------ Original Message ------ Received: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 02:56:12 PM PDT From: Dome Announcements <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Dome-L <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: DOME ANNOUNCEMENTS--Baghavad Gita, TM in the news
1. Bhagavad-Gita Sunday, August 14th, and Sunday, August 28th 2. TM in the News 1. Bhagavad-Gita Sunday, August 14th, and Sunday, August 28th "The Bhagavad-Gita is the Light of Life, lit by God at the altar of man, to save humanity from the darkness of ignorance and suffering. It is a scripture which outlives time, and can be acknowledged as indispensable to the life of any man in any age." -- Maharishi, 1969, p. 19. This weekend, Sunday, August 14th, read and sing the Bhagavad Gita. 1:15-2:30 p.m., Room 111: Maharishi Veda Bhavan, $10.00 at the door. Sunday, August 28th, hear all 18 chapters of Maharishi¹s English translation of the Bhagavad-Gita read aloud. Maharishi Veda Bhavan 12:30 3:45 p.m. $25.00 at the door. NO CHARGE FOR .M.U.M. and MSAE STUDENTS, FACULTY & STAFF 2. TM in the News There was a great article about Maharishi Vedic Architecture in American Way Magazine, a free magazine on all American Airlines flights. <http://americanwaymag.com/aw/lifestyle/feature.asp?archive_date=7/15/2005> *** David Lynch's inauguration of a foundation to make the Transcendental Meditation technique available to students and to create world peace has made major headlines. This excellent inteview appeared on the Newsweek web site: The Magic of Meditation - Newsweek Health Beat - MSNBC.com <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8701267/site/newsweek> *** The Chronicle of Higher Education also covered this. >From the issue dated August 5, 2005 Filmmaker Wants Students to Chill Out With Transcendental Meditation By ERIC HOOVER In the late 1960s, college students closed their eyes, expanded their minds, and made meditation a fad on campuses. Now David Lynch wants them to do it again. In July Mr. Lynch, director of the films Blue Velvet, Eraserhead, and Mulholland Drive, announced the establishment of the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace, an organization that will promote the mental and physical benefits of Transcendental Meditation. Mr. Lynch, who says he has shut his eyes and entered the "field of oneness" twice each day for 32 years, plans to begin a speaking tour of 50 colleges this fall to tout meditation as a tool for overcoming anxiety and stress. "It's an ingredient that's missing from education," he says. The Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi introduced Transcendental Meditation, known as "diving within," a half-century ago (and later taught the Beatles his method for chilling out). The mental technique is practiced silently for 15 to 20 minutes twice a day. Researchers have found that it can reduce high blood pressure and improve brain function, among other health benefits. Proponents say meditating also can raise students' academic performance and foster creativity. Students who meditate achieve a state of "relaxed alertness" that helps them complete assignments more easily, says William R. Stixrud, a clinical neuropsychologist based in Silver Spring, Md., and a member of the foundation's Board of Advisers. Mr. Lynch's own descriptions of Transcendental Meditation are no less imaginative than his films, in which time does strange things and symbols leap out of the unconscious. Meditating, he says, is a "dive into pure creativity" that has helped him realize his artistic potential, a portal to the source of "love, consciousness, creativity, and power" that in a mere two weeks transformed him from an angry man to a happy fellow. "It is this light you turn on that gets rid of negativity," he says. 'Bright, Shiny Pennies' Mr. Lynch believes that frazzled high-school and college students are in need of such a light because of academic pressures, fatigue, and stress. He imagines a world in which each student has one class period a day to experience silence and bliss. Recently some elementary and secondary schools have started after-school meditation programs. Some colleges, too, offer meditation instruction. Gregory Kuhlman, director of the counseling program at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, says his staff suggests meditation and other relaxation training to some students to help them "manage anxiety." Mr. Lynch became convinced that the practice could benefit young adults after attending a series of skits performed by high-school students who had learned meditation at Maharishi University of Management, in Fairfield, Iowa. "They seemed like bright, shiny pennies," he says of the actors. "There was a consciousness that came off them that I never had seen." The foundation, which he established with his own money, intends to finance meditation classes for students as well as institutional research on the physiological effects of the technique. Bob Roth, the foundation's program director and a meditation instructor, says the group will seek to raise additional funds from the entertainment industry and philanthropies to help fulfill its mission: to ensure that every child and young adult who wants to learn Transcendental Meditation can do so. The foundation will provide funds for some students to learn the technique and receive follow-up training, Mr. Roth says. Even more ambitious is Mr. Lynch's plan to raise $7-billion to help establish seven affiliated Universities of World Peace that would train students to become "professional peacemakers." The plan would require many wealthy people to dive deeply into their wallets. It is, Mr. Lynch concedes, a long-term goal. Closer to the present, he predicts that college campuses are primed for a Transcendental Meditation revival. "Some students will say, That's baloney, but others will say, I've got to have that," Mr. Lynch says. "But first they have to hear about it." College students, who already possess an array of pharmacological treatments for depression and anxiety disorders, may need convincing that taking a timeout twice a day could help them overcome such problems -- or that sitting quietly might do more to soothe them than their favorite alcoholic beverage could. Then again, a generation that grew up to believe in "the force," from Star Wars, may just warm to the message that one can influence his or her own destiny by looking inward. http://chronicle.com Section: Students Volume 51, Issue 48, Page A32 Copyright © 2005 by The Chronicle of Higher Education *** Also, excellent article in the Orange County Register: Tapping into TM Filmmaker David Lynch wants to share with schools the benefits he says he's reaped from Transcendental Meditation. By PETER LARSEN The Orange County Register Filmmaker David Lynch makes movies that unfold like dreams, surreal and abstract, often beautiful and disturbing at the same time. The mysterious qualities of work from "Eraserhead" and "Blue Velvet" to "Twin Peaks" and "Mulholland Drive" have at times left viewers wondering if Lynch has found some way to tap into his subconscious and make art of what he finds there. Which in a way, it turns out, he says he has. For more than 30 years, Lynch has practiced Transcendental Meditation - TM, for short. He credits it with enhancing his happiness, his health and - most importantly for his art - his creativity. Because he believes so much in what TM has done for him and others he knows, Lynch has launched an organization - the ambitiously titled David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace - to provide the program to schools and any student who wants it. "The proof is in the pudding," Lynch says on a break from work on "Inland Empire," his new movie project. "When you see students who have experienced consciousness-based education, you kind of say, 'Oh, I can't believe what I'm seeing!' "These people are self-sufficient. They've got a strength. They have a clarity. They've got got an inner happiness. "They kind of glow with this consciousness." Transcendental Meditation is the meditation program that has been led by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi for the past 50 years. For 20 minutes twice a day, the person meditating sits with eyes closed, seeking to settle the mind into a deeply quiet state referred to in TM circles as "restful alertness." Baby boomers may remember TM and the Maharishi for such famous followers as the Beatles in the '60s, but other celebrities, from actors Clint Eastwood and Mary Tyler Moore to shock jock Howard Stern, have done it, too. Yet the movement has always had critics. Some argue that it has religious elements related to Hinduism. A New Jersey court case from the 1970s ruled it was religious in nature and could not be taught in schools. A spokesman for the national TM organization said that since that case, society's view of TM has changed. Public schools in Detroit, Atlanta and Washington D.C. have used it, and it is now widely considered a mental and physical technique as secular as yoga. To Lynch, who believes students would benefit as he has, it's a simple equation. "People out there know the schools are in trouble," Lynch says. "And here is (TM), ready to boogie. "Bring it out and see what happens." ••• Jean Anne Currivan, a 19-year-old from Dove Canyon, has practiced Transcendental Meditation for as long as she can remember, starting out informally as a 5-year-old, then learning the traditional program when she turned 10. Throughout attending Santa Margarita Catholic High School she meditated twice daily, and she's sure it's helped her studies and her life at large. "It's given me a lot of clarity," she says, sitting between her parents, Bruce and Annamaria Currivan, both longtime TM practitioners. "I don't feel tired all the time. And it's allowed me to enjoy my studies for studying them, rather than working to get a good grade." As a freshman last year at the University of California, Berkeley, where she plans to major in physics and philosophy, her roommate "was always impressed how I didn't stress out before tests," Currivan says. The Currivan children - sons Joseph, 21, and Peter, 16, also meditate - are poster-perfect for the point TM leaders hope the David Lynch Foundation will help make: calm, clear-thinking and focused. "I can't imagine people not doing it," says Bruce Currivan, a technical director at Broadcom, who also serves on the board of trustees at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa. "I think it would be great if we had it in school," Annamaria Currivan says. "It gives me tremendous hope for the world. "It's very natural for (Jean Anne) to meditate and it would be wonderful if other children would have that, too." ••• At the Nataki Talibah Schoolhouse in Detroit, about 120 students have practiced TM twice daily for six years. Carmen N'Nambi, founder and principal of the public charter school, says that since the program started - funded in part by a grant from the Daimler/Chrysler Foundation - the 120 students in it cherish the 10 minutes they meditate in the gym twice daily. "I don't think we realize how much we don't value quiet in this culture," N'Nambi says. "American society is busy. "So the future generation needs to know how to rest, to say, 'That's enough now, I need to go take care of myself for a little bit.' " The program at the school is being studied by a University of Michigan Medical School researcher, whose preliminary results found students who meditated there reported feeling happier and less stressed. "I'd say, 'Why do you like it?' " N'Nambi says of her conversations with students in the TM program. "They'd say, 'I'm not nearly as grumpy,' or 'I think I'm doing much better in my schoolwork.' " ••• Lynch discovered Transcendental Meditation in 1973, after hearing how happy it made his younger sister. "The first thing that happened was, I had anger, and this anger, within two weeks dissipated," he says. "I started feeling happier and enjoying the doing of things more. "It turns the mind within until you reach the greatest field of happiness, pure bliss. "And that experience is what we need," he says. "You can say, 'That is so much baloney, David,' but it's us. The ocean of bliss, unity, happiness, love is there for you to experience." As a filmmaker, Lynch says TM has helped him tap into his creativity. "I always say ideas are like fishing," Lynch says. "You go fishing for ideas, and the bait is desire, I always say. You focus. It's like bait on the hook, and you catch ideas. "And the little ones swim on the surface and the bigger ones swim down deeper. And when you meditate, you catch bigger fish. "I always feel lucky when I catch a good one." The foundation, Lynch believes, is a terrific idea. Beyond providing TM to schools, the foundation also hopes to form groups to meditate for peace, believing that group meditation can help reduce crime and war. Steven Yellin, a spokesman for the national TM organization, says 40 schools are waiting for funds to provide TM. As the foundation builds an endowment, they will be first to receive the $2,500 per person training costs. "The goal is basically to raise money - I would like to raise $7 billion," Lynch says. "The interest would sustain teaching TM to any child, any person who wants it. "I could do that with one-stop shopping with Bill Gates, who's a guy who's very interested in education," he says. "I would just love to talk to him about this." But Lynch also wants to raise money from grassroots supporters, such as one of the extras on his current film, who donated the $50 she'd earned for the day. Or his barber, who recently gave back the money he'd paid for a haircut as a contribution to the cause. "It's so possible," Lynch says. "You have education that brings a student to his full potential, and it's so possible to set up peacemaking groups to bring peace to Earth. It's so possible." To learn more To learn more about the foundation, visit www.davidlynchfoundation.com <http://www.davidlynchfoundation.com> . To learn more about Transcendental Meditation in general, visit www.tm.org <http://www.tm.org> . Orange County has TM centers in Tustin and Laguna Beach where anyone with $2,500 to spend can learn the method. There are also free introductory lectures in the following cities this month: San Clemente: 7 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 16, at 100 N. Calle Seville. Newport Beach: 7 p.m. today and 7 p.m. Aug. 17 at 260 Newport Center Drive. Fullerton: 7 p.m. today and 7 p.m. Aug. 17 at 1001 E. Chapman Ave. Laguna Niguel: 6:30 p.m. Thursday, 28202 Cabot Road, Suite 300. Laguna Beach: 1 p.m. Saturday, 363 Gleneyre. Call (949) 715-7000 for details. CONTACT US: (714) 796-7787 or [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** DOME ANNOUNCEMENTS is a moderated list that distributes announcements to the Maharishi University of Management community. 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