Robert Muller: [GMW #2226] The Peace, The Cleanliness, The Beauty And The Happiness Of All On This Magnificent Planet Begin In The Mind, The Heart And In the Hands Of Each Of Us

Monday, May 30, 2011

[GMW #2226] The Peace, The Cleanliness, The Beauty And The Happiness Of All On This Magnificent Planet Begin In The Mind, The Heart And In the Hands Of Each Of Us

Idea Dream - Robert Muller's Ideas 1001 to 1500

In the late seventies I decided to write a book for my children, telling some of the most important lessons I had learned in my life of war and peace. It was published under the title Most of All, They Taught Me Happiness, Doubleday in 1978 and was shortly thereafter translated into German. The Austrian publisher, Helmut von Loebell, invited me to the Frankfurt annual bookfair for the launching of the German edition. When I arrived in Frankfurt and we walked together to the Fair, I saw him bend once in a while, pick up trash and put it into a bag. I looked at him and asked him why he was doing that. He answered: "Because some months ago I heard the speech of an Austrian monk, Brother Steindl-Rast who told the audience how he had met a United Nations official who was picking up trash along his way to the train station in order to ensure and enjoy the cleanest mile on Earth." He smiled at me, and added, "I got interested in you and decided to publish your book in German."

After my retirement from the UN, fate did not want me to return to my beloved Alsace-Lorraine, but decided that I should be the first one-dollar-a-year Chancellor of the first University for Peace on Earth in one of the first demilitarized countries, Costa Rica. The University is located in a marvelous area of preserved tropical forests, on a sacred hill, Mount Rasur, from which, according to a local indigenous prophecy, a civilization of peace will extend to the entire world.

Next to the University a beautiful farmland was for sale. I loved to walk on it and to dream that if I were younger I would buy it. Then one day I read this text I had written a few days before my retirement from the UN:

"I dream that someday as a sort of elder of the United Nations I will live on a hill with a breathtaking view and spend my last days writing the beautiful stories of my life, and my visions for a better world."

Well, that was a signal from fate. One must never miss fulfilling one's dreams. I bought the farm, live on it, have a breathtaking view, and am writing the stories of my life and my visions for a better world. Every day I walk from it to the University for Peace, ensuring that it is the cleanest mile on Earth. And here again the tourists are looking at me with curiosity and doubt that I will ever win.

My dear, beloved wife, Margarita, alas has left this Earth. I visit her tomb often, reporting to her and asking for her help from the world of the spirits. I noticed that the cemetery has also a good amount of trash. So I decided to make it the cleanest cemetery on Earth. And I have succeeded too.

There is one major duty where I have not succeeded, alas. When visiting the Hopi people in Arizona, a Hopi woman asked me if she could give me a better name than Robert Muller (Red Beard the Miller). It is women who have the task of giving names. I accepted and she gave me the name Kogyun Deyo. I asked her what it meant. "It means Spider Boy. Your task will be to make a vast spider web, to catch in it all evil on Earth and then to throw it far away into the universe."

On that task I have not succeeded, although I cannot complain about the many positive results I have obtained during my forty years at the United Nations. And I continue to try relentlessly and against all odds. I am writing this story at dawn in my little farmhouse with a breathtaking view on Mount Rasur, triggered off by the publisher of a nice magazine of good stories, Heron Dance, who liked my book Most of All They Taught Me Happiness. Since the 11th of July of last year, when the countdown to the year 2000 began, I have also been writing a compendium of Two Thousand Ideas for a Better World: Perhaps each of them will not represent more than one little mile on Earth. But if each of the 5.6 billion people on this planet would take care of a little mile, there would not be enough miles to clean for all. The peace, the cleanliness, the beauty and the happiness of all on this magnificent planet begin in the mind, the heart and in the hands of each of us.

Robert's The Miracle, Joy and Art of Living,
Volume II Chapter 5 - Of Love
We shall never learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny, unless we have taught ourselves to consider everything as moonshine, compared with the education of the heart." -- Sir Walter Scott

UN News Sources - UN Chronicle, United Nations News Service , UN Wire News Archive
References: Earth Charter, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Rights of: Children, Women, Indigenous People
To Be Written: Rights of Nature, Birds, Animals, Fish, etc.

Photo Credit: Maciej CiupaLocation: Lake Ocoee, TN
Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.

-- Wallace Stevens

Books recommended by Robert are here.
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