Every where now, one can hear the cry, ‘World Peace, World Peace,’ but the number of persons who can tell how it can be attained is very small! There is no one who can even picture correctly what exactly is meant by shanti or Peace. For, if one has acquired true peace and experienced it, the turmoil and confusions of the world will not be cognized at all. You cannot be aware of its absence if you have it. Peace means,’ the giving up of the activities of the senses.’ How can such peace be spread and ‘promoted’ by any one who has gained it? It can be experienced, but, it is incapable of being exchanged from person to person. The best that can be done is to show the way to others, to inform others of its sweetness. How can other’s hunger be appeased by your eating your food? The diner alone derives satisfaction from the dinner. Peace too is of such a nature. Each has to earn and experience it for himself, so that all may have it. Love and fortitude are enough to confer peace. But, you should not concentrate on mere outward show, let these virtues saturate your thought, word and deed; that is the way to establish world peace also.

Certain others declare that prayer can bring about world peace and they ask people to pray. Of course, it is good to pray; but peace can never be gained by that alone. Prayer must be united with practice. You should not pray for one thing and practise another. Such prayer is only a means of deception. The words you utter, the deeds you do, the prayers you make, must all be directed along the same path. While repeating prayers for world peace (Loka Shanti), if you cannot patiently put up with others, if you slander others and look down upon them, you yourself will have no peace; you will have turmoil is instead! And, with the turmoil, all the attendant sorrow and pain!

Through world peace, individual too can be cultivated. When food is taken by the hand to the mouth, chewed and swallowed, the essence spreads to every part of the body. So also if the hands are engaged in acts promoting peace, and tongue engaged in prayers for peace, by these two means, the essence of peace will spread into all parts of the world, which is but the body of the Lord. (NNSG Vol.5, p. 87)