Your Personal Peace Formula - Mansukh Patel

Seven point plan for peace in yourself, your relationships and your world.

Background articles

The Peace Formula and Friendship without Frontiers

Mansukh Patel developed the basis for this book, The Peace Formula, during the Friendship Without Frontiers world journey.

Friendship Without Frontiers

Mansukh’s father, Chhaganbhai Patel, had been inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s vision for peace since working amidst his Satyagraha movement in India. For the rest of his life he nurtured the thought of a team of peace workers travelling the world and offering hope and practical advice wherever it was needed.

When Mansukh, along with John Jones, Chris Barrington, Rita Goswami, Annie Jones and others were building the Dru team in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, Mansukh’s father continuously encouraged them to move towards a moment when they could launch such a world tour. Mansukh, John and Chhaganbhai even laid the foundations with a project entitled ‘World Walk’ in the early 1980s.

By 1991, Mansukh, John and the Dru team had become sufficiently established to seriously consider creating such a world tour. Bringing in Andrew Wells, who had recently joined the Life Foundation after serving with the Quakers at their United Nations Office in New York, they launched the Life Foundation’s first world tour on Jan 1st, 1992. It was called Friendship Without Frontiers.

Sadly, Mansukh’s father never lived to see the moment when his dream came to fruition, passing away in late 1991. Nevertheless, he was able to participate intensively in its development, spending many hours in early 1991 helping the team create the tour's template.

Friendhip Without Frontiers aimed to honour the quiet yet unrecognised heroes of the world, to offer the Dru’s practical peace-building techniques in seminars, and to publicise and network with the world’s most innovative projects for peace.

Many great peacemakers

Rita Goswami, John Jones and Andrew Wells began Friendship Without Frontiers in Europe, and were joined at various stages through the rest of the world by Mansukh and Rita’s twin sister, Anita Goswami.

It was while Rita, John, Andrew and Mansukh were in India, conducting seminars and networking with peace projects that the idea of The Peace Formula was born.

Mansukh and the team had just spent time at Mother Teresa’s convent in Calcutta, interviewing her and praying with her. During their journey they’d met some of India’s greatest peacemakers, including the great vedantists, Swami Dayananda and Swami Chinmayananda. John and Mansukh had interviewed Swami Chidananda, the revered head of the Sivananda Centre in Rishikesh who had done so much for indigenous people and their environment in the Himalayan region. Rita and Andrew had met leading Gandhians in Delhi and the whole team had visited numerous projects across India created from the legacy of this great man.

While staying at the Ramakrishna centre in Calcutta, Mansukh was filled with awareness of the wealth of wisdom that India’s many great peacemakers had offered the world.

Humanity does work for peace

At one point Mansukh stood looking out of his window at the dramatic contrasts of Calcutta: the noise, the chaos, the climactic rush of one of the world’s busiest cities; juxtaposed with the simple relaxation of so many Indians as they went about their business – camel drivers resting on their wagons as their charges slowly plodded to their destination, a man riding a bike effortlessly through the crazy traffic with a small dog balanced easily on his handle-bars.

Amidst this apparent chaos were countless illustrations of unity and harmony.

To Mansukh, it was a microcosm of humanity’s global plight. ‘Where is everyone rushing to?’ Mansukh’s mother had once asked when seeing motorway traffic for the first time on her arrival in the UK. This rush and stress leaves people empty, hollow and without hope. The only outcome can be events like Hiroshima – the tragic evidence of man’s disconnection from himself and all of life around him.

Yet at the same time, Friendship without Frontiers had proven that in every country that Rita, John, Andrew had visited there were countless people and projects working towards a better world. Humanity as a whole is longing to experience its harmony with life, and it seems that nothing can hinder this urge from finding fruition.

The spiritual giants of India had given so much, Mansukh mused. Their contributions should never be forgotten. And so, as he contemplated the deepest spiritual laws that these peacemakers had given to the world in their time, a distillation of these same laws appropriate to our time began to form itself within his thoughts.

Mansukh walked from his window to the courtyard at the centre of the Ramakrishna centre. By the time he met John, Rita and Andrew, who were waiting for him there, The Peace Formula had been born.

More articles on the Peace Formula.