other celebrities.

The Maharishi had already learnt that a few pop-star converts could help his crusade to raise the world's consciousness and later he invited Donovan to visit him in Los Angeles. Donovan was initiated a few days later. Later in 1968 he visited the Maharishi at his ashram in India with the Beatles, Mia Farrow and Mike Love of the Beach Boys – and a global movement was born.

Has it all been peaceand love since then?

No. John Lennon soon fell out with the Maharishi and wrote a a song "Sexy Sadie" about his allegedly materialistic ways. It did not dampen enthusiasm for the technique and in the 1970s, the Maharishi launched a "World Plan" to establish a teaching centre for each million of the world's population. He also founded a political party, The Natural Law Party, which fielded candidates in elections in several countries including the UK but is now mostly defunct.

Since 1990, the Maharishi has co-ordinated his global activities from his headquarters in Vlodrop, a town in the Netherlands. In 2005, he ordered his followers to stop teaching the technique in Britain in protest against Tony Blair's support for the US in the Iraq war and the British electorate's failure to unseat him at the general election. He said there was no point in wasting the "beautiful nectar" of TM on a "scorpion nation." The ban has since been lifted.

Is it expensive to learn TM?

A course costs £1,280 in the UK. This includes four consecutive days of instruction (90 minutes a day) with "as much follow-up as is required for the first three to six months." Whether that is expensive depends on the benefits it brings. Ozzy Osbourne thought it a waste of time. He said: "I tried TM but gave it up and smoked a joint instead."

Some TM teachers have become concerned about the cost and have left the organisation to offer instruction on their own. In the UK there are 80 official TM teaching centres. Instruction begins with a short ceremony and then the student learns and begins practising the technique.

Should we all bedoing it?

The Maharishi, now aged 90, would wish it so. He believes the spiritual wellbeing of the world would be transformed if everyone spent 20 minutes each day meditating.

So should children be encouraged to practise TM?

Yes...

* It helps reduce stress and anxiety and offers a way of dealing with unpleasant emotions

* Medical evidence shows it can lower blood pressure and cholesterol and benefit the heart

* Spending 20 minutes each day in quiet contemplation can increase peace in the world

No...

* It is mindless, time consuming and offers little benefit to those who cannot empty their minds

* Children should not be encouraged to indulge in quasi-religious practices until they are old enough to choose

* Greater benefits can be obtained by spending 20 minutes cycling, singing or reading
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: I Don't Believe in Beatles on November 17, 2007, 02:28:49 PM
From TIME: (http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1684582,00.html?xid=feed-cnn-world)

Why David Lynch Should Learn German
Thursday, Nov. 15, 2007 By ANDREW PURVIS/BERLIN

David Lynch is no stranger to weird confluences. But the U.S. filmmaker, known for such works as Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, failed to anticipate the reception his latest project got in Germany this week. Lynch, whose new-age beliefs are sometimes as quirky as his movies, is touring Europe to help establish a network of so-called "invincible universities" to teach the philosophy of transcendental meditation. The idea is to engender world peace. But at a meeting this week at a culture center in Berlin, Lynch triggered a less than peaceful exchange with German onlookers when Emanuel Schiffgens, his partner for establishing such a "university" in the German capital, suddenly veered into dangerous waters.

"We want an invincible Germany!" intoned Schiffgens, the self-styled Raja of Germany. The flap those words created, with their echoes of the Third Reich, reveals both the deadly seriousness with which Germans view their wartime past and the gulf separating Lynch's new-age agenda from that of some hard-bitten Berliners with a more historical mind-set.

"What do you mean by this concept of invincibility," asked an onlooker from the audience, made up mainly of film students with a smattering of meditation devotees. "An invincible Germany is a Germany that's invincible," replied a Delphic Schiffgens, who was dressed in a long white robe and gold crown. "Adolf Hitler wanted that too!," shouted out one man. "Yes," countered Schiffgens. "But unfortunately he didn't succeed." At that the crowd began shouting epithets at the speaker: "You are a charlatan! This is bad theater!" Lynch, who does not speak German, looked on in incomprehension.

The director was in Berlin attempting to buy a large swath of land on a hill known as Teufelsberg, or "Devil's Mountain," on the city's outskirts. The hill is made up of some 12 million cubic meters of rubble cleared away after Berlin was destroyed in World War II; the site was later used as a U.S. listening post during the Cold War. Lynch and Schiffgens are followers of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who founded the concept of transcendental meditation. Schiffgens says that with Lynch's help he plans to build a gleaming new "university" on Teufelsberg in order to provide "knowledge to students but also give them the chance to be enlightened." The university would form part of a network of similar institutions in Austria, France and elsewhere. Shortly after Lynch laid a foundation stone this week, however, a senior official in the regional government told German radio that it had not granted permission for construction of the university on Teufelsberg and possibly never would. A manager at the Berlin culture center where Lynch and Schiffgens spoke conceded that the flap did not reflect well on his center. "It's all a bit embarrassing," he said.

Near the end of the meeting, Schiffgens tried to explain his use of language to a restive crowd: "Invincible means no more negativity. No more enmity. We want to make Germany invincible so they cannot defeat you!" Lynch, who by this time had availed himself of a translator, then stood up and took the microphone: "You all have a history and Raja Emanuel has triggered some things. I would say, 'Deal with it.' Have it out with Raja Emanuel. But he's a great human being."

The American director, a bit of a cult figure himself in Europe, regretted that the real message of transcendental meditation, which he calls an "ancient eternal knowledge verified by Western science," was being lost in the furor. "Mankind was not made to suffer," he said. "We are all one. Bliss is our nature ... But somehow tonight this beautiful gift has gotten perverted. Let's march boldly toward a bright and shining future!" The strangeness of the whole affair was not lost on film students in the audience, one of whom caught it on film. (http://nosedef.blogspot.com/) At the very least, the evening was suitably Lynchian: disturbing but good theater nonetheless.


(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi10.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fa110%2FStonerSunRising%2Flynch_berlin_1115.jpg&hash=09a0dade0826a188afa06e072b1ad8a0d7f18dc5)

Director David Lynch and Emanuel Schiffgens display a plan for a transcendental university.
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: Pubrick on November 17, 2007, 11:40:26 PM
Quote from: Ginger on November 17, 2007, 02:28:49 PM
one of whom caught it on film. (http://nosedef.blogspot.com/)

that first clip was fucking disturbing. these germans are smart ppl. those are very powerful words this idiot Raja Emannuel Schiffgens was saying, and without CLARIFYING them, he just kept repeating them. here's the problem:

"this is the wrong man" -- the germans said this about RE. it's true. everything about this TM business is tragically wrong for basically RIGHT reasons. the frustration in the room was palpable and it goes further than the words he used. they want to educate everyone while in a higher state of consciousness.. well i submit to them that we CANNOT function or communicate realistically in that state, as proven by this disconnected douche.

what he was saying would probably not shock "enlightened" ppl. maybe they would understand that "invincibility" is meant as a collective ideal on a global scale and with the goal of progress towards increasing positivity. but the way he presents it is MADNESS in the real world. he claims to be connected to some ineffable state of truth and consciousness, but at what cost? he appears completely disconnected from reality.

frankly, RES, david, donovan and all other followers of this crap sound like goddamn POD PEOPLE when they speak. our world has a history, not least of which is the specific history of GERMANY and the lessons we have learned through it (the hard way). the most disturbing fact is that Germany was not the first time such horror swept the world. ideals are corrupted even now, ppl are exploited with the hope of a greater future. the raja, and whoever is truly in charge of the spread of TM, should be acutely aware of all this.

i believe there is some truth in the cause, as with all religions at heart, it is noble, and peaceful. but institutions are NOT infallible.. and keep in mind that TM is supposedly not a religion but simply a "method". there are problems with its expansion and they need to be addressed. if not completely dismantled.

one thing is certain, as lynch said to the crowd, "this is bound to come up again". and as one german said to Lynch about the dumb cunt raja "he's destroying what you built up so beautifully". lynch should heed this warning. he needs to leave this crowd.

this is not the way.
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: socketlevel on December 06, 2007, 01:42:56 PM
ya it's ironic (or not at all) because Hitler would use the same semantic tactics in his speeches.  talking in circles and instilling a false sense of intelligence (yet there is no logic in the arguments), all the while conveying a strong emotion; the very thing that people latch on to.  now obviously this guy is a Nazi sympathizer, and he let it slip, but this similar type of speech is used on any political platform.  the only reason why this gets notable recognition is the fact that it ties into a horrible past event.  on a smaller yet equally destructive means, every political agenda preys on people's sense of patriotism and emotions instead of laying out a logical blueprint of their platform.  they don't do this, because doing so would be open for criticism of their agenda; and because that is boring, it is made to look like drama instead of reality.

i do agree with you though pubrick, and the germans have become very smart people because of the usurped government's in their past.  hell they're the only ones that won't let tom cruise in their country to shoot his films, because they're fucking smart.  i did about a year of research about Scientology and that is some fucked up crazy shit, really insane when you get the nitty gritty.  germany is like one of the only countries that outlaws this insane cult, so i'm proud at the fact they took this guy head on.  the news clip never states what lynch thought of all this after the fact when get got all the info, i'd like to know if he was like "wtf, this guys fucking nutz on a Messiah kick" or if he's so down the rabbit hole that he would defend him.  scary stuff, that's for sure.
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: I Don't Believe in Beatles on December 06, 2007, 09:38:10 PM
Oh, I forgot to post this.

These clips were uploaded to Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k357ErdUQyk) and Lynch commented on them in three posts:

David Lynch here. (PART 1 of 3) I don't want to have anything to do with Hitler. As we all know he was not a good person who did terrible things.

I want to support Invincible Universities to develop the full potential of the student, which is enlightenment, and to have students meditating together in a group to enliven and radiate the unified field—the field of peace—into the atmosphere, into the collective consciousness of every nation.

David Lynch here. (PART 2 of 3) Invincibility in this case means dynamic peace. It means a situation where no harm can come from within the country and nothing destructive can come from the outside to harm the country.

Sometimes misunderstandings are troublesome. So I want to make perfectly clear that the university for enlightenment and peace will make this a peaceful world — a peaceful world family — where anyone can travel anywhere in the world and meet a friend, not an enemy.

David Lynch here. (PART 3 of 3) Dynamic peace is not just the absence of war—it is the absence of negativity, which is the seeds of war. These universities, established on a permanent basis, will put an end to thousands of years of war and oppression, and prevent a man like Hitler from ever arising again.

David Lynch
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: Pubrick on December 06, 2007, 11:35:29 PM
Pubrick here (Part 1 of 1) then tell your nazi sympathizer leader of invincible germany to learn how to explain his terminology. you think a few posts on youtube is gonna clear up the whole thing? it's gonna come up again because the ppl in charge of this stuff are CRAZY.

Pubrick
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: socketlevel on December 07, 2007, 02:11:14 AM
ya i guess the biggest moment in question is when he states that Hitler did not successfully achieve his goals, just being the devil's advocate for a second, maybe me meant that Hitlers ideologies and meathods were the failure rather than trying to suggest that Hitler was an underachiever.  i don't know, what do you think?  i have sometimes even read posts on this site and later thought "oh shit, that's the opposite of what i meant" just from my choice of diction.

think this is a possibility?  or is he just a bad guy?

-sl-
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: MacGuffin on May 13, 2008, 06:21:02 PM
David Lynch Talks Transcendental Meditation, Red Ants In Space, By Kurt Loder
Moby, Donovan also perform at Maharishi University's weekend honoring 'Blue Velvet' director.

FAIRFIELD, Iowa — You know you've arrived in Fairfield, a town of some 9,000 souls situated amid the flat corn and soy fields of southeastern Iowa, when you see two great golden domes swelling up into the sky. These mark the site of the Maharishi University of Management, the educational center of the Transcendental Meditation movement founded by the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, an Indian spiritual entrepreneur who died in the Netherlands in February. Beneath the domes, separated into contingents of men and women, hundreds of TM adherents array themselves around the floors, practicing group meditation. A TM veteran told me that the domes were also once said to offer vertical maneuvering room for those adepts who achieved a state of levitation, although the possibility of actually rising up into the air, which is still as improbable as ever, is something that's downplayed nowadays.

We arrived in Fairfield just in time for David Lynch Weekend, a tribute to TM's highest-profile exponent. "Transcendental Meditation" (like "TM," a trademarked term) became famous in the 1960s when it attracted such celebrity spiritual seekers as the Beatles and Donovan, both of whom traveled to India to meet the Maharishi in person. The Beatles soon fell out with him, and moved on in a huff; Donovan stuck with it, but today his vintage hits, like "Hurdy Gurdy Man" and "Sunshine Superman," are most widely heard on movie soundtracks. And so now it is Lynch, the director of such singular films as "Eraserhead" and "Blue Velvet," who is the movement's most energetic proselytizer, traveling the world to talk it up, and even publishing a book recently — "Catching the Big Fish" — about his 33 years of TM practice.

We spoke to Lynch on April 26 at the typically cheery little bed-and-breakfast inn where we were staying. (Fairfield is an intensely cheerful town, but it has no hotels, and as best we'd been able to ascertain the previous evening, there's only one bar.) The director arrived wearing his usual black suit, its lapels endearingly dotted with cigarette ash. Since he's lately become committed to the use of low-end video cameras in making his movies (the most recent being 2006's "INLAND EMPIRE"), one of our group had brought along a tiny new vid-cam in the hope that Lynch might shoot some footage for us. Which he did, bless him. And since one of the reasons he loves this new digital technology is because it allows him to get right in among his actors with performance suggestions and dialogue adjustments while he's shooting, we shot him, too, while conducting the interview. All pretty exciting. Well, for us.

That night there was a concert in Lynch's honor in a gymnasium on the university campus that had been fitted out with very professional video, audio and stage-lighting rigs. The show opened with a brief set by a remarkable singer named Chrysta Bell, a sleek blond woman whose lushly atmospheric songs recall the whispery sound of an earlier Lynch collaborator, Julee Cruise. (Bell sang on an "INLAND EMPIRE" track called "Polish Poem.") Bell was followed by Moby, another TM practitioner, who did an acoustic set assisted by a second guitarist and a powerful female singer whose voice was reminiscent of Janis Joplin. (After the show, Moby and company headed over to the local high school's prom — which was being upstaged by the Lynch-fest — to perform some more, unannounced.) Topping the bill was Donovan, who has retained the trademark vocal vibrato that featured on his old hits, which he ran through at length, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar.

Earlier, Lynch himself had come out onstage to address the crowd — if "address" is the word. Actually, the director had no set speech to give; he only took questions from the audience. This brilliant stratagem allowed him to talk about whatever he wanted, pretty much, and he used his answers to the various inquiries to extol TM's usefulness in relieving stress and unleashing what would probably have to be called positive consciousness. ("Negativity blocks creativity," he said. And "Know everything within and you'll know everything without.") TM has its detractors — killjoys who call it an exploitative cult. (You can Google them.) Lynch, however, has clearly found the practice of meditating for 20 minutes, twice a day, to be valuable in his work, and he would like to see TM taught in schools — as it is, of course, at Maharishi University.

Unsurprisingly, he got no arguments from the students on hand for his address, who were uniformly adoring. A girl in the audience, an aspiring filmmaker, asked Lynch to free-associate some characteristic Lynchian imagery. He came right up with a bunch, including "a bowling ball in space filled with red ants" and "a Buick with 16 15-year-old girls." (Very D.L., that last one.) The girl was impressed. "Awesome," she said.
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: MacGuffin on July 09, 2008, 05:35:27 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimage.guardian.co.uk%2Fsys-images%2FLifeandhealth%2FPix%2Fpictures%2F2008%2F07%2F03%2Flynch3.jpg&hash=dae13563f9e8b9a11f39530c52e9ccc30874dcc0)

'The pleasure of life grows'
Film-maker David Lynch hasn't missed a day of meditation in 34 years. He explains how one experience changed his quality of life forever
Source: The Guardian

When I first heard about meditation, I had zero interest in it. I wasn't even curious. It sounded like a waste of time.
What got me interested, though, was the phrase "true happiness lies within". At first, I thought it sounded kind of mean because it doesn't tell you where the "within" is, or how to get there. But, still, it had a ring of truth. And I began to think that maybe meditation was a way to go within.

I looked into meditation, asked some questions, and started contemplating different forms. During my research, my sister called and said she had been doing Transcendental Meditation for six months. There was something in her voice. A change. A quality of happiness. And I thought: "That's what I want."

So, in July 1973, I went to the Transcendental Meditation centre in Los Angeles and met an instructor. I liked her. She looked like Doris Day. She taught me this technique. She gave me a mantra, which is a sound-vibration-thought. You don't meditate on the meaning of it, but it's a very specific sound-vibration-thought. She took me into a little room to have my first meditation. I sat down, closed my eyes, started this mantra, and it was like I was in an elevator and they cut the cable. Boom! I fell into bliss - pure bliss. And I was just in there.

Then the teacher said: "It's time to come out; it's been 20 minutes." "IT'S ALREADY BEEN 20 MINUTES?!" I replied, shocked. And she told me to "shhhh!", because there were other people in the centre meditating.

It seemed so familiar, but also so new and powerful. After that, I said the word "unique" should be reserved for this experience. It takes you to an ocean of pure consciousness, pure knowingness. But it's familiar, it's you. And, right away, a sense of happiness emerges - not a goofball happiness but a thick beauty.

I have never missed a meditation in 34 years. I meditate once in the morning and again in the afternoon, for about 20 minutes each time. Then I go about the business of my day. And I find that the joy of doing increases. Intuition increases. The pleasure of life grows. And negativity recedes.

Some forms of meditation are just contemplation or concentration; they'll keep you on the surface. You won't transcend: you won't get that fourth state of consciousness and you won't get that bliss. You'll stay on the surface.

Relaxation techniques can take you a little way in. That's beautiful, but it's not transcending. Transcending is its own unique thing. And why is transcending so easy? Because it's the nature of the mind to go to fields of greater happiness. It naturally wants to go. And the deeper you go, the more there is, until you hit 100% pure bliss. Transcendental Meditation is the vehicle that takes you there. It's the experience that does everything.

One of the main things that got me talking publicly about Transcendental Meditation was seeing the difference it can make to kids. Kids are suffering. Stress is hitting them at a younger and younger age. And there are all these different learning disorders that I never even heard about before.

At the same time, I saw the results of schools where the students and teachers practise transcendental meditation - where the student learns to dive within and unfold the self, that pure consciousness. Grades go up and test scores improve; students and teachers have less stress, less anxiety. The joy of learning and the joy of teaching increase.

My foundation, the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace, was set up to help more kids get that kind of experience. We've raised money and given it to schools throughout the world to allow tens of thousands of students to learn to meditate. It's amazing to see kids who do this. Stress just doesn't catch them; it's like water off a duck's back.

I am doing this not only for the students' sake, for their own growth of consciousness, but for all of us, because we are like lightbulbs. And like lightbulbs, we can enjoy that brighter light of consciousness within, and also radiate it. I believe that the key to peace is in this.
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: MacGuffin on January 30, 2009, 01:13:48 AM
David Lynch Foundation World Harmony Concert

Paul McCartney, Donovan, Eddie Vedder, Sheryl Crow, Paul Horn, Moby and more will perform a global benefit concert at Radio City Music Hall in New York City on Saturday, April 4, 2009, in support of the David Lynch Foundation's international initiative to teach one million children the Transcendental Meditation technique—and change the world overnight. Find out more over at: http://www.davidlynchfoundation.org/concert.html
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: jenkins on September 16, 2013, 01:15:53 AM
jb
and others,

didn't know about this and i'm excited!

Dir. David Lynch, 2012, digital presentation, 71 min


"Meditation Creativity Peace" is David Lynch Foundation Television's (http://dlf.tv/) compelling new documentary film featuring exclusive, candid footage from David Lynch's 16-country tour around the world when he spoke to government leaders, film students, and the press during 2007 and 2008. David's unique, free-styling demeanor grabs your attention from the very beginning of the film. David has also selected deeply insightful quotes from great thinkers and revered texts throughout history, which reveal how the practice of meditation, developing creativity, and enjoying true inner peace are the birthright of everyone. As David says in the documentary, "Transcendental Meditation is for human beings—it doesn't matter where you live."
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: jenkins on October 12, 2013, 09:14:02 PM
you can guess. none of the us visits were included, and since i saw him during that period and in the us, i got to see a whole bunch of different places in kinda the same way (except through low-midrange cameras). i was excited when:
he responded to questions about consciousness and religion and other things. he doesn't seem resistant to the ideas of people finding sublime totality through other venues, he just thinks trans med is the best and gives you an arrow into a realm beyond the surface (bliss). starting with: first lesson, go sign up today. he's on a mellow mission for peace, it's true, and based even on what he's saying (about totality) this view isn't portrayed as obligatory understanding for peace. he's just all about it

lynch is all about peace. i got no probs with that
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: Pubrick on October 12, 2013, 11:50:09 PM
What's his recurring dream and what was the action.
Title: Re: Lynch on transcendental meditation
Post by: jenkins on October 13, 2013, 12:12:28 AM
she asks lynch if he's ever had recurring dreams. he asks her to come on stage next to him, which of course she does. seems like maybe he needs a friend while he tells a personal story

the dream is about being in a desert... a normal kind of desert, but lynch describes it his style and (probably) wiggles his fingers. he sees a man who is his father. he has two kinds of father, a good and a bad one, and he can't tell which father it is. he says in the dream he walks toward the father. NOW he lurches at the girl. she's shocked. it's an old horror story gag. the audience laughs and lynch smiles because he knows he's being funny. he holds the girl's arm while she recovers from being surprised

then, not done. the girl calms down and there's quieter audience laughter. lynch's smile gets bigger. punchline: "and that was my nice father." everyone erupts with laughter. end scene