Claes Nobel pays tribute to Shri Mataji

Claes Nobel, grand nephew to Alfred Nobel who established the Nobel Prizes, is an avid proponent of humanitarian and environmental causes. In 1974 he drafted ’The Nobel Laureates Declaration on the Survival of Man Kind’ which was signed by 78 Nobel Laureates, advocating the support for environmental protection and humanitarian leadership. Following this, in 1985 he wrote the ‘Global Declaration of Earth Ethics’, upon which he founded the NGO United Earth, aimed at bringing attention to environmental issues through the prestigious Earth Prize Awards.

Mr Nobel has tremendous respect for Shri Mataji, what she stood for and the great impact she has had on the world. In 1996, he presented Shri Mataji with an award for peace at the Maharashtra Institute of Technology, where Shri Mataji addressed the "World Philosophers Meet - A Parliament of Science, Religion and Philosophy”. On the 3rd July 1997 Mr Nobel made a public speech at the Royal Albert Hall in London, praising the lifework of Shri Mataji and her contribution to world peace.

Today, Mr Nobel continues to advise prominent spiritual, political, and economic leaders from around the world on preserving the earth and maintaining peace. As founder of National Society of High School Scholars, he also works to instil these ideals in youth through education and example.

Read the Full Speech

I have a vision. I have a vision for a world that is better, safer and saner than the one we presently are experiencing. It is a world where people live in harmony and peace with themselves and in harmony and peace with nature. Now those words are vast, it’s a bold vision. Do I have a practical way of going from vision to reality? Yes! I will share that with you. And I will share it and indicate the tone of the meeting by ten small words, and they indicate how this global world transformation shall be undertaken, and they are: right thoughts, right words, right deeds, right here and right now.

The key word, the key word is of course "right". This world is fighting about what is right, what is right to you might be wrong to me and visa versa, it is a grey area. So we need a reference point, so we can distinguish between right and wrong and between truth and lie. Tonight Shri Mataji will show us what is right. Tonight Shri Mataji will empower us to become the masters of our own destiny, and tonight we will be guided by the knowledge of Self-realisation. We will do so in the light of truth. And we shall all know absolute truth and absolute peace.

Now 100 years ago, Alfred Nobel established a Nobel Peace prizes. These prizes represent excellence. We have prizes in chemistry, physics, medicine, literature and peace. Of those prizes I hold the peace prize to be the finest. And I want to tell you that Alfred Nobel listened to a women. He listened to his secretary Burta from Suttonry in Paris,100 years ago, when she said: "Dr. Nobel, you should use your vast fortune for betterment of the world. Tonight we are listening to another woman, we are listening to the message of Shri Mataji.

However, I’m very much inspired, first by my uncle and later on you here by Shri Mataji. Alfred Nobel talked much about peace. He was frightened that his awesome, explosive dynamite which cleared up land for harbours and tunnels, could also be used for warfare. Today in the arsenal of military systems it's like a small firecracker. But at that time dynamite was the most awesome destructive material. Now Alfred Nobel thought basically about peace as an absence of war, but I assure you that peace is much more than absence of war. And I see that peace exists is four specific areas.

The first area is the peace that the individual has in him or herself. How do we treat our mind, our emotions and our feelings? How do we treat our body? Are we slaves to other masters or are we our own master? Until we have the inner peace in ourselves, we can never have an outer peace in the world. And the safest and best way of finding world peace is to have mass movements that includes all religions and philosophies, all enterprises, whether they are political or scientific nature to realise what inner peace is.

And that’s what we are talking about tonight. Self - realisation. What does Self-realisation mean? Well, it means that we are realising something, but what is the Self? Ladies and Gentleman, the Self in us is the divine, cosmic powers that exist in each and every individual but which is dormant in most people around the world. The spiritual leaders from ancient laws, they knew about this, and they spoke about this but this secret of secrets has been suppressed, deliberately, until Shri Mataji, with great courage and great wisdom, being an old soul, who decided by herself, to come back to the Earth at this critical time in our history in order to share her knowledge and wisdom which is the Sahaja Yoga, which is instant Self-realisation, which is to activate the dormant principle that we all have, the Kundalini and help the Kundalini to rise up and thus we become what it says in the Bible: 'You are created in My image.'

That was the first category, first sphere of peace, the one we have within ourselves. The next one is the peace that we have among each other, in the family, in our community, in our nation, that we have peace with other ethnic groups and with other religions; that we really become true, what I call 'active listeners', and as active listeners are able to put ourselves in the place, in the shoes of the other party. Only then, when we have the outlook from their perspective, shall we understand what they are trying to say.

We’re always talking, talking, talking. My dear wife, who is not here tonight, she said:"Claes, you talk too much, you don’t listen." I have started to practice what she calls, 'active listening'.

The third sphere is the sphere that put me in originally, after all I am a European Swedish businessman, why am I up here speaking the language of spirituality, and saying that that is where the hope of the future exists. I’m doing so because I have a deep and profound reverence for nature. As a Nobel peace laureate, Dr Albert Schweitzer said, after he had worked and worked trying to distil a phrase that contained everything that he knew, everything that he wanted to say through his philosophy, Dr Albert Schweitzer coined the phrase, ‘reverence for life’.

Nature is nothing but a plethora of examples of life in his multifaceted version. And I tell you, dear fellow seekers of truth, we, humanity today, in our ignorance, in our greed and in our lust for power, we are in the process of destroying the very thing that makes this planet unique and that is: life on Earth! And so far we do not know of another planet in the universe that harbours this miracle. Earth is like a blue jewel in space and there is only one Earth and this Earth is fragile and we must take care of her and we respect her.

Earth is also called nature. We cannot break the laws of nature, we must live by the laws of nature, if we break them, Mother Earth will break us. And we are only one species of, we do not know how many species we have, five, ten, fifteen millions, but this we know, and this has been proven by the world's most foremost scientists in Harvard University, United States, Dr Edward O Wilson, we are today bringing to extinction 250 species per day! That is as if we are deliberately and wilfully pulling out thread after thread after of what consists of fabric of life, and Mother nature will not let us continue doing that without correcting us as naughty children.

The fourth sphere of peace, is the peace that we shall know between ourselves and God. Any religion or any group who raises their arms and destroys his enemy in the name of God is not following what God has asked us to do. The world should not know of violence and the world should not know of war.

I call, as we already heard, these four spheres of peace, 'Earth ethics'. And tonight we will hear more from the Holy Mother how we shall have a reference point, how we can distinguish if we have a charlatan and a fraud in front of us or if it’s a genuine honest person. And you, dear audience, you have come here tonight from many different walks of life and like you, I have also been seeking for the truth. I am beginning to discern truth rather clearly and let me tell you this, that I look upon life on Earth as a kind of a school, a school where we are learning perfection and purification.

Now, on Earth everything is interdependent, interactive and inter-related and on Earth, as well as in heaven I guess, every action has a reaction, every effect has a cause and every cause has an effect and the Holy Mother, as I said, She is a highly evolved soul, she has learned from many, many lives, what it is all about and this what is all about laws, the unseen laws, the spiritual laws, they are always here and they work as infallible as the law of gravity works. It always works all those unseen laws, it is for us to learn and perceive that law.

I am very comfortable with the teachings of Shri Mataji and I am very comfortable with the Holy Mother herself. I say so because, in the Bible there is one saying, amongst several good ones: You shall know the tree by its fruit. And lately I have met the young men and women, in different parts of the world and certainly from many different parts of the world, and they are all shining, beautiful human individuals that radiate inner peace and balance. They are unique, you who follow and you that are in the process of following, will be I think, those individuals who should call themselves ambassadors for the Earth and after tonight’s session is over, I’m sure, that you should see clearly how you shall distinguish between truth and lie. And you shall realise that blind faith is of no value and that fanatasists and to take up violence as a last argument is of no value. Eventually those things will bring you unhappiness, they will bring you conflict and potentially war.

Ladies and gentlemen, I know that we hold the future in our hands. I know that the future is in your hands, I know it’s in my hands. And I also know that the future of the planet exists in the heart of the individuals. Now I will close my remarks tonight by a fable from India. I heard it when I attended the Rio conference ‘92, that was the twentieth anniversary of the Stockholm conference, that for the first time put on the environment on the world agenda. In Stockholm in ‘72 we had only two heads of state, the prime minister from India and the King of Sweden. In Rio twenty years later, we had 110 heads of states. A marvellous declaration was drafted, agenda 21. Just last week in New York there were 70 heads of states that continued with Rio plus five, but as I told Sir C P, when he asked me about how is the outcome of this conference, I said: "Well, we are talking about sustainable future, but it seems to me that in UN there is much of a sustainable dialogue ongoing."

Tonight we shall take the action. Well, I asked the Holy man from India, the white robbed Achariya, and I said: "Is there hope for the future?" And He said: "Mr Nobel, I will answer your question as follows", and this is what he said: "When the dear Lord had created the Earth, he was very very happy, very very pleased, it was His finest creation in the universe and He decided to celebrate, to have a party. And God invited in all the angels and all the devils. When they were there He toasted them and wished them welcome as a good host, and said: "There’s only one rule that you must strictly obey, while you are here having a good time", and by the way the best food and the best wine was served, ambrosia nectar, and He said: "There is one rule and that is that while you're here celebrating My creation, you may never bend your elbows."

The devils cried out and said: "We don’t want any part of such a party. How can we enjoy it not bending our elbows?" So they left. Then the party started, the angels were having a jolly good time and the dear God was very, very happy. Now, how could they eat and drink without bending their elbows? Well, I sense that you can see what the moral of the fable is. The angles were feeding each other, they were sharing and they were caring, and that is what we shall do in the future together. Thank you very much.