The Earth Charter and the Ark of the Gaia Covenant

"The real goal of the Earth Charter is that it will in fact become like the Ten Commandments."

—   Maurice Strong

"Do not do unto the environment of others what you do not want done to your own environment....My hope is that this charter will be a kind of Ten Commandments, a 'Sermon on the Mount', that provides a guide for human behavior toward the environment in the next century."

— Mikhail Gorbachev, The Los Angeles Times, May 8, 1997

On September the 9th, 2001 a celebration of the Earth Charter was held at Shelburne Farms Vermont for the unveilling of the Earth Charter's final resting place. This "Ark of Hope" will be presented to the United Nations along with its contents in June of 2002. It is hoped that the United Nations will endorse the Earth Charter document on this occasion; the tenth anniversary of the UNCED Earth Summit in Rio.

Placed within the Ark, along with the Earth Charter, were various items called "Temenos Books" and "Temenos Earth Masks." Temenos is a concept adopted by Carl Jung to denote a magic circle, a sacred space where special rules and energies apply. Some of the Temenos Books were created within this magic circle by children, who filled them with visual affirmations for Mother Earth. Fashioned with the "earth elements", the Temenos Earth Masks were also worn and created by children.

Maurice Strong and the "Agenda"

In 1992 Maurice Strong was the Secretary General of the historic United Nations (UNCED) Earth conference in Rio. This gathering featured an international cast of powerful figures in the environmental movement, government, business, and entertainment. Maurice Strong's wife Hannah, was involved in the NGO alternative meeting at the Summit called Global Forum '92. The Dalai Lama opened the meeting and, according to author Gary Kah, to ensure the success of the forum, Hanne Strong held a three-week vigil with Wisdomkeepers, a group of "global transformationalists." Through round-the-clock sacred fire, drumbeat, and meditation, the group helped hold the "energy pattern" for the duration of the summit.

It was hoped that an Earth Charter would be the result of this event. This was not the case, however an international agreement was adopted – Agenda 21 – which layed down the international "sustainable development" necessary to form a future Earth Charter agreement. Maurice Strong hinted at the overtly pagan agenda proposed for a future Earth Charter, when in his opening address to the Rio Conference delegates he said, "It is the responsibility of each human being today to choose between the force of darkness and the force of light."  "We must therefore transform our attitudes and adopt a renewed respect for the SUPERIOR LAWS OF DIVINE NATURE," Strong finished with unanimous applause from the crowd.

Despite the disapointing setback of no official agreement toward a "peoples Earth Charter", Maurice Strong forged ahead, with Rockefeller backing, to form his Earth Council organization for the express purpose of helping governments implement UNCED's sustainable development which Agenda 21 had outlined. Agenda 21 was perhaps the biggest step taken to facilitate any future "enforcement" of a patently pagan Earth Charter. According to Strong "the Charter will stand on it's own. It will be in effect, to use an Anglo-Saxon term, the Magna Carta of the people around the Earth. But, it will also, we hope, lead to action by the governments through the United Nations."

The New Age and the Radical-Left 'Enlightenment'

The "For Love of Earth" day-long celebrations at Shelburne Farms Vermont began with an early morning pilgramage during which 2000 or so participants, led by Satish Kumar, walked to the "great barn" where they were greeted by the sounds of the "Sun Song" played by musician Paul Winter. The Pagan festivities continued with the words of Dr. Jane Goodall, Satish Kumar and organizer Dr. Steven C. Rockefeller. The Earth worshippers were treated to dance, music and paintings of several Vermont artists, after which they joined hands and offered an "Earth prayer" of "reverence" and "commitment" to Mother Earth and the "Ark of Hope".

Satish Kumar, who led the early morning pilgramage at Shelburne Farms, is an an influencial advocate of Gaia. Kumar says that "contemporary thinkers of the green movement are collectively developing an ecological world-view." The Earth Charter is the green movement's crowning achievement toward this holistic world-view, and the practical means by which all of us will soon be held accountable to "Divine Nature". According to Satish Kumar. This pagan view has five ingredients: Gaia (James Lovelock), Deep Ecology (Arne Naess), Permaculture (Bill Mollison), Bioregionalism (Gary Snyder et al.), and Creation Spirituality (Matthew Fox). "Creation Spirituality" is what had, undoubtedly, taken place at the Shelburne Farms Earth Charter celebrations. In the words of Steven W. Mosher, president of Population Research Institute, "Gaia is the New Age term for Mother Earth. The New Age believers hold that the earth is a sentient super-being, kind of goddess, deserving of worship and, some say, human sacrifice. Compared to Gaia worship, the simple animism of primitive cultures is wholesome."

Musician Paul Winter also has deep roots within the green movement and "creation spirituality." He has performed concerts at the Cathedral St. John the Divine in New York City, on the solstice and equinox, for well over twenty years. These pagan festivals, in a supposedly christian church nonetheless, are generously sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation and a new age organization called the Lindisfarne Institute – the latter of which has its headquarters in the Cathedral. Maurice Strong is also a member of Lindisfarne (publishers of G-A-I-A, a way of knowing) along with Gaia theory biologist James Lovelock, and admitted Luciferian David Spangler, among others. Paul Winters' most recent concert at St. John the Divine was for the annual Earth Mass, on 7 October.

The fact that this annual October 7th Earth Mass coincides with the hindu Holy Day of Dassehra (worship of the Great Divine Mother) cannot be a coincidence. Winter and bandmates play a tune called Missa Gaia as part of the Feast of St. Francis. The Pope once attended the Feast of St. Francis at St. John the Divine in 1986. Stressing the unity of all the world's religions, John Paul II happily shared the platform with a Tibetan Lama, a Hindu swami, a Native American medicine man, and a Moari high priest.

The New American Insider Report of January 23, 1995 writes that the historic Episcopal Cathedral of Saint John the Divine "has long been a center of New Age and radical-left 'enlightenment' and high-brow Establishment 'culture'." Author Gary Kah reports, in his well-documented book The New World Religion, that the Cathedral of St. John the Divine displays "a female Christ on the cross, complete with shapely hips and full breasts." Also in the same issue of The New American there is a list of donors to the Cathedral: Mr. and Ms. Steven Rockefeller is among them, along with Mr. Robert de Rothschild; David Rockefeller Jr.; Mrs. Mary C. Rockefeller; Mr. and Mrs. Laurance Spellman Rockefeller; Rockefeller Center Properties Inc.; The Rockefeller Group Inc. and many elite-of-the-elite organizations such as J.P. Morgan & Co.; Chase Manhattan Bank; Goldman, Sachs & Co.; Hearst Corporation; CBS, Inc. and even, mysteriously, the Federal Emergency Managment Agency (FEMA), among others.

Earth Charter Commission Co-Chairs

The Earth Charter Initiative was launched in 1994 by Maurice Strong, his newly formed Earth Council and Mikhail Gorbachev, acting in his capacity as president of Green Cross International. In 1997, the Earth Council and Green Cross International formed an Earth Charter Commission to give oversight to the process.

The Global Transformational Movement

Left to right: Wangari Maathai, founder of Kenya's Greenbelt Movement and one of the Earth Charter Commissioners; Maurice Strong, Co-chair of the Earth Charter Commission; and Peter Adriance, a representative of the Bahá'í International Community, gather after the reception following the Official Launch of the Earth Charter, 29 June 2000, at the Peace Palace in the Hague, the Netherlands. More than two hundred fifty people from nearly fifty countries came together to celebrate the release of the final draft of the Earth Charter, a declaration of universal values and ethics for sustainable development, drafted with input from a broad spectrum of humanity.

Sri Chinmoy Indian Mystic, and outspoken advocate of the United Nations' "spiritual mission."

A final version of the Earth Charter was issued by the Earth Charter Commission in March 2000. The Earth Charter "was drafted in coordination with a hard law treaty that is designed to provide an integrated legal framework for all environment development law and policy." This hard law treaty is called the International Covenant on Environment and Development and is being prepared by the Commission on Environmental Law at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a behemoth agency which oversees 700+ governmental agencies worldwide.

The Earth Charter, consisting of 16 principles, has its roots in the values of the Transformational Movement. Jan Roberts, president of the Institute for Ethics and Meaning describes this Transformational Movement as a paradigm shift from individualism, self-interest and separativeness, to unity, wholeness and community. Steven C. Rockefeller was the prime candidate for the leadership role as co-chair of the Earth Charter Steering Committee, the Drafting Committee and co-chair of the final Earth Charter Commission. Besides being a professor of Religion and Ethics at Middlebury College, expounding the virtues of "creation-centered theology," in his capacity as trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, his family's resources ensured the success of the project.

It's clear that the global transformationalists are promoting the Earth Charter as the "new scripture." At the presentation of the Ark, and its "new gospel" contents, we can expect that it will be endorsed by the U.N. The halls of the United Nations has long been a haven for New Age one-world religion spirituality. Former Secretary-Generals like Dag Hammarskjold (founder of the U.N. Meditation Room), U Thant and former Assistant Secretary-General Robert Muller have long been outspoken advocates of a new pantheistic global spirituality, using the U.N. as a vehicle to spread their doctrine.

UN Meditation Room The U.N. Meditation Room is built in the shape of a truncated pyramid. In the center is an altar made out of magnetite, the largest natural piece of magnetite ever mined. For meditation purposes it is probably the most ideal spot on the planet, since the magnetite altar has its foundation straight down, built into the bedrock of the land below; tapping into the energies of the earth itself. The mysterious mural also helps the worshippers tune into esoteric energies, and helps facilitate a state of altered consciousness.

The United Nations even has their own in-house prophet, Sri Chinmoy. This 70 year-old indian mystic is the official Spiritual Advisor to the United Nations. For the past 23 years he has offered prayer and meditation meetings for anyone to attend every Tuesday and Friday at the U.N. Sri Chinmoy claims to have been Thomas Jefferson in a previous life, and he also claims to be the Spritual Brother to Jesus Christ. Chinmoy's disciples claim he's one of a handful of fully enlightened beings on the planet. Some disciples go so far as to claim he is an avatar, a living God. They meditate to a print of his face.

Perhaps the final resting place for the "Ark of Hope" will be in the United Nation's Holy-of-Holies, the U.N. meditation room. "We have the UN Meditation Room, which is visited by hundreds of thousands of visitors a year," Robert Muller explains in his book Genesis: Shaping a Global Spirituality. "We have also a UN Meditation Group led by an Indian Mystic. One could tell several moving stories of the spiritual transformation the UN has caused, to the point that this little speck on earth is becoming a holy ground." (quoted inThe New World Religion, by Gary Kah, p. 310)

To Sri Chinmoy and Robert Muller, world peace will ultimately depend "on divine and cosmic government" and an "alliance between all major religions and the U.N." Muller has gone so far as to call the U.N. "the body of Christ." The United Nations "will be the last word in human perfection," Sri Chinmoy proclaims, it will "stand as the pinnacle of divine enlightenment."

The Earth Charter stresses that man is his own saviour. By saving "mother earth" we will once again return to an idealic Garden of Eden. But instead of worshipping the Creator, the New Age Aquarian conspirators wish to plunge us headlong into a creation-worship new world religion. "Little by little a planetary prayer book is thus being composed by an increasingly united humanity seeking its oneness," Robert Muller preaches. "Once again, but this time on a universal scale, humankind is seeking no less than its reunion with 'divine,' its transcendence into higher forms of life. Hindus call our earth Brahma, or God, for they rightly see no difference between our earth and the divine. This ancient simple truth is slowly dawning again upon humanity, as we are about to enter our cosmic age and become what we were always meant to be: the planet of God."

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“The Earth Charter: Building a Global Culture of Peace”
Steven C. Rockefeller
The Earth Charter Community Summits
Tampa, Florida, September 29, 2001

This is a good time for interfaith dialogue involving Christians, Jews and Muslims and members of other religious traditions as well. The Earth Charter can be used as a catalyst for exploring common ethical values in these exchanges.

A year from now, the United Nations will convene the World Summit on Sustainable Development, and our government representatives should know that we want the United States to play a creative leadership role at this critical world meeting.

Thousands of local, national, regional, and international organizations have now endorsed the Earth Charter. The most recent endorsement has come from the Parliament of the World’s Religions.

Invite your organization to consider endorsing the Earth Charter, if you have not already done so. The more support we have from civil society and local government, the greater the chance of endorsement by the United Nations General Assembly in 2002.

In my home state of Vermont, the Earth Charter is being transported across the state from town to town in a beautiful, handcrafted Ark of Hope by people walking in a spirit of peace. In addition to the Earth charter, the Ark of Hope contains the prayers and poems of many Vermonters. The global challenges before us are great, but if we unite behind the kind of vision affirmed in the Earth Charter, there are grounds for hope........ With reverence for the mystery of being and with reverence for life, let us resolve here today to commit ourselves anew to this great work.

Interview : Maurice Strong on a "People's Earth Charter"

Mr. Strong is Chairman of the Earth Council and Co-Chair of the Earth Charter Commission.

transcript of interview conducted March 5, 1998)

Q: Mr. Strong, could you share with us why you think an Earth Charter is so important ?

A: The Earth Charter is important as an expression of the commitment of people throughout the Earth to evoke their own deepest moral, spiritual and ethical principles in the task of ensuring a sustainable future for those who inhabit the Earth now and those who will follow us on the Earth.

People act in accordance with their deepest motivations, and therefore to undertake major programs and activities, which we must do, they have to be rooted finally, in the priorities of people, and those priorities stem from their moral, ethical and spiritual values. So, the Earth Charter will attempt to articulate these in rather universal terms. And by articulating them and ensuring that they represent the voice and the feelings of millions of people from all over the world, they can have an immense value in terms of motivating our political leaders to do what is necessary to ensure a sustainable future for our children.

Q: How could support for a People's Earth Charter help to create the political will necessary to ensure that this issue is part of the UN agenda ?

A: The whole question of an Earth Charter was in fact on the UN Agenda at Rio. We didn't quite make it. We did make some progress. At the Stockholm Conference, which was the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972, governments agreed to a historic declaration, which moved the world community towards what we now call an Earth Charter. Then, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, as the Secretary General of that conference, I challenged governments to produce an Earth Charter. They made progress. They created a Rio Declaration. But, they did not complete the job of agreeing on an Earth Charter, and therefore people are now taking up this. People, through their organizations and through the Earth Council, who is working with many others around the world to help ensure that this task of formulating a universal Earth Charter, ...will command the support of people throughout the world and by commanding their support, as the true voice of people -- after all, the United Nation's Charter begins "We the People..." Well, the Earth Charter is going to be a product of people's commitments, and those commitments will clearly serve to motivate governments.

The Charter will stand on it's own. It will be in effect, to use an Anglo-Saxon term, the Magna Carta of the people around the Earth. But, it will also, we hope, lead to action by the governments through the United Nations.

Q: What is the aim of the process at this point ?

A: The aim of the process is to bring the Earth Charter to people everywhere; to enlist the cooperation and the help of organizations of every kind: citizen's organizations, non-governmental organizations, educational organizations, youth organizations, and of course religious and spiritual organizations -- to enlist all of them in this task of trying to ensure that the Earth Charter reflects the thinking, and the concerns, and the values of people everywhere.

Now of course, people are different; people have different perceptions and different values. But, out of this we want to distill those universal values which we all must share in order to ensure our common future. And, to put it language that speaks to people everywhere but also ensures that people are the source of the Charter. And, therefore we need and we invite the help and the participation of organizations and people throughout the world to ensure that the Charter has the most universal possible acceptance, and that it is rooted in the true participation and the contributions of people everywhere. And we want those contributions. The more contributions, the more participation, the more will be the credibility and the validity and the political influence of the Charter.

Q: Why or how is a People's Earth Charter going to make a difference ?

A: Of course, charters don't solve everything. We know for example, those of us who follow the Christian faith, know the Ten Commandments. We embrace them. We value them. We try to live up to them. But, we know that it has never been totally possible for people to do that. But that does not stop us from striving. Now, we know that the Earth Charter will contain values and principles concerning how people must relate to each other, how they must treat each other and how they must relate to the Earth. And these principles will be principles to which we must aspire, principles that will motivate our conduct. But, we also know that those principles won't come immediately into force. Everybody will not suddenly embrace them. But we hope that everybody will respect them, everyone will try to base their lives on these principles and only by doing that can we ensure that the Earth will remain a safe and hospitable home for those who follow us on it.

Q: There has been a lot of concern about the role the Earth Charter will play in the UN negotiations. Is one of the ultimate goals of the project to receive an official endorsement by the UN ?

A: Well, it does not depend on that. Let me be very clear, this is a People's Earth Charter. It will have its power, it will have its influence because it comes from people. That's why we want to ensure that people throughout the world, the maximum number of people, are involved. That is what will give it its authenticity. That is what will give it its credibility. That is even more important than putting it on the UN Agenda. But by doing that, then that will make it inevitable that the UN will take note of it, and hopefully it will then lead to a process of producing a formalized Earth Charter.

But, let us be very clear, the UN action is not going to be the only goal. The real goal of the Earth Charter is that it will in fact become like the Ten Commandments, like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It will become a symbol of the aspirations and the commitments of people everywhere. And, that is where the political influence, where the long-term results of the Earth Charter will really come.

Of course, as someone who has served the UN for many years, I hope very much that the UN will embrace this and that it will be translated into a formal commitment on the part of governments. But the a priori purpose is to get the commitment of people, and the political commitment of governments, hopefully through United Nations action, will follow inevitably from the commitment of people.