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Russell and Katy Brand Support Meditation Charity at Showbiz Event

Russell Brand and Katy Perry joined David Lynch and a host of other Hollywood stars at a glittering benefit event in New York last night to help bring a therapeutic meditation technique to thousands of war veterans suffering from stress disorders.

Earlier in the day Russell, Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood helped launched the Operation Warrior Wellness project with powerful testimonies of how Transcendental Meditation has helped them personally.

Russell Brand surprised the US media with a touching insight into how daily practice of Transcendental Meditation (TM) has transformed his life in the last 14  months. Standing next to David Lynch, he joked about his former days of alcohol, drugs and sex addiction, and described how, on learning TM, he had very quickly gained access to "a deeper state of happiness which was very profound and absolute".

"Of course", he told the audience, "I can only speak of my own personal experience but what it felt like to me was the dissolution of my idea of myself ... I felt this tremendous sense of oneness."

He described himself as an "erratic thinker and an adrenalised person", but he said that through Transcendental Meditation he felt "a beautiful serenity and a selfless connection."

His delivery was warm and humourous as he spoke of how the technique, which he practises for just 20 minutes twice daily, has effortlessly helped relieve him of his egotism and sex addiction:

"I have a tendency towards selfishness which I feel has been exposed as a superficial and pointless perspective. [Now] I feel a very relaxed sense of oneness. I feel love - a sort of love for myself and also for everybody else, which is unique because normally I'd express that in my nocturnal activities! But now it feels absolute, without initiation or conclusion; a constant state of absolute love between all of us."

Surrounded by war veterans from WW2, Iraq and Vietnam, he spoke of his support for the Operation Warrior Wellness project which will enable 10,000 veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder to learn the technique.  He joked about how trivial his problems were in comparison, and pointed out that experience and research had shown that Transcendental Meditation is just as effective with individuals who "have endured phenomenal and terrifying experiences".

"If there is anything we can do to assist people, if there is any technique that can make their suffering temporarily or permanently alleviated, this is something we have to research and learn even more about.

"What I have discovered is that Transcendental Meditation is useful for me, not because of a unique set of circumstances, not because of my formerly secret brilliance, but because I am a human being and it is applicable to all human beings, in all situations. No matter how extreme, trivial or mundane our concerns, someone, everyone, can draw from it."

Later he and his wife, Katy Perry, who has also learnt Transcendental Meditation, attended the Change Begins Within fundraising gala dinner at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Last year's Change Begins Within concert (see video top right), which was organised by the David Lynch Foundation, brought together Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr on the public stage for the first time in 30 years.

You can watch Russell Brand, Clint Eastwood and others speaking about TM at the David Lynch Foundation Press Event David Lynch press conference video

You can also watch the the showbiz bash: Change Begins Within Gala Event David Lynch Change Begins Within gala video


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