Back in Brooklyn.  The winter here was extraordinary while I was away.  There were times when I was in Mongolia when the temperatures in Ulaanbaatar and NYC overlapped.  Some wondered whether weather warfare might be at play, myself included.  My Russian and Mongolian friends wondered more openly, uninhibited by the social prohibition against “conspiracy theories”.  Russians know what is going on.  They aren’t shy about digging in and finding things out.  They call things as they see them.  Americans are caught in mid-lie and so, therefore, cannot now call anything as it is.  They fear all the bad karma they have accrued.  But they also fear the NSA and the regime of Hope and Change.  Even the anti-war movement has fallen into sleep-walking state.  At present, the fear of not being able to carry through any longer with the lie is too unbearable.  And no alternatives are being explored in the social arena. The risk to the fragile Empire too great.  The sacred empire must be maintained at any cost!  But to the planet’s free-thinkers it has become obvious that the greatest source of human misery is the Anglo-American Nazi cabal–the mercenary/banker/coke-head alliance with a declared program of depopulation.  Weather warfare could very well be used to apply pressure on the US to purge itself of the fascist, criminal faction.  Russia has this capability.  China has the power to apply irresistible economic pressures.  It may take a world of pressure to purge this dangerous fascist clique.

The BRICS alliance is quite prepared to accept a reformed US.  Will the American people be made aware that a future of cooperation awaits them, an evolutionary future?  Or will corporate media continue to make them believe that they face a choice between hegemony and destruction? 

Russophobia has never looked more irrational, like a drug-induced paranoia. 

It is as though Americans are staring into an abyss.  But let us look into this abyss. It is an abyss of truth and togetherness, of progress!  An abyss of joy!  Unity!  True development!  The world wishes to move forward!  Why does the American wish to hold back?–to dig in its steel claws, refusing to budge.  Can we not heed the call to unity?  Do we not imagine that we would have much to contribute?  Do we not know that we have far more than guns or butter?  We have dynamism.  We are propellers, driving the human mission.   Americans love to innovate.  With the criminals out of the way, the gift of American innovation could supply the new era with tremendous brilliance!  The abyss that the corporate media has taught Americans to fear (the abyss in which the US would not reign supreme) is analogous to the addict’s fear of not getting drugs.  So, indeed, America truly has nothing to fear and everything to gain.  Increasingly, America’s security concern is being recognized as hysteria.  So, whereas the rational world sees possibilities, the American has been taught to see doom and diminution.  As with the drug addict, there is a fear of being subsumed in a larger order if it implies the loss of ersatz control.  It should probably not surprise us that the opium trade continues to figure prominently in the funding of the crime syndicate that runs the global financial system from London/Wall Street.  Its power literally resides in the power of chemical addiction!  It leverages the frightening underworld of drives and fears to pursue its fascist program.

 What we need is to jump into the abyss!  The abyss is joy itself. 

Do sane people believe that there could be any other way besides rational cooperation?  There never has been. But fascism has been at war with cooperation and sanity since the Edwardian era.  Since the early 20th century it has been a global showdown between financialization and real production.  Wall Street/London fascists have organized a powerful network of control.  The spirit of life must respond!  It must respond with a judicious show of force and with powerful alternatives. 

The drug addict believes that monomania can replace a balanced existence.  This never ends well. The addict must sometimes be restrained–especially when unnecessary collective risks are incurred.

The world is tired of “death-by-America”.  Interesting new deals are being investigated.  Partnerships are being formed that will circumvent Anglo-America.  Powerful new Asian development banks will impart new values to the global economic system.  I am hopeful that these new values will have nothing in common with IMF conditionalities.  There are many signs now that the daring hopes of the compassionate dreamers will light the new dawn.  There is more than enough strength in Russia, more than enough passion in China.

New dawn!  Not a cheap Nazi device!  Not the kind of thing easily concocted by Soros and Wall Street.  This real, actual new dawn will ignite spiritual and scientific revolutions. The new dawn brings new combinations of human talents.  This is the dawn that is coming despite the mercenaries, the CIA funny money and the nuclear blackmail.  This is the longed-for escape from the lethal clutches of oligarchy.  And it is a spiritual/psychological escape from the enfeebled clutches of Western consumerism, which might be embodied in the form of the junkie–if positing a new Jungian archetype (The Junkie) seems useful here.

The allure of debt is less lustrous than ever.  Debt-based money is underwritten not by law but by the changeable machinations of oligarchs who, like the casino, can never lose. The people see this with increading clarity and are turned off!  The dream–the dream of eternally lustrous debt–demoralized the global society, which, like an addict, pursued immediate and non-constructive payoff, declining to reflect on the longer term goal of development or on such basics as production and innovation.  Consumerism hid the truth, doing so in order to survive, the way a junkie must hide from the truth in order to survive psychologically The inconvenient tragedies could be downplayed by the semi-coherent (and now completely incoherent) media spectacle.  The carnival of television and Hollywood has been a mental prison, a psy-ops ward, one that has held the American psyche within the corporate constraints. Eventually, the truth became unknowable–after we were entrained to avoid it.  Recently, it has become irrelevant in the way that truth eventually becomes irrelevant to the junkie.

It is possible now to hide the truth in plain sight.  The junkie won’t go near it.  The lie is so much more attractive anyway.  But notice: the big lie becomes more absurd by the week.  The pretenses of freedom are wearing thin and are obediently cast off by an American society that seems eager to put on an orange jumpsuit.  The successful “capitalists” have already “made it.”  The oligarchs have closed the hatch behind them, unconcerned that justice might be seeking them and unconcerned for the poor idiots whose prospects have been raided. 

The capitalist program has been shut down. Those who could sign up, did so some time ago.  But now the lower ranks are being thinned by killer cuts, genocidal austerity.  A synthetic cold wind of economic desolation blasts into town just as the beast is breathing its last. 

This killer wind . . .

The cold and criminal contagion that is devastating Ukraine at a frightening pace is the poisonous economic frost breathed forth by the IMF, followed up by the chilling spectacle of mercenaries and useful psychotics.  It is estimated that the IMF and the World Bank have caused the deaths of some 40 million in the past five decades.  Malthusian economics.  No wonder the IMF has partnered so expeditiously with Nazis in Ukraine! Institutionalized genocide and thuggery have long worked well together.  The fascist, who recoils at life and seeks everywhere to subvert truth, has long argued that the ends justify the means.  It is pointless to argue with someone who has announced they have dispensed with reason.  One can pity them.  But one must be prepared to fight them. 

(Noteworthy: the puzzled desperation lurking behind the theatrical facade of fascism.  There is a kind of disconnect, a bafflement: “Life must not be so . . . !”  is the source of the torment.  And yet Life most decidedly IS so: requiring nuanced thought, nonideological reasoning, the suspension of prejudice, a commitment to truth, preservation!  It requires acknowledging that which is most frightening to a fascist: life on life’s terms.  The fascist’s essential character is that of the megalomaniac who seeks to subjugate the entire natural order for the sake of the fearful ego, defending this position by pointing out that fascism has already succeeded in propelling the disenfranchised from the level of human garbage to that of glorified thugs. The fascist becomes useful to the  criminal cartel and from this derives a monstrous pride.)

Back in Brooklyn.  Mongolia protects me by remote forces.  I recall the tremendous personal strength and gentleness that I felt in the presence of His Eminence Zava Damdin Rinpoche.  What a wonderful privilege (and responsibility) it was to be invited to dinner at his house just outside Ulaanbaatar, with his family and close friends!  It is our great intent at the Roerich Bira Foundation to connect with the deep spiritual sources he embodies, to join them with the engines of development, to awaken the full progressive spirit of humankind!  His Eminence’s spirit is emblematic of the wondrous reserve of psychic energy that seem to overflow everywhere in Mongolia.  Cool, focused, creative, generous and with the urgent drive to uplift, to illuminate. To proceed with a joyous rationality! 

Shambhala is my refuge.  It is a refuge that unfolds, expands.  Every act of kindness, every inspiration brings Shambhala nearer, enlarges it, brings us strength and clarity.  The sky, the earth, fellow life forms: we are collaborators.  Every agent of goodwill is an agent of Shambhala.  We, the emanations of the one holy principle: the principle of unity.  We take possession of all vital resources–preeminently among them, the gift of imagination!   Let us imagine the next paradigm, for it is hurtling toward us and we must be prepared.  It is the One Truth.  The Earth will be a garden!  Let the lights of imagination illuminate this fast-approaching era.  The beauty of Shambhala inspires us to free the Mind from oppressive fixed forms, awakening us to the creative power that emerges when the Individual and the Collective become One, achieving a oneness beyond artificial duality. 

“The Addict” struggles to fend off the sense of powerlessness that duality brings.  The desire to control becomes overwhelming, leading inevitably to the complete distortion of life. But duality cannot be resolved by force.  Duality must be healed.  It is healed by the clarity that comes with a balanced, compassionate approach to life–caring for one another, inspiring one another, asking for help when it is needed.  In an environment of enlightened interdependence, all duality becomes a minor concern.  The engaged and balanced human being is tormented no longer.  The addiction to control has passed.  The blessings of Shambhala are without number.

A strange and terrible transformation has been underway in the US for the past several years, since the beginning of the Obama administration.  This reality was driven home to me today when I saw on Twitter a photo of a young girl holding up a sign that read something like: “Drone strikes kill children like me.”  It made me sick inside to face the truth of her message.  The caption below read: “#ILoveObama because only 95% of his drone strikes kill civilians.”  This statistic is easily verified and it has been available for years now.  The wanton killing of innocents has proceeded with total impunity and the response from the US anti-war movement has been almost total silence. 

The vehemence and passion that not long ago animated the cause of peace has been drained from the ranks of activists to a truly shocking degree.  No one dares to criticize or speak out against the murderous policies of the Obama administration.  Or, rather, very few.  One must give credit to the few who speak out.  But, when contrasted with the level of anti-war activism during the Bush administration, the present outrage barely registers in the realm of public discourse.  It is tacitly accepted among the brainwashed, Prozacked minions and reinforced by corporate media, that to object to murders being carried out by a “Democratic” president is somehow bad form and should be stifled, repressed.  The horrors of the drone murders are not discussed in mainstream left circles.  Bourgeois embarrassment and self-censorship are the “appropriate” response when the topic is raised.  To point out that the drone murders have increased since the end of the Bush administration will elicit a stony and uncomfortable silence.  If you are impolite enough to raise this fact, you are encouraged by nonverbal social cues to “drop it”.  And so, the previously vigilant Left has fled from collective responsibility.  And the person who dares raise the topic of Obama’s penchant for blood, is held in immediate suspicion of being a Republican, a Libertarian (frightening!) or something akin to a “conspiracy theorist”. 

This strange and sinister modulation in political discourse has been somewhat gradual but, to someone like myself who spends a good deal of time away from the States, it has been sudden enough to create a creepy Stepford-like experience when I return.  There is no doubt that this development is pure evil.  The ability to dissociate from the extreme suffering of others is at the very heart of evil.  And the compliant sheeple in the States are certainly complicit in a terrible evil of the highest and most appalling variety.  One realizes when facing this dark transmutation in the American psyche that it is actually not really new.  The nation once looked on and cheered the genocide of the Indigenous population, an event unprecedented in human history.  But what makes this evaporation of basic human conscience so incredible is the Leftist cover that continues to support the ongoing psychotic outsourcing of violence around the globe. 

Not long ago, we Americans smiled broadly and triumphantly and spoke of “Hope” and “Change”.  Gone was Bush and the evil Cheney, who once embodied warmongering so perfectly that it was indeed irresistible to imagine that their exit could not fail to usher in an era of peace.  How wrong we were!  Obama set about immediately attacking Pakistan.  Not long after, it was Libya that found itself in the cross-hairs of this new devotee of “Exceptionalism”.  Gone were the Neocons.  But in their place were the humanitarian bombers, the acolytes of Brzezinsky–a new cold-blooded breed of absolutely amoral policy-makers who cared nothing for the suffering of others.  In February of 2014, we watched the US State Department launch a coup in Ukraine and install a Nazi clique.  We, the world citizens, noticed that the US mainstream media chose, with the determined viciousness of a propaganda wing, to ignore the glaring presence of Nazis in Kiev.  At first, it was simply denied.  But when it became impossible to deny (social media and alternative media sources could not be stifled), it was simply downplayed.  “Downplayed” is perhaps an understatement.  It was dismissed as irrelevant.  It was swept under the already filthy, bloodstained carpet.  My “leftist” friends were uncomfortable when I would raise the issue.  It was bad form–didn’t I know?!–to bring up such an inconvenient fact.  Didn’t I understand that our leftists in the White House should not be questioned, held to account or be confronted?  Again, what was I?–a Republican?! 

The sanitized evil is the worst because it can exist in its own bubble of sanctioned perfidy, unexplosed to reason or rational examination.  Self-censorship and partisan idiocy has succeeded in inoculating the masses against any urgent need for moral accountability.  American Exceptionalism under Left Cover has become probably the most potent form of Fascism the world has ever seen.  Deplorable offenses that would have elicited the calls for Bush’s impeachment  have been refashioned in acceptable leftist garb.  There is, of course, absolutely no substance in any political rhetoric in this present scenario.  One is simply advised not to question, not to criticize.  The lies about Russian aggression in Ukraine continue to go unchallenged in the public debate.  The sheeple fall into line with uncanny obsequiousness behind the genocidal program being carried out by John Kerry, Victoria Nuland, Barack Obama, et al. 

The horrific flood of images depicting the crushing of civilians in Eastern Ukraine is utterly ignored–willfully, programmatically–not only by the corporate media but by the people themselves.  They seem not at all curious to know what is really going on.  They are content to bury their snouts in the trough prepared for them by their corporate and political masters.  Such a degree of conformity would not have been possible under Bush.  He was too divisive a figure.  But Obama was a brand that commanded a far greater degree of loyalty.  And it is this present loyalty to a fascist agenda that has so unnerved me of late.  It has kept me up at night.  Tormented me.  It has been so shocking to see my friends become helpless idiots in the thrall of the Fascist Corporate Left Brand, to see their stubborn and bewildered expressions when confronted with the truth.  It has been like a nightmare.  They do not want to see the truth.  Or read about it, or entertain the possibility of truth.  They are comfortable in their complicity and in the neutered, dumbed down, “safe” (not safe for Ukrainians, Libyans, Syrians, Russians, Arabs, Palestinians!), utterly false and shamefully corrupted content that has been substituted for real public discussion. 

My American friends have been stolen from me. Or perhaps they have been willing participants all along.  Probably it is a lot of both.  And so I alternately pity them and vilify them.  Neither does much good.  The Stepford effect has taken hold on such a deep level that I doubt it is possible to get through to them.  And so the great Fascist Evil that has possessed the nation continues to control the minds of the willing participants with its bland, heartless, petty and smug delusions.  Are the American people accountable for the deaths in Gaza, Donbass, etc.?  Of course.  And yet, the obvious brainwashing has been so thorough and insidious that is difficult to condemn them.  But perhaps only condemnation will begin to wake them up.

The Roerich Bira Foundation is currently planning its first international conference for this coming June.  The topic is “Tenggerism and a New Culture of Development.”  Tenggerism will be quite unfamiliar to non-Mongolians.    During the time of the Mongolian Empire, Tenggerism functioned as a comprehensive belief system that took into account all spheres of human necessity: spiritual, economic, environmental and political.  It was a system under which all faiths were reconciled and by which the State administered to the needs of the people, promoting goodwill, cohesion and development.  Its foundational schema is simple and profound: three elements–Earth, Sky and Human Being–coexist in harmonic balance. 

This balance guides every aspect of human life.  Under Tenggerism, our regard for Mother Earth, our reliance on wisdom and law, and our interactions with one another are guided by this principle of Triadic Balance.  In this way,  the dignity of life is maintained and promulgated; the sacredness is never decoupled from the necessities of survival; and the well-being of the individual is the intrinsic concern of the society and vice versa.  While this belief system draws from pre-historical nomadic sources rooted in Mongolian and Turkic traditions, it presents itself now as eminently modern.  Its globalist perspective and holistic philosophical framework lends itself particularly well to the issues our planet now faces with regard to our environment, our economic and political governance, and our interpersonal and intrapersonal modes.  In short: the way we regard ourselves and one another, the way our social world is administered, and the way we interact with our planet are taken as a whole under Tenggerism.  And in this regard, Tenggerism merges quite naturally with the current understanding of development, which recognizes that true development can only occur when all these concerns are taken into account. 

The  celebrated work of Dr. Shagdaryn Bira elaborates the Tenggerist vision and elucidates its historical context.  However, Dr. Bira, himself a capable visionary, is also keen to point out the urgent relevance of Tenggerism to the current global situation.  His philosophical brilliance, exhaustive historical research and his visionary aspect earned him the coveted Denis Sinor Medal in 2002.  But Dr. Bira has never been one to rest on his laurels.  He has always intended that the message of his life’s work should reverberate in the sphere of general human discourse and provide illumination to our evolutionary path.  And it is with faith in his vision and in the utmost confidence in his cultural contributions that we will present our June conference.  The fact that it will be an international conference signals our understanding that any serious approach to the subject of development cannot fail to be international in scope.  Interdependence, long regarded as the lynchpin of human society, has never resonated as a concept quite so powerfully.  And never before has it been clearer that a serious development program must take into account the value of every individual and the importance of every aspect of human concern.  Development is an evolutionary principle inherent in human culture.  It is a natural and vital process that expresses our need to find solutions and to expand our possibilities.  As a process, it is too all-encompassing to be institutionalized, although many aspects may be served in various institutional settings.  At the essential level, development is a mindset, which, when inculcated in as many individuals as possible, produces the greatest results for the social order.

It is of paramount importance to the Foundation that this conference lead to direct action on multiple fronts.  We do not seek merely to gratify esoteric cravings or engage in empty theory.  The essence of our conference is action.  The essence of Tenggerism is life and in the continual observation that the requirements of life are best kept sacred by meeting them in a timely and balanced fashion.  Tenggerism is a call to action and an unshakeable understanding that best practices are always to be preferred.  In a sense, Tenggerism and development are nearly synonymous.   Our list of speakers reflects our guiding commitment to producing clear results.  From Korea, we will bring Prof. Kim Moon-Hwan, former president of Kookmin University in Seoul.  In addition to being an influential academic, Prof. Kim has been a key exponent in South Korea’s development over the past several decades.  His expertise is directly applicable to Mongolia’s present situation and his insights into the realities of development have global resonance.  We will undoubtedly learn much of value from Prof. Kim.  From Santa Clara University School of Law in the US, we will bring my father Prof. Philip J. Jimenez who has run a successful study-abroad program for nearly forty years.  His global perspective makes him uniquely qualified to consider the future of the international legal order.  As we enter a new era of globalism, one that is clearly evolving from a kind of hierarchy of regions to become a truly universal system, Prof. Jimenez’ observations will prove extremely useful.  From Austria, we will bring Karl von Habsburg whose record of humanitarian service exemplifies action.  His passionate commitment to the cause of culture and to the cause of the downtrodden and the underrepresented will add the clarion notes to our development chorus.  To hear him speak is to be moved to serve the human cause.  From Moscow, we will bring Dr. Viktor Frolov, who heads the scientific research wing of the International Centre of the Roerichs.  Dr. Frolov will emphasize the promise of vigorous and unfettered scientific activity in the development of human society.  From Tokyo, we will bring Prof. Yasuhei Taniguchi, whose was a founding member of appellate body of the World Trade Organization.  Prof. Taniguchi’s deeply humanist perspective on the role of justice in the area of global trade makes him a person of great interest to Mongolian jurists.  In October of 2013, we brought him to speak at the Mongolian National Legal Institute where he was very well-received.  At that same seminar was his colleague Prof. Mitsubishi Matsushita, also of the WTO.  Prof. Matsushita is himself a brilliant lecturer and we hope that he will join us in June as well.

The list is, at present, incomplete.  I should like very much to bring development experts from China.  That is, in fact, my must immediate and pressing task as Secretary-General.  The new regional mood of friendship and cooperation should be reflected faithfully in our program.  I am also hoping that Karl von Habsburg might help me contact potential speakers from Africa to come and offer their advice and share their experience.  Through Daniel Entin, head of the Roerich Museum in New York, I am hoping to connect with potential lecturers in Latin America.  There is much to be done in preparation for our conference.  But so much has already come together that I am personally astounded.  We are expecting Mongolian President Elbegdorj to deliver the introductory remarks!  His interest and considerable knowledge of Tenggerism and his deep respect for Dr. Bira will inform what will be undoubtedly a memorable address.  We are also most grateful to the Mongolian government for the use of the Parliament Building. 

It is our intention to produce a conference that will be of great interest to Mongolians who are now very engaged in the topics we will cover.  But a central aspect of the Foundation is internationalism and so it is our intention to resonate regionally and globally in our activities.  Additionally, it has been my aim from the beginning to bring world attention to Mongolia, a country that has given me so much.  Mongolia has much more to offer than minerals.  It has deep philosophical, political, spiritual and intellectual reserves which will add much to human progress.  In making such a contribution, Mongolia will simultaneously  invigorate its own development and the development of the planet.  We are very excited for this upcoming conference and we welcome any and all voices of goodwill who seek likewise to advance the cause of development.  By definition, development is all-embracing and truly leaves no one behind.

I am writing from the Roerich Museum and Shambhala Center in Ulaanbaatar.  Before me is the image of Rigden Djapo, a king of Shambhala.  He is clearly a warrior, he is in action, riding across the sky.  But he is attentive!– attended by fiery doves and watched over by the Buddha. 

I never would have thought when first I saw the image of this humble, dignified Museum in black and white photographs in my book on Roerich that this would be my office.  The past two years have flown by with some prodigious results and some lingering challenges, heartaches.  What exactly is our mission?  We seek to emphasize the importance of culture in shaping develolment.  Without inculcating certain principles on a cultural level–that is, deeply and on a level that governs every aspect of life–the evolutionary process of development will inevitably serve the few at the expense of the many.  It will become sclerotic.  The few will seek to deter the many from joining the process and advancing themselves. The oligarchs will contrive to stunt the process because they believe that free, open and meritocratic development would disadvantage them. 

That is how it is that development agencies, programs, organizations seem very often to make matters worse for those struggling the hardest.  The individuals behind them do not actually wish development in the true sense.  They wish to control development, to keep “others” in their place.  And to make a tidy profit.  They didn’t attend Harvard Business a school for nothing–even though it functions more as a social club than a school.  The oligarchical conspiracy is this: We must stay in control and allow nothing to grow unless it is under our auspices.  How is this achieved? First of all, it is achieved by any and all means necessary.  The saboteur of human potential will either dress itself in the garb of legitimacy or use fear and brute force to cover its illegitimate modes.  The slightest whiff of altruism will intoxicate the saboteurs into believing that they are good people.  Like a drug, when it wears off, it leaves the user in a state of anxiety and paranoia.  What if people find out what they are actually up to?  What if the poor fools really do manage to succeed at development?  Will our kind lose out?  Will “they” overtake “us”? 

How is it that the World Bank, while in the process of fighting poverty, will usually end up making things worse?  It is always easy to blame the downtrodden and easier still to walk away when there is no persons or body of persons who can hold them to account.  The glossy veneer of technocratic respectibility hypnotizes the media, the vast majority of the privileged and a good number of the disadvantaged who need desperately to believe hope is rational.  Where such slick maneuvers do not succeed in managing the developing peoples, brute force is never far behind.  Libya, Iran, Iraq, China, Russia . . . the list of countries who have either been beaten down by or continue to be harassed by the Western technocratic elite is quite long.  So far, only the BRICS have forged a reasonable opposition and alternative to the eugenics-minded, Anglo-American dominated West.  And so, true development, and a true world order, has a chance of succeeding. 

But, certainly, the struggle is far from over. The term “development” needs to be taken back from the technocrats and given new meaning, or, restored to its original meaning.  This requires that each person rennovate the concept within themselves and encourage one another to do so.  We must recognize the ambition for development in ourselves and in others, and we must encourage, foster and engage in mutual aid and teamwork.  The disinformation campaign has been singularly focused on confusing us, causing us to doubt our senses and one another.  It has largely separated us from basic knowledge of right and wrong–or at least, it has separated from the sense that right and wrong have any serious meaning.  The fascist oligarchy has hoped to keep the world largely stupid and dependent on their expertise.  It has depended, indeed, upon abject stupidity.  For how else is it possible to get healthy young people to go and die in wars that are predicated on a cruel and blatant hoax like 9/11?  This has gone well beyond jingoism.  This has resulted in a pathological alteration and abuse of human psychology. 

The big problem is: the oligarchs have no vision, only insatiable desire.  Those who has sought to control and exploit have very little idea of what it takes, in the long run, to develop as a species, with other species within the given paradigm of Earth and Sky.  As the innocent are ground down into hopeless poverty or else shredded literally in the streets of Donetsk, as economic imbalances attain cartoonist proportions, as lies are pushed forth and no truth is repressed, we must face the reality that the present program must have a dead-end.  And it is only intelligent to assume that the forces that will bring us to this dead-end will have no idea of what to do in the face of extinction–or they would have been doing it all along.  The IMF has no clue, the World Bank has no clue, the CFR and Bilderberg have no clue.  The great vacuum of the UN clueless.  They are an Apartheid organization that routinely shuts out and shuts up our 300 million Indigenous and does not defend them in any appreciable way.  They are a political organization, created for political reasons. 

The concept of development has been weaponized.  So, we must rediscover the concept and passionately pursue its realization.  Development can no longer be allowed to function as a tool of manipulation by Anglo-American interests.  We must embrace it as and fundamental aspect of human culture.  We must promote it on a spiritual level, in the sciences, in the full realization of art that does not merely stand by and lament.  We must promote it in our families and among our friends.  And in those moments of reflection that development requires, we may find our own deeper nature.  We will uncover the meaning of life for ourselves.  This is the work of our Roerich Bira Foundation: to inspire a universal culture of development.  Harmony is not a static proposition.  It moves us forward in a river of melody and in the elaboration of themes.  What we must be clear about is that evil exists.  It exists as anything that might thwart this natural life impulse.  And only a CULTURE OF DEVELOPMENT can guide us as we attempt to steer away from tragedy and loss.  Joy is our destiny.  Confusion in this regard is unnecessary.  How wonderful it is to work until late in the afternoon in this lovely historic museum, to watch the sun’s beams penetrate these icy windows and illuminate this sacred space.  At these moments, I know Shambhala is near!

Genghis Khan’s was first and foremost an environmentalist. That is, his environmental awareness was at the center of his legitimacy. Indeed, the regional mode of nomadism is itself the living embodiment of environmentalism–of treading lightly on the Earth, of respect for the cycles of renewal, of respect for land and water.  Genghis Khan consolidated his power on the basis of his attunement to natural laws.  When the Mongolian Empire was founded in 1206, he codified the best practices of the ancient ways into a body of law, Yassa (meaning “custom” in modern Mongolian), that attempted to regulate human activity by maintaining balance with Father Sky and Mother Earth.  If a particular custom seemed counterproductive, Genghis Khan discarded it.

His code of laws was a distillation of nomadic environmental wisdom,  social rules that supported and fostered communal viability, and an ideological vision derived from spiritual traditions.  As Dr. Shagdaryn Bira writes in his majestic and highly prescient work “Mongolian Tenggerism”: “It was a belief in the Tenggeri (Heaven-God) that inspired and motivated the unprecedented rise of the Mongols in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and this belief was eventually developed to the point where it constituted a cohesive political theory that can be called Tenggerism or Heavenism.” This was further developed to a form of indigenous universalism that sought unity in the human community, promoting religious freedom and affirming the goodness of common purpose.  While this body of law (for all its power and consistency) was kept largely secret and its text diffused across numerous sources (a consolidated version is still undiscovered), it was cannily observant of all relevant phenomena and was unprecedented in its universal claims. Tenggerism also lacked a consolidated text, yet, it too, brought extraordinary clarity to the aspirations of the Empire.

While drawing on ancient Shamanic sources, Genghis Khan was engaged in a very immediate way as an innovator in a rapidly changing political situation.  He would forge an form of internationalism in which disparate populations could benefit from a highly connected system that rested as much on freedom of belief as on loyalty to the Great and Sacred State, to which even the practice of Shamanism was subordinate. This rapidly evolving holistic structure was prodigiously capable of absorbing entire cultures and combining the advances and talents of each to generate astounding technological and intellectual achievement.  This brilliantly administered and synergistic state proved a powerful determinant in world history: without Genghis Khan’s innovations, Russia and China would not exist today and the Renaissance would most likely not have occurred–and it is possible that the more progressive seeds of today’s internationalism might still be waiting to sprout.

Each culture absorbed gained access to an efficient system of trade, an unparalleled communication network (the horseback postal service “arrow messengers”).  And under the aegis of Mongolian Tenggerism,  all faiths (Christianity,  Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Shamanism) flourished in a spirit of open discourse and mutual respect. Nourished by millenia of tradition, Tenggerism was transfigured into a cohesive ideology that served as a basis for an international spiritual order.  Genghis Khan himself was and is regarded as a Shaman himself, in whose person the extraordinary secular duties merged with the sacred.  Through the agency of the Khan’s charisma, the Empire retained the Mandate of Heaven.

Genghis Khan was absolute in insisting that the rule of law applied to all equally, including himself.  He is the first great leader to publicy declare his own subservience to law.  He cautioned that this sacred principle must be maintained.  He demanded that his successors do likewise or risk disunity.  This warning against extra-judiciality was heeded for roughly fifty years after his death, at which point a carelessness in the application of law did indeed begin to erode the vast empire’s unity.

Today we face a similar legal fork in the road.  International law gives expression to the highest awareness of human beings in terms that acknowledge interdependence among Peoples and with the environment. It affirms the sacredness of the human person and recognizes rights and duties as universal principles emanating from “higher law”.  Its rapid development since 1948 still finds us much delinquent in meeting its letter with action.  We see that this has brought us to an existential precipice, where mass starvation and environmental collapse loom as a result of insidious tendencies to disregard international law. International law now offers the human race something more than a mere codification of positive law. It offers itself to us now as an ethical system, a way forward, a way of inclusion, a mode of sustainable governance. And it is my belief that we must rally around it and work to uphold it or face catastrophe. 

“Today,  increasing numbers of people consider that modern globalization is becoming too technocratic and egocentric, and that it fails to take into consideration many serious problems of the world, such as poverty, inequality, insecurity. . . .  It would seem that today’s globalization in its current form, cries out for a more fundamental and humanistic philosophy that could be acceptable to everyone the world over, regardless of religious, cultural or other differences.  This, of course, represents an extremely hard task to fulfill and would require enormous effort and will from humanity.  Yet, it might be argued that there is no alternative.”
                                                                       –Dr. Shagdaryn Bira

My belief–and the crucial point of collaboration between Dr. Bira and myself–is that international law offers such a realization of higher will and that through developing its mechanisms and our own understanding, we may transcend our current dangers. 

Infused in the concept of sustainable development is a living concept that echoes Mongolian Tenggerism, which itself affirms what the global indigenous movement is expressing with increasing urgency. It is my view that the Indigenous voice is the most unified and relevant voice in current human discourse.

Increasingly, the struggle for indigenous rights is finding common cause with the struggle for the rights of all.  In the words of Tom Goldtooth: “We are all in the same canoe.”