Bob Roth

Bob Roth is a teacher of Transcendental Meditation and the CEO of the David Lynch Foundation. He began practicing Transcendental Meditation in 1969 and went on to build a career centered on teaching it to executives, students, veterans, and others dealing with stress. As CEO of the David Lynch Foundation, he has expanded meditation programs for underserved communities and people affected by trauma, with 1.5 million adults and children worldwide learning to meditate. Roth is also the author of Strength in Stillness: The Power of Transcendental Meditation, a practical guide that explains how the practice can reduce stress and build resilience. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: Anthropic https://Claude.com/tetra ------ AG1 https://DrinkAG1.com/tetra ------ Athletic Nicotine https://www. AthleticNicotine.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ LMNT Electrolytes https://DrinkLMNT.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Lectio 365 https://Lectio365.com ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Tetragrammaton.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  First time I sat to meditate, I was an 18-year-old between my freshman and sophomore year at the University of California at Berkeley in June 28, 1969. I remember it. What were you studying? I wanted to be a United States Senator. I wanted to change the world. I'd worked for Bobby Kennedy, senior, when I was in high school, and I grew up in a very political family, and so our thing was, you know, you have to change the world, and I thought politics at that time was the way to do it because you could make sustainable change and scalable change. And so I got to Berkeley, and it was crazy, and I wasn't into drugs, I wasn't into... I was just trying to figure a way to make it. And a very good friend of mine

• 1:08Speaker 01

  named Peter Stevens, who I really trusted, said he was doing transcendental meditation. And I said, I'm sort of my dad's... My dad was a doctor and a scientist, so a little bit of skepticism there. I went, hmm, maybe. But he said, "Give it a try." And he held up a pen, and he dropped the pen in his hand. He said, "You don't have to believe in gravity for the pen to fall. You don't have to believe in this meditation." So my first meditation was sitting in this little room with this Sylvia Schmidt, 18-years-old. I said, "Well, I can't be hypnotized. I'm, you know..." And first meditation, and it just blew me away because it was familiar, and it was unique, and it was comfortable,

• 1:52Speaker 01

  and it was like, "Oh!" Because I had really... Like sort of David Lynch, I had worn thin of what the world had to offer. There had to be something more. It was not, it was almost depressing. So the meditation was a glimpse into something that was, oh, there's an other. Well, you know, you talk about in your book, spiritual world and expansion and awe. I love that awe.

• 2:15Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  And so it was an experience of awe.

• 2:17Rick Rubin?

  Right from the first time.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  And then it didn't happen for a while and then it happened. But yeah, right from the very first one. It's like Mother Nature was saying, we're gonna let you know there's something real here. And then you pay your dues.

• 2:26Rick Rubin?

  And from that time, did you carry on? Or was there ever a time where you felt like this is not for me?

• 2:31Speaker 01

  It was just the right thing. And then August 1970, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was holding a one-month course, training course for teachers at Humboldt State College near Mendocino, up in Northern California. And there were 2,000 people, because the Beatles had learned to meditate. So it was a lot of interest on college campuses. And I remember when he walked in the door at this big hall. And there was a, again, there was like, wow, this is a real deal here, something real. So yeah, and I became a teacher. And I've been teaching for 54 years, full-time.

• 3:05Rick Rubin?

  Have you, over the years, get to spend time with Maharishi?

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:08Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about him.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  I'll just say this one thing. One thing that I would do is, at different points during the time, I would host reporters who would come to meet Maharishi. So I'd be outside the room and the press, the guy from AP or something, be sort of skeptical and who's the Maharishi and all that sort of thing. And then they would go in to meet with him. And then 45 minutes later, they came out smiling. Because he wasn't anything what had been portrayed.

• 3:33Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  You know, pre-Beatle and Beatle time. Real deal, I mean, like the real, you write in your book, authentic. You didn't have to be original, authentic and profoundly authentic. I felt very comfortable around him and he never told me what to do. It was just like. I love transcendental meditation. I call it the democratization of meditation. Anybody can do it.

• 3:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  You don't have to believe in it. And my whole thing is, I want to change, you know, make a change in the world. He was that same message, you know? So anyway, the same guy who would, the reporter asked him, what's your, gonna be your big contribution to the world? And he said, it's nothing. It's the same old, same old knowledge. So he was great. I love being around. But the point I wanted to make is, there'd be lots of, this is my nature, lots of people would want to stay around him and study. And there would be these conferences with quantum physicists and Nobel laureates in chemistry. And then there'd be an Imam and a rabbi and a priest and this person, that person. They'd all sit together with Maharishi, sort of moderating. And they'd talk about deep truths of life,

• 4:37Speaker 01

  in different vocabulary, deep truths of life. And I found it fascinating for a while, but I just wanted to take the meditation and go out and teach it. So I taught it at San Quentin Prison. And I taught it, my father was an injured war veteran and a doctor. So I taught at the VA Hospital in San Francisco. And my mom worked with under-resourced kids in Marin County. I brought it in Marin City. So that was my thing, just use it to do something like that.

• 5:04Rick Rubin?

  Historically, was meditation kept secret before Maharishi?

• 5:09Speaker 01

  I think that you had Parma Haza Yoga Nanda. And you had some of these other great yogis who would come, teachers who would come. But I think, I remember seeing Time Magazine credited Maharishi with being the one who sort of broke down the barriers and made meditation accessible. And from that came the whole thing of yoga came out of that and health food stores and that sort of awakening.

• 5:33Rick Rubin?

  It also was a four-day course. And then you can do it for the rest of your life.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a lifestyle. And now, this is my perspective, because my father was a doctor and my mother was an educator. And I wanted to be a US Senator. At the time, it was a sort of noble profession. I wanted to make a change. And so now, our whole focus with meditation, and I run the David Lynch Foundation, is meditation as medicine. Meditation as a healthcare intervention to address all these really significant problems, particularly trauma and stress that are gripping the world. And so do it that way. And one time, someone asked Maharishi, You know, you brought this technique to bring enlightenment, and now people are using it to get rid of high blood pressure. Does that disappoint you?

• 6:22Speaker 01

  And he said, "You pull one leg on a chair, all the legs come." So you transcend, you dive deep within, and in that transcendence, it's like watering the root of a tree. All aspects of life get nourished.

• 6:35Rick Rubin?

  Tell me what transcendental meditation is.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Rick, I like to use an analogy of a cross-section of an ocean, where you have choppy waves on the surface, and that the ocean is silent at its depth. And the choppy waves can be likened to the... Some people call it the monkey mind. I call it the "gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta mind." "I gotta do this, I gotta do that, and I gotta call him, and I gotta call her." All the "gottas." And it's a natural human desire to say, "I'd like some inner calm, some inner equanimity, some inner connection, some inner access." And the operative word there is "inner." And the question is, is there such a thing as an inner? And if so, how do we get there? And so now, there's hundreds of different types of meditation. But when they do brain research, turns out there's three basic types.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  One is called focused attention, and that's your classic concentration form of meditation. The thinking on it is, what disrupts a calm ocean? Waves. So if you could stop waves, you could have a calm ocean. So what disrupts a calm mind? Thoughts. So if you could stop your thoughts or minimize thoughts, you'd have a calm mind. So that's a focused attention, just that. And brainwave research shows that it creates something called gamma brainwaves, which is your brain really working hard, focused, hard work. Second is called open monitoring. And this is a... many mindfulness, observational. Open monitoring is...

• 8:01Rick Rubin?

  Vipassana, maybe?

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, yes. I preface this by saying, all these three types of meditation, absolutely fine. Just different, different thing. So, open monitoring, and I'm making it brief, says, "Thoughts themselves are not the disruptor of calm, but the content of thoughts." So if I have a thought about a guy named Joe, and a few years ago, Joe done me wrong, it's upsetting. Joe's coming. So vipassana or open monitoring teaches me the key words here are dispassionately observe my thoughts, my moods, my feelings, be in the present.

• 8:35Rick Rubin?

  No reaction.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  That's right, be in the present moment. It's an observational. And when that meditation does something, many different types of brainwaves, but theta brainwaves, which are four to eight cycles per second, and that's like onset of dream. Now, these are two cognitive approaches. They're pertaining to the waves. So then the third is self-transcending, and that's transcendental meditation. Self-transcending recognizes that there's a vertical dimension to the mind, that it's not just thoughts and reactions and movement and that sort of thing, and how I react to things. There's a vertical dimension. And like the ocean has a depth, the mind has a vertical dimension.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  And transcendental meditation, to transcend, means in this case, you could say settle down, allows your active, thinking, noisy mind to just begin to settle inward and experience quieter and quieter levels of thought, and then experience what's called the source of thought. Transcendent, you talk about in your book, that field, that ocean, just unboundedness, no judgment, awe. It allows that experience effortlessly, no strain, because any strain, any agenda, any agency stops it. So it's an effortlessness, and when we do that, it creates something called alpha one

• 9:58Speaker 01

  brainwaves, that's eight to 10 cycles per second, and that's a state of restful alertness. So transcendental meditation is an effortless process that just allows the mind to dive and access that field of pure creativity, pure consciousness, pure awareness that lies within. And it has a whole constellation of changes and tickles.

• 10:17Rick Rubin?

  When you bring up the vertical dimension, it sounds like the other side of it would be prayer.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Explain, what do you mean by that?

• 10:25Rick Rubin?

  Well, prayer is connecting upward.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. What did they say about meditation? I don't know if you said it or someone said, prayer is talking to God.

• 10:35Rick Rubin?

  Meditation is listening.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so this is, while this is not religious, it's secular. It's just accessing the silence within, actually Psalms 46:10. You know what it says? "Be still and know that I am God." Doesn't say pray, doesn't say chant. "Be still and know that I am God." And Lao Tzu said, "To one whose mind is silent, the universe surrenders." Which means you have insight into everything.

• 11:01Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful. How did Maharishi learn this?

• 11:06Speaker 01

  He was a college student in Allahabad. Came from a small town in India. And he also, I'm sure in a much bigger way, was looking for something more. He was studying physics. He was looking for something more and he was, I guess, and someone told him that a great yogi was going to be coming into town. And so he went to go see the yogi. And he was way in the back and he couldn't really see him because it was dark. But he just tells the story that a car drove by and the car lights flashed on, name was Guru Dev or Swami Brahmananda, and flashed on his face. And it was like one of those, you just knew. It's not a question. It's not, the rational mind isn't thinking it through and analyzing it.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  It's just experience. And so then that was, then he wanted to stay with him. And his teacher said, "No, finish college." So he finished college. And then he came back to, stayed with him for 13 years as his sort of number one, sort of chief of staff for 13 years. And then when his teacher died, Guru Dev died, then Maharishi took two years of silence in Urukashi and then started traveling around teaching the meditation he had learned.

• 12:15Rick Rubin?

  How much do we know about Brahmananda, his teacher?

• 12:19Speaker 01

  Not that much. He was called the Shankarachary of the north in one of these areas. He was very private. He had stayed in silence for, I think he was a true sort of yogi. He'd stayed in silence in caves in the Himalayas for 40 or 50 years. And they kept trying to bring him out and kept trying to bring him out. Finally, when World War II was really picking up, he said, okay, okay. But he didn't want to talk that much, but he came out. And the idea is when you have a person of that Gharshan experience, then it alone has an influence on the world. But then he got Maharishi and got people around him and collected and made practical. Meditation was so cloaked for so many years. I think the British coming to mess things up.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  And I think the British really fouled up a lot of the integrity of Indian culture. I mean, Ayurveda is a great healthcare system.

• 13:09Rick Rubin?

  Practically erased.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, practically erased.

• 13:11Rick Rubin?

  It seems like Maharishi really had a hand in bringing it back.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  He was really great. He described him since once as he's sort of endlessly curious. And he was having a meeting with some Ayurvedic doctors and Western doctors both because he said they should be compatible. And someone leaned over to him, to Maharishi, and said, what do you know about Ayurvedic medicine? He says, not much, but in a few days, I'll know a lot.

• 13:33Rick Rubin?

  It seems like he was interested in all of the ancient wisdom, meditation being one aspect, Ayurveda being another, Vedic astrology, all of the different aspects of this like lost wisdom that for thousands of years was the way people lived.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  That's right. And we thought it was primitive and we thought it was, you know, obscure. But actually, any disease a person has, psychological, physiological, what is it all? You take the medicine, butt, sleep, meditate, eat right, exercise, same thing. Because what are we doing? We are strengthening the body's own inner intelligence to ward off disease. So, modern medicine says you have a disease in your kidney. Let's destroy that disease in your kidney. Also, it was during everything. Ayurveda medicine would say, no, let's make the immune system so powerful that it can drive that out. Now Maharishi was very adamant. He said, they work together. It's not you abandon.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  Whatever his thing was, whatever scientifically proven to work. He loved Chinese medicine. And he loved a lot of the indigenous properties in Latin America.

• 14:44Speaker 00

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• 16:36Rick Rubin?

  How did you go from being one of 2,000 students to spending time with Maharishi and working directly with him?

• 16:45Speaker 01

  You use the word persistence in your book. For me, it was, you know what the word dharma is?

• 16:50Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was my path. It was like, in Japanese, they call it ikigai. It meant everything for me personally. I loved the experience of transcending, of diving within, and that silence and that peacefulness. I loved that it was a challenge because there was so much misunderstanding about transcendental meditation in general, transcendental meditation, Maharishi. I bring it on. There's a great quote from Marcus Aurelius. "No one is ever hurt by knowing the truth." So I just wanted to know the truth. And the more I dug into the whole thing, beyond the sort of nonsense, it was very powerful. And so in 1972, I became a teacher. And I came back to the Bay Area and I taught TM for two or three years. And then there was a Maharishi European Research University

• 17:36Speaker 01

  in Switzerland. So I interned there around Maharishi.

• 17:40Rick Rubin?

  What was the research university?

• 17:41Speaker 01

  They did research on meditation. Yeah, and they would also bring in researchers. And it was also a sort of theoretical physics and consciousness, a lot of discussion about consciousness. Are you a physicalist who believes that this whole world and subjective experience is a product of the neurons in the brain? Or do you feel that consciousness is a field that we access as an antenna? And so Maharishi reveled in those discussions and debates. And so I just had a chance to be around a lot of wise people. And I'll say one more thing on this. I remember running video camera. And there was a time when Maharishi was in the middle, and it was a big conference. And on his right was Brian Josephson, who was a Nobel laureate in physics,

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Ilya Prigogin, who was a Nobel laureate in chemistry. And over this side was this great rabbi and a great this. And they were talking back and forth. And it was, it became clear. It's the same reality, different vocabulary.

• 18:36Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  But I remember looking through this little camera lens and thinking, this could be any time in the past where wise people got together to explore truths with no...

• 18:48Speaker 01

  Biases and no prejudice is just truth. It could have been Socrates, it could have been Jesus, it could have been anything. And so then I had a chance to be around him more and more over the time.

• 18:58Rick Rubin?

  What was the first time you ever spoke to him?

• 19:00Speaker 01

  I became a teacher and I thanked him very much. I thought I had a, he taught me individually to be, to teach. He said, you know, go and make a better world. Because he felt like all the things we're doing to make a better world. Yes, we have to change the healthcare system and yes, we have to change education and government. But unless we equip human beings with the tools to awaken pure awareness, nothing's gonna work. So that was when he just, those words. And then different times, I didn't go to him to say, should I do this or should I do that? That wasn't my thing. It was like, you know, I really liked to go back and I was really into, I really liked sports when I was a kid. And the San Francisco teams.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  And so I said, I like to bring this to, you know, sports or something like that. And he had a great line, someone had told him, Marishi, good news, the Chicago Bears won or something. At first he said, the Bears? And then he said, good news from the field of sports. And he said, what, nobody lost?

• 20:04Rick Rubin?

  That's great.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  It's a, yeah, whereas, and that's the truth in anything in the outer life. One person wins, one person doesn't win, sort of. But in the transcendent, in that field of pure consciousness, deep within, everybody wins.

• 20:20Rick Rubin?

  Would you say he didn't have a sense of competition about him?

• 20:24Speaker 01

  None. He would, sometimes people would say, well, should I see this person? He said, whatever you want. His whole thing was, whatever you want to do, always, whatever you, he, he used to cite this thing that in the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, where it says, know thyself. So he took it further, he said, know thyself, be true to thyself. Do what you know to be right and don't do what you know to be wrong. You know to be wrong. Isn't that beautiful?

• 20:53Rick Rubin?

  The Four Commandments.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  That's right. That's it. He said, that's the essence of all. That's right.

• 20:58Rick Rubin?

  I love that.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Can I tell you another funny Marishi story?

• 21:00Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  So one time he was, they were building something, they were gonna build a lecture hall. He had a great sense of humor. And so, for me, he was like a grandfather.

• 21:10Rick Rubin?

  How old was he when you met him?

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Well, 1970, they say in the papers that he was born in 1918. So I guess in his 52 or something like that. He first came to the United States in 1959. But anyway, so someone was showing him all these different materials that they were going to do. He didn't really need to see it, but you know, upholstery for something. And so he's feeling, what is this? This is linen. What is this? This is, you know, wool. What is this? And someone said, what is this? He said, what is this? And he said, naphthalate. Of course, he said, what's naphthalate? And the guy said, plastic. And I said, ah, plastic. Man's gift to God.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Just like that.

• 21:51Rick Rubin?

  Very funny.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Very funny. Very funny.

• 21:54Rick Rubin?

  At what point in your experience of meditating, did you realize this is powerful enough that I'm going to dedicate my life to sharing this instead of going into politics as I had planned?

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Much to the chagrin of my father, who was, you know, put himself through medical school in Detroit during the depression, delivering the Detroit News. I'm his oldest Jewish son, who was going to, not a doctor, a lawyer, you know, something. It took me two months at Berkeley in 1968 to realize politics was not my path.

• 22:27Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  It's just too much divisive. It was never going to heal the soul of the nation. Politics important and that, but it wasn't my dharma. Wasn't my path. Didn't empower me. So when I started to realize that I had something that could impact scale, which is what we're doing now with the David Lynch Foundation. We're working with insurance companies so that TM is available to everyone in their insurance. Going to change a lot. So it just dawned and then he passed away. I became a teacher in 1972 and he passed away in 1978. Probably was easier for him. I mean, by the, I mean, he was meditating and I would do these retreats. He came to, he was proud of me, but it was a bit of a change. It was not his world.

• 23:09Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, this wasn't his vision for your life.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  No.

• 23:11Rick Rubin?

  But this is your vision for your life.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  And, and he let me and he became a doctor and his father wanted to stay in Detroit, running their hardware store and he went and did his thing, so.

• 23:23Rick Rubin?

  That's an interesting point you bring up about the insurance paying for meditation. I remember that Maharishi thought it was important for the meditator to pay for meditation. Because you're paying for it, you treat it with the respect that it deserves.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  So he had two different things there. He wanted somebody to pay for it. Cosmically, there needs to be some gift back. And so individuals pay. But then we started with the David Lynch Foundation and he loved. We were working with kids. I think it changed. Some people have a criticism of TM in the past that we charge money. Well, the money is charged. We're a nonprofit organization and we want to have like an educational institution. So when a person learns to meditate, then for the rest of their life, they can come back and there's a full-time TM teacher there, seven days a week or five days a week, that they can have their meditation. It's not like I volunteer on Saturday afternoons. And he wanted to scale it.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  So the money that was charged was to help basically pay for the teachers to raise a family. When we started having schools paying for it, and I taught in San Quentin Prison, he was happy about that. He just wanted it not to be out of the backs of the teachers. And also, the interesting thing is now, for example, we're in a lot of hospitals and fire departments. And they're under enormous stress and they're just getting crushed. And so now the hospitals and fire departments are paying for them to learn. And they're doing research to show that it actually saves money. And they'll still get enlightened.

• 25:00Rick Rubin?

  How did you come to meet David Lynch?

• 25:02Speaker 01

  I met David Lynch, I'd heard about him, that he was doing TM. And then we were gonna do something about, we wanted to build a meditation peace center in Los Angeles. And then we just talked a few times and I said, David, we want to try and raise awareness to build this community meditation center in L.A. So we held a press conference. I didn't know that much about him. Mobbed because it was David. Because I'm not really this big film guy, you know? And then we just, our paths crossed. And the thing about David and I is that we are as close to brothers as possible on a deep level and as different as possible as you could imagine. I learned so much from him. And then the foundation came up.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  And I had always, Rick, wanted to bring meditation to people in need, always. And I think it was my upbringing. When I was 10 years old, sitting in the VA hospital in San Francisco, waiting for my father to finish reading an x-ray so we could go to a Giants game. He was held up and I would see these World War II and Korean War veterans rolling by. And then he'd take me, he volunteered at San Quentin Prison. So I'd go over there with him. And so I always wanted to bring it to people in need. And I was talking to my friend Mario and I kept saying, "Why isn't there a foundation that would just give money so we could pay teachers to go into schools and just teach TM?" "No, there wasn't, nothing." "And why isn't there..."

• 26:28Speaker 01

  And Mario finally said, "Oh, just stop complaining and do it yourself." I don't know what that meant. So I called up David and asked if he would do it. And then we did it together. We had not a clue what we were doing. No grand plan. I didn't know what a 501(c)(3) was. He did not either. We didn't have any money. David was not a wealthy man. He said he made movies famously that people didn't pay to watch.

• 26:50Rick Rubin?

  No, he was a true artist.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  True artist. But we started it. And then it just grew and grew and grew. And when we started, it said, "You won't last a year." And now we're 20 years.

• 27:00Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  So David and I became really close, close. We traveled all over the world together. And the thing I wanted to say is, he didn't care if anybody understood what he was doing. And my training was sort of in journalism and public policy. I wanted someone to understand absolutely every word. Absolutely every word. So we loved each other deeply. It was rooted in the same unboundedness. So we would just go places and we didn't get in each other's way. And the best story about this was, there was a press conference that David attended with John Hagelin, Dr. John Hagelin, the physicist, then president of Marshy International University, on the peace proposal, where if you have enough people meditating together,

• 27:43Speaker 01

  you could reduce the violence in the atmosphere and promote peace. And the press conference was going great. And Marshy was really good with the press and very punchy answers. And everything was specific and great. And he started talking about quantum physics, which he loved, and consciousness. And then he started talking, and all the reporters were like, "What, what, how do we end up here?" And then something called the Constitution of the Universe, which was devade from the ancient. And this whole thing, and people were getting fidgeting. And I'd worked hard to get all those press there, and they were fidgeting. And I go, "Ooh," and they're looking at their watch. And I leaned over to David, and I whispered on the stage, I said, "Getting a little abstract." And David, in a very loud voice, looked at me, said, "Bobby, for me, the more abstract, the better."

• 28:29Speaker 01

  So that was it. And we just called each other, and I talked to him every day before, the two weeks before he passed away, on the phone.

• 28:36Rick Rubin?

  Did David get to spend time with Maharishi as well?

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Maharishi really loved him, really loved him. Because authentic, truthful, immeasurably creative, really got what Maharishi was doing. And David had to overcome, because there was a lot of, like the Beatles had to overcome. There was a lot of misunderstandings in the sphere about who Maharishi was, and it was all not true. And Paul and Ringo said that, and I taught Sean Lennon, and he said, he grew up, and he would see... This was 10 years after Beatles had been in India. And he said, every morning, he'd wake up, and he'd walk into his parents' bedroom, and they were holding hands, meditating together. So...

• 29:19Rick Rubin?

  I learned because of the Beatles.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did, I heard about it because of the Beatles. So he clarified a lot of misunderstandings for people, and David's integrity helped with that.

• 29:31Speaker 03

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• 31:31Rick Rubin?

  Tell me the story of Fairfield, Iowa.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  So during the 1960s and 70s, when because of the Beatles, a gazillions of people were learning, and I should say Donovan was involved in that. Beach Boys were involved in that.

• 31:47Rick Rubin?

  Mia Farrow as well.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. There was a lot of college students learning to meditate. And someone said to Maharishi, "We should just have a university, a regular university, that offers traditional courses. But meditation is an educational methodology that would help students be able to learn more." So some people donated some money first in Santa Barbara. And then some property, a university, went under in Fairfield, Iowa, Parsons College. They got it for like a song. And that was in 1974 and started.

• 32:21Rick Rubin?

  So it would be like a Christian university, but it's Maharishi Meditation University?

• 32:26Speaker 01

  Yes, except that there is a philosophy and a belief structure around the Christian university. Whereas this was, they have people from 60 countries and they had a Muslim temple there. And they had a Jewish and they had all different things.

• 32:39Rick Rubin?

  So it was a secular university with meditation?

• 32:42Speaker 01

  With meditation, yeah, exactly. And it was, funnily enough, at the core of, said this should be at the core of learning. Students need to develop, as you say in your book, expand your awareness and the universe expand. The universe can't expand if your awareness isn't. So expand your awareness, then the universe surrenders. And then out of that, they used it, the research was done for other ancient, these Vedic approaches. Now, Veda has been misunderstood to be Hindu, but it's not. Vedic science predates Hinduism by forever. So Ayurveda came from that, yoga came from that, meditation came from that. So that's where research was done on Ayurvedic medicine and called stepachived, which is green architecture.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  And so it's an amazing place. And the funny thing is, I was going out to lunch with a dean of students from Yale and NYU. And I'm not affiliated with the university, but I know about it. And they said, we love what's going on at Maharishi University. Because meditation is at the core of their learning. And at our universities, we have it set up that if a student wants to meditate, they have to find time outside of school hours and go over to the center and learn something. We want to have it be the core curriculum that will be at the basis. Because everything they're learning is going to be, and this was even before AI, is going to be out of date.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  And this is something, of course, they'll take, carry with them for the rest of their life. So it was way ahead and continues way ahead of its time.

• 34:16Rick Rubin?

  How many students, do you know?

• 34:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, they have it online, a thousand or something like that. And they have a doctoral program. They have a big dome where people meditate.

• 34:24Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about meditating with other people. I typically meditate by myself, but I've had the privilege of meditating in a large group and something happens.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. Maharishi, you heard about that in the ancient texts. It talks about that individual meditation is good to get rid of the stress and enlightened my brain. But when done in groups, it also helps to get rid of the societal stress. It has an effect on the collective consciousness of society. And collective consciousness is two levels. You can go to certain areas of a city and you can feel fear, or the country, you can go into war-torn areas, and in those high-stressed areas, blood pressure rates are high, suicide rates are high, and you go to other areas in more nature, and it's a different collective consciousness.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  But also, Rick, the hypothesis that there's a field of consciousness that underlies everyone and everything that we tune into, and that the meditation accesses that and stirs that field and creates an influence of positivity throughout the whole collective consciousness. So the idea is to have hundreds or thousands of people doing that often, and students. And someone said to Maharishi, "People aren't going to believe that." And he said, "It doesn't matter, we're going to do it anyway. You don't have to believe in it." And then someone at the UN was saying, "Just try it. Everything else you've tried has largely failed. If it fails, it's just something else that failed. But imagine, imagine if it worked."

• 36:00Speaker 01

  And they have research, like 40 studies that shows that violence goes down and crime goes down.

• 36:06Rick Rubin?

  And even for the individual meditators, I know you felt it, when you're meditating with a large group, something

• 36:12Speaker 01

  Huge.

• 36:13Rick Rubin?

  It gets very deep.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  People say, "So are you praying for peace?" He said, "No, no. What happens when you turn on a light? You're lighting the filament, that's all you're doing. But the filament goes out to the glass and spreads out into the

• 36:24Rick Rubin?

  Light fills the room.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  Light fills the room from that one filament. So we as human beings and our nervous systems, the hypothesis here is that, there's a couple of hypotheses, that there is a field that connects us all together, underlies everyone and everything. There's research that suggests that. But that we as human beings, in our meditations, can access that quite purely and have a powerful, positive influence for ourself, and then, without even thinking about it, radiates outward.

• 36:53Rick Rubin?

  From the time you met Maharishi until the time he passed,

• 36:58Rick Rubin?

  Did he change at all?

• 37:00Speaker 01

  First 25 years, he was at it for 50 years. First 25 years, he focused a lot on transcendental meditation. Making that sort of understood and the research oversaw the, you know, really encouraged research and explaining the mechanics and training teachers. He trained thousands and thousands of teachers. So then somehow in 1975 or 80, he switched. And he said, now I want to start going back into these ancient texts of this Vedic science of consciousness. Because modern medicine was going askew. As we know, it's money and it's drugs and it's all that. And so he said, let's look at this Ayurveda strengthened.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  And then he said, even with architecture. He said, okay, there's this whole boom on green architecture. 90% of our life is spent indoors. And so there's an understanding that if you have toxic materials, that influences you. But Maharishi took it another step further. He said, just getting rid of the toxic materials isn't necessarily awakening a person. So he said, from this ancient Ayurveda thing called Vastu Architectures to Bhajaved. He said, they told you, oh, when you build your house oriented, so you get a morning sun coming into your kitchen. And then in the evening, you don't want the sun coming into your bedroom. So the sun, your bedroom should be here. So orientation.

• 38:28Rick Rubin?

  Parallel to Feng Shui.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  Remember, it's just Himalayas.

• 38:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Like pulse diagnosis is something in Ayurveda and it's something in Chinese medicine.

• 38:38Rick Rubin?

  Chinese medicine.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then the door said, come with me. And he and his sister, two seats had just opened up, front row, right in the middle.

• 38:47Rick Rubin?

  Meant to be.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  Meant to be.

• 38:49Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, the universe was.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right.

• 38:50Rick Rubin?

  Supporting this process.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. So that was the Merv Griffin Show. 50,000 people were learning TM every month in the United States. It was a big thing all over the world. And then Maharishi said, okay, now it's time to start these other approaches, not just non-toxic, but you talk about more aligned we are with nature. So in Ayurveda medicine, it's harnessing the natural power of the human immune system. In building, it's harnessing the power of the sun along with the green. And so that was a big thing. David Lynch, 2005.

• 39:29Rick Rubin?

  And it's not obvious that David's interest would change things in the way that it did.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  People used to always stand up and say, "What's Mr. Bliss? You know, what is he, Mr. This new Mr. Bliss making these movies?"

• 39:44Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 39:44Speaker 01

  You know, how do you, because David started meditating in 1973. I'll tell you that story. So he famously talks about this, where he had everything he wanted. You know, he graduated from homeschool and he had everything he wanted. He was working on Eraserhead and he wasn't happy. And he couldn't figure out, "I have everything, why aren't I happy?" He kept hearing the line, "True happiness lies within." And he said it was a cruel statement, because they don't tell you where their within is, and they don't tell you how to get there. Very cruel, very frustrating to him, very literal. "Where's the within? How do I get there?" Then he said he kept hearing about that meditation could be a way to go within, but he didn't know what meditation to do.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  So he started looking at different things and he didn't know how to choose, didn't know how to choose. And then he tells the story that one Saturday, he got a phone call from his sister. And just about whatever, he said, "What's going on?" She said, "What do you mean?" He said, "What's going on? Your voice, it's changed." And she said, "Well, what?" He said, "No, it's changed. What are you doing?" And she said, "I just started transcendental meditation." He said, "That's it." And he just knew. So he learned transcendental meditation and...

• 40:56Rick Rubin?

  Because he heard the energy in her voice change.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  Did everything.

• 41:00Rick Rubin?

  Better.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  Better.

• 41:01Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 41:02Speaker 01

  Better.

• 41:02Rick Rubin?

  He wanted that.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  He wanted that, authentic. He said he didn't really care about any of the research.

• 41:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  Although he liked it for, he understood we had to do it in order to prove it to the insurance companies in order to get, but he said that's not why he did it like you, he couldn't care less.

• 41:17Rick Rubin?

  It's the least interesting part to me is the science of it.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  I know.

• 41:20Rick Rubin?

  I just know that it works.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like, wouldn't it be great if 300 million people could have access to this, to their healthcare system? One time a person said to me, "Do you want everyone in the world to meditate?" And I said, "That's very presumptuous."

• 41:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  "I can't say that. I would like everyone to know what it is, have everyone access to it. And if you're a single mom and you don't have funding, or if you don't have a place, I'd like, the hospitals are now setting up meditation rooms, that I'd like. I can't tell a person they should do it, but I like having it available." But anyway, he...

• 41:52Speaker 01

  It was Mr. Bliss. And he kept, some of the great things he would say is,

• 41:59Speaker 01

  "You don't have to die to do a death scene, and you don't have to suffer in order to show suffering. In fact, if you have broadened awareness, you're much more capable of really, truthfully, expressing that human emotion. Then if you're lost in another human emotion, then you can't, but if you're back here, then you're free to do whatever you want to do." And the fact that Dave, when you said, "What were the biggest things?" I think David Lynch, he just changed everything. And we started Foundation, and the Foundation is now one and a half million adults and children have learned to meditate in the US and all over the world, and we're working in a hundred hospitals, offering it to doctors and nurses, veterans,

• 42:44Speaker 01

  and war-torn areas. And I would like it to be five million in the next three years.

• 42:51Rick Rubin?

  How many meditators are there, period?

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Twelve million, twelve million.

• 42:54Rick Rubin?

  Twelve million?

• 42:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, TM. And it's not, as you know, it's not a quick fix sort of thing. It's not like you can just sign up for it. When you learn it, it's taught over four consecutive days. The first day is in personal instruction. The second, third, and fourth day can either be in personal instruction or it can be remote, but it takes more time. And then there's a whole follow-up program that you have access to.

• 43:15Rick Rubin?

  For people who really fall in love with it, are there more advanced techniques? What would those be?

• 43:21Speaker 01

  There are advanced techniques. Maharishi described them as, TM is like planting a seed. When you learn TM, your teacher gives you a mantra, which is a word or a sound that has no meaning associated with it, no positive effects, and then teaches you how to use it properly. There's advanced techniques that can come along that he described as like fertilizer. Like, okay, you planted the tree and you can just water it, but at certain times, if you add a little nitrogen or something that can help it grow. And in the ancient, there's a book called Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, which is sort of the classic yoga textbook, 2,500 years old. And in it, Maharishi Patanjali talked about,

• 44:05Speaker 01

  the first half of the book, he described transcending, the dive within. And again, it's not controlling the surface. It's accessing the depth. And then the second half of the book is, what can you do if you're established permanently on that level? And so he came out with a S I D H I, S I D H I, city program, which potentially said ways of strengthening. How creative can we be? How refined and accurate can my senses be? My sense of sight, my sense of hearing? So he came out with the city program, which was more advanced than TM. But TM is the basis of the whole thing.

• 44:48Rick Rubin?

  Did Maharishi write any books?

• 44:50Speaker 01

  Science of Being and Art of Living. And also, he did a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, the first six chapters of the Bhagavad Gita. And then other books, but much more along these lines of Ayurveda medicine and more, more technical.

• 45:03Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about the first book, the main book.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  Science of Being and Art of Living?

• 45:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  He came to the United States in 1959. He had been in India from 1955 to 1957. He traveled around India by himself, teaching the meditation. Art of 58. And then someone, when he was in India, said, well, you know, you should go to the United, you should take this, go around the world. In his 40s. So someone bought him a plane ticket to go to San Francisco.

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• 47:05Speaker 05

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• 47:10Rick Rubin?

  Air flight was new in the 1940s, no?

• 47:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, 19, well, this is 1959, 58. But travel, he traveled around India just on train by himself.

• 47:18Rick Rubin?

  But it was a new idea, even to be able to do this at that time.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  So new. He'd never been anywhere.

• 47:23Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 47:24Speaker 01

  He had never been anywhere.

• 47:25Rick Rubin?

  But nobody had been anywhere.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  Nobody had been anywhere, and he grew sort of rural India. So he was just, everything was brand new, and he just... The story he tells is he was in a cave for two years, which David and I saw the cave in India, where he meditated for two years in Uttarakashi, which is called the Valley of the Saints. And it's just, his master had passed away, and this was it. He was just gonna retire, and he was just gonna go in. And then, after about two years, this thought kept coming up. And it was Ram Ashram, which Ram Ashram was this place in the south of India. And it just kept coming up, and he, why this? What's this thought? Everything was so quiet and silent and pure, and just Ram Ashram.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  And so he asked one of his buddies, yogis who were there, and he said, "I just keep having this thought." The yogi said, "Go to Ram Ashram and get rid of the thought." Yeah. So he traveled two years to get to Ram Ashram, teaching transcendental meditation. He had to overcome a lot because in India, everybody knows what meditation is. So here's this person who's got, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure." And he said, "No, it's effortless. There's no effort and there's no dogma and there's no all this stuff around it." "Yeah, yeah, yeah." But he was successful and he set up some centers. And then, when he was in India, Ram Ashram, he gave a big talk. And at the end of the talk, there was like 10,000 people. He said, "We want to spiritually regenerate the world."

• 48:52Speaker 01

  And for him, spiritual was not religion. It was the essence of humanity, awaken the essence of humanity in everyone. So then someone bought him a plane ticket. Basically, he went to countries in the East and then Asia. And then he came to San Francisco. Great story, he recalled it. So he gets to San Francisco and he's welcomed by a Buddhist society. And he's giving a speech one night to a group of people in Buddhist society and about enlightenment. And the next day, an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, I've seen it, says, "Yogi Brings Meditation to Fight Insomnia." And he read it and he said, "It made me want to go home."

• 49:37Speaker 01

  He said, "This, I'm bringing a message of enlightenment and people in America are using it to go to sleep. I don't know what I'm doing here." But then, the next moment, he realized, again, it doesn't matter why a person learns, they get all the benefits. You water the root of a tree for one branch, all the branches are nourished. And so he then came to Los Angeles and started traveling around. One of the biggest things was in 1959, he had a meeting with scientists at the Sequoia National Park.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  And they sort of planned how they could do this. Actually, you asked me the biggest thing from the Beatles. I forgot something. In nineteen sixty-eight and sixty-nine, Dr. Robert Keith Wallace and a researcher from Harvard did the first research on transcendental meditation. And they looked at what happened to the brain. They looked at what happened to blood pressure and oxygen consumption. And it showed profound changes took place. And it ended up as a main, published in the Science and Scientific American. And that really opened the floodgates. Because for Maharishi, there's no difference between physiology and consciousness, spirituality and matter. It's a continuum. Just like we know that there's no break

• 50:56Speaker 01

  between mind and brain and body. It's a continuum. And so if you see things that are going on in the brain that are distinct, that is a measure of what's going on in consciousness. So he said, let's, we're in a very materialistic society. Let's look that. So he really pushed the science.

• 51:18Rick Rubin?

  I was told that the words used by a TM teacher when they teach meditation from the beginning, it's always the same words. And they're the exact same words as if Maharishi himself was teaching you meditation. Is that true?

• 51:31Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:32Rick Rubin?

  That's amazing. Carrying on the lineage.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  Because he wanted to be sure that if a person came to, genuinely came to learn to meditate.

• 51:40Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  There was no diminishment because this person or that person, he wanted it to be as impactful as possible. So when I learned it, I learned it, my teacher Sylvia didn't speak great English, but I understood it enough. And it didn't matter how charismatic the person was or anything. Here is the instruction. "The mind, there's choppy waves on the surface, silence at its depth." That's your own innermost self. How do I get from up here? Down here. And so Marashi brought up a few key teachings that had not been around. First of all, the idea that there's a transcendent, that it's not just surfing the waves, that you can access

• 52:22Speaker 01

  an ocean of consciousness within, that was a big one. But he also said, people said, well, you meditation, you have to control the mind. You have to make effort, concentration. The mind is a monkey. Monkey mind has to be corralled, and that's hard. That takes effort. And he said, no, the mind is not a monkey. The natural tendency of the mind, given the opportunity, will be to be drawn to something more satisfying. Again, enjoyable. You're in a room listening to terrible music and beautiful music comes on in the other room. Your attention goes to that. There's no effort for that. So then he said, okay, the mind is-

• 53:02Rick Rubin?

  There's nothing to figure out.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  No, nothing to figure out at all. The mind is drawn to something more satisfying. Inside, really, you can have big words, pure consciousness, doesn't matter. Innermost quiet self, quiet self. So he said, all we have to do is give the attention of the mind an inward direction. Like teach a child how to dive, take the correct angle, and the mind will be drawn inward because deeper levels are increasingly more satisfying. So the settling is effortless. Any effort, any forcing, any strain, any agenda, any goal, slows the whole thing down. And then he gave a mantra that had no meaning and told a person how to use it

• 53:47Speaker 01

  as a catalyst and taught them how to use it effortlessly.

• 53:49Rick Rubin?

  Do different people react to learning in a different way?

• 53:54Speaker 01

  So I've been teaching for 52 years, thousands and thousands of people. In the beginning days, everybody thought meditation was bogus, and they didn't think they could do it. Now, people will come to me and they'll say, I know it's good for me, I know it works. I don't think I can do it. I've tried, I've tried to clear my mind of thoughts, I've tried. And the comment that when they open their eyes from the first meditation, 98.9% of the time is-

• 54:26Speaker 01

  Oh, I didn't know that was inside. That's easy. So, no, it's the same. And even because of David, I've taught well-known people. And although I spend much more time just teaching veterans, and they're all the same. Doesn't matter how much money you have. You're worried about your kid, or you can't sleep at night, so.

• 54:46Rick Rubin?

  What is the relationship between TM and stress?

• 54:51Speaker 01

  There's two aspects to the stress process. One is called stress auras. So stressors are demands and challenges that come at us. Covid was a stressor. Having a child who's sick when you have to get to work is a stressor. Change in job, change in this. Those are stressors, external. This other component to produce stress is called my stress response. How do I react to that news? How do I react to losing a job? Or my face is, I don't look as young as I used to. Or there's a change in a relationship. Or I have 10 things to do, and I only have time to do two. My stress response, I have control over that. Did I sleep well? Did I exercise?

• 55:36Speaker 01

  Am I eating properly? Am I meditating? Then my stress response, my ability to handle, is bigger. And then that thing doesn't conquer me. I'm not a victim. Whereas if I didn't take care of myself, the same thing happens. It's crushing. So stress is that product. Stress is a part of everyday life. The big question is chronic stress. That's the residue that builds up day after day after day after day, that doesn't go away, even though I've slept as much as I can and eaten properly. And all the medicines you have, they reduce the symptom of high blood pressure, the symptom of anxiety, the symptom of depression, but does nothing to get rid of the chronic stress at its basis.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  And I think that's the uniqueness of transcendental meditation.

• 56:25Rick Rubin?

  What does TM do for blood pressure?

• 56:29Speaker 01

  So the National Institutes of Health, over the last 20 years, have given $30 million, and the Department of Defense, to study the effects of TM on high blood pressure. And it turns out that TM is as effective, if not more effective, than all the antihypertensive medication for reducing high blood pressure. 110 million people suffer from high blood pressure in America. It's the number-one killer. The news that just came out from the American Heart Association is that they looked at all the different types of meditation for heart disease and high blood pressure. Based on research, they said only transcendental meditation reduces high blood pressure.

• 57:08Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 57:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. Because it gives the body rest.

• 57:11Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 57:11Speaker 01

  It's not a cognitive process. It gives the body rest. There's something called cortisol, which is a stress hormone. And a good night's sleep will drop cortisol levels 10%. And 20 minutes of TM drop it 30 to 40%.

• 57:25Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 57:26Speaker 01

  Nothing else does.

• 57:26Rick Rubin?

  In 20 minutes?

• 57:27Speaker 01

  It keeps it down.

• 57:29Rick Rubin?

  Is the level of rest achieved in 20 minutes of TM deeper than in a night's sleep?

• 57:35Speaker 01

  It doesn't take the place of sleep. Sleep has a whole scientific...

• 57:40Rick Rubin?

  Different profile?

• 57:40Speaker 01

  Profile, does different stuff. It's actually unique. It's very deep, but it's a different state. It's a state of restful alertness, where the body is profoundly rested and the mind is settled. When we go to sleep, we're unconscious. And when we're dreaming, it's sort of hallucinatory. But in that transcendent state in meditation, you're deeply rested and wide awake inside. You know, pure awareness. It's awareness.

• 58:05Rick Rubin?

  What is coherence?

• 58:07Speaker 01

  Coherence is that constructive interference. Coherence is... And you'll find it in your work when you're all on the same page.

• 58:13Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 58:14Speaker 01

  Even the research shows when a musician and the audience, or a musician with another musician, or a musician with a producer, or on the same page, their brainwaves line up. They just... they line up, like the same brainwave. So when you say we're on the same wavelength, it's literally true.

• 58:31Rick Rubin?

  Literally true.

• 58:36Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about TM prisons.

• 58:38Speaker 01

  So when I was a kid, my dad used to volunteer once a week at San Quentin prison. He was a radiologist to read X-rays. So I used to get to go with him. And that was eye-opening. And then in the evenings, there was within the gates, but not within the actual walls, there was a cafeteria that was served by, they called them trustees, by the inmates. So everybody wanted to go out to dinner with the Roths, all my friends, because we could go to San Quentin prison and be served. That was like when you're 12 years old. That's like the biggest thing. So I always had this desire when I became a teacher that I wanted to bring it to San Quentin. And it was going on as a fellow George Ellis.

• 59:22Rick Rubin?

  This was the first.

• 59:32Speaker 06

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• 1:00:57Rick Rubin?

  Prison to have it.

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, there was one in, second one, there was one in Walpole Prison in Massachusetts, but in the US. And a fellow, George Ellis, was a pioneer and he got the guy who was the head of Hell's Angels, who was behind bars, to become a great advocate for TM at San Quentin. But I'll just tell you this one story that stands out. I'm like 24, 23, and to go into the prison, you have to go through four huge gates, walls, doors. And at each door, you have to sign something, four times, that says, "If you're taken hostage, they will not negotiate for your surrender." So you do that four times. And then when I got behind

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  bars, it's this, this, this, this grassy quad, almost like a university, very surreal. And then when you look around, the guy who was hosting us from behind bars said, "Well, that's where death row is, and that's where this is, and that's where that is." And the stress was, I could start feeling this because it's San Quentin.

• 1:01:58Rick Rubin?

  You feel the doors close behind you each time you go through?

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Each time, and lock.

• 1:02:01Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  And, and just the stress, because the most violent of human beings in that area, we're all locked up. So anyway, the, the point is, I did a group meditation. We went down into a basement, and there were 30 men there, and I had them all close their eyes and meditate. It was, subjectively, the deepest meditation to this day I've ever had in my life.

• 1:02:26Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:27Speaker 01

  Just, I could barely open my eyes. And afterwards, the guard said, "You had members of, at the time, the Mexican Mafia, the Black Panthers, the Aryan this, the violent gangs, none of them, within the prison themselves, would have ever closed their eyes or turned their back to any of them." And we all sat there. I was so innocent, I didn't even know the significance. I thought, wow. And Maharshi used to call that initiative "Freedom Behind Bars."

• 1:02:57Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful. And if you think about the stress level in prison, how high it must be, the reason it could be as deep of a meditation as it was, is because of the nature of how much stress they're under. There's so much room to go.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  Exactly right. The contrast is so great. The men and women, we did women's prisons too. And one of the, the research that came out from San Quentin initially, showed that 80% of all

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  Crimes are committed by repeat offenders. It's called recidivism, eighty percent. And the meditating men who left San Quentin, the number was cut in half. So it didn't completely eliminate it because we didn't have the support system when they got out, but it was a huge contrast.

• 1:03:42Rick Rubin?

  Were the inmates receptive? Did they want to learn?

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, desperate for it. Desperate. I mean, some people, to put it this way, the ones who wanted to learn, but we had waiting lists. We had a waiting list of everybody on death row was wanting to learn

• 1:03:57Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:58Speaker 01

  in San Quentin. And then we did programs in Oregon State Penitentiary, and outside of Salem, and Walpole, and different places, and prisons around the world.

• 1:04:09Rick Rubin?

  How has your relationship to the practice changed over the course of your life?

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  You know how you have the term second nature? Well, before second nature is third or fourth nature. So when you first learn it, it's sort of out there and you're sort of grappling with it. And again, to use the science terms, you form neural pathways. So when someone is learning a guitar, to play guitar, they move their fingers around, but there's actual pathways in the brain that allows them to do that. And the more you do it, the more superfluid playing the piano or playing guitar is. You have the neural pathways. Your brain knows how to do it. So you can go from fourth nature, third nature, and then something becomes second nature. And now for me, it's like first nature. You had said in your book, "When it never leaves."

• 1:04:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:54Speaker 01

  When that pure awareness, that awareness never leaves. And that's called cosmic consciousness. And there's seven states of consciousness. That's the fifth, and that's cosmic consciousness. So I'm not saying I'm any cosmic consciousness, but that change is just me.

• 1:05:10Rick Rubin?

  Do you know the seven stages?

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:05:12Rick Rubin?

  Walk me through them.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  Sleep state, unconscious, dream state, waking state. And that's where we're in. And those are called three relative states of consciousness. And we go through them. Eight hours, eight hours, something like that. Now, have you ever been, when you're just waking up or just falling asleep, and there's a sort of like a twilight-y sort of zone where you're just sort of awake, but your mind is settled and you're not awake or asleep? You ever had that?

• 1:05:44Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  You had a gap? That is a little hint of a state of consciousness that underlies all those three states. It's sort of like you can have a curtain, and there's a light, and then there's a curtain, and then there's a curtain, but behind it is consciousness, that's said to be consciousness. So lots of people have had that experience of that's a pure consciousness or fourth, it's called in Sanskrit turiyateet, fourth state, and that...

• 1:06:13Rick Rubin?

  Is that when we have the feeling sometimes of falling?

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a process of that, getting to that, exactly. Yeah, that transcending. Now, the actual transcendent is not a sense of falling or motion, it's just I am this, it is this, is this. So that's a fourth state of consciousness, and there's a neurophysiology of that transcendent state. And so, anyway, that, just move along, that's the fourth state. That's a meditative state. Wordsworth describes it, I'll send it to you, the quote, it's a beautiful quote. He said, "In that serene and blessed mood, where I'm like laid asleep in body but wide awake in mind."

• 1:06:50Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful.

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a beautiful quote.

• 1:06:52Rick Rubin?

  Didn't know he was a T M R.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  No, the nice thing is, it's throughout time, you know, throughout time. So then, when you go from living life and then meditating, and then living your life and meditating and living your life, what happens is the neural pathways are established of that process of transcending. And then you don't lose it. Your connection to that, capital T H A T, that, that awareness, that silence, that quiet. I mean, I have all these quotes. Awareness is not a state you force. There's little effort involved through persistence, though persistence is key. It's something you actively allow to happen. Really in mind? Here, one last one.

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  Awareness needs constant refreshing, meditating. If it becomes a habit, even a good habit, it needs to be reinvented again and again, until one day, underline, you notice that you are always in the practice of awareness, at all times, in all places, living your life in a state of constant openness to receiving.

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  That's cosmic consciousness, that's the fifth state. So there's a meditative state where you're refreshing, where you're diving within. Cosmic consciousness is where I know myself in life. I am established and not losing that. And that is a big state. Sixth state is called refined cosmic consciousness. Religious people have called it God consciousness, called refined cosmic consciousness. And that is, okay, come out of a meditation or you're feeling particularly connected, and then your senses are so acute. And you hear things, and you see things, and you know things. And nature, beautiful. And so that sixth state is, I'm infinite, unbounded in myself.

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  Outside, I'm enjoying everything to its maximum, almost celestial perception.

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  But there's one state beyond that, and that's unity. And that's the great ancient Vedic term, "I am that, thou art that. All of this is nothing but that." And so unity, you still see its beauty, beauty, beauty, beauty, beauty. But then you transcend that, and then you see the one unity that underlies everything. Be still and know.

• 1:09:14Rick Rubin?

  Oneness.

• 1:09:15Speaker 01

  Oneness. You're not creating it.

• 1:09:17Rick Rubin?

  No.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  You are accessing it. It's coming to you.

• 1:09:20Rick Rubin?

  It's there.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  It's there, it's there.

• 1:09:22Rick Rubin?

  We just don't see it.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  That's right. And then as you go along, you become more sensitive to the fact that, oh, if I eat this stuff, or if I smoke that stuff, or if I do those things, it just puts a cloud on the nervous system. It is not necessary. What you have already, what the brain is producing, the dopamine and all these different things, endorphins, is a million times more satisfying than anything you could take from the outside.

• 1:09:47Rick Rubin?

  So does TM help people with addictions?

• 1:09:51Speaker 01

  Hundred million percent because it doesn't tell you, "Don't do that." It gives you an experience of the happiness that you're looking for outside, or the relief from pain that you're looking for outside. So it opens your awareness to that. And where does that feel? In yourself. It was always there. And so it gives the brain and the heart a new experience that overrides that destructive experience. What experience does, it gives the heart the experience of happiness. And what knowledge does, it satisfies the doubts in the mind. You don't have true knowledge

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  until you have both the experience and the understanding. Someone gives you something to eat. You say, "That's delicious." "What is it?" "Strawberry." "Oh, okay." So that's what you have when you meditate. And when you learn TM, you're given the experience, and then you're given this knowledge to explain the experience.

• 1:10:51Rick Rubin?

  I remember at one point in time Maharishi wanted to build an amusement park.

• 1:10:55Speaker 01

  Vedaland.

• 1:10:56Rick Rubin?

  What do you remember about that?

• 1:10:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, he wanted to bring out the fact, he was gonna do it near Niagara Falls, but now I heard someone's building it in India. It's just expensive. He wanted to give this, like, I always liked the statement when I was growing up, "Well, I'll believe it if I see it." As if the senses had a clue what was going on in the world. The human senses in many ways are very limited. So Vedaland was gonna give you, I guess with AI and computers, it's like dive deep into the molecular level, atomic level, subatomic, like have an experience.

• 1:11:31Rick Rubin?

  It'd be like a demonstration.

• 1:11:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:11:33Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 1:11:34Speaker 01

  Yes. And you demonstration of what that celestial perception would be and what, like, so you could see it for real. Because the notion that our senses have a clue of what's going, actually going on in the universe. I mean, the light, what do we see? Our band of light is just like nothing. Visible light is nothing compared to what the universe is expressing.

• 1:12:05Rick Rubin?

  What do you remember about your time in Italy and Spain with Maharishi?

• 1:12:09Speaker 01

  I was 21 years old. I had gotten time off from Berkeley.

• 1:12:15Rick Rubin?

  Had you been to Europe before?

• 1:12:17Speaker 01

  I was a foreign exchange student. For two months between my junior and senior year in high school, I went to Holland.

• 1:12:25Rick Rubin?

  And was that a great experience?

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  It was a great experience. I really liked it. So I was 21, and there were 2,000 people from all over the world. And it was being run, the whole thing, basically, the team organization was being just run by people my age, so sorting out hotels and all that. And every day, we saw Maharishi, and every day, we could ask him questions. And it was profoundly illuminating.

• 1:12:54Speaker 00

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• 1:13:37Speaker 00

  Emerging in early monastic life, it engages scripture through four gentle movements: reading, reflection, repetition, and rest.

• 1:13:51Speaker 00

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• 1:14:33Speaker 00

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• 1:15:07Rick Rubin?

  How many people were there?

• 1:15:08Speaker 01

  2,000 people.

• 1:15:09Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  2,000 people, from all over the world. That was a time when we wanted to change the world and also at a time when people were taking drugs for whatever. And Maharshi's message was higher states of consciousness without drugs and that the human brain is the best pharmacy and will release the drugs at the right time in the right proportions and far more than you could ever imagine from a plant. You know, I like to say I'm a leftover from the 60s. I still want to do the same thing I wanted to do then. It was make a better world.

• 1:15:44Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about the TM organization over the years, from the earliest days and what it grew into.

• 1:15:52Speaker 01

  So the earliest days, there's an article from the Hawaiian, Hawaiian advertiser, I think it's called. In 1958 or something, Maharshi had arrived and he was staying in a YMCA in Honolulu and it said, "Meet a yogi for meditation instruction, free." It was like that, you know, and people would come at this time. He was by himself and so then he came to San Francisco. He went to Los Angeles.

• 1:16:20Rick Rubin?

  Did he speak English from the beginning?

• 1:16:22Speaker 01

  He spoke English from college days and he got better and better and better at it. And then he went to Los Angeles. So people started setting up centers everywhere. And he said, "There was no grand plan because it was the way you talk about creativity." The next thing emerged. Oh, you know, here he is, fully present in Los Angeles. And then someone says, I know someone in London. And there's a house, and there's this, and there's that. When he was in Malaysia, I know a Buddhist temple in San Francisco. So it was just, which I love.

• 1:16:54Rick Rubin?

  It happened by itself.

• 1:16:55Speaker 01

  Happened by itself. As Maharshi used to say, nature knows best how to organize. And then there were the first people who were the leaders of the TM organization were in their 50s, and Jerry Jarvis. Jerry Jarvis ran the TM organization in the United States from like 1964 to 65 until 1975 or 78.

• 1:17:17Rick Rubin?

  He told me that Maharishi had him learn how to fly helicopters that he could bring Maharishi around.

• 1:17:21Speaker 01

  He was great. He was also a great jazz musician.

• 1:17:24Rick Rubin?

  I didn't know that.

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:25Rick Rubin?

  I loved him.

• 1:17:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then research came out, and then the Beatle thing came. And then Maharshi turned it over, basically, to a new generation of college students. And it was Students International Meditation Society. And that was in place for decades.

• 1:17:42Rick Rubin?

  Was he involved much in the business end? Or did the business run itself?

• 1:17:46Speaker 01

  Well, Jerry would be in touch. Jerry would call up and say, this is, you know, periodically, there'd be, it wasn't day to day. I don't think it was like enough going on, but he'd give reports. And Maharshi was a great manager of people. They say an enlightened person is the ability to focus. You know, you have that, go deeply into something, and everything else disappears and go deeply, deeply, deeply.

• 1:18:08Rick Rubin?

  And then move on to the next thing.

• 1:18:09Speaker 01

  Move on to the next thing. And that, the past is the past, and here's the next thing.

• 1:18:14Rick Rubin?

  How does TM relate to creativity and making art?

• 1:18:19Speaker 01

  They used to think that in the brain, the hemisphere, the right hemisphere, maybe, you ever hear that?

• 1:18:24Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 1:18:24Speaker 01

  You're a creative person, you're a, you're this type of a person. The left hemisphere, you are a scientist, researcher, that sort of thing. And that was taught everywhere. Turns out that's not true. Turns out creativity is a product of networks within the brain. And there are three main networks within the brain. The brain works really hard when you're focused, so really on target. You're focused and you're churning, and it's exhausting. Your brain is 2% of the weight of your body, and it uses up 20% of the energy. So that's why if you really focus for a long time, you're tired. So that's called the Attention Control Center. And that's where Rick is just, just locked in.

• 1:19:09Speaker 01

  So then researchers wanted to know, well, what does the brain do when it shuts down? It's just not focused, when it just rests. So they said, okay, let's see what happens. And they said, what does the brain default to? And so they said, all right, the brain defaults to, it's not focused on anything. And they were very dismissive of that. And they called it the default mode network, creative name, what does it default to? And they said, it's a waste of time. You're daydreaming. Your mind is wandering. Well, now, they have new names for the default mode network. One is called the imagination network. But here's the best one, the genius lounge. Is that great? Great.

• 1:19:54Speaker 01

  The genius lounge. That's when you're not focused, when you've gone for the walk, when you're taking the hot shower, when you're not concentrating. Some guy's trying to work on something or something out, and the wife says, honey, you just gotta go for a walk, too much. Genius lounge is when the brain is not focused. And that's where David Lynch says you can catch the big fish. Yeah. Deep within. And you talk about it all the time in your book. So the genius lounge. And the creative process is you have the experience, the inspiration, the cognition, and then that shuts down, and then you focus. And then you have the attention control network. So now your brain is focused. So that's the analysis.

• 1:20:37Speaker 01

  And the first is the creation, all of your words, one or the other. Stress undermines both. So if you're stressed, you can't focus. And if you're stressed, they call it the writer's block. Well, here's the interesting thing. They studied 200 of top creative minds, conductors and mathematicians, and they wanted to see if the brain was the same. Turns out that those brains have a unique ability to both focus and innovate, and they don't get in the way of each other. So while you're focused on something here, good ideas can come up. And so you're not lost on that thing. So the creative process

• 1:21:20Speaker 01

  is the process of the genius lounge and then the ability to make it happen. And David would answer, me having given you the Bob answer, David would say that transcendent field is a field of infinite creativity, infinite love, infinite power, infinite happiness, infinite truth. And when you experience that, then whatever you're doing embodies that.

• 1:21:49Rick Rubin?

  That's probably why I feel like learning TM when I was 14 was the most significant thing that ever happened to me in my life.

• 1:21:58Speaker 01

  A very formative time, the ideal time.

• 1:22:02Rick Rubin?

  How do children do with TM?

• 1:22:05Speaker 01

  From the age of about four or five to the age of 10 or 12, they get a word of wisdom. They get a walking mantra. So they're given a mantra, but they don't sit with their eyes closed to meditate. The nervous system not strong enough yet. So the parents can take-

• 1:22:21Rick Rubin?

  From five to 10?

• 1:22:22Speaker 01

  From five, for about five years old to 10 or 12 years old.

• 1:22:25Rick Rubin?

  Okay.

• 1:22:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the parent, they can do it while drawing. They do it with their eyes open. They say a mantra silently inside. And it has a wonderful, at an early age, resonant quality to the nervous system and makes the nervous system more vital and resilient. From about the age of 12 on, they get the sitting technique. And if they're 12, they do it for 12 minutes, 13, 13 minutes, 14, up to 20, and then 20 minutes, you're set.

• 1:22:51Rick Rubin?

  Nice. Talk to me a bit about the mantras.

• 1:22:54Speaker 01

  So a mantra is a word or a sound that has a couple syllables, has no meaning associated with it. And the reason for a mantra is the mind likes to think. And you tell the mind, "Don't think, clear your mind of thoughts. It's a battle." So a mantra in TM is a word or a sound that has no meaning associated with it. And the mantras in TM come from a ancient, ancient tradition, over 6,000 years old. Some people incorrectly say they're Buddhist this or that. They're not. They're just sounds with no meaning or sort of... Because if it had a meaning, then you're stuck up here. That part of your analytical part of your brain doesn't allow you to transcend. So some people will say, "Oh, it's just a mantra meditation."

• 1:23:39Speaker 01

  There's a, you know, TM is a highfalutin mantra meditation. There's a zillion mantra meditations. You can go on, you know, you can just get a book. They'll give you a mantra, you repeat it. Here's the other thing that Maharshi's insight was, that the thinking of the mantra is not a clear pronunciation. That's an effort, and that keeps the brain and your body, that's force. You're forcing. You're not letting it happen. So that when, the reason why when you learn TM from a teacher in personal instruction, they give you the mantra, and then they teach you how to use it effortlessly, gently, naturally, and no forcing, that allows, frees the mind to dive within. Again, any effort, even a little bit, stops the process.

• 1:24:24Rick Rubin?

  I remember the subtlety in learning. It's easy to question whether you're doing it properly or not. So having a teacher was very helpful in calming those concerns.

• 1:24:37Speaker 01

  And that's a tradition. I mean, that's an ancient oral tradition. Even now, when you have all this stuff, people have said to me, "Well, you know, there's AI. You don't need to have personal instruction or whatever." And although there's a swing back of people don't want AI. They don't, they want a human being to human being. So a teacher teaches them, so you learn once and you learn it properly.

• 1:24:58Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about the relationship between our mind and our body.

• 1:25:02Speaker 01

  There's no difference. So there's a field in science called the PNEI, which is the psyche, neuro, endocrine system, immune system. Psyche, that's you see something. Neuro, it impacts my brain, so now I'm afraid. I just saw something, now I'm afraid. My brain registers something called the amygdala, registers fear. That sends a message to my adrenal glands that, or that sit on top of your kidneys. Your adrenal glands pump out cortisol and adrenaline, and now you're in what's called fight or flight. And then when you're on fight or flight, you have cortisol. Absolutely too much of it destroys your immune system. That's why if a person's highly stressed, they get sick a lot.

• 1:25:47Speaker 01

  Or if they're seeing negative things all the time, it's not healthy for them. And that's a continuum. There's no door from the mind. So psych, mind, brain, the endocrine system, and your immune system. So it's one continuum. And that's why, you know, they have the lines, "You are what you eat," or "What you see, you become." You metabolize. If you're watching, they say, if you're watching horrible movies all the time, or you're whatever, you're around people, you become that. We metabolize everything. The beautiful thing about meditation is it gives us the freedom not to be a victim of that.

• 1:26:29Speaker 01

  So if that's the case, what, "I can't leave my room, I have to stay inside, I can't..." No, because then you have that stressor, stress response. Then I've got to build up my resilience. And that's why it works so effectively with veterans. It helps them heal from PTSD who've been overwhelmed by that PNEI.

• 1:26:49Rick Rubin?

  Is there any relationship between TM and psychedelic drugs?

• 1:26:57Speaker 01

  Someone asked Maharishi once about psychedelic drugs. He said, "They're trying to kick in the door to heaven."

• 1:27:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:02Speaker 01

  It remains to be seen if it doesn't have a very destructive effect on some of the subtle mechanisms in the human nervous system, subtle fibers of the human nervous system. I remember when I was, I had a job at a plant nursery in Berkeley. And during the holiday season, they'd bring in these azaleas that were just gorgeous, fully bloomed, just... And then they'd bring in these little azalea plants in these five-gallon cans. It had a few flowers on them, but, you know, this was so beautiful. Well, the force bloomed, those flowers never bloomed again. They were artificially jammed to create something. And it damaged, or if they did, it just almost destroyed them. Whereas the one that grew in the little five-gallon can,

• 1:27:46Speaker 01

  and you put it in the soil, and you water it, and you grew and grew and grew and became something for years and years and years, azalea. So let's give the human nervous system what it needs to grow, and it will help fulfill our desires.

• 1:28:01Rick Rubin?

  I believe Maharishi suggested not to drink alcohol or take any drugs two weeks prior to learning TM.

• 1:28:09Speaker 01

  That was marijuana and drugs. Marijuana was too.

• 1:28:13Rick Rubin?

  Not alcohol?

• 1:28:13Speaker 01

  No, alcohol was, I'll tell you why. It was a few days. It wasn't a moral thing. He wanted people to have a clear experience in the meditation. And alcohol is a carbohydrate that metabolized through the system much faster.

• 1:28:25Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 1:28:26Speaker 01

  Marijuana had a longer residue.

• 1:28:28Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 1:28:28Speaker 01

  So he just said, afterwards, you decide what you want to do. But if you're going to learn this, I want you to have a clear experience.

• 1:28:35Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about the spiritual aspect to transcendental meditation.

• 1:28:40Speaker 01

  I think that true spirituality is the essence and the highest of humanity. It's the essence of human love. It's the essence of human creativity. It's the essence of human intelligence. It's the essence of human kindness. It's the essence of human strength. It's the essence, it's the highest, it's universal. And so, a person can be spiritual and religious, but they're different. There's that essence, but when you read the experiences of the great saints of all religions, they all have the experience of transcendence. It's all there. Just the vocabulary is different. And when Maharshi talked about the spiritual regeneration movement,

• 1:29:21Speaker 01

  it was to regenerate all the institutions with that highest level and essence of humanity. Right now, the next biggest thing with Maharshi's passing in 2008, and he named, which was huge, but he named Dr. Tony Nader to be his successor. Specifically named him. And Tony, Dr. Nader, spent 20 years around Maharshi all the time. During all those years, studying with him, going deeply into Ayurveda. He is, in addition to being a big soul, also was trained at Harvard and MIT.

• 1:29:59Rick Rubin?

  What's his background?

• 1:30:00Speaker 01

  Neuroscience and medical doctor, both. MD, PhD. And he's really the voice now. And he wrote a book called Consciousness is All There Is, which was really to take this idea that consciousness is primary. You have all these neurons, these sort of just neurons firing, and then somehow the ideas, you get them all together. And now, everything that we feel, touch, taste, smell, everything, is a product magically of these little cells that have no consciousness. So the richness of your life is just to somehow, an epiphenomenon, they call it, of these cells. So he said, no, there's another angle, an ancient angle,

• 1:30:43Speaker 01

  and actually more younger neuroscientists are agreeing that consciousness is a field. And he's also written another book, which is called The Power of Caring. And it's all about human compassion, human caring, and relationships based on the development of consciousness. And I think that the TM, people used to say, well, what's going to happen to the TM organization when Maharshi passes? Could not be in better hands. I have beyond enormous respect for him and what he's doing. So that's where we're going forward.

• 1:31:41Speaker 00

  Tetragrammatin is a podcast. Tetragrammatin is a website. Tetragrammatin is a whole world of knowledge.

• 1:31:56Speaker 00

  What may fall within the sphere of Tetragrammatin? Counterculture? Tetragrammatin. Sacred geometry? Tetragrammatin. The avant-garde? Tetragrammatin. Generative art? Tetragrammatin. The tarot? Tetragrammatin. Out-of-print music? Tetragrammatin. Biodynamics? Tetragrammatin. Graphic design? Tetragrammatin. Mythology and magic? Tetragrammatin. Obscure film? Tetragrammatin. Beach culture? Tetragrammatin. Esoteric lectures? Tetragrammatin. Off-the-grid living? Tetragrammatin. Alt spirituality? Tetragrammatin. The canon of fine objects? Tetragrammatin. Muscle cars? Tetragrammatin. Ancient wisdom for a new age.

• 1:32:43Speaker 00

  Upon entering, experience the artwork of the day. Take a breath, and see where you are drawn.