Twenty-five years ago, when he was still a young man and not yet a guru, the answer to life's mysteries came to Ravi Shankar unbidden. "Like a poem," he explains now, sitting in his white robes in a Salt Lake City hotel room where the carpet has been covered with white bed sheets.

Outside the hotel room door, people are waiting for an audience with His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, who these days has followers in 150 countries and is the founder of two worldwide organizations, The Art of Living Foundation, and the International Association for Human Values, which he founded with the Dalai Lama.

Sri Sri has followers even in Utah, where on Friday night more than 600 people crowded into a ballroom at the Marriott University Park Hotel to join him in a "peace meditation."

At the front of the darkened room, Sri Sri sat cross-legged on a sofa, smiling. "Take a deep breath in," he said in his soft, high voice. "Let's be still."

Breathing — a special breathing technique that is part yoga and part his own invention — was the answer Sri Sri had received in 1982. If people learned to breathe deeply and rhythmically, he realized, they could more easily meditate and could rid themselves of negative emotions. And eventually the world would be a more peaceful place.

He and hundreds of volunteers have since taught the breathing technique — Sudarshan Kriya — to millions of people, including tsunami victims, prisoners, Iraqis, Russian soldiers, AIDS patients and terrorists. Many of these breathing lessons are done for free; for everybody else the 20-hour course costs $375.

Sri Sri made his brief stop in Utah as part of a four-city tour to regions of the United States that aren't as familiar with his work, he told an audience that included University of Utah president Michael Young. After Salt Lake City, he'll travel to Boise, Kansas City and New Orleans.

The trip is part of his new "Stress Free, Violence Free America" campaign, which is part of a 25th anniversary celebration of his work. Earlier this week he was honored at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

The self-effacing guru said that success is "a smile that nobody can take away from you." Ego, he said, is something we don't need to use all the time, so "give it some rest." And a soul mate, he said, is somebody we can create happiness for, rather than the other way around.

Nobel Laureate Myron Scholes also spoke Friday night. Scholes is a Stanford University economist and a Sri Sri fan, who said he has a simple taxonomy to explain how the rhythmic breathing technique works: It reduces stress and anger, which then helps people learn, "and from learning we can give."

The Art of Living Foundation also runs orphanages, disaster relief, youth programs, drug rehabilitation, and peace initiatives.

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E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com