The United Nations is a meeting place where representatives from countries around the world can debate global issues of concern for the well-being of humanity. It contains the various representations of society, such as non-governmental organisations, the business community, trade unions, professional associations, research and academic institutions, plus youth groups. Its genesis was born from a desire, after the cessation of war, to settle long standing grievances and border demarcation disputes, and it took much hard-nosed negotiation to bring it into any form of consensus. At that time concession to the four major powers was essential and inevitable if there was to be any cooperation and participation at all, for without that participation – however flawed and self-promoting – the United Nations would have been unable to survive and grow. The original blueprint for the U.N. was based within the reality of that time, and in 1945 the founders endeavoured to create a world forum to lift human consciousness to a new level by formalizing the United Nations Charter, with its focus on world peace and security, fundamental human rights, justice and respect for international law, and freedom for all peoples of the world.
The U.N.’s General Assembly is a type of a parliament of nations and currently consists of 193 member States, representing almost every country in the world. The U.N.’s Security Council has five permanent members with the power of veto, and proposed resolutions must have unanimous agreement from these permanent members before they can be passed. Although the vote of the General Assembly is not legally binding on member States, its decisions represent the moral authority of the community of nations.
Today the challenges of its sustainability and growth remain much the same. In a world that has been described as a global village with global citizens, the U.N. must be able to meet these challenges and expand its effectiveness in a new era where relationships are conducted in an interdependent world.
The U.N. is not and was never intended to be a world government, and it is powerless without the support and cooperation of its independent member states. While the U.N. was always to be a forum for achieving beneficial world outcomes, its real effectiveness must come from the support of its citizens for its national delegates. It is at this grass roots level that the hearts and minds of women and men are inspired by the possibility of a truly global organisation working for the common good, without fear or favour.
In 2005 its member states were urged to help re-mould the U.N. and bring about the needed reform, but just as individuals, families and communities struggle to reflect higher values and principles in their daily life, the U.N. is also facing these same challenges. For transformation to occur within the U.N. a key factor in the move toward greater spiritual values and principles is the “state of mind” of the organization – the minds of the member nations who represent, as best they can, their national citizens.
Encouragement to strengthen the transformation of their “collective minds” toward a more universal way of thinking will aid in the adjustment of visions, based upon national self interest, to wider and more universal ones based upon the awareness that we are all inter-related parts of a greater whole. A heightened public awareness of concern for the environment, plus the drive to reduce world poverty, and opposition to war and terrorism is but some of the examples of the public collective consciousness striving to meet the challenges of modern living.
It would appear that transformations generally come through successive crises, which eventually work to bring about the needed tensions to break down crystallised thinking. Dire results of actions allow an emergence into greater enlightened thinking. Significantly it’s said that crises are expansions “registered by the inflow of love and light”, and have the effect of opening up a pathway to higher levels of consciousness. Written in the book “The Light of the Soul” by Alice Bailey we read:
“The effect of the transference of our conscious thinking state from a low objective to a high one produces a flow of energy of a vibratory quality equivalent to the higher objective. This produces a change or a mutation in the … thinking entity, and … they become transmuted … to a condition where they are adequate to the … desire … [to be achieved]. Carried to their conclusion, a transformation is produced, and the words of St. Paul become therefore clear: ‘Be ye therefore transformed by the renewing of your mind’.”
If this is the challenge that faces the world community of nations then old policies and strategies which have been promoted in the past need to be changed. Reform requires a sense of moral obligation on the part of all nations both developed and developing. Spiritual catalysts will help to bring about such needed changes.
In the 70 years after the birth of the U.N. our world has changed in remarkable ways and there is now an increase in major world problems un-imagined in the past. One obstruction toward reform is considered to be tension between the visionary goals of the U.N. and the understandable self-concerning policies of the nation states toward self-preservation. Although the ethic of solidarity has been overwhelmingly avowed, the overall picture shows that there remains, in some of the collective minds, a lack of resolve to act in accordance with the principles of synthesis and union.
A U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said that
“Reform must be rooted in a new consensus among governments of what the U.N. can do best, what it should do with others, and what it should leave to others to do”.
In this context, the proposed reforms by him were designed to move the ethos of the U.N. from a post-world war/cold war mentality into an organisation that integrates that initiative into the reality of a One Humanity. The strengthening of the “collective will” of the U.N. toward unity and right human relations would demonstrate a reform more suited to the challenges of our times. An esoteric perspective dictated by the Tibetan from his book “Discipleship in the New Age” is relevant where we read:
“Within the U.N. is the germ and the seed of a great international and meditating reflective group – a group of thinking and informed women and men in whose hands lies the destiny of humanity”.
The United Nations can be regarded as an instrument of the higher will working out through the individual human being in its higher aspect, and has the potential to reflect the universal and inclusive values of the Soul. Many individuals, past and present within the forum of the U.N. have been, and still are responsive to the call of the soul. That influence needs to be strengthened and supported.
Two important focuses in September for the U.N. are the upcoming Global Summit of World Leaders formally declaring a visionary set of 17 Sustainable Development goals which address the universal principle of the needs of all nations and all peoples. More information about these draft goals are found on its website. The U.N. International Day of Peace will be celebrated on 21st of this month when the U.N. Secretary General will ceremonially ring the Peace Bell and call upon all people to observe a minute of silence at 12 noon on that day. Many people and groups around the world will take the opportunity to be part of that vigil for peace at that time.
