- Why does a guru with 300 million followers come to Sarpsborg to give courses in yoga, meditation and breathing techniques?
- I was invited long ago, but the waiting lists are long. This is the 15th country I am visiting in one month. Fortunately I need little rest and food. Some vegetables and three hours of sleep on the floor every night, that is enough.
- What else can be achieved by your methods?
- A stress free mind, a disease free body, a violence free society, a limitless intellect, a drama free memory and a sorrow free soul.
- How did you discover the recipe to so much good?
- It came as a revelation 30 years ago, like a poem can come to a poet, while I meditated for ten days in absolute silence. I spontaneously started teaching, and the techniques worked.
- How long time does it take to learn the techniques you are prescribing?
- 12 hours, spread over three to four days. It isn’t worse than that.
- ”Give me two hours daily with a terrorist for six days, and I will change his way of thinking,” you have said. Would that be sufficient for the man responsible for killing 77 people in Norway?
- I am convinced about that being enough for all terrorists. When I revive the soft human values that we all are born with, it becomes impossible to resort to violence.
- Concretely, how do you manage to achieve such a dramatic change in a terrorist?
- These are people who are brainwashed to think that they alone possess the truth and the ticket to heaven. Yoga, meditation and breathing techniques contribute in such a way that their brains find peace, and that they begin thinking in a different way. They start seeing themselves as human beings in our shared world. They realize what pain is, and that it must not be inflicted on others. I have seen big changes in the more than 300 000 prisoners worldwide who has completed my course.
- But the relapse rate is not exactly zero of those either?
- All change for the better, but for some of them one course will not be enough. They may need follow-up and support groups.
- How can we avoid a new 22.7- nightmare?
- The key is multi-religious and multi-cultural upbringing from the children are very small. In this way we prevent them from becoming insecure about their own roots and afraid that their culture and religion will disappear. The roots will strengthen when we expand our horizon. Diversity gives a cause for celebration, not conflict.
- Are all religions and cultures equally valuable
- There is something good in all of them, but not all of their expressions are just as appropriate in our time. We must preserve the good and get rid of the old fashioned.
- And who will decide what is what?
- Ours shared common sense.
- You have mediated in conflicts all over the world: Cameron, Ivory coast, Kashmir, Iraq, Sri Lanka. What have you achieved?
- A lot, and still just drops in the ocean. But it has been good to see that when you bring ordinary people together - Indians and Pakistanis, Palestinians and Israelis, Muslims and Christians - the rhetoric of politicians cease to have an effect on them.
- What will you answer critics who claim that your approach to the conflicts is naive?
- I welcome all criticism. Maybe I can learn from it. But I do think that they should know properly what I do and achieve before judging.
- You did use your diplomatic skills when you and the artist Ravi Shankar in the 1990s argued for the right to bear the name?
- He he, people used to come to my courses believing I would play the sitar, while others came to his concerts expecting to learn meditation and breathing techniques, so to avoid confusion I added Gurudev.
- You have been nominated for the Nobel’s Peace Prize. Did you know that the leader, Thorbjørn Jagland, participated in one of your courses while he was the Norwegian foreign minister, and that he was criticized for recommending it to the employees in the department?
- No, but that may be another reason why I hardly can get the prize. It anyway seems to go to people who fight, agitate, not to someone who only shows the way to a mind free of stress.
