American University will soon be one of the first colleges to participate in a two-year research project on transcendental meditation and its effects on college students, said Bob Roth, vice President of the David Lynch Foundation.
On Tuesday, David Lynch, the award-winning film director of "Mulholland Drive," "Twin Peaks" and "Blue Velvet," was joined in Bender Arena by quantum physicist Dr. John Hagelin and neuroscientist Dr. Fred Davis, director of the Center for Brain, Consciousness and Cognition at Maharishi University of Management.
The David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing the benefits of stress-reducing meditation to students. Lynch's foundation recently partnered with other foundations for a $1.2 million research grant to study the effects of transcendental meditation on brain functioning, academic performance, learning disorders, anxiety, depression and substance abuse among students in nine schools and colleges.
"In my mind, I started the organization to raise $7 billion dollars," Lynch said. "That's kind of a lot of money, but it's chicken feet compared to what, for instance, the government spends on bomber airplanes. So for three and a half bombers we can get consciousness based education for any student who wants it."
Lynch explained that consciousness-based education is when a student starts "knowing himself or herself."
Transcendental meditation is the most thoroughly researched and widely practiced program in the world for developing the full creative potential of the brain and mind, improving health, reducing stress and improving academic outcomes, according to the David Lynch foundation website.
"I wanted to form this foundation for enlightenment for the individual and student," Lynch said. "That's what education should be: to develop the full potential of the individual and peace on earth. Peace on earth isn't pie in the sky anymore. Real peace is not the absence of war, it's the absence of negativity."
Dr. Fred Travis said high stress and fatigue cause people to become a "stimulus and response machine." They don't develop the "CEO" part of the brain, which involves decision-making. He said transcendental meditation can help strengthen this part of the brain.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi founded transcendental meditation, a procedure practiced 20 minutes twice a day, sitting comfortably with the eyes closed.
Lynch said his first experience with transcendental meditation was "like the cables of the elevator were cut."
"I didn't know what transcendentalism was," Lynch said. "I didn't know what transcending was. I went and they took me to a little room and told me to meditate. The word 'unique' should be saved for that experience. It was beautiful."
Dr. Hagelin said that our brain is wired to experience a "inner unity" that connects everything, including human beings. This is the meditative state; it is also known as a "spiritual experience," the fourth major state of consciousness. At the meditative state, the body enters a profound state of rest that can be two to three times deeper than sleep.
"Life is fundamentally unified and superficially diverse," Dr. Hagelin said.
Dr. Hagelin also said that this type of experience was vital and "without the experience of the knowing and consciousness, people can go through life and they don't really know what they are."
"The specialization is not the evil," he said. "The evil is the specialization at the expense of knowing how to systematically expand comprehension to be global. Experience one's unbounded nature as universal consciousness. That is the organization's core nature."
The David Lynch Foundation will offer scholarships to students who are willing to learn the meditation techniques and who want to attend the schools, colleges, and universities that foster the consciousness-based approach to education.
"True happiness isn't out there," Lynch said. "True happiness is within. But where is this within and how do you get there? This is transcendental meditation. There's an ocean of it. It's called bliss. Bliss takes where happiness leaves off. If students can feel this bliss then that's all you need to know"
