Well yes, but like I said, small mistakes or small failures. We take small failures very often. We have failures in investment. We have failures in operation, but no big mistakes or big failures. How do we take that? Like ordinary business.

I didn’t fear failure. I expected failure. I think I’ve always been somebody, since the deaths of my father and brother, who was afraid to hope. So, I was more prepared for failure and for rejection than success. The success took me by surprise and it frightened me.

I had set my mind on winning the 1500-meter gold medal in Helsinki in 1952. ... And, it all came disastrously wrong when I came fourth instead of winning. ... Instead of retiring in order to devote myself to medicine, I decided to go on for another two years while I was still a student, working clinically in London, and I did that.

Right, it’s true, it’s true. We didn’t think of ourselves as that, you know everybody … There’s an element of craft in the work, you know, we’re putting one foot in front of the other. Trying to get more experiments to work than fail but in hindsight, yes, there’s some truth in that.

It just, um, starts feeling correcter and correcter until it's done.

If I had found something that was better than TM, I’m not stupid, I would have gone and done that. We’re looking for the best thing we can get for ourselves.

Intuition? They say intuition is sort of feeling and intellect going at the same time. It’s a knowingness. As I always say, it’s knowing when something isn’t quite correct and then knowing a way to make it correct. And intuition is, I always say, the number one tool for the artist, I think the number one tool for people in business, perhaps the number one tool for human beings. Knowing how to do something, how to make it feel correct for you.

On my film Dune, that experience could have finished me. It was so horrible. I identify so much with my films – and I knew I sold out – and meditation kept me from jumping off the cliff.

What do I think it is? A fulfillment of a desire gives you happiness.

Absolutely. My friend Charlie Lutes said the most we can do for ourselves is to take that dive within twice a day, bringing out more and more of that consciousness within and that consciousness has qualities, qualities of intelligence, creativity, happiness, love, energy, power, peace. All these things you’re gonna get more and more of. You cannot lose.