World Culture Festival Review
Located on http://www.pravasitoday.com/despite-rains-thousands-attend-art-of-living-festival-in-berlin (under comments)
Mia says:Waste of time and money. Misleading advertising. The yoga activities, which was our reason for being there, got cancelled without notice. There were a few talks about the benefits of yoga, but we already knew all these things. (No need to preach to the converted.) There was nothing at all that deepened my understanding or practice of yoga. The performances were mostly mediocre and didn’t match the venue at all. Choir of 300 people, 1,000 guitars in the Olympia Stadion etc. Sounds great on paper, but in reality, you only hear 5 people or 5 guitars as they only had a few microphones. There were also 2,000 “dancers” from Bulgaria who did nothing but walk and swing their right foot over their left leg and vice versa. Most other performances were like that: quantity over quality. As for the food, there was only one Berlin-based caterer which served expensive bland food in small servings, and we had to pay using their impractical non-refundable tickets. Totally did not match the theme of world culture and diversity. Can’t believe we spent over 50 euros per person on this. It’s not at all a “mega-yoga event” or “world culture festival” as advertised. It’s actually the 30th anniversary celebration of a cult organization called the Art of Living, whose members are fanatical about its founder, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. The program brochure, the videos that interspersed the shows and everything else was full of Sri Sri, Sri Sri, Sri Sri. So sickening! When we got home, we did some research on Sri Sri and it turns out our hunches are right. This guy is a total scam and PR stunt guy. Just google the following phrases: “The The great great Sri Sri NGO NGO scam scam”, “Beyond the Art of Living”, “Beware of His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and AOL”.
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Beyond The Art of Living 
The performances and the Sri Sri mania sound like an exact repeat of the silver jubilee celebrations. Some things never change. At least during SJC we had some fairly edible food. 3000 musicians on the SJC stage indeed, what a waste of effort. Bad sounding quantity over quality even there.
What next for Ravi’s 60th birthday? A space cruise? World tour on the most expensive cruise ships? I bet it will be full of bling just like SJC and the world culture events, and nearly devoid of anything useful. In SJC even the kriya was shortened and we were asked to breathe lightly because there was so much dust due to the red mud, it was getting into everyone’s nose and eyes.
Oh! The 30th anniversary celebrations are not yet over.Next is coming up in Shimoga,the place of origin, on 17th sept.Teachers are calling up and offering to come home for donations.each has a target of 20k.Thank God, I’m out of this.