>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/14/giving/14koppel.html
>
>
> Earth's Future Peacemakers Just Need a Little T.M.
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> By LILY KOPPEL
> Published: November 14, 2005
> DAVID LYNCH, the filmmaker known for his distorted, labyrinthine worlds,
> wants America's young people to clear their minds.
> The David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace,
> formed in July, is raising money to bring Transcendental Meditation to
> students from first grade through college. Mr. Lynch's vision involves
> raising $7
> billion and creating universities dedicated to earth's future peacemakers.
> "Diving within" to the "energy" and "bliss" is how Mr. Lynch, who has been
> meditating for 30 of his 59 years, puts it. He hopes "diving within" will be
> standard in every student's curriculum.
> "Pouring water on this root, these kids," he said. "Enlightenment is the
> fulfillment of the most exquisite machine on earth. Any human being can visit
> it.
> Anything that is a thing emerges from this thing."
> Mr. Lynch's explanations are certainly imaginative, a film of his mind: "The
> word transcending is the key to it, to the very deepest, most profound
> eternal
> level"; "It's not a joke. It's a thing that works. Mankind is not meant to
> suffer"; "This is an ocean of bliss. It's like grabbing onto the biggest elec
> trical line filled with bliss."
> Mr. Lynch, who is working on a film "Inland Empire," practices T.M. 20
> minutes twice a day by sitting in a comfortable position, closing his eyes
> and
> repeating a mantra. He says it allows him to enjoy "the doing of things" more.
> "If somebody is a filmmaker, they get rid of things like deep fear, anxiety,
> frustration," he said of meditation's benefits. "It's the real deal. The
> whole
> enchilada. You will fall deeper into the film."
> Notoriously reclusive, Mr. Lynch has come on stage to spread
> Consciousness-Based Education with fall speaking tours to universities on the
> East
> and West
> coasts. "I really think it will change the world," he said. "It's all
> imagination."
> The Lynch Foundation, with assets of about $410,000, has awarded so far
> $25,000 each in seed money to seven schools, three public charter schools,
> three
> public schools and one private school for children with learning
> disabilities,
> all of which requested help. Only two of the charter schools agreed to
> discuss
> their meditation program publicly because the other five schools were
> involved
> in research studies related to T.M., the foundation said.
> "We have not gotten so much yet," Mr. Lynch said. "But there are indications
> that we are going to do really well."
> Several of the seven schools received matching grants from other foundations
> and philanthropists who partnered with the Lynch Foundation.
> "He is going to revolutionize education in America," said Dr. George H.
> Rutherford, principal of the Ideal Academy Public Charter School, an
> elementary
> and
> middle school in Washington.
> Dr. Rutherford said that many foundations call to donate computers, but what
> he needs is Transcendental Meditation so that the students can concentrate
> better to use the equipment. "T.M. helps to reduce the stress that creates
> problems," he said.
> A meditation component is written into Ideal's charter, which was approved by
> the Board of Education and the Charter Association, both in Washington.
> Researchers at the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa,
> will
> measure the effects.
> To train teachers and fifth- and sixth-grade students, Ideal received $75,000
> - $25,000 from the Lynch Foundation and a larger partnering gift from Jeffrey
> F. Abramson, a principal in a Washington real estate company and the Abramson
> Family Foundation, a founder of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
> After completing training, homeroom teachers will lead meditation, a new age
> variation on the Pledge of Allegiance.
> Training is led by instructors from the Maharishi Vedic Education Development
> Corporation, also in Fairfield, Iowa. The seven-step program costs $2,500 a
> student.
> Last month, a Lynch Foundation's gift of $25,000 went to the Nataki Talibah
> Schoolhouse of Detroit, a public charter school, which previously received
> T.M.
> financing from the DaimlerChrysler Corporation Fund and the General Motors
> Foundation.
> The Lynch gift of meditation was for Nataki seventh- and eighth-grade
> students who worked as a nonmeditating control group in a 2002 study tracking
> the
> "social-emotional competencies" of the meditating students conducted by Rita
> Benn, director of the Education Center of the Center for Complementary and
> Alternative Medicine at the University of Michigan and a clinical
> psychologist.
> The
> study was inconclusive, but the students in the group wanted to experience
> what
> their peers had felt.
> Carmen N'Namdi, a co-founder and the principal of Nataki and vice chairwoman
> of the board of the National Charter Schools Institute, said that just a few
> of her parents connected T.M., a secular practice, with religion, and she
> anticipated none would question Mr. Lynch's artistic work.
> The Lynch Foundation is partnering with other philanthropists to grant
> another $25,000 to the University of Michigan, Yale, Emerson College and
> other
> colleges to help train students in meditation. On Mr. Lynch's recent visit to
> East
>
> Coast schools, he was a draw for film students and seekers alike. Mr. Lynch,
> Mr. Abramson and others are also supporting an American University study on
> T.M. on college students.
> David Jacobson, 22 , a senior film student, attended Mr. Lynch's T.M. lecture
> at New York University. He said he was there because he admired Mr. Lynch's
> films. After hearing that two of his biggest heroes, Mr. Lynch and Roy
> Orbison,
> once meditated together, he said he got curious about T.M. until he learned
> from the Maharishi Institute that the full training cost $2,500.
> "I feel like this is part of something big he is doing," said Mr. Jacobson,
> to friends who were discussing their awe of Mr. Lynch while questioning his
> eccentric role in education. "Like taking over the world."
>
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