GERRI: Hello everyone.

And hello to people around the world who are listening to us now.  I'm Gerri Schwartz from the Visioneers International Network welcoming you to Episode 7 on our journey of extraordinary wisdom.

This episode is about Dr. Robert Muller a champion of global citizenship. My partner Des Berghofer and I would like to introduce this episode with a conversation about Robert.  Des, you start.

DESMOND: Thank you Gerri.

In the previous episode, Dr. Bill Halal made the case that humanity is heading into an Age of Consciousness in which we have the potential for a positive future as we use the products of the digital revolution, including artificial intelligence, to embrace global consciousness and transcend the current mega crisis of problems threatening our survival.  Well, we all know that such an outcome is by no means certain, and we're currently experiencing an unfortunate form of consciousness in many places, which is making everything worse.

Bill speculates about what global consciousness would look like.  He is even creating a portal on his website to show it.  But in this episode of our series we can do just that by sharing the wisdom of Robert Muller as a true global citizen.

Robert was our friend.  Do you remember, Gerri, we met him in 1995 at a conference in Santa Barbara where he invited us to join him and many other thoughtful people to discuss and seek solutions to the mega crisis of world problems already becoming evident in the decade of the 1990s.

GERRI: Yes, I remember.  We found him to be such an extraordinarily large presence.  He filled the room with such positive energy.  By that time he had retired from forty years at the United Nations, the last several years at the top of the organization as Assistant Secretary General to three Secretaries General.  In his retirement he had assumed the role of Chancellor of the United Nations University for Peace in Costa Rica where he was sharing his wisdom and experience in world affairs with researchers and students from many countries who were seeking to be agents for peace in the world.  They could have had no better mentor.

Des, do you remember how important an impact that first meeting of Robert had on us?

DESMOND: Yes, we came away inspired to redouble our own efforts to improve prospects for the future.  In 1997 we invited Robert to come to Vancouver to speak to a youth conference of students from many schools.  It was called Global Citizenship 2000 and was intended to inspire the young people and their parents and teachers about what they could do to improve the world at the start of a new millennium.

For two days at the age of 75, Robert captured the hearts and minds of everyone who heard him, and when he took out his harmonica to play Beethoven's "Ode to Joy," the audience erupted into a standing ovation.

Those memories are among the most precious in our storehouse.  Robert is no longer with us, but his legacy lives on large in the world.  We are fortunate to be able to show some of it today, courtesy of Robert's widow, Barbara Gaughen Muller, as a video recorded in the 1990s in which Robert appears in a delightful interview with Chantal Westerman.

Gerri, can you tell us how Robert 's life and legacy fits in with what we have heard so far from our wisdom keepers.

GERRI: Yes, I would like to mention Jean Houston, because she anticipates the emergence of a possible human and we see it in full glory in Robert.

When I think of everyone listening around the globe, my heart leaps as I think of his amazing life and the legacy and example he leaves us.  We have honored Robert with the Visioneers Hero of Humanity award, but we are more honored ourselves by having known him.  We will hear about some of his accomplishments at the United Nations in the video, but let me mention just one or two.

He oversaw studies and research on world population and on the state of the biosphere, and he organized a conference on world religions and spirituality.  He was responsible for creating many of the United Nations specialized agencies.

But he had a special saying: Never say anything is impossible.  That's what he said, and he went ahead and did it.

And despite living through and experiencing the atrocities of war during the second world war, and despite having seen from the top many dark days of conflict between nations, Robert Muller maintained his optimism and his hope for the future.  He was called the United Nations Prophet of Hope.

Des, we're surprised at how many of our Visioneers have known and were influenced by Robert, for example, tell us what Doug Roche said.

DESMOND: Yes.  Dr. Doug Roche, also a Visioneers Hero of Humanity and Canadian parliamentarian and former Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations was a friend and colleague of Robert.  He said, and I quote: "Robert was like a fountain with new ideas constantly gushing from his fertile mind. It would be impossible to know how many people he has influenced, but certainly many of the efforts now underway, whether in governance, development, the environment, disarmament, human rights can be traced back to his writings and speeches."

Robert was pragmatic. He knew how to get things done, but Doug went on to say that there was much more to Robert than that, and I quote again: "He gave us love.  He gave the world love.  He reflected a boundless love for humanity. This was the motivation, the dynamism, the very essence of Robert.  Skillfully using his harmonica, he often played "Ode to Joy."  He lifted up whole audiences because they knew he was not just playing joy.  He was joy."

GERRI: Ohh, yes, how can I ever forget that night in Vancouver when he was playing "Ode to Joy"  He takes out his harmonica.  There it goes.  We have a clip of that and we'll play it to conclude this episode so you can see for yourself.

DESMOND: Let me conclude my introduction by saying how Robert's life was a fulfillment of what our other wisdom keepers have been saying.  His words, his ideas were the expression of what Willis Harman saw as a global mind change, and what Ervin Laszlo calls planetary consciousness.  His love of the Earth was a manifestation of Jane Goodalls call to take care of the forests and the chimpanzees and all biological life.  He was Jean Houston's future human fifty years ahead of when she thought we might see it.  Above all, his life was an expression of Bill Halal's vision of global consciousness at the top of the Life Cycle of Evolution.

Gerri, over to you to conclude.

GERRI: Robert Muller, the quintessential global citizen, believed in the progress of humanity towards goodness, to higher and higher accomplishments, into the capacity to live our lives full of happiness, even when the conditions seemed just the opposite.

After you have finished watching the video of Robert, put on episodes 13 and 14 of the Visioneers Audio Theatre, also released today, in which the story reaches a moment of high drama as the characters are tested with the same qualities of courage and determination so evident in Robert's life.

And as we watch him, let's monitor how we feel, let's see his effect on Chantal his interviewer, as she gets engaged into who he truly is.

So, let's meet him now.  Here's Robert and Chantal.

ROBERT (Speaking at the UN): I discovered that to believe in humanity and to have the personal decision that you will not let evil and the misdoings of others drive you down those very fundamentals.

Love is something extraordinary, and we should pay more attention to words like peace, hope, faith, thankfulness, and so on.

CHANTAL (Voice over): Dr. Robert Muller is a man of peace. He labored behind the scenes at the United Nations for nearly 40 years before his retirement in 1986.  A decade later in 1996, he received the prestigious Albert Schweitzer award for his humanitarian efforts.  His unfailing energy and working towards a world without borders has earned him the title of global citizen.

Robert George Muller was born in 1923.  In his early years he lived through political turmoil in the Alsace Lorraine region of France.  Without moving, his grandparents were claimed as citizens of five successive nationalities as this region was repeatedly conquered, the result of three major European wars. As a child he often looked out the window at a border he could not cross and dreamed of the day when he, like the clouds and the birds, would not have to be confined by man-made divisions.  During World War II, Mr. Muller experienced the horrors of war, first as a member of the French Resistance, where he endured the Nazi occupation, then he suffered as a prisoner of war, and later became a refugee  When he finally returned home he, enrolled in the University of Strasbourg, earning a Doctorate of Law, then in 1948 he entered an essay contest writing about how to best govern the world.  He won first prize, an internship at the newly created United Nations.

For the next four decades, Dr. Muller met with world leaders, looking at humanity from a global perspective and envisioning ways to improve life on the planet Earth.  He rose through the ranks at the UN and eventually became an assistant to the Secretary General.  Because of his optimistic views about man's ability to live in peace and take care of the Earth, he is known as the Prophet of Hope.

CHANTAL: Dr. Muller what a pleasure and a privilege it is for me to sit down and talk with you. I thank you so much.  You have accomplished so much, you have lived the life of three men as far as I'm concerned with all that you have done in your life  But the basis of all you do and all you write about is happiness. Is that true?

ROBERT: That's correct.

CHANTAL: Why happiness, why not ambition, or drive, or dissatisfaction?

ROBERT: Well, I think it was a perception I had as a child already.  My father told me that when I was a four year old I was going around saying that life was divine, and I took this word divine because it was the biggest objective I could find to give my view of to be alive. For me to be alive was something absolutely extraordinary. To see old people, my father was surprised that I took off my cap each time there was an old man or an old lady, so you do that because they know so much and I hope that someday I will know as much as these old people know. So for me life was something absolutely extraordinary, and by having this feeling towards life I felt that happiness was almost a duty. I was a happy child, because all this around me was an incredible miracle. For me, happiness is still the objective of the human being.

CHANTAL: Do you think that people can make a conscious decision to become happy if they are not happy.?

ROBERT: Oh, definitely, and this has happened to me quite a number of times. At one point the Germans stopped me at the border, arrested me, and we were in the Gestapo prison, and we couldn't even lie down. It was filled with people, and you had a pail somewhere for doing your necessities.  It was so awful I couldn't imagine that something like this could happen,

And then I said, How can I be happy in a place like this, that's impossible.  Then I said, No, I can decide to be happy.

CHANTAL: Now how would you do that?

ROBERT: It just happened that I had a pencil, which they didn't take off my coat, and then I went through the prisoners. I said, Let me go to the door, and then I was there at the door and with this pencilI wrote a novel, and I imagined that I was living on the hill falling in love with a beautiful girl, and I was out of this prison. I decided to be with my mind elsewhere, and as a result of this I was happy, even in that prison.  They couldn't get my happiness.

CHANTAL: People watching this broadcast would say, I like the idea, I like the concept, but I am unhappy,  I want to find happiness,  I have a dream that I want to come true.  What's the first step that person takes to go in that direction?

ROBERT: I think there would be two things.  The first one is to remember your early youth.  What was your dream when you were a child?  That gives you an idea of what you can still do, even if society has put you into another direction, and you can do it even when you're very old, when you are free, when you are retired. That's what I always say to the old people.  Fulfill now the dream you had when you were a child, and once you see this, and once you have your dream and begin to work on it, then you are immediately uplifted and you find the happiness, and the funny thing is that usually the dream becomes fulfilled.

In my case, I was dreaming as a kid that the border which I saw from my window disappeared, and it disappeared.

CHANTAL: So then dreams have power?

ROBERT: Dreams are some extraordinary expansion of your capacities, and what you could be able to do if you do not see the obstacles, and when you dream them, there comes the idea.  The idea follows the dream. Well after having the dream, this is what you can do.  Why don't you start with this, so that the idea is a concrete manifestation of the way of fulfilling your dream, and this is why I've written all those thousands of ideas, and if they do not come into practice immediately, it might be later, it might even be after your death.

CHANTAL: Speaking of those dreams, let's look at them because I've read some of your dreams, that you have written about, and there are a couple that I particularly love, and I want to know how you think they can come true. This is from your book of Ideas and Dreams for a Better World.

Idea Number 1859, you're right Dr. Muller, you do have quite a few ideas and dreams. ”Wonder has been a permanent part of my being during my life. In my elderly years it has reached its maximum.  Have a sense of wonder for your magical divine life, and for all the miracles that surround you.”

Talk to me about how we can find wonder in our lives, if we don't have it.

ROBERT: Well, this is again the creation of your being.  You see, maybe for a long period of my life I was not thinking in terms of wonder.  As we talked about before, I was dreaming, I had a feeling of the miracle of life, and as I got older and older and wrote this, I found another dimension is the dimension of wonder.  It is that when you wake up and you look at the sky in the morning and you see the forests in Costa Rica awakened under the sun, this is almost a dream, it is a miracle, but what it does to me as a human being is a sense of wonder.

CHANTAL: Would it help us Dr. Muller if we asked the universe or a power greater than ourselves or God, Show me a sense of wonder, give it to me so that I may have it?

ROBERT: And you'll get it.

CHANTAL: Then I'll get it. OK, Idea Number 1782: “The word retirement age should be abolished and be replaced by a new word like Fulfillment Age.”

ROBERT: I even call it refinement.

CHANTAL: I like that.

ROBERT: Yes, I cannot accept to retire from anything. When I left the United Nations, I said, Now i have a total freedom, and I'm now 77 years old, I've never felt so good.  I am free at the University for Peace. I work there for one dollar a year, so they cannot give me any order, I give my free services.  I'm in Costa Rica in a demilitarized country.  I can write.  I can come up with my dreams. I can make speeches. I can walk in the wonderful nature, and this is not retirement.  In other words, even when I was in the big United Nations, I was on top of the world, but after leaving the United Nations I didn't lose anything, i found the whole nature of Costa Rica and the tropics and so on, so that with my leaving the United Nations I found even an expansion of my own being.

CHANTAL: You know, Dr. Muller, I find you to be a man who is so alive.  Are you at all afraid of dying?

ROBERT: I don't like the idea of dying, but first of all, by taking this attitude of having so much to do, so many dreams, so many ideas, you have no time to get sick and you have no time to get old.  So the idea of being old is completely excluded from my mind, and I pray God to let me live as long as possible in order to do as much as possible.  And I live in such a way to be healthy and not to take any drugs, alcohol, or things of this sort, to sleep from seven o'clock in the evening and nine hours every night, because I go to bed at the time when the roosters go to bed, and then they wake me up at four o'clock in the morning so, that I'm in tune with nature, and to live as long as possible.

CHANTAL: Idea 1902: “Every UN delegate speaking should have before him a heart stick, like the Indigenous people have, to remind them that they should speak from the heart.”  And you even say, I use such a stick. Tell me about this stick and how it would help the world.

ROBERT: It is to remind you always that when you speak you must also speak with the heart.  We Westerners speak mostly with the intelligence, and very seldom do we dare to use the word love.  Recently at the University for Peace at the end of a course, a girl student when I ended the course with a speech as the Chancellor, she said Mr. Muller, you do not know how much I thank you, because I've taken this three month course and I've never heard the word love, and in your final speech you used it three times. Can you imagine!

The distance between the brain and the heart is only eighteen inches, so you have to make a conduit between the heart and upstairs, and the stick reminds you, reminds Indigenous people, never to forget the heart.  Our Western society is too cerebral, it doesn't speak enough of love. We should speak about love, happiness, all these great concepts, forgiveness, compassion, taking care of people, these are the great concepts which have always guided humanity. 

And one thing which is also important and which I remember from youth, it is to be in union with the universe.  In other words, not only the total planet and the total humanity, but the universe, and this I got again as a child.

CHANTAL: What you're talking about is a reverence for life.

ROBERT: Reverence for life, of course, absolutely.

CHANTAL: Is what's happening right now a dream?

ROBERT: Again it's a dream that I'm able to tell you this, because my dream is that really what I have learned from life, these extraordinary lessons, at the end of the twentieth century, and the first time I would like to give this to the world, I would like to make the whole world learn how to be happy and not to think negatively, to think always optimistically and positively, because optimistic is always better, even if it does not succeed, than pessimism.

CHANTAL: Let me ask you this, give yourself a progress report, how are you doing on your dream your desire to teach us, to teach the world, not to think negatively, to open yourself to the cosmic forces? How are you doing on your mission, Doctor?

ROBERT: Well, it's not yet very far, but it is much better than I could have ever expected.  If anyone would have told me that the border in my hometown would disappear; if anyone would have told me that I would survive all the gestapos and the second world war where I could have been killed a half a dozen times; if anyone would have told me that my dream to work for peace would be fulfilled and that I would enter the United Nations with an essay immediately after the second world war; and that three days before retiring from the United Nations I would be appointed the Chancellor of a University for Peace in a demilitarised country...

CHANTAL: Wow!

ROBERT: And that there are 34 Robert Muller schools who are teaching the children what we are saying here, to teach them happiness...

There's a Robert Muller school which I visited in Texas and the caretaker in the courtyard said, Mr. Muller I don't know what they're teaching to these children in there, but I've never seen two children fight each other, but how do they succeed this?  And I said for a very simple reason, because on the day the children come to their schools, and the mothers already tell them in their womb, they are told that they are a miracle, and that you should be happy to be alive, when we know so much about the universe, more than any king and emperor in time, they should be proud to be alive today and that they will have a great life, they can have a great role in life, and then the children they say, Well if I'm a miracle and he's a miracle, how can I hurt a miracle?

CHANTAL: Then I would say that your progress report is a pretty good one.

ROBERT: Not bad, not bad but not good enough.

CHANTAL (Voice over): During his four decades at the United Nations Dr. Muller watched it grow from a gathering of a mere 51 nations to become a world authority. He presided over early efforts to conduct a worldwide population count.  He projected birth rates and medical advances that would increase longevity.  He warned of the potential difficulties to the biosphere with uncontrolled population growth, and then in 1972 he presided over the first worldwide conference on the Environment held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

CHANTAL: One of your great accomplishments Dr. Muller is more than 40 years of service with the United Nations.  I think that's remarkable.  A lot of people today, though, say that the UN is outdated and there's no longer a need for that.  What are your thoughts on that?

ROBERT: Well, the United Nations in my opinion is really probably one of the most important things that has happened in this century.  When the World War II was over, and i joined the UN, I was a very pessimistic young man.  If the French and the Germans, two white highly civilized countries had three wars in the lifetime of my grandparents and parents, how can I expect that communists and capitalists, rich and poor, two thousand religions, so many ethnic groups and languages, that they are going to make it.  I was almost sure that within twenty years there would be something else that would trigger off a World War III.  And it hasn't happened!

When I got to New York in the first United Nations in an abandoned war factory, a Belgian delegate asked me what are you coming to do here young man?  I said I come here to work for peace, because I do not want my children to see the horrors I have seen in this war.  And he said, Well I pity you, because you will lose your job.  This organisation will not last more than five years.  And the United Nations still exists, has become universal. It's the meta biological organization of the human species that has to look into everything: the outer space, the population, the climate of the world, the future population, what will the world be in a hundred years, in a thousand years. It is the biggest central brain of the human species.

CHANTAL: What if there was a world symposium somewhere specifically about global consciousness and spirituality, would people come to that?

ROBERT: Yes, as a matter of fact I have created with Dr. Karan Singh of India a world commission of eminent personalities on global consciousness and spirituality.

CHANTAL: Well, it's done then.

ROBERT: And we are going to have a meeting which is planned now in Spain in October of next year to bring together the most eminent people from around the world, in order to look precisely into this, namely, to have the consciousness of the universe, the consciousness of our planet, and to have the religions to cooperate in this global consciousness.

CHANTAL: Alright, create your dream, who would you like to be there?

ROBERT: Well, we will invite presidents, we will invite the Dalai Lama, we'll invite the Secretary General of the UN, we have some of the best thinkers on Earth who are perhaps not so much known, we will invite Ted Turner and people like this to really reach finally this global consciousness of the human species, beyond the nations.

CHANTAL: Is that possible? 

ROBERT: We have to do it.  Again do not consider anything impossible, this is why I speak so much about the world in my books and eighteen books so far, and in my four thousand ideas, it's always this, you must love, you must love the Earth as your home.

CHANTAL: You're a good teacher for me, because I, like many people watching, this broadcast might say: Sorry Dr. Muller, but that's impossible, it's not just love everybody.  But I shouldn't say it's impossible.

ROBERT:    Never say that's impossible. Say this planet is our home.  Look, in Europe we were able to suppress more than fifteen borders. Now Europe is the love of all the Europeans, and they fought each other before, now the French and the Germans they can marry, you can settle anywhere in Europe.  You have a European Court of Human Rights, and it's a miracle that you have transformed countries which killed each other for all these centuries, now they are Europeans.

CHANTAL: Alright, let me give you a thought to consider.  You are a medical doctor, the planet Earth is your patient.  What's the prognosis? 

ROBERT: Well, first of all, we have a World Health Organization that has all the works of the doctors around the world.  I have recommended that we should have an Earth Health Organization.

CHANTAL: An Earth Health Organization...

ROBERT: And that many people should be the doctors of the Earth.  The problems with the Earth are very very serious.  We let every five hours die a species.

CHANTAL: Every five hours, really?

ROBERT: Yes.  Every minute we put 12,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the air.

CHANTAL: Let me get my head wrapped around the species dying.  You mean, like an eagle, or a kind of a bird, or a kind of insect, every five hours one of those species is...

ROBERT: Every five hours one of these species on the planet disappears.

CHANTAL: Ohh!

ROBERT: Can you imagine.  When it took millions of years to create that species.

CHANTAL: I can't imagine it. 

ROBERT: So, we are now six billion people. In 1952 there were two billion people. In 2050 in fifty years from now, we will be three billion more people on this planet,

CHANTAL: Three billion! 

ROBERT: Three billion, that is half of the world population of today, will be added to what we are with six billion, we're going to be 8.9 billion in the year 2050.

CHANTAL: So then, Doctor, the planet Earth as your patient sounds like it's sick and getting sicker. What do we do to heal it?

ROBERT: Well, we're making a lot of noise.  I created the World Environment Conference and brought together the first world conference on the climate in 1979 and they said.it's crazy.  And what do you see in the newspapers that now governments are trying to save the climate of this planet.

You see, we have done everything in the preceding period, humanity, humanity, humanity, humanity, and we have succeeded, the longevity has increased from 40 to 60 years in the poor countries, to 72 years in the United States; the children's mortality has almost collapsed, has almost disappeared; there are no world epidemics anymore.  We have done wonderful humanity, but we totally forgot about the Earth until in 1972 we discovered that something was getting wrong and it was called the Environment.  We have destroyed 30 percent of the nature of this planet since 1970, and we continue to do it now on a world scale. It is horrible.  The Earth now has become preoccupation number one.

CHANTAL: So this is the famous Bench of Dreams.  I know there's one in Costa Rica.

ROBERT: Yes, and in more and more places all over the world. 

CHANTAL:  Benches of Dreams are beginning to spread.

ROBERT: Yes.

CHANTAL: How did the idea come about? Do you sit here and dream up your dreams?

ROBERT: Well, here, but also and mostly in Costa Rica, because we are located on the sacred mountain, the legend being of the Indigenous people that this is a land of dreams, and that the dreams will become true when you dream them on sacred Mount Rasur.

CHANTAL: Or on these benches?

ROBERT: Of course, on these benches.

CHANTAL: So tell me, how I would dream a dream on this bench? How do I make it come true?

ROBERT:  Well, you take two little rocks, and there are some available here, OK, you hold one in each hand, you hold them very very strongly with a lot of energy, you close your eyes, and very strongly you dream your dream, and after a little while you reopen your eyes, and then you throw one of the little pebbles on the earth, so that Mother Earth will help fulfill your dream, and the other one you keep at home on your desk to remember what your dream is.  Bravo!

CHANTAL: This is my dream.

ROBERT: That is your dream.

CHANTAL: Ohh, ohh!

CHANTAL (Voice over): Robert Muller's idea for a Bench of Dreams originated in the lush countryside of Costa Rica where he spends half of his time. The rustic Muller farmhouse can be found near Mount Rasur in an area considered sacred by the Indigenous people.

CHANTAL: Your University for Peace in Costa Rica, what does one learn when one goes there as a student?  What is the purpose?

ROBERT: Peace, to teach peace in every possible way, and to teach also peace with the Earth.  So, in other words, there are two main purposes: avoid violence, how to avoid violence, how to teach your children not to be violent, how to get peace between nations, to get peace between everybody.  And the second one is to have the right relationship with nature and not to destroy nature, because when we destroy nature, it's a war against nature.

CHANTAL: So there would be classes like Environment 101?

ROBERT: Yes, definitely.  Now the students they have already a degree, they have to have either a Masters degree or a PhD and they come from around the world so that they get these additional specialized teaching of helping to have peace in the world, and to create peace ministries, and to have peace education, whatever you can in schools and so on.

CHANTAL: And the students after they've graduated from the Peace University in Costa Rica, they go on to do what?

ROBERT: Well, they go into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they go into various professions, they go to a Peace Corps, whatever. That is up to them to find it, but they have already an idea before coming to the University for Peace, they have already an objective: I want to go to the University for Peace, because I want to work on peace in the Ministry of Education, for example, or I want to go into politics, and I want to become a peacemaker in politics, or I want to return to central Africa to make peace between the ethnic groups.

CHANTAL: Do you have heroes, do you have people you look at and you say what a wondrous human being he is or she is?  Who are your heroes?

ROBERT: Well, I think a man like Dag Hammarskjöld, who from being a tremendous economist, intellectual became a mystic in the United Nations.

CHANTAL: I agree.

ROBERT: Another man was  Secretary General U Thant, who was a Buddhist mystic, who was very simple.  You cannot imagine how simple he was.  Sometimes he said to me: "Robert, I cannot understand you Westerners who go to church on Sunday to be spiritual for an hour.  I'm spiritual from the moment I wake up until the evening when I go to bed.  All my life is spirituality.

And I had to push him to be strong as the Secretary General, you know.  And by the way, speaking of dreams, when I was appointed to him, people told me he is only going to have two more years, there's not much to expect.  And I said, but I'm not going to lose my time with a Secretary General who is not audacious and so on.  So the first day when we met I said, Do you have any unfulfilled dreams?  He looked at me very surprised, and he said, Yes, I have three dreams.

What are they? I think that the United Nations doesn't make sense without China being here with its millions of people.  Secondly, I'm sick and tired sometimes to listen always to these political and economic speeches. I would like to hear a spiritual voice.  And thirdly, I would like, I'm a teacher, I think that without teaching and education we will have no peace, so I would like to see maybe a University for Peace created.

And I said, OK, let's work on it.

First speech for him, return of China to the United Nations, priority item number one on the world agenda, and China was voted back to the UN, and thank God for it, because today we do not have a cold war with China. 

CHANTAL: Exactly.

ROBERT: Can you imagine.  Secondly, I said to him, Look you can ask the Pope to come and speak.  He's the head of a little state the Vatican State, we can invite the Pope to come. He said, OK, wonderful, you invite the Pope. I invited the Pope John Paul II.  He came. I got all the cardinals assembled in front of him in their garments, and it was a wonderful day. They asked me, the Pope would like to give you a gift at the end of his visit to the United Nations, what would you like to get from him?  And I said, Well, I would like to have a little crucifix very modest which belonged to himself.  And you know what he gave me, this golden cross which belonged to him, that was the gift of the Pope for the invitation to come to the United Nations.

CHANTAL: The Pope gave you that? 

ROBERT: Gave me that cross, you see.

CHANTAL: Oh!  What a wonderful dream.

ROBERT: And then finally, I got the University for Peace created. By that time, unfortunately, U Thant had left and died, but we fulfilled his dream.

CHANTAL: Do you think that there would be world peace if we all had the same spiritual framework?

ROBERT: It would do enormously and it is now going to happen at long last because the religions have decided to work together around the concept of global spirituality.

Years ago, one of my first books was called A New Genesis: The Birth of a Global Spirituality, so that all the religions would get together, and I made a speech in the World Parliament of Religions in 1993 and said, For Heaven's sake create the United Religions like the United Nations, and Bishop Desmond Tutu the Nobel Prize winner, listened to me, and I said, and don't wait another hundred years to have the next Parliament of Religions, and he convened it in South Africa.  So that the Parliament of Religions can become the General Assembly of the religions, and now they work together.

CHANTAL: One of the things that you talk about is something called kaputalism.  What on Earth is that?

ROBERT: Well, we have the word Das Kapital of Karl Marx, and of course that starts with the K because it is German, and since I predict that capitalism is now going to take the same way as communism, namely, it's no longer an economic viable system for the world, so I call it kaputalism because kaput means gone.  Capitalism will be cut. It will be kaput,

CHANTAL: What would happen if we in the world simply smiled more, if we made an effort to smile more in interviews like this, on the street, what if we all smiled more?

ROBERT: It would be fantastic.  It would be fantastic because the face reflects the whole physiognomy, and if you smile, well you are upward, you are optimistic. If you are very unhappy, even the body sags to a certain point, so that smiles and the face speaks.  And I'm always impressed by a man who smiles.  The president of Costa Rica, Rodrigo Carazo, came to the United Nations to propose the creation of the University for Peace, and this man, he smiled constantly. I tried to imitate him, but I can't.  You must will to smile. Isn't that interesting,

CHANTAL: The mere mention of him makes me smile.

ROBERT: You see how he's the President of a country who always smiles.

CHANTAL: Lovely, that's lovely.

How would you say is the best way for us to educate children to think of the world in this way?

ROBERT: To decide to educate them, that is the first step. If you decide to educate the child in peace, you will have so many examples and models.

CHANTAL: One of the things that I see that is so distressing to me, something simple, toys for children, video games for children, where they are nothing but violence, nothing but killing.

ROBERT: Well, I think that this should be avoided by the parents, they can do a lot, already, by the teachers, and there are countries like Sweden where they have even agreement with the toy manufacturers not to produce any war and violence toys. Really now. Can you imagine that in Sweden the toy manufacturers are producing peace toys and never war toys.

CHANTAL: No war toys?

ROBERT: No war toys anymore whatsoever, they don't produce them, so in Sweden you cannot buy a war toy. 

CHANTAL: Really, or a war game? It is all peace games?  Even their video games? No squirt guns?

ROBERT:   No, absolutely.

CHANTAL: Astonishing.

ROBERT: And that was an agreement between the government and the producers.

CHANTAL: How many times have you been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize?

ROBERT: Oh, quite a few times, yes quite a few, as a, yes even by Nobel prize winners, and the nicest recommendation for me was from Betty Williams for what I have done for the children.

CHANTAL: Do you really not know?  Do you know, it's about 19 times that you've been nominated.   

ROBERT: I didn't know, nobody told me this.

You'll see again, I come to what I said at the beginning, when you do something positive, yes, some strange forces begin to work in your direction, and when you have dreams where you have ideas you are recompensed ten times by incredible happiness and successes,

CHANTAL: Do you know, as I sit here enjoying immensely this conversation with you, I'm very very aware of a phrase that you use a lot.  You say, Can you imagine!  And I realized that is kind of a request to go ahead and imagine it, because when we imagine something, what happens is absolutely it occurs.

ROBERT: It's the first step, is the first step.  If you do not imagine, it will not happen. I think this is the value of the human being, that he can imagine, and then it becomes a reality.

CHANTAL: Is your definition of happiness different today than it was thirty years ago? 

ROBERT: I think it's the same, but it's more expanded today. I'm more optimistic about a happy world than I was when I came out of the Second World War, there's no doubt about it, but we must keep in mind that we have completely new problems, which didn't exist at that time. In the charter of the United Nations there's no word Earth or nature.  That was not a problem at the time. 

CHANTAL: That was what year? 

ROBERT: That was in 1945, you see.  By the way, we have now the University for Peace, the Earth Council, which is located at the University for Peace has produced an Earth Charter, so we have a United Nations Charter, and we have an Earth Charter, where the Earth is speaking, and you will see in my thousands of ideas, it's the Earth speaking to me all the time: "Yes, dear Robert, what do they do this to me?"

For as years ago, it would never have occurred to me before 1972 even to think so much for the Earth.  The Earth was taken for granted.

CHANTAL: One of the things that you talk about that I actually aspire to in your book of ideas and dreams is the importance of living more frugally, in a more frugal way. Can you talk about that a little bit for me.

ROBERT: Yes, absolutely.  A person in the Western world today consumes thirty times that of a person in a poor country consumes,  Can you imagine.  And all the waste that goes here in every direction.  One of the reasons why at the Universityfor Peace we have taken Saint Francis as I was saying, he has a beautiful monument there. It is because in Saint Francis we found the same ideals which we have at University for Peace, namely, peace, respect, and love for nature, and simple and frugal living.  And for me simple and frugal living is that it makes your body function better, yes, and you are not sold out to things.

CHANTAL: But let's define it a little bit, let's unpack a little bit, because people watching this will say, Well, what does that mean?

ROBERT: It is not to waste things as we do and to, for example, to have a cornflake, to have something very easy for breakfast in the morning, not to hundreds of various things around you.  I think everybody knows what it is to have a simple frugal life, and also live more generally in less things.  Even I myself, I have too many things around myself, and I refuse to live in a modern house on our mountain in Costa Rica. It's an old peasant house which I have restored, and people say, Why do you live in this cabin?  Barbara, my wife, at first she was shocked.  Today she doesn't want to live anywhere else, because you can flood a little dwelling a little cabin with all the love of God and of the universe, and the spirits of the people who lived there in the nineteenth century they are still around.  You can love something which is very simple.  I prefer that simple cabin in Costa Rica to a luxurious home,  So it's a kind of decision, and i think the reason of it is that you want to be more yourself. This is very very important in yourself.

I have an anecdote which is important.  Not long ago there was a teacher with a group of students, and he said, Oh, Mr. Muller, what a wonderful nature this university is located in, and I said, Yes, this is much better than in a crowded city. Here nature gives you peace all the time.  You can look at this beautiful nature without end for hours.  

Among my students there is a girl, a wonderful girl, who is always depressed, very very unhappy. I tried everything to make her feel happy, and it didn't work.  And when she came to this university, i said, Let us not be inside, let us go outside in the middle of nature.  Let's just sit down and look at the beauty of nature, and after a while I saw that the girl was crying, and I asked her what's happening, why do you cry?  She said, That's the first time in my life that I found myself.  Can you imagine.  That is the first time in my life that I found myself in nature.

CHANTAL: You know, we're doing a documentary on wisdom about silence, you see, and the power of silence.  What are your thoughts on silence? What does silence bring to our lives from your perspective?

ROBERT: Well, the innermost you go inside I think the most important thing is to go inside, and then you can go outside, you can give what you feel inside.  For me, for my own life, is you have also to look what is your written…  For example, my best moments are very early in the morning when i wake up, and here I'm lying in my bed next to Barbara, and for almost an hour the ideas flood in, total silence, a whole new philosophy, things I've never thought before, and in the evening if you would ask me this, would not be the same, in the evening the world has pressed me down. I'm not at my best, so it's the silence that does that, and it is also the fact that you had the night of recuperation.  I think it's important for every human being to find out what is your best moment.

CHANTAL: I'm at my best when I'm around someone like you.  Thank you, and i want to thank you for this opportunity.  I want to thank you for a most incredible and enlightening conversation and I thank you for your time.

ROBERT: Well, I'm going to do one last thing, yes, OK.

CHANTAL: Are you going to read to me?

ROBERT: No, I'm going to play you a little music.

CHANTAL: Ohh, even better.

ROBERT: Because my grandfather taught me only one little instrument, it's a ten hole harmonica.  And the greatest song in my life, which I found is the Ode to Joy of Beethoven and Schiller,

We are all humans become brothers and sisters, so that I will finish our interview, whether you can use it or not, with the Ode to Joy of Beethoven. All right.

CHANTAL: Can you imagine.  You make me cry.

ROBERT: Me, too.  I think a speech is only successful if you cry and you make people cry.  I think this is when we touch the great mysteries of the universe.  I'm not ashamed in the middle of a speech to begin to cry, and to see people cry, there's nothing wrong with this.

CHANTAL: Thank you.

ROBERT: Thank you.

CHANTAL: Thank you for my tears. 

ROBERT: OK.

GERRI: So brothers and sisters! Having witnessed this incredible conversation I'm sure your heart is open too as you have experienced the quintessential global citizen and evolved human being. Robert too was a Prophet of Hope but for him hope was not just a feeling, it was a strategy for action and during his tenure at the United Nations and to following he created a magnificent legacy we all benefit from today. So Robert also knew that music opens the heart and, as I promised you at the beginning, here is Robert playing Ode to Joy on his harmonica for the children in Vancouver. And on this clip captured forever he is playing for you too.

ROBERT: So, I'm going to have another dream, namely, to play the Ode to Joy here in this beautiful library and that's what you're going to hear.  I'm sorry not to have such beautiful performances as you had before, but on those ten little holes I will try my best. OK.