The Western Yogis: David Lynch & Charlie Manson
What is the link between David Lynch and Charlie Manson?
It is an influence upon the later 20th century that interconnects a web of popular culture icons, from the Beatles to Charles Bukowski to Vidal Sassoon.
Transcendental meditation.
The sixties in America were the origin-point of much of what we consider the modern iconography and morality (both good and bad). California was really the more precise nucleus of this phenomenon, and we might go further to even say Los Angeles and San Francisco, and even more precisely in areas such as Hollywood and Haight-Asbury, we may pinpoint the precise heart of that strange influence which ‘blossomed from the beats’.
Five or ten years before the rest of the world began emulating this scene, the corners of Haight-Ashbury and the Whiskey a go-go formed the break from traditional morality and culture and trailblazed their way into a free-form LSD-hazed psychedelic ‘lifestyle of freedoms’. They practiced orgiastic free love and a certain unfettered creativity in their literature, fashion, film, and (most notably) their music. For many the end road of this ‘revolution’ was rather shabby and predictable: skid row, biker gang rape, and drug deal murders. And for the rest, the ‘freedom culture’ was eventually bottled and consumerized into what later became the bizarre lifestyle of the ‘yuppies’.
Decades later their egalitarian value system was further twisted into an imposed ‘woke tyranny’ — but that is another story.
It was there in that heart of what became the ‘hippy culture’ that movie stars and old-world producers and mafia dons rubbed elbows with folk and rock musicians, drug addicts, violent biker gangs, pornographers, cultists, and (again most importantly): shamans and gurus. For this newfound morality of the 60s was not just hippy decadence, as it came with a flip side, a dualism, and alongside destructive rejections of tradition there were, believe it or not, genuine attempts at reviving ancient Indo-Aryan spirituality.
Transcendental meditation was a method developed by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who developed his unique take on traditional eastern meditation and brought it to the West with celebrity endorsement from the Beatles (and the Rolling Stones) perhaps most famously. Of them I believe Brian Jones and George Harrison became serious ongoing practitioners. Many do not know that this is the very same method often praised and preached by the recently deceased filmmaker David Lynch. Lynch cited this meditation method as the source of all creativity and peace in his life. He invested heavily in the promotion of an international institution which furthers awareness of this practice developed originally by Maharishi.
Believe it or not, Manson has a similar story in many regards, but more as the ‘dark side of the coin’. It was Neil Young who directly said (by way of being critical) that what the Maharishi was doing was exactly what Charles Manson was doing with ‘The Family’. And indeed Manson was directly inspired by these teachings (though moreso by the similar yogi Paramahansa Yogananda). Manson considered himself to be a shaman or yogi (with a certain Christian slant) and it is forgotten just how successful he was as a spiritual leader, well known in these hippy scenes and Hollywood studios. Many famous actors and musicians, such as the Beach Boys and Cass Elliot, counted for a time amongst ‘The Family’, gathering routinely to hear his crazed sermons.
There is really nothing much more to account regarding this, other than the strange nature of this drug-addled ‘spritiual renaissance’, and the ultimately ‘red-pilled’ ancient aryan quality of the eastern practice which inspired both Lynch and Manson. Two ‘famous artists’ (one light and the other dark) who exemplified the outburst of creative popular culture which spanned the thirty years from the 60s to the 80s. And this odd but brief Western cultural shift that occurred while under the influence of threads of archaic pre-Christian spirituality.
