PROPHET

La Casa de Maria, California, May 1994, The Big Picture Summit. One of the most visionary meetings I have attended, arranged by Douglas Gillies and with Robert Muller playing a central role in addressing the question: how can we speed up the shift to holistic thinking from linear, reductionist, compartmentalised thinking? Douglas has been working on Robert's biography ever since and, judging from its narrative detail, must have spent many weeks talking to him. For readers unfamiliar with Robert Muller, he was Assistant Secretary of the UN working for many years in the Secretary General's office, and who has written many books based on his vision for the UN and for the future of humanity, as well as founding the international Robert Muller schools with their world core curriculum. He is also an honorary member of the Network, and readers can subscribe to his daily thoughts on [email protected]

This book is the story of Robert's life up to 1951. His father was a hatmaker who expected Robert to follow him into his profession, but his mother hoped that he would be an intellectual. He turned out to be more than that, a practical visionary. When Douglas first met Robert, he asked how an ordinary person could think like a global citizen. It's pretty easy, he said, 'you just take everything you do and multiply it by six billion'. Kant's categorical imperative in practice. The book begins with a significant episode in Robert's UN career, a visit with Kurt Waldheim to China in 1972. Robert could not initially understand why he had been asked to go, but it turned out that he played a central role in having China admitted to the UN, against the wishes of the US and its then UN ambassador, George Bush Sr. Later in the book, we discover that his thesis on the Sarre region was a bible for Robert Schuman as he worked on the creation of the European Iron and Steel Community that evolved into today's EU. Robert has been nominated more than 20 times for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Lorraine is on the border between France and Germany and has therefore changed hands on a number of occasions in the last 150 years. Some of Robert's ancestors fought on one side, some on the other, while Robert's father had worn both. For Robert, this was eventually to underline the absurdity of war. The book's narrative moves along briskly with many direct dialogues lending it immediacy and highlighting significant episodes in his life. Like when aged five he shouted 'Das Leben is goettlich' (Life is divine) in a Church where a priest was celebrating the Eucharist. Poring over is grandfather's 18-volume encyclopedia, and the time when he was given a harmonica, which he still plays. His teacher Hehn and the discovery of Goethe and Schiller, another teacher Cumin who instils Descartes' principles that include 'never accept anything as the truth unless you know it to be true'; and his parting words, 'forget me, know yourself'.

Robert was 16 when the war broke out in 1939 and the family had to evacuate. Robert wrote to the Prime Minister asking why ordinary families could not go back to recover their possessions. The result was swift: the police came and gave them and other families the necessary permission. Douglas' account of the war makes gripping reading. It was during this period that Robert ignored an intuitive voice and was captured as a result, and also discovered the affirmation techniques of Emile Coué. He used this both positively and, astonishingly, negatively in order to induce appendicitis that got him out of a drafting order. Later he escaped from a hotel where the Gestapo was looking for him as a member of the Resistance by telling them that he had seen himself on the third floor and coolly slipping out on a bicycle.

Robert saw his fair share of atrocities and was astonished by the extraordinary dignity of a woman - Guichard Blanche - who was executed by the Resistance while still praying. Her body fell directly into the waiting grave. Robert realised how the soldiers were ordinary people with families and persuaded his commandant, Marey, to spare 20 young Germans trapped in a barn at a time when the war was virtually over. Then he went to the newly liberated Lyon, where only one bridge out of 28 was saved. When he returned, he was devastated to discover that Marey had executed all the young men whose safety he had promised. It was a defining moment for Robert, who swore to God that he would dedicate the rest of his life to peace.

After the war Robert won an essay prize that enabled him to spend some time as an intern at the UN. This was the start of his eventual career and life work. Those early and precarious days are vividly evoked, and as I write the power and legitimacy of the UN has been sidelined by overweaning US interests. Robert, however, has not been discouraged by this. At a recent celebration of his 80th birthday at the UN, he rejoiced that so many people were now questioning the legitimacy of war as a means of settling scores and disputes. One can only hope that Douglas is already at work on the second volume of the book to bring the reader up to date. There are too few people in the world like Robert Muller who combine a vision of the future with practical experience of how it can be achieved. The book can be ordered online at www.eastbeach.org