Q&A David Lynch

DAVID LYNCH'S PUBLIC knows him as a deliciously weird antihero with a taste for inscrutable plots and gruesome imagery. But as I learned on a visit to the filmmaker's house in the Hollywood Hills last week, up close he's as polite and unpretentious as an Eagle Scout -- which happens to perfectly suit the man otherwise known as the head of the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace (davidlynchfoundation.org).

Lynch discovered Transcendental Meditation 33 years ago; he's been a devoted practitioner ever since. A mental technique introduced in 1958 by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (whom the Beatles famously embraced and then dropped in the 1960s), TM is founded on the idea that we all possess an internal reservoir of creativity and energy -- otherwise known as the "unified field" -- that can be accessed by sitting for 20 minutes twice a day and repeating a personal mantra. According to the Maharishi's official website, the practice can reduce stress and reverse the effects of aging. It was scientific research into how TM helps students become more focused and creative, however, that prompted Lynch to establish his foundation last year to raise funds for bringing TM into schools.

But that's not all Lynch had to talk about. His newest film, "Inland Empire," a haunting psychological thriller shot with a hand-held digital camera, was released this month, and his first book, "Catching the Big Fish" (Tarcher/Penguin), about meditation, consciousness, and creativity, comes out in January. The book, an unexpected delight, serves as a sort of skeleton key to the rest: In it he muses on the relationship between TM and his work with appealingly nondidactic and non-New Age-y clarity, and in so doing opens the door -- a crack, at least -- to the heretofore impenetrable mysteries of his imagination.

Lynch and I had coffee in a spare, sunlit room adjoining his studio. His house is actually a complex of three houses that he's bought and attached over the past 20 years. Swallowed by the stacked landscape and dense vegetation, the hulking concrete and glass structures feel implausibly modest, even unassuming -- not unlike the man himself. He's made of them an intricate kingdom of unfettered creativity, where on any given morning he can be found designing a lamp, tinkering with Photoshop, or creating a painting. "The day is driven by ideas," he said.

IDEAS: Your new film seems to take the associative approach you've used before to a new level. Could you describe how you did it?

LYNCH: It was as if somebody was in another room with a completed puzzle and flipping me the pieces. Sometimes I'd get a piece and write it down, but it wouldn't thrill my soul. Other times I'd get a piece and fall in love with it. And then I'd get flipped another piece, which may or may not have had anything to do with the others. Instead of writing the entire script first and then shooting, I'd go shoot each idea as it came. Then I decided that if there is a unified field, all of these ideas should be able to be related, and slowly a story started coming that brought together all the fragments. That was a thrill.

IDEAS: How do you know a great idea when you see it?

LYNCH: Just happiness. Falling in love with something can be a euphoric experience. Maharishi says, "Mankind is not made to suffer, bliss is our nature." I really believe that. Bliss is physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual happiness. You can literally vibrate in happiness. You're in love and you're happy, and you know what you're going to do -- and then it's just translating that idea.

IDEAS: Where do your ideas come from?

LYNCH: Sometimes ideas come from new places. Or when you go to a place you haven't been in a long time, you see it afresh, and notice it more. Or people. I was out the other day and saw this guy's face and couldn't stop looking at it. I keep thinking about his face.

IDEAS: Has this always been your process? Where did your ideas come from when you were young?

LYNCH: In every neighborhood you have your friends, and you have light and freshly mowed lawns, and houses, and dogs, and there's a whole bunch of stuff to do. You see these houses, and sometimes you see your friends' parents, you just get a glimpse at them. And always there's something you don't know about. You see so many people relating one to another and you can sense something motivating them. And maybe you go off on a little dream, and you wonder. You see things in life that sometimes are shocking, and sometimes things are not so shocking, but they'll make you wonder. And it goes like that. Life going on.

IDEAS: Why, after more than 30 years of practicing Transcendental Meditation, did you decide to establish a foundation devoted to it?

LYNCH: I never used to talk about it -- I just did it. But I had the opportunity to visit Maharishi Vedic City [the "ideal" city the Maharishi founded in Iowa in 2001], and on that trip I met students who were in a school with consciousness-based education. These kids were so great to be with: strong, self-sufficient, not clones of one another, each individuals, but with a certain kind of glow, and certain strength. Sharp, funny, creative. Beyond the beyond.

I thought, Wait a minute. Our education is the sickest, most twisted joke. But you meet some of these students, and it's so natural, it grows from within. "Water the root and enjoy the fruit." Maharishi's been saying that for over 50 years.

IDEAS: How did you get into TM to begin with?

LYNCH: I was working on "Eraserhead," which was supposed to be the most euphoric experience ever. I had everything I thought I wanted: an 18-acre estate in Beverly Hills, two 35-millimeter cameras, black light video machines, all these lamps and cabling sets. I had a setup. But I remember thinking at one point, "I should be super-happy." I was happy, sort-of, on the surface. But inside I was hollow. It was weird having that feeling. So it made me think about a phrase I'd heard before that had always had a ring of truth to it: "True happiness is not out there; true happiness lies within." But I didn't know what within was, or how to get there.

When I decided to try TM, it was a strange pull, and a gentle worry. I wanted it but didn't know what I was going to get. Actually doing it was magical. It worked. I had an experience that was in my mind profound and deep and thick and unique. And after that things started getting better. Anxieties and fears started lifting, replaced by a solid, glowing, internal, strong happiness.

I think a lot of artists don't want to fiddle with that drive, or that edge, or whatever makes them roll. But I don't want to fiddle with that either. I want to enhance that and make it more powerful. TM feeds the creative process like I can't tell you. It's money in the bank. You can easily not go to the treasury; you can just have your dirty little pennies in your pocket, you'll be fine. But if you want to go, there it is, and it's beautiful.

Kate Bolick is senior editor of Domino magazine and teaches writing at New York University. Her interviews appear regularly in Ideas. E-mail kbolick@globe.com.