Question: What do the delegates and ambassadors who are participating in the General Assembly offer to the United Nations spiritually?

Sri Chinmoy: I am giving only my own inner feeling. Since all the delegates, all the diplomats, have a heart and a soul they have the best intention to serve mankind as such. From the practical point of view, they may not succeed. But their intention is always good. Otherwise, they would not come to the United Nations to be of service. Their inner motive is excellent. However, when we try to do things on the outer plane, we often meet with countless problems. If we give way to these problems then we don’t succeed.

But all the diplomats and delegates have something spiritual to offer. They have come, first of all, to serve their country, their nation. Their nation is not one person but thousands and millions of people. They represent their nation, so millions of people are inside them, speaking through them to the world at large. So the message that the ambassador of a nation gives is something that the nation wants the whole world to hear. It is the nation’s collective freedom or collective contribution to mankind that the ambassador is offering. Therefore, we must realise there is something deep or meaningful inside him, something fruitful inside him. This very thing, on the outer plane, may not bear fruit all at once. But just because it does not bear fruit immediately, we cannot say that the nation does not have a good motive or that the individual who represents the nation has a bad intention.

Each delegate is a human being and each human being has a soul. That means a solid portion of God’s Consciousness-Light is inside each individual. Each individual has the capacity, the potentiality, the needed power to serve mankind spiritually. But it takes time. Some individuals open up to the light sooner than others. But nobody — no diplomat or delegate or individual — can live without in some way offering to the Source the love, concern, sympathy, compassion, devotedness and all the other good qualities that come from the Source.