Meditation with David Lynch: When I Was Wrong and He Was Right
One sweltering summer afternoon in 2012, I sat pregnant in the back of a limo next to David Lynch as we cruised along Mulholland Drive. At 66, Lynch was at his sharpest: blazer, white shirt, a cigarette tucked into his pocket, and his perfectly swooped white hair. Outside the tinted windows, Los Angeles floated beneath the blue sky, while the faint hum of the radio filled the air-conditioned car.
I was interviewing Lynch for a New York Times piece about his nascent interest in Transcendental Meditation, or TM. After a couple of decades of journalistic remove, it wasn’t easy not to be charmed by the precision of his observations and his very peculiar take on the world. That afternoon, he seemed a little cranky-he said he was on a cleanse, and his wife was expecting a baby too. There was something in our conversation that felt heavy, even long after the car ride was over.
Beyond the Beyond Experience
Lynch recalled his first meditation experience thus: “I sat in a chair, closed my eyes, and started my mantra. It was like the cables of an elevator had been cut. I went within, and boom! I was in bliss. I couldn’t believe it.” Since then, he had never missed his meditation twice a day.
Meditation as a Lifeline
He shared how meditation saved him during the crushing failure of his film Dune in 1984. “Meditation saved my life,” he said. “If I hadn’t been meditating, I probably would’ve committed suicide. It gave me the happiness I needed to survive heavy times.”
A Shift in Focus
For decades, meditation was a private practice for Lynch. But in 2002, after he had taken an exclusive course of lessons from the Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, something shifted. “When I came back, I didn’t care about enlightenment anymore. I just wanted everyone to experience meditation.”
Mission: Meditation for All
In 2005, Lynch founded the David Lynch Foundation to promote meditation and world peace. He taught thousands how to do TM-from Hollywood celebrities to school kids. And thanks to fundraisers, books, and speeches around the world, Lynch’s efforts have brought meditation into schools, hospitals, and more than a million people worldwide.
A Heated Conversation
The discussion in the back of the limo got heavy quickly. I asked him about TM’s old religious overtones and cult-like vibe; Lynch waved it off. “Old news. It’s the technique that counts, man,” he said forcefully. “It’s what proved to me that peace and happiness were not myths. “
Reflection
It wasn’t until years later, when I was sitting at the David Lynch Foundation with my two teenage daughters learning the TM technique myself, that it finally clicked. Meditation was that easy, yet profound, little tool to just make my way a little more articulately through life. As Lynch once said to me: “Hello, it works.”
Source: Rolling Stone
