By B K Ashima Sachdeva

Most world leaders, international organisations and so-called peace summits tend to define peace in the shadow of war, as 'a situation where there is no war"between nations.

By doing so they are actually taking a negative view. By viewing the positive element in contrast to the negative, we will end up underrating the former'spotential. By defining light as the 'absence of darkness"or, life as the 'absence of death", we assign greater importance to the powers of darkness and death, or in the case of peace, to war, rather than peace.

It is widely acknowledged that it is easier to appreciate what is good when one has already experienced the 'bad". But the question today is not of 'experiencing"; the challenge today is in creating peace, and not in appreciating peace as a concept. And this cannot be done if we keep concentrating on destruction.

It'stime now to literally construct peace . But, peace is intangible. Peace is not just a feeling or a state of being. It is not just something that one would achieve only during long hours of prayers or meditation. And it is certainly not end-of-war alone. So, what is it?

Peace is life itself. It is our original religion. It is like an eternal spring within us. Even a little child likes peaceful surroundings: a child starts crying when he hears violent arguments, even though he is unable to understand the meaning of the words being uttered in anger.

Peace, therefore, is a natural instinct and if we wish to construct a peaceful world, then all we"ve got to do, is to let it manifest in our lives.

Whatever a peaceful mind comes in contact with, undergoes a positive change - be it our family relations, our workplace or even the material things that we use. How does this happen? Let'suse the analogy of a tree. If we look upon human life as a tree, then the soul is its seed. The soul comprises three main faculties: the mind, the intellect and the sanskars (sub-conscious).

The first two determine the quality of our thoughts and actions and the third one reveals the kind of energies or virtues and powers we have in store. While our actions sprout shoots, becoming branches and leaves, symbolic of the relations and possessions in our lives, it will be the quality of energies supplied to them by the mind, that"ll determine the quality of fruits and flowers the tree shall bear.

Thus if the mind has been conditioned to think positively and peacefully, it will have a similar effect on its connections with others. This explains the tangibility of peace in an individual'slife.

However, how feasible is peace at the macro level? Can we really create a world of peace? Going by ancient mythology and scriptures worldwide, we are led to believe that there is, indeed, such a world, whether it is the Indian Satyug, the Islamic Jannat, or the Biblical Heaven.

All these places have been described variously as the land of peace, the land of happiness and paradise, where inhabitants are free from any kind of worry, aggression or unhappiness. Paradise is called so not just because it is believed to be a place of scenic beauty; it is also where the divine virtues of love and peace prevail.

The motto of the Brahma Kumaris is that when we change, the world changes. To achieve peace, three things have to be borne in mind: that peace is our natural religion; that all that we do affects those who surround us; and that to recharge our pure energies, we need to connect to the Supreme Source.

A life operating on these three laws of peace will tangibly transform everything to a peaceful state and recreate the one culture that we all wish to re-establish in the world - that is, the culture of peace.