Оlga Alekseevna Urozhenko

Candidate of Philosophical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Ural State University named after A.M. Gorky, President of the International Council of the Roerich Organizations by name of S.N. Roerich Russia, Yekaterinburg

The Pact of Cultural Values Preservation / the Roerich Pact as Expression of Philosophy of Cosmic Reality

In April, 15 2010 we marked 75 years since the day of signing "The Treaty on Protection of Artistic and Scientific institutions and Historic Monuments" known as the Pact of Culture/ the Roerich Pact (after the name of its initiator) by the representatives of the USA and by those of the 20 Latin American countries. When speaking at the White House Ceremony on signing the Pact by the countries of the Western hemisphere, the 32-nd US President F.D. Roosevelt paid the attention of those present to the fact that "the treaty conveys in itself a much more profound spiritual meaning than it is worded in the text". It is an expression of "the most important principles of preserving modern civilization" including "the basic doctrine of responsibility and solidarity".

What can "a much more profound spiritual" meaning of the Pact consist in?

At present after several anniversary conferences having been held at the Moscow International Roerich Centre and after the scientists from numerous countries of the world having collected, studied, analyzed the Pact history, we can say with confidence: the Pact of Culture / the Roerich Pact is a complicated and compound phenomenon. It is a special meta-phenomenon which contains a legal documentary text, voluminous materials connected with its promoting, the name of Roerich assigned to the name of the document, the activity of all the Roerichs including that of Helena Roerich who inspired and guarded the work over the Pact, and as the acme of this phenomenon – the Banner of Peace. All these sifnificant components are an immensely confirmative testifying to the presage of the New Epoch / to the threshold of a New World/ to a new evolutionary stage in the history of the humanity – in such a way Helena Roerich appreciated the Treaty. And from the space of the above mentioned "packet of documents" the basic principles of Philosophy of Cosmic Reality (the energetic world outlook) expose themselves step by step in all their peculiarities as they are stated in the Teaching of Living Ethics.

The History of the Pact of Culture names traditionally 1903 when Nicholas Roerich and his wife Helena Ivanovna during their travelling through some ancient towns of Russia saw masterpieces of national genius (temples, wall paintings, fortresses, utensils and so on and so forth) be getting destroyed, perished, disappeared from the Earth face. After N. Roerich’s having acquired a brilliant knowledge of the civil law at the St. Petersburg University where he graduated from the law faculty as one of the best students of F.F. Martence (an outstanding Russian lawyer on whose initiative on the verge of XIX-XX centuries there were held the earliest Hague peaceful conferences which started the world process of establishing the rules of warfare including protection of cultural values) there began his public activity. In 1904 at the Emperor Archeological Society Nicholas Roerich with all his active civil stand brought forward the idea of protecting and safeguarding national shrines and antiquities. He was a member and a constitutor of numerous Councils, Commissions, Societies dealing with such problems. During the years of the First World War (1915) he made a special report on this subject for the Russian Tsar Nicholas II and the High Commander of the Russian Army – Grand Duke Nicholai Nicholayevich. He also issued the poster "Enemy of the Mankind" (1914) and produced a number of paintings including "The Glow" (1914). In March 1917 immediately after the February Revolution in Russia Roerich was appointed the Vice-chairman of the Commission on Art Affairs, for "the calls for protecting Culture are equally urgent in spite of the fact whatever governments are in power".

A qualitatively new stage of establishing the Pact began in 1929 just after finishing the Central Asian Expedition. The period of time between the first Roerichs’ meeting with the Teachers of the Himalayan Brotherhood (London, 1920), the meeting in the Land of India (Darjeeling, 1924), and the meeting after finishing the Central-Asian Expedition (1928) became the important point of the Mission of their lives. Within those remarkable 7-8 years Nikolai Konstantinovich and Helena Ivanovna achieved the highest degree of renovation: their physical organism got refined, and blossomed the Lotus of their Fiery Spirit. They were one kind of persons when entering the Expedition and they went out of it quite another kind of human beings.

It is already in 1929 the International Treaty to protect and preserve cultural institutions and monuments in times of war drafted under Roerich′s supervision by Dr. Georges Chklaver, professor of international law at the University of Paris and by a member of the International Hague Court, professor Albert Joffre de la Pradel was published together with Roerich′s Appeal to all the countries and to all the peoples of the world. At that very time in New York, in Paris and in Bruges (Belgium) there were established the Pact Permanent Committees. Annually during the next 6 years dozens of messages, greetings, memoranda, letters, accounts, recommendations, articles, conferences were forming the energetic field of the Pact social movement. The culmination of those efforts, as it was noted, became signing the Pact at the White House in the study of the US President F.D. Roosevelt who through Helena Roerich was in correspondence with the Great Himalayan Teacher. "Our Ray is over President Roosevelt". He "will join you in all your actions for the benefit of your Country and in establishing the World′s ballance". "Thus President Roosevelt will be invested with Power". At that time the US President "has got the Bowl of Peace" and signing the Roerich Pact became one of his first conscious actions in the capacity of an envoy of the Brotherhood.

The joint energy of peace-making activity appeared to be so great that in 1937 it got an active response of the Baltic Roerich Communities, in 1938 it got that of the oldest literature community "Nagari Prachavarini Sabha" from Benares, the place of the first sermon by Buddha Shakjamuni. At that very time the Banner of Peace was hoisted in Karachi. Rabindranath Tagor wrote to professor Roerich defining the Pact as "a great humanitarian work for the welfare of the mankind": "I am profoundly convinced that it will be of great consequences for cultural and mutual understanding of all the peoples".

However before the beginning of the World War II no country had signed the Pact. Europe was totally preparing / was energetically taking its road towards massacre secretly or evidently, in consciousness or in unconsciousness, as a tyrant or as a victim. Europe appeared to have been programmed for war. There came true the words which had been told to Roosevelt by the Great Teacher: "Europe shows the signs of degradation. Let the dynamite explode where it is being laid".

After the Great War the Pact peacemaking energies did not vanish, they gave impulse to a widely spread international movement "For Peace All Over the World" with Picasso′s white pigeon as its symbol.

Having obtained its independence India, thanks to Pandit J. Nehru’s endeavours, approved the Pact during the shortest time. There appeared newspaper articles on adopting and signing the Pact by the Government. But no official information appeared about it. The Kashmir war prevented from it.

Since 1954 the history of protecting cultural values in time of armed conflicts had appeared to be connected with the Hague Intergovernmental Conference and with the documents having been approbated there.

Such are the so-called landmarks of the Roerich Pact social history.

However, it is known that "each force, when entering life, creates in the visible plan, but it strains itself with the help of an invisible lever. "When speaking on the bases of life We Call them Overterrestrial". And so the Pact history wouldn’t be fully understandable if "history beyond historians" (N. Roerich) were excluded from it and if we had not attempted to discern its meta-roots.

Nowadays, first of all, among the Pact meta-levers there reveals the Great Himalayan Teacher′s activity which the Roerichs′ heritage testifies to, Their "indefatigable care of preserving the Beautiful". For million years They have been saving art monuments, They have been collecting inventions, "the models of cities and of other places of history", "memorable relics”. They have been carefully treasuring them in Their Depositaries which Helena Roerich partially saw. "In prevision of Armageddon We started distributing Our Recommendations concerning the best ways of protecting the world values of Culture" (from the book "The Overterrestrial" dedicated to the inner life of the Himalayan Brotherhood, collected by Helena Roerich from her dialogues with the Teacher and published in 1938). The Words mentioned above can′t help associating with the work over the Pact of Culture. In this context the Pact is not simply a kind of the product of N.K. Roerich′s humanistic genius but it is his realizing the Great Teacher′s direct Errund/ direct Instruction.

What is the object of the collecting-preserving activities of the Brotherhood? "The happenning Armageddon has its task to demoralize all the energies of the humanity". But "how many powerful emanations art objects radiate. Among the onsets of darkness such kind of emanations can be the best weapon".

The Himalayan Depositories, however, are not at all "the museums as we traditionally see them". Here "the objects serve as a reservoir of accumulating [beautiful] aura". Sometimes "they are sent to the world for carrying out a certain errund", sometimes "as a kind of a magnet they are buried in a certain place". Numerous tests are being carried out on the radiation of the objects: "We compare the language of the objects by their radiation", "it is valuable to observe the relation of the ancient aura towards the modern radiations". "If it is possible to get a number of objects created at one and the same time under the similar aspirations, it will be possible to get an epoch′s radiation. Thus it will be possible to study a genuine sense of certain times". So "each object is a necessary apparatus" for investigation. This kind of approach can’t but pave the way towards fundamentally new perceiving senses, ways, methods of the protecting service to Culture.

It is worth also mentioning that the Teachers of the Himalayan Brotherhood are not only busy with saving monuments of Culture. In the book being cited there are lines of a great significance: "There is a society of animal protection, however there is no society of man’s protection". "…Not only war and time of troubles, but school and family are full of low exquisite tormenting". "Conscious torturing one’s close relations does not much differ from the remotest wild epochs". "…There should be protected the inviolability of personality"; man’s dignity should be protected.

In the light of what has been spoken about the High Source in the text of paragraph 2 of Article I of the Roerich Pact becomes clearly understandable: "The same respect and protection [as historical monuments, museums, scientific, artistic, educational and Cultural establishments] are enjoyed by the co-workers (!) of the above mentioned establishments", "both during war and peaceful time".

Thus according to the Himalayan Brotherhood project, the Pact becomes the Treaty of protecting man as bearer and co-worker, co-creator of Culture, for Culture without man, without man′s honouring Light can′t exist. Each authentic co-worker of Culture, according to the Pact, is a real treasure of his country, each co-worker of Culture embodies the highest value of the whole Planet. It is inadmissible to kill him without any reason, to rot him in camps, to keep him in torture chambers, to humiliate him, to trample and to discreet him. The Pact really introduced a humanistic component both into foreign and into home policy of the countries which had signed the Pact and thus turning them towards principally new methods and new instruments of governing.

Finally one more remark relating the history of the Pact. There is paid attention to its official legal name bearing the name of its creator – "The Roerich Pact". When the document was being prepared for signing in America, Helena Roerich was greatly troubled about the withdrawal of the Name of the Pact. In her several letters she insistently reminded of the necessity to bring It back. She considered the International Law authorities′ references to a special law and to the international practice which excluded naming Treaties and Pacts, to be formal and unconvincing. She insistently paid their attention to – "We have got the Edict…" "We have been told that the Pact without the Name will be deprived of its sole".

For India and for the whole East naming the Pact after the Name of the Great apprentice of the Great Himalayan Teacher manifested sacred and real connection: chela-Guru – and the Fire Law of Hierarchy behind that connection.

Thus in the light of the Brotherhood activity the Roerich Pact becomes "the protection of the visible world" from the raging waves of the chaos. Its participants "join the Teacher′s activity. Meta-history of the Pact confirms the words of the ancient Arabic poet Maarry: "History is a poem where words change but the rhythm remains the same". And the sources of this rhythm come from the Overterrestrial Worlds.

Which place in the Pact phenomenon is by its Banner occupied? The white field and the sign of Triunity in it. What do they mean?

In the 4-th line of the resolving part of Resolution-7 of the American states′ International Conference on the Roerich Pact and in the 8-th line of its preamble (twice!) one and the same conceptually important formulation is repeated: to recommend to the governments of the states to join the Pact "directed at the world-wide recognition of the Banner <…> with the view of guaranteeing cultural values protection".

We can′t but mention that the first objective of the Pact is as follows: "the world-wide recognition of the flag". And only in the 3 d article the Flag is called as a differential sign; the 4 th article is dedicated to compiling a list of the monuments and establishments to be protected.

Thus the composition of this rather short (of only few pages) international document points to a dominating role, to the highest place belonging here to the Banner.

In the Convention about protecting cultural treasures in case of armed conflicts adopted in the Hague in 1954 in some articles there is written about the necessity of a differential sign and there is also described its drawing – a shield with white and blue squares and triangles… It is also interesting to mention that in the Second Protocol of the Hague Convention adopted in 1999 a problem of the sign is not being discussed at all. All these facts should be understood as a pragmatical approach to the sign on the part of the authors and of those who signed the Hague’s documents.

However the pieces of the Roerich Pact text cited above allow us to see in the Banner the peculiar "Capital", "Key stone" of the Pact in order to grasp its sacred ancient meta senses (pre senses), which are "much more deeper <in the meaning> than the instrument as such <the method applied for achieving the purpose>", wrote N.K. Roerich in October 1946, more than 10 years later after signing the Pact and only a year before his leaving this life.

The Banner of Peace is not a mechanically composed symbol. In it there is hidden and revealed Spirit of the Pact, its sacred Seed, its Principle which only in its internal essence is able to serve the evolution of the World.

The Roerichs named the Flag in various ways: Znamya Mir a ("mir a" as "of not war" and "mir a" as "of the Universe" / "of Cosmos" / "of World building" that is "the Banner of Peace and of the Universe"); the Banner of Culture ("of Culture" as "an amount of evolutionary achievements of human genius", "of Culture" as of a peculiar meta-phenomenon – "honouring Light"). "Light wind of Other Being" (L.V.Shaposhnikova) is an indispensable indication to the state of Culture.

The deep ontological senses of the Banner of Culture become understandable due to its terming as the Banner of Light: Light as an instrument for "burning of Darkness" and Light as the way to manifestate the crystallized Substance of Spirit no matter whatever it is called: a small candle light, the sacred element of Agni, Fokhat sparks, Lucida Substance or unspoken Matrix Substance. In 1948 Helena Roerich quite openly wrote to her American friends: "… A fiery stamp (of Akashi records) lies on the Banner of L[ord]… Indisputability of this undeniable fact should be affirmed in the hearts of all those who strive for the World of Light and Culture of Spirit". The Banner of Light forms the space for direct touching by the Earth’s man the subtliest, all-generating, all-penetrating energetic vibrations of the universal substance – Substance of Light – without which all parts of the Universe, all Its elements would be lifeless and dispersed.

In Agni-Yoga the flag is termed as the Banner of Lords, the Banner of Strong-hold of Light, the Banner of Hierarchy, the most subtle Principle of the worlds’ regulating and organizing, the world values, goals, strivings and senses.

Thus the versatile semantic space of the Pact Banner contains numerous key images, conceptions, laws of philosophy of cosmic reality stated in the Teaching of Living Ethics.

As a whole composition (a cloth and sing of Triunity) the Banner may be understood as a peculiar modelling of a Mandala (as a magic diagram, a model, "a map of the Universe", a concealed Country, Space, Principle that fractionally organizes various, absolutely of different scales phenomena, such as: the Universe, atom, mineral, plant, man, inward Living systems, those of the outward Being. To conceive Mandala’s Essence and Principle means to obtain the key to the gates of the Great Mystery of the Universe. It also means to acquire a certain relationship towards Cosmic Rhythm. And only then Mandala appears to be a peculiar resonant, synergetic modulus that protects, that preserves the safety of any organism whatever it is. In the course of man′s conceiving /assimilating/ perceiving Mandala turns responsively man’s integrity and that of the whole world towards a dynamical process of transforming /remaking. Mandala, and following it the Banner of Peace, appear to be a device, means of transforming and advancing. It helps to turn all living and movable energies of Being towards infinitely multiforming Reality. Thus transforming proves to be the best way of Culture protecting/preserving.

The exterior forms of Mandala as to the different aspects of man′s activity (in architectural constructions, rituals, art and so on) are greatly diverse. They are glued to concrete historic facts, to philosophic systems, to art traditions and the like. But as for the symbolism of its inward forms it is deeply rooted in universum. The quadrangle cloth of the Banner of Peace personifies the earthly world, dense and manifest. As for the circle and the spheres they symbolize the world of more advanced, more refined vibrations of Spirit. The plastic form of the circle and that of the 3 spheres, conjugate and contiguous, turns one′s visual memory towards unmanifest/ulterior presence of a transformed, artistically generalized stroke of a spiral. But the image of the spiral including concentric form as one of the visual equivalents of the law of fractals is the base of creating all the worlds known today.

The closed silhouette of the central figure forms (of a rather compound design) a "quite the reverse" triangle with its downward apex in contrast to a big triangle with its upward apex within which there are inscribed spheres. On the one hand, a common form of the two inscribed (one inside the other) triangles of different scales reveals an unmanifest hexahedron connected with being of the feminine principle of the Great Mother of the World whose Epoch (according to philosophy of cosmic reality stated in the Teaching of Living Ethics) concurs with the beginning of "Blessed Satia-yuga" and is called the New Epoch. On the other hand, the figure after thorough looking at fixes clearly and exactly the centre, the centreing which reminds, in a peculiar way, of the sacred bindu vajra point, the point into which there roll inwards and out of which there roll outwards all the Worlds. At last the scale difference of the triangles visually transfers all the design out of the two measured plane of a mechanical similarity into a stereoscopic space of numerous co ordinates and thus introducing the Banner of Peace once more into a vertical model of the Universe testifying to the principle hieraticness of its structure.

Recurring to the traditional symbolism of the Banner of Peace such as mandala when considering it in the light of the Living Ethics, we should notice that the Earth square into which there is inscribed/confined/blocked up/brought down/"crucified"(!) the Heavens circle – the quadrature of the circle – becomes in this case a direct visualizing of one of the most important principles of the Teaching: “Life is the crucifying of spirit confined in matter”, life is sacrificing (!) of the Superior to the inferior, of Spirit to the Earth and at the same time life is protecting (!) the Earth from the raging waves of Chaos; the Helping Hand to the inferior in its evolutionary ascent.

Thus the fractiousness of the semantic field of the Banner of Light is expanding like the view of "the Universe receptacle" what is the mandala when visualirized.

Let us regard all the individual elements forming the Banner of Culture. In the Russian Language Explanatory dictionaries the word "banner′ ("znamya′) is of the same root as the words ′znameniye′ ("sign") and "znameniye" ("striking illustration"). They all mean some individual sign, indication, stamp, meta-phenomenon which is behind them or following them. The Banner (znamya) always indicates to availability of another/of other plan of Being beyond any external manifestation.

The Teaching of Living Ethics/ the philosophic heritage of the Roerichs names the overterrestrial source of "Other Being Plan" and quite clearly elucidates it. The auraous "radiations were sometimes called a banner (znamya)" including those of a human being. "Man carries his banner (znamya) when he lives in the overterrestrial world, he cannot conceal his Light".

The light bearing radiations are overterrestrial basis of prayer-banners, prayer-gonfalons, prayer-flags which are widely used in the world religious practices. A Buddhist when reviewing prayer-banners "turns tight", amplifies and sets free their energies having been covered with prayers. Their shades transfer the prayers and their all-penetrating energies thus saturating the Earth. That is why it is better not to tred upon them. Spiritual banners flap in the wind and the wind activizes the prayers transferring them all over air. The flags over lakes return their sacred energies to the lake water. Together with the streams of rivers and brooks the prayers get to the ocean. Thus the elements are being pacified, harmonized, quitened down and the Earth natural substance is being enlightened.

And "the Great Banner of Peace carries its charges of Light" – the Himalayan Brotherhood Aura Light. And it "fierily saturates air currents round the Earth as panacea from all evil". Thus in the phenomenon of the Banner there is being firmly affirmed "the fiery nature of all Reality", the fiery principle that is all-penetrating. As a rule, only an experienced wayfarer is able to see Banner of Light But in XX-th century the Fiery Banner of the Pact has illuminated the Celestial Path just openly, in the sight of all the planet, from East to West, from North to South. The Fiery Banner cultivates the arable of the Earth, sows the seeds of Light in it, thus fertilizing it; the Fiery Banner of the Pact gives the affirming of a New World to the torn to pieces Planet laying the potential of a New Earth and a New Sky. And if before not secret but sacred Principles of Existence were rolled up and at the same time were presented in the symbols of Sacred Stone, of Sacred Bowl, of St. Jacob’s Ladder, of golden-haloed Triratna and etc., but now into the history of the temporal society there is being introduced a new form of the symbol – the Banner protecting the spiritual principals of the whole Being and cementing the space of the three Worlds.

As for the sign of Triunity there have been written numerous books. It is known that this sign in its present configuration has got its ageless origin. Roerich discovered it on the ancient rocks of Mongolia; in the Himalayan mountain passes; on the pottery ornaments of the Neolithic Age; on the shields of the ancient Greek gods and heroes; on the coat of arms of the Templars; on ancient Russian icons; on the clothes of Christian saints; on the images of Buddha Maitreya Dzanabadzara; on the temple decorations; on the finger-rings and on fibulae. It also can be discovered, though on rare occasions, on Buddhi banners or on those of the Japanese stock of Minamoto. As it has been mentioned above, XX-th century for the 1-st time in the world’s history approved and affirmed the sign of Triunity on the Planet scale and XX-th century also affirmed/brought down/introduced the sign on the Pact Banner into social life at the level of the State power.

The Sign reflects such mostly important universum reals/principles of philosophy of cosmic reality as the Universal Unity of the World or, as it sounds in Hinduistic terms, the Single Superior Principle of Being, Brahman, out of which by means of Maja great energy the infinitely changeable forms are constantly manifested; as the principle of fractiousness/similarity of world-construction / as the law of the Hierarchial principle, as the principle of ascending from bipolarity towards trinitarian methods/ways of cognition and so on.

Next let us pay our attention to two circumstances connected with the Sign. The first one. We may take the opportunity of supposing that the sign of Triunity points to Heaven, to the starry Sky. The Sign projects upon the Earth in a peculiar way the constellation of Three Wizards – Orion′s Belt, a profoundly sacred, well-known to the mythology practically of all peoples of the Planet. The Sign in the Banner of Peace, in the Banner of Culture calls very clearly not metaphorical but ontological roots/bases of Culture, it immediately addresses us to "its distant and high sources". It points to reality of such word-expressions as "Cosmos of Culture" or "Culture is a cosmic heritage of the mankind". Culture as Beauty, Love, Truth, music of spheres "cannot proceed from the Earth alone". Culture descends from cosmic distances. It is the cosmic heritage of the mankind. The Sequence of Teachers radiant with "interplanetary pearls" delivers it to the Earth, and the sacred Banner of Culture becomes the direct manifestation of the Rays of the boundless Cosmic Hierarchy.

The second circumstance is connected with a creative process of the Sign birth/making. As we have already noted N.K. Roerich knew about the sign long ago; but it was realized as the Sign of the Banner of Peace only after appearing before the Image of the old Russian icon "St. Vivifying Trinity" which is kept at St.-Trinity Sergius Monastery. The Image was created in XV-th century by an outstanding icon-painter Andey Rublyov, a younger contemporary of St.Sergius, the Spiritual Leader of Russian Land. The activity of St. Sergius as the Spiritual Uniter of Rus was similar to that of Akbar′s the Great for India. The Ray of St. Sergius, a greatly congenial Image to N.K. Roerich, and the Ray of Andey Rublyov reached the heart of the artist of XX-th century and he sensed "the magnetism of the object", "obtained the essence" [of it]…, "felt its harmony" and rolled up the brilliant anthropomorphous composition of the icon-painter into the Sign. Filled with a silent joy of the Unity, painted in the spirit of a light joy of the pre-Mongolian wall-paintings of the Transfiguration Cathedral of the Savior-Mirozhsky Monastery (XII c., Pskov) Rublyov′s Trinity was, above all, sanctuated by sacrificial sufferableness of medieval Russians during the tragical Eastern raids of the nomads in the period of feudal division in Russia. Indeed, the icon became the treasure to protect the people′s Spirit.

In XX-th century, by the time fixed, after offering the Sign of the Banner of Peace and being supported by the "Trinity" N.K. Roerich, on the one side, presented the cosmic sources of the creative work by the medieval artist, unexpectedly having uncovered its cosmism though hidden and concealed. On the other side, Roerich enriched the protective Sign of the Banner of Peace with the intonation of sacrificing, with which there was, above all, penetrated both the Christian doctrine concerning the Trinity and, to the greatest degree, delicate painting of the icon. The expanding, broadening and all-enveloping sacrificialness of Life was personified in the icon both by a bowl with a figure of a slaughterred lamb standing on the table before three Angels and by invisibly rhyming reiterations of the Bowl′s outlines in the drawing of the figure formed by the outlines of the sitting Angels′ legs; and, above all, by the Bowl slightly obvious and visible within the outlines of the Angels′ wings, the Bowl alledgedly moving off far beyond the icongraphic composition and dissolving in space both behind and before the praying image in the space of praying service.

It is worth mentioning that the idea of sacrificialness and protecting, above all, consisted in the fact connected with the mandala phenomenon mentioned above. In Buddhism, for example, a special mandala was brought as a gift to Buddha, to Bodhisatvas, to Hidams or to a Teacher as a token of entrusting the Universe under Their protection. The custom of making sacrifice of mandala was taken by the lamas out of the legend about the Indian emperor Ashoka who had raised Buddhism into the rank of the state religion (B.C. III c.) and who thrice favoured the Buddhist community with India as a gift and then thrice redeemed it for treasures.

Thus the Unity of Wisdom and compassionate sacrificialness entered the figurative and semantic cloth of the Banner of Peace. It affirmed the creativity of Life, the transformation of the Planet by means of the highest measures, for the paralysis of the supreme centres bereaves human beings of having been given to them the Superior/Supermundane Life and immortality.

However, the Pact is not at all a kind of abstractness, it is not a transcendental symbolic abstract idea. The fact is that philosophic senses of cosmic reality/ the Teaching of Agni-Yoga here are directly introduced into the real life of human beings and even not only into their everyday life with its indispensable individual self-perfection but at the same time into social life of theirs, into their concrete conscious social activities.

In the East they know different paths towards Truth: the path of a flower, the path of tea, the path of a warrior; the path of Karma-, Jnahnna-, of Raja-, of Bkhakti-Yoga and so on. In April 1935 E.I. Roerich wrote about a special path – "the Path of the Banner" of Peace. The activity for ratifying the Pact is "the Banner Movement", "the Pilgrimage of the Banner", Its "sanctifying".

And next. If the Pact signing was the state Governments′ concern then its adopting, performing, introducing into life is "a social (!) heroic feat". No decrees of the states but peoples′ social collaboration and private initiative are necessary for real success. The Roerichs′ experience in organizing the activities concerning the Pact promulgating testifyed to the fact that "private activities" can get the greatest response on the part of the public opinion, they create/organize it and induce towards wide-spread collaboration in denouncing each act of vandalism. Preserving Culture is a long-termed enlightening and educational work in the form of programs on the part of numerous organizations and co-workers; it is a kind of organizing permanent "moral appeals"; it is a kind of indefatigable reminding; it is a kind of petitioning; it is a kind of convincing, – each time all these kinds of public activities are to be new, rich in forcible and weighty arguments and, above all, there should be constant counteracting to all notorious facts of "shooting down" Culture. Only the undeviating, every moment unceasing kind of work is able to awaken a cultural consciousness of sleeping masses. Only due to the assistance of the world public there appears the possibility to raise that "moral tension", that high energetic source which will be able to induce the governments′ institutions to take right decisions in favour of Culture. N.K. Roerich called the enthusiasm of public opinion "the first protector of national treasures". Indeed, “when there is Culture, <…> then there is [an inspired] and right decision of "the most difficult social problems", he wrote.

The text of the Treaty, its Sign and the character and the ways of the activities aimed at its promulgating also indicate that protecting only physical bodies of the objects of Culture though most important but is not the single purpose of the Pact. The principally new evolutionary sense, meta-sense of the Pact is in the fact that it, still more, means protecting the Spiritual body of Culture, which is meant as a sacred object. "When preserving and protecting Culture", calls N.K. Roerich, "try to transfer your struggle to a more elevated plan". "We call upon you not to put sandbags all around, but to oppose [to the political figures′ yearning to war] the power of your thought of Culture that should prevent unpermittable ravages". "The physical disarmament alone is of no help. One should become disarmed in one′s heart, in one′s spirit". "Culture is the weapon of Light".

The mobilization of thought, feelings, spiritual aspirations of a human being and those of the whole humanity for protecting the cultural heritage "strengthens any construction", magnitize and cements space around it. The power of this spiritual act is a guarantee of the authentic, not imaginary, mechanism of evolution. Thus the Pact becomes not simply a valuable leaf of paper, bearing a coat of arms, not only an important legal document, but it becomes a kind of a lever for transforming life, it becomes an international impulse to put in action "the rotary lever of the world", it becomes "the filcrum", Archimedes searched for, in order to turn the Earth towards a new spire of evolution. The Pact is a motive force in the way of evolution, an anchor that holds from falling down into abyss.

In XX-th century the fiery energies of "Blessed Satja-Yuga", about which "Vishnu-purana" had announced, with great force swooped down upon the Earth. The fiery sword is burning through the thick terrestrial sheath transforming all the spheres it adjoins. The momentary transformation of "the Planet of human beings", tragically having failed to keep pace with evolution, could provoke a fatal shock and reduce it to ashes. However, the appearance of the Banner of Culture, the Banner of Peace, the Banner of the Heart of Hierarchy of Light in the Earth space has been predestined for checking, for softening perilously strong vibrations and thus providing rescue to the Planet. The Roerichs mentioned repeatedly: Those who are under the Banner will escape. "The Banner has been raised. It will never be lowered".

75 years ago this statement was supported by the plenipotentiaries of our Planet, they stamped the Pact of Culture – the Roerich Pact on the dates pointed opposite their signatures.

Today it is our turn to act.



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•  The Roerich Pact and the Banner of Peace as a Remarkable Phenomenon of the World Culture
Reports and Speeches at the International Social and Scientific Conference.
Delhi – Kullu – Shimla – Kalimpong October 22– November 5 2010


© The International Council of Roerich Organizations by name of S.N. Roerich. http://www.roerichs.com/Lng/en