[nukkad] FW: Sudarshan Kriya - as I experienced it !!!

["Gurunath M." <>]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The zoo is a prison for animals who have been sentenced without trial and I feel guilty because I do nothing about it. -Russell Hoban, author (1925- )
----------------------------------------------------------------------------


By Allen Salkin

The face of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, guru extraordinaire of the explosively
expanding yoga and meditation practice called The Art of Living (AOL), is
more lined than it appears on the covers of his dozens of books, CDs,
newsletters, Web sites, and postcards. Today the twinkly-eyed, black-bearded
"guru of love" is in New Jersey, in the bridal suite of Royal Albert's
Palace hotel, wiping his hands and waiting to be interviewed. His white
robes are made of a fine, opalescent fabric that shimmers slightly.

He begins speaking in a cheerful, slightly bleating Indian-accented voice
about his favorite subject. "Love is the only superior power on the planet;
love has the healing power. It can heal mental, physical, and spiritual
illnesses."

His simple message—a light blend of Eastern religion, meditation, yogic
stretching, and breathing—is catching on big. Tens of thousands of Americans
have taken his classes that feature the breathing technique he calls
Sudarshan Kriya. Five years ago, his ashram in India was attracting about
5,000 overnight guests a year. Now, more than 25,000 annually check in for
retreats at the 60-acre center that attracts up to 5,000 visitors a day when
Shankar is there. Worldwide, more than a million people in 136 countries
have taken his introductory course. He spends about 60 days a year at his
ashram near Baden Baden, Germany, 40 days at AOL's ashram near Montreal,
Canada, and 150-odd days on the road, giving satsang (spiritual talks),
everywhere from Atlanta to Singapore. The Art of Living may be the fastest
growing spiritual practice on the planet.

"The organization is growing at such a fast rate," says Prashant Rajore, the
administrator of Shankar's ashram in India. "In India itself, we have
doubled in the past year. We have doubled the number of our teachers; we
have doubled the number of our volunteers working in the villages."

The Ashram

To understand the vastness of AOL and ponder the question of why Shankar,
why now, leave New Jersey for a moment and head to a spread of rocky hills
on the outskirts of Bangalore in South India. Here, high above a vast valley
of rice fields and banana trees, a mammoth new building is rising into the
sky. Pillars as thick as elephants swirl upward, supporting gymnasium-wide
slabs of what looks like the biggest wedding cake the earth has ever seen.
This ornate confection is made not of whipped cream, eggs, and flour, but of
concrete, gold leaf, sweat, and hard cash. When it's done, the main floor
will hold 3,500 meditators, all breathing hard and fast, then slow and deep,
for Shankar. The extraordinarily grand temple, perched dramatically on the
pinnacle of a hill overlooking the vast valley, isn't just for show. Asked
why they were building it, my ashram tour guide said simply "We have
outgrown the old one." The old meditation hall, a flat-roofed, white-walled,
one-story building, was built about a decade ago and can hold only about 400
people.

On the next hill over is the dining hall, where vegetarian meals are ladled
out. That's where, five months before my interview with Shankar in New
Jersey, I met James Latimer, a 29-year-old former British Telecom client
manager who is now a landscaper at the ashram. Latimer had taken a basic
course in England in 1994 and now is one of many Shankar followers who
believes his guru has something supernatural going on. "Someone special has
come to earth," he gushed, eyes bright. "In The Art of Living, there are
people who think this could be Krishna, this could be Jesus." You'd think
that such talk wouldn't sell well with Americans, who are wary of
charismatic gurus, familiar as we are with the well-chronicled excesses of
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, David Koresh, Jim Jones, and Baba Muktananda. But it
does.

"Following a guru appears to be a quick way toward personal transformation,"
says Robert N. Sollod, a professor of psychology at Cleveland State
University, who has published works on the psychology of religion. "People
are looking for that."

Perhaps Shankar's growing success can be explained by the strong appeal many
spiritual searchers find in someone whose practice promises to solve all
problems. "There was a moment when he just locked on, looked me in the eye,
and stopped . . . and I went into that classic description of pure bliss,
pure peace, just everything was light," says Nancie DiSilverio, who first
heard Shankar speak in person at a satsang in Connecticut in 1992. "It
happens because he's established in being, and he runs around in unbounded
space-time. In his presence, if you can let go, that's available." What
Solland is describing is transmission, or shaktipat, a longstanding
phenomenon among gurus and their disciples.

Truman State University professor and Shankar follower Lloyd Pflueger
explains that in the Hindu tradition the main reason people see an
enlightened guru is not just to listen to words of wisdom but to actually
receive the "radiation" from the guru's presence. "Whether or not you are
noticing the sun, the sun's rays are permeating the skin and changing it.
It's like that when you're in close proximity with the source of spiritual
radiance. Just being in the presence of the master can touch something in
you beyond words, beyond logical discourse. It can be either partially or
totally decisive or transformative in your spiritual growth."

Pflueger says that Shankar's presence is a more valuable tool for
transformation than what the guru actually says. "I feel Sri Sri has a very
strong radiation. It's not constant. It's like a peacock. It's not all the
time when the peacock spreads his feathers, but when he does, you can't
ignore it. I've been around Sri Sri when the feathers are spread in various
degrees, but there are times when I've felt I would physically melt from the
spiritual radiation I was feeling from him."

Shankar's teachings are cherished by his followers, who marvel at the ease
his methods bring them. "What Shankar is emphasizing is the experiential
component of religion," says Michael E. Nielsen, Ph.D., a professor of
psychology at Georgia Southern University. "Its advantage is that you can
have the results right away. Most Western religions, Christianity and
others, have developed all these elaborate belief systems that try to
explain things in a rational way and make people feel better." According to
Nielsen, if you try to understand things through experience, the proof is in
the pudding. "You do the practice and the stress leaves you and you feel
better. It promises a very satisfying and immediate thing. You can feel
better without relying on someone else to explain it rationally and without
relying on the promise of heaven later. What Shankar is teaching is very
appealing to people for this reason. Someone could be an agnostic or an
atheist and still get something from Shankar's philosophy—that the
individual has within them a greater sense of intelligence."

The Man

Shankar was born may 13, 1956, in Tamil Nadu, India. His father, Venkat
Ratnam, was a scholar of languages and now does charitable work. Mother
Vishalaskshi died in 2000. The couple chose the name "Shankar" because May
13 is the birthday of ninth-century Hindu saint Adi Shankara. Ravi, a common
name, means "sun." In the early 1990s, Shankar met the famous sitar player
Ravi Shankar, who complained that the holy man was unfairly capitalizing on
the name the musician had made famous. Soon after, the guru added the
honorific "Sri Sri."

There are two legends about Shankar dating back to his childhood that
followers readily recite to demonstrate his divinity. As a baby, Shankar was
rocking on a large swing hanging from four iron chains. The swing suddenly
fell to the ground. His father says it was a miracle the infant wasn't
injured; physics dictates the four chains should have fallen into the center
of the swing, but they fell outward instead. Then, as a 4-year-old, Shankar
is said to have recited passages from the Bhagavad Gita, a holy text he had
never even read.

As a boy, Shankar refused to play soccer with the other children, saying,
"These feet cannot kick anybody, let alone an inanimate ball." Instead, he
spent time writing poems and plays, and studying. He graduated from St.
Joseph's College in Bangalore with a science degree and was offered a job in
a bank. He turned down the offer, following a spiritual path instead,
eventually traveling to Rishikesh to study with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the
guru famous for popularizing Transcendental Meditation (TM).

In 1982, Shankar entered a 10-day solitary period of silence, during which
he says the centerpiece of The Art of Living, the Sudarshan Kriya, was
revealed to him.

The Teachings

The centerpiece of the AOL program is the Sudarshan Kriya, a breathing
technique that promises to cleanse the body and mind, eliminate stress, and
restore focus. To find out more about the kriya—and because American Art of
Living functionaries said they wouldn't let me interview Shankar unless I
did so—I signed up for a four-day, 16-hour introductory course in Manhattan,
two months after I'd visited India. The course was taught in a Holiday Inn
conference room, not far from the original Macy's department store. My
teacher was Nancie Di-Silverio, one of the 200 or so AOL instructors in the
United States. The Southern California native was one of a dozen teachers
flown to New York after the September 11 attacks to head free AOL classes,
which normally cost $250.
DiSilverio asked us each to introduce ourselves to the other 13 students by
shaking hands, looking in each other's eyes, and pledging, "I belong to
you."

Then we men and women, ranging from dewy-eyed newlyweds to gray-haired
grandmothers, were given lessons on taking deep Ujjayi breaths and asked to
consider what each of us wanted out of life and out of the course. By hour
three of day three, we were deep into the Sudarshan Kriya, breathing like
pumping bellows through our noses, eyes closed, slightly dizzy, hearing
DiSilverio beseech us: "Put a smile on your face—even if you have to fake
it! Smile." The air being sucked in and puffed out was ice cold, flowing in
from a window open to the January chill because Shankar has dictated that
the air must be fresh when the kriya is taught. On a cassette player in the
corner, Shankar's voice intoning "so-hum" set an unrelenting breathing
rhythm: Soooooo (breathe in)-hummmmmm (breathe out ). The pace is slow at
first and then quickens like a runaway train: sohumsohumsohum . . . .

The kriya requires breathing in and out through your nose in circular
breaths without pausing in between the inhalation and the exhalation. During
the retreat, this lasts about 25 minutes and is done in time with the tape
of Shankar. The at-home instructions are to start with 20 long and slow
in-out breaths, followed by 40 medium-length breaths and 40 small, fast
ones.This 20-40-40 is done three times and lasts a total of seven to nine
minutes. After that, you let the breath do what it wants for one minute and
then finish with five long, slow "so-hums." We were told to allow our
thoughts and emotions to flow, to deny nothing. After about 25 minutes, the
breathing over, we were told to lie on our backs and then our right
sides—which felt excellent. What descended then was the quiet empty space
that meditation can bring. It was nice. Calm. But that night at home, I
developed a hammering headache. We'd been told to avoid medicines if
possible, so I resisted pills.

The headache lasted into the next day's class. DiSilverio said my condition
was probably the result of my body purging toxins. Still, after the final
class, I'd had enough detoxing and blissfully swallowed an ibuprofen, which
brought relief.

I felt cleansed and clearheaded for days afterward, and most of the other
students said they felt quite peaceful at the end. Some of them had endured
stomach problems, and a few others had headaches. That might just have been
caffeine withdrawal, but I left feeling that daily practice of the Kriya
would probably be a good thing to do. According to DiSilverio, Shankar says
you can't really see the profound benefits of the practice until you do it
for six months. What put me off the most about the idea of doing it every
day was the time commitment of it. For me, a busy New Yorker, it seemed like
too much to do. But I am glad I learned the technique, and it is possible I
will decide to try it out for a few weeks or months some time down the
line—as long as the headaches eventually go away.

But The Art of Living is not all breathing. A booklet we were given to take
home with us summarizes the Shankar credo: "One God, One Truth, One World."
Here, in just 12 easy-to-read pages, are the "Eighteen Laws of Spiritual
Life." Some are familiar self-help messages like "Stop blaming others and
yourself," "Let go of the past," and "Have confidence in yourself." Some
echo Buddhism: "Acceptance of the present moment," and "Impermanence."
Others recall Judeo-Christian principles: "Trust the supreme and infinite
intelligence which has formed this entire creation."

Dr. Frances Vaughan, author of Shadows of the Sacred: Seeing Through
Spiritual Illusions (Quest Books, 1995), says the growth of movements like
Shankar's, which borrows philosophies and practices from many Eastern and
Western religions, shows the increasing popularity of "trans-traditional"
perspectives.

"It means you honor all traditions, but you don't necessarily identify with
any one of them," Vaughan says. Shankar's success may indicate that he is
the tip of the iceberg in terms of what the new century will bring,
religionwise. As the Internet and cheap jet travel expose more and more
people to different religious traditions, people may become more willing to
cobble together a few ideas from here and a few from there to create
spiritual belief and practice systems that work for them as individuals. For
many people, the work Shankar has already done in synthesizing something
fresh from many different sources may be enough. He brings an
already-developed, easy-to-swallow, easy-to-follow system, and adds a bit of
a twist, for those who want it, of himself as the enlightened guru. One
needn't believe in his grace to find The Art of Living useful, but it's
there if you want it.

"This is what seems to be happening in terms of people's spiritual quest, a
journey that leads them to different practices and traditions," says
Vaughan. "We have these teachings available now, and we didn't used to.
People don't necessarily stick with one their whole life. They try different
sources, particularly because the opportunity is there."

The Medical Opinion

AOL teachers are quick to point out that one needn't believe Shankar has
special powers to benefit from his kriya. They eagerly point to medical
research, a subject that is the province of Ronnie Newman. Newman's
full-time job with AOL is touting the kriya's tested health benefits—for
cancer, depression, HIV, and other illnesses—to medical schools, science
conferences, universities, and whoever else will listen. She's a real pro,
in command of her material. "The study ÔMajor Depressive Disorder with
Melancholic Features' found that Sudarshan Kriya was as effective as drug
therapy," says Newman, who received a Masters in human development from
Harvard in 1980. "An EEG study found that practitioners of Sudarshan Kriya
experienced low-frequency alpha waves . . . and what's even more striking is
that the brain was also producing beta, which is indicative of sharp
concentration. The system was relaxed and simultaneously alert." These
studies were done in India; Newman hopes her lobbying will spur more
research in the United States.
At a New Delhi symposium in March on Sudarshan Kriya, pranayama, and
consciousness, organized by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Dr.
Richard Brown, a Columbia University psychiatrist, said the kriya's rapid
breathing causes the release of the same hormone released during sexual
activity.

"If someone's well, it helps them deal with everyday stress," said Brown,
who wrote the book Stop Depression Now (Penguin/Putnam, 1999) about
meditation and herbal treatments and who regularly refers patients and
colleagues to AOL courses. "But if someone's depressed or has post-traumatic
stress disorder, the breathing can also be astonishingly helpful." Brown
says the breathing may, scientifically speaking, be "a kind of controlled
hyperventilation" but believes "it's quite mild, which is why the side
effects [like my headache] are nothing to worry about."

But Sollod, the psychologist from Cleveland, isn't so sure. He said the
kriya may be similar to holotropic breathwork, a once-trendy
hyperventilation technique that promised psychological and physical
benefits. "For some people it uncovered buried subconscious material that
they weren't able to deal with. It was a practice that was claimed to be
natural and without risk, but it did cause casualties among some people."

The Love

Shankar's organization practices the charity he preaches. Near the Bangalore
ashram, an AOL-funded school provides 650 poor children from illiterate
families 10 years of free education and daily meals. AOL executives say they
are doing similar charitable work in some 3,000 villages. Another new
construction project at the ashram is a vocational school that will teach
villagers how to become tailors. The AOL is accredited as a nongovernmental
organization in special consultative status with the United Nations. In the
United States, the nonprofit group Prison Smart has spent roughly $250,000
in recent years teaching Shankar's techniques to prisoners.

Shankar flew into New York in January to participate in the prestigious
World Economic Forum. As an invited religious leader, he was accorded the
same status as South African Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and President
of the World Muslim Congress Abdullah Omar Nasseef. The night before his
appearance at the forum, Shankar gave a satsang at a synagogue on the Upper
West Side for 2,000 people who paid $10 each. A band played Indian songs to
warm up the crowd, and then he arrived in white flowing robes, holding
flowers and walking sprightly down the center aisle before ascending the
stage and carefully clipping on a microphone. He answered a few questions
from the audience: "Do you think gurus should be treated differently from
other people?"


"Just as a normal human," Shankar replied. "Just as a dear friend, nothing
more."
"Will you ever marry?"

"I don't think I've grown up. Child marriage is prohibited. Maybe if I get
older, I'll consider it. But do you really need to get married to raise a
family? You simply have to consider the whole world your family."

A video camera caught his every utterance. Shankar speaks English, Tamil,
and Hindi fluently. He answered some questions with care and others with
playful laughs. One person asked: "Can you explain the mind-body
connection?" This is a subject Shankar has written on and talked about
extensively. But this time he answered only, "Yes, they do seem to be
connected, don't you think?" He smiled and soon announced, "Enough
questions, I think. Let's meditate, shall we?"

Afterward, I was led up to the stage to meet him. After a satsang he will
stand for hours, shaking hands, touching heads, and smiling at anyone who
waits in line. We shook hands, and I said I hoped he would find time in the
next two days for an interview. After I stepped down, I was told by a cadre
of teachers that I couldn't have an interview. Sri Sri was busy preparing
for his speech at the economic forum—and I hadn't taken the basic course
yet.

The Lesson

Three months later, the medieval-looking, ash-white Royal Albert Palace was
teeming with Sri Sri followers, most of whom appeared Indian. (The Manhattan
crowd in January had appeared mostly non-Indian.) The sound of chanting and
the scent of curry wafted through the corridors, and piles of shoes filled
the corners near the main conference hall.
I was led to the bridal suite. Shankar asked how I was. I told him I was a
little hung-over and had not slept because I'd stayed up all night for my
birthday party. "Your head hurts?" he asked. "Come here." He held out his
hands. I knelt down in front of him. He put his fingertips on my temples and
the top of my head. This was a strange way to begin an interview, but why
not try an empirical test of his healing powers?

He moved his hands on my head for 15 seconds, then lifted them off.
"Better?" I backed away, then slid into the chair, trying to gauge what I
was feeling.

"I'm not sure," I said. "Do you believe you can heal people?" I asked.

"People say it makes them feel better," he replied. His brown eyes were
wide, his face open and easy to stare at. He was a very pleasant person to
be around.

I asked him if he understood that Americans are somewhat distrustful of
gurus, especially those who claim supernatural powers. Was he worried that
he'd be grouped with people like Rajneesh and Koresh? "I don't put a label
on myself," he said, moving his hand across his forehead. "I'm just an
absolutely natural and free person. I'm 100 percent free. I have no titles.
I have no labels. I have no chains binding me."

I asked him why he was celibate and wasn't he ever tempted to try sex.

"There is no such compulsion or need that has arisen. . . . This time around
on the planet I'm meant to do some work," he said. "I feel that there is so
much love all the time, vibrating; love is all the time there. There is no
need for me to find love and joy in something, an act."

I asked him how he had the patience to greet every person in the room after
a satsang. "When there is so much love, you can greet. Love always
energizes," he answered. "Why shouldn't I meet everybody if my meeting
everybody brings them some relief, some solace, makes them feel happy?"

Finally, I asked him about his strategy for winning new converts, about
whether the new meditation hall was part of that strategy, and how he felt
about the billboards of his face that were going up in India. "I've not
thought about those things," he said. "It doesn't matter."

The Exit

After shankar left the room, he was swamped by admirers. People fell to the
ground and touched his feet. They held up their babies for him to touch. A
man was led up to him by a teacher, and the man said, "I'm lost, I don't
know what to do. I'm lost. I need help." Shankar told him to take the basic
course. He looked to the teacher and told her to help the man enroll.
More and more people closed in on Shankar, but he had to leave to speak at
the evening satsang. The music was getting faster and louder and more
frantic with his expected arrival. He sauntered into a fancy walk-dance
step, snapping his fingers in the air. It allowed him, with a smile on his
face, to benignly glide through the throng and into the conference room. I
said to the event coordinator, who had sat with me through the interview,
that the dance step was an impressive move, a good way to get through the
crowd without hurting feelings. "It's so much worse in India," he said.
"It's not a life most of us would want to live." But it is the life that
Shankar believes he was born to live.

As I stood there watching him accept the adulation of the crowd, I thought
back to the last question I'd asked him when it was just the three of us.
Before I turned off my tape recorder, I said there was one more thing I
wanted to ask, a question just for myself, not something that I had to ask
him for the article. I don't believe that Shankar is a god or that he can
heal a headache with his hands, and I haven't done the Sudarshan Kriya since
I finished the introductory class. But Shankar struck me as an awfully kind
person who was teaching a form of yoga that many people believed was helping
them, and he wasn't asking them for lots of money or to do anything else for
him. After months of poring through his financial records, interviewing his
followers, and reading his writings, this reporter was ready to ask Shankar
a heartfelt question.

"Is it luck that you've found the right thing that allows you to feel like
you are at all times being your best person? Because one can go through life
and be the best person one can, and always choose the good thing to do, the
right thing to say, the compassionate thing. But at the same time, I sit at
my desk every day, and I'd like to be expressing myself from my heart always
in my writing. But I have to write some stories I don't care about to earn a
living. How do I bring together what I want to do and what I have to do?"
Shankar seemed to sharpen, more on his ground now. He summarized the sum of
my ramblings:

"Are you saying that in your business you are sometimes asked to do things
which are not right?" I thought about it.

"Basically, yes," I said.

"If you stick to truth, you won't lack for anything." he replied slowly. "I
started a school with 175 kids. People thought I was crazy. It's difficult
to feed two children in India. I had no money. I took a school that was
bankrupt, which had a loan on its head. When you have trust in God and your
spirit, I tell you this, everything will fall in line. When you think all
the time how do I feed myself, then you're in trouble, but when you do some
good job in the world, there will be a million people ready to feed you with
desserts and the whole meal.

"People who were around me, my family and friends, wondered why I was taking
the responsibility for poor children when I have no steady income at all.
Okay, they said, you have some money for two months, but what will you do
for the third month? But when we started doing, it would come right at that
moment when it was needed. Now we are running 100 charitable schools in
India. Some in tribal areas where no one else will go. Twenty years. And in
each school we have about 1000 children. It's very gratifying when you see
children who would never have had an education, and now they come up with a
good education and smiles."

The interview was over and I watched him leave the room, dancing his way
into the main hall. A chair was waiting for him on a stage with a
microphone. Thousands of people were there because they wanted to hear what
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar had to say—a simple message of trust, hope, and love. I
got into my car and drove in silence all the way home through the rainy
night. When I got home, I slept like a rock.

Allen Salkin is an investigative reporter living in New York City.







------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To join/leave, use the form at: http://www.mumbai-central.com/nukkad/#options
This list is archived at: http://www.mumbai-central.com/nukkad/archive.html