David Lynch's Next Project? Documentary on Transcendental Meditation
Posted 11.19.09 by Rich Z
If you're a David Lynch fan, you probably know he's been spending the bulk of his time on transcendental meditation lately. He's even started his own foundation, which seeks not only to promote awareness about meditation, but also to bring it to schools nationwide.
With so much time devoted to the practice, Lynch has not made a feature since Inland Empire (2006). But in a recent interview with Vulture, the 63-year-old director said that his next project will be a documentary about the founder of transcendental meditation, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The Maharishi spent more than 50 years teaching and advocating the meditation technique to people worldwide, even attracting the attention of The Beatles in the late '60s. He lived into his 90s and died of natural causes in February 2008.
While it sounds like a fascinating project, it certainly doesn't sound like the "typical" Lynch fare, and the man himself stated as such in the interview.
It won't be a so-called David Lynch film, really; it will be about Maharishi and the knowledge he brought out. It'll hold a lot of abstractions. We're on our way to India in December to start the India part of it ... I don't think
it'll be a talking heads kind of thing, but we're going to do a lot of interviews with people. We'll interview — I hope — in India, a 97-year-old man who was with Maharishi from the beginning and get stories of times that weren't so well recorded.
If you're unfamiliar with the work of the Maharishi, check out his address from Lake Louise, Canada in 1968, or the interview (below) he gave on Larry King Live in 2003.