Catching the Big Fish

the first dive

He whose happiness is within, whose contentment is within,

whose light is all within, that yogi, being one

with Brahman, attains eternal freedom in divine consciousness.

bhagavad-gita

When I first heard about meditation, I had zero interest in it. I wasn t even curious. It sounded like a waste of time.

What got me interested, though, was the phrase true happiness lies within. At first I thought it sounded kind of mean, because it doesn t tell you where the within is, or how to get there. But still it had a ring of truth. And I began to think that maybe meditation was a way to go within.

I looked into meditation, asked some questions, and started contemplating different forms. At that moment, my sister called and said she had been doing Transcendental Meditation for six months. There was something in her voice. A change. A quality of happiness. And I thought, That s what I want.

So in July 1973 I went to the TM center in Los Angeles and met an instructor, and I liked her. She looked like Doris Day. And she taught me this technique. She gave me a mantra, which is a sound-vibration-thought. You don t meditate on the meaning of it, but it s a very specific sound-vibration-thought.

She took me into a little room to have my first meditation. I sat down, closed my eyes, started this mantra, and it was as if I were in an elevator and the cable had been cut. Boom! I fell into bliss pure bliss. And I was just in there. Then the teacher said, It s time to come out; it s been twenty minutes. And I said, IT S ALREADY BEEN TWENTY MINUTES?! And she said, Shhhh! because other people were meditating. It seemed so familiar, but also so new and powerful. After that, I said the word unique should be reserved for this experience.

It takes you to an ocean of pure consciousness, pure knowingness. But it s familiar; it s you. And right away a sense of happiness emerges not a goofball

Three-time Oscar-nominated director David Lynch is among the leading filmmakers of our era. From the early seventies to the present day, Lynch's popular and critically acclaimed film projects, which include Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Wild at Heart, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, INLAND EMPIRE, and Twin Peaks are internationally considered to have broken down the wall between art-house cinema and Hollywood moviemaking.

The director explores every aspect of his work in film, music, photography, and other aesthetic pursuits, including behind-the-scenes stories about Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive and revelations on his thirty-five years of Transcendental Mediation. Read it because: This is about as close as Lynch will ever come to an interior shot of his famously weird mind.
Kelly Lemieux, Rocky Mountain News
 
The book, an unexpected delight, serves as a sort of skeleton key to the rest: In it he muses on the relationship between Transcendental Meditation and his work with appealingly nondidactic and non New Age-y clarity, and in so doing opens the door a crack, at least to the heretofore impenetrable mysteries of his imagination.
  Katie Bolick, The Boston Globe

The quirky helmer known for Boy Scout demeanor and twisted tales shares his creative vision in a surprisingly gentle tome informed by the underlying teachings of Transcendental Meditation. But don t worry: David Lynch, one-time creator of The Angriest Dog in the World comic, keeps the proselytizing to a minimum. He addresses topics ranging from working with wood (for it) to director s commentaries (against) in deceptively simple, yet ultimately affirming, chapters. There s much for fans and aspiring filmmakers to enjoy.
Variety
 
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," says David Lynch the idiosyncratic filmmaker whose creations include Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire, and the cult TV classic, Twin Peaks. He claims that he has savored the pleasures of diving deep thanks to a 33-year practice of Transcendental Meditation (TM). He describes the fun of gathering what he calls "firewood" (all kinds of ideas and things for a film), the joy he takes in seeing an aging building or a rusted