David Lynch was one of the outstanding creative geniuses of the past half century. He was one of the most effective advocates of Transcendental Meditation we’ve ever seen. And he was a great friend to MIU.

During his career, David was widely regarded as the world’s greatest living filmmaker. But he poured his creativity into many other forms — painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, sculpture, woodworking, and music composition. His life and visionary work showed that consciousness is truly a field of all possibilities.

He had an extraordinary gift for communicating the benefits of TM practice. His words were always fresh, vivid, and compelling. In his best-selling 2006 book Catching the Big Fish, he wrote:

If you have a golf-ball-sized consciousness, when you read a book, you’ll have a golf-ball-sized understanding; when you look out a window, a golf-ball-sized awareness; when you wake up in the morning, a golf-ball-sized wakefulness; and as you go about your day, a golf-ball-sized inner happiness.

But if you can expand that consciousness, make it grow, then when you read that book, you’ll have more understanding; when you look out, more awareness; when you wake up, more wakefulness; and as you go about your day, more inner happiness.

You can catch ideas at a deeper level. And creativity really flows. It makes life more like a fantastic game.

He spoke on college campuses across America, Europe, and the Middle East on the theme of “Meditation, Creativity, and Peace.” In 2012 he released a film with that title, documenting his European and Middle Eastern tours from 2007 to 2009, when he visited sixteen countries to speak with students, accept national awards, and encourage TM practice as a technique for boosting creativity and securing peace.

Countless people have said that it was David Lynch who inspired them to learn to meditate. 

David prided himself on never missing a meditation. In Catching the Big Fish, he talks about his TM instruction in 1973, describing his first meditation experience this way:

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. . . . 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 happiness, but a thick beauty.

After David had been meditating for a couple of years — but long before he became famous — he went with a friend to hear Maharishi speak at a large venue in Los Angeles. As he stood in a long line of people waiting to get in, Maharishi arrived, emerged from his car, and walked past them. David recalls all sound seeming to fall away during those moments. A short while later, a man came out of the building and motioned for David and his friend to follow him. He took them into the building and guided them down a series of long hallways, then opened a door and — to David’s amazement — led them out onto the main floor of the theatre right in front of the stage, gesturing for them to sit in two somehow empty front-row seats in an otherwise packed auditorium. A few moments later a woman approached them and asked, “Who are you?” “I’m nobody,” David replied. “Well, you must be somebody,” the woman responded, “because you’re sitting in the VIP section.”

David Lynch Weekends at MIU

Between 2006 and 2009, David came to MIU each spring for an annual series of David Lynch Weekends, intended to attract prospective students interested in creativity and the arts.

In 2009, the event attracted 200 guests from 27 states and countries as far as Italy. Besides question-and-answer sessions with David Lynch, the weekend included musical entertainment by MIU students, an introduction to the TM program by Bob Roth, a taste of the activities of the David Lynch Foundation around the world as documented by DLF.TV, and a presentation by Dr. John Hagelin on “The Cosmos Within: Exploring the Limits of Human Potential.” The capstone event was a concert featuring music legend Donovan, blues singer/songwriter Laura Dawn, and James McCartney, son of the famed Sir Paul McCartney, making his US debut.

David Lynch academic programs at MIU

David generously lent his name to the David Lynch MA in Film program in 2013, when it launched. Over the next three years, he invited each class of film students to his home in Los Angeles for a wide-open discussion in his personal studio. Students spent several more days visiting other filmmakers and significant people in the industry.

Amine Kouider, chair of the Department of Cinematic Arts and New Media and an award-winning filmmaker, was in one of those classes. “David greeted us in his studio with coffee and donuts and then happily answered every question we had. We all felt it was a privilege and gift to be with him.”

In 2016, the MA in Film transitioned into the David Lynch MFA in Screenwriting within the David Lynch Graduate School of Cinematic Arts. David met remotely each semester with each new cohort of students for an hour of live Q&A, a tradition that continued until last semester.

“David’s commitment to our programs was unwavering.”

— Amine Kouider

“David Lynch was a beacon of consciousness and creativity,” Amine said. “David’s commitment to our programs was unwavering. He delighted in meeting with our students and sharing his wisdom and experience. His motto for us was ‘meditate and create.'”

Reflections from Stuart Tanner, program founder

Stuart Tanner, assistant professor of Cinematic Arts & New Media at MIU and an acclaimed documentary film producer and director, created MIU’s original David Lynch MA in Film program along with professor Gurdy Leete and Joanna Plafsky, and he worked with David Lynch at its inception.

“We had scholarship funding for the best applicants during the first years of the program,” Stuart recalls. “Students submitted their films as part of the scholarship application. David wanted to be personally involved in reviewing those films and awarding the scholarships.

“We went through all of them together, all sorts of different kinds of films — music videos, animations, dramas, experimental films. We talked about each them, discussing their merits, back and forth. It was not like I was talking with the foremost avant-garde surrealist cult filmmaker in the world. We were just two buddies talking about these films. It was a unique and fantastic experience and a lot of fun.”

“My conversations with him were always like that,” Stuart said. “He was always easy with you. It was always one hundred percent authenticity with David. He was a committed, kind, insightful, brilliant filmmaker. The humanity was always there. You could talk with him about anything — film, art, anything — and what you always got back was thoughtful, penetrating, and laced with humor and universality. I don’t think there’s anyone David couldn’t reach. He was unique.”

“When we’d visit him in Los Angeles at his home studio, those couple of hours were a powerful experience for everybody,” Stuart said. “The way he handled the students was incredible to watch.”

Reflections from Daniel Nearing, program director

“For more than half a century, David Lynch has been ‘Catching the Big Fish’ of ideas from the depths of his consciousness,” said Daniel Nearing, the current Director of the David Lynch MFA in Screenwriting program. “He is a giant of American and international cinema, yet no matter the medium — film, painting, drawing, music — he has shown us what it means to live The Art Life with unflinching integrity and heart.”

“He has also been in recent years the most vocal, influential proponent in the world for the Transcendental Meditation technique,” Nearing added. “He insisted that TM be a part of our curriculum from the start, and as a consequence has forged a generation of screenwriting voices in alignment with the source of his own magnificent visions.”

In a recent email to the MFA students, he referred to the class’s latest conversation with David: “As we spoke with him that last time, Alexandra (class of 2025) shared that her father had recently died and asked David if he had thoughts on an afterlife. David held court, as only David could do, with wisdom, intellectual agility, and grace. Let’s hear this again from him and take it to heart. He’s there now.” And then he shared this video clip from that Zoom call.

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Quotations from David Lynch: David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2006), 28 and 4.