October 22, 2003 -- DIRECTOR David Lynch wants you to give peace a chance - by helping him raise $1 billion to establish a vast network of "peace palaces" around the world.
Lynch, who has been a follower of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Transcendental Meditation movement for 30 years, tells PAGE SIX that his bearded guru wants to build meditation meccas in 3,000 of the world's largest cities, including a headquarters in India that will house 40,000 followers.
"He is teaching a way to go within and gain enlightenment," says Lynch, who launches his peace drive Friday morning with a press conference at The Plaza hotel.
"There's this beautiful ocean of bliss and consciousness that is able to be reached by any human being by diving within, which is really peaceful and harmonious and can be enlivened by the group process. This group is a peace-creating group. It saturates the atmosphere. This is all about establishing peace. Right now, we gotta get peace back in the world. Peace is a real thing."
While Lynch's peculiar peace push would seem to invite ridicule by cynical New Yorkers, the director behind such creepy classics as "Eraserhead," "Blue Velvet" and, most recently, "Mulholland Drive," remains deeply devoted to his cause: "I'm going all out for this," vows Lynch. "It's kind of important to have peace on earth."
The hopeful helmer tells us he turned on many of his friends and co-workers to TM.
"Everyone in my office does it," Lynch says. "I've introduced it to people on my movie sets, too. I'm not gonna drop any names."
Indeed, back in June, Lynch, his "Wild at Heart" actress Laura Dern and "Mulholland Drive" starlet Laura Haring, as well as Heather Graham, declared their support for a $4 million peace center in Los Angeles, where meditators would gather twice a day to practice "yogic flying," a group practice that supposedly sends positive vibrations out into the world and reduces stress and crime.
Scheduled to join Lynch at Friday's Plaza press conference are choreographer Robert La Fosse, physicist John Hagelin, peace activist Robert Brown and the Maharishi himself, live via satellite from the Netherlands.
Copyright 2003 NYP Holdings, Inc.
Back to the David Lynch articles page.