One of the greatest film directors of our time, David Lynch – creator of Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive – wants to raise US$7 billion to bring world peace through transcendental meditation programs. He intends to educate children in the ways of meditation. “I am starting this foundation [The David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-based Education and World Peace] to ensure that every child in America who wants to meditate can learn”, he says and the Foundation also wants to study the effects of meditation on drug abuse, mental illness and high blood pressure.
Lynch told the Chicago Sun-Times in January that he had benefited greatly from decades of meditation. “It’s not that you go dead or numb. It’s, there’s just too much happiness and consciousness and wakefulness and understanding growing for you to be, you know, suffering so much, or caught up in some narrow little thing. It just starts getting better, and better, and better, and better.”
As a long-time fan of Lynch’s weirdness, I have to say I’m certainly curious, though more than a little suspicious. Any alternative to an education program like this and I’ll listen.