David Lynch: Consciousness, Creativity and the Brain

hi sorry buddy doing yeah so first of all I would like to welcome every single one of you to what should be a fascinating enlightening evening tonight I am on Alban rostro and I'm the president of the Associated Students of the University of California tonight we are very lucky to be in the presence of a man whose work will live on for decades and he and his work has already changed the way we perceive film and art the ACC is proud to host David Lynch on this beautiful campus today but before we start the show I would first like to thank a few people that made this show possible I would specially like to thank the UC Berkeley Office of Student Affairs and the vice chancellor hinata Padilla and that's a college department for the generous support in making this event happen with their help we were able to ensure that this program would be free to every single person in attendance I would also like to thank a CCC adviser Jenn Crowder for her wonderful help in making this event possible and and the different student staff members in the ACC Office of the President Tracy Ross I met Jane Sara Seager Jared fain and Ying Quang thank you so much for all your wonderful work I would also like to thank the Cal performances staff especially Nicky Harper Doug chambers and Alex in Alexis most Mascaro and I would also like to thank they the educational technology services staff Ben Hubbard John Schneider and Elena parada UC Berkeley has been the site of many engaging speakers and leaders and has long been a beacon of knowledge as the world's best public institution as such it is important that this institution such as the ASUC continue to bring new and fascinating speakers to this wonderful campus therefore it is only fitting that we get to be here today in the presence of the very man behind films such as the Elephant Man blue velvet and Mulholland Drive it is our mission to educate the student body by providing them with amazing opportunities and numerous opportunities to question the world around around them and to engage in new and innovative ways of thinking about the world with this mission in mind we are proud to bring David Lynch here today and talk about and and and we're very proud to have him here today to talk about consciousness creativity and the brain David is also joined on our stage by dr. John Hagelin a Harvard trained physicist and we're all renowned quantum physicists again I'd like to state how great it is to have David Lynch and John here to talk about consciousness creativity and the brain and how they can help us better understand how these techniques and practices can open up new ways of thinking that we have never even considered tonight promises to be an engaging evening to all students and community members in attendance I would now like to introduce the vice president of the David Lynch foundation and the master of ceremonies for the evening Oprah enjoy the show first of all on behalf of the David Lynch foundation it's wonderful to be back here at my alma mater and to welcome all of you go bears go bears the words to welcome all of you tonight to what promises to be a very exceptional evening David Lynch has a passion for what he calls the doing for his filmmaking for his painting for his photography for his sculpture for his music he also has a passion and you'll hear it tonight for ideas he loves big ideas that he captures deep within the finest levels of his awareness and he also has a passion for that diving within that's something that human beings have been doing for eons diving within and awakening that vast reservoir of creativity and intelligence which lies within each one of us and that process of diving within for the last 32 years david says has fueled his incredible creativity and intelligence and innovation and honesty and integrity that we all know and love about David Lynch tonight we're very fortunate to have David talked about his filmmaking his ideas and his process of diving within joining David as we just heard will be dr. John Hagelin prominent quantum physicist who has led for the last 25 years a scientific investigation into the foundations of human consciousness before we welcome John and David I'd like to read to you a few words we trust you among American filmmakers for you don't manipulate instead you imagine and you discover we are proud that an individual can have pursued this hard this twisting highway in this spiritually desiccated and hostile environment of Hollywood and we are here to learn how you kept your bearings kept your vision and kept sharp you're probing imagination in that smog of money and illusion what does it mean to direct does it mean to administer to engineer you are not an engineer of emotion as a filmmaker you are rather a searcher of self and society well here we are David right now at this minute direct our attention beyond what we know we're listening intently welcome would you please welcome David Lynch and John Hagel thank you very much good evening oh if Bobby Roth here and the excitment forgot to tell you that I don't have a planned speech and there's two microphones for you all if you have questions on film or meditation or consciousness you can ask the ask questions or we can just enjoy the silence it's kind of beautiful hi I just have a simple question for you yes my name is Greg and I'm wondering do you think that the consciousness can exist outside the body here there and everywhere its consciousness is there such an abstraction and we we all have it we don't think that much about it but it's the i am-ness i am-ness being our ability to understand our awareness our wakefulness our inner happiness and there's a great giant ocean of pure consciousness within every human being and to ask a follow-up question you bet do you believe that substances can be a tool to understand that better you're going to hear from a doctor Fred Travis later on who will explain what these substances do to the brain and I already knew the answer I just that's cool and we all want these experiences and those experiences are there and with meditation Myra sheet Mahesh Yogi teaches Transcendental Meditation and Transcendental Meditation is a mental technique that's easy to do effortless yet supremely profound in that it allows any human being to dive within and experiencing subtler levels of mind and intellect and to transcend and experience that ocean of pure consciousness now what happens when you experience that so interesting when you experience it you enliven it you wouldn't fold it and it starts to grow consciousness grows so beautiful and the rien result of that growth of consciousness is enlightenment which is the full potential of the human being such a beautiful thing what is your name again my name is Greg Gregory Gregory such a beautiful thing it is thank you very much good evening thank you for coming my name is Tim and my question is did agent Cooper that's good did he practice TM and will we ever see him again a lot of people asked that now he'd be the most likely one probably one of the things that that this this field of pure consciousness is a field of knowingness knowingness and it's like an intuition so when you start experiencing it and it grows intuition grows and you know Agent Dale Cooper had quite a good intuition going and this is one of the things that I've found I've been meditating for 32 years and this thing for if the filmmaker this thing of knowing and is it like an ocean of solutions you dive in there and these solutions come you can see a thing you can see think and feel a thing and see solutions to make it feel correct money in the bank for the filmmaker and for any human being hi I'm Deirdre and I actually had two questions completely unrelated or maybe they are in your head my first one was could you describe your first introduction to Transcendental Meditation and your first experiences with that and my second question was what your new film was about super um there was a time when I if if I ever did I if I ever did hear about meditation I didn't wasn't even curious about it I had nothing against it nor was I forward I just didn't think about it and I and if I did think about it I think it would a waste of time and then I remember this phrase true happiness is not out there true happiness lies within and this phrase had a ring of truth to it to me but they didn't tell you in the phrase where the within was nor how to get there so it seemed like a very kind of mean phrase and then I started thinking wait a minute maybe meditation is this way to go within and so I started getting fired up and they say at a certain point we we don't know when it hits us but we become seekers we start asking questions we start getting curious who knows why this happens but I started reading about things asking questions and it was about that time my sister called and said she had started Transcendental Meditation and she told me about it but as looking back it was a change in her voice that I just said I want that and I went down and I learned it and you you learned how to meditate and then you're taken into a quiet little room where you can have your first meditation and I I didn't have a clue what it would be I just knew I wanted it I sat down close my eyes started the mantra and it was like I was in an elevator and they cut the cables and I dove into bliss beautiful beautiful deep bliss and that experience was so powerful and so unique I say the word unique should be saved for this experience and I never missed a meditation in my 32 years I love that experience and I loved the feeling after the experience and what it does and there's a side effect to experiencing pure consciousness it's negativity starts to recede it's the weirdest thing it's like ramping up a light and negativity like darkness starts to go and I had a big egg in me and I was taking it out of my first wife and I had fears and anxieties I'll tell you before I started and two weeks after I started meditating my wife came to me and said what's going on and I was quiet for a moment because it could have been any number of things she might have been referring to so finally I said what do you mean and she said this anger where did it go and she had noticed it I didn't even know that was lifting it's a beautiful beautiful thing and these negative things like fear anxiety tension stress depression these things start lifting again money in the bank for a human being to do anything it's so beautiful how the enjoyment of doing just blossoms huge huge enjoyment of doing when this I call the suffocating rubber clown suit of negativity begins to dissolve um could you tell me about your next film I'm working on a film called Inland Empire and I'm in the editing stage right now I got to get some wine hi my name is Melinda and I had two questions actually I was wondering it's kind of some question but I have heard that it was on a documentary about Star Wars that George Lucas had considered having you direct Return of the Jedi and what would you have done differently had you directed it well and also the other is if you find yourself in a place where you're not able to meditate I understand you probably get a lot of your ideas through meditation if you find yourself on location and you're wondering you're stuck with something how do you get to get yourself out of the noise and out of the racket and pull yourself into your own way and your own world so that you can actually get through with your meditation well you can find a place to meditate anywhere you can meditate in an airport no noise is no barrier it's nicer when it's quiet but I meditate before I go if I'm shooting I go meditate before I go shooting then meditate at lunch or meditate after I finish and every place I've ever gone if you ask for a quiet room even if they're not they never heard of meditation people say oh yes you know come with me and they get me a little quiet room it's very beautiful and and then you just dive in and you don't go in there necessarily to get ideas you go in there to expand that container of bliss consciousness intelligence creativity harmony coherence love energy power all this starts expanding and it's so beautiful and then when you come out all energized refreshed blissful then those ideas are easier to catch it's like the net goes deeper and deeper and deeper and you can catch those fish and also what you said you started meditating 31 years ago 32 32 well and what originally piqued your interest in meditation I was that's what I was what you heard the word enlightenment I thought is it possible for human beings to gain enlightenment and what is that and and and is it possible to really get happiness going from within because we are always looking out out out for happiness and we live in a world of change everything is always changing and if you see this car that you love and you want this car it's going to make you happy you save up or if you have the money you'll get that car and I even know you brush your teeth looking at your car it's so beautiful it's so much happiness and you're driving and keep it clean and you're going along then the time passes and a year later it's kind of dirty with some scratches and dents two years later you're driving down the road and you spot a car that you want and this car starts crying because you don't want it anymore true happiness grows from within when you dive within and really dive all the way and experience that ocean of consciousness which dr. John Hagelin science calls the unified field oneness unity oneness and unity it's so beautiful and as he says at that fundamental level we are all one we're one world family on the surface were all different which is always going to be but underneath were all one so beautiful and also the Return of the Jedi but thank you very much mr. lin chen i'm going to take a seat well I was asked by George and but I told him George this is your you should direct this film this is your ideas in your film and please George you do that but should I go first yeah thank you hello hello what's up my name is Martine I'm what is your name Martin Martin yeah I'm a young Argentinian filmmaker and I have two questions if it's possible ah one it's about a film that I'm doing and it's more about a personal situation where I came first to this country the first reaction that I have was that people was calling me like a a DD and bipolar and I'm not that crazy well maybe I don't know anyways um what's her reaction when I mean like the American you know farm you know all the medicines and you know people are getting so focused into you know depression and you know the prozac and Ritalin and all that and you know I know it's an industry but you know they affect to people that you know they could you know they are hyperactive but they could you know they could be producing much more so you know I'm I feel that you were one of those people and you get to focus with your meditation I found my ways you know this is a very good question and I think what you'll hear from dr. John Hagelin will give a much more of an answer than I can give except that there's lots of studies going on right this very minute of what meditation does to you know these so-called disorders and how people are you know benefiting so greatly from it without drugs so and then we have dr. Fred Travis who can speak about that as well yeah and I have a second question it was about the your film the straight story what's your motivation behind it I mean it's so different you know well it's similar in a weird way with the Elephant Man I had zero interest in the straight story hearing about it before I read the script and I'd been hearing about it for a couple of years and one day I was asked to read the script by Mary Sweeney and I sat down started reading it and I just felt felt felt felt and I wanted to see you know it's like catching an idea a script his ideas all organized for you but it's the same principle as you read it you see it you smell it you've you feel it and you see how cinema could do that and so I got fired up because of the emotion of that story and it still still gets me yeah thank you then thank you good evening sir I would just be interested in hearing you talk maybe a little bit about coincidence um perhaps what role it played in your life or if you pay attention to it and maybe if you could even speak on if you see any differences or boundaries between coincidence and intuition that's very good question coincidence I call happy accidents and sometimes if something is going wrong you might say that's not a very good thing but at the end of something going wrong it may have been all going wrong to show you a very good thing which goes to staying alert as you go forward making a project say for a film I can't think anyway though of happy accidents there's just been so many the one that comes to mind is Frank not no I'm Bob killer Bob in Twin Peaks how that came about was very interesting Frank Silva was a set decorator and we were in the house that we were using for Laura Palmer's house and we were shooting the pilot and I was out in the hall underneath the fan and Frank was moving a dresser which when he moved it blocked the doorway and I heard a and say old Frank don't block yourself into the room and I didn't even turn around I just pictured Frank in that room and then they thought wait a minute and I ran in and I said Frank are you an actor and he said well yes I am because everybody in Hollywood's an actor maybe everyone in the world so um I said you're going to be in this thing and I just I just I had him go down behind the bed and hold and panned across twice without him and once with him because I didn't know what it was and then we went downstairs when we were shooting and we were shooting a scene where grace of risky Laura Palmer's mother sees something in her mind's eye late at night alone and bolts upright so the operator was on the wheels and he has to crank up to follow her with the lens and she bolts up screaming and he cranks up and he's got her and I said perfect beautiful and he says Shawn the operator said no it's not beautiful and I said what's wrong and he said someone was reflected in the mirror and I said who was reflected in the mirror he said Frank was reflected in America so it's a very happy accident thank you for being here tonight thank you my name is Jason and I was wondering if you could tell me how Transcendental Meditation is different from other forms of meditation and if it's worth the $2,500 that's a very good question I'm them let's talk about the money first to me it's worth far more than that and we have a thing where we think something spiritual or something that's supposed to be good for you should be free and yet all these things we want cost a lot of money and the price to me is a it illumines the strength of the desire if you want that you'll get it and I know people who don't have much money they find themselves wanting it and they get it some people with lots of money they could easily get it and they don't want it and they don't want it because it costs something it should be free it's a strange strange thing now some of that money goes to the teacher the teacher who teaches you and the teachers are full-time and as Bobby said wouldn't it be a beautiful world if the teachers of meditation the ones that teach you how to dive within experienced self pure consciousness lead you to your full potential enlightenment wouldn't it be beautiful if they could live on that money now the rest of the money goes to world peace it doesn't go like when we pay our taxes to killing people in the name of peace it goes to peace creating groups who are trained in advanced techniques to enliven that field of consciousness unity enliven that in the world and that's another whole thing we could talk about what's the other question how is it different than oh yeah now the foundation is David Lynch foundation for consciousness based education and world peace is offering we have to raise money to offer it to you for free a scholarship if you are interested in starting or interested in knowing more about it or interested in helping bring a person to if their full potential or bring peace to earth by enlivening this field enlivening this field of oneness then let us know no problem and we'll try to raise the money okay so I can tell my parents that David Lynch said to pay for it please tell your mom and dad that it would be so beautiful if they paid for that no I paid for my son Riley and my son Austin and my daughter Jennifer and I paid when I started when I started was only $35 but it's a lot of money to me then I didn't care I really wanted it and I've been doing it ever since and my friend Charlie Lewis used to say around the Center in LA at least they'll meditate up the twenty five hundred dollars worth and it's the regular practice of diving within it would be beautifully if you gained enlightenment overnight but you dive in twice a day once in the morning you're a meditator you go and you dive in and then you just go about your business and watch things get better it's really beautiful it's for the rest of your life Thanks and I really like your movies but at the end of them I usually say I don't get it you start meditating pal hi my name is Rachel and you've spoken of your paintings as being a process of reaction action and reaction and I was wondering how that process of action and reaction relates to transcendental meditation and to consciousness and my other question is that at the center of a lot of your films and and a lot of your paintings you seem to put remains in the corpse in this place and I'm wondering what what about that interests you in particular in your paintings where you have the actual decomposition happening on the canvas I like organic phenomenon and I like earth earth things I like things growing and I like also the things you know decaying why do I like that I don't know but it's a beautiful beautiful texture to me unbelievable unbelievable textures a factory in a field is almost more beautiful to me than just the field man and nature kind of working together even though it's very bad for the environment it's a beautiful texture I dislike those things and this action in reaction how does that go it's like a dance and it's like you you do something based on a and that's the intuition going it's this consciousness sort of flowing you make an action you see it you react you feel it and it indicates the next action and you react you think feel it and it indicate indicates the next thing and it grows and it's a beautiful thing and it's the same in music it's it's this note is going and and and and and that one isn't working it just goes to that one you know it just builds and it goes like that thank you an intuition does grow it's it's it's pretty amazing thank you hi my name is Chris um I'm a little confused I don't know what consciousness really is and I don't know why are we different or our animals conscious and what separates us from that and our if we're getting in tune when we meditate or with this unity our animals already in tune if we lost this attunement and we're trying to get it back through meditation so yeah that's a bunch of beautiful questions what was that first part of that question what's consciousness that I saying 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 golf ball-sized awareness when you wake up a golf ball-sized wakefulness and you'll have a golf ball-sized inner happiness but when you expand it more understanding more awareness more sense of self self awareness bliss wakefulness and when you hear that enlightenment is wide awake then you might think we're all sort of in trouble apparently there's many degrees of wakefulness but wide awake in pure consciousness is the is the state of enlightenment wide awake always with the self waking sleeping and dreaming now maybe dr. John Hagelin can talk about the animals because I'm not sure where they fall in this but I think it's the human being that can you know unfold that supreme enlightenment and we're built for it we're built for that dive within we're built to unfold it I don't know why we have to do this process but it's it's been throughout the ages many many many have gone before Mayra she didn't make up this technique it's an ancient technique for human beings to realise the full self realize that unfold it and then human beings have this promise and on the way to enlightenment things get better and better and the enjoyment of doing goes the way you appreciate things grows how you get along with people grows better and better and and that's you know so beautiful when you're working now I've heard that there's businesses they had an article in the paper of businesses run on fear businesses run on fear and I thought if I ran my set on fear I wouldn't get even 1% of what I get no one would go the extra mile but it's like a macho thing to run your business on fear and people are in fear all day long and when you fear a place pretty soon you start to hate the place and you hate to go to work and that hate turns to anger and then you're angry with your work this is the reverse of that you start unfolding all these positive things the negative things start to recede and if you have a set with this kind of atmosphere going people go the extra mile they start flying with ideas they start helping out more they start being with you and it's not against you it's a beautiful thing thank you thank you good evening good evening my name is Josh I first got in love with Eraserhead in eighth grade because of an interview with John Waters saying that was his favorite movie and I was wondering if there was a mutual respect you have with the work of John Waters or if there are any other contemporary directors whose work you admire I always I met John Waters many times and I always make sure I thank him for that because when Eraserhead first opened in New York City John Waters had a film opening and I heard the story that when his film opened he ended on stage but instead of talking about his film he said this odd al you all should go see erase her hit it was a very good thing what was the other question are there any particular directors contemporary directors that you admire I don't know so much about content well I guess Paul Thomas Anderson I'd say I like you know Fellini and Bergman and Kubrick those guys a lot thank you very much thank you hi my name is Carolyn and I want to thank you for your daily weather report thank you very much and I have two questions that are related I was wondering what is a typical day for you and are you a vegetarian and do you believe that vegetarianism contributes to meditation good meditate a typical day I get up I meditate and I go about whatever it is I'm working on right now I'm working on editing my film and I eat chicken sometimes but I like now a thing called trail mix and I don't know the type of it but it's got M&Ms in it and it's really really good you should try it now it's true it's really important what you eat they say you wee ROV but a lot of things are important but we live in the field of relativity so relatively it's most important for me to make that dive within that to me is money in the bank and I see things getting better so I just make sure I do that every morning and every evening and the day is just very enjoyable and I kind of have a setup or I have a woodshop and a painting studio and a sound studio I can go as ideas go I can go here and there and that took a long time to get about 20 years to build that and so I always wanted to set up so now I can kind of go here and there as as whatever sparking it you know dictates thank you hi I'm Jesse and hey Jesse how you doing all right I was watching the making of blue velvet and I was watching this the actors sort of describe how you communicated with them and I thought it was really interesting because they were saying something like well he didn't say much he just sort of stood there and had this this look and he felt something and and I knew what to do yeah and I was just interested in like maybe you can recreate what you looked like at that moment or like you know what was it that when I don't I don't consider like that but I get up and I think that's something about the hands and it's strange what you say but this is the case of how it kind of goes the idea says everything and so then the next idea the idea dictates everything you know that that follows you just stay true to the idea now you've got actors let's say two actors and they're you're going to rehearse a scene for the first time with with me so I just start the rehearsal anywhere it is and then when it's over it's either normally it's a long way away from where it should be sometimes it's closer than I thought but wherever it is then you talk and the way you talk it doesn't necessarily make so much sense it's just talking to them and and they and and and maybe they say a sentence or something like that need you say yes he says and I go again then the next time it's closer and it's closer but you go and tie and some new words come up or a new thing in their face and and then they they say okay and they would go again and little by little by little it's amazing how thing goes off in them and they say they got it I've got it and they own it and then they bring all their talent to that and it rolls and but it's a process you know Thanks it's a communication not a hundred percent with words hi I'm Dani hey Dani um I had a question about your short the 45 second film that you did with that old camera and I was wondering if you talked about your experience with that and how you came to that idea for the short that's a 55 second yeah the Lumiere brothers who started cinema had a beautiful camera brass wood and glass and it had a little little beautiful little wooden magazine which held a little roll of film that lasted 55 seconds and a hundred year anniversary they recreated this these cameras or maybe they have the original ones I'm think it might have been the original ones they recreated the emulsion and put it on acetate rather than nitrate and they asked for T film directors to use that camera and there they had many many rules you could not stop the camera you had to use natural lighting you could make no edits in it and you had three takes I'm pretty sure that was it and I'm I I remember getting the idea my hand was on this Inca power saw table saw I was in my shop and I got an idea to have five or six sets and then have the camera move as rapidly as possible in between the sets but first closed closed the lens you know cut off the light and then move the camera really fast and then open it up and then close it and move the camera really fast open it up like that and so it took a long time like 15 days to build these sets and get it all organized and it it worked out you know pretty good that's how it happened okay cool and yes a really random question do you find that it's more natural for you to smile and pictures or to just have a blank face or pictures a small smile okay cool thank you hi my name is Amanda hey Amanda I was really fascinated by a short film the grandmother and I was wondering what brought that about I don't know and it's so beautiful how ideas come along I just got an idea that a small boy plants a seed and grows a grandmother because a grandmother is a source of love for many people and this boy's family was pretty much hell so that it just kind of I don't know where that idea came from but there it was thank you you're welcome all ideas come from this field because this field is at the the where you transcend the field of pure consciousness is at the base the source of thought the source of mind the source of matter and it's the source of a fish it's the source of a tree the source of a star it's a beautiful beautiful full field one more question says Bobby and I'll be back later on I'm Daniel Daniel yes what do you meditate on you meditate using a mantra and the mantra is a specific sound vibration you you just start the mantra going and the mantra turns the mind within always we are pointed out but now we're pointed in and why do we like going within why is it easy and effortless because it's natural the mind loves to go to fields of greater happiness in which with each subtler level of mind with each subtler level of intellect there's more and more happiness until you reach the source maximum bliss maximum and you splash into that and the splash is bliss beautiful beautiful you just keep diving you pop out with thoughts dive back in pop out died back in then you come out more and more and more of that is with you it's like going to the Treasury and filling up your pockets with money with gold and then you come out and you start spending it ideas you start catching ideas you start having a great time now Bobby Roth will introduce the great dr. John Hagelin my good friend diving within all of David's beautiful descriptions are the descriptions that people have had throughout the ages of turning within David asked John Hagelin and we'll meet Fred Travis brain researcher to talk about what science tells us about the process of diving within and then when those two gentlemen are finished then David will come back and continue taking your questions John Hagelin is a world-renowned quantum physicist educator author and public policy expert he has conducted pioneering research at cern which is the european center for particle physics and slack which is a Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and is responsible for the development of a highly successful grand unified field theory based on the superstring his scientific contributions in the fields of electroweak unification grand unification supersymmetry and cosmology include some of the most cited references in the physical sciences in recognition of these and other achievements dr. Hagen was named winner of the prestigious Kilby award which recognizes scientists who have made major contributions to society through their applied research in the fields of science and technology the award recognized dr. Hagelin as a scientist in the tradition of Einstein genes bore and Eddington dr. Hagan received his PhD from Harvard University he's currently director of the institute of science technology and public policy and professor of physics at Maharshi University of Management and he is now working in Washington DC to establish a much needed long overdue university of world peace please welcome dr. Hagan thank you very much it's a great pleasure to be here I'm normally not shy of public speaking but David Lynch is a very tough act to follow he has this million-dollar coiffure which makes some of us feel follically challenged and he speaks about meditation which is a very very difficult communicate experience to communicate he speaks about it with such a poetic clarity and lucidity that it is really tough to follow I would like to add a few scientific remarks to the beautiful experiences that David shared David has talked with us about the experience of a field of unity within profound inner harmony inner peace and inner unity this experience of inner unity is really the core experience that has been described since the beginning of history by all the major traditions of knowledge and spiritual traditions of the world is this feel of unity at the basis of life's diversity fact or fiction it's very interesting to me today to see that modern science through its reliable but slow means of gaining knowledge has over the past half a century maybe a little longer peeled away layer after layer of the onion of existence exploring deeper levels of natural law deeper levels of nature from macroscopic to microscopic to the molecular atomic nuclear sub nuclear world of quarks and leptons electroweak unified world grand unified world super unified world 10 million million million times smaller than the atomic nucleus at this Fountainhead this core level of nature's functioning we see the emergence the discovery of fundamental unity at the basis of the diverse laws of nature governing the universe at that level all four forces gravity the strong force the radioactive force the electromagnetic force are all one in all the so-called particles the quarks and leptons on which they act are also all one at that level there's just a single unified ocean of existence in all the particles and forces that fill the universe are just little ripples on the surface of this ocean of unity ocean of existence this really remarkable understanding of the core unity of life is not the sole province of the world's mathematical physicists but as I said it really has been the cherished experience of generations and generations and generations of refinement of techniques of meditation have really been designed to render more and more efficient the process of diving within is easily and efficiently as possible experiencing deeper levels of mind deeper levels of human intelligence corresponding to the experience of deeper levels of intelligence in nature and then at the source of thought one experiences this ocean of intelligence and creativity the field of unity within that is the so called meditative state it is also described as holistic experience and it we'll see in a few moments it has with it a remarkable transformation and correlation in the functioning of the human brain a complete transformation so dramatically different from waking that the meditative state is now considered to be a fourth major state of consciousness distinct from waking dreaming and sleeping another way to see how it arises in what it is is to examine for a moment the phenomenon of attention in waking consciousness attention really it's just a localized beam of consciousness so in waking conscious were always aware of something that means our comprehension is focused on a particular object of perception or another the meditative process is one where that narrow focus of comprehension whatever it is starts to well you start to withdraw your awareness from those isolated boundaries and comprehension which was narrowly focused starts to systematically expand opening up more holistic levels of comprehension more holistic levels of understanding and more holistic levels of understanding until comprehension becomes literally unbounded unity wholeness that is the experience of consciousness and it's not foreign in a sense that it is just the experience of our self in the most profound sense of that word somebody asked what consciousness was a moment ago or what the self is the self is that one thing self is just the our subjectivity the liveliness of consciousness that allows us to see anything experience anything know anything but what's so abstract about that consciousness is the consciousness itself isn't experienced at least not in waking consciousness where the attention is always localized on some concrete object or fah or emotion or sensation so by withdrawing that narrowly focused attention systematically to become unbounded completely Universal and abstract that's the experience of what's called pure consciousness pure said subjectivity the self with a big ass sometimes called Atma so the self are very subjectivity is the only thing in our lives that never changes it's the one thing that allows us to believe correctly that were the same person today that we were as a child as everything else changes the body changes for the worse our beliefs change our friends changed our professions change our spouses change everything changes and yet we know we're the same person today that we were 51 years ago and that sameness is our own subjectivity the nature of which is infinite expansion unbounded bliss the origin of universes universal intelligence universal consciousness that field of unity at the basis of life diversity that underlies and connects us all now for me is an educator and there's a lot of research to back this up and we'll see a very brave student is about to come up here and let us take a look under his hood and we're going to see what happens to the human brain when human attention normally directed outward turns systematically within in the awareness expands and expands to experience the self a complete real-time transformation in the functioning of the brain which for a brain scientist is remarkable and I think even for most people pretty impressive but as an educator what is so crucial about this discovery of this meditative state and understanding it physiologically from the standpoint of brain physiology is that it really is the missing ingredient to education it is a technique that expands consciousness expands the container of knowledge now this state of transcendental awareness or expanded consciousness is as I said unique it's different from waking dreaming sleeping in what sense it's different in this striking sense that normally the electrical activity of the brain which is often measured here and here and here in here and everywhere across the scalp the electrical activity of our brain the so-called brain encephalo gram EEG is not very intelligent I don't know if you've ever seen ever your EEG scan but it's really depressing it's really like there's no communication between different areas of the mind and personality mathematically it's very much like an orchestra before the conductor takes the stand the musicians are warming up they're sawing away at their instruments and no real effort to coordinate their activity and what do you get a cacophony of discordant sound and then the conductor assumes the podium and raises the baton and then that cacophony of discordant sound is transformed instantly to flowing music the difference the integrated functioning of the orchestra so that integration of brain functioning is an inevitable side effect and a striking side effect of the meditative experience this experience of unbounded awareness that is as old as time now again as an educator this is crucial why because orderly brain functioning what's called global EEG coherence with a whole brain functions in concert orderly brain functioning correlate scientifically with rising IQ increased intelligence improved learning ability and academic performance short-term and long-term memory enhanced moral reasoning increased psychological stability emotional maturity alertness reaction time everything good about the brain depends on its orderly functioning and now orderliness of brain functioning can be systematically developed in any student of any age this already reverses a bleak view of human potential mainstream view of human potential which has been until now that we peek at sixteen years of age at 16 our gray matter is of maximum weight the raw intelligence of the brain is also maximum and thereafter we undergo this long and torturous process of declining raw intelligence and shrinking of gray matter which is very visible by the 20s and catastrophic by the 30s don't even think about the 40s or 50s now by the time you get to be 51 we say well we make up for that with our maturity and wisdom and experience the whole thing is pathetic and fortunately completely obsolete and out-of-date because now we know that the brain is sufficiently plastic and malleable and capable of forging new collections and learning new things throughout life and yes if you don't use the brain it does atrophy and we'll show in a moment some extraordinary pictures of acutely atrophying brains from lack of use but even that is reversible because the meditative state in an educational setting which is the best place for it in my opinion the meditative state engages the total brain and is unique among the whole range of human experiences waking dreaming sleeping hypnosis only this experience of unbounded awareness engages the total brain and develops the brain holistically with longitudinal increases in IQ even in older people in nursing homes so it's an educational technology of the foremost magnitude now if you're standing in front of a PTA which I have many times and trying to sell the concept of introducing a little quiet time in the classroom for the experience of unbounded awareness I talk in terms of increased IQ and academic performance David likes to talk and so do I really more in terms of enlightenment and I wanted to spend the last few minutes before introduce dr. Fred Travis and discussing what that term means well I think we're in a position to understand very easily now what it means enlightenment is also called self-realization realization of the true nature of consciousness which is unbounded beyond change universal eternal bless now in the beginning days and weeks and months of meditation that's a momentary experience of expansion and exhilaration of universal being but it's a sticky experience it's so profoundly attractive that it starts to stick in the sense that you more you you forget less and less of your true unbounded nature even while the awareness is sharply focused on specific boundaries so even though this process of transcending and experiencing being really develops over a period of days and you're completely proficient by a matter of weeks or months what grows over time is this permanency of the experience of the two nature of the south and that permanency is called enlightenment now what's so great about why it's called liberation freedom from bondage etc is because until the self is known then whatever we're experiencing cold water may be mashed potatoes for dinner you know that can be ok if you like potatoes but it's really at the expense of something so much bigger because why you're eating those potatoes that's it in your life waking consciousness that's what it gives you at that point what do you lose unbounded bliss and if you're eating okra marinated eggplant life is a disaster at that point because that's all there is and it's not very nice if you ask me so freedom from the binding influence of perception so that you're never lost this is what happens over regular meditation and it then it doesn't matter if you're sound asleep or dreaming or dynamically engaged in a tennis match or an exam even under the depths of the anesthesia you are never lost to the experience of your unbounded inner blissful reality that's self realization that's unlike its invincibility its inner strength because no matter what's happening on the outside whether it's okra or mashed potatoes life is always bliss you can enjoy the parts more fully than ever before but inner stability of bliss and contentment becomes permanent so I would like to introduce for a few minutes dr. Fred Travis who is really one of the foremost brain verse researchers in the US and maybe the expert in the area of meditation and brain development who will introduce Shane zisman again a very brave student who will show just in a few minutes real-time the complete transformation of brain functioning associated with the meditative state and why this is so fundamental to life and to education when you appreciate Shane's discipline who's going to meditate in front of about 700 people right now when my girlfriend first saw my brainwaves I was mortified there was little coherence and very little amplitude so what Shane is going to share it's very unusual so please welcome dr. Fred Travis and Shane system we open the curtains please Thank You dr. Hagan we take a moment just to set everything up here so we need the curtain down please very good if I only had a brain what we'll be doing is we're going to anchor these abstract concepts which John and David had discussed and the concrete functioning of your brain the reason this is possible is brain functioning shapes the content of daily experience when you have a good night's rest you wake up and there's no problem too big for you but remember those nights that you didn't sleep so well and you wake up tired in the morning it's a chore just to remember what day it is and this process of brain underlying experience also goes the other way every experience we have in turn shapes the brain right now what's happening in your brain is the light from my body is coming it's going through your your eye is going into the back of your brain is creating these waves of electrical activity the sounds coming through your ear just back and forth over the brain what's happening is hundreds of thousands of brain cells out as if shaking hands and creating a delicate network and it's this network that lets you see me and let you understand what I'm saying what happens is with regular experience these networks get stronger what you're actively doing is you're constantly creating networks that then help you understand your reality this is a nature of your brain your brain is a river and not Iraq it's constantly changing they've been some research with monkeys in this case where they just brushed the fingertips of the monkey that was the additional experience the monkey had and what they did is they looked at the part of the brain center brain which actually responds when the fingertips are touched and this is the amount of the brain that was responding every time the monkey's fingertips were touched after three months of this research this is amount of the brain that was responding do you see it's much bigger this is what happens with every experience ever any of you gone into the elevator where they have the Braille and trying to read it this is one of the things I like to do and is it I keep on trying to keep on trying I really can't detect all those bumps a blind person can read it very quickly what the blind person is doing is devoting more of their brain to the information coming through their fingertips this is what's happening with every single experience we have we're constantly recreating brain networks which then recreates our reality now the important point that I want you to understand is all experiences change the brain when you're in class you learn some concept you learn some new skill you're actually creating a local network in your brain but when you stay up one or two nights when you're taking extra load in the quarter and you just under stress under the gun for 12 weeks at a time that's also creating specific brain circuits and these brain circuits result in something called darns shifting high stress and fatigue what happens is you use the back part of your brain this is your the screen of your mind right now what's coming through your eyes what's coming through your ears is creating a picture back here so almost like the screen up here and all of the slides come and replace what's there that's what's happening in the back part of the brain is what's happening right now and under high stress under fatigue this sensory concrete area can talk to the motor system but it just responds with what's happening right now it's very much of a stimulus response mode there's not a lot of thoughtful thinking this is the way you respond when you wake up in the morning you overslept you're late for your class you jump up get your clothes on run the class sit down and you forgot your homework it's what happens when you stay up all night studying for an exam and then you go into the exam and you fall asleep what you do is you're lacking the ability to look into the future that's what happens with this front part of the brain this is the frontal executive system this is the sea II Oh of the brain chief executive office of the brains responsible for judgment decision-making planning under high stress you actually bypass this this part of the brain under high stress and fatigue you bypass this part of the brain and you create circuits which would leave that out that's what we see in this next slide this slide is showing activity of the brain brain metabolic rate this is a normal brain looking at the bottom of the brain so here's the front of the person their noses up here here's the back of the brain notice over here this is a it's not a student it's a criminal a violent criminal but notice these areas here this is areas of the brain that are not active there's not actually holes in this person's brain it's just when that person is thinking in deciding these parts of the brain are not contributing so judgment planning thinking into the future that part of the brain that lets you do that is not active now the high stress of life our fast-paced world the increased pressure under here at the university is moving this type of brain in this direction unless you're doing something to actually exercise these it's very much physiological training it's like going to the gym and lifting weights if you want strong pectoral muscles you lift weights in specific way if you want to develop this part of your brain you have to have specific experiences and one of those experiences is this process of transcending it's just what it does when the mind transcends it actually activates it actually enlivens and integrates the CEO of your brain okay now it's time to stop talking and let's see some EEG we have here Shan zisman give him a hand please thank you what would be doing is we'd be looking at his brainwaves in real time and we'll see them during eyes open during eyes closed and then during transmetal meditation practice here they come yes and so these big bumps here in here are blinking could you blink three times for the crowd very good thank you Shane now this is some extra ones this is the we have a little laughing in his EEG what we're doing is we'll actually look at a single sensor in the front and we'll see what's happening just in this part of the brain this is a one second here there's about eight seconds on this screen this moving line is what's happening right at this moment this is what the brain looks like when you're looking out at 700 people looking at you what's happening is it's very fast activity here this is the brain taking all of the shapes of your heads and your colors of your clothes in the lights and trying to make a whole picture of it well look at the back part of the brain now so we can have some perspective here's the back part of the brain the key point is noticed that these signals are quite different this one is going up with one rhythm this one is going up and down with another rhythm what will a chain to do now is just close the eyes and we'll see how the brain waves change and close the eyes so the main thing I want you to notice is this type of activity is beginning to be seen here this rhythmical activity going up and down this is called alpha activity this is a signature of the brain that's restful and alert as just humming to itself the reason you see this in the back is that's the visual Center what's on the retina goes to the back of the brain when your eyes are open all this electrical activity is going back there it's keeping them brain completely revved up you close the eyes and that part of the brain can rest and this is resting rhythm of the cortex notice in the front of the brain in front of the brain is still quite active it looks a lot like during eyes open because when you close the eyes your mind is still going this mental chatter is continuing just grind away and what we see during Transcendental Meditation is we'll notice that this resting rhythm of the cortex is seen in the front here this is this idea of transcending the whole mind the whole body goes through a state of restful alertness and our fullness I can open your eyes and we'll start from the from an eyes open so here's eyes open EEG so now you can close your eyes begin to meditate there are many good examples but we can start here notice again in the back we see this resting rhythm the cortex also it's being seen here in the front here here also here as well this is a process of the whole mind the whole body transcending we're just looking at two places on the brain the front in the back but if we had all 32 here we would see this throughout the entire brain will just continue to watch as Shane is meditating see it coming up here now if Shane is doing mindfulness meditation you wouldn't see this up here mindfulness meditation it actually involves actively evaluating watching the situation and the frontal areas are quite active actually the measurement is called lateral asymmetry if here is practicing Tibetan Buddhism you would not see any alpha at all it's a very strenuous concentration technique you actually do it wow look at this you actually do it with eyes half open and so with brain patterns now we can address the question that someone asked earlier how is TM different from other meditations so this is very good well thank you for meditating you can stop now Shane and open the eyes when you're comfortable the whole point that I want you to take home is back to there is back in the world again is that experience changes the brain meditation is an experience you take the brain to a new state and by going back and forth you integrate that experience that level of fullness with the experience of whatever you're doing waking sleeping dreaming so much so that we can ask what we your brain be like when you graduate what's going to be the effect of college on your brain and we've come up with a brain integration report card it actually measures level of integration of brain functioning in the front over all the brain and also how you the brain responds during a task it's augments to cut the classical academic report card with one that's looking at level of brain functioning which is the most enduring benefit you can get from your University because your knowledge is going to be obsolete in about five years it's just knowledge is changing so quickly what you want to get is to structure those circuits that allow you to think clearly so I'd like to leave you with one idea especially those that are leaving I want you to stay for this this is the Wizard of Oz here we have the Scarecrow remember the Scarecrow wanted scared now that's sorry that's the Tin Man you were testing me is very good scarecrow wanted a brain and you remember what he did he he brave being burned to death and the monkeys took him off and tried to pull on the stuffing out he did all that because he wanted a brain he came and saw the Wizard of Oz and what is the Wizard of Oz giving him a piece of paper so what my recommendation to you is don't be content with just getting a piece of paper from your college education thank you very much thank you very much Fred thank you very much Shane I'm going to bite David back up in a moment to take any questions you might have on meditation or on filmmaking but I just wanted to say the following thing David is really working very hard with his Hollywood contacts and other contacts to make sure every student in the United States elementary junior high school college and graduate student who wants the experience of meditation and diving within to have that experience and he's therefore established the David Lynch foundation for consciousness based education in world peace and we're in the process of essentially building an endowment which will allow students who want to learn meditation to be able to do so more easily and in fact you should have a card that you might have come in and received if you could if you have any interest in learning more about meditation how to learn it or where to learn it how to receive support from the David Lynch foundation if you could leave us the card David we'll get back to you in a week or two he'll tell you the progress he is making which is very substantial and also give you instructions on how to learn meditation and perhaps how to be supported to do it I just want to say one thing we are born in this life with broad comprehension and EEG coherence throughout a lifetime of Education we learn to focus that broad attention increasingly sharply which is also a very important skill to be able to recognize and manipulate our environment but there comes a time at the Masters level I think where we start to realize we're learning more and more about less and less and at the doctoral level we've discovered we come the world's greatest expert in nothing the specialization itself isn't the evil it's the lack of a few moments and a little guidance of how to withdraw that narrowly confined copy and narrow-minded nationalism and narrow self-centeredness etc expand that comprehension to live the wholeness of life which is the true nature of our consciousness and to become global citizens global citizenship to replace narrow-minded nationalism so David is doing this David is hey created his foundation with an ulterior motive and that of terior motive really is world peace this is not a golf ball-sized idea it is a David Lynch sized idea but it's a very practical approach David's the feeling is you can't have a green forest without green trees you can't have a peaceful world without peaceful individuals so he has created a foundation to bring the experience of profound inner peace to as many people as possible as many who want it and what he is very excited about achieving and we're most excited about achieving is not just individual piece but the spillover effect of meditation which is a remarkable scientifically proven phenomenon that is we affect one another we affect our loved ones we affect our friends our families the entire community atmosphere even the atmosphere of an entire city if enough people are involved in experiencing deep peace within you radiate that peace like a light bulb a lip bulb radiates light and the research shows is just as panic can spread to a room spread through a theater just as panic can spread through a city calm and unity and harmony can spread through a city can spread through a campus can spread through the entire country or the world we are therefore creating more and more meditativeness and we started in Washington DC just a few weeks ago by hundred students at American University and others at neighboring universities are learning Transcendental Meditation with the help of the David Lynch foundation for credit in a research project sponsored by au to really start to create in Washington an influence of sanity and peace in this stress ridden city so the idea based on extensive published research is that if you can't get george w bush to meditate and i wouldn't hold my breath you can surround him and his administration and the Congress with an atmosphere that will replace a very fear-based partisan driven environment with a more coherent and harmonious and unified environment as long as the capital city is gripped with fear in divisive Nisour of policy when it comes to environment global warming arms proliferation decisions of war and peace throughout the world that's the sort of policies you'll get so we are not we're starting in Washington but now we're moving through California we want to create as much of a palpable measurable physical tangible influence of peace as possible so Washington DC were establishing the first campus of the university of world peace the idea is to counterbalance the global proliferation of military academies and graduate war colleges yeah better dedicated to advancing the science of war which I would argue has already hit the point of diminishing returns have one University on earth dedicated solely to the prevention of war to the promotion of peace in creating a new profession not soldier but professional peacemaker people with the ability and responsibility to prevent rule so please get involved with this on any level you can take courses there learn to meditate be in touch with David Lynch through his foundation and I want to at this point thank David and invite them back to take our final questions on film meditation consciousness in the brain thank you David take a few more questions thank you very much hi David my name is Tom I'm John I have a question about film the first time I saw the movie Mulholland Drive it was in this very auditorium on that screen behind you fantastic and it took me to a very special place and then I went home and I actually had a dream about it I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what that movie means to you um Tom I can't I can tell you a story about it though Mulholland Drive as some of you know was started out to be a TV show and it was going to be this was going to be the TV pilot and a TV pilot is an open-ended story it doesn't finish itself and when the people at ABC saw it they hated it and so it was dead but I got the chance to turn it into a feature film it took a long time for them to work out contracts and everything and during that time I didn't really worry about it much but then there came a day when I had to they told me you got the green light go to it and I didn't have the ideas so this was one time when it things did happen in meditation the almost a very day I was told I got the green light and realized I didn't have the ideas I did my evening meditation I'm 10 minutes in and like a string of beautiful pearls the whole thing came out and I felt so happy about that I can't tell you is such a blessing and at this these ideas affected the beginning middle and end of the thing and it was right there now there's one more thing that we're in in your question you know this business of intuiting our way we see so many films but even even the most surface of films hold some abstraction where are brains and minds are working and we're enjoying things and there might be some look of a person to another person where we say what would you know but we kind of get with what they're you know a few more hints or something like that but the more abstract it gets the more we got a feel think you know we got a feel think our way and everybody has this you know capability and you know everybody can come up with this their own interpretation and if it is abstract and it's you know you could start diving within and in unfolding more of that you know intuition and things become more and more clear this clarity of what's going on in the world increases a bigger picture forms and you know abstraction czar it's it's all known it's a field of all knowingness beautiful thing thank you thank you very much oh I was just wondering if you could tell us how you feel about colors and how they are used to express things and film again um well it's the idea it's the idea if you go into a room and if it's if it's a blue you say no no no no no we've got to paint this room and it becomes a kind of a pink a yellow pink because that feels correct for the idea that you got that sets the mood and then it's not yellow pink under sunlight it's yellow pink under a kind of a not night but just at dusk just almost night and the yellow paint looks a certain way and that's the mood you want and then you get the sounds to go with that and and it goes like that all based on the original idea it's not that you think so intellectually like you decide I'm going to use blue because blue gives me a strange cool feeling and this is a very cold character or something like that it's not an intellectual overlay it's living inside the ideas and being true to them it's like the chef the chef doesn't make the fish the fish is there and then the chef says that's a beautiful beautiful fish and I'll prepare really do what I can to make a beautiful meal out of that it's like that sort of hi David hello uh do you want to know your next okay my name is Andrew and I was curious I have two questions one about the different forms of art that you do do you feel that your films paintings music do you feel they inspire your other art forms sometimes sometimes they're just out on their own but sometimes when you're working on a piece of music music for me unlocks a lot of things sometimes you're working on a certain music or certain combos of sounds and a and a image comes out of that an idea comes out of it just pops out and we're listening to other music I got a lot of ideas for four scenes it may be just a fragment of something but it leads to other other ideas that hook together with that and a story could form lots and then but some of the same sensibility of painting for instance works in film also you know framing a thing and and where the eye goes some of the same things work across the board and and film is a lot like music because it's a flowing of things in time like music is and that's a that's a beautiful thing to think about how things flow in in time and also you talked a little bit about the rehearsal process to focus ideas do you do you feel that there's one part filmmaking that is most important for you know all elements are important so that the whole can work and if you don't pay attention to each element then then the whole you know has less chance to work and even less chance to get the thing as the whole is greater than the sum of the parts sometimes that could happen and that that would be a beautiful thing thank you thank you hi my name is Kathy and I came specifically tonight because I was interested in the concept of peace through meditation and you know there's experience very often of not feeling very powerful in the world in terms of what's happening and my question has to do with how many meditators make the hundredth monkey so that something does happen and become realized in the world and this is the meditation needed to be focused on peace or you know just throughout I'm going to try to explain it and it's it's so beautiful and so hard to believe my rishi has a saying from the very beginning and it's a it rhymes so we remember this little phrase water the root and enjoy the fruit and this simple little phrase is the key to individual enlightenment and the key to world peace watering the root for the individual is that diving within experiencing that fundamental level of pure consciousness growing that in that and the fruit of that action is enlightenment for world peace now when you expand consciousness in the individual negativity starts to recede the peace creating group is is like a peace creating factory with the most perfect machines on earth inside that factory the human beings there's a group of people meditating and doing advanced techniques in a group their quadratically more powerful at enlivening that unity than the same number scattered about this group practice has been tested 52 times short-term tests smaller groups 52 times people had to leave their family or go away from their work and go to a place and do this you know program for up to two months and there's famous ones they're all independently verified tests independently verified is being successful in reducing crime and violence trips to the hospital road accidents in the area of this test now the size of the group determines the area like dr. John Hagelin said we're like light bulbs we got this bliss bubbling inside but we broadcast it out so throughout through these tests they came to a formula the square root of 1% of the world's population that's 8,000 square root of 1% of 6.4 billion 8,000 this pretty small group 8,000 or a little bit more would be sweeter working always each day permanent so if you had a billion dollars in the bank you'd never touch it just the interest coming off could sustain a group of 8,000 in a place food little beds and a place to do this program and there are a lot of souls that are just want to go for enlightenment they want to go for it they'd be happy to do this for themselves and for the world it's it's money is standing in the way of this happening on a permanent basis permanent basis and it sounds hard to believe but this field of unity as dr. John Hagelin says is so powerful it's so powerful and he used the word last night this this way the the when you enliven it it goes in all directions it sees no obstacles it would be easy to light up this little teeny ball and the outskirts of the Milky Way with enough unity so we live in harmony diversity is appreciated fully and we're just pumping with bliss we're filled with ideas who knows what we'd come up with in this atmosphere certainly we wouldn't be running around killing each other or ripping our heads off so can I understand you to say the 8,000 have to be together in one air in one location yes because they're more than a thousand meditators throughout the world but yes none that could claim 8,000 in one location every every every light bulb helps but I want to you know help get peace greeting groups as well as you know lots of people you know diving within to develop their full potential in becoming happy in their work and then not dying of fear and and tension and depression and all the rest of that well I want to thank you thank you very much hope it's successful let's hope so hi David how you doing pretty good um I was just wondering what single word would you use to describe the Los Angeles area light light mmm thank you you're welcome hi David my name's Steve how you doing Steve doing pretty good I had a question about your film Eraserhead which is still the only film to this day which is actually terrified me and I say that with full confidence because it's a very challenging film it's very visceral film and I wanted to know what was your motivation behind the concept of the baby in that film and I also wanted to know what motivated you to create Henry's reality in his world in the way that you did I always say that my biggest influence in life was the city of Philadelphia the Eraserhead is a Philadelphia Story it was born out of Philadelphia my experience is there thank you thank you hello do more questions and Bobby's gonna pull the plug my name is Carrie and actually I have two questions for you the first one is three more questions okay quick quick they're they're light um what is the strangest strangest thing that's ever happened to you in reality and I'm from Los Angeles and I was just wondering why do you think la's light well I don't know quickly yeah because your visionary interpretations of things are not you know well typical so there have been a number of strange things but would you send me your name and number and I promise I'll get back to you with what I think is the strangest I'm drawing a blank great and Los Angeles it being light where's that stem from I came to Los Angeles from Philadelphia yeah the East Coast West Coast thing I'll tell you one strange thing happened to me I just I don't know why I'm thinking about this but I was in the museum and Los Angeles in that light and they had a show of art coming from India sandstone carvings and I kind of wandered off from the people I was with and I came around a corner and there was a corridor created of you know temporary walls about 40-foot long hallway and at the end was a head of Buddha and I came around the corner I looked up the pedestal up up up I saw that head and boom this quite light and bliss shot out of that and lit me up like a firecracker that was a nice strange experience thank you hi mr. Lynch how you doing Chris and I've got a question and and if this is going to be the last question I'll also ask for a little follow-up which might be a good way to end this but my my initial question and this is mr. Soglin and Travis can feel free to chime in on this as well as regarding the relationship of meditation creativity consciousness the brain where do dreams fit into this whole picture there's waking sleeping and dreaming and then the fourth state of consciousness is that transcendental consciousness pure consciousness and I don't know how to answer what dreams really you know what dreams really are but I think if we can ask dr. Fred Travis he might be able to do to help us out because of the hour why don't you come up afterwards and we can discuss this it's not a one sentence answer here okay okay what happens when your dream is your brain stem cells become active they're never active at all and they're like third graders that get out at recess time and they fire up and completely activate your brain so if you're sitting in your brain you're think you're seeing things you're moving the same time it goes down to the spinal cord and it paralyzes the body it's a tonyia so you might have woken up from dreaming and you have been able to move and you can't move a finger and then it takes a little while and you can move your fingers in your hands you're actually experiencing the effect of those what are dreams dreams are structured forgetting they're also an automatic self-test of the of the body and brain are you ready to wake up and what consciousness does is it takes this random activation in the brain tries to make sense out of it so that's the short answer thank you okay and I've got a just a quick follow-up to that I can appreciate your your reluctance to discuss your your current progress on your on your film right now but could you maybe share with us an interesting dream that you've had lately I have been dreaming lately I don't know what it is last night I did dream though I dreamt that we would all work together in this world for a real piece which is not just the absence of war but the absence of negativity the seeds of war and Mari she has said that negativity is just like darkness it's just like darkness and you say wait a minute and you look at darkness and you then you see darkness isn't really anything it's just the absence of something the absence of light turn on the light darkness goes right away no problem you don't have to fight the darkness and it's good all the good we can do for our fellow man all the good we can do for society all that is so beautiful but at the same time let's work together to turn on that light of unity the real most fundamental level of the world lives of existence turn that thing up with a peace greeting group try that see what happens and see if negativity goes away like darkness goes away in the light I just have a quick question whether you see whether you see a transcendental meditation and diving within as antithetical to social activism and social movements because this campus in the 1960s came close to a university for world peace and that I'm not sure if that was predicated so much on meditation as opposed to social activism and jumping up and down and holding signs and speeches to me to me you do what you can like I just said do what you can for society let your voice ring out but for me I've got to concentrate on trying to and I'd ask you to help me you know do something that I really believe is getting underneath the problem not solving the problem at the level of the problem even how big your heart is get underneath the problem enliven that field of unity at underneath all problems help do that as well thank you this read this may everyone be happy may everyone be free of disease may auspiciousness be seen everywhere may suffering belong to no one peace thank you you

Channel: UC Berkeley Events

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Keywords: ucberkeley, educational, howto, yt:quality=high

Id: V8TFcLgu5Ow

Length: 109min 23sec (6563 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 21 2007