Leela: What is the origin of the AUM?

Premdip: The origin was Veeresh’s desire to give Osho a present in return for the AUM Marathon he had received from Osho. Veeresh also wanted to make the five days AUM Marathon less long for people who didn’t have the time to attend such a long process, and it was completed in 1991 just after Osho left his body, so he gave it to Osho’s sannyasins.

Leela: In the AUM the participants have the opportunity to express all the emotions that they normally hold back. What are the benefits of such a process?

Chandrika: When people are not able to communicate with each other they get isolated, and the more isolated they become the more they will be missing nourishing human contact. In the AUM meditation people can open up again to all the basic feelings, such as anger, love, sadness or joy. It’s a way of allowing themselves in a safe setting, to experience and release those feelings again. The AUM is not an everyday situation, it’s an experiential situation. Eventually it will open up the feelings and it will be easier in normal life to feel and to show who you are.

Leela: The AUM is a “Social meditation”, that means there are some social interactions between the participants. Why Social meditations?

Chandrika: You can meditate by yourself, you can become aware by yourself, but it’s much more intense to do it together with other people. This is because other people can often see you more clearly than you yourself and because most difficulties arise between you and others. They push your buttons, they make you feel where your soft spots are. That’s why meditating exclusively by yourself can be a way to avoid yourself. – The others are like a mirror that helps you look at yourself and get enriched, and you can have such a variety of human contacts…Moreover, we need friendship in this world.

Leela: The AUM is one of the main tools of Humaniversity therapy, and it is normally used in the communal living program. What are the benefits of the AUM for people living together?

Chandrika: The AUM meditation can and should be done everywhere, because it’s a short and complete process. But especially when people live and work together, they often have certain areas that they don’t share and that they repress. And when too many things are not communicated people will find ways to avoid others. They suddenly cannot talk with each other anymore and human interaction becomes complicated. The AUM meditation is like an opening. It allows us to move into all the feelings, to interact intensely and to clear out repressed emotions, repressed negative and positive feelings, it’s a way of saying: “We do want to take care of our relations.”

Leela: I saw people who regularly participated in the AUM and had a deep transformation: what happens from a point of view of the emotions and of the personal process of growth, when you start to meditate with the AUM in a total way?

Premdip: It’s like everything you do: if you do it in a total way, you have a big chance to learn something.

Chandrika: And, what’s more, if you do it a few times, you will start to go deeper and to open up. It’s a way of going into a journey inside of yourself, to explore who you are. And with a Social meditation, you will find yourself in the company of many friends.

Leela: The AUM is used at the Humaniversity also for people who are in the Addiction Program because of drugs, alcohol, food, and more. What are the major benefits of the AUM for such people?

Chandrika: When people are using drugs or sleeping pills or whatever, it really means that something else is missing: human connection. So they are looking for a relief. All drugs are a way of killing pain or of creating ecstatic feelings.
The AUM meditation is a way to create ecstatic feelings in a natural way, because if you express twelve different basic emotions totally you create energy, and your heart will be nourished through the connection with others. In the addiction program the isolation is one of the major issues; at the Humaniversity we replace the isolation with connection. And that human connection will become more important to the addicts than self-destruction.
But it is important that the person is ‘clean’ before we work with him; on drugs, it’s difficult to guide him, because his consciousness is influenced by the drug.

Leela: The first stage of the AUM is confronting each other: the participants scream at each other all the negativity that they need to express. But some people do not want to insult others or be insulted by them. Can you explain the meaning of this phase of the meditation?

Premdip: I think those people think that if they do not express the insults, the insults are not happening. They just keep them repressed inside themselves. We prefer to think that if negative emotions are expressed in a safe way, they are not anymore in the way between you an the other person

Chandrika: It also comes from the misunderstanding that negativity or judgments are something bad and you have to be considerate towards others, but the fact is that either the judgment doesn’t fit and then it doesn’t stick, or it fits and helps you see something about yourself. – Moreover, if you don’t express negativity it will haunt you in your dreams and pester your life. – We want to teach people to become aware of their judgments and express them totally so they can drop the burden.

Leela: Another important part of the AUM is hugging. Can you explain why hugging is so important from a therapeutic point of view?

Chandrika: Hugging is non-verbal; it goes beyond words; it’s deeper than words. When you hold a person, that person feels the vibration, the warmth of your body. He feels cared for. That’s why it’s so healing to hug. It means you are there for that person and if you allow this non-verbal communication to happen, it brings you back to the time when you were innocent and you were held by the mother. This care and love is understood everywhere in the world.

Leela: I saw people participating in the AUM and saying afterwards that the meditation was hard for their body. The same people after a few AUM’s were feeling much lighter and positive. What happens in the body, when you do the AUM?

Chandrika: When you do this meditation you allow yourself to express many feelings that you keep inside. And a lot of these are stored in the body as tensions, and your muscles get tight. But with the AUM you start to loosen up, and the energy flow can move more freely again. And when you do this a few times, you will get lighter. It’s like every time you get rid of more “weight” that you are carrying with you and of which you can now let go.

Leela: Do you think the AUM could be used in social institutions, such as schools for instance, and what would be the ideal conditions?

Premdip: Yes, we do it here with the Tan-jus, the teenager program, and they love it! It’s good for young people, they need to express their energy and to be allowed to express the feelings of anger and joy and be connected with other people at the same time. I think they could easily be trained here. They would do it themselves first and when they understand the process, take it into schools, perhaps once a week.

Chandrika: Emotional education starts with learning to become aware of what you feel, and then learning how to express it in a non-destructive way. That is something that is missing in our education and the AUM meditation provides it. I have been working with the teenagers for fifteen years and I see that the Social meditations are fantastic tools. I’m absolutely convinced it would be beneficial if we could bring the AUM to the school.

Leela: There is a five-day AUM group at the Humaniversity, the “AUM Marathon”. What is the major benefit for the people participating in this group?

Premdip: To do this AUM meditation under the guidance of Veeresh, who created it and has more then 30 years of experience, will take you to the bottom of your being, and will help you to make fundamental changes in the parts of you that you do not enjoy anymore. And with the help of this meditation done over and over and longer and with so much depth, you will get to the centre of the cyclone, a space of silence in which time stops. And there, with the love that you feel around, you can make decisions with a lot of awareness.

Leela: Twice a year the Humaniversity offers a training for those who want to become an AUM Leader. What do people learn during this training?

Chandrika: The training will enable the participants to guide groups of people in the AUM meditation. They first need to participate in the AUM meditation themselves and take part in the AUM Marathon. In this process you look at yourself from all angles in a very exciting and deep way, so that you understand how you feel, how you relate, from inside. In addition to the AUM Marathon we will give a special training so that they learn how to present the meditation, how to talk to a group of people, and what practicalities to take care of so that people can feel safe. They will learn to understand the different stages. They will get video feedback so they can evaluate how they come across, they will get basic information about emergency situations. They will learn how to assess people, how to interview them, in order to see if the person is really coming for the right reason, to explain to them what the process is about, so they can finally go to a group of people and say “I’d like to introduce you to this process and show you who you can be!”

Leela: In Italy the AUM has been spreading all over the country for the last five years. The AUM is a way to meet, to take care of each other, to have fun together and to go deeper in the love and the friendship. How do you see the future of our country from this point of view?

Chandrika: If it is spreading more and more the future looks bright! In this way they will get turned on to looking at themselves and finding out who they can be. Our slogan here at the Humaniversity is: Working with People for a Better World.

Premdip: the Italians are very expressive people, they like to relate with other people, to express their feelings and their love, and I think the AUM is a beautiful way of allowing this energy to come in the open with awareness.

Leela: The way of Veeresh is the way of friendship. In which way does the AUM contribute to developing friendship in the world?

Premdip: When people do the AUM, naturally after the AUM they have made such a deep connection during the meditation that they start talking to each other and they will want to meet each other again. They have something in common, they have done the AUM, and that in many cases develops into deep friendships.

Chandrika: When you’re willing to look at yourself, and that’s what the AUM in fact is, and when you are willing to do that together with other people, you will develop love, awareness and caring for each other in a natural way. I think the more people are becoming aware of how they feel, and of who they are, the more they will start to spread it. Friendship is just a very natural consequence of it. And we need a lot of friendship in this world, so we can have peace…