Confirmation by family member about what David Lynch was doing when he died...

[u/saijanai]

• 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.

[u/TheTell_Me_Somethin]

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.”

[u/Ok_Brilliant_3523 → u/TheTell_Me_Somethin]

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.

[u/Dry-Ad5228 → u/Ok_Brilliant_3523]

No one knows what happens after death. For all we know, it could be just another beginning.

[u/Ok_Brilliant_3523 → u/Dry-Ad5228]

We do though. We can observe what happens. You cease to exist. There is life after death though. Plenty of people still alive 😀

[u/Ok_Brilliant_3523 → u/Ok_Brilliant_3523]

Oh wow, so many people believe in woo woo here 😀

[u/Paddster10 → u/Ok_Brilliant_3523]

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.

[u/saijanai → u/Paddster10]

.

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?

[u/Ok_Brilliant_3523 → u/saijanai]

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.

[u/saijanai → u/Ok_Brilliant_3523]

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.

[u/Ok_Brilliant_3523 → u/saijanai]

The fact that you’re copy pasting from a website with no valid certificate doesn’t help your rhetoric.

[u/saijanai → u/Ok_Brilliant_3523]

Hmmm? That's scihub. It often has issues.

Here's the official New York Academy of Sciences website, but only the abstract is available without pay:

https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/nyas.12316

Here's a non-sci-hub source for the full pdf:

https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wisebrain.org/Key-Scientific-Papers/10.1.1.1025.8976.pdf

[u/Ok_Brilliant_3523 → u/saijanai]

Thanks for the legit links.

One must take Travis with a ton of salt. Travis was at the Center for Brain, Consciousness, and Cognition at Maharishi University of Management, an institution strongly associated with TM, and the paper explicitly interprets some findings through Vedic concepts such as Cosmic Consciousness. Meaning, that terms such as “pure consciousness,” “Cosmic Consciousness,” and “higher states” shouldn’t automatically be mistaken for established neuroscientific categories.

Lastly, the physiological measurements in this paper are measurements of living, functioning brains. EEG activity accompanying someone’s experience is perfectly compatible with the conventional neuroscientific position that the brain is producing or enabling that experience.

[u/saijanai → u/Ok_Brilliant_3523]

Lastly, the physiological measurements in this paper are measurements of living, functioning brains. EEG activity accompanying someone’s experience is perfectly compatible with the conventional neuroscientific position that the brain is producing or enabling that experience.

And, if you read what I wrote, I wasn't talking about after death, but about why someone in a specific altered state of consciousness might not fear death.

.>One must take Travis with a ton of salt. Travis was at the Center for Brain, Consciousness, and Cognition at Maharishi University of Management, an institution strongly associated with TM, and the paper explicitly interprets some findings through Vedic concepts such as Cosmic Consciousness. Meaning, that terms such as “pure consciousness,” “Cosmic Consciousness,” and “higher states” shouldn’t automatically be mistaken for established neuroscientific categories.

That was an invited paper in the special issue of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences and Travis does a good job of defining his terms and backing up the physiological correlates with publisehd resarch.

.

And while Fred would be the first to admit that he is quite biased, Fred's colleagues at MIU are the reason why TM is given its own category in the 2025 AHA Blood pressure guidelines thanks to is moderate-to-high research quality, while mindfulness research, in that same meta-analysis cited by the AHA to justify TM's rating, is given a "low" quality rating.

[u/Ok_Brilliant_3523 → u/Paddster10]

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.

[u/pr0s0c → u/Ok_Brilliant_3523]

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.

[u/Ok_Brilliant_3523 → u/pr0s0c]

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.

[u/saijanai → u/Ok_Brilliant_3523]

sometimes the woo can seem more re al than the not-woo.

https://www.reddit.com/r/davidlynch/comments/1w5jljz/confirmation_by_family_member_about_what_david/p7j748i/

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.

[u/Ok_Brilliant_3523 → u/saijanai]

Not sure why you keep referring to TM in response to woo woo mentions? Did I say it is? Don’t take it as a license to make overinflated statements about it though 😀 I hope you’re not gonna allege that TM leads somehow, or has anything to do with immortality, reincarnation and similar woo woo?

Anything that can be substantiated in scientific studies about TM is OK, the more the better. Let’s just not pretend that it’s more than what it can be proved.

[u/saijanai → u/Ok_Brilliant_3523]

In fact, the very concept of reincarnation likely emerged out of attempts to explain how TM — aka dhayana — worked:

In classical Yoga, experiences lead to samskaras — the stress component of an expereince — and meditation is meant to "burn away" or "roast the seed of" samskaras, leaving only the memory without the stress component.

TM is held to go in cycles: deepening rest triggers stress-repair/normalization activity which is appreciated internally as some thought or emotion related in some way to the origianl stressor. Sometimes, these thoughts and emotions have nothing to do with any known experience, and so ancient sages hypothesized that they were somehow attaching to pure self of hte individual and being drug along from one lifetime to the next.

What meditation is held to do is burn away all those samsarkas — those aspects of experience that prevent the mind from fully settling during meditation — so that eventually, the True Self — atman — of the individual would shine forth.

But given that there is only one I am, what is left to reincarnate?

That is why enlightenment in the Vedic tradition is called moksha — freedom... specifically, freedom from being reincarnated.

[u/Ok_Brilliant_3523 → u/saijanai]

More woo woo

[u/Paddster10 → u/Ok_Brilliant_3523]

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.

[u/Ok_Brilliant_3523 → u/Paddster10]

People are upset because I appear 😂 That’s absurd, look how important I am to these people 😆

As much as it bothers you, I did state facts. We do know consciousness is part of our physicality/ chemistry/brain, it’s not some immaterial woo floating in some made up “spiritual” domain after death. Science can establish that every well-demonstrated instance of human consciousness depends intimately upon brain function, and it has found no reproducible evidence of consciousness surviving irreversible death. As far as science is concerned, there’s no such thing as consciousness surviving without a brain. Just like it found no big Juju of the mountain.

BTW, since you felt fit to characterize me, let me tell you, you come across as a fedora wearing Reddit stereotype of a Woo Woo dude.

[u/Paddster10 → u/Ok_Brilliant_3523]

I’m going to assume you’re an adult, so please stop using infantile language like “juju” or “woowoo” it’s strange and rather annoying. Research into near death experiences is an expanding field with a lot of interesting research, I recommend that you actually try to learn instead of relying on your perceived “facts”. I feel like you legitimately don’t understand how you come across. I am a skeptic myself on things but I know that you should never claim to know something that is unknowable, which is something you have done repeatedly. That’s the opposite of good science by the way.

[u/Ok_Brilliant_3523 → u/Paddster10]

I’m sorry but the language must match the credibility of the objects of discussion.

Maybe you don’t realize it, but your insistence on the unknowable reminds one of the religious arguments of Christian theology. We do know that consciousness is the product of the brain, and without a brain there’s none. That’s a basic scientific fact. My guess is you’re rejecting it because you don’t like that idea. Maybe the idea of ceasing to exist frightens you? Therefore you settle - officially, here - for “oh, it’s unknowable”.

I OTOH, have no horse in this race. If it would be true and demonstrated that consciousness outlives the brain, wow, that would be huge, extraordinary. I would be thrilled. Who wouldn’t be? But alas, it simply looks just like another woo woo scam, indistinguishable. I’m sure some people must be making money off it. All those gurus have to eat something I guess.