The inner message of the United Nations1

The outer message of the United Nations is Peace. The inner message of the United Nations is Love. The inmost message of the United Nations is Oneness. Peace we feel. Love we become. Oneness we manifest.

The United Nations has a mind, a heart and a soul. Its mind tries to offer flowing Peace. Its heart tries to offer glowing Love. Its soul tries to offer fulfilling Oneness. In the near future, a day will dawn when the message of the United Nations will be absorbing to the child, elevating to the common man, thought provoking to the highly educated and inspiring to the seeker.

Each delegate is a force. Each representative is a force. Each nation is a force. The source of this force is a particular will. This will can be either the Divine Will or the human will. The human will wants to be with the world and in the world only on one condition: that it will be able to gain supremacy over others and maintain this supremacy. The Divine Will wants to be in the world, with the world and for the world without expecting anything from the world. The human will, at most, tolerates the world. The Divine Will constantly wants to liberate and fulfil the world. The human will wants to control and lead the world. The Divine Will wants to transform, glorify and immortalise the world. The human will in us needs the soul’s expanding and illumining purity. The Divine Will in us wants the Goal’s blossoming divinity.

The League of Nations was a dream-seed. The United Nations is a reality-plant. The aspiring and serving life of man’s universal oneness will be the eternity-tree.

In his address to the United Nations in October 1965, Pope Paul VI said:

"No more war: war never again! Peace. It is peace which must guide the destinies of people and of all mankind."

The goal of the United Nations lies not only in thinking together, but in thinking alike. Each individual has every right to love his nation; but he must also dedicate himself in order to immortalise his nation’s relationships, inner and outer, with the rest of mankind, so that all can run together for the universal good of humanity.

In the words of Pope John XXIII:

"It is our earnest wish that the United Nations organisation may become ever more equal to the magnitude and nobility of its tasks, and that the day may come when every human being will find therein an effective safeguard for the rights which derive directly from his dignity as a person, and which are therefore universal, inviolable and inalienable rights."

All nations together can build a temple. All nations together can make a shrine. All nations together can worship a Deity. At the entrance of the temple, the Divine Protection shall smile. Upon the shrine in the temple, the Supreme illumination shall smile. Within the heart of the Deity, the Absolute Perfection shall smile.

Here at the United Nations, what I feel is an inner voyage. In its inner voyage, the United Nations has to brave many temptations and setbacks. As we all know, defeats and failures are mere steppingstones in our onward march to perfection. At the end of its voyage, there is every possibility that the United Nations will be the last word in human perfection. And then the United Nations can easily bloom in excellence and stand at the pinnacle of Divine Enlightenment.


THN 1. Dag Hammarskjold Lecture Series, Dag Hammarskjold Auditorium, 4 January 1973.