On a Sunday evening on July 18, over 700 people came to listen to Prem Rawat near the starkly beautiful city of Newcastle, close to England's border with Scotland. The event — the result of an impromptu invitation from a Newcastle resident — marked Prem Rawat's first visit to the city.

Here are some excerpts from his talk:

I need to prepare so that, no matter what happens, today doesn’t just slip away. And if I can begin to prepare for today, and if I can prepare for tomorrow, perhaps I can get enough insight to prepare for this life. So that this life, too, doesn’t just slip away. That it remains, every day, something real for me — as long as I am alive.

Whatever you do in your life — whether you decide to follow Knowledge or you decide not to follow Knowledge, whether you decide that what I say to you is worth something or not — here is my two cents worth of advice for you: Whatever you decide to do, don’t be distracted. This life moves too quickly to be distracted. You can’t afford to be distracted. You can’t.

That’s what this life is, isn’t it? This is that little bridge where the infinite and the finite have come as close as humanly possible. And that’s it. This is your chance to have a realization of realizations, to have a feeling of feelings, to have an understanding of understandings, to have a clarity of clarities. This is as close as it gets. What do you want to do? The opportunity is afoot. Today has come, and it’s almost gone. Yet it’s never too late. It's never too late to recognize.