This full conversation, in both audio and written form, has never been published until now. I had the immense honor of interviewing David Lynch in October 2018 for Yahoo Entertainment. We mostly talked about Transcendental Meditation, but sadly, while Lynch was the very definition of a visionary, the vision he mentioned in his final sentences never came to pass. Lyndsanity is running Lynch’s complete interview today (Jan. 16, 2025) in light of the news of the legendary director’s death at age 78.
Some people might be surprised to learn that director David Lynch has been a passionate advocate and practitioner of Transcendental Meditation since 1973. After all, many skeptics associate any type of meditation with a hippie-dippie mentality, and Lynch’s incredibly dark and twisted cinematic classics, like Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, and Twin Peaks, aren’t exactly about peace and love and hearts and flowers.
Speaking ahead of this weekend’s Festival of Disruption in Los Angeles, which will raise consciousness and funds for his David Lynch Foundation, Lynch acknowledges this seeming dichotomy with a chuckle. “That’s true. I get that kind [of question] every time I talk about meditation. People say, ‘David, if you’re so happy, how come you make these [disturbing films]?’” he says. “I say the artist doesn’t have to suffer to show suffering. I used to worry: ‘Am I going to get all calm and easygoing and not want to work anymore? Am I going to make goody-goody-two-shoes things and feel-good things?’ But no. You get more of an edge when you dive within. You get way more energy to do your work. Negativity, you see, is the enemy to creativity. People say, ‘Oh, suffering artist!’ and all that, and it might sound like a romantic thing, but suffering is really not that enjoyable.”
Speaking of suffering, Lynch steadfastly believes Transcendental Meditation could be the cure to all of society’s problems, including toxic masculinity and rape culture: He says men would be more gentle, enlightened, and empathic if they practiced TM. “Absolutely. It would bring out that thing: ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ It just would bring that out. Men have certain urges and women are a certain way, and this has caused a lot of trouble, but if men were meditating every day, they would not want to force anything on women. They would treat all people with a whole different type of kindness and respect. It would just come naturally.”
In 2005, Lynch started the David Lynch Foundation to introduce TM to underprivileged students, the homeless, military veterans, war refugees, prison inmates, and other “at risk” groups. Since then, he has directed only one feature film, 2006’s Inland Empire (though he says he’s currently “going through boxes of ideas, and trying to catch them from the ether”), but he has worked on the Twin Peaks television reboot and released two albums. And on Nov. 2, he and Twin Peaks composer Angelo Badalamenti will release their long-delayed experimental jazz album, Thought Gang (recorded in 1992-93), some music and video of which will premiere at the Festival of Disruption.
Check out Lyndsanity’s conversation with the maverick auteur about why he believes Transcendental Meditation is the most surefire way for anyone to achieve “true happiness.”
LYNDSANITY: The Festival of Disruption is to benefit your foundation. I’m very interested in Transcendental Meditation. I don’t know too much about it, but it sounds like something I could use in my life.
DAVID LYNCH: Everybody could use it. Lyndsey, everybody has a treasury within and this technique, this ancient form of meditation that Maharishi revived, this mental technique, will get you to that treasury. And the key word is “transcend.” You want to transcend meaning. You want this experience, that deepest level, eternal level of life, which is all positive. And when a human being transcends and experiences this field, they infuse some of that and they really and truly begin to expand whatever consciousness they had to begin with. Tied to consciousness are these all positive qualities. So, within every human being, there’s unbounded intelligence, creativity, happiness, love, energy ,and peace. And this is something we all need more and more and more of it. Every human being has consciousness, but not every human being has the same amount. The good news is every single one of us, glorious human beings, has the potential for infinite consciousness, enlightenment, and it just needs unfolding. You’ve got to transcend every day and bring that out, bring out that full potential, and it’s so great for the work. It’s so great for the life.
You’ve been doing it for quite some time, right? Like over 40 years?
Forty-five years.
Do you remember your first experience with it? What was going on in your life at the time that made you gravitate towards this?
Well, when the Beatles went to India with Maharishi, I had zero interest in meditation. I thought it was a waste of time, a fad, and I didn’t want any part of it. I thought it was fine for them, but I didn’t want it. But then somewhere along the line I heard a phrase: “True happiness is not out there. True happiness lies within.” And that phrase had a ring of truth to it for me, but the phrase doesn’t tell you where the within is, nor does it tell you how to get there. And there’s a lot of phrases in the world with the word “within,” but people have different ideas of what it is. But there is a deep within and that is so valuable and precious and important for the human being. Anyway, I thought after a while maybe meditation is a way to go within. Then I started looking into meditation, reading about stuff, asking people, and I find out there’s many, many different forms of meditation, but none of them seemed right to me until my sister called and said she started Transcendental Meditation as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. She told me what it was and I liked everything she said about it, but most importantly, I heard a change in my sister’s voice. I heard more happiness in her voice, more self-assuredness. And I put it all together and I said, “This is what I want.” And I went and got it.
What does true happiness mean to you? It means different things to different people, obviously.
Well, true happiness is… there’s a word, “happiness,” and there’s a word, “bliss.” And bliss, they say, takes up where happiness leaves off. Everybody gets happy at different times, but in the field of relativity, on the surface of life, we all know that the happiness doesn’t last. It lasts for a while, like you get a new car — I always use that example, brand new car. You’ve been saving up for it and you get it or it’s a gift. You just love this car. You’re so happy, really and truly happy. And then a year later, the car is dirty, you’ve got a couple of dents and different things like this, and it’s different story then. But the stuff you get from within, this bliss, it takes up where happiness leaves off and you can be physically happy, emotionally happy, mentally happy, spiritually happy. You can vibrate in this happiness and it’s so euphoric. I’s so beautiful When a human being transcends and experiences this field within, it’s a beautiful, beautiful experience and thoughts will come. You’ll pop out of there. You wish you could stay in there. But you’ll dive again and go in and experience it, dive again and go in, experience it. And little by little, there’s a side effect to transcending. And the side effect is negativity starts to lift away. So, people see things like stress, traumatic stress, anxiety, tension, sorrow, depression, hate, bitter, selfish anger, and fear automatically, without trying, start to lift away. And I call this the suffocating rubber clown suit of negativity. So many of us live inside this stinking heavy, rubber, rotted kind of rubber clown suit, and we’re suffering one degree or another, and this thing automatically starts to dissolve and that alone would be something very great, but you’ve got this… I say gold coming in from within and garbage going out. So, it’s a win-win situation and every human being, when they get this thing, they say, “Oh my goodness, that’s what happened to me.” I said, “Where has this experience been?” It was so beautiful and I didn’t want to look back. I just wanted to meditate regularly every day.
It’s interesting, because I think a lot of people associate any type of meditation with sort of like hippie-dippie-ness, peace and love, rainbows and flowers, stereotypes of that nature. Obviously your art is very dark most of the time, and I think maybe some people would be surprised that you’d be into meditation, because it seems at odds with the movies, television, and music you do. I don’t mean that in a negative way. There are just stereotypes about what meditation is.
Lyndsey, I get that kind of question every time I talk about meditation. They say, “David, if you’re so happy and all this, how come you make these kind of things?” Everybody’s different and everybody has certain things they love, and I love ideas. I love ideas that make up stories, and a lot of these ideas come from the way our world is. And stories throughout time have life-and-death situations, lots of negativity. Overcoming that, finding love, in the middle of all this, there’s happiness, sadness, violence — there’s courageous things, whatever, in a story. And I say, the artist doesn’t have to suffer to show suffering, have it on the screen or have it in the book. You can be so happy making these things. And it’s not that you become a goody-goody two-shoes. I worried when I heard about this: “Am I going to get all calm and easygoing and not want to work anymore? Or am I going to make goody-goody two-shoes things and feelgood things?” And you get more of an edge when you dive within and get this inside; you get way more energy to do your work. The negativity, I say, is the enemy to creativity. So, negativity squeezes the tube through which the ideas flow and you can’t get those ideas. This negativity is hurting you. And people say, “Oh, they’re suffering artists” and all that. It’s not fun to suffer. It might be a romantic thing or the artist could use it to get girls, if it’s a male artist. But suffering is not that enjoyable to the suffering artist. It’d be way better to get more of an edge, get more energy, get more intelligence flowing, get more creativity flowing, get better relationships, get better. This happiness in the doing. People work and work and work, but they’re not that happy day by day by day; they’re working for the money or the result. And we should be happy all the time, and all the things we do get this happiness going inside, this energy going to enjoy life, feel good in the body and this, supports all that. And more so to me than money in the bank, you’ll have an edge over non-meditators. But pretty soon everybody’s going to see the truth of this and be diving within every day.
What are some other misconceptions about TM?
Well, the big one, that it’s a religion. It’s not a religion. It’s a mental technique. And it’s not against any religion. And people from all religions do practice Transcendental Meditation. It’s ancient Vedic technologies. The Vedas are the laws of nature. It’s an incredible science, Vedic science — this thing truly works. Brain research. Now, the EEG machine, they can tell when a person truly transcends, it shows up in the EEGs and it shows what other forms of meditation do. It’s incredible to transcend; it is a human being thing. It’s not against anything. It’s for everything. And when that clicks in, millions more will jump. People of a new thing naturally are skeptics. There’s so many artists in the world. You should be a skeptic. You should look into it, look at the research, but don’t let skepticism keep you from something good. This is something that comes and goes throughout time. This technique, people have used it throughout time to unfold their full potential enlightenment and it truly works. While it’s a pure technique, it hasn’t been goofed up. People need a legitimate teacher. … They’ll get the real thing. It takes about four days, an hour and a half each day. All their questions are answered. When they leave the teaching, they know they’re meditating correctly. If ever more questions come up, they go back to the teacher and they just meditate, then make it part of their life, 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in the afternoon, and go about their business. And watch things get better and better and better.
We are in some pretty dark and stressful and turbulent times, socially and politically, right. Have you noticed an increase in people wanting to do TM to alleviate the stress they’re feeling from the world?
There’s two things. One is the receptivity is growing for Transcendental Meditation because of all the research that’s been done and the word-of-mouth of what happens when you learn this technique — how life changes for the good. … Everybody is stressed these days to one degree or another. Some schools are suffering not only stress but traumatic stress, post-traumatic stress. The kids, they say they’ve got a bubble of turmoil in them. I mean, it’s really of torment. And surface cures won’t get rid of that torment. Many, many, well-wishers of humanity are trying to help the kids and they do all kinds of things to more one-on-one time with a teacher ,talking to mental help people, drugs, different kind of drugs. They give them different kind of coloring books, better classrooms, prettier classrooms. These things are surface things. And the drugs sometimes work, but there’s side effects to them. And when they get Transcendental Meditation, this torment dissolves. These little kids see the torment leaving. They can focus again. They can understand. Appreciation for things improves, the relationships between the students. Bullying stops. Fights stop. There’s a school that got this for the whole school, one of the first schools in San Francisco. They had a fight once a week at least that required the police and an ambulance. This school, after one year of the students meditating, doing Transcendental Meditation, was like a blissful school. The fighting stopped, grades went up, the students could focus, and the teachers didn’t have teacher burnout. They started liking to teach. Relationships between the students and teachers went way up. It became a school you would want to go to, and it was one of the worst before. They’d tried everything. This torment left the children. Vets get this with suffering from post-traumatic stress. We’re almost right away like a pressure cooker. That stuff just comes out and they say, “Oh, this is so beautiful. I’ve got my life back again.” One of the [other] techniques that they use for vets is to show them violent films over and over and over, to get them numb to violence. This is a joke! You give them this technique, this ancient form of meditation, and they easily and effortlessly dive within and boom, whoa. It’s a treasure that is so good. It’s so important for the human being.
Although you’ve been doing TM for 45 years, wasn’t there was some kind of turning point around 2002 really spurred the creation of your foundation?
The foundation was formed and I don’t like to talk. I don’t like to be in front of crowds. For some reason I heard about the Maharishi’s peace0creating groups and I thought, “We are going to have world peace in two weeks. This is incredible.” And then two weeks came and went, and more weeks went, and I thought at least the world should know that this field within is a field of unbounded, infinite, immortal, immutable peace. And it’s always been there. This field within eternal means never had a beginning. It’s always been. And it’s there now and it will always be there. Everything in the field of relativity has a lifespan. This is an eternal field and it’s our big friend. … It will let you walk away from suffering. It’ll make you feel so good about life. So anyway, I thought. “I’ve got to tell some people about this!” And I ended up going around and around and around to many different countries talking, and I always felt good about it afterwards. But it’s a torment for me to go in front of people
Really? I wouldn’t have imagined that!
I got more and more used to it, but it was tough in the beginning.
So, you said that all it takes is 20 minutes of TM in the morning and 20 minutes in the afternoon. We live in a time of so many distractions. It’s hard to even get through a book or a TV show without checking your Instagram, checking your phone. There’s a million distractions going on. It’s not really healthy for the brain, I don’t think. For people of this younger generation that was raised on so much sensory overstimulation, how are they going to be convinced to sit down for 20 minutes once a day, let alone twice a day? Attention spans are short now.
Right? So, if you were told you that for 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes in the afternoon, you could go to the treasury and take out all the gold you could take… people have a choice. They can say, “No thanks,” or they can go to the treasury. And people should know that we waste far more than 20 minutes a day. All they have to do is say, “This is 20 minutes for myself.” And you sit comfortably in a chair, close the eyes, and do this technique, and 20 minutes zips by. You come out really refreshed, ready to go, more energy, more ideas flow, happier outlook on life, and you find that you’re way more efficient for the rest of the day. You’re thinking much clearer and you got this happiness that inside that carries you along. You start enjoying life more. So, it makes sense even before you start. But once you start and feel and think the difference, it really makes sense. It’s money in the bank. Common sense.
Which of your films, or TV shows, whatever, would you say is most directly affected by your meditation?
All of ‘em, because they’re all based on ideas, and I love ideas and I love catching ‘em. And I find I can catch more since I started meditating and I’ve got more energy to do the work and I’m happier in the work. I don’t know what I would’ve been like if I hadn’t started meditating. I was creative before, but I wasn’t so self-assured. And in this business, you get killed without self-assuredness. I was filled with a lot of anxieties and I was filled with a lot of anger and my situation in life. Two weeks after I would take this anger out of my first wife, and two weeks after I started meditating, she asked me, “What’s going on?” And I said, “What are you talking about?” And she said, “This anger, where did it go? “I didn’t even realize. Everything seems real natural, but people notice the changes in you before you even really recognize them. And I hadn’t been giving her any trouble and I didn’t feel the anger, and it was very, very beautiful. There’s all this domestic violence, there’s all kinds of different violence. People are filled with this stress causing them to do very strange and unproductive things. And a stressed person comes home and they really are truly stressed and the slightest thing can get them going. And if husband and wife are both stressed, little kids wonder, “What the hell is going on? What is this? The whole world’s coming apart!” They give them this technique and pretty soon, even if there’s disagreements, it never would approach violence or hateful things. It’s a different story. This kind of love blossoms inside. You don’t want anyone else to be hurt. Relationships improve. You could be going through a divorce in a very, very much better way if you got this happiness inside and more clarity and more love. It’s so good for all our relationships.
To that end, obviously in the news there’s been #MeToo. There was Christine Blasey Ford. There’s been a lot of things in the news about men being violent or predatory towards women — not that this is a new thing, it’s just being talked about more than ever before. Do you think that TM could help with that situation, like make men be more enlightened?
Absolutely. There’s the thing. It would bring out that “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It just would bring that out. … Men have a certain urges and women are a certain way, and this has caused a lot of trouble, but a lot of happy times too. So, men, if they were meditating every day, they would not want to force anything on a woman. They would treat people with a whole different set of kindness and respect. It would just come naturally. It comes naturally.
Very interesting. This is unrelated tm, but as a rock fan, I must ask, do you have any future plans to do more music?
Well, I would really like to. The engineer in my music studio… it’s now moved to Virginia, so I’ve got to learn the room on my own and I’ve got other things I’m working on. So little by little, I would like to get back into the world of music, for sure.
I was wondering if there’d be any music of your own played at the Festival of Disruption.
Yes. As a matter of fact, Angelo [Badalamenti] and I in the early ‘90 started an album called Thought Gang. And we worked, I think it was ‘91 to ‘93 on its experimental music. And through the years I’ve worked on it a little bit here and there. But it mostly laid dormant until this year. And the album Thought Gang comes out in the fall and half of a long track will be played with another track at the Festival of Disruption. And a video.
Very cool! And what about any plans for feature films? I believe it’s been about 12 years since Inland Empire.
I’m right now going through boxes of ideas, and trying to catch them from the ether. And let me see if there’s anything.
I don’t know if you want to talk about this and it’s totally fine if you don’t. But a few months ago, I believe…
Yeah, I know what you’re going to say…
You know where I’m going. But I believe what you said [that Donald Trump had the potential to be one of the “greatest presidents”] was taken out of context.
It was taken way out of context. I’d rather not talk about that. People talk about these things all day long. But I would like to say that I really feel, and it is pretty obvious, that this country’s divided. Another name for this field within is called the unified field. Ancient Vedic science has always and forever known about this field, but modern quantum physics discovered it in around the ‘70s, a field which is the unity of all the particles and all the forces in manifestation. And the scientists even say that everything that is a thing has arisen from this field in a process they called spontaneous sequential symmetry. Breaking this field is magical — always been there, this incredible, incredible field, and its unity. You enliven this field of unity in the midst of diversity where we are. And there is peace. All diversity is appreciated fully in the light of unity. This is peace and this is absolutely possible. So, all these problems, people so bitterly divided, enliven this field, and they affect collective consciousness with this bliss, harmony, coherence, love, all these qualities from this field. And you’re going to have a different world. Right now, all around this world, every single human being participates in creating that collective consciousness. And we have, like I say, a dark, brooding cloud all around the world. The peace-creating groups are so powerful. They can spread this isotopically at the speed of light and liven this field of peace within. And it’ll turn that cloud from a dark, brooding cloud to a beautiful golden cloud. And this is what I’m interested in seeing happening very soon.
Me too! Sounds good.
Good deal, Lyndsey. Let’s get the word out. It’s absolutely possible. It’s in the works right now. The groups aren’t big enough yet. It doesn’t take even that big a group, but it takes a group big enough on a permanent basis. And that’s a key: on a permanent basis. If some of the world’s billionaires put in a couple of billion dollars, they could sit in some place and just the interest could support peace on Earth. And everybody enjoys. The rich are going to be happy, but everybody else is going to be happy and prosperous. It’s going to be beautiful.