Maharishi and the yogi

Yogi Bearer
Dark Films Aside, David Lynch Brims With the Light of Transcendental Meditation

By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 2, 2005; Page C01

LOS ANGELES David Lynch is wiggling his fingers. As the filmmaker becomes
excited,
wiggle speed increases. He is really wiggling now. He is talking about diving
into an
infinite ocean of pure bliss.

Earthlings, pack a bag. David Lynch is on a mission. It might not be the mission
you would
have chosen for him. But it is his mission and he appears sincere. The director
behind
some of the most disturbing images in cinema, who brought us the mutant baby in
the
avant-garde classic “Eraserhead” and the portable gas-inhaling mask apparatus
for Dennis
Hopper’s “mommy, mommy, mommy” character in “Blue Velvet,” would now like to
save
the planet from negativity.

“It’s a no-brainer,” he says.

The plan? Peace factories.

“You build a facility like a factory, you house the people, you feed the people,
they do their
meditation,” he says, “and it’s a beautiful, beautiful thing for the world.”

Lynch is sitting in the recording studio at his three-house modernist complex in
the
Hollywood Hills, just down the road, as it turns out, from Mulholland Drive,
which is also
the title of one of his inscrutable films.

His space, if not his mind, is spare and uncluttered. There is a row of guitars
(he plays). A
studio for his canvases (he paints). In a kitchen sits a high-end espresso
machine. He
confesses a fondness for caffeine and sweets (he famously went to a nearby Bob’s
Big Boy
restaurant almost every day for seven years for a chocolate milkshake). On a
recent
morning, the 59-year-old artist is dressed in a white shirt, buttoned to the
collar, like a
cowboy nerd. His pompadour of gray is swept up, three stories tall. He smells
richly of
recent cigarettes.

From his work in film and television (he was also the creator of the series
“Twin Peaks”),
one might expect Lynch to be creepy. He is not. Instead, he appears almost
sunny, as
happy as can be, talking about his plans for the David Lynch Foundation for
Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace and about his ongoing tour of
college
campuses to promote his vision.

For 32 years, twice a day, morning and evening for 20 minutes, Lynch says, he
has
practiced the Transcendental Meditation technique developed by the Beatles’
former guru,
His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, originally from India and now living in
Holland.

The peace factory workers would do the regular TM, Lynch says, and more.

Like what?

“This is going to blow your mind,” Lynch warns

Fire away.

“The advanced techniques.”

Of course, the advanced techniques. Specifically, the advanced techniques taught
by
Maharishi that include “yogic flying,” which the Maharishi University of
Management (MUM)
in Fairfield, Iowa, describes in its literature as “blissful hops.” A photograph
on its Web site
shows a pair of students with legs crossed in the lotus position lifting off a
mat, meaning
they’re levitating.

Here’s his plan: “At least 8,000 beautiful souls working like factory
workers doing their
program, pumping peace for the world,” Lynch says. Why 8,000? That is,
approximately,
the square root of 1 percent of the world’s population, which is the number
needed to
produce the Global Maharishi Effect for reducing international conflict.

The price tag? Seven billion dollars, Lynch says. Give or take. The figures are
in flux. For
seven peace factories. (Why seven when you only need one? “A safety factor.”)

Lynch so far has spent $400,000 of his own money and raised $1 million in
donations
from a handful of wealthy individuals and organizations. “Money will open so
many doors.
It will start snowballing.” Still. Seven billion — it’s a lot of money. Or is
it?

Lynch estimates that world peace, or what Maharishi’s followers call “Heaven on
Earth,” can
be purchased for the price of 3 1/2 B-1 bombers. “In which case,” Lynch says,
“it would be
a bargain.”

* * *

Tom Cruise and Scientology. Madonna and Kabbalah. The recent results of
celebrity
endorsement for higher consciousness are mixed.

Lynch, once famous for his reclusive habits, has been touring college campus
since
September. First he did the East Coast, then the West, and early next year he
plans to do
the Midwest and South. To date he has visited 13 schools, including several
Ivy-league
colleges, as well as American University, home of a Lynch-inspired research
project to see
whether meditation increases healthy habits and work performance while reducing
stress.
AU psychology professor David Haaga, who learned TM years ago but no longer
practices
it, is a principal investigator for the study. He expects 300 students to
participate; they get
TM training free (it usually costs $2,500), paid for by Lynch and the Abramson
Family
Foundation.

Last month, Lynch appeared at the performing arts auditorium at the University
of
Southern California. The free event was filled to the balcony seats. Bob Roth, a
longtime
figure in the TM establishment (which claims 6 million people worldwide have
undergone
training) and now vice president of the Lynch Foundation, warns the students in
Los
Angeles that his boss will be using “big words” such as bliss, consciousness,
being and
enlightenment. “David really doesn’t like public speaking,” Roth says.

Lynch strides to the podium in a skinny black tie, white shirt and rumpled
jacket and
announces, “I will try to answer questions on film and meditation and
consciousness.” He
does not give a speech, going right to the Q&A.

The inquiries roam the range.

Like, what is “Mulholland Drive” about? (The film is notorious for its opacity.)
“I’m sorry,”
Lynch says in a friendly way. “I can’t do that.”

Or, okay, so you’re meditating and there’s this infinite oneness and total being
and so you
become, like, God?

Lynch says he is not an enlightened being: “I’m sorry to say, but I’m on my way.
Every day
gets better and better.”

Another student asks how many drugs, in particular hallucinogens, Lynch has
ingested.
That seems a reasonable question. “I have smoked marijuana,” he says, to
scattered
applause. “I don’t smoke anymore. I was in art school in the ’60s, so you can
imagine what
was going on. But my friends said, ‘No, no, no, David, don’t take those drugs.’
” Nervous
laughter rises from audience.

He is asked how he started meditating, and Lynch says, “Initially I had zero
interest in it,”
but there was something in the voice of his sister, who had just been trained in
TM, and he
signed up. He explains that “you’re expert from your first mediation.” He says
he’s never
missed a session in 32 years. “You sit down comfortably, close your eyes, say
your mantra
and away you go!” (Lynch, like other TM-ers, keeps his mantra secret.)

Some of the questions sound like they come from TM practitioners planted in the
audience, but Roth later says that is not so.

When he talks to the students about his meditation, Lynch makes it sound quite
nice. “Like
blissful electricity,” he says, and he is evangelical in regard to its benefits.
As a spur to
creativity. As salve for stress. “Things that used to crush you, don’t,” he
tells them. “Life
becomes more of a game that’s fun to play.” (In a later interview, Lynch
described his first
time, in 1973: “You’re taught how. I went to a little room. Quiet. I closed my
eyes. Started
that mantra. It was like I was in an elevator and they snipped the cables. And
fuummm !
Down I went into pure bliss. I’ve said this many times, but the word unique
should be
saved for that experience.”)

Then it’s time for show and tell. Fred Travis, director of the Psychophysiology
Center at the
Maharishi University of Management, comes onstage with Shane Zisman, a
“volunteer” who
is wearing a blue cap bristling with electrode sensors. Zisman, who has been
meditating
since he was 5 years old, takes a seat and Travis plugs him into an
electroencephalograph,
and the EEG readout is projected on a large screen. Travis asks Zisman to close
his eyes
and begin to mediate. After 16 seconds, Travis points to a change in the waves.
“See!
There!” But if the squiggles are profound, it’s hard to grasp. The demonstration
seems a
little cheesy. The audience is not moved to ooohhs and aaahhs.

Next up is John Hagelin, a Harvard-trained physicist, past presidential
candidate from the
Natural Law Party (dominated by TM-ers) and now at Maharishi University. Hagelin
alludes
to such concepts of physics as the Grand Unified Theory and cosmic superstrings,
though
he does not describe them in any detail. “The universe,” he announces, “is
superficially
complex and fundamentally simple.” This does not seem to blow anyone’s mind.
Hagelin
and Travis appear to serve a need in that the TM movement strives to prove
itself as
“scientific” as opposed to “religious” (because the meditation does have its
roots planted in
the Hindu tradition).

Then Hagelin makes the pitch. David Lynch wants to see TM introduced into the
curriculum from elementary school to college. He wants students everywhere to
learn to
meditate. He wants world peace. There are “52 published studies,” Hagelin says,
that prove
“the spillover effect” that TM emits, like some kind of cosmic wi-fi, into the
surrounding
communities. Back in 1993, about 4,000 TM-ers gathered in Washington for two
months
to repeat their mantras and according to Hagelin reduced violent crime by 18
percent
(though police commanders at the time attributed the decrease to increased
patrols and
arrests)

“If you can’t teach George W. Bush to meditate, then you surround him with
meditators,”
Hagelin says. He tells the students to fill out a card on the way out and David
Lynch will
get back to them shortly on how and where to get a scholarship to learn
Transcendental
Meditation.

* * *

The next morning at his home, Lynch seems pleased with the talk. (According to
Roth,
more than 100 students asked for more information at the USC event and, to date,
several
hundred across the country have gotten TM scholarships. Their goal, he says, is
to train
10,000 in the next 18 months.)

Lynch is asked why he is doing this.

“I was just a regular meditator for a long while, making films and paintings,”
Lynch says,
but he saw what TM did for him, how it helped him navigate the perils of
Hollywood. In
this town, “people hate you. People would really like to kill you and they’ll do
it many ways.
Do this to your film. They’ll threaten you. Put that pressure on you. It happens
to
everybody in this business, and every business. If I ran my set on fear, I
wouldn’t get 1
percent of what I could. Fear in the workplace. A macho cool thing. They’re
total idiots.
Fearful. There’s no joy. Zip. Fear turns to hate. Hate turns to anger. You want
to kill your
boss. Going to go the extra mile? No, you want to kill him. This is what
Maharishi talks
about. Don’t worry about the darkness. Walk toward the light. Turn on the
light.”

Using meditation to reduce stress is one thing. But these peace factories, even
Lynch says,
“sounded kind of unbelievable.”

Yeah.

“They say it’s pie in the sky. They say it’s baloney.”

Okay.

“But to enliven this beautiful field of bliss, love, the unity of life. Through
the greatest
machines on Earth, the human brain, to dive within, because we are built to dive
within.
We’re built for enlightenment.”

His fingers are really wiggling now. “When people catch on to this,” he says,
“this is a done
deal.”
– end – from WashingtonPost.com