Filmmaker David Lynch has “lent his famous name and idiosyncratic hairstyle to a project to raise $1 billion on behalf of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Indian guru of transcendental meditation who once entranced the Beatles, and who has for the past few decades been striving to build an earthly paradise. The $1 billion is for a meditation centre big enough to hold 8,000 skilled practitioners. Lynch explains that such a critical mass of positive thinking ‘broadcast’ from one spot will be enough to pacify the world.”