Jacaranda Radio 94.2 FM
The Complimentary Breakfast with Rian van Heerden
Johannesburg, South Africa
featuring
Prem Rawat
Radio announcer:
This is The Complimentary Breakfast. Jacaranda FM.
Rian van Heerden:
It’s a huge pleasure to have Prem Rawat on the show this morning. He has been traveling and speaking to audiences about peace since he was a child.
Onscreen text:
RIAN VAN HEERDEN
Host, The Complimentary Breakfast
Rian van Heerden:
And he also said that “We all know what the symptoms look like, of this disease—it’s greed, war, selfishness, violence, and an increasing loss of trust. Peace is a real thing; peace resides in the heart of every human being. Peace has to emanate from each of us.”
Prem Rawat is with us. Good morning to you, sir.
Prem Rawat:
Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Onscreen text:
PREM RAWAT
International Speaker, Ambassador of Peace
Rian van Heerden:
You know, I know very few people that can engage an audience like you can. I watched the—just yesterday I was watching the Boston, Massachusetts chat. And you had profound things to say, and I think one of the most important things that I took from you is that we need to find out what makes us happy.
Prem Rawat:
Yes.
Rian van Heerden:
And what makes us all happy is the same thing, is it?
Prem Rawat:
Yes, it is. It’s the fundamental need. Peace is not a luxury. And peace is not a word. In fact, peace is a feeling.
And like hunger, like we need to sleep, like we need to eat, like we need to drink water, like we need to breathe air, we actually need peace in our lives. Because without that peace, our functioning breaks down; our basic thinking breaks down. Our perceptions break down. And we no longer can function as a human being, properly. And this is why peace is important in this world.
Onscreen text:
Real Peace
Prem Rawat in Langa
Cape Town, South Africa
Prem Rawat:
Who are we? What are we? What does it mean to be here on the face of this earth? What does it mean when this breath comes into you? What does it mean to be actually, alive?
What do we want? Do we want to overcome a problem or do we want to forge a road for the future? Do we want to take care of some issues—or do we want to create a highway to a future that encompasses every person? This is the decision that we have to make—as individuals, not as a society—but as each one of us, what do we want in our lives? What is important to us?
Peace, like the Council Member said, is very easy to say, very difficult to attain—why? If it is so difficult, if it is so impossible, why even have the concept of peace; why even have the idea of peace?
Because everybody, 7.5 billion people on the face of this earth, have their own idea of what peace is. That peace that you carry in your mind is not real peace. What you carry in your heart is the real peace—the peace that does not see a reason to be, but has existed since time immemorial for those people who have appreciated it and welcomed it in their lives.
Can peace be in the midst of a battlefield? What better place for it to be? Can peace be experienced in the middle of chaos? What better stage and contrast than that? And that is why the battles happen here, and the peace dances here. Two, in the same vessel, in the same person at the same time. How can this be? But it is.
How far is darkness away from light? Tell me, how far is darkness away from light? When you turn off light, how long does it take for the darkness to appear? Two minutes? Three minutes? Four minutes?
Or instantly? That’s the relationship of the darkness and light: light is never far from darkness, and darkness is never far from light—ever. All you have to do is be where that is, that you want to be.
You want the bad; you want to welcome the bad? Welcome the bad, and you will feel the bad, and it’ll influence your life and it’ll drag you down and it’ll make you depressed—and you will become, what? [Individual: Greedy.]
Is greed the mark of strength or weakness? Is greed the mark of strength or weakness—I ask you; what do you think? [Individual: Weakness, yeah.] Greed is a mark of weakness, not strength. Power struggle is a mark of weakness.
Have you seen Star Wars, the old one—and do you ever see that? Isn’t that the neatest scene, when the commandos are there? And the guy, Obi-Wan Kenobi just says, “You don’t need to check their papers,” and they go, “We don’t need to check, yeah, okay.” No guns needed. No weapons needed—strength!
Strength comes from the inner core of a human being. That’s where it resides. That’s where you have to go to be in touch with it.
And to me, I haven’t told this one story here, but I did tell it at the Book Launch and I told it at Malmesbury Prison that I was at—and I will tell you that story here, too.
Once upon a time there was a settlement, and in the settlement there was a chief. One day a young boy walked over to the chief—and it’s, “Chief, I have a question.” The chief said, “What?” He said, “I have a question; why are some people good sometimes—and the same people, bad the other times? Why are some people good sometimes, and the same people bad the other times?”
And the chief said, “Inside each one of us are two wolves, a good wolf and a bad wolf—and they fight.” So the boy said, “Chief, why do they fight?” And the chief said, “To get supremacy over you, to have command over you—this is why they fight.” So the boy thinks some more and says, “Chief, which wolf wins? Which wolf wins?” And the chief said, “The one you feed.”
What do you think? Do you like that story? [Audience: Yes. Yes, we do.] It has such a quick ending—and it gets you thinking: “Of course, whichever wolf I feed, that’s the wolf that’s going to win.”
Let me ask you, which wolf have you been feeding? Which wolf have you been feeding? You don’t have to answer me; just answer yourself—to yourself, honestly, “Which wolf have you been feeding?”
“I don’t want to feed the wrong wolf because if I feed the wrong wolf, I destroy my life! I destroy my time that will never come back—that will never come back, that will never change.” This is the decision that we have to make every single day: “What do you want in your life?”
Which wolf do you want to feed? From where do you want to come; do you want to come from your heart? From your wisdom? From your understanding? From your knowing? Or do you want to come with everything that everybody else has told you? This is what the Peace Education Program is all about—the Peace Education Program is about you, not about other people.
Everybody, wherever I go—I see people are totally enamored by other people: “What do other people think of me; what do other people think; they, that they like me, do they dislike me; what will they say? What about my society; what about my this, what about my that?” Is that what it is about?
Your life, the one you have been given—you as a human being, where do you count; where do you fit into this world? It took millions and millions and millions of years of evolution to put you on the face of this earth that you are here today—you think it’s a mistake? Do you think it was just like that? No, it took millions and millions of evolutions to put you on the face of this earth.
A breath comes in and a breath goes out and you find yourself alive. Your palette is virtually infinite! Of what you can feel, of what you can express, of what you can know, of what you can understand, of who you can be, there is no limit.
But this is the realm of the heart. This is the realm of the knowing. This is the realm of the people who have understood their dignity, and have no problem offering the dignity to others. They bond with a human being because they are alive and you are alive. Not because of the common interests; “Oh, you like music; I like music; we’re friends.”
No, “You are alive; I am alive; we are friends.” That’s the day this world’s going to change. That’s the day this world is going to change, not because “You speak this language and I speak this language; we are friends”—but because “You are alive and I am alive, we are friends.”
This is the possibility, if you want to accept. I am not here to preach to you. I have nothing to preach. I want to invoke some thoughts so you can think for yourself.
Because if you have ever felt your heart, you know what is important to you. If you have ever felt your life, you know what is important to you. And if you are truly here because you want peace in your life, you know that peace is not far from you—never has been, as it dances in the hearts of every single human being.
Whatever you do (or don’t do), don’t ever feed the wrong wolf. Because that wolf will win. This is not the story you want.
You have to forge your own story; nobody is going to forge a story for you. Nobody is going to forge your life; you have to forge your life. And that fire sometimes is nothing but disappointment—but even in that disappointment, that metal is turning and churning and transforming. That’s what transformation sometimes is. That’s what transformation sometimes is.
What happens? What happens when you take clay, earth, dirt, and mix it with water? This is what people don’t want on them. This is what people don’t want on them—and the car drives by and splashes water with dirt on it—it’s like, “Oh my God, I’m dirty; I’m dirty; I’m dirty.”
But somebody takes the same dirt and kneads it, and kneads it, and kneads it, and kneads it—and puts it on a wheel and turns it and churns it and makes it a beautiful earthenware….
And then takes that earthenware and puts it inside the kiln—and it goes through and it bakes. And when it comes out, the same dirt that got on your clothes for free, (and you freaked), now you are going to buy this earthenware. And it’s going to decorate your house.
This is transformation. This is transformation. And this is the same transformation that you have to allow, yourself, to happen.
Everybody in this whole world—I am not even going to say, “Langa” or I’m not even going to say “South Africa”—I am saying the whole world needs to unite!
The whole world needs to unite to take care of all the stupid problems in this world, so that we can forge a highway to the future, the future in which there is prosperity, peace, and dignity—in fact, first, dignity, peace, and then prosperity. That’s the way it needs to be—not just for today, but for generations and generations and generations yet to come.