Archives –- Towards Peace Through Unity, 1975

This pamphlet “Towards Peace Through Unity” was written and published in July 1975, immediately following the founding, in Sweden, of PEACE THROUGH UNITY.

TOWARDS PEACE THROUGH UNITY

It is a truism to say that we live in a time of unprecedented change and transformation. Yet it is only by keeping this fact continually in the forefront of our minds that we can avoid the trap of imagining that we can be exempted from active personal participation in and co-responsibility for the immense changes which must affect radically the lives of every one of us.

Although fear, suspicion, mutual mistrust, selfishness, and exploitative tendencies still bedevil our human relationships, the most encouraging sign of our times is the awakening and growing determination on the part of citizens of good will in all countries to become ever more deeply involved in their search for ways to make their contribution to the establishing of right human relationships and to the cause of peace and justice on our suffering planet.

What we are here concerned with is not so much the “struggle for peace” – which is meaningless without relating it to freedom and true social justice – at the level of United Nations and inter-governmental activities of a political, cultural, social and economic character designed to contribute to this end. We feel that the time has come when greater recognition and encouragement needs to be given by national governments to the indispensable contribution to a just and peaceful world that can potentially be made by the “common man” – the ordinary citizen of goodwill in every country – who, as he becomes educated in a true sense of world citizenship and responsibility, earnestly seeks ways to play his part from a standpoint of identification with and loyalty to his highest vision of what it means to be human and to serve the well-being of all planetary life.

Such individuals may well at present constitute a relatively small minority. But their influence can nevertheless be significant. And their activity, provided that their motivation is to be unitive and not separative, should be viewed as vitally complementary to the activity of those holding official positions and fully identifying themselves with the governmental or ideological stance where matters of political or social injustice are in question. Such activity need in no sense take the form of disloyalty to government or country but should be viewed as essentially of a complementary character as we move towards an increasingly global vision.

In the world today there is a growing movement in the heart and spirit of peace-loving peoples in all countries, which is beginning to take form as what might best be described as an invisible fellowship. Like a seed having its own natural and spontaneous growth, this rapidly spreading international communion consists of individuals who, when they meet – and most of them will never physically do so – recognize one another through their compassionate and inclusive outlook, their demonstration of a selfless personal quality of living and through their commitment to true social and humanitarian world service. They share a concern to live and work in a way that serves to widen, deepen and intensify areas of mutual understanding. While giving due recognition to differences which should be both acknowledged and respected, they are not concerned to give their energies to being argumentative over these differences, but are concerned rather to keep their vision and their energies steadily focused upon unitive possibilities in all their relationships. It is evident that we are not here referring to any organized activity but to an organic and, let us hope, irreversible evolution in the body of the family of man, which is resulting in a transformation towards holistic tendencies in an increasing number of the world’s peoples. Even if these at present constitute only a relatively small minority, there is, especially among the youth of today, a perceptible trend away from narrow self-interest and self-centredness, with all their attendant miseries for the individual and for the community at large, towards a concern to think and act in the interests of the whole human family and the other life streams sustained and nourished by the planet.

Apart from any other encouraging factor in our human situation, this in itself is one of the most hopeful signs in our crisis-ridden time. This trend, and the work being done by these individuals, who so often act anonymously behind the scenes, is providing a not insignificant service as we face the tensions brought about by the need to move, in all areas of human relationships, from confrontation to co-operation and finally to a form of union and world governance which must essentially be based upon true democratic principles, which are globally acceptable.

As we prepare to move towards a unified planetary civilization, it is well to bear in mind that earth mankind is not the sole nor the highest intelligence in the universe. We live in a universal organism in which higher intelligent cosmic forces and laws continually operate with creative effect in and through its every part and particle, therefore including our planet and all life upon it. It would be unwise to ignore the fact that the universe consists of intelligent energies which interpenetrate and interact with our own. Some of our foremost scientists are not only realizing the basic oneness of all life – the reducibility of all matter to energy – but are believing it to be probable that all energy is living intelligent energy on its own level. While we can to some extent shut ourselves off from the influence of these higher intelligent energies – just as we can to some degree ignore the impact of our interrelationships and interaction with one another – we can equally be open, if we so choose, to co-operate with this higher intelligence and thus with a larger overall purpose for universal evolution, embracing the evolutionary development of our own planet.

While it may initially be humbling to admit that our human level intelligence and wisdom has not always been of the very highest calibre – as is evident enough from the course of human history on earth – we may perhaps now have sufficient wisdom to realize that it might seem a little foolish to refuse to let our minds, with true discrimination, be infused by the energies of higher levels of wisdom and intelligence. To think that this would be shirking the responsibility to solve the problems we have created as a human family would be no more valid than to claim that an individual human being should in no circumstances, however grave, ask or be given any assistance from his neighbours. We exist on earth to care for and to give and receive service to and from one another. It is simply a matter of opening our eyes to an understanding of the fact that we live in a wider network of interrelationships than many of us may hitherto have suspected and that our planet is not a closed system, an isolated unit any more than are our nations, our families or our individual selves.

When there is a sincere aspiration to open up to and co-operate with the various levels of higher and wiser intelligences, there can be insights, which will always be for the good of the whole, into the solution of individual and collective problems. A growing number of people in all countries bear witness to this experience, including many agnostics who are known to be giving recognition to the existence of this higher unifying intelligent power. It is of no consequence whether we call this process attunement, telepathy or some other form of extra sensory perception.

In the foregoing we have suggested that the complex problems human beings have created for themselves in the long course of human history are unlikely to be solved by the same level and quality of intelligence and consciousness that has been responsible for bringing them about; but that as we now move towards the emergence of a global civilization discoveries are being made in regard to our relationship with the living energies of the universe, which, taking into account the burgeoning spirit of goodwill arising among a growing number of citizens of every land, introduces quite new factors into problem solving which are now to play an increasingly significant part in the overall human situation. In the task of seeking out areas of mutual understanding and co-operation, a movement towards a resolution of conflict situations can often be furthered from a basis of mutual agreement where this is found possible at a level transcending areas of specific disagreement, and common meeting points become more readily possible when an agreed mutual stance can first be taken at this deeper level of communication.

To exemplify what we mean, we would like to offer the following seven points, as representing basic truths in which an atmosphere of mutual agreement can be rooted and which may often serve as a joint springboard and reference point for working towards the solution of specific conflict situations:

There is an invisible, harmonizing energy – an intelligent, wise and loving energy – at work throughout the universe, which can affect our decision-making in the highest interest of all, if we freely decide to attune to it with the will to think and act in the interests of the whole;
It is therefore desirable to identify our own power of will with this unifying power and to be open to whatever disciplines or teachings may assist us and others in achieving and maintaining this identification;
This invisible creative energy embodies what might humanly be interpreted as a purpose for the infinite unfoldment and evolution of all life;
There exists within every individual the capacity to evolve in and towards perfection;
The disunity, conflict and general distress of so many human beings on earth and the pollution of our planetary environment result from a choice by man of a course of evolution and development which has tended to deviate from the recognition of and attunement to the higher qualities of life and the loving, wiser and unifying energies which we are ever free to unite with and express;
It is open to us, and is desirable, to deepen a sense of our invisible unity in spirit with all created life, and with the source of that life, and so to draw to us an ever greater capacity to serve in co-operation with our fellow human beings to establish right human relationships and right relationships with the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms and with the laws and forces of nature;
In the establishing of these right relationships we shall be laying the foundations for a true brotherhood of life and peace on earth.