I had a question interrelating your practice of art and filmmaking with meditation. And I practice meditation. I’ve been to a retreat in which one individual was using a notepad, writing down ideas; I assume he was a writer. And the teacher sort of noted and asked him to get rid of that—you don’t need to carry the baggage of your idea of your profession of writing. And I was wondering: How do you

How do you think Transcendental Meditation would affect those of us that find our creativity in conflict and stress?

I think you’ve got to understand conflict and stress. It gives you ideas. Ideas can come from everyplace. But I guarantee you, if you have enough stress, you won’t be able to create. And if you have enough conflict, it will just get in the way of your creativity. You can

I’ve listened to the lectures, but I’ve never had a TM experience, and I was trying to think of something that might be a corollary to the TM experience. Is there something that you can describe that might be something we’ve all experienced that comes close to that?

What they say: many people have experienced transcending. And there’s an experience that you can have just before you go to sleep.

While I can respect the overall goal of world peace for your Foundation, I’m wondering: Do you think that this emphasis on the individual and individual consciousness takes away from important discussions about the structural, economic, cultural, historical, and ideological causes of war and violence?

In my mind, yes. But I’m interested in enlivening this field of unity with a peace-creating

Can you could make some explicit statements about creativity, please?

Creativity is a little bit like problem solving.

And catching ideas: they’ve got to enter your conscious mind. So to me, if that conscious mind can get larger, you can catch ideas at a deeper level. And you can understand those ideas more, and appreciate a depth of them. And the thrill of them is more, and you can solve those