David Lynch Wants To Raise $7 Billion for Transcendental Meditation, Is Still Saner Than Madonna or Tom Cruise

These days, with Tom Cruise's Scientology inanity and Madonna's Kabbalah bullshittery, this celebrity-pushing-religion story is downright charming.

Tomorrow, the Oscar-nominated director of such graphically violent movies as "Blue Velvet" and "Mulholland Drive" is announcing the formation of the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace.

Lynch has been a devotee of transcendental meditation and its founder, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, for 32 years. The foundation he'll launch with his own money will fund schools to set up transcendental meditation (or "TM") classes and pay for research on the effects of the yoga technique on the "brain and body."

Lynch hopes to raise $7 billion within a year.

"This is not a pretend thing," Lynch told PAGE SIX's Steve Garbarino. "Our government spends seven times that on killing, calling it defending, and making machinery and technology to kill human beings in the name of peace."