David Lynch – John Hagelin Tour
Inspires Thousands of College Students
on East and West Coasts
More than 15,000 students attended the David Lynch – John Hagelin “Consciousness, Creativity and the Brain” college campus tour this fall on the East and West Coasts, with 5,000 signing up to receive additional information about the Transcendental Meditation program and the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace (davidlynchfoundation.com).
Award-winning film director David Lynch, Institute Director Dr. John Hagelin, and brain researcher Dr. Fred Travis spoke to capacity crowds on all 13 campuses they visited, with hundreds of students turned away at each event due to lack of seating. Students responded with overwhelming enthusiasm to the tour’s message of enhancing creativity and creating lasting world peace through the Transcendental Meditation program.
Participating colleges. The West Coast tour included presentations at the University of Southern California; the University of California at San Diego, Irvine, and Berkeley; the University of Washington; and the University of Oregon. The East Coast tour included the University of Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania, American University, New York University, Yale University, Emerson College, and Brown University.
New DVDs. The tours produced four new DVDs that are now available for online viewing and will be available soon for purchase (see below for more information, or click here).
Media coverage. The tour also attracted extensive media coverage—not only from prominent national newspapers but also from a wide array of student newspapers in all cities on the tour. For an updated sampling of press articles, click here. For an updated list of college newspapers covering the tour, click here.
Below are summaries and photos documenting the phenomenal success of the East Coast and West Coast tour:
Tuesday, November 8 — The “Consciousness, Creativity and the Brain” tour arrived to overflow crowds tonight at the University of Oregon in Eugene. A standing-room-only crowd of 750 jammed the University’s Columbia Hall to greet David Lynch, Dr. John Hagelin, and Dr. Fred Travis, with an additional 700 people watching the presentation from an overflow hall connected by closed-circuit television. The broadcast was also connected to Oregon State University and Western Oregon University so that people there could watch as well.
The atmosphere in the hall was “electric—charged with enthusiasm,” according to Dr. Hagelin. The head of the University’s film department said that this presentation had “created the most intense interest and excitement on the University of Oregon campus that I have ever seen.”
Monday, November 7 — Tonight’s “Consciousness, Creativity and the Brain” presentation at the University of Washington in Seattle added another great wave of success to the West Coast tour. At the University’s Kane Auditorium, an enthusiastic standing-room-only crowd of 750 greeted David Lynch, Dr. John Hagelin, and Dr. Fred Travis for the presentation, with an additional 400 people watching from a spillover hall connected by videoconference. The event was also webcast live to hundreds of students at several University of Washington satellite campuses and to viewers across the country.
The Dean of the University’s School of Education opened the evening with a warm and very respectful welcome for the speakers and for the knowledge they represented, and all the students in attendance were exceptionally eager to hear about the Transcendental Meditation program and its impact in creating enlightenment and world peace.
Media director Bob Roth commented, “The feeling in the hall tonight was superb. Each evening on this tour seems to exceed expectations and bring a powerful new wave of purity and coherence to the city and the nation.”
To watch the entire University of Washington presentation online, click here.
Sunday, November 6 — At UC-Berkeley tonight, 750 people filled Wheeler Auditorium to hear the “Consciousness, Creativity and the Brain” presentation, responding enthusiastically to the deep knowledge provided by the speakers.
Saturday, November 5 — At the University of California in Irvine, students lined up four hours in advance to get seats for tonight’s presentation, packing the 500-seat Crystal Cove Auditorium plus a 300-seat overflow hall where the talk was broadcast live via video. University chancellors, deans, and department chairs attended the presentation along with their students, as did local philanthropists and heads of foundations. In addition, 400 people at Portland State University watched the event live via webcast and raved about the talks. All the speakers brought both deep knowledge and lively humor to their presentations, keeping the audience swinging between rapt attention and gales of laughter.
To watch the entire University of California–Irvine presentation online, click here. (RealPlayer)
Friday, November 4 — Over 1,000 people filled the Price Center Ballroom at the University of California in San Diego tonight to hear David Lynch, Dr. John Hagelin, and Dr. Fred Travis speak on “Consciousness, Creativity and the Brain.” The respectful and appreciative audience responded very enthusiastically to the profound knowledge brought out by the speakers, and hundreds of students signed up for more information.
Thursday, November 3 — More than 1,200 people packed the Bovard Auditorium at the University of Southern California tonight to hear award-winning film director David Lynch, US Peace Government president Dr. John Hagelin, and M.U.M. brain researcher Dr. Fred Travis speak on “Consciousness, Creativity and the Brain.”
The USC presentation kicked off this month’s West Coast college campus tour and was hugely successful, punctuated by many enthusiastic standing ovations from the crowd. David Lynch opened the talk by offering to answer questions about his films and filmmaking, but every question from the audience focused on consciousness, enlightenment, the TM program, and the brain—a remarkable new level of receptivity and responsiveness from the public. Even the seasoned media reporters attending the talk were impressed by the presentation’s depth of knowledge and research and by the eloquence of all the speakers.
October 2, Brown University—More than 650 students packed Solomon Hall tonight at Brown University in Providence for the last stop on the David Lynch “Consciousness, Creativity and the Brain” tour. An additional 185 found seating in an overflow hall with video feed, but 350 more were turned away at the door.
New DVD: All the people who showed up were given a new two-hour DVD featuring an engaging interview with David Lynch about meditation, consciousness, and filmmaking, followed by Dr. John Hagelin’s powerful “Creating Peace” presentation given in Miami at the prestigious Prophets Conference in June 2005. This DVD, which has been distributed throughout the week to all students attending the tour presentations, will be available for general purchase very soon.
Saturday, October 1: The “Consciousness, Creativity and the Brain” tour arrived in Boston tonight for a 7:30 p.m. presentation at the Majestic Theater. On the previous Wednesday, when free tickets for the talk were to be distributed from the Majestic Theatre box office, the ticket line had already wrapped around the block an hour before the box office opened, and all 1,200 available seats were gone within two hours. Students from Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brandeis, Boston University, Boston College, and Emerson College (the host institution for tonight’s event) attended the presentation and responded very enthusiastically to all the speakers.
New DVD: Emerson College, which owns the Majestic Theater and is renowned as one of the finest schools for communications in the nation, videotaped tonight’s entire presentation with state-of-the-art, six-camera production equipment. The college has now produced a DVD of the proceedings, which will be available for purchase shortly.
To watch the entire Majestic Theater presentation online, click here.
Friday, September 30—In New Haven tonight, more than 1,200 students—a standing-room-only crowd—packed Yale University’s Battell Chapel to hear award-winning director David Lynch, Dr. John Hagelin, and Dr. Fred Travis speak on “Consciousness, Creativity and the Brain.” An additional 200 students were turned away at the door due to lack of seating. University administrators said it had been two decades since any campus event had filled the Chapel to capacity. After the talk, over 40% of the audience signed up to receive more information about the Transcendental Meditation program and the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace.
Friday, September 30—Today the prestigious Peninsula Hotel in New York City hosted the First National Brain Conference for Business, entitled “Is the Workplace Bad for Your Brain?” Leading scientists and business executives, as well as David Lynch, spoke about the practical, proven benefits of the Transcendental Meditation program for improving creativity and success in business and industry. (For more information, see businessbrain.org.)
More than 60 business leaders attended the conference—as did an impressive group of top national and international business and health media, including Time, the New York Times, the Globe and Mail (Canada’s largest newspaper), Newsday, Fortune, Money, Fast Company, Psychology Today, Self, and Agence France Presse (the international wire service for French and English language newspapers). To read the first published article about the conference, from the Edmonton Journal (Canada), click here.
Speakers at the conference included:
- Gary Kaplan, M.D., Ph.D., Gary Kaplan, M.D., Ph.D., neurologist and Associate Professor of Clinical Neurology at Hofstra University School of Medicine; formerly Associate Professor of Clinical Neurology at New York University School of Medicine
- Fred Travis, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Brain, Consciousness, and Cognition at Maharishi International University
- Andrew Newberg, M.D., Director of Clinical Nuclear Medicine, Director of NeuroPET Research, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Radiology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
- Jeffrey Abramson, Partner, The Tower Companies
- Arthur “Bud” Liebler, former Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications at DaimlerChrysler; Principal at Liebler/MacDonald
- David Lynch, three-time Academy Award-nominated film director of Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive, and Inland Empire (now filming)
New DVD: The conference, sponsored by New York Professionals for a Stress-Free Workplace, was webcast to business leaders and press across the country. A DVD of the conference proceedings will be available soon for purchase.
Thursday, September 29—New York University’s Cantor Film Center hosted two presentations of the “Consciousness, Creativity and the Brain” tour tonight, with over 1,000 students in attendance. Speakers David Lynch, Dr. John Hagelin, and Dr. Fred Travis enthralled the crowd with their discussion of the relationship between consciousness, filmmaking, the unified field, and the latest findings on brain development, and more than half the audience signed up for more information.
Wednesday, September 28—More than 800 students—a standing-room-only crowd—jammed Harrison Auditorium at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia tonight to see David Lynch, Dr. John Hagelin, Dr. Fred Travis, and Penn brain researcher Dr. Andrew Newberg speak on “Consciousness, Creativity, and the Brain.” An additional 600 students were turned away at the door, but university officials acted quickly and ran wires from the Harrison Auditorium stage to large outdoor speakers so that the overflow crowd could sit outside on the ground and listen to the presentation.
To read The Daily Pennsylvanian’s excellent coverage of this event, please visit
www.dailypennsylvanian.com
Tuesday, September 27—Students at American University in Washington, D.C., had only two days’ notice about the David Lynch tour that arrived on campus this evening. Yet 550 students poured into Bender Arena, the campus basketball arena, to hear David Lynch, Dr. John Hagelin, and Dr. Fred Travis speak.
American University is considered to be one of the top universities in the country for training students to be government leaders and state department diplomats. This small private college will be the site of a major two-year research study on the effects of the Transcendental Meditation program for improving mental and physical health of college students. Five hundred students will learn to meditate to form the core of what will soon be a peace-creating group of 2,000 college students in the nation’s capital.
Sunday, September 25—Here’s how the Ann Arbor News (Monday, September 26, 2005) described the scene on Sunday night as David Lynch, Dr. John Hagelin, and Dr. Fred Travis took the stage at the University of Michigan to speak on “Consciousness, Creativity, and the Brain”:
Packed Crowd Hears David Lynch
Filmmaker shares zeal for Transcendental Meditation
If you arrived on time to see filmmaker David Lynch talk about Transcendental Meditation last night at the Power Center, you were already too late. The venue was packed to capacity.
Harried Power Center employees with walkie-talkies loudly stated, again and again, that there were no available seats anywhere in the building, but dozens of people nonetheless lingered at both ground floor entrances, hoping a spot would miraculously open up. (Despite earlier reports that equipment had not been set up to provide video feed of the talk, those who stayed did eventually get to hear and see most of Lynch’s presentation by way of television monitors in the lobby.)...
For the full story, click here. (PDF of full article)
More than 1,400 people attended the presentation, with another 400 people turned away because the hall was not large enough.
Students in particular were profoundly moved and inspired by the speakers. Here’s an excerpt from just one student’s email after the talk:
I attended David’s presentation last evening, and walked away in a daze.... It is now 2:54 am in the morning. I just woke up, and had a terrible realization. I had possibly just walked away from my life calling....
I had understood David and John's philosophies ever since I was a freshman in high school. The paradigms of meditation, spirituality, quantum physics, interdependence, consciousness, and practicality were core to my being as I grew up and moved to Michigan for college....
I would like to inquire if there is any way possible (of course there is!) for me to become deeply involved with the foundation. I do not wish to be a mere member or benefactor. I would like an active role and help establish and develop consciousness-based education in schools in the United States, as well as abroad. I know that I have the abilities and resources to be successful. I would genuinely appreciate if you can provide guidance to how I can become connected with your foundation.
Faculty, too, recognized the significance of Sunday night’s event:
The event last night was extremely powerful for me in many ways. Something is in the air. The world is in such a twit that folks may be beginning to look inside for emerging approaches (self-awareness>>creativity>>engagement in that order, rather than the other way around). ... Most of my adult life has been in service to the dream/scheme portrayed last evening.