United Nations
right|250px|thumb|Logo of the United Nations The United Nations is an intergovernmental organization founded in 1945, with stated aims that include promoting cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, political freedoms, democracy, and the achievement of lasting world peace. Theosophists have been supportive of the United Nations since its inception.
Blavatsky and the United Nations
Joy Mills wrote an article about "H. P. B. and the U. N." in 1970:
To link H. P. B. and the U. N. may seem incongruous. Yet there is certainly a relationship between the goal which she set forth in the re-enunciation of an ageless wisdom concerning man and the efforts to realize that goal in practicality through world order under world law. The alternative is world chaos and world destruction. In May 1889, H. P. B. published in her journal, Lucifer, an analysis of “Our Cycle and the Next,” stating unequivocally: “If Theosophy prevailing in the struggle, its all- embracing philosophy strikes deep root into the minds and hearts of men, if its doctrines of Reincarnation and Karma, in other words, of Hope and Responsibility, find a home in the lives of the new generations, then, indeed, will dawn the day of joy and gladness for all who now suffer and are outcast. For real Theosophy is ALTRUISM, and we cannot repeat it too often. It is brotherly love, mutual help, un-swerving devotion to Truth. If once men do but realize that in these alone can true happiness be found, and never in wealth, possessions, or any selfish gratification, then the dark clouds will roll away, and a new humanity will be born upon the earth. Then, the GOLDEN AGE will be here, indeed...
The Theosophical Society, dedicated from its inception to the ideal of brotherhood, has been called the first United Nations, comprising as it does within its membership individuals of many nations, many cultural and ethnic backgrounds. If we who are its members today, building out of all differences and distinctions a unique harmony of purpose, remain loyal to the vision toward which H. P. B. pointed, it may be our privilege to portray the pattern of a truly universal brotherhood of humanity, founded on the spiritual perception of man’s essential nature. No higher privilege could come to any group of men and women, but the price of brotherhood is paid with the currency of present action, not the promissory notes of tomorrow’s good intentions.[1]
Theosophists anticipating need for United Nations
James S. Perkins, President of the Theosophical Society in America from 1945-1960, spoke in a public lecture in 1942 about the need for an international structure:
If the postwar world establishes a federation of free peoples, strong enough to promise the end of military aggression, “we will have a world in which human intelligence will organize and distribute the ample resources of Nature and devote itself to human progress rather than to destruction,” James S. Perkins, vice-president of the Theosophical Society in America, said in a lecture at the society’s rooms here last night.
“But tomorrow’s world,” he cautioned, “will inevitably grow out of today’s acts. Since human progress advances or falls upon the moral and spiritual integrity of the main body of its individuals, the condition of tomorrow’s world rests squarely upon the question whether men in their daily lives are giving expression to those universal principles which are the ethical foundations of any great and enduring world order.”[2]
