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It’s always surprising when someone’s demeanor seems at odds with their work. One doesn’t expect small talk from Salman Rushdie or bitter musings from Jessica Simpson.
It’s more than a little surprising, then, that director David Lynch would sum up his dream of creating world peace as “turning on a light.” It’s a dream he’s been putting time and money into: Earlier this summer, Lynch launched the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace. He wants to raise as much money as possible — his goal is $7 billion — to help children reduce stress through Transcendental Meditation. […]
For 30 years, in addition to his painting and moviemaking, Lynch has been practicing Transcendental Meditation, a form of meditation popularized by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the 1960s. While the actual practice of TM only calls for twice-daily 20-minute sessions of silent meditation, its proponents make some grand claims: With 8,000 advanced meditators practicing at a time, “social tensions can be defused on a global scale,” according to physicist, former presidential candidate and foundation co-founder John Hagelin. To help promote his cause, Lynch has been touring the country’s college campuses, dodging questions on the meaning of his enigmatic movies and expounding on the benefits of TM. He’ll be at Wheeler Auditorium at UC Berkeley at 7:30 p.m. today to talk on “Consciousness, Creativity and the Brain.’’ The Chronicle called to ask him about this marriage of art and meditation. Speaking from his Los Angeles office, Lynch was extremely sunny. Steadfastly refusing to talk about his newest film, “Inland Empire,’’ shot entirely on digital video, he talked about bliss, wakefulness and the possibility of world peace. Coming from the master of the distorted dream sequence, it was a bit surreal.
Q: I understand you began practicing TM in the early ’70s at the suggestion of your sister and have been doing it ever since. Is this the only form of meditation you’ve tried? What else do you do to relax?
A: No, I didn’t ever try anything else, and if I didn’t have it now, I don’t know what other form I would attempt. I would want to transcend, experience a unified field of consciousness, an ocean of self-awareness. I don’t want to get a little bit relaxed. Do you know what a consciousness-based education is?
Do you understand that it has nothing to with belief? People from all religions practice TM. You don’t even have to believe in its effects, you don’t have to believe any part of this for it to work. If you’re a human being, it’ll work. It’s like if you step up to X-ray machine, you don’t have to believe in the machine to have it work. We want to give students a technique to dive within and experience the self. As it unfolds and they grow in consciousness, they gain awareness, wakefulness, bliss, universal love, energy.
Q: You’re known for rejecting the idea that there are easy interpretations to your work. How do you reconcile this with your practice of TM, which literally claims to have an answer for something as huge as world peace?
A: I don’t think it matters how I see things. The answer to “Mulholland Drive” is inside each person as subjective intuition goes to work. Like many things in life that are fairly abstract, the idea of world peace is so complicated on the surface, but I don’t really worry about fighting the darkness — like the Maharishi says, just turn on the light. Modern science has discovered unified field in matter. They say that everything that is a thing emerges from the field and that field can be enlivened in human beings by a peace-creating group. Turn on the light so bright, it evaporates negativity. ... It’s like building a factory for peace. The sooner it’s tried, the sooner we’ll know if it works.
Q: OK, say we get world peace, we get bliss and serenity. Wouldn’t that be bad for your business? Your films reflect the incoherence, the darker parts of human consciousness.
A: Oh, well, everything will change. Paintings and film will change, but you would still catch ideas. I don’t think peace would be a boring thing. I mean, who knows what it would be like? I think it’d be incredible, so full of vitality, there would be an ocean of solutions. We would grow in bliss.
Q: That’s true. We don’t know what world peace would be like. There’s a line of thought, though, that depression has been credited with ...
A: I know! It’s really weird, the idea that you have to suffer to create. I think it’s absolutely the opposite — you can show suffering so much better when you’re not suffering. When that cloud of hate, fear, anxiety is lifted, you can really go to work translating the ideas you have within.
Q: I agree, actually. Depression does not foster creativity. Do you think your work with the Foundation, the mission of world peace, will take away from your film and art endeavors?
A: Well, you know, there’s 24 hours in a day. I love to make films, paint, saw wood and I would like to play a part in getting a peaceful world.