David Lynch : Transcendental Meditation

On the way to Enlightenment

sanunit@iowatelecom.net — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:00:00 +0100

Have you been enlightened?

I’m not enlightened, I have to tell you. But on the way to enlightenment, the good news is: every day gets better. When you experience this consciousness, this ocean of consciousness has qualities. And those qualities are bliss. They call it sometimes “bliss consciousness.” And you can dive in and get wet with this bliss consciousness. And it expands. Inner happiness grows. It’s so beautiful. It&r [...]

Transcendental Meditation over the years

sanunit@iowatelecom.net — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 19:00:00 +0100

How has your meditation evolved over the years—from a different experience each time, or gone back to the same thing?

With Transcendental Meditation, it’s been my experience, and talking to others their experience as well, you’re an expert from your first meditation.

And we could start talking about consciousness. Consciousness is this quite abstract thing. And it’s—yet the number one i [...]

The start of Transcendental Meditation

sanunit@iowatelecom.net — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 19:00:00 +0100

How did you get interested in meditation?

When I first heard about meditation, I had zero interest in it. And I’d hear it, but I wasn’t even curious about it. I was not for it nor against it; I just didn’t care to know about it.

And I had these phrases coming that we all hear, that “True happiness doesn’t exist out there; true happiness lies within.” And that phrase always got me. But in that [...]

The truth is the truth

sanunit@iowatelecom.net — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 19:00:00 +0100

When I listen to you talk about Transcendental Meditation, I like everything about it. But I am a devout Christian, and Transcendental Meditation comes from a tradition totally different from Christianity—Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was a Hindu monk. I feel I’m ready to learn TM, but I can do it only I reconcile it with my beliefs.

I was raised Presbyterian. I respect people who are religious, and I think they find something there that’s beautiful. There’s truth there [...]

David Lynch on being the Master of Darkness and Mystery

sanunit@iowatelecom.net — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 19:00:00 +0100

Most of your movies are full of negativity, violence—the more shadowy things in life. And yet you promote Transcendental Meditation, which seems to give you so much bliss. How are these opposites reconciled in your mind?

There are many, many dark things flowing around in this world now, and most films reflect the world in which we live. They’re stories. Stories are always going to have conflict. They’re going to have highs and lows, and good and bad.

I fall in [...]

Spirituaity, Christianity and Eraserhead

sanunit@iowatelecom.net — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:00:00 +0100

You speak a lot about spirituality, and I heard that you were raised Christian. Did the Bible ever inspire you?

Eraserhead is my most spiritual movie. No one understands when I say that, but it is.

Eraserhead was growing in a certain way, and I didn’t know what it meant. I was looking for a key to unlock what these sequences were saying. Of course, I understood some of it; but I didn’t know the thing that just pulled it all together. And it was a struggle. So I got o [...]

How to balance success and failure

sanunit@iowatelecom.net — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 19:00:00 +0100

It’s easy to speak about success through Transcendental Meditation when you are a successful movie director. Do you mean to say that people who practice TM never fail?

You have to learn to find balance in success and failure. Success can kill you just as failure can. And the only way to have balance in success and failure is to function on that Unified Field level. There’s your friend. You can’t fake it—you’re either in that field or you’re not. And [...]

Withdrawing from the world

sanunit@iowatelecom.net — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 19:00:00 +0100

You sound like a very responsible person, socially involved and aware of the needs of others. But you speak a lot about meditation, and I used to think that meditation is a way to achieve personal peace by withdrawing from the world, from other people, by dodging our responsibility towards each other and the society. I’d like to hear your point of view on that.

Meditation is not a selfish thing. Even though you’re diving in and experiencing the Self, you’re not closin [...]

World peace and Transcendental Meditation

sanunit@iowatelecom.net — Thu, 29 May 2008 19:00:00 +0100

The David Lynch Foundation advocates “world peace,” and it seems you are planning to achieve it through Transcendental Meditation. I know so many people who would find the very idea of world peace ridiculous. What would you say to them?

People are so convinced we can’t have peace that it’s s joke now. Somebody wins a beauty pageant, and the joke is, she wants world peace. And everybody has a big laugh. Nobody believes in peace. It’s a nice idea. But that&r [...]

On the road to enlightenment

sanunit@iowatelecom.net — Thu, 22 May 2008 19:00:00 +0100

How does Transcendental Meditation get rid of negativity?

Picture it this way. You are the Empire State Building. You’ve got hundreds of rooms. And in those rooms, there’s a lot of junk. And you put all that junk there. Now you take this elevator, which is going to be the dive within. And you go down below the building; you go to the Unified Field beneath the building—pure consciousness. And it’s like electric gold. You experience that. And that electric gold ac [...]

Why did you choose this type of meditation?

sanunit@iowatelecom.net — Sun, 18 May 2008 19:00:00 +0100

My question is about the nature of Transcendental Meditation. I’ve studied many meditation techniques. I’m curious about the one you employ.

This Transcendental Meditation is what I employ. And you’re given a mantra, which is a specific sound-vibration-thought, and the mantra is the vehicle. The mantra turns the mind within. And what makes it so easy is: once the correct angle is given, the mind wants to go to fields of greater h [...]

Get ideas going by practicing Transcendental Meditation

sanunit@iowatelecom.net — Thu, 15 May 2008 19:00:00 +0100

Do ideas just pop into your head full blown and you just go with them?

One summer day, I was at a laboratory called Consolidated Film Industries in Los Angeles. We were editing the pilot for Twin Peaks and had finished for the day. It was around six-thirty in the evening and we had gone outside. There were cars in the paring lot. I leaned my hands on the roof of one car, and it was very, very warm—not hot, but nicely warm. I was leaning there and—ssssst!—the Red Roo [...]

Paying attention to ideas

sanunit@iowatelecom.net — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:00:00 +0100

Where do you get your ideas from?

Ideas come along in the strangest way when you just pay attention. And sometimes things happen on the set that make you start dreaming.

When we were shooting the pilot for Twin Peaks, we had a set dresser named Frank Silva. Frank was never destined to be in Twin Peaks, never in a million years. But we were shooting in Laura Palmer’s home and Frank was moving some furniture around in her room, I was in the hall, underneath a fan. And a woma [...]

How to relate to everyone on a set or in life

sanunit@iowatelecom.net — Thu, 01 May 2008 19:00:00 +0100

Creativity seems to be such a personal thing. But then, as a director, you have to work with a lot of different people and get them to do what you want. How do you relate to so many people at once?

When you work, you want a happy crew going down the road together. You need the ability to focus on things as a group. You need to concentrate on one thing at a time and not have a million different things distracting you. This capacity grows when people start practicing Transcendental Medi [...]

How to be a good director

sanunit@iowatelecom.net — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 19:00:00 +0100

What’s it like being on the set with you as director?

I hear stories about directors who scream at actors, or they trick them somehow to get a performance. And there are some people who try to run the whole business on fear. But I think this is such a joke—it’s pathetic and stupid at the same time.

When people are in fear, they don’t want to go to work. So many people today have that feeling. Then the fear starts turning into hate, and they begin to hate [...]

The benefits of practicing Transcendental Meditation

sanunit@iowatelecom.net — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:00:00 +0100

I learned Transcendental Meditation recently, but I find it difficult to practice it on campus, where no one understands what I’m doing. Is it worth it?

We’re like lightbulbs. If bliss starts growing inside you, it’s like a light; it affects the environment.

If you go into a room where someone’s been having a big argument, it’s not so pleasant. You can feel it. Even if the argument’s over, you can feel it. But if you go into a room where someo [...]

Where to meditate

sanunit@iowatelecom.net — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:00:00 +0100

I don�t see how a student dorm could be suitable for meditation. Don�t you need a special quiet place for that?

You can meditate anywhere. You can meditate in an airport, at work, anywhere you happen to be.

Usually, I meditate in the morning before breakfast, and in the evening before dinner. But when I�m shooting, I meditate before I go, and again at lunch. And if I haven�t meditated long enough, I�ll meditate when I finish.

I�ve been in places where there are no othe [...]

Is transcending real?

sanunit@iowatelecom.net — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 19:00:00 +0100

How real is all this talk about transcendental bliss? It might be just your own personal experience, something purely subjective, don't you think?

Scientifically, more and more is coming out to show that transcending is real and its benefits are real. By measuring EEG patterns in brain research, they can prove that someone is transcending; they can prove that the person is experiencing a fourth state of consciousness—the other three being waking, sleeping, and dreaming. I&rsq [...]

What is transcending?

sanunit@iowatelecom.net — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 19:00:00 +0100

When I hear you speak about transcending, I think of a certain special state I sometimes experience when I listen to music or get lost in reverie, or just before falling asleep. I wonder if that’s what transcending is. Is it possible to experience transcending without meditation? Can I transcend and not realize it?

Many people have already experienced transcending, but they may not realize it. It’s an experience that you can have just before you go to sleep. You’re a [...]

Sharpening your intuition

sanunit@iowatelecom.net — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0100

I have a feeling that intuition plays a big role in the way you work on your movies. Is it true? Does meditation help develop it?

Life is filled with abstractions, and the only way we make heads or tails of it is through intuition. Intuition is seeing the solution—seeing it, knowing it. It’s emotion and intellect going together. That’s essential for the filmmaker.

How do you get something to feel right? Everybody’s got the same tools: the camera and the t [...]