David Lynch, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Transcendental Meditation

I never had much use for David Lynch after he tried to pass off his failed TV show pilot MULHOLLAND DR. as a feature film, but the boy has really gone off the reservation this time. The former Alka-Seltzer pitchman is now milking his friends for donations to his Transcendental Meditation Centers, and not just a quick squeeze, he’s looking to raise 7 Billion Dollars!
Lynch claims he has already raised a million for the effort (including $400,000 he kicked in himself) and one day envisions seven “Peace Factories” set-up across the globe where he would, in his words, “house the people, feed the people, they do their meditation, and like factory workers doing their program, pumping peace for the world.”

Much like Polio and TB, TM was almost stamped out years ago, but Lynch is bringing it back with a vengeance. Lynch isn’t, of course, the first gullible rich person to fall prey to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The Beatles perhaps were his most famous victims, but his most tragic was the great Doug Henning.

Yeah, Doug Henning. You remember him. The ambiguously gay magician that really took the world by storm with his TV specials years before David Blaine or Criss Angel were tricking kids out of their milk money.

Henning was a geek, but he was also pretty savvy in his youth. He got the Canadian Government to give him a $4,000 grant so he could study magic at the feet of Dai Vernon. He also got a young Ivan Reitman (GHOSTBUSTERS) to produce his stage show, which he later moved to Broadway and then parlayed into TV specials.

But he also fell under the spell of Transcendental Meditation, and soon sold off his props and costumes, and traveled to India to “study” with the Maharishi. He took time, every now and then, to do little gigs like teach the Jackson 5 a few magic tricks for the stage show, but he was hooked.

In 1994, he returned to Canada and ran for parliament as part of the Natural Law Party. His platform included employing 10,000 flying yogis who would meditate to save Canada. They would create a “unified field,” as part of the “Maharishi effect” – something he claimed was responsible for bringing down the Berlin Wall. He stated, “If I can make an elephant disappear, I can make the deficit disappear.”

Henning got 839 votes out of a total of 55,298 cast. Then the Yogi directed Doug to build Veda Land, a $1.5 Billion Dollar set of three amusement parks that would be a Disneyland for TMers. Much like the ‘Maharishi effect’ it never got off the ground.

It’s interesting how many of TM’s programs involve raising money so a bunch of people and just sit around all day and chant ‘Ohmmmmm’. Kind of a Wicca welfare program.

I won’t belabor the point here. James Randi pretty much put a fork in the pig years ago. Check out his web site for more info. This is not to say everything is a bad about TM. The Maharishi has explicitly outlined three acceptable “paths” for women in society: 1) marriage and motherhood, 2) monastic celibacy, and 3) engagement in a life-supporting profession or occupation that does not strain the allegedly delicate nervous system of female physiology. Why to go Lynchie! It’s a wonder both his wives divorced him.

Hey, people can believe whatever they want to believe in, but here’s the rub: Henning diagnosed with liver cancer in 2000, and he chose to treat the disease with only TM. He died within five weeks at the age of 52. Milking the gullible is one thing, and I’m all for it, but leading them to their death is another.

If it still sounds good to you, you could learn more at davidlynch.com, but be warned: it is a pay-per-series site. He must feed the TM beast after all.