This Is Cool

Director David Lynch has been practicing Transcendental Meditation (TM) since July 1973, twice a day, 20 minutes per session. In July 2005, he launched the David Lynch Foundation For Consciousness-Based Education and Peace to fund research about TM's positive effects, and he promotes the technique and his vision in an ongoing tour of college campuses.

Lynch is also working on the establishment of seven "peace palaces," each with 8,000 salaried people practicing advanced techniques of TM, "pumping peace for the world." He estimates the cost at $7 billion. He has spent $400,000 of his own money and raised $1 million in donations from a handful of wealthy individuals and organizations for this endeavor.

Lynch has also written a book, Catching the Big Fish, which discusses the impact of TM on his creative process. The title refers to Lynch's idea that "ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you've got to go deeper." He is donating all author's royalties to the David Lynch Foundation.

The video above features Dr. John Hagelin, whom you might recognize from the 2004 film, What the Bleep Do We Know. Dr. Hagelin is a scientist, educator, and three-time Natural Law Party candidate for President of the United States. Educated at Dartmouth and Harvard, he is now a Professor of Physics and Director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy at Maharishi University of Management, and the Minister of Science and Technology for the Global Country of World Peace, a virtual community with the stated goals of worldwide peace and prosperity. Hagelin co-designed the high-end, Enlightened Audio Designs (EAD) digital-to-analog audio reproduction system.

In 1992, Hagelin was honored with a Kilby International Award for his work in particle physics leading to the development of supersymmetric grand unified field theories, for his innovative applications of advanced principles from control-systems and optimization theories, and for his research on human consciousness.

Hagelin attributes his unusual career path from physicist to spokesman for global human concerns to his practice of TM and to his studies with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. In 1987 and 1989, Hagelin published two papers on the relationship between physics and consciousness. These papers discuss the Vedic understanding of consciousness as a field and compare it with theories of the unified field derived by modern physics. Hagelin argues that these two fields have almost identical properties and that for all purposes they are one and the same. Part of the evidence he presents for this explanation is his research on the effects that meditation techniques such as TM have on society as documented in this video.