In February, 2009, Prem Rawat spoke to an audience in Tel Aviv, Israel, where he responded to questions and expressions from the audience: 

Q: Hello. I’ve just finished my fifth key preparing for Knowledge. I’m very excited, anticipating. And I love listening to your stories. You make me laugh a lot. My question is: I have a very scientific way of thinking. I have to know, I have to understand. I feel that I’m missing something.

A: Well, when you hear what you hear, what do you feel inside of you? Do you feel good? Do you feel happy? 

Q: But I don’t understand.

A: All you have to do is understand that. Feel that joy, feel that happiness. Something inside of you is responding. This isn’t about a scientific experiment or proving a hypothesis. This is about feeling.

We all began with some simple fundamentals. We were able to feel a need and to express that need. We somehow think that is insignificant. We become very analytical, because this is what the world tells us to do: “It’s this way. It’s this way. It’s this way.”

On a recent visit to Mazara del Vallo, Sicily, Prem Rawat was awarded honorary citizenship. Following that ceremony, several high school students came to the microphone one-by-one to ask him questions. What follows are excerpts from that exchange.

Q: “Life is a journey, and the journey of life is so beautiful that it does not require a destination.” I read this quote of yours, and I wanted to ask: without a precise destination, don’t we run the risk of drifting away?

A: Every journey has to have a purpose. Now, in some journeys, the purpose is to reach a particular place or destination. But in the journey of life, the purpose is to enjoy. And that in itself is the destination of the journey—to enjoy being alive. Yes, I agree with you that we cannot drift away from the enjoyment of this life. That is the purpose of this journey.

In a lively interview with Spanish journalist Eva M. Peña of Business & Class magazine, Prem Rawat responds to questions like, “If peace is within each person, why are human beings constantly struggling?” and “What do you consider to be the worst ‘evils’ of the twenty-first century?”

Eva M. Peña, a Spanish journalist, interviewed Prem Rawat for Spain’s Business & Class magazine on April 27, 2006. 

You live to spread the message that peace can be found, but what is peace?

If peace is within each person, why are human beings constantly struggling?

We are so geared to look for solutions outside us, that when it comes to peace, we look for it on the outside as well. It’s a bit like somebody who has a gold mine under their house but doesn’t know it. Maybe they beg all day long and they suffer, but the solution is so close to them and so simple. If they could find a way to access the gold mine under their house, they would never have to beg again. People struggle because they cannot find the peace within them. That is my message: Peace is within you. And not only that, I offer a way to be able to get in touch with that peace.

In a telephone interview with Issa Asgarally, one of the editors of the Mauritius magazine L’Express Dimanche, Prem Rawat responds to a wide range of questions about the world we live in, the universal longing for peace, and the possibility of individuals to discover peace within. Published in in  L’Express Dimanche, Mauritius 2007.

The word “peace” means different things to different people. What kind of peace are you talking about?

People go somewhere very quiet and think it’s peaceful. It’s not peaceful; it’s quiet. There is a difference between peace and quiet. It could be very quiet, but there could be a war raging inside a person, and that is not peace. Peace is fundamentally innate, an undeniable feeling that is real. It is so incredibly human to want to feel that peace. It is not in the realm of the divine but in the human realm that peace needs to be felt, and it is human beings who need and want peace. Even so, we get caught up in definitions, saying, “Maybe this is peace, maybe this is peace”, but peace is a feeling.

Peace is a feeling in which a person can say, “Now I feel peace.” No questions, no doubts. It is not a group thing or a painting or anything else. There is a peace that lies in the heart of every human being on earth today regardless of what they believe in or what they do. Even the warmongers—in their hearts, they, too, truly want peace.