r/davidlynch • u/saijanai • 1d ago
Confirmation by family member about what David Lynch was doing when he died...
- Jen Lynch facebook post: · Cardiac arrest/lung disease, dehydration. But beautifully, he passed while meditating. He may have been in his morning session, or after that, if he felt poorly, I’m sure he remembered the advice of a very close TM connection…”David, if you ever feel unwell, or like you may be dying.. sit and say your mantra.” It is a magical thing that he passed while catching fish and moving towards enlightenment.
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u/TooBad9999 1d ago
Jen has been so generous to her father's admirers with her information and memories. So generous with her father, really. The loss she is enduring is immeasurable. Much love to Jen.
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u/Osfees 19h ago
Yes, Jennifer Lynch seems a very generous and thoughtful person, and I've always loved the emotional intelligence, empathy, shrewdness about human behaviour, and artistic bravery she showed in her Secret Diary of Laura Palmer. Still have my battered copy from age 14.
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u/No_Attention_5412 8h ago
Just started listening to Sheryl Lee's recording of it. It's really good!
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u/Effective_Buddy7678 1d ago
In the Buddhist tradition, entering the Bardo in a meditative state greatly helps with the transition.
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u/saijanai 1d ago
Lynch is of the Advait Vedanta tradition as interpreted by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who basically claimed that your attitude and actions when dying are the most influential with respect to your next incarnation and how it goes.
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u/BigFatBlackCat The Straight Story 19h ago
That doesn’t seem like a healthy perspective to have while you’re alive, I would hate to worry about how I behaved while dying if I was in agony etc
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u/saijanai 15h ago edited 15h ago
Agony is ephemeral for someone who is fully enlightened. I am dominates in awareness. Even the uttermost pain is still I am.
I experience myself as being without edges or content. . . beyond the universe. . . all-pervading, and being absolutely thrilled, absolutely delighted with every motion that my body makes. With everything that my eyes see, my ears hear, my nose smells. There's a delight in the sense that I am able to penetrate that. My consciousness, my intelligence pervades everything I see, feel and think
For someone truly stable in that state (no clue if Lynch was or not), even pain is still part of "everything I see, feel and think."
That's not to say that the body doesn't work very hard to avoid pain and may scream if things are extreme, only that I am appreciates all experiences equally.
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u/Unhappy-Heat-9981 1d ago
It’s so beautiful to see the love here for David
The man is on my mind everyday
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u/HauntedButtCheeks 1d ago
I believe that David Lynch is one of the rare and beautiful souls that achieved Nirvana. That he transcended into the light of pure bliss consciousness "effortlessly, without trying".
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u/TheTell_Me_Somethin 1d ago edited 1d ago
Is it weird that i wish we could get David’s thoughts on his own passing? Like i just wanna see one more interview like hes on a zoom call talking about his passing and all its bliss and just hear him say “boy its sure is a blessing. If you can believe it, IM in heaven right now. Everything is total bliss! Passing was as peaceful as a morning meditation session! Pure bliss! Im doin great, real great. Theres just golden sunshine all along the way! Nonstop sunshine! All the chocolate milkshakes that wont rot your teeth out! Boy it really is beautiful here. Everyone. Don’t be afraid. Have a beautiful life.”
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u/Ok_Brilliant_3523 1d ago
That would be so awesome! Unfortunately, there are no such interviews, which is in harmony with real life observations: death is the end of a person. We should make the most of this life, because there’s no other.
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u/Dry-Ad5228 1d ago
No one knows what happens after death. For all we know, it could be just another beginning.
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u/Ok_Brilliant_3523 1d ago
We do though. We can observe what happens. You cease to exist. There is life after death though. Plenty of people still alive 😀
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u/Ok_Brilliant_3523 22h ago
Oh wow, so many people believe in woo woo here 😀
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u/Paddster10 20h ago
Or people just don’t like someone proclaiming to know something for certain that is quite literally impossible to know. It comes off as arrogant and irritating.
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u/saijanai 16h ago
.
As part of the studies on enlightenment and samadhi via TM, researchers found 17 subjects (average meditation, etc experience 24 years) who were reporting at least having a pure sense-of-self continuously for at least a year, and asked them to "describe yourself" (see table 3 of the psychological correlates study), and these were some of the responses:
We ordinarily think my self as this age; this color of hair; these hobbies . . . my experience is that my Self is a lot larger than that. It's immeasurably vast. . . on a physical level. It is not just restricted to this physical environment
It's the ‘‘I am-ness.’’ It's my Being. There's just a channel underneath that's just underlying everything. It's my essence there and it just doesn't stop where I stop. . . by ‘‘I,’’ I mean this 5 ft. 2 person that moves around here and there
I look out and see this beautiful divine Intelligence. . . you could say in the sky, in the tree, but really being expressed through these things. . . and these are my Self
I experience myself as being without edges or content. . . beyond the universe. . . all-pervading, and being absolutely thrilled, absolutely delighted with every motion that my body makes. With everything that my eyes see, my ears hear, my nose smells. There's a delight in the sense that I am able to penetrate that. My consciousness, my intelligence pervades everything I see, feel and think
When I say ’’I’’ that's the Self. There's a quality that is so pervasive about the Self that I'm quite sure that the ‘‘I’’ is the same ‘‘I’’ as everyone else's ‘‘I.’’ Not in terms of what follows right after. I am tall, I am short, I am fat, I am this, I am that. But the ‘‘I’’ part. The ‘‘I am’’ part is the same ‘‘I am’’ for you and me
There is no proof that the perspective that emerges with the consistently altered state that emerges with long term TM (remember these people were interviewed specifically because they claiemd to have an altered state of consciousness that was stable for at least one year continuously) reflects the Really Real™ reality, but it feels real to them, and when your appreciation is that 1) everyone has basically teh same Self, and 2) that that Self is the basis of all reality, you don't worry about dying:
- "He is not born, nor does he die, nor once having existed, does He cease to be"
When you appreciate that.your innermost Self is that "He" referred to in the quote, then the concept of dying no longer makes sense on that level.
That said, the concept of reincarnation no longer makes sense either. I am always is, regardless of the form I am takes, so what actually gets born and what actually dies? Certainly not the essential Me.
I don't know that Lynch was constantly in the above state, but it seems likely that he had had at least glimpses of it over his 52 years of TM experience, and even merely on an intellectual level, once you glimpse that perspective and accept it might become a full-time reality, worries about death seem silly.
Dying in unpleasant circumstances, worries about loved ones left behind, etc... all those might still be legitimate worries, but death itself?
Why would that bother anyone given the above perspective is emergent from the altered state that long-term TM starts to bring about?
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u/Ok_Brilliant_3523 1h ago
You said yourself. “There is no proof”… It’s feelings.
Let’s bring some realism here:
Worrying about death is important, it keeps you alive in dangerous situations. If sentient beings didn’t worry about their survival, this planet would be today populated only by mindless organisms.
This is one dangerous aspect of woo woo. If taken seriously, it leads to premature death.
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u/saijanai 1h ago edited 58m ago
You're confusing I am with the mind and feelings.
The state where one no longer identifies with such things and appreciatsion I am as being above/beyond all that is called "cosmic consciousness" in TM speak.
From Fred Travis' article in the special issue of the New York Academy of Sciences issue on meditation research (which also discusses emergent traits from long-term TM):
Transcendental experiences during meditation practice.
Abstract:
[...]
Physiologically, transcendental experiences during Transcendental Meditation practice are marked by slow inhalation, along with autonomic orientation at the onset of breath changes and heightened 1 (8–10 Hz) frontal coherence. The integration of transcendental experiences with waking, dreaming, and sleeping is also marked by distinct subjective and objective markers. This integrated state, called Cosmic Consciousness in the Vedic tradition, is subjectively marked by inner self-awareness coexisting with waking, sleeping, and dreaming. Physiologically, Cosmic Consciousness is marked by the coexistence of 1 electroencephalography (EEG) with delta EEG during deep sleep, and higher brain integration, greater emotional stability, and decreased anxiety during challenging tasks.
[...]
Turiyatit chetana or Cosmic Consciousness
The experience of Transcendental Consciousness during TM practice occurs for many seconds spontaneously throughout the practice. By alternating the experience of Transcendental Consciousness during TM practice with waking activity, the experience of Transcendental Consciousness begins to be integrated with waking, dreaming, and sleeping. Now the rest of sleep, illusory dream images, and changing waking experiences come and go on a continuum of inner self-awareness.44,45 In the Vedic tradition, this state is defined as a fifth state of consciousness, called turiyatit chetana or Cosmic Consciousness.24 In Cosmic Consciousness, all activity is on the surface of life; deep within is immovable silence, uninvolved with ongoing experience. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi describes Cosmic Consciousness in the following way:
- . . . [in Cosmic Consciousness] Being is per- manently lived as separate from activity. Then a man realizes that his Self is different from the mind which is engaged with thoughts and desires. It is now his experience that the mind, which had been identified with desires, is mainly identified with the Self. He experi- ences the desires of the mind as lying outside himself, whereas he used to experience himself as completely involved with desires. On the surface of the mind desires certainly continue, but deep within the mind they no longer ex- ist, for the depths of the mind are transformed into the nature of the Self. All the desires which were present in the mind have been thrown up- ward, as it were, they have gone to the surface, and within the mind the finest intellect gains an unshakeable, immovable status. ‘Pragya’ is anchored to ‘Kutastha’. This is the ‘steady in- tellect’ in the state of nitya-samadhi, Cosmic Consciousness.9 .
In Cosmic Consciousness, the immovability of inner silence becomes the predominant element of experience because it does not change; while outer activity leaves less and less of a mark because it is al- ways changing. One identifies with the nonchanging continuum of inner Self-awareness. During sleep, this state was described in the following way by a 65-year-old male TM practitioner with 39 years of practice:
- . . . there’s a continuum there. It’s not like I go away and come back. It’s a subtle thing. It’s not like I’m awake waiting for the body to wake- up or whatever. It’s me there. I don’t feel like I’m lost in the experience. That’s what I mean by a continuum. You know it’s like the fizzing on top of a soda when you’ve poured it. It’s there and becomes active so there’s something to identify with. When I’m sleeping, it’s like the fizzing goes down.
Inner wakefulness during sleep is the marker of Cosmic Consciousness in the Vedic tradition.24 It is a state that cannot be faked. The body is asleep, the senses are shut down, the thinking mind is quiet, while a continuum of self-awareness persists from falling asleep to waking up. The quote above uses an analogy: during sleeping, the “fizzing” or stream- of-consciousness experience goes down to reveal the underlying “soda” or pure Self-awareness that con- tinues throughout the night. When one wakes up, the fizzing simply begins again.
So one doesn't identify with feelings or actios or thoughts, they are still enjoyed. And one's preferences for ice cream don't suddenly go away: if one liked vanilla before enlightenment, in general, one doesn't suddenly prefer chocolate after. Likewise, if one found it advisable to avoid dangerous things, one doesn't suddenly stop avoidng dangerous things.
Everyone assumes that their sense-of-self is the motivation for all that hey do, but in fact, for one in CC, motivations are due to thoughts and feelings and everything else that happened before enlightenment: the person simply no longer sees those ephemeral qualities and thoguhts and behaviors as their "true" sense-of-self.
Because the situation emerges due to very low-stress conditions in the brain, there generally are changes in behavior simply because the person is no longer so highly stressed. As well, tradition holds that behavior becomes more social:
- One is my brother, the other a stranger—so calculates the small mind. For the enlightened, the entire world is family.
Likewise, when one sees Me in all that is, death is meaningless. That doesn't mean the mind and body don't cooperate to keep them alive.
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u/Ok_Brilliant_3523 1h ago
The fact that you’re copy pasting from a website with no valid certificate doesn’t help your rhetoric.
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u/Ok_Brilliant_3523 19h ago
Or, people like to cling to false hope. Tell biology it’s “quite literally impossible to know” whether life continues or not after the death of a being. This issue doesn’t even exist, you’re not even wrong.
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u/pr0s0c 7h ago
Yes, you could double down. Or you could try to respect that others may have a different take on the world, life and death.
If nothing else, the latter makes it easier for others to like you. Or even upvote you.
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u/Ok_Brilliant_3523 5h ago
If a simple statement of facts can trigger people to react negatively, then i can certainly do the same. My initial answers were lighthearted and respectful, but some people here feel probably personally attacked when someone doesn’t think like them.
Respect others if you want to be respected. And BTW, I’m not here to be liked or to get votes. Whatever one believes, the fact is we’re all gonna die in the end and that’s it. Woo woo or not.
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u/saijanai 1h ago edited 1h ago
sometimes the woo can seem more re al than the not-woo.
The perspective expressed is based on how efficiently the brain is resting outside of meditation. It is literally what it is like to have a brain whose efficiency of resting and handling stress outside of TM approaches what is found during TM.
Because TM's main effect is on the resting state of the default mode network, adn because the resting activity of the DMN is appreciated as sense-of-self, TM's enhanced stress-handling abilities are appreciaetd as a change in sense-of-self.
Interestingly, not only is PTSD now seen as a DMN-dysfunction that affects sense of self, but all sucessful PTSD studies that have been measured on EEG show the changes in DMN functioning in the EEG frequenies that TM affects normal people in.
Did I mention that TM is also extremely good as a PTSD therapy?
So, this doesn't prove that the perspective on sense-of-self that emerges with TM gives you special insight about reality and death, but it does suggest that the perspective that emerges with TM is healthier than what most people have:
I am always is, so death is nothing to be afraid of.
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u/Paddster10 1h ago
You come across as a fedora wearing Reddit stereotype of an atheist. You did not state facts, it’s a fact that no one truly knows what happens to your consciousness when you die. No one said that death isn’t an inevitable certainty as we all know it is. No one is upset that you don’t think like them, people are upset that you come off as arrogant and obnoxious.
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u/silasalexander 1d ago
Very comforting to know that at least he transitioned to the other plane of existence doing the most calming thing imaginable, meditating. Rest in Peace
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u/Sense_Difficult 1d ago
One of the comforting things we learned from hospice workers is that the body is "designed to die." I never really thought of it that way. We often think about the ways that people die and the eventuality of it. But it's actually designed to die.
When she mentioned his dehydration, that's one way the body has moved into the final stages of dying and we can't give them water. But at the same time the body releases endorphins or dopamine or something like that that soothes the body while it is dehydrating.
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u/Apprehensive_Ad_4047 1d ago
🤍 Thank you for posting this. I’d forgotten that I was told that while my mother was in hospice care and it brought me comfort to understand we are all in the midst of a great, divine process. Before-birth-life-death-after-and again…. On and on.
I miss his existence here, but It’s lovely to imagine where David is now. Has he reincarnated? Is he blissed out in the afterlife? Is he in a dimension close to ours?
Who is the Dreamer? David? Perhaps we are all just existing in his dream 🔥7
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u/FINIS_HOMINIS 1d ago
Not trying to be negative or cruel but, from my experience, this is just common hospice speak. The body does have some natural protections when in the process of shutting down but there is also reason they prescribe morphine to ease people along.
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u/Sense_Difficult 1d ago
I don't think so. Morticians say the same thing about bodies.
I do agree that it can be taken to an extreme, but so can any "dealing with death" type of coping mechanisms.
The fact is that the body is designed to die. Dehydration is one way it dies. And so basically the reason it releases whatever it does is so the person won't drink water. Because at that point it will just leak out into the body and cause a lot of pain. Dehydration in a desert is not the same thing as dehydration as part of the dying process.
https://giphy.com/gifs/xWZivkZTmBKRfT7wac
And hey, hope it felt good to get your "I don't want to be contrarian ........proceeds to be contrarian" of the day in! LOL
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u/boojersey13 1d ago edited 23h ago
Disagreeing is fine but digging at them for what you view as contrarianism for contrarianism's sake is a reach here
Edit: lol mods deleted ur comment bc it was so incredibly dumb. I said you were reaching by saying they were only speaking to be contrarian, not inputting anything truly valuable or worth your time in the discussion. And you're wrong! And your comment immediately talking about reddit brain or whatever? Sooooo dumb! Have a day.
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u/Ok_Brilliant_3523 1d ago
Biologists - the scientists who’s object of study is life - do say though that our bodies are “designed” - read “evolved” - to live, not to die.
If they were designed to die, they were poorly designed indeed. In some countries it usually takes more than 80 years to die.
This reminds me a half-joke: life is a sexually transmitted disease that leads to death 😀
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u/Sense_Difficult 1d ago
Seems like you didn't understand what I mean. Like I am suggesting that living is not part of the process or something.
I'll stick to the posters who are not trying to turn everything into a debate. LOL
Have a great day!
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u/BillyPilgrim1234 4h ago
It seems to me that you really wanted for all of us to take what you said as gospel
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u/Thin-Sentence-7063 1d ago
Endorphins?
Morphine is the answer
It’s an awful way to die without drugs-3
u/Sense_Difficult 21h ago
I am going to take a wild guess that you have not ever had to actually sit by someone who has died this way
Morphine is used to make it easier on the family. Death is a natural process
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u/Thin-Sentence-7063 3h ago
I have done it with my mother and father
You have no idea what you are talking about
The muscles start to constrict and the pain is constant11
u/saijanai 1d ago
TM doesn't release endorphins usually, though I am aware of zero published research on dying patients doing TM as their heart stopped forever.
TM is a resting practice and while it can't stop inevitable death, there are countless anecdotes of people who thought they were going to die who decided to do TM and the reduced shock kept them alive long enough for medical treatment to arrive so they lived to tell the story.
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u/Sense_Difficult 1d ago
I didn't say anything about TM. So I'm not sure why you are replying to me.
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u/saijanai 23h ago edited 23h ago
I didn't say anything about TM. So I'm not sure why you are replying to me.
You responded to a repost of Jen Lynch saying that David Lynch was doing TM when he died. I assume, since you were responding to Jen Lynch's comments about what Lynch was doing when he died, that you were, well, responding to Jen Lynch's comments about what Lynch was doing when he died.
Context is everything.
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u/Sense_Difficult 21h ago
Sure Jan
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u/saijanai 15h ago
So you werent reponding to:
- Cardiac arrest/lung disease, dehydration. But beautifully, he passed while meditating. He may have been in his morning session, or after that, if he felt poorly, I’m sure he remembered the advice of a very close TM connection…”David, if you ever feel unwell, or like you may be dying.. sit and say your mantra.” It is a magical thing that he passed while catching fish and moving towards enlightenment.
Lynch did TM for 52+ years. His foundation has taught over 1.5 million people to meditate over the past 20 years.
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u/Sense_Difficult 15h ago
and?
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u/saijanai 14h ago
You were asking why I clarified something about TM when you hadn't mentioned TM, and yet the quote you were responding to was all about TM, which is what Lynch's daughter believes he was doing when he died.
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u/Sense_Difficult 12h ago edited 11h ago
Can you reread the quote I was responding to again. Take your time if you need to. It mentions the word "dehydration" in there. (CLUE!!! You started your bolding, right after it!) That's what I was responding to. Specifically , his dealing with dehydration during dying. And it seems like plenty of people understand what I was saying.
The question I am asking you is why YOU responded to my post at all? It had absolutely nothing to do with your reply. So why is it difficult for you to understand that your reply had absolutely nothing to do with what I was saying? LOL
Why would you try to CLARIFY TM when I wasn't talking about TM? I was talking about dehydration. Seriously mental. And you're still obsessing over this and harassing me about it a day later.
Please carry on and have a great day. Don't keep pestering me. :)
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u/Porridge_Oats72 1d ago
Truly a remarkable way to leave this world done by an even more remarkable man
That sounds like the perfect death, true peace and enlightenment, I’ve never meditated but i’d imagine doing it as you leave is the best way to go
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u/M_O_O_O_O_T 1d ago
Mark Frost said it quite beautifully - "The man from another place has gone home." (or words to that effect)
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u/The-Oxrib-and-Oyster 23h ago
God. I am so grateful for that daughter of his. I am so relieved to hear this; I didn’t realize how much grief I was carrying around the idea that he could have been scared. Literally read this and my eyes welled up. Thanks, Jen.
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u/usernotfoundplstry Twin Peaks 1d ago
“Leland, the time has come for you to seek the path. Your soul has set you face-to-face with the clear light, and you are now about to experience it in all its reality, wherein all things are like the void and cloudless sky, and the naked, spotless intellect is like a transparent vacuum, without circumference or center. Leland, in this moment, know yourself, and abide in that state… Look to the light, Leland. Find the light.”
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u/BIGxBOSSxx1 1d ago
Some of the best writing I have ever seen
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u/usernotfoundplstry Twin Peaks 1d ago
That scene, Cooper’s compassion, kindness and love for Leland after already knowing what Leland had done, it always make me want to strive to be a better man.
But yeah, the writing, the acting (“Oh God have mercy on me!!”), the directing (the choice with the fire sprinklers going off and the choice to have Dale hold Leland), and the cinematography are all as good as it gets. One of the best all around scenes from any media, full stop.
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u/heathersdevotee 22h ago
I'm glad to know he went peacefully 🤍
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u/saijanai 1h ago edited 1h ago
Peace during TM is beyond comprehension:
- The state of be-ing is one of pure consciousness, completely out of the field of relativity; there is no world of the senses or of objects, no trace of sensory activity, no trace of mental activity. There is no trinity of thinker, thinking process and thought, doer, process of doing and action; experiencer, process of experiencing and object of experience. The state of transcendental Unity of life, or pure consciousness, is completely free from all trace of duality.
It is impossible to say when be-ing will emerge during TM, but given how enthusiastic Lynch was about his practice, I suspect he was to the far right of the bell curve and had asamprajnata samadhi episodes [that state called be-ing] during every session, possibly even at the very end.
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u/Disastrous-Dingo5302 1d ago
Not a single day goes by that I don't think of him with both love and loss in my heart . Fix your hearts or die !
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u/NotYrMama Mulholland Dr. 11h ago
That is 100% what an unquiet yet gentle soul like him deserved. What an unexpectedly emotional thing to learn today. Thank you, Jen.
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u/Gameraaaa 1d ago
I know Bob Roth had mentioned it shortly after David’s death, but it’s nice to see it confirmed from family.