David Lynch

Transcendental Meditation

In December 2, 2005, Lynch told the Washington Post that he had been practicing Transcendental Meditation (TM) twice a day, for 20 minutes each time, for 32 years. He was initiated into TM on July 1, 1973, at 11:00 a.m., in a TM Center at Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles by a teacher "he thought looked like Doris Day". Since then he never missed a program. He advocates its use in bringing peace to the world. 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 by an ongoing tour of college campuses that began in September 2005. A streaming video of one of Lynch's public performances is available at his foundation's website.

Lynch is working for the establishment of seven "peace palaces," each with 8000 salaried people practicing advanced techniques of TM, "pumping peace for the world." He estimates the cost at $7 billion. As of December 2005, he had spent $400,000 of his own money and raised $1 million in donations from a handful of wealthy individuals and organizations. In December 2006, the New York Times reported that he continued to have that goal.

Lynch has written a book, Catching the Big Fish (Tarcher/Penguin 2006), which discusses the impact of TM on his creative process. He is donating all author's royalties to the David Lynch Foundation.