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To the cosmic light, the Lord of our hearts, dear brothers and sisters, honourable guests—or rather, brothers, for to say "guest" is not so good for me. To say to the brother that we belong to each other, that is good. A guest is temporary. Before I speak, I remember one story about world peace, for which we are all longing. We heard from the holy Torah the message of Judaism. The Torah means the guidelines for peace. When we read in the Qur’ān, it is guidance towards peace. When we read in the Vedas and Upaniṣads, in Hinduism, it is a guideline to peace. And if we come to Christianity, Jesus’s message is also love and peace. Though every religion, every holy book, and every religious leader speaks about peace, humanity, and love, we still miss the peace. And we must do something so that we find that peace again. There is a story about one elderly lady, about 95 years old. She had a walking stick in her hand and was searching for something in front of her house. She had back pain, but she was searching. She couldn’t sit on the ground, having in her hands a magnifying glass to see. A few hours later, a good neighbour, a young man, noticed that his neighbour was searching for something. He thought, "I should go and help her." So he came to this elderly lady and he asked her, "Dear mother, what are you searching for? Can I help you?" She stood up and said, "Oh God, yes, my child, I lost my needle. I lost my needle, and I am searching, but I can’t find it." And he said, "You sit down, I will search for you." And he was searching for twenty minutes, half an hour, each centimetre of that ground. No needle there. Then he asked her, "Please, can you tell me when and where did you lose your needle?" She said, "I lost my needle in the kitchen." He replied, "I can’t understand, you lost the needle in the kitchen and are searching outside." She said, "Yes, why? Because the kitchen is too dark." He said, "Mother, even if there is darkness, you will not find what you lost inside by searching on the outside." That peace is within our heart, but we have lost it somewhere within us. But there is a darkness of ignorance, and we can’t find it. And so, we are searching outside with material life, with money, and with different things. We will not have peace through money, these technologies, and these weapons. We shall guide our fellow men again toward their hearts. Inner peace will be there for the outer peace. Mahatma Gandhi said, "There is no way to peace; peace is the way." Peace is the way. That’s it. If we think that we will search for peace somewhere in this world, we will not find it. But if we look within ourselves, we are peace. No normal person wants to fight against anyone. Everyone would like to have peace. But we feel forced to fight. Why? Because we or others have lost the inner peace. Yes, we often blame the government. We often blame the presidents of countries or the prime ministers. But did you ever think how hard their position is? Their life is constantly targeted by the pipe of the gun. Every individual would like our president to act differently. Well, there is something which they can do, and something they can’t do. So, we should not depend on the government or politicians. But we should get understanding and harmony in two things which have been mentioned already. First is religion. The religions should come together, and religion has an approach to the individual person. This is a practical way, not only that they should be religious, they should be spiritual. But at least the duty of religion is to tell the people, "Don’t fight. We will find a solution through negotiation." War never brings peace. War always brings hate. In an interview about ex-Yugoslavia, one of the ladies said, "Yes, we will forgive what our neighbour did to us. But we will not forget." Their blood is boiling in the fire of revenge, and that we have to calm down. Why do religions fight? This is something I still don’t understand today. Religion is not for fighting. Never. And no religion tells you to go and fight, but it is still happening. This is happening with the people and so-called uneducated people. They provoke the people to hate. And therefore, leaders like our dear brother Imam Johari, like these great personalities, have the duty individually to approach, and that is what they are all doing here, sitting. You know, India—I am talking about India. We had a very loving, harmonious life together, Hindus and Muslims. But unfortunately, when politics came, because of their bank boat, they began to fight. Gandhi did many, many good things, but one thing that he did was not good, and that was the secular religion. In the matter of religion, the secular country. The religious, the free in religion, no support to the religion, secularity. Now, what happened? Today, India is one of the countries where the most disputes, conflicts, and wars are beginning. Through this political interest to win the people and the missionary. The Christian missionaries who damaged the peace in India, you can’t imagine how. They come with money and give temptations to the poor people to change their religion. And that is a problem. You should help, very good, but without conditions. Love. The people who became Muslim or accepted Islam did so with free will. With their understanding, okay. You tell them you convert a few people with money power, and then they are terrorizing the whole village. If they don’t become Christian, they will not get this and that, and they will not have access through my land. So the biggest problem in India today is that which the missionaries created. Do they want peace, or do they want to convert people to have more members? This is a problem, the biggest problem you can’t imagine. And then people are very unhappy because they lost the faith of their ancestors. Therefore, the religion and all these religious leaders have a duty to guide the people without conflict, without fighting, to have peace. One is eating pizza, another is eating spaghetti, and the third is eating potatoes. Why not? We are all sitting at the same table and having peace with each other. So this is the one problem. Second, which is mentioned by sister, is media. Media has an approach to the individual person. And in their hand, in their pencil, what they are writing is that power; they can change the world. And so, if there is anyone from the media or those who are listening through the internet, I would request you to bring and write more about the message of peace, understanding, and harmony. I have been traveling for the last 40 years around the whole world. I never force people or say that they should become a Hindu, or they should become a Muslim, or they should become Jewish. Never, never. Why? We are all born as human, that’s all. One religion: humanity. So, because I feel that people don’t need your belief or others’ belief, but people need love and wisdom, in which our holy books—it doesn’t matter from which religion we look—are guiding us. That is what we call Guruvākya, the message of the saints, prophets, and gods. If we follow that, within no time, there will be peace in the world. So, my message is always going through tolerance, respect, understanding, trust, and harmony. And tolerance in religion, respect for every culture, as our dear brother Johari said. Do not look outside at the color of the skin or the size of the body. Don’t look to the anatomy of the body, but try to see what is within. We are one in that, an understanding for every person’s problems and every country’s problems. Trust in God; that will bring harmony and peace. So today, we are all here. We wish to have peace, and we are not only wishing for peace, but we are working for peace. And we are all the same, normal human beings. Śrī Śrī... Why are humans now suffering so much? Because of their way of eating, way of living, and because they have lost inner confidence, self-confidence. People are afraid to be religious, people are afraid to be spiritual, and people are afraid to meditate. Why? Because they come to know what they have done. They have done. They have fear. They are running away from themselves. But we have to guide people back to their inner self. Whatever we did was out of ignorance, sorry. And God will forgive us. So let’s take a step toward each other. Every religion should take a step together and take a vow that we will work for peace. With our neighbours, with our children, and with other friends and colleagues, we will create peace. And it is said, peace begins in the heart, and charity begins at home. So we make the first step today, like we made a witness of the peace tree. So let us hold our hands and stand for world peace. Will you do this? Please. Thank you. In your language, in your belief, in your way, in your thinking, in your faith. For one minute, reach from your heart to each other in language. So to conclude this morning’s program, we’re going to ask Deborah Kaladani, Imam Johari, and Reverend Middleton to light a candle to represent the light that their own tradition brings to the world. And to symbolize the ideal that when the great traditions work together for world peace, the shared light is the same. And that is it. In this gathering, and the Unitarian and the Baha’i, because I work with the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington, I get a chance to breathe that global air. I think we are enlightened enough souls now to not refer to each other as different religions. If there is only one source of that light which is spread throughout, then we are all following the same way. We are going in the same direction. We are seeking the same thing. And so, maybe to people who are not so evolved, they didn’t have the benefit that we have, they see themselves as different. If I thought you were different from me, I wouldn’t come here. But because I think you are the same as me, I come to be with myself. And so I would at least like, as we talk about, you mentioned it, I don’t remember how the word you used. I go, and therefore for us, terrorism knows no religion. Yeah, terrorism knows no religion, and we’re all following, really trying to follow that way. So now, again, finished in one nice, different candles, the light is the same, yes. So, thank you all for coming. This marks the formal end of our program. We’ll have lunch organized in just a minute. And I want to thank all of our special guests for having been here today. And thank you all for being a part of what was a really special program this morning. And once we have everything organized, we’ll be right back with you. Thank you all so much. There’s something happening this afternoon. Anybody know what it is? Imam Johari and I have had the privilege of serving, as he mentioned, the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington, and one of our concrete efforts to promote peacemaking in the world has been to sponsor something called the 9-11 Unity Walk. Those of you who had the chance to participate in this event in the past, know how special it is. You walk down essentially Mass Avenue, past all the houses of worship. You get a chance to dialogue with different faiths. Mahāprabhujīp Karatā Mahāprabhujīp Karatā 1.30, 1.30, it’s announcement time. We always have announcements. I just want to say that Aleph has a program called the Rodev Shalom School for Peace, the Pursuers of Peace School for Peace, where we’re teaching Jewish Americans with this program to be peacemakers. So if you know Jews who are into that kind of thing, I think you all know how to get in touch with me, or perhaps I’ll send the information your way, and you can help be a disseminator so we can be multipliers and amplify our work and magnify our numbers. And one more quick thing before we go, we have a little token of our gratitude to our guests. We have some prints made of these beautiful photos that are on our walls. And they just say, "Peace begins with one’s own heart," World Peace Tour 2008. So thank you very much.