Lynch on Devil's Mountain

This story from Spiegel's Zeitgeist:

A crowd of starry-eyed film students and meditation devotees filled an auditorium in Berlin Tuesday expecting to hear a lecture by David Lynch, the quirky but accomplished Hollywood director. What they got, however, was a sales pitch for a New Age university that Lynch, the Oscar-nominated director of movies like "The Elephant Man" and "Mullholland Drive," wants to build on the Teufelsberg, Berlin's highest hilltop. Lynch does not speak German and the man he chose to relay his vision, his German guru Emanuel Schiffgens, described the proposed university in terms sure to offend any German with any grasp of 20th century history. "Invincible Germany! Invincible Germany! I want to hear you all say, invincible Germany!" said Schiffgens to the audience in Berlin's Urania theater. (...)

Lynch is working to found a series of "invincible universities" across Europe. The institutions would integrate traditional courses in subjects like science and the humanities with the philosophy of Transcendental Meditation, a meditation technique pioneered in the 1950s by the Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Plans for such institutions are underway in Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, and Scotland. The Scottish project is being co-sponsored by the 1960s folk music icon Donovan. (...)

But Lynch clearly believes in his plans. "Somehow tonight this beautiful gift has gotten perverted," he said at the forum. "Let's march boldly toward a bright and shining future."

Well, good night, and good luck. See the whole article here.