Full story: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/movies/247166_lynch05.html
You may not think of quirky director David Lynch as a poster boy for mellow, but his tone grows rapturous when he speaks of the bliss he has found through 32 years of Transcendental Meditation.
“It sounds strange at first,” said Lynch, 59, whose credits include “Blue Velvet,” “Mulholland Drive” and the off-kilter TV series “Twin Peaks.”
“But then,” he added, “when you start doing it and seeing your life getting better and better, you can’t believe it. You had anger, and it goes away. When that blanket of fear, stress and anger starts lifting, this is freedom. “
Lynch, who is known as a reclusive artist with a fear of public speaking, has nevertheless launched himself on a tour of major East and West Coast universities, including University of Washington, to spread awareness of Transcendental Meditation, or TM, which he practices twice a day.
So what’s this all about? Is Lynch just the latest celebrity to tout his spiritual beliefs, a la Tom Cruise and Madonna?
In a way, but given the time and money Lynch has spent on meditation, this clearly isn’t a passing fancy.
In a phone chat from his Los Angeles home, Lynch, who rarely opens up about anything, gushed like a geyser about the wonders of TM, popularized in the West by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, one-time guru to the Beatles. […]
Lynch’s immediate goals are concrete: to raise $20 million to teach TM to inner-city schoolchildren and to college students as a way to lower stress.
Ultimately, he hopes to raise $7 billion to create and endow seven “universities of world peace.”
The craggy-faced filmmaker, who has multiple Oscar nominations, is renowned for darkly surreal storylines. Ironically, he said that with meditation, “the world looks better, people look better.”