Date Published on EarthPax.net: May 11, 2003

Preface

At this beginning of the third millennium I offer these reflections on the miracle, joy and art of living, written during a half of century of service with the first universal organization on Earth, the United Nations. May they be of help to the individual and collective search for peace, happiness and fulfillment on our beautiful planetary home circling in God's vast, mysterious universe.

The art of optimum happy human living and fulfillment, of proper love and care for our miraculous Earth are the next phase of our evolution. May these markings from my life be a contribution to it.

Volume 1 ~ Chapter 1

Our Place in the Universe

Only a cosmic or heavenly approach, i.e., a correct view of our place in the universe and in time can help us find our right attitude and feelings towards life, our planet, our fellow humans and ourselves.

Life then appears as a true miracle, a tremendous gift of cosmic consciousness, a fabulous glimpse into the incredible, fathomless universe, an opportunity to be co-Creators with God and evolution. Yes, it is an immense luck to be alive.

We humans must still learn to see the largest realities around us: the vastness of the universe and the eternity of time. And yet, how many people pay attention to them? Most of us live blindly, glued to the immediate sights and sounds around us, seldom lifting our eyes, hearts, minds and souls to the heavens and to the breathtaking beauty of the universe.

Spiritual people are blessed with that ability. This is why they are usually happy and serene people: They "know" better.

And the priests say rightly: Sursum corda, lift your hearts.

We should never forget our heavenly, cosmic origin and nature.

I would advise every searching human being to place his search and to search his place within these four vastest realities:

the total universe

total time

the total Earth

the total human family.

No dog, no cat, no animal looks at the sky and the stars. They see only their immediate environment. Humans alone can extend their senses into the infinite and eternity. A cell of my body cannot rise above itself and try to understand the secrets of my being, much less of the Earth and of the universe. Only humans can do that. This is the divine, cosmic spark in us. This is why our search for knowledge, or science, is in reality a spiritual quest. This is why we have the privilege and the duty to govern and manage our planet as a sacred trust, as a unique, miraculous, still evolving achievement of the universe.

Perhaps in the evolution of the universe there comes a time when a species has discovered most secrets of its environment and becomes the master and manager of a planet. We seem to have reached that stage in our evolution. It entails vast, staggering responsibilities.

The central challenge of our time, as of all times, is to find the right relationships between humanity, the Earth, the heavens and eternity.

From the mail I receive, from the articles and books I read, from conferences I attend, from UN debates and documents, I have the unmistakable impression that the whole human race is now engaged collectively in seeking its meaning and ways on this planet in the universe. From individual seeking we are passing to collective seeking. We are entering a great new phase of evolution!

The universe is an infinite, eternally changing cosmos of cosmoses, from the infinitely large to the infinitely small. And among these cosmoses, blessed with my thirty trillion cells, my brain, my will, my heart and my soul, I am a stupendous cosmos of my own, made of an infinite number of cosmoses linked through matter, energy, senses, heart and soul to the entire Earth and heavens. What immense, beautiful opportunities and responsibilities to do good this implies! What happiness, what luck to be alive!

A durable fame can be achieved in our time only by those who seek the ultimate meaning of life and help formulate the right framework and philosophy of life on our planet, i.e., those who see it correctly within the total Creation and time. We need a new ideology for humanity and for our planet. This is progressively being done in the world's first universal, meta-biological evolutionary organization of the Earth and humanity, the United Nations.

Humanity fully depends on the sun and on this Earth for living. Hence we must respect our star and our planet, cherish them and treat them as sacred. And yet, we seem to have lost contact with them. We sleep and no longer pray when the sun rises. We live imprisoned in cities of steel and cement. We hear radio and watch television instead of contemplating Mother Earth's nature and her wondrous gifts. We are mistaken. We are on a wrong trail, as our Indian brothers say. We should make daily offerings to the sun and to the Earth and say with our brethren and sisters in the monasteries: "This is a good day to live and to glorify God."

We are linked with everything in the heavens and on Earth. And yet, like every blade of grass and grain of sand, we are each unique and unrepeatable in all eternity. What a wonder to be alive!

The sky is so beautiful, so infinitely blue, and yet an astronaut flying to the moon, soon after leaving the Earth enters a world of darkness. Our "infinite" blue is only a few miles thick, a minuscule layer in the immense universe. How lucky we are to live on such a beautiful planet! How intensely we must cherish it, protect it, preserve it! It is all we have and will ever be given in the universe. Nothing will be added to it.

The Earth is a solar child. All life on it derives from the sun. Ancient cultures which worshipped the sun were not wrong.

We should not see the Earth as separate from the sun. We should see the sun, the Earth and all teeming, evolving life forms on our planet as one interdependent whole, as a Sun-Earth reality.

We take our sun and Earth for granted. And yet, they are incredible, mystery-filled, mind-boggling phenomena in the universe. We should be in endless awe and admiration before them, in communion with them.

According to one of the most ancient peoples of this planet, the Yanomami people of Brazil, keepers of the memory of Creation, the role of humans is to protect the continuity of life in our solar system. In order to do that we must all be "lamps of concordant tension".

In the vast universe, we humans are true kings, almost Gods. We know so much, feel so much, dream so much, query so much, discover so much. We will not rest until we see, know, feel and understand all there is in the heavens and on Earth. We unquestionably are of a cosmic nature. We want to reach the outer expanses of the universe. We are a transcending species capable of lifting itself beyond its capacities and senses by a universal urge. We are stupendous little nebulas of life on a tiny, solid, watery, warm planet, trying to reach out for the stars and the outer limits of heaven. What a prodigious species we are! What an exciting adventure it is to be human! What a teeming laboratory, what a palace full of treasures our planet is in the vast universe!

And how could it be otherwise, since we are energy, matter and soul of the universe which has passed through many starforms before our present planetary incarnation? Hence the instinct of our divine or cosmic origin and our longings for the heavens and prayers to God. In each of us is all the past experience of the universe, of all past life forms and all our ancestors. You can therefore best learn the meaning of life by looking deeply into yourself.

We should be ready to report at any time to a celestial inspection team. I hope the United Nations will someday publish a yearly report to the Universe, and the religions yearly reports to God or the gods.

Our planet is so small and part of such a tiny solar system among trillions of solar systems of a small galaxy among trillions of galaxies of a cluster of galaxies among trillions of super-galaxies, that our efforts to understand Creation resemble those of a flea trying to understand the whole planet Earth! And yet, we are doing it!

We live in the universe. Hence we are universal beings. We must pursue our evolutionary elevation into fully transcended cosmic beings. We are a rare, unique form of life at the spearhead of cosmic evolution. It is our duty toward the universe, from which we come and receive everything, to fulfill our cosmic destiny. As a first step, we must define that destiny!

Every year, the UN receives a report on radio waves in the universe to detect if there are any other life forms in the heavens. Not a single one has so far been received. We might well be all alone and unique in the cosmos!

Kepler was right when through astronomy and astrology he tried to determine the cosmic laws which should rule life on Earth. And we are right when we try to lift ourselves by our bootstraps through science, religions and world organizations to the heavens in order to fully grasp our cosmic nature, celestial home and destiny.

The spinning of our planet around the sun seems immense to us. And yet, in the vast universe, the Earth is so small that it can barely be seen from the sun! At a distance of a few light years, our planet becomes invisible, a mere speck of dust in the universe. And yet, we are. We are even a lot! The cosmic microbe I am is able to be conscious of most of the universe, from the infinitely large to the infinitely small!

Once in a museum I saw on a huge wall the photograph of the Milky Way, our galaxy. I looked for our sun and planet and found only an arrow with these words: "The sun cannot be seen but is located somewhere in this area."

I was dumbfounded: "If not even our sun and Earth can be seen, how small and irrelevant I must be in the universe!"

But after a while, my optimism took over again and I said to myself: "No, I am not irrelevant and minuscule! I am as big as that galaxy because I belong to a species which was able to take that picture."

In the past, it was only exceptional, genial, godly beings like Jesus, the Buddha, Confucius, or sensitive artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Mozart, Bach and Beethoven who were cosmic beings. Today every child can be educated (inducated) into a cosmic being, thanks to the tremendous knowledge humanity now possesses.

Humanity has now a computer-photography of the remotest milky way of galaxies. Its distance is 15 billion light-years away! Multiply 300.000 km (the distance covered by light in a second) by 60, again by 60, then by 24, then by 365 and finally by 15 billion, and you will obtain the staggering figure of kilometers of 142 followed by 21 zeros!

On a clear night, the human eye can see about 6000 objects in the sky: satellites, planets, stars and galaxies. Through the biggest telescope on Earth, astronomers can see 40 billion objects. With the first telescope in space, we can see from 5 to 10 trillion objects in heaven! And with the first under-sea telescope we will even "see" black holes, quasars and galactic nuclei!

The same is happening with the infinitely small. More than 200 sub-particles of the atom have been discovered. The distance of one of them to the next higher particle is comparable to the distance between our Earth and the sun!
Tell this to a cave-man, to Socrates or to George Washington to see their reactions! We must be proud to be living today. This is said to all children on the first day of their attendance of a Robert Muller School, the new schools of global, cosmic education.

Remark of a little boy to his mother when he came home from a Robert Muller school:
"Mammy, did you know that we are living in heaven?"

Every head of state and every human being should remember this and derive from it a deep joy and sense of responsibility.

Someday soon we will discover our true cosmic meaning. Then everything will fall into place on planet Earth. Then government will become a sacred duty, a respect for divine, cosmic laws and no longer the object of narrow humans wills, whims, interests, gains and ambitions.

A face glued to another face cannot see that face. Until we saw our total Earth from space, we could not see the Earth, we could not understand her. We saw the stars and the heavens and we discovered God, the Father. Now we can see the Earth, and we discover beautiful goddess Eartha, Gaia, our Mother in all languages.

The first duty of Earth government will be to determine what is right in the total framework of the universe, of time, of our planet and of humanity. Then the real, most advanced human history will begin!

If you want to have a sense of infinity and of eternity, look at the sky and the stars. If you want to see the beauty of the small, look at a flower or a grain of sand.

As William Blake said so beautifully:

"To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour."

If you wish to give children a glimpse of the immensity of the universe, of the vast expanses of the infinitely large and of the teeming complexity of the infinitely small, i.e. the colossal range of human knowledge, take them on the same day to an astronomical observatory and to an atomic bubble chamber!

On a wall in my office on the top floor of the United Nations I had this list of major segments of our place in the universe. It reaches from the infinitely large to the infinitely small. On each of these layers, humanity has begun to cooperate actively in one or several of its world agencies:

Our planetary home in the universe


Astrophysics and outer space

Our relations with the sun

The Earth's physics

The Earth's climate

The atmosphere

The biosphere

The seas and oceans

The polar caps

The arable lands

The deserts

The mountains

The Earth's water

Plant life

Animal life

Human life

The Earth's energy


The Earth's crust

The Earth's minerals

Microbial life, genetics

The world of the atom

This is the first of the four cosmic frameworks of our place and fate in the universe.

For the meaning of the acronyms, see Annex.

Within this vast framework, the human species is exploring and probing our planetary home in every possible angle. The world conferences held for the first time in human history reflect this new phase of our evolution. Such conferences were:

~ a world conference on the utilization and conservation of resources in 1949 ~

~ two world conferences on new and renewable sources of energy in 1961 and 1981 ~

~ three law of the sea conferences in 1959, 1970 and 1973 ~

~ a world conference on the biosphere in 1968 ~

~ two world conferences on the environment in 1972 and 1992 ~

~ two outer space conferences in 1968 and 1982 ~

~ a world food conference in 1973 ~

~ a world desert conference in 1977 ~

~ a world conference on the ozonosphere in 1978 ~

~ three world climate conferences in 1979, 1982 and 1989 ~

~ a world water conference in 1979 ~

~ a world science conference in 1979 ~

~ two special sessions of the UN General Assembly on a new international economic order ~

~ several international conferences on the peaceful uses of atomic energy ~

These UN conferences were pathbreaking first foundations for the next phase
of government: Earth government.

All along this Copernican framework, individuals, groups, firms, governments, associations and world entities work, search and help humanity fulfill its destiny in the universe. We are now universal, cosmic beings. Think, consult your heart and find your right place and contribution as co-workers in this extraordinary, vast cosmic adventure.

Not a single encyclopedia on Earth presents our total knowledge within the two most obvious and logical frameworks which impose themselves upon us so glaringly, namely: the total universe, from the infinitely large to the infinitely small, and total time, from the infinite past to the infinite future.

The editors of the world's great encyclopedias should meet and agree on that new common table of contents of human search and knowledge.

We are minuscule entities in the universe and in time. We will never fully understand the infinitely large and infinitely small. We will never grasp the beginningless beginning and endless end. And yet, within these limitations we can live miraculous, joyful, confident, searching, fulfilled, extraordinary lives and acquire an incredible consciousness of the stupendous universe and of our miraculous Earth.

If the stars and sun would begin to doubt, they would soon extinguish themselves. So it is with humans.

Even if Einstein proved to me a thousand times that time is a function of space, I will have no use for it. For me, indeed, the two greatest realities in which we live are space and time. No mathematical formula or mental reasoning can take this fundamental reality away from me. The real, true, infinite variations in relationships in the vast universe escape all human understanding. They are beyond the grasp of our human words.

In the United Nations one is promoted from a national human being to a global, Earth, universal being. It is the greatest school of an expanded consciousness and art of living at this stage of our evolution.


Dag Hammarskjöld and U Thant, two Secretaries-General of the UN, were the most universal human beings I have known in my life.

Seen in the four infinites, human life becomes a tremendous privilege. We could as well have never been born and never received the gift of life in the vast universe and eternity. We must therefore be "good" cosmic units, children of God, in order to merit our lives and contribute to a higher level of evolution. This ancient religious truth is beginning to reappear in the science of "genetic codification" and in the work of the United Nations, the first global genetic memory bank.

The four infinites, planet Earth, humanity and the individual will henceforth constitute the great human agenda of evolution.


The measurements we use to "see" the infinitely large are pretty well "frozen" on our planet: a parallel might not be parallel in the universe, but is on our Earth; time may be a factor of speed in the universe, but we live within a firm earthly time. As for the relationships within the infinitely small, they are safely locked in by nature, unless the scientists and the military let them loose and destroy this planet.

Time, light, speed, space, energy, atomic weight, attraction, gravity, black holes, white dwarfs, quasars, leptons, weak force, etc., I admire you all, you discoveries by great minds of some of the basic factors and relationships in the universe. Thanks to you, we have machines, factories, electricity, longer lives, better lives, and we can see into the infinitely large and infinitely small. But please do not forget this: I have been able to live for many years a prodigious life without ever worrying about my atoms and sub-atoms. Humanity has lived for millions of years, and most of its 6 billion people wake up every morning without knowing or minding about their atomic structure. We live on a specific planet with a specific weight, time, speed, texture and place in the universe. I live on it with my specific genes, weight, time, speed, texture and reality. And none of your laws explains my dreams , my loves, my cravings, my sleep, my conscience, my growth, my life, my divinity and my death. You help me greatly and I am thankful to you. But I would prefer to live without you as humans have done for so long rather than do without my loves, my dreams, illusions and my God.

The instruments we use to "see" the infinitely large and the infinitely small are a function of our human senses and perceptions. We stand somewhere on the fathomless universal scale of distances and volumes, and we judge Creation and time from our point of view. In the universe, "great" and "small," "brief" and "long" may have no meaning. In the universe everything is probably equally important. Perhaps not even "to be or not to be" may be important. But I cannot conceive it. To me everything seems important on this planet.

In the end, it is all a question of joyful surrender to the miracle of life, Creation and God. With our limited human senses and means in the vast unfathomable universe we will never make it. The acceptance of an original force, of a Creator, of a supreme being with whom we can talk and feel one through prayer, faith and love, is still for innumerable people the simplest and greatest way out of the insoluble mysteries.

Humanity must concentrate again on the definition of God, of what the divine intentions are for this planet and for our life in the universe and eternal time. Only then will we find the ways of right human behavior and relationships and of making this planet a haven of peace, beauty, justice and happiness. We must reestablish the reign of God on Earth. We must think, feel and act like universal beings. We must find the rules and laws of the universe as they apply to our planet. This is what is expected of us.

Who and what should guide us on this planet? The vast majority of the people do not even know what they want, much less how to govern the world. Their values, wants and beliefs have been programmed into them by education, religion, ideology, nationalism, politics, business, advertisement, marketing, monopolies, the media. What is needed for our future destiny is the determination of the cosmic laws which should guide us and our planet. That is the gigantic challenge to the United Nations. That is what two Popes came to say to us in the world organization.

It is not so much the world which we should govern or manage well but ourselves.

If we look into the windows of a Cathedral from the outside we see only darkness. If we look through its windows from the inside we see heavenly sights. Humanity should never neglect to look through the window of its skies to the sun, the stars and the breathtaking beauty of the universe.

If we do not believe in God, if we think that we can do it all by ourselves on this little planet, we simply shut out the entire infinity and eternity, which is the blindest thing we could no. No "primitive" people have ever done it.

When humanity will have solved its material, political and social problems, its intellectual, emotional and moral problems, it will be faced with the most fundamental question of all: the spiritual quest, namely what is our place and meaning in the universe and in time? Then will start the cosmic, divine age of our fabulous journey. Then we will find at long last the right answers to our problems. At the entrance of a new century and the third millennium the UN should convene a world conference on the meaning and spirituality of life.

After the Gaia hypothesis will come the Uranus (solar) hypothesis. Then will come the Zeus or Whole Cosmos hypothesis and we will find God again.

Beautiful, satisfying music required the search for the laws of harmony. Similarly, a beautiful, happy human society will require the search for the laws of harmony of the Earth and of the universe. This will be the role of tomorrow's universal, human and Earth preserving, embellishing government.

It takes a great act of courage to try to make sense of life and Creation: it requires faith, love, passion, commitment, dream, enthusiasm, poetry and music as much as mathematics and science. There is more in Shakespeare and Beethoven than in Darwin and Einstein. I sometimes wonder if humanity would not be better off by foregoing its investigations and conquests of the infinitely large and infinitely small. We could as well be content with seeing Creation as it is in all its breathtaking beauty and wholeness manifested on Earth. For will we ever be able to control the forces we unlock? That is the great question.

Of the vast expanses of the universe only a tiny part is of concern to us: our solar system, our outer space and our biosphere. Beyond that we are perfectly safe: we are located in such a remote corner of the cosmos that no explosion of a nova nor a galactic upheaval is likely to affect us for billions of years. Our only danger and potential enemy is ourselves.

During most of human history, people thought that the Earth was the center of the universe. Then we learned that the sun was not turning around the Earth but that the Earth was circling around the sun. So we thought that the sun was the center of the universe. Then we learned that the sun is only a small star turning around the axis of a galaxy of stars. Then we learned that this galaxy is circling around the pole of a cluster of galaxies which in turn is rotating around the pole of a spheric expanding universe! How small and diminished we have become! Scientists further tell us that time, distance, speed, mass and energy are all relative. But, if this is so, then perhaps we are not so small after all! We might even be the only planet with life in a universe of fire, gases, atomic explosions and interstellar voids! Our conditions might be unique: the right distance from a sun not to burn and not to freeze, the right mass to retain water and an atmosphere, the right rotation and orbit, the right atomic density and chemical composition. So we might after all be a true showpiece, a unique, miraculous success of the cosmos. What responsibility this would mean!

What change of thinking, concerns, policies and behavior it would require from our political leaders! What immense human pride, gratitude and truly religious feeling it would command from us! Why not try loving and managing well that miracle?

The sun to humans:
"Look at my nine planets. Three of them are pure ice. Two are masses of gas. Two are fiery balls and one is icy rock. On only one, namely yours, after sending out my rays for 5 billion years, have I succeeded to produce life, a very rare phenomenon, perhaps unique in the universe. And see what a mess you are doing with it. I am ashamed of you. You are playing with my Creation without the slightest comprehension of the miracle it is and of the magnitude or your misdoings. Why are you incapable to manage your planet in peace, harmony and with untold love?"

Our answer:
"Soon we will, please give us a little more time. We are only in the kindergarten of figuring it out."

Sometimes when I see nature, people, cars, airplanes, buildings, I stop walking and I say to myself:
"What an incredible globe this is, turning at 1666 kilometers per hour with so much life on it, with people standing on it, their heads pointing like antennas into all the directions of the universe, with leaves, plants, diatoms and algae avidly absorbing the energy emitted by our star. And to think that we are the only planet of our sun, and perhaps of the entire universe, to possess life! How can we not stand in endless awe before such a miracle, preserve it and make it the most perfect cosmic success in the universe.

Secretary-General U Thant once asked an astrophysicist:
"Is it true what the Buddha believed, namely that humans will never be able to leave their solar system?"

The astrophysicist confirmed it: humans are for all eternity prisoners of our minuscule solar system. They will never be able to travel beyond its limits, despite all the fantasies of science fiction.

How lucky we are, therefore, to have our little planet to stand on, our oxygen to breathe, our sun to heat, illuminate and nourish us, our waters to quench our thirst. But alas, to those who destroy it, to the pessimists who denigrate life we cannot even say: "Love this planet or leave it," for there is no other place to go. They will die on this Earth and be recycled in its ground, hopefully to be reborn as optimistic, life-loving creatures.



Humans will now enter a fascinating new period of evolution: added to Darwin's thesis of the survival of the fittest, to Mendell's law of heredity, to the genetic codification of our experiences in DNA and RNA, we are now blessed with the birth of a universal, global, planetary consciousness, which makes us recognize our false avenues, wrong values, and errors. A new anthropology, economics, sociology, values systems, ethics, philosophy, morality, spirituality, and politics are being born under our eyes at the beginning of this new century and millennium.


In the Robert Muller schools the children are taught about their place in the universe in a very simple way: they are asked to fill out the following form and to draw at the end a picture of their home. A child who has done this will not forget it for the rest of his life:

WHERE ARE WE?

UNIVERSE ___________________________________________________________________

GALAXY _____________________________________________________________________

SOLAR SYSTEM _______________________________________________________________

PLANET ______________________________________________________________________

HEMISPHERE _________________________________________________________________

CONTINENT __________________________________________________________________

COUNTRY ____________________________________________________________________

STATE _______________________________________________________________________

CITY OR VILLAGE _____________________________________________________________

STREET ______________________________________________________________________

NAME _______________________________________________________________________

You are truly a citizen of the Universe!

A PICTURE OF MY HOME

Decide to Aggrandize Yourself......


to the vastness of the universe

to the greatness of God

to the beauty of Creation

to the genius of humanity

to the magnificence of our planet

to the unique treasure you are.


Aggrandize your mind

Aggrandize your heart

Aggrandize your soul


Extend all your senses

to the stars in heaven

to the beauty of the Earth

to the potential of the human race

to the infinity of your inner life.


And you will become the universe

You will become Creation

You will become humanity

You will become infinity

You will at long last be your real

divine, miraculous self

in total communion with all there is
in heaven and on Earth.

Then you will contribute your peace and happiness

to our miraculous humanity and well-preserved,
heavenly planet in the universe.

UN ACRONYMS


FAO
Food and Agriculture Organization

IAEA
International Atomic Energy Agency

IBRD
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development

ICAO
International Civil Aviation Organization

IFAD
International Fund for Agricultural Development

IFC
International Financial Corporation

ILO
International Labour Organization

IMF
International Monetary Fund

IMO
International Maritime Organization

ITU
International Telecommunication Union

UNCHS
UN Centre for Human Settlements

UNDP
UN Development Program

UNEP
UN Environment Program

UNFPA
UN Fund for Population Activities

UNESCO
UN Educational, Science and Culture Organization

WFP
World Food Program

WHO
World Health Organization

WMO
World Meteorological Organization

Volume I ~ Chapter 2

Our Miraculous Planetary Home.

We admire cosmonauts who travel in small space capsules or set foot on the moon or space platforms, but we forget that we are ourselves cosmonauts traveling on a space globe the like of which no humans will ever be able to construct. Our artificial satellites are entirely made of materials from spaceship Earth. We must set our values and admirations straight. Human creations can never be more admirable than nature's, for we are part, tools and products of nature and of the mysterious forces of the universe. All our achievements must be traced back to our given miraculous planet and to the Creator or creative forces of the universe. They alone are unfathomable, admirable and sacred. We are admirable and sacred only for being part of them, for being their creation, caretakers and co-creators.

We wrongly say: we live on this planet. We must say: we are part of this planet, in flesh, in liquids, in air, in mind, in heart, in life, in death and in rebirth. We are part of it as long as it will live and beyond our life.

Being born from the Earth and being an intimate part of her, we must understand Her, listen to Her, cherish Her, blend with Her and not conquer Her. We must not destroy or wound our miraculous Mother Earth from whom proceeds all we are, all we have and all we will ever be.

When there is a planet as rich and beautiful as ours, inhabited by a species as astonishing as ours, then we must be patient with the latter's efforts to find its proper place, harmony and fulfillment on it. No one, indeed, can prove that we are not a unique and miraculous planet and species in the universe. We should consider our planet unique in the universe, benefiting from very extraordinary cosmic circumstances and endowed with truly exceptional conditions. From such a point of view, our planet becomes forthwith sacred and infinitely precious, human life and all life on it true miracles, and the government of that planet a sacred, holy function. Yes, we must visualize a possibly lifeless universe to understand our immense responsibility as the trustees, children and caretakers of our incredible, miraculous planet Earth alive.

Astrophysicists tell us that the conditions necessary for the birth of life on any planet in the universe are so innumerable that they represent the most astronomical mathematical improbability figure humans can conceive.

Even if there were other life-bearing planets in the universe, ours would still be unique because it is with planets as it is with humans and all living beings: there will never be two identical ones.

If you feel lost, desperate and hopeless about the human condition, just remember that only 500 years ago we did not even know that the Earth was round, that there existed another continent beyond the seas and that the Earth was turning around the sun and not the contrary. We are still in the kindergarten of the new global age. Have patience and a sense of wonder. We will learn infinitely more and see further extraordinary progress.

Thanks to the UN and to its 32 specialized agencies and world programs, we have now for the first time in evolution an adequate inventory and information on our planetary home, from the stratosphere to the depths of the oceans, from the world's climate to the atom and genes, from the deserts to arable lands, from the polar caps to the tropics and equator, etc. Nations have even agreed to bore holes of at least 1000 meters into the Earth's crust to better know its interior.

As a result, for the first time, our species is in a position to treat and manage well its planetary home. And we will do it. It will be the most exciting period of our history.

There are places on this Earth, natural or human-made which are so beautiful that one wishes to exclaim: "Oh, please remain forever as you are, you are so beautiful." Such places should be protected from change, and someday the entire planet would be a paradise, a cherished world heritage. Then economics will be reduced to our planet's maintenance and to our essential, reasonable needs. Then humanity will be a peaceful, fulfilled species living in incredible happiness and harmony on its beautiful planetary home.

In many respects we do live already in Palace Earth, in paradise Earth, but we have not yet learned to live peacefully and properly in it. We will.

Scientists tell us that a species that does not take good care of its habitat is doomed. Humanity must become a caring one instead of a conquering, destructive, overconsuming one.

There are no greater books than the Earth and humanity themselves. There are no greater novels than our own lives. From morning to evening we can read and write these Godgiven, wonderful works. There should be two basic textbooks in all schools of this planet: the Book of the Earth and the Book of Humanity. And we should all contribute to them.

Once we have seen a picture of our incredible planet from outer space, we are never the same person anymore. That picture should be hanging in all schoolrooms of the world.

It is incredible, albeit miraculous, what we human species have been able to do on this little planet! But now we must beware, for we are beginning to do some serious damage. Thus,

Each minute


we destroy 21 hectares of tropical forests

we consume 34,725 barrels of oil

50 tons of fertile soil are washed or blown off cropland

12,000 tons of carbon dioxide are added to the atmosphere.


Each hour


685 hectares of productive dryland become desert

120 million dollars are wasted on military expenditures, a trillion a year

55 people are poisoned and 5 are killed by pesticides

60 new cases of cancer are diagnosed in the United States alone, over 5000,000 cases
each year with 20,000 cases leading to death, because
of the thinning of the ozonosphere.


Each day


25,000 people die of water shortage and contamination

10 tons of nuclear waste are generated by 485 nuclear plants

250,000 tons of sulfuric acid fall as acid rain in the northern hemisphere, damaging lakes
and millions of hectares of forests

60 tons of plastic packaging and 372 tons of fishing nets are dumped into the seas by commercial fishermen, killing thousands of fishes,
sea birds and sea mammals.

Every five hours a species becomes extinct...

How does our dear, precious Mother Earth feel about that? For in practically all languages, the Earth is a mother or goddess: Matri Bhumi, mother Earth in Sanskrit; Gaia, the goddess Earth in Greek; Eartha, the goddess Earth in Germanic languages; Ixmucane, mother Earth in the Maya language, etc. Someone should collect and publish the etymologies of the word Earth in all languages.

This beautiful planet of ours is fragile like a crystal. We must therefore treat it with utmost care.

I dream of a world in which no bird would fly away and no animal flee at the approach of a human.

O God, let us become the Planet of the Loving People

the Planet of the Smiling People

the Planet of the Peaceful People

the Planet of the Beautiful People

the Planet of the Healthy People

the Planet of the Happy People

the Planet of the Just People

the Planet of the Virtuous People

O God, let us become Your People

O God, let us become like You.

Perhaps we are already part of You,but we have not yet realized it or have forgotten it.

How beautiful you are, O my planet Earth! The yearly UN Earth Day on the spring equinox in March should become the most important day of the year.

Let us proclaim the third millennium the Millennium of Paradise Earth.

These incredible living trees, these beautiful flowers, these flying and singing birds, these mountains, these valleys, these seas and oceans, who created them? No human being could have. So who did? What is the mysterious creative force, still active and invisible around us? We call it God. May it not be in us too? May we not have become the most active manifestation of this creative force, the spearhead of further positive, non-destructive evolution? How wonderful it will be when we realize that.

Oh! how can some people not love, adore life! How can youth not believe in life! I will never understand it. We should remember at all times that our planet is one of the most beautiful ones in the universe. We are blessed with life, waters, plants, animals, seas and oceans, a teeming biosphere and senses which reach far into time and into space. We can see, feel, hear, talk, sing, think, love, understand, dream, embrace the heavens and the Earth. What more do we want? We are probably the most advanced life form in the universe, one of the greatest successes of the cosmos or God, living on one of the luckiest, unique planets, and yet we do not rejoice at all times and do not administer it yet with the divine care it requires. Yes, please let us rejoice, rejoice, constantly rejoice.

Poor little bird on my porch. You will never know all I know. You will never fly where I fly. But to each his God-given world and happiness. For I too am only a little bird on a porch of the vast incomprehensible universe.

I observed a little hen on a hill in Switzerland: it never looked at the beautiful mountains and lakes nor at the sky, as I did. I felt so grateful, so happy to be a human.

In our dreams of a perfect planet, there are no wars, no violence, no hatred, no injustices, no drugs, no alcohol, no armaments, no nuclear dangers, no fouled air, water and soils. All these dreams converge for the first time ever on a universal scale in the United Nations. So are their violations, obstacles and birthpains. Humans should be enthralled with this unprecedented, gigantic, beautiful enterprise, all children of the world should be taught about it.

Human life is truly an astonishing mystery. So much is involved in the constitution and functioning of a single human being: trillions of cells, each a prodigious little factory, thousands of miles of vessels, hundreds of automated clocks, an amazing brain with 100 billion neurons whose mechanical reproduction would require the volume of a cathedral, senses, a mind, a heart and a soul capable of embracing the entire planet and universe. So much is involved in the education of a human: years of learning in the family, in school, in university and the never ending experience of life. So much is involved in his participation in life: the wish to be of use, to create, to be recognized, to be remembered, to leave something behind. And then, when the peak of experience and wisdom is reached, that immense cosmos begins to wobble and to weaken until it returns to Mother Earth. What was the purpose of it all? What kept such an incredible cosmos together? The inborn will for life? Yes. But why? It all makes sense only if we suppose that we are part of an incomprehensible but grandiose design in the universe and in time. The discovery of the reason and ultimate objective of that design remains the fundamental prerequisite of proper human government. This is one of our most exciting tasks. We are still at the surface of things. We still need further Copernican revolutions. How can people lose their time in trifles, unconcerned, unamazed by the miracle of life?

How can we be blind? The universe is in a child, in a flower, in a garden, in a house, in one's work, in a song, in a painting, in every human being. God is everywhere, as long as our attitude is one of respect, gratitude and endless wonder at the prodigy of life. The beauty of the universe is in my home and in the immensity of the heavens.

These words uttered by Pablo Casals have been a great guide in my life:

"The child must know that he is a miracle, a miracle, that since the beginning of the world there hasn't been and until the end of the world there will not be another child like him. He is a unique thing, from the beginning to the end of the world. Now, that child acquires a responsibility: `Yes, it is true, I am a miracle. I am a miracle like a tree is a miracle, like a flower is a miracle. Now, if I am a miracle, can I do a bad thing? No, I can't, because I am a miracle."

"God, Nature. I call God Nature, or Nature God. And then comes this other thought: I am a miracle that God or Nature has made. Could I kill? Could I kill someone? No, I can't. Or another human being who is a child like me, can he kill me? I think that this theory can help to bring forth another way of thinking in the world. The world today is bad; it is a bad world. And it is because they don't talk to the children in the way that the children need."

God has given us an inestimable capacity to focus our senses, our mind, our heart and our lives from the infinitely large to the infinitely small. We can see both the stars and heavens and the traces of atomic sub-particles in a bubble chamber. We can love the sky afar or a flower or brook near by. We can tremble at the passionate sound of Beethoven or at the humble song of a bird. We can live with a gigantic mind embracing the entire universe or as a passionate collector of little stamps. We can live with a religious heart encompassing God and all living beings or as parents loving dearly each other and their children.

A being from outer space who would see our planet for the first time would expect it to be inhabited "inside", as is a spaceship. But we live "on" it, stand on it, cultivate it, build above it, breathe the oxygen emitted from it, heat ourselves at its sun, and do not have to live inside it. A strange, lucky, planet indeed with its thin biosphere of constantly renewed life which warms and feeds itself revolving around a glowing overhanging star called the sun.

I had in my office at the UN a drawing made by UN cartographers: it showed the biosphere or sphere of life, a little layer of no more than a few miles reaching into the atmosphere and into depths of the seas. In it all life of our solar system is located. Beyond and below it there is not a microbe left. I asked the cartographers to reduce the radius of the Earth to one meter: the biosphere appeared merely as a line not bigger than an egg shell! To politicians who visited my office I said: "This is what you are playing with. This is what you are filling with conflicts, games of power, money, interests, nations and weapons. Why are you harmful to that incredible, delicate so precious biosphere? Please be their healing, loving guides and statues will be erected to you."

There is still so much to do in our home. A world inspection team should go around, distributing marks of achievements and failures. If I were a member of it I would give highest marks to Holland for having transformed uninhabitable marshes into a beautiful land, to Israel for having made deserts bloom and to Costa Rica for having demilitarized itself, made ten percent of its territory national parks and created the first University of Peace on Earth.

Yes, there is still so much to do on our planet. There is not even a Napoleon who would look at it and say:

"I want these canals and tunnels to be dug; I want this overflow of water brought to this desert; I want these solar and hydroelectrical power plants to be build; I want these new lakes to be formed; I want these deserts to be stopped and made to bloom; I want these world railroads and roads to be build; I want these world satellites to be launched; I want all people to be decently fed, educated and employed; I want world laws; I want world justice; I want a World Treasury; I want proper Earth government; and so forth. Alas, very few talk like that. Doesn't any politician want to become famous?

Nature and evolution have tried so many incredible combinations and forms of matter, energy and life that no idea conceived by humans will ever be able to match them.

With its marvelous life-giving atmosphere, waters and nature, planet Earth is a true miracle in the universe. On it dwell many extraordinary living creatures, including humans which hopefully will not destroy it.

When I was a young UN official, my superiors always deleted the word "world" from my writings and replaced it by "international". Today, the words most often used at the UN are: the world, the planet, the globe, interdependent, planetary, global. The human mind has expanded its vision considerably. But the words universe, cosmic, God, Creation, infinity, eternity, love, soul and spirituality are