Flame that Transforms - Savitri MacCuish, Mansukh Patel, Andrew Wells, Foreword by Mark Victor Hansen

Mansukh Patel, Savitri MacCuish and Andrew Wells conceived the idea for the Flame that Transforms while presenting the World Peace Flame to Mark Victor Hansen, co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul publishing phenomenon.

Mark Victor Hansen's Chicken Soup for the Soul books include more than 65 titles, collating stories and words of wisdom to uplift the soul in fields ranging from business studies, peace and health, right through to pets, toddlers and the schoolroom. Similarly, the World Peace Flame has generated stories of people’s lives being transformed in countless arenas of life, so it seemed natural for Mansukh, Andrew and Savitri to begin compiling these stories.

In the process of their collaboration with Mark Victor Hansen, he and Mansukh Patel created a video invitation to the World Peace Flame Forum – a gathering of 50 of North America’s leading publicists, personal development experts and entrepreneurs searching for a road to peace, hosted by the World Peace Flame. From Mansukh and Mark Victor’s in-depth discussions during the creation of the video, it was clear that one of the most important roads to peace is to give people real-life role models they can follow. The World Peace Flame Forum’s findings endorsed this, and so, The Flame that Transforms was born.

While Andrew Wells set about collating stories about the World Peace Flame submitted by people from across the world, Savitri MacCuish and Mansukh Patel began formulating their experiences of the birth of the World Peace Flame. Work began in earnest on the book in April 2003, and then Mansukh, Savitri and Andrew took less than 45 days to finalise the manuscript, enabling it to be ready by July 31st, 2003, when Mansukh and Savitri unveiled the World Peace Flame Monument at the Dru International Course Centre in Snowdonia, North Wales.

Overview

The Flame that Transforms opens with an exhilarating narrative of the drama surrounding the birth of the World Peace Flame.

It begins with Savitri MacCuish’s powerful childhood experience of witnessing her father’s death, and the subsequent transformation this experience wrought within her. Remarkably, rather than creating a disastrous trauma, the legacy of kindness and compassion left by her father was enough to propel the young Savitri into a quest for answers that would one day culminate in her co-creating the World Peace Flame.

‘There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come,’ said Vincent Van Gogh. The idea for the World Peace Flame originated when the ground for such an idea had been cultivated to near-perfect conditions. Mansukh Patel, Savitri MacCuish, Rita Goswami and a variety of others from the Dru team had concluded an intensive round of seminars and trainings teaching their personal peace-making techniques. For a rest, they had decided to gather a group of friends together, and help Mansukh’s sister in restoring her house. Many factors came together as Mansukh, Rita, Savitri and the others worked together with a lively banter and much humour. Helping someone in need, a group of friends relating to each other with unity and an inspired purpose, the potency released by their previous teaching work – all combined to create a fertile ground of potential. Relaxing one night after a long day of working, the friends’ conversation began to spiral upwards around peace. Someone mentioned an idea of lighting a flame of peace, Savitri added an idea to make an Olympic-style phenomenon, and one idea began to build on another until the genesis had happened. Savitri MacCuish eventually crystallised it: ‘Imagine if Flames of Peace were lit on all the continents of the world, flown together and united into one. Imagine what that resulting Flame would mean to the world.’

Mansukh Patel’s father had said years before, ‘It is the nature of a flame of peace that people will always gather around it.’ Mansukh and Savitri felt sure this new idea had the potential to help thousands, perhaps millions of people to achieve a new level of awareness and inner strength.

Bringing the Flames together

Once Mansukh and Savitri conceived the idea, they had three and a half months to complete it, aiming to bring the Flames of Peace together at their International Dru Conference in late July, 1999.

From here, the Flame that Transforms then goes on to recount the dramatic race to bring the Flames into being from around the world. Savitri and Mansukh take turns relating each phase of the Flames’ journeys in a gripping narrative.

Savitri MacCuish started work on establishing a Flame of Peace for Europe. Eventually, she gained consent from Irene van Lippe Biesterfeld, Princess of the Netherlands to light the European Flame. Savitri journeyed through appalling thunder storms to Irene’s residence for the lighting ceremony, on what seemed to be the darkest weather of the year. The group lighting the Flame paused in silent focus for peace and then Irene van Lippe reached out, lit a match and lit the Flame. Suddenly, the room was flooded with light as the sun appeared, impossibly brilliant on such a stormy day, and shone through the window frame. Savitri, Irene, and everyone in the room gasped in awe. In the dazzling sunburst, the window frame’s shadow had formed a perfect cross, and the new Flame of Peace was flickering quietly exactly at its epicentre!

From this point onwards, Mansukh Patel’s team in the UK and Savitri MacCuish and her team in the Netherlands worked rapidly to find a method of transporting the Flames to the UK, eventually contacting more than 80 airlines. Finally, in the culmination of endless hours of persistence and determination, Savitri and her team developed the necessary idea: they would contact the air forces – after all, they could fly bombs which were much more dangerous than their small flames of Peace.

On July 7th, 1999, the Royal Dutch Air Force made it possible for Savitri MacCuish to fly the European Flame of Peace to Birmingham airport, UK, where she was met by Mansukh Patel and a team from the Dru UK. They had just 24 days to fly the remaining six other Flames from the other continents of the world.

Mansukh Patel takes over the narrative from here, recounting his simultaneous journey through Africa with his colleagues Andrew Wells and Anita Goswami. While Mansukh led detraumatisation workshops in South Africa, Andrew Wells and Anita Goswami presented in-depth trainings on detraumatisation in Northern Kenya at the big United Nations World Food Programme base at Lokichokkio. Eventually joined by Mansukh, they travelled into South Sudan and witnessed first-hand the effects of war there – even to the extent of a cliff-hanging encounter with a traumatised soldier at the border.

From Mansukh’s point of view, these experiences were a perfect preparation for his contribution to the World Peace Flame’s birth – lighting the Flame for Africa in the place of his birth in Kenya’s Rift Valley. On June 26th, along with the African Church Elders of the district, as well as Andrew and Anita, Mansukh Patel lit the Flame of Peace for Africa, and it seemed that the whole of this vibrant continent was present at their ceremony.

Once the first Continental Flames had been lit, the other continents swiftly fell into place. Savitri MacCuish’s team enabled the African flame to arrive in the UK, flown by South African airways, which was then met by Andrew Wells and taken to a special reception hosted by the Mayor of Oxford.

Mansukh Patel’s team in the UK, directed by Julie Hotchkiss, then arranged for the American, Canadian and Australian Flames to arrive. Finally, with only hours to spare, Savitri succeeded in having the Middle Eastern Flame delivered to the UK by the Royal Air Force.

The birth of the World Peace Flame

The World Peace Flame was lit in front of more than 500 delegates at the Dru International Conference – doctors, politicians, lawyers, community group leaders and many more from across the world. Mansukh Patel carried the Indian flame, lit from Mahatma Gandhi’s eternal flame. Savitri MacCuish carried the European Flame, which had made the others possible. Andrew Wells carried the African Flame, while Anita Goswami carried the Australian Flame, lit by Aboriginal Elders and flown by the Royal Australian Air Force. Lalita Doerstel carried the North American Flames, and John Jones the Middle Eastern.

From there, a new phase of the journey began. The World Peace Flame was taken back out to the continents it had been formed from, and thousands of people began to take candles lit from the World Peace Flame back into their houses, their work, or their places of worship. It was carried into war zones, brought into peace negotiations, and became a silent witness for peace in major cities of the world.

From its small beginnings as an idea in a house in Lancashire with Mansukh Patel and Savitri MacCuish, the World Peace Flame has gone out to an estimated ten million people – at least – and the stories that began to return told of extraordinary transformations.

Stories to light a path of peace

Andrew Wells has collated some of the most poignant of these, and the result is 41 stories in topics such as overcoming tragedy, designing your success, family life, the workplace, peacemaking and more. Some of their titles include:

You will be warmed, uplifted, delighted and inspired by these fascinating glimpses into how ordinary people came to create extraordinary healing and peacemaking as a result of their connection with the World Peace Flame.

Part 3 - Meditations with Light

Mansukh Patel, Savitri MacCuish and Andrew Wells have collated four powerful meditation techniques that use light to help you

Taken from Mansukh’s parents tradition, these meditations help you focus your awareness using various aspects of light, cultivating a greater connection to your own inner strength and the light of wisdom it represents.

The Flame that Transforms is a remarkable book, filled with drama, insights, practical techniques and extraordinary stories of people achieving remarkable results by their connection to the light of their own inner wisdom.

You will thoroughly enjoy this book – while gaining a treasure-trove of methods to improve your life.

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The Flame that Transforms

Savitri MacCuish, Mansukh Patel & Andrew Wells - Foreword by Mark Victor Hansen

Background articles

The Flame that Transforms - Savitri MacCuish, Mansukh Patel & Andrew Wells

Introduction and background

Overview

Bringing the Flames together

The birth of the World Peace Flame

Stories to light a path of peace

Part 3 - Meditations with Light