David Lynch's Dune Options

[Critter]

Dune and Kundalini Yoga

The Sleeper Has Awakened. If I had any doubts about the Kundalini Yoga references in Dune, the line "The Sleeper Has Awakended" put all doubts to rest. This line is classic Kundalini Yoga. The Sleeper in Kundalini is a sleeping snake, the snake being itself a representation of the Kundalini energy that is awakened/harnessed when you achieve enligthenment. It took me about 10 years to forgive Joseph Campbell for being human. It has taken me almost that long to forgive Frank Herbert.

The New York Post reported some days ago about the acting career of Kyle MacLachlan (the lead in Dune). The article mentioned how, after the monumental failure of Dune, Kyle MacLachlan came back to star in Blue Velvet and to revive his career.

I am not a David Lynch fan. David Lynch tends to exaggerate characters to the point where they are cartoon-like. However, Dune was an incredible movie. David Lynch's Dune probably rates right up there with A Clockwork Orange and Blade Runner. What finally made me realize how really good David Lynch's Dune was was seeing the Dune tv series on CD. Dune the tv series may be more true to the Book and it may present more human characters, but David Lynch's Dune is definitely more entertaining

When I went to see the movie Dune, what I saw was a bastardized version of Kundalini Yoga for a western audience, a western audience that probably had no idea what Kundalini Yoga was. For this reason, I more or less hated Dune for years. I saw Dune as a theft of something rather than an original work of art.

The Buddhist religion is very complicated. I basically only know about the little bit of it that I am most interested in. From what I've read, there are several schools/yogas for achieving enlightenment. Kundalini Yoga is one such yoga that involves following a special diet and doing special meditations/exercises/kyrias to achieve enlightenment. The concept of achieving enlightenment in Kundalini revolves around moving your consciousness/energy from your lower chakra (located at the base of your spine) up your spine to the highest chakra (located at your forehead). This Kundalini energy is represented by a snake. The symbol for medicine, the two intertwined snakes, is a Kundalini symbol.

Dune the Book, in my view, essentially takes all of the tenets of Kundalini Yoga, adds a whole lot of opera and theater and replaces the snake metaphor with a worm metaphor. Also, instead of the years of dieting and meditation and exercising, Dune offers westerners the quick fix of simply taking a drug, The Spice.

I just noticed something interesting on the Officail Dune website. The site refers to meetings and correspondence between the author of Dune and Joseph Campbell. Very Very interesting. I will have to research this.

[Critter]

Dune and Useless Information

I can remember buying and reading some of the first Dune Book. And, I can remember bying and reading some of a Dune Book with a giant worm with a man's head on the cover. However, I don't recall what either book was about. From where I sit, the Dune books are all just so much useless information.

From where I sit, I don't really need a westernized fiction based on Kundalini Yoga. As I said once to someone who seemed stunned when I said I didn't have time for fiction: I can create my own fiction.