Shekhar from Brahma Kumaris Raja Yoga Centre is with NTPagesTV telling us how their meditation courses are run on a voluntary basis, with many students eventually going on to become teachers themselves.
The following is a written transcription of the interview:
Natural Therapy Pages: I'm Mel from NTPagesTV, and I'm here with Shekhar from Brahma Kumaris Centre. How are you, Shekhar?
Shekhar: Very good.
NTP: That's good. Nice to see you. So, tell me a little bit about Brahma Kumaris.
Shekhar: Brahma Kumaris is an organisation which teaches positive thinking and meditation in 110 countries and 8,000 centres throughout the world. All courses are given on voluntary basis. So, every person who learns meditation is teaching after a few years. So there is no fee charged for any one of our courses throughout the last 70 years. People put their own money, or you can donate. That's how it works.
NTP: That's amazing. So, it's for anybody, yes? Meditation is for everybody.
Shekhar: Everybody. So, there's no boundaries. As far as internationally, there's no boundaries because we have main Centre in India, and in a dining room there are about 20 nationalities sitting together. In the early morning, we chop vegetables, everyone, and there are about 15 nationalities sitting, chopping one bean or something like that. That's 5:30 in the morning.
NTP: Tell me about the courses that you have here in Sydney and around Australia.
Shekhar: Courses we have are positive thinking so that your mind becomes positive. The whole idea is what you think that's what you are. If you think negatively, then you become a negative person. If you have thoughts of positivity, you become positive. It's changing your perception, your attitude, and turn to positivity. That's one course.
Second course is meditation. Meditation is simple and not made complicated because once you understand you are a soul in the body - body requires a lot of actions and negativity comes along with the body, and soul is absolutely pure original nature - so meditation is to get back to the purity of the soul. Once soul is pure, you're automatically positive, and that's the idea of it.
NTP: Beautiful. So, you have ongoing classes, don't you?
Shekhar: Yeah, we have seven lessons, eight lessons, one and a half hour. And if we learn that, you get a complete picture of Brahma Kumaris meditation course or Raja Yoga meditation course. Raja means king and yoga means controller, you know, connection. And Raja means you become king of all your senses, so those senses and physical things don't control you, but you control what's going around you.
NTP: That's the way you want to be, isn't it? Well, thank you so much for your time today, Shekhar. I know that you have a website we can go to, it's https://www.brahmakumaris.org/centre-locator. We'll be sure to check it out and have a look at your courses online.
Shekhar: Yeah, and we have two retreat centres in Sydney and one in Melbourne. And there, you can go on the weekend, donation-based again. There's no fixed charges, and they're beautiful places. Thank you.
NTP: Thank you so much for your time today.
Originally published on Jun 14, 2011
