Prem Rawat (India, 1957) has dedicated his life to Peace, in capital letters. The roundness of this statement can be almost overwhelming, but this writer and lecturer, who since the age of eight transmits a clear and forceful message, has dedicated his entire career to finding peace in a place that many times we do not think of looking at: our interior .
It was his father who took this idea. He, who told his message to everyone who wanted to hear, had the essence that the peace we spend our lives searching for is not waiting for us there, but it is already within us. Following the death of the parent, Rawat saw clearly that the purpose of his life was to continue his father’s legacy, and with it continues.
At just 13 years old, he talked about the power of knowing ourselves on the main stage of the now well-known Glastonbury music festival. It was at that age the first time he landed in the United States, with anticipation of being there a few months, but he never returned. Since that time he has dedicated his entire career to travel around the world telling the virtues of peace. And it is that Prem Rawat is clear that to meet this is what we need to be happy, to be able to live in harmony and survive our current society, an environment of vertiginous rhythm that balks us and even gives us a moment of truce to discover who we really are
Now, the “peace ambassador” publishes “Listen to yourself” (Aguilar), a title that explores the ability we must develop to look within. We met him in the middle of his book promotion tour of Spain, with which he seeks to help us understand and thus learn to live in our current society, full of noise that does not let us hear.
What makes us more difficult to hear ourselves, the noise from the outside, or the noise we have inside us?
Everything makes it difficult for us, but the worst is when we take the noise from outside and turn it into interior noise. This makes it much harder to listen to us, and in the end that is the most important thing: to listen to us.
Does everyone have peace inside?
Yes, we all have peace within ourselves, it has always been there inside. Socrates said “Know yourself”, and he said it because there is something we have to look for and it is inside. It is incredible, but peace is within and we must seek it.
Even people with internal conflicts, people who generally do not do good deeds …?
Look, we developed a program called “Peace Education Program” and we do it in prisons and prisons, where we see people who are going to be confined for the rest of their lives. However, when I speak with them they discover that there is also peace within them, that they can move on.
And where should we start looking for that peace?
For us. We spend our lives looking for peace outside, we search in books, in the mountains, in temples, even in other people … However, when we focus on ourselves, when we take a mirror and look inside, we are taking the first step To seek peace
Do we have to accept death to live fully?
What you have to accept is life. There are two walls, the first is the birth and the other is our death. The important thing is not to worry about death or try to find the date on which we are going to die, but to focus on life, feel this moment in our life and focus on it, because our time is limited. Thus, accepting life, we reach calm and happiness.
Don’t we appreciate being alive enough?
Do not! And that is why I repeat so much the idea in this book, it is essential to have gratitude for everything we have in our lives.
So how can we learn to thank this life?
I come back to it, but we have to open ourselves. We already do it with others: when a friend is in trouble, we tell him not to worry, we give him our advice. But when we are in that situation, what do we say? “This is horrible … you are terrible,” and if we said this to a friend or friend, it would not work. We must accept ourselves, because this is difficult for many people.
To get to know ourselves … must we separate ourselves from the world around us?
There are people who think so, but it is not necessary to separate from the world, and in fact it is not possible. Everything develops in this plane in which we live: we have to work, we have to eat … we are social beings and we need this world. However, what we have to do is seek peace within all this. It is not necessary to go to a monastery or be a monk, we must simply seek the peace we have inside.
Is caution in life necessary or can you end up ballasting us?
The opportunity is given to us all the time, with each of our breaths, but we are not paying attention. We get up in the morning, we start reading the newspaper and see the headlines and in none we read the really more important headline, and that is that we are alive now. It is important to accept this headline because we are now alive and now we have this opportunity.
He talks a lot about the noise of the world … How should our relationship with technology be?
Right now, what happens is that it is not we who manage the technology, but that technology drives us, it overwhelms us. As human beings, it is important that we now focus on making sense of all this and we are the ones in charge of our lives, not letting Facebook or Twitter manage us. This is the only way in which we will win, because now these applications get mark the agenda of our life.
There is a subtitle in the book that says “Learn to feel”, how do we do it?
When you are not free, you are not the owner of your life, you are not able to feel anything. There are other people who tell you what you should feel and how. If we are free, it is when we can and we begin to feel. Freedom is a word we all like, no matter what country you come from. And because? What are we slaves of? Of nothing obvious, but we are, we are slaves of our mind and this often does not let us move forward.
There is a phrase from the book that says: “We cannot live in yesterday, we cannot live in tomorrow.” Is the projection of the future necessary? How can we find a balance between living in the present and keeping track of the future?
If we don’t accept the future, and we don’t accept the past, in the end we are in no man’s land. The only thing we are able to understand is the present. Be aware of what we do now, because when you are you realize now you create the past and you can predict the future in some way. If we dedicate ourselves to acting unconsciously, we make mistakes and these affect the past and have a reflection on the future. However, if we understand our present, this will be the one that defines us as human beings, nor will it define the future, nor will it define the past. What we do now is really important. .