:: January/February 2006 Volume 5/Number 1

David Lynch Set to Direct Consciousness-Based Education Effort!

By Bob BelinoffI
Independent Director Gives Green Light to Dive With-in!

Famous, even fabled independent film maker David Lynch came to the USC Campus recently, home of the famous, even fabled USC film school. The director of The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, among other forays into the peculiar, obtuse and the violent was there to talk about a reality very different from the one he creates on screen. He came to talk about peace, bliss and higher consciousness.

The thousand or so mostly would-be famous and fabled film students that jammed Bovard Hall didn’t want to know about his characters or camera angels – surprisingly – they wanted to hear how he plumbed the depths of his imagination, they wanted to discover the source of his inspiration.

While Lynch was not terribly revealing on any front, his statement was in his presence, the idea he was there to represent, and the company he shared on stage.

David Lynch was there on behalf of The David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace, an organization he founded based on the teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and the purpose of which is to bring TM into classrooms all over the world, making meditation available to any student who wants it.

He shared the stage with Physicist Dr. John Hagelin (see the LA YOGA interview on Pg. 26) and TM researcher, Dr. Fred Travis. Dr. Hagelin, who has been described as a scientist in the mold of Einstein, spoke about the parallels between the ancient Vedas and contemporary physics, as well as the evidence for TM to reduce stress, improve learning and even reverse crime waves. Dr. Travis used a USC student wired with electrodes to illustrate the calming and coherence of brain waves under the influence of meditation.

But mostly it was David Lynch, looking a little like the Sheriff of Marshall City, Kansas, in black suit, narrow black tie and 1890 pompadour who left the most lasting impression and made the most cohesive argument for TM. “There is an ocean of pure vibrant consciousness inside each of us,” he said, his fingers dancing on an invisible keyboard at his side as he spoke, ….you don’t need anger to create, you need clarity.”

Fear, anger and violence may make a wonderful story for film, he told the audience, but they are poison to the creator. Lynch has been meditating, twice daily, for 32 years. “Intuition grows – you just know how to go, it’s like an ocean of solutions waiting for you.”

Lynch has reportedly spent $400,000 of his own money on his quest to see meditation made available to all students who want it, and raised a million more, so far. His goal is to raise $7 billion for peace palaces where mass meditation would change the “field,” achieving a tipping point in global consciousness and bringing peace to the planet.

Statements like this can easily lend themselves to ridicule, but anyone who’s meditated regularly knows the power of the practice. And, based on his track record, one must not be quick to question the plot line or the filmmaker.

His previous scenarios – not plots so much as cinematic tapestries – have gone something like this: a young man meets his date’s parents at their home where he carves up a tiny chicken which comes to life gushing dark liquid, while his date’s mom has an orgasm. This is a scene from Eraserhead, Lynch’s first film which he took time off from repairing roofs and doing odd jobs to make. It took him three years and cost him $10,000. After being initially rejected by every distributor, the film ultimately went on to become an independent classic and launched his incredibly successful career.

When a plot line like this produces a masterpiece one can’t help but take seriously his efforts to change the tenor of our times and the world for future generations through his calm-eyed vision of peaceful yogis generating fields of bliss.

Watch for a Peace Palace opening soon near you. Or check out the Foundation’s web site at www.davidlynchfoundation.org

Bob Belinoff is a writer and documentary filmmaker living in Los Angeles. 
Bob@digitalwkshop.com

 

 

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