Here is one of the most successful American music producers and entrepreneurs, Russell Simmons talks about transcendental meditation.
BETTER
My concentration is better, my memory is better. I’m more comfortable in my seat which I think is life’s goal. Meditation has been a great help to me in so many ways. It basically is the core of my existence – the freedom you get from meditation is the kind of consciousness you want to operate from. 
AWAKE
I want to be awake during the day. I don’t want the noise to separate me from whatever greatness is in here. I want to operate from that space. Be awake while you work. You’ll have your head on straight. Meditation is the basis from which you can really attract things, but also – when you’re awake and something’s there, you just go and get it. If you have noise in your head, you can’t go and get it.
So you want to be awake. You want to be able to get what you imagine. Imagination is good for you. You imagine something, and you calmly go out and get it. Meditation gives you that. It’s somewhat like magic – when you’re awake, things become easier. So just from a practical standpoint – you just want to be awake. You want to be able to operate from that awakened state. Meditation gives you that.
GRATEFUL
Meditation promotes gratefulness. You want to be grateful. You want to operate from a grateful space. The person who’s grateful is really attractive. It allows you to be a good giver, and again – good givers are good getters.
PRESENT
You’d like to be present. You’d like the world to move slow. You want to see – when you drive, you want to drive past the flowers, to see the flowers. You can do nothing – you cannot create anything, you cannot even be happy – you can do nothing except for the moment the noise disappears and you can see. A good job makes you present, a good song makes you present.
Meditation helps you to keep that presence. It actually teaches you and your brain to operate from that presence. You’ll understand it, you’ll become it when you meditate. So that’s why we meditate – so that we can see that what is in front of us.
QUIET TIME
“Quiet Time” is important for kids because they have so much noise going on in their heads. The bullies, and the pressure, and…. When you meditate, you understand: It’’s all nothing. Let me do this. Let me go to work. Let me concentrate, let me understand what they’re teaching me. Let me be awake.
You can learn nothing if your brain is running, if you have lots of stuff in your brain. It all has to settle in order that you can learn. For you to get an idea in your mind, you have to have a settled mind. Meditation is the process of settling the mind.
STILLNESS
Stillness is critical for young people. More often than not, it’s the lack of stillness that separates a kid from good education. It’s something we have to give kids. It’s critical. They have to get it. They have it in them, everybody wakes up with it – but they don’t know how to operate it, how to drive the ship. Teaching them to drive it, teaching them to meditate is like teaching them how to learn. Making it easier for them to learn.
STRESS
I think the kids are growing up in a world which is full of stress, full of anxiety everywhere. There’s this anxiety to succeed, there’s this overemphasis on the things in the outside, there’s a de-emphasis on the things in the inside.
It’s a difficult place to grow up, this world – the way we have it now, with all the things we’re selling them, promoting to them. Go tell your mummy to buy you this, get your mummy to get you this and that. And then, if you don’t have this and that and this, then, you know – jump out of the window. This really is the kind of pressure. Get this grade, if you don’t get this grade – don’t come home, you gonna get a whipping.
Teach kids to be calm, so that they have a shelter, a refuge from the noise, from the threats, from the false world. Bring them into the inner world. Let them operate from this true self which is a happy, joyful self. Meditation is about connecting the young person or the adult to the happy, joyful self.
That’s the message I’m giving you – the kids job in life, their only pursuit could be happiness. Meditation promotes happiness.
DOC RUTHERFORD’S SCHOOL
Going to Doc Rutherford’s school was fun. You know, I’ve been to other schools where kids meditated, but that school was especially good at it. Doc Rutherford was a person who was a student of the struggle of the people in this community. He understood them well.
And yet he knew there was a simple way. And the students are doing so great because he taught them how to meditate. When you meditated with them, you could hear a pin drop, you could feel the stillness spreading around the building, the peacefulness.
So the violence that was in that community was not in that school. The anxiety that’s in the whole community – not in the school. I think the community does better because when the kids meditate, it gives the community a coolness. So the whole community has calmed down a little bit when the kids meditate.
It’s a very powerful thing, being with Doc Rutherford and those students when they meditate.
ALCOHOL AND DRUGS
Kids get hold of alcohol and drugs and these things so that they can promote a bit of silence. To a dim or a cloudy mind, there’s no noise – it’s cloudy, so you cannot think. But when you let your thoughts settle, there’s no thinking and there’s a focus.
So there’s a cloudy way of relieving the noise, and there’s a still way of relieving the noise when we’re still and we operate from the core of our spirit. So that’s what I want the young people to be able to do – they have to get a chance to look inside. There’s so much emphasis on the outside. Let them look inside, find all the answers and the way to deal with whatever noise there is outside – take refuge in the inside. Twice a day, two times a day at least. A few minutes to reconnect.
It makes all the difference in the world.
DAVID LYNCH FOUNDATION
The reason I support David Lynch is that I believe every kid should have the freedom and the opportunity to meditate. Every kid should have a way to escape the noise. And I think kids need it, they deserve to have it.
Every kid who’s awake, is a happy kid. You can give every kid happiness when you teach them meditation. The moment they realize they have everything you have. Get them that gift. Very, very important. It’s the greatest gift you can give – the gift of consciousness.
