DAVID LYNCH and the invincible Raja confuse Germany.
By MARC FISCHER

It’s a film anyone would like to see: Hollywood director David Lynch, kneeling on Berlin’s Teufelsberg (“Devil’s Hill”) in front of a fat guy in a frock, digging a hole in the ground while people stand around him, torches in hand, shouting, “Invincible Germany!” What kind of movie would it even be? A Nazi picture? A witch flick? A fat-guy film? Not a movie at all: on this particular November night in Berlin, shortly after half past eight, Lynch is actually sitting on the ground, in the blaze of torches, digging into the dirt to break ground for an Invincible Germany.

That it would be no ordinary afternoon had been clear from the outset: “Spiritual Illumination and Immortality” was the title of the lecture Lynch delivered at 5 PM at Berlin’s Urania. When he’s not in the German capital, Lynch usually makes movies in which ears are cut off and call girls’ souls undergo rapid quadruple transmigrations before they die. But occasionally, he reports on the advantages of Transcendental Meditation. He’s on a crusade: Lynch wants to establish super universities all over the globe that will “bring world peace.” Of central importance to this project are Yogic Flyers who levitate a few inches above the ground, disseminating their knowledge and good vibes across the land like dandelion seeds.

Sounds like a good start, and Lynch is looking good, too, as he takes the stage at Berlin’s Urania. Better than good, actually, wearing a black suit over a white shirt and a narrow yellow tie, his hair a tsunami wave of icy grey. He had been touring with the Yogi number for a couple weeks, met Shimon Peres in Israel, Sarkozy in France – and the day before speaking in Berlin, he visited Gusenbauer, the Austrian chancellor. Hamburg, Hanover, and Cologne would follow. Lynch was a big hit; and although he hasn’t received any licenses for his super schools just yet, the world seems to be slowly catching on to the fact that some thing has to change before we all drown in crime, stress, and aggression. Just how bad it really is, says Lynch, is evident in his own movies, most recently, Inland Empire: everywhere nothing but fraud, murder, dirt, lies!

Transcendental Meditation (TM) is a relaxation technique invented in India in 1958 by the late Guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who passed away just this February after having come to unexpected fame in the 1960s when the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Dolly Parton, Donovan, and Stevie Wonder made pilgrimages to see him – to learn the secret mantras and immerse themselves in the “infinite sea that is the beatific inner self.” In 1973, Lynch followed the rock and rollers into this infinite sea and has been swimming in it ever since, for twenty minutes each morning and twenty minutes each night. He’s told anyone who cares to listen – and many who don’t – that he couldn’t have made a single one of his movies without TM. Neither Eraserhead nor Blue Velvet nor Lost Highway. Some people say Lynch is getting even crazier as the years pass, but lately it seems more likely that he’s always been this way. On his website he sells coffee and reads the weather report every morning.

The crowd of almost 200 guests, part bespectacled students and part sensitive yoga-types, applauds the director and immediately begins asking Lynch the typical questions about his enigmatic movies: “What happened in the slammer in Lost Highway?” “What was the dwarf in Twin Peaks all about?” “If you are so peaceful, then why do you make such profoundly disconcerting movies?”

Lynch is smiley and more polite than the Dalai Lama, but he unfortunately also talks that way: promising anyone who tries TM “beatitude, satisfaction, spiritual illumination.” He moves his hands in circles – to hypnotize the crowd, perhaps? Then calls “world-famous scientists Prof. Dr. John Hagelin and Prof. Dr. Bevan Morris” to the stage; they explain that TM is “a hundred million times stronger than the nuclear force,” erases all negativity from society, and that there is “solid proof for all of this” – statistics, studies, evidence.

As the audience murmurs its “is-that-so’s” and skeptical “um’s,” the show’s real star arrives in white raiment, an amulet, and a golden crown. He is Raja Emanuel, the Raja of Germany, come to announce the beginning of a new era: the era of an Invincible Germany.

The Raja speaks with a singsongy lilt, a mixture of Jonathan Meese and Andy Kaufman. Some people in the audience laugh: What will Lynch come up with next? And where is the camera filming this?

The Raja’s real name is Emanuel Schiffgens; he is 58 years old and lives in Hanover. In 1970, he too went to India to visit the Maharishi; today he is the president of Maharishi Veda GmbH, the German daughter of the worldwide conglomerate that promotes the original Yogi’s meditation schtick. It’s a commercial empire that many people consider a sect, whose smartest ploy is to claim that that is precisely what they are not. In other words: the Raja will teach you TM with pleasure, but you will have to fork over 2,000 euros for your mantra. If at some point you’ll want to fly as well, that costs extra.

Addressing the crowd at the Urania, Raja Emanuel announces that the Maharishis have just purchased Berlin’s Teufelsberg, where they will build “the first university of an invincible Germany … A light will emanate from this university that will extend like a ray across all of Germany and render it invincible.” The Raja holds up a picture: a white marble tower against a blue sky, the refuge of the future world spirit.

This quickly dampens the audience’s laughter. Devil’s Hill, Germany, invincible, ray-like light? If someone had been wearing a Nazi-meter, it would have exploded.

“But why an invincible Germany? We’re in the EU!” someone exclaims.

“Hitler also wanted an invincible Ger many!” someone else blurts out.

“But unfortunately, he failed!” the Raja counters.

The reactions among Bayreuth’s Wagnerians to Schlingensief ’s last “Parsifal” were moans of pleasure in comparison to the cries of “Clown! Charlatan! Boo!” that rained down on the Raja that day. But what about David Lynch?

Not knowing any German, he merely sits frowning. His assistant asks artist Bobby Roth what’s going on.

“The Raja is talking like Goebbels on ecstasy.”

“Is it very bad?”

“Well …”

In an effort to calm down the masses, Lynch explains that this particular invincibility is not meant in a military sense, but in a spiritual one, and invites the audience to follow him to a groundbreaking ceremony on Teufelsberg itself. Most can’t come, of course – what kind of students and yoga disciples in Berlin have cars?

As soon as president Bevan Morris settles into Lynch’s white stretch-limousine he sings a Roy Orbison song to come down from it all. Only with the Germans do they get this kind of trouble, he says, nowhere else. While the car glides through Berlin, a conversation about nationalism, faith, and sects develops, and Lynch is surprised to hear that Hitler once planned to erect a defense institute at Teufelsberg: “Really!?” At this point the car has stopped on the hill, directly opposite the ruins of the listening post.

It’s usually pitch-black by that time of night, but the Raja is prepared: torchbearers light the scene. Are they the Yogic Flyers? Not quite – they’re still practicing, someone says. Hanfried Schütte, the man who wants to sell the land to the Maharishis, is in attendance as well.

But for how much?

“I’m not obliged to say.”

Do they already have a license to build the super university?

“No.”

The Raja puts a spade in Lynch’s hands; the director kneels down and digs in, not a speck of dirt soiling his ensemble. Soon the hole is two feet deep. “Now the bricks,” the Raja declares, handing blocks of aerated concrete to Lynch, who smashes them with the spade before marking them with the Maharishi’s symbols. Money and rice are thrown into the hole and the merry Raja begins to sing his “ Invincible Germany” anthem. No one in the world is having more fun. The Maharishi’s sun-flag is raised, cognac pralines are served – the only thing missing from the ceremony is a good old-fashioned book-burning.

“Hitler’s been dead for 50 years and the Germans still can’t be proud of themselves. That’s going to have to change at some point,” the Raja says in the limousine on the way back.

“It’s high time you shut up!” Morris says suddenly. “Stop speaking in our name. Don’t you realize that you are endangering our cause?”

But the nature of this cause remains unclear – world peace or world domination? Silence descends in the limousine until it arrives at the hotel. Lynch rushes straight up to his suite – he’s really going to need that meditation now.

“A lot went wrong today,” Bobby Roth tells me later over a drink. True, but it made for an incredible film – not directed by, but starring the always disquieting David Lynch.