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.

You often say that instead of focusing on our differences we should look at our similarities. What do we all share, and how can we become more aware of it? You have already partly answered that question.

Yes, the world tries to teach us differences, not that we all desire peace. We all want to be happy, whoever we are. Whether we are a cow herder in India, a landlord in Africa or a farmer in South America, we all want to be happy. It doesn’t matter if somebody is a tycoon, if you take away their happiness, you take away the fundamental thing they desire. We look at our differences, but we truly fail to see that what we all aspire to is so similar. Maybe we have different languages, maybe we have different ways of expressing it, but that does not make the quest of every human being different.

You give top priority to the heart in the quest for peace, and you are certainly right. Tell us more about this.

Well, there has to be a balance. Every human being has been blessed with two things: a mind, or intellect, and a heart. The heart is genuine; the heart does not change. The intellect does change. Bitter experiences, this and that—all these things have an influence on a person. But a person’s heart stays true to them throughout their life.

In childhood, the heart wants to be happy. It wants to be content. As we grow, it stays with us, requesting and motivating us to look for fulfilment. The intellect says, “This is how you can be fulfilled.” And we start pursuing paths, listening to everything that our mind has to tell us. We forget what the heart has been telling us, and the consequence is that we feel lost. But the guide is inside. The guide has been there not asking for much, not asking for all the other things that we pursue—just to be content, to be happy, to be in peace. And that message of the heart has been there forever.