People: David Lynch Launches $500 Million World Peace Initiative: ‘Things Are Very Precarious’
- Follow this link to see video of David Lynch talking on this initiative:
https://people.com/movies/david-lynch-launches-500-million-world-peace-initiative-exclusive/
David Lynch is making strides toward world peace.
The 76-year-old Twin Peaks creator and David Lynch Foundation founder has announced plans for an initiative that will aim to fund transcendental meditation (TM) training for 30,000 college students, in an effort to help them “become advanced peace-creating meditation experts and build a legacy of lasting global peace,” according to a release.
In a video call to action about the initiative — of which there are plans to invest about $500 million in the first year — Lynch says, “We don’t know what tomorrow’s gonna bring if we don’t get peace on this planet.”
“This war in Ukraine … people were saying it’s not gonna happen, and now it’s happened. People are dying. Cities are being destroyed,” he continues. “Things are very, very precarious. Everybody knows it.”
“People do many things to help humanity, but this has been going on for a long time. Talking, marching, singing — it’s not brought peace,” Lynch says.
In his call to action, Lynch discusses the impact of transcendental meditation — a movement led by Dr. Tony Nader — and how the group of around 10,000 people he is hoping to have become experts in it will “affect collective consciousness.”
“Whether they meditate or not, all of us human beings will feel the effect and livening of this beautiful field within, and everyone will start getting the benefits as if they were meditating twice a day,” continues the Mulholland Drive director.
“Stress will start going. All this negativity will start lifting, and they’ll start getting happier,” Lynch adds. “They’ll start getting more energy. They’ll start getting more creativity. They’ll start being nicer to one another. They won’t want to hurt anyone. … It’ll be a world at peace.”
According to the release, those to be trained in the practice “will include 10,000 students at Maharishi International University in the U.S., 10,000 at the sister school in India and 10,000 at partner universities in 10 major hotspots around the world.”
Created in partnership with the Global Union of Scientists for Peace and Maharishi International University, the initiative aims to “not only reduce stress in” the students’ “own lives, but create a powerful force of coherence on a larger scale,” an emailed description reads.
“David Lynch is not only a brilliant filmmaker — he believes that world peace is attainable and can be achieved,” Nader says in an emailed statement. “His plan will do what all the bombs cannot do: help us create actual peace in the world.”
To learn more, visit davidlynch.gusp.org.
