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How Can the Spiritual Dimensions of Science and Consciousness Help the UN and Humanity Achieve Better Standards of Life in Larger Freedom? Seminar; Thursday, 26 May 2005; 3:00-6:00 p.m.
United Nations Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States
on
"How the spiritual dimensions of science and consciousness can help the United Nations and humanity achieve better standards of life in larger freedom" Thank you very much for this gracious, very generous introduction. I am here as one of you; to share my thoughts with you on this wonderful topic and I thank the sponsors, Ida and Maria, for their wonderful words to start our proceedings. I believe that the topic of our discussion today should receive greater attention in this house, that the Millennium Declaration calls the world's common house. These thoughts should be discussed more often, more in-depth and on a more serious basis than we have done so far. It is necessary for us to talk about it. The title of my presentation is very interesting. It contains some key words, the most important of which are, of course, "evolution of consciousness". But there are also some other words, which are very important. We talk about "better standards of life", we talk about "larger freedom", and we refer to all peoples of the world. I think these are very key words that you have picked up from the United Nations Charter. But one word, which is available in your flyer, is missing from the title of my presentation. This is "social progress". So I would like to draw your attention to that aspect because the United Nations Charter specifically mentions social progress along with the standards of life. So, these two are very inter-connected and absolutely complementary. When you think about evolution of consciousness, we are not talking about the biological or genetic evolution of it. We are talking about social evolution. We are talking about how we interact with society and how society influences us in our interaction. And when we talk about consciousness, we talk about our inner selves, our behaviour, our attitude, our impressions, our emotions, our feelings about various things in life. And I believe that if we look into that, we will see that there are some aspects of consciousness, which are basic in our nature, which are ingrained in our characters, and there are some which we gather as we move along in our life and these are added on to our consciousness. These aspects come out of our upbringing, out of our education, out of the environment we live in, out of the objectives of life that we set for ourselves, out of the changes that occur around us both in technological, scientific and environmental changes. These two aspects of consciousness continue to affect our lifestyle and our attitude towards various things. However there is an imbalance between these two aspects—the basic one which gives us very positive emotions, vitality and energy, a sense of belonging to our community, to the rest of the world and the other one which is the acquisitive, materialistic aspect that sometimes we gather in the process of our lives. And it is this imbalance, which causes all kinds of difficulties, crisis that we face. This imbalance detaches us from the rest of the world; from the rest of the society. It disrupts our sense of belongingness, sense of togetherness. It isolates us from our communities. When we get isolated, that is when all the insecurities start. And this isolation is actually a manifestation of the emptiness that we have at the personal level. It is very interesting to note that this emptiness can create a vicious cycle, as we feel we are individually, personally empty, we continue to fill up that void with material things, with material pursuits thinking that our emptiness will go away. However, the more we seek such artificial pleasure and materialistic things to fill the void, the emptier we become because we isolate ourselves. We create an alienating society where we live as individuals, pursuing our materialistic goals. I think that this is essential to bear in mind when you think of evolution of consciousness. As we have seen throughout the ages, and even more in recent decades, we feel that there are more differences, more divergences and confrontations in our society. Every crisis that we have, be it environmental, poverty, violence, when analyzed in depth, is caused by human self-centeredness. When you believe that you are at the centre of the world, and everything else revolves around you, then this self-centeredness becomes so very strong that it overtakes you. You lose control of yourself, become violent, disruptive, and feel that everything is working against you. We need consciousness to evolve in a manner where we feel and also think about not just ourselves as a community or part of the world but also as belonging to a bigger whole. I believe that this sense of belonging is very necessary. When we come to the point where we need to come out with solutions to crisis, we find that also the solutions are based on the need of individuals or of special interest groups. Solutions in most cases are not being put forward for the world as a whole, because we believe we are part of the bigger community. There has to be a change, a better balance that we are all seeking, and I believe that change is needed even more so in the context of the work of the United Nations. I believe that change, bringing about further evolution of consciousness, can come within our own control, within our own minds. What we need is to change ourselves. We have heard very often the words from Mahatma Gandhi: "be the change that you want to see". You have to bring the change within yourself. Another element I would like to bring in this discussion is that many of the reasons for crisis, violence and disruption lie in the fear of the unknown. Fear of the unknown creates all the divisions in the world. We think that we are scared of somebody if we don't know that person. So it is very important that we try to know each other. We may be different; but difference should not be taken as a threat. Difference is energy, difference is vitality, difference is creativity. We need to know each other more than we do at the moment. We create our own world, we create our own fears, and that is where we stay - we revolve around ourselves, we do not connect with each other. The world would be a much better place when we are relieved of this unnecessary fear of the unknown. That connectivity, that knowledge of others would come through compassion, through love, through understanding and through respect for diversity. Ida mentioned about UNESCO. UNESCO had looked into the issue of learning to live together, and they had worked into education, as it should be in the 21st century. We feel very strongly that the present system of education needs to be radically changed, if we want to bring evolution in our consciousness. Our education system needs to be transformed in a way where people know about the need for belonging, the rest of the world's need for developing, understanding and tolerance for others. UNESCO identified two ways to bring about those changes. The first one is to expose the child as he or she grows up, to the diversity of life, diversity of nature. The second one is to teach the children to learn collaborative, cooperative things in life; how to do things in a collaborative way, and not to build too much of individualism in yourself. These two elements are very important as we are trying to create a society where we can live together. Let me now come to the United Nations. Its Charter starts "we the peoples of the United Nations and our respective governments...". However, I think this Organization has become more of Governments and less of peoples. Here peoples as represented by civil society and non-governmental organizations have less and less say. Of course the UN is an inter-governmental organization, and as a part of the Secretariat now and in my earlier incarnation as representing a government, I have to accept that, but I believe that the nature of global crisis has changed and we need to change the way we work in the UN, and here comes the need for an evolution of consciousness. We take decisions here; we scramble over words, commas and full-stops. We do not think of changing our hearts, we do not think of changing the way we interact with each other; we do not want to change the way we look at other people's problems. Two-thirds of humanity is engulfed in all kinds of problems, and many of today's problems are what Kofi Annan refers to as "problems without borders"—no single problem is the problem of a single country. And we cannot resolve this problem unless we have a change in our consciousness. The Charter speaks about social progress, better standards of life, in-larger freedom for all peoples of the world. These are wonderful words, but we have come so far away, from those words written 60 years ago. We need to revisit the Charter to find the spirit, the consciousness that created this House of the Peoples of the World; this House of Peace, this House of non-violence. We talk about the Millennium Development Goals. These goals would never be achieved through indicators or targets or statistics. We need to reach those goals with a change of our hearts with the belief that the world is one global village, where all of us live together. If one part of the village has a problem, the rest of us are affected. It is very important to keep that in mind. And unless we build that in ourselves - the spirit of global village, we can never achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Maybe at the end of the year 2015 we will have some statistics to show that this part of the world has achieved the MDGs. But has it really changed the lives of the peoples? Has it really changed the way we react to each other? Have we become more peaceful, non-violent after the end of the year 2015? That is what we need. Many of our problems are eased if we approach them with passion and sympathy and support. A hand of friendship is much more important, much more powerful than a few dollars you can give. Let me end by saying that the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals), or their achievement or lack thereof, would be meaningless unless we take care of the weakest segments of humanity and that is the responsibility that I have now. The LDCs (Least Developed Countries), LLDCs (Landlocked Developing Countries) and the SIDS (Small Island Developing States) have no voice in this house though they are big in number, about 90 altogether. They have no voice because they have no strategic importance, they have no military power, they are economically insignificant and vulnerable, so they do not matter in this house, and this is very unfortunate. It is necessary for the world to show that we care for them, that we care for these poorest, weakest and most vulnerable parts of humanity. I am an advocate for these countries. My office was created 3 years ago and I would like to believe that it was created out of the "guilt complex" of the Member States that are not doing enough for these countries. However, the mere creation of an office or putting up of an advocate does not do the job. It is maybe the beginning, but let us believe that during the upcoming summit in September and during the remaining ten years of the millennium goals, we will be able to do something to change the lives of millions of people, about 740 million now in the 50 LDCs. By 2015 these countries will be adding 200 million people to their struggling population. As we go through the change of consciousness to make the world a global village, we should not forget these countries in special need, the countries, which deserve the support of the rest of the village. Thank you very much. |
