| | David Lynch is one of my favorite artists. His surrealists films tap powerfully into my emotion-core, vibrating there in strangely consonant harmonies, resonating somewhere in a land between my rational brain and my Id, speaking to something weird and disturbed and terrified and childish within me, often evoking what I think Freud best described as the "uncanny."
So, of course, it is intriguing to me that Lynch has been a lifelong meditator.
His chosen technique is TM - the Transcendental Meditation school - as promoted by the Maharishi Yogi.
I don't know a lot about TM except what I've gleaned here and there, as well as some supplemental readings, such as this book called The Maharishi Effect: A Personal Journey Through the Movement That Transformed American Spirituality by Geoff Gilpin, which I thought was a funny, sad, and revealing memoir/expose of what an old school TM insider and Maharishi University graduate makes of it all.
I also read some of The Science of Being and Art of Living by the Maharishi Yogi, but it wasn't a meditation manual so I lost interest in it pretty fast.
TM seems to be a huge, secretive, engine-of-money-generation ala Scientology in some ways, but influenced by Vedic philosophy, etc. They charge HUGE amounts of money to teach meditation, as in the thousands of dollars type huge. And they are always trying to claim that their style of meditation IS THE BEST EVA!! Whatevs.
The yogic flying videos one finds on Youtube are pretty darn amusing, though! Full lotus hopping. I like when they race each other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO8HI884_zI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHwhGUo90jw
Anyway, I've always wondered, what attainments, if any, do you think David Lynch has attained?
TM seems to be a mantra meditation, so probably all he does in his twice daily 15 minute sits is a kind of samatha-style meditation, right? So maybe he gets jhana, or some of the higher jhanas? In promotional videos about TM, Lynch does tend to go on and on about "bliss," so that makes me think maybe he is blissing out in some jhana state or other.
There is no indication that TM does insight practices, is there? I mean, Lynch does talk at numerous times about the "unified field," which sounds like he is possibly describing some High Equanimity stuff, etc., ala the formations, but, unless he has gone on retreat, it is hard to imagine that he has managed to work his way through the stages of insight in just twice daily 15 minute sits. Lynch does take the unified field theory pretty seriously, as it influenced the creative process of Inland Empire, which is a crazy masterpiece. In everything I've read, however, TM talks about how its practices are restful, regenerative, etc., so there seems to be no emphasis on insight, perhaps just some jhana stuff then. It could be that he is describing the formless realm jhanas, such as #6 boundless consciousness, when he talks about, for instance, "an ocean of pure vibrant consciousness." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2UHLMVr4vg
Thoughts? |