Art of Living had sent out model draft to "nominate" Sri Sri for Nobel Prize, campaign began in 2004: Blogger

By Our Representative
Amidst spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravishankar's claim that he “refused” to accept Nobel Peace Prize, a 2010 blog, written by a “whistleblower” on a site "seeking" to open dialogue with “former Art of Living (AOL) members and currently doubting ones”, is being quoted to point towards how Sri Sri was “very feverish about getting a Nobel Peace Prize” in 2004.
“In September 2004”, this blog claims, “All AOL centres received an email saying that the Nobel Peace Prize Project (NPPP) has been launched with Guruji’s designation of an international team to work quickly and quietly on this initiative”.
It insisted, it was necessary to "initially to work with Peter Payoyo, overall coordinator, Netherlands; Christopher Kiran Byrt, Norway; Christoph Glaser, Switzerland; Werner Luedemann, Germany; Ewald Poeran, Netherlands; and Fahri Saatcioglu, Norway.”
The blog quotes the email as saying, “We urge everyone to be very discreet about this matter. It is the standard policy of the Nobel Committee that nominators and nominees must not publish nor advertise their nominations. Guruji’s nomination will be unnecessarily jeopardized if we allow the NPP Project to be exposed publicly. So let us all just keep the smile, keep the silence, and wish for the best.”
A model nomination letter was sent out to all the centres, the blogger says. Thus, an email warned, “The ‘model nomination letter’ circulated earlier (Word document: “Example and Elements of a Model Nomination Letter”) is for your guidance only. Use this document to get a general idea about the particular nomination letter which you need to draft, when this drafting is called for. The ‘model nomination letter’ should NOT be copied verbatim.”
Another email, quoted by the blogger, says, “The National Coordinator will act as a focal person for our collective efforts and will become part of the global coordination network to assist in Guruji’s NPP nomination.”
The person who sent the email said, “In the coming days and weeks, I and the other members of the International Coordination Team will be calling you individually by phone so that we may be able to share personal updates about progress made on the project.”
Suggesting that the spiritual guru personally took interest in the project, the blogger quotes an email as saying, “Yesterday in Brussels, I had the opportunity to talk to Guruji about our project. His message and his blessing to all of us is: Let us work harder and give our very best to come up with many NPP nomination letters.”
A second email said, “Guruji met with of the NPP Project Coordination Team last Saturday afternoon in his room in the Ashram at Bad Antogast, Germany. The members of the team that went to see him were Christoph Glasser, Werner Luedemann, Ewald Poeran, and myself. Also in attendance in the meeting were some Art of Living colleagues who had an interest in the project.”
And a third one said, “Guruji expressed satisfaction on the fact that we have secured at least 130 confirmed nominations as of Saturday morning. It was mentioned to him there were four heads of government (one president and three Prime Ministers) who have supported his nomination so far. It was also mentioned that many more new nominations will be secured in the coming days.”