The soul-love of the United Nations6

The soul-love of the United Nations is life-examination, life-improvement and life-perfection.

Life-examination makes our life on earth meaningful.

Life-improvement makes our rest in Heaven blissful.

Life-perfection makes our rest in Heaven and on earth fruitful.

The soul-love of the United Nations has the fragrance of Divinity’s rose on the physical plane and the benediction of Immortality’s bird on the spiritual plane.

Mind-love, heart-love and soul-love. Mind-love is just an opinion. Heart-love is a firm conviction. Soul-love is an everlasting illumination. Opinions at times confuse us. Convictions at times disappoint us. But illumination always makes us see the Feet of God and the height of Truth. It also makes us see that it has silenced the roaring lion of darkness in the outer world and that it has fed the soaring flame-bird in the inner world.

The soul-love of the United Nations teaches us three most important things: patience, expansion and oneness. Patience is not peace. But patience eventually shows us the way to peace, world peace. Expansion is not an act of self-aggrandisement. But expansion can easily be a life-offering and love-building reality. Oneness does not indicate a lack of opportunity for revealing and manifesting individual uniqueness. Oneness is like the essence and fragrance of a lotus. It does not prevent each petal of the lotus from revealing and manifesting its own uniqueness.

The soul-love of the United Nations has a philosophy of its own. It says that each nation has its own significant truth. One nation will not and cannot overthrow the realisation and revelation of another nation. On the contrary, the realisation and revelation of one nation can easily complement the realisation and revelation of another nation. The soul-love of the United Nations has a religion of its own. This religion is a silently unified wisdom. In this silently unified wisdom looms large a supremely unifying life.

Voltaire said something quite interesting and illumining: “Four thousand volumes of metaphysics cannot teach us what the soul is.” It is the soul alone that can teach us what the soul is. But before the soul teaches us about itself, we have to unlearn the teachings of the obscure, uncertain and doubting mind and, at the same time, we have to learn the teachings of the loving, uniting and illumining heart.

I wish to quote a most significant thought of Emerson: “We can’t describe the natural history of the soul, but it is divine.” No matter how sincerely, how soulfully, how devotedly and how unconditionally we try to describe the natural history of the soul, we are bound to underestimate its capacity. For the soul is the child of both Infinity’s Dream and Eternity’s Reality.

In order to know the soul-love of the United Nations, we have to choose to be free, and we have to be free to choose. When we are within the confines of history, we have to choose to be free. When we are in the sky of evolving spirituality, we have to be free to choose. Soul-love is free will. Soul-love is free choice. When a nation’s free will chooses self-giving, its free choice expedites God-becoming. In self-giving and God-becoming is the confluence of the outer lustre of the United Nations and the inner effulgence of the United Nations. This confluence will, without fail, be a glorious vision for both mortals and immortals.

From the spiritual point of view, the soul-love of the United Nations will always remain resourceful in all problematical situations, untiring in the discharge of its national and international duties, sagacious in its pursuit of inner knowledge and inner wealth, and spontaneous in its willingness to add to the peace, love and joy of searching and ascending humanity.


THN 6. Dag Hammarskjold Lecture Series, Dag Hammarskjold Auditorium, 1 February 1973.