A. Walter Dorn Interreligious Insight April 2005
To better understand Sri Chinmoy’s spiritual vision and appreciation of the spiritual nature of the UN, it is appropriate to examine the philosophy of his august and eminent mentor, Sri Aurobindo, at whose ashram in Pondicherry, India, he lived, meditated and studied for twenty years. Sri Aurobindo was one of the spiritual and intellectual pioneers of international organization, as well as one of the early intellectual leaders of India’s independence movement. Writing at the very dawn of the idea, when an organization of independent nations for peace was merely a vague notion in the minds of a few, he charted the future of this great dream.
During World War I, when Europe was convulsing in a self-destructive dance of war, Sri Aurobindo wrote masterfully and prophetically about the need and “inevitability of some kind of world-union of free nations”. His works, titled, “The Human Cycle”, “The Ideal of Human Unity” and “War and Self-Determination” (1915-18), were pathfinders in laying out the foundation and planting the seeds, perhaps deep in the consciousness of humanity, for the development of international organization. In 1916, Aurobindo advocated a “first scheme to which the life of humanity could turn for a mould of growth in its reaching out to a unified existence”.
During World War I, when Europe was convulsing in a self-destructive dance of war, Sri Aurobindo wrote masterfully and prophetically about the need and “inevitability of some kind of world-union of free nations”. His works, titled, “The Human Cycle”, “The Ideal of Human Unity” and “War and Self-Determination” (1915-18), were pathfinders in laying out the foundation and planting the seeds, perhaps deep in the consciousness of humanity, for the development of international organization. In 1916, Aurobindo advocated a “first scheme to which the life of humanity could turn for a mould of growth in its reaching out to a unified existence”.
Perhaps not by coincidence, that same year, Woodrow Wilson became the first serving American president to endorse the concept of a world organization for peace. After the Great War, as it was called, President Wilson pushed for a League of Nations and chaired the Commission of the Paris Peace Conference that drafted the League’s Covenant, thereby bringing into being the world’s first international organization for peace and earning him the title of Father of the League. Wilson would declare in February 1919: “A living thing is born.”[ix] (As an aside, Woodrow Wilson’s daughter, Margaret Wilson, moved to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in India after her father’s death and lived there until 1944, the same year that Sri Chinmoy entered the Ashram as a permanent resident.)
For Aurobindo, “the whole secret of earthly existence” is that all life is in “progressive evolution of a Spirit”.[x] He welcomed Wilson’s initiatives in Paris, hoping that international law would be “an effective force which will restrain the egoism of nations as the social law restrains the egoism of individuals”, and delighted when the League of Nations “was in travail of formation”.[xi] In the inter-war period, however, he bemoaned the fact that the League was “constantly misused or hampered from its true functioning by the egoism and insincerity of its greater members”.[xii] Prophetically, he had noted in 1916, that difficulties and disappointments were “bound to help” the process of unification, since once begun it would be “impossible for humanity to draw back”.
When the United Nations was created after the World War II, Aurobindo recognized it as a continuation and improvement of the League: the same spirit, the same general structure, and, unfortunately, some of the same flaws. He lamented, for instance, that the “oligarchy of big Powers” witnessed in the League was a strong surviving element with the new United Nations, as seen in the “preponderant place assigned to the five great Powers in the Security Council and clinched by the device of the veto”.[xiii]
For Aurobindo, “the whole secret of earthly existence” is that all life is in “progressive evolution of a Spirit”.[x] He welcomed Wilson’s initiatives in Paris, hoping that international law would be “an effective force which will restrain the egoism of nations as the social law restrains the egoism of individuals”, and delighted when the League of Nations “was in travail of formation”.[xi] In the inter-war period, however, he bemoaned the fact that the League was “constantly misused or hampered from its true functioning by the egoism and insincerity of its greater members”.[xii] Prophetically, he had noted in 1916, that difficulties and disappointments were “bound to help” the process of unification, since once begun it would be “impossible for humanity to draw back”.
When the United Nations was created after the World War II, Aurobindo recognized it as a continuation and improvement of the League: the same spirit, the same general structure, and, unfortunately, some of the same flaws. He lamented, for instance, that the “oligarchy of big Powers” witnessed in the League was a strong surviving element with the new United Nations, as seen in the “preponderant place assigned to the five great Powers in the Security Council and clinched by the device of the veto”.[xiii]
More positively, Aurobindo prophetically wrote, shortly before he left the earth in 1950, that the arrival of the world-threatening Cold War was a confrontation that could be eliminated and harmony established. Much further in the future, he envisaged a “single world-State” as “the final outcome which the foundation of the UNO [i.e., United Nations Organization] presupposes”.[xiv] (He also envisaged a “United States of Europe” which was made concrete less than a half century later in the formation and solidification of the European Union.) In most of Aurobindo’s writings, the motor of evolution for international organization arises from “the drive of Nature towards larger agglomerations” for “the law of the community or nation … is to harmonise its life with that of the human aggregate and to pour itself out as a force for growth and perfection on [sic] humanity”.[xv] Behind this evolutionary process lay the notion of the "nation-soul".
Nolini Kanta Gupta, Aurobindo’s close friend and disciple as well as the Secretary of the Aurobindo Ashram, provided an incisive articulation of the nation-soul concept: A Nation is a living personality; it has a soul, even like a human individual. The soul of a nation is also a psychic being, that is to say, a conscious being, a formation of the Divine Consciousness and in direct contact with it …[xvi] He further presaged Sri Chinmoy’s view and experience in his statement that “[t]he individual can know of and come in contact with the nation’s soul in and through his own soul”.[xvii] Sri Chinmoy elaborated upon this idea of the evolving soul of international organizations.
Nolini Kanta Gupta, Aurobindo’s close friend and disciple as well as the Secretary of the Aurobindo Ashram, provided an incisive articulation of the nation-soul concept: A Nation is a living personality; it has a soul, even like a human individual. The soul of a nation is also a psychic being, that is to say, a conscious being, a formation of the Divine Consciousness and in direct contact with it …[xvi] He further presaged Sri Chinmoy’s view and experience in his statement that “[t]he individual can know of and come in contact with the nation’s soul in and through his own soul”.[xvii] Sri Chinmoy elaborated upon this idea of the evolving soul of international organizations.
While the United Nations has its own soul, it also is a “garland of nation-souls”. In this case, the total, the “group-soul” to use Aurobindo’s expression, is more than the sum of the parts. While a garland of flowers is a joy to behold, the United Nations is more than its member states. From the spiritual point of view, it is something greater, vaster and deeper than the sum of its parts. For instance, the UN Secretaries-General have become the spokesmen for humanity, not just the voice of an assembly of nations.
Dr. Walter Dorn is Associate Professor at the Canadian Forces College and the Royal Military College of Canada and teaches peacekeeping and international organization to military officers from Canada and abroad. He has served in UN peacekeeping missions and at UN Headquarters. He is editor of World Order for a New Millennium: Political, Cultural and Spiritual Approaches to Building Peace (1999). His web site is www.cfc.dnd.ca/dorn.
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