“Where there is Peace, there is Culture;
Where there is Culture, there is Peace.”
—NICHOLAS ROERICH
Painter, writer and peace builder, Nicholas Roerich believed that it was possible to create peace through art and beauty. He said, “When the whole earth will be covered by the Banner of Peace, protecting cultural treasures, there will be no field for war.” As a consequence he wrote the Roerich Pact.
On April 15, 1935, the Roerich Pact was signed in the White House. Agreed to by twenty-one nations of the Americas, the treaty was signed in the presence of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It is now international law. Since that date many other nations have signed the treaty which agreed on preserving and protecting the cultural produce and activity of the world, in both war and peace.
The desire for peace never leaves us. There are always those among us who strive to create a better world for us all. On September 21, 2010, we will be celebrating Peace Day, (see video) a 24 hour-window of opportunity for life-saving activities around the world, and an opportunity for individuals – particularly young people – to become involved in the peace process.
This UN International Day of Peace, was started in 1999 by Jeremy Gilley, an actor and filmmaker. It is a day of global ceasefire and non-violence. This year Peace Day is also part of the UN Millenium Development Goals Summit in New York. There are 12 Goals nominated by the UN as those most important to all humanity: end hunger and poverty, universal education, improve maternal and child health, combat AIDS, create a sustainable environment, gender equality and a global partnership for development.
Our human journey to create and sustain peace on Earth continues unabated. But what do peace days, culture, art, beauty and development goals have in common? They’re all a product of the soul of humanity, of our collective desire for something greater and better than we have now. It’s the energy that drives us to want to do something, to create something that is uniquely our own expression of the highest and best that we can believe in; our vision of what may be.
According to Alice Bailey, the soul is the creative artist. 1 “Our modern civilisation is the result of this creative activity of the soul’s desire nature, limited by form”. All concepts and ideas that evoke a response of beauty are the products of the soul. They draw out from the deepest parts of ourself feelings of love, harmony, joy and aspiration. Beauty is our way of expressing and acknowledging truth – the best and highest to which we can all strive.
Art is our human way of touching the divine. As Thomas Merton puts it, “Art is not an end in itself. It introduces the soul into a higher spiritual order, which it expresses and in some sense explains. Music and art and poetry attune the soul to God because they induce a kind of contact with the Creator and Ruler of the Universe.” 2
Nicholas Roerich understood that culture and art are the keys available to every human being, to help them unlock the beauty within. Once the door is opened, the energy released by beauty can express itself in the outer world, transforming it for others who can then also see the beauty, previously veiled, now made tangible.
“Art is science made clear,” said Jean Cocteau.3 Both art and science are intrinsic to culture. That’s why Roerich’s Banner of Peace is so potent a symbol of humanity’s collective striving for betterment. This banner of three circles is an ancient diagram symbolising the trinity – in this case the triune reality of Love, Beauty and Action, and of Art, Science and Spirituality.
What is culture? It has been defined as the service of the light – Cult = service and Ur = Light. “Spiritual culture is the highest form of service to Light. Spiritual culture is a diverse and uninterrupted communication of the higher with the lowest, the spirit and the matter.”4
Although at present treated as separate disciplines, art and science share a common heritage and a united goal. They both strive to express truth and the beauty therein; the highest that humanity can know and try to manifest in form at any time. Whether the beauty is expressed through art as painting, writing, sculpture, photography, music, or through science as inventions, knowledge and theories, all are different ways of expressing the same soul urge to draw forth that which is hidden.
The soul is the creative agent and both science and art are expressions of the soul and of spirituality which – the spirit hidden in matter and form. Science creates in atomic matter, the energetic and the particular, while art creates in the world of the forms made up of the atomic, the energetic and the particular. Both are striving to make sense of our world, to make our lives better, more meaningful, and both aspire to understand what lies behind the outer veil that covers the daily, mundane world. Both seek to reveal something more: interesting, helpful, beautiful, wise and meaningful.
The Roerich Pact and Banner of Peace symbolises this common striving across disciplines, cultures, races and nations; striving for a world that is peaceful, beautiful, harmonious, loving and joyful. Some call it the Golden Age, others the New Age, others think it’s a fantasy that can never be, but all dream of it because it’s part of our archetypal memory and our collective hope that there is a better life for all.
Thomas Carlyle suggested that, “The great law of culture is: let each become all that he was created capable of being.” 5 If we accept that we are each in essence a soul in a physical body, and that the soul is the part of ourselves that creates, then art and science, are both creative. Whether they contribute to the highest culture of our time, or try to keep us chained to the rocks of materialism and the status quo, depends on who is creating. If it’s the soul – the light part of ourselves that’s aware of its shared humanity – then the created work is worthy to be added to the cultural heritage of our age.
Initiatives like Peace One Day and the Millenium Development Goals are proof that the lighted soul in many is alive and well. Like Nicholas Roerich before him, Jeremy Gilley used his creative imagination, powered by his soul, to manifest something beautiful in the world. This something is beautiful because it is inclusive, joyful, loving, meaningful and much needed right now. Its energy spreads waves of fun, laughter, and light that automatically create a sense of wellbeing and harmony, if for some it’s only one day.
These qualities of beauty and joy are part of the emerging culture. This is a world culture that doesn’t belong to any one person or nation, it belongs to the whole world. Whereas in the past nations have claimed certain people, works of art, science or philosophy as their own, in the world we are now creating, culture will recognise its spiritual base as being inherent in all humans. Simplicity of forms is true beauty and truth, giving a closer expression of divine meaning and purpose. 6
To create there needs to be peace. It’s difficult to create anything but more dis-harmony when all around guns are firing and corpses are lying in the street. The UN Day of Peace and the Millenium Development Goals reflect our collective understanding of this fact. In their ideals of sharing peace, resources, personal freedom and liberty, these and other similar initiatives show us the best that is human. Our common humanity, our in-built knowing that we can’t live here alone, that we need each other and that wherever there is war and suffering, all are at war and all are in pain. Many also understand that to achieve these noble goals, we need to take personal responsibility for them by choosing to live more simple, sustainable lives.
The Banner encourages all humans to beautify all aspects of life. Wherever it is displayed, it recognizes the great achievement of the past, the present, and the future. It encourages all individuals to strive to fulfill their highest potential; it encourages each person to take responsibility for the evolution of the planet; it signifies the peace-builder; and it symbolizes the transformation of the individual and of society. It represents cooperation—the cornerstone of the emerging planetary culture—in all aspects of human activity.7
Art, science, philosophy, the highest and best that any period in history can create, is our shared culture, our spiritual culture. Roerich’s Banner of Peace is used by many individuals, groups and associations around the world to promote awareness of the Pact, the Banner and their underlying principles. Symbols speak to the soul and the Banner of peace resonates with humanity’s un-faltering desire for cessation of fighting between individuals, groups, tribes and nations, so that all can witness the flowering of the new age.
Nicholas Roerich, like Jeremy Gilley and thousands of others, believe that peace on Earth is a prerequisite to planetary survival and the continuing process of spiritual evolution. Now many believe, as did Roerich, that the symbol of peace unites all humans, across cultures, in the common language of Beauty and Knowledge.
“Art is to create beauty, through beauty we gain victory, through victory we unite and through beauty we pray.” Nicholas Roerich
1. Bailey, A. Esoteric Psychology II. Lucis Trust, New York, 1970,
2. No Man Is An Island, The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, Florida,1955.)
3. Le Coq Et L’Arlequin, 1918.
4. World Forum of Spiritual Culture, Spiritual culture is the new ideology of the renewing world, , retrieved 7 September, 2010
5. Great Ideas of Western Man, 1965.
6. Bailey, Esoteric Psychology II. p. 247
7. Centre for Peace through Culture, www.centerpeacethroughculture.org,
retrieved 6 September 2010