The following is an excerpt from Prem Rawat’s address on peace in Italy at the Theatre Verdi of Padua’s town hall in October 2010.

Peace—either you feel it in your life or you don’t. If you feel, enjoy it. If you don’t feel it, find out how you can.

First: What is peace? What is this elusive thing that we are all trying to pursue? Is it an idea?

Why doesn’t peace seem to be a happening thing? Because the individual is missing from the equation. We talk about world peace, not individual peace. We see the final product.

We have forgotten that the quest for peace—the need for peace—is not expressed by the world but by individuals like you and me. We can only look at ourselves and feel our need to be in peace.

Peace is not social. It is an individual phenomenon. You might see a restaurant where there are people who are sitting and eating, and then there are others who are just walking by. How can this be? Don’t we all need food? Yes, but it is hunger that drives the need for food. We all need water, but without thirst we would not feel like drinking water. So what has to be understood is that if we want peace, we have to explore our own thirst for that peace. This is what will drive the drive that is needed to find peace in our lives.

And then comes the question: How do you search for it? This is a big question. How do you search for something you never lost? Where do you begin to search? When you lose something, you look in the last place you had it.

When the quest for peace begins from inside of us, why are we looking on top of the Himalayas to find it? When the quest for peace begins from inside of us, why are we looking toward people who may have written a book about it? Why aren’t we starting from ourselves?

If you start searching for something that you have not lost, this is going to create very big problems, because you are sincere and you are looking and looking but you are not finding. And what happens? Time gets wasted. A lifetime gets wasted, and before you know it, you neither found what you were looking for, nor understood the search, nor understood what this life is all about.

Look within you. And find your thirst. Look within you and find your quest. Look within you and find what it is that you want. Look within you and find shelter from the storms. Look within you and find the unchanging.

Whatever the concepts of peace are—that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the real peace in your life. This is we want. Do whatever is necessary to find peace in your life, because not only will it bring you peace, it will also bring you an immense amount of happiness and gratitude for being alive.