Take a deep breath - guru's "breathing" plan for world peace

Jun 8, 2011, 2:06 GMT

Berlin - From the 1936 Olympic Games under the Nazi regime to the football World Cup final in 2006, Berlin's Olympic stadium has held some historic events - but rarely can it have hosted something as unusual as next month's World Culture Festival, where some 70,000 attendees will hold a 25-minute mass meditation for world peace.

Whether the guns and missiles around the globe will really fall silent is another matter, but the two-day festival of spirituality and yoga is the brainchild of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, a 55-year old Indian guru and founder of the Art of Living Foundation.

Organizers hope that people from 150 countries will descend on the German capital for the 48 hours of music, meditation and speeches from political and religious leaders. The highpoint - the mass meditation - will be joined by an estimated 2.5 million people around the world, as well as the 70,000 people in the stadium.

With conflicts raging in Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, parts of Africa and central America, there is no doubt that the world could do with a dose of peace - but will the combined efforts of a stadium full of worshippers silently meditating really help?

'This does not create magic, with peace the next day,' says Shankar, at Berlin's luxury Maritim Hotel. 'But such events happening around the world will unite the hearts and minds of people.'

'It may appear to be impractical, but in my own experience we can contribute substantially to peace.'

Diminutive, dressed in white robes, barefoot, with a straggly beard and deep brown eyes, Shankar shies away from calling himself a guru - despite having 'trained' some 30 million people worldwide in the art of his breathing meditation, discovered, he says, during a 10-day silent retreat by the Bhadra River in 1981.

'I would just describe myself as a child that refuses to grow up. The point is bringing people together - this I have been doing all my life,' he says.

Shankar set up his Art of Living Foundation to spread the teaching of his breathing mediation, and it is now celebrating its 30th year with the stadium festival.

'We take things for granted. We all breathe, so we think we know about breath. We don't.'

But why Berlin?

'Germany is the heart of Europe. I first came to Berlin in 1981. Then I really wished that these two sides of Berlin should become one ... We all meditated and wished for peace and I said, 'It's going to happen', but the people didn't believe me. They thought, 'He's a small man from India, he does not understand what's happening'. I said Germany will be united one day. So 30 years later I thought we should celebrate here in Germany.'

The stadium, assuming they can fill it, was a landmark of the Third Reich, and is still a sinister presence on the Berlin horizon. Could the karma of multinational meditation erase some of those ghosts of Adolf Hitler, who watched the black US athlete Jesse Owen win gold here 75 years ago?

'From the same place that came the conflict, I would like to issue the call for peace, and unity,' says Shankar. 'It's time that stadium reverberates with peace and celebration.'

But what about closer to home? Shankar's native India has been engaged in a decades-long stand-off with neighbouring Pakistan - at times, edging close to all-out war between the two nuclear-armed nations. Why not bring peace there, which many security analysts fear is even more likely to spark a war than the Middle East?

'We are constantly on the job. We have worked quite a bit in Kashmir. I've been doing conflict-resolution efforts in Kashmir, Iraq, Palestine. At the end of this year I hold a peace conference in Bangalore for imams and rabbis. So, you know, these are big issues in the world, and you can't expect a change overnight.'

But can simply breathing, and yoga, bring world peace? 'Definitely. First of all, conflict arises from stress, it arises in the minds of people. It is not something which drops from heaven. The mind is the source of all conflict, and because the mind is stressed and lacks understanding, conflicts arise.

'The whole Iraq conflict arose in the mind of one person, Saddam Hussein. If he had better understanding, and if he lived a life free from stress and not bent on so much egoism, he could have saved a lot of disaster.'

But isn't stress a natural part of life? 'Disease is natural - but medicine is also natural. So stress is natural, but if you know how to get rid of stress ...'

What about the Arab Spring? 'In one way it is good people are rebelling against the supression of their rights, which has been there for a long time. I would appeal to the leaders - when people are rebelling you should give up.'

And violent Islamism? 'It's a lack of cultural understanding. So, they become fanatics. The biggest danger to the world is fanaticism. Only a festival like this, multi-religious, multi-cultural festivals will help people.'