A society untroubled by strife is the principal prerequisite for progress of all kinds. However, the task of ridding society of conflict and ensuring that it remains peaceful begins with the development of a positive personality in each of its members. The preponderance in any given society of positively motivated individuals is the best guarantee of peace.

Centre for Peace and Spirituality International, established in New Delhi in January 2001, aims at the development of such human characteristics as will ensure the ideal social ambience.  Being a non-political organization, as its name would suggest, its aims are to cultivate the values of peace and spirituality, to bring about an intellectual revolution and, in the process, to turn men and women into real human beings.

Spirituality and peace are two aspects of the same reality. Spirituality is the result of positive thinking by an individual, while peace is the result of this positive thinking at a collective level.

Traditionally, spirituality has always been regarded as a state of being which is opposed to worldliness,  entailing the raising of one’s life above the purely mundane to the level of one’s very soul.  Due to this concept of spirituality, people believed in ancient times that the way to achieve spirituality was to renounce the world—in other words, to practice asceticism. This meant leading a life of seclusion in the jungles and mountains, far from all the comforts and luxuries of the world.

When an individual chooses such a non-material life and totally engrosses himself in it, he has the internal experience of a disengaged kind of ecstasy. But this state of ecstasy is not the desired spirituality. It is, in fact, a lesser form of spirituality: it is not true spirituality.

Man’s greatest faculty is his mind. That is why man is called a ‘thinking animal’. This being so, true spirituality is that which is attained at the level of the mind, or thought, whereas the attainment of ecstasy takes place on an altogether different plane; it is, in fact,  a kind of psychological anesthesia—something that is not achieved in a wholly conscious state.  

Spirituality as a discipline, as it is commonly understood, is not heart-based but rather mind-based.  The human heart, in reality, is nothing but an organ that controls the circulation of blood.  It is not the center of conceptual activity: real spirituality., it must be conceded, is something that is achieved through a conscious process of the mind.

Moreover, spirituality is not something that is distinct from religion; it is, in reality, the genuine soul of religion. The word ‘religion’ has generally been associated with form or rituals. However,  form or rituals are only the visible manifestations of faith: the core of religion is, in essence, spirituality.

Indeed, spirituality is the realization of a higher reality, by which man rises not only above the animal and material world but also from a lower to a higher state of humanity,  thus enabling himself to lead a new and better life.

Spirituality, it should be re-emphasized, does not mean renouncing the material world. Spirituality, on the contrary, becomes a reality when man lives in the world in such a manner that he transforms material experiences into spiritual lessons,  creating spirituality out of non-spirituality, just as a  cow converts its fodder into milk.

This process of transformation is effected through an intellectual awakening that enables man to receive spiritual nourishment from material things. The Centre for Peace and  Spirituality International aims at preparing highly developed minds along these very lines.

The common concept of spirituality is that its source lies within man himself. But at CPS, we believe that human beings are only the recipients. God alone is the giver. One cannot just look within oneself and find spirituality. Therefore, the only way to achieve spirituality is to awaken one’s nature in which God-consciousness has been instilled right from the time of one’s birth. This means seeking out the Creator by reflecting upon creation; by adopting the principle of simple living and high thinking and thus developing the spiritual aspect of one’s being. It is this simple living and high thinking associated with spirituality which enables man to rise above irrelevant interests and focus on building his personality.