Director-General UN Geneva, 16 Jun 1980

Filed under MG Members in other events

During a European lecture and concert tour last spring, Sri Chinmoy met privately with several world figures. An account of his meeting in the Vatican with Pope John Paul II appeared in the July 1980 bulletin. Sri Chinmoy also met with several dignitaries while in Geneva on 16 June.

Fol-lowing are brief excerpts from his discussions on world peace and reiigion with Mr. Luigi Cottafavi, Director-General of the United Nations in Geneva,’

See else where for his meeting with:

  • His Excellency Mr. Gurbachan Singh, Indian Ambassador to Switzerland; and
  • Mr. Pestalozzt~ Vice-President of t h e International Red Cross Committee.
  • Sri Chinmoy’s visit to Rome, 18 June, included a lecture at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, on “The Inner Hunger. “

Meeting with the Director-General of the United Nations

Sri Chinmoy:

It h as been a great honour for me to meet you and to learn so much about your experiences with different religions. Being a seeker, I have tremendous love for all religions. I find that all religions are essentially the same; only we are calling each one by a different name.

God, being One, is omnipresent and omniscient. But, as human beings, we are like children of the same family who are fighting among each other. Each of us will say, “I am the dearest; he is my father and not yours.”

But everybody knows that the children all have the same father.

1980-06-16 Mr Cottafavi Dir.General of the UN in Geneva-crp-2

Mr. Luigi Cottafavi; Director-General of the United Nations:

Exactly. At the United Nations Headquarters in Geneva, we are devoting ourselves to a task which is almost a religious one. Our wide scope of activities seeks to create better conditions in the world, which will allow our Charter to be enforced. We have, for example, economic development programmes in areas which are in need. But we also study the way in which we are trying to help, because, as you know, the growth of advanced technology itself can be a kind of illness. So we must consider both the medicine and the ailing body. If the medicine is too strong, it can kill the body.

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