Sri Chinmoy:
The Peace Meditation at the United Nations

After joining a Peace Meditation on 1 February 1991 while visiting New York, Mr. Robert Muller, currently Chancellor of the University for Peace, was moved to offer some reminiscences about his many years of service at the United Nations. Below is a brief excerpt from the remarks of the former Assistant Secretary-General, who has always been a strong advocate of spiritual ideals and is a long-time friend of the Meditation Group.

 Mr. Robert Muller, Chancellor, University for Peace: It is wonderful to see so many of my old friends. I have always been so happy that Sri Chinmoy is a spiritual presence at the United Nations. The United Nations cannot succeed if it does not have a spiritual dimension.

That was the conclusion of Dag Hammarskjold, who became a mystic here in this house. If you read his Markings, you will see that at the beginning he never mentions God, whereas at the end, he has a daily dialogue with God. Before he died, he also said that we have tried to make peace, but we have not succeeded, and we will not succeed if there is not a spiritual renaissance in the world.

Of course, then there was U Thant, who was so close to you, who held that there was no difference between spirituality and life. He could never understand the Western world, where you keep spirituality for the church on Sunday and the rest of the week you live a material, intellectual and nonspiritual life. For him every moment from morning to evening was spirituality at its highest. He never forgot that spirituality is the highest dimension of life. I myself became more spiritual thanks to the influence of U Thant and of Sri Chinmoy, and it has helped me in my life quite a lot.

I remember U Thant once said that whenever he travelled to capitals around the world, they took him each time to visit the monument to the unknown soldier, but not once in his life had he been taken to the monument to the unknown peacemaker. Now we have a monument to peace in Costa Rica, on the grounds of the University for Peace, and when visitors come we take them to this monument to the unknown peacemakers.

Costa Rica is a very magnificent country. We hope that it can become a model for the world-a model of peace through total demilitarisation, a model of human rights and democracy, and a model of the environment. Mr. Maurice Strong, who visited us a few weeks ago, intends to create an Earth Centre in Costa Rica, and we are offering the campus of the University for this. Costa Rica has had no army since 1949, and as a result they are the most prosperous country in Central America.

Our proposal to make Central America a zone of peace was accepted at the last meeting of the Presidents of Central America. They are all going to teach peace systematically. I have been asked to go to Nicaragua, where we are establishing a National Commission of Peace Education, not only for the schools, but also including the media and different religions and professions. Five ministers have signed a declaration that they will now teach peace as has never been done by any country on earth-a complete strategy of peace education in Central America. And what we are trying to do there for Central America has to spread to the rest of the world.

In a certain way, today is my last day at the United Nations, because I came to pack. I have 38 cartons of papers which are not needed by the archives and they will be shipped to Costa Rica to have a Margarita and Robert Muller Library and Centre. Just this morning I saw Mr. Perez de Cuellar, who signed a very important letter for us regarding the future of the University for Peace. When I told him that I was very glad that he gave his signature because it was my last day in the United Nations, he said, “It will never be your last day at the United Nations. This place will always be your home.”

appeared in  Meditation at the United Nations – 1992 Jan – Mar, Periodic Bulletin