Prem Rawat:
There’s a saying about tradition. (I love it. Really like this saying.) It goes like this: “Tradition, what is tradition? Tradition is peer pressure from the dead.” They’re dead; they’re gone! But the pressure is still there.
And there they are, “It should be this way; it should be this way; it should be this way,” and this is the tape that plays in your head, and this is how you make your selections.
Whatever happens. So much of it is not being driven by our selection as we would like to think it is. It is not being done that way; it is the tape that plays. I call it “noise.” What do you call it?
It’s noise. “This has to be this way; this has to be this way; this has to be this way; this has to be this way; this…. You have to sit on the right; you have to sit on the left; you have to do this and you have to do that and you….” Noise, noise, noise, noise, noise, noise, and this whole life becomes full of noise.
And in the midst of this noise, we want sanity?! In the midst of this noise, we want clarity?! In the midst of this noise, we want to be happy?! You really are asking a lot! You’re really asking a lot. Because that’s not going to happen.
The way we have structured our life, we have made it so difficult, so incredibly difficult, that the path to peace indeed has become incredibly, incredibly difficult.
When the desire for peace is simple, the path going back home…. That’s the only way. That’s the only way you’re going to experience peace in your life, is when you go back home—home here, in you. Not here! But here, in you. That’s the only way you’re going to experience peace.
You’re only going to experience peace the day you get in touch with you! And that process of getting in touch with you is incredibly difficult because we have wandered so far away from our selves.
Now—here is the problem. Here is the real problem. Now, we don’t recognize home. Now, we don’t recognize home. And when you don’t recognize home, you could be standing in front of it, and you will go, “What, that’s my home?”
You already have a preconceived idea of what your home looks like. Absolutely. And when your concepts don’t meet up with it, you go, “That’s my home? That’s not the home I want.”
But “home” isn’t about that; home is home. Home is that place you come to—and you close that door. And you are in your world. That’s what home is. Everything, everything is familiar.