The 16th Session of the Provisional World Parliament operating under the authority of the Constitution for the Federation of Earth concluded its deliberations on International Human Rights Day, December 10, 2025. This Parliament session was both in-person and online from Pondicherry, India, with participants from around the world. As President of the Parliament, I gave the Presidential Address and emphasized the framework under which we operate, known as the Earth Constitution.

Each session of the Parliament acts as a legislative body, discussing and passing “World Legislative Acts (WLAs) that address the problems of governing and redeeming our broken world system. Drawing on the background of the previous 73 WLAs that began with the first Parliament session in Brighton, England, in 1982, voting delegates discussed and then voted on a host of new WLAs, numbered from 74 to 91. A great deal was accomplished that, of course, will be duly recorded on our websites.

My presidential address consisted of a PowerPoint presentation emphasizing the structure and functions of the Earth Constitution and its relevance for the future of humanity. Drawing on the work of the widely known “Integral thinker,” Ken Wilber, the presentation emphasized the significance of both “Waking Up” and “Growing Up.” Traditional religions and spiritualities around the world have understood the process of “Waking Up” for many centuries, perhaps millennia. Human beings must break through their cultural and egocentric illusions to realize the “Cosmic wholeness” that already informs our lives and yet transforms our lives once we begin to live from that wholeness. From Christian mystics to Sufis to Buddhists to Hindus to today’s often non-affiliated “spiritual masters,” advanced religious teachers have shown the ways to this realization.

But “Growing Up” has only really been unveiled during the past century or so. Thinkers, psychologists, cosmologists, spiritual thinkers, and philosophers have articulated stages of maturity that people can and must go through in the course of Growing Up. Different thinkers have often identified from 4 to 8 basic stages of maturity, all of which have an amazing consistency from one thinker to another. The simplest developmental model often has four stages. We normally start with the immature egoism of youth (stage 1) and grow beyond this to an ethnocentric identification with our own culture, religion, language, race, etc. (stage 2). For many people, the growth process stops here, and they remain identified with their own nation, religion, etc., but real maturity only begins when they become world-centric, pluralistic, and holistic.

At this third level (stage 3), people become world citizens and begin to develop “planetary consciousness.” They begin to embrace the multiplicity of human differences within the unity of our common humanity: our common species evolution, our common “lifeworld,” and our common planetary ecosystem (“Planetary Consciousness”). At this level, they may begin to see the necessity for an Earth Constitution and participate in initiatives like that of the Provisional World Parliament that points forward to the ratification of the Earth Constitution for all humanity.

Wilber calls the fourth state “Integral,” meaning that it brings stages of growing up and the process of “waking up” together. I prefer to call it “Cosmic consciousness” (as I have done in several of my books), meaning basically the same thing. Human beings need to directly experience the oneness of reality and live from that realization (waking up), and they need to grow to Worldcentric and Cosmocentric levels of maturity, embracing the unity in diversity of the whole, including the whole of human life (growing up).

The Provisional World Parliament exists as a nascent democratic world government, joining the peoples and nations of Earth together under a system in which the people of Earth are sovereign, and the nations receive their share of sovereign authority from the World Parliament that represents the whole of humanity. I take Wilber as correct when he declares that there are four dimensions in which we need to grow up: (1) in our “selfhood” or subjectivity, moving from egoism to world-centrism, etc.; (2) in our cultures that need to grow to cultures of holism, harmony, peace, and compassion (not hate, fear, and division); (3) in our sciences and external forms of behavior, again emphasizing growth toward a mature holism; and, finally, (4) in our governance and organizational systems in which we must move from the fragmentation of “sovereign” nation-states to the holism of an Earth Federation under an Earth Constitution.

Many people around the world are dimly aware of the need to grow up in the first two or three dimensions. But most still take the sovereign nation-state system as “natural” (it is not), or a simple self-evident “given” (it is not). In fact, the nation-state system, invented in Europe some 375 years ago, is an outdated and immature way of organizing humanity, creating international chaos, endless wars, and huge planetary problems (such as the inability to deal with the climate crisis or to eliminate extensive global poverty or to disarm the world of its weapons of mass destruction).

In fact, the very existence of this dysfunctional global non-governance system exacerbates the problems of growth in the other three dimensions: it encourages hate and fear in the subjective dimension. It encourages cultural fragmentation and mutual hostility in the cultural dimension, and it colonizes science in the “It” dimension towards militarism and anti-life pursuits. Ratification of the Earth Constitution, on the other hand, would encourage holism, peace, and respect for diversity in all the other three dimensions. It is a key, therefore, to creating a decent future for humanity.

That is why, in its “Pondicherry Declaration,” the Provisional World Parliament declared a state of planetary emergency. While the climate collapses all around us in the form of droughts, wildfires, floods, erratic weather, superstorms, rising ocean levels, extreme heat waves, invasive species, etc., the world spends some 2.7 trillion US dollars per year on war and weapons. While 20 per cent of the Earth’s population live on the verge of starvation, the nations of the world compete for markets and resources with tariffs, sanctions, clandestine weapons transfers, political intrigue, etc.

While each nation cultivates “patriotism” in its population, weapons of mass destruction become equipped with ever-faster delivery systems, and the militarization of space continues unabated. The world is a gigantic, chaotic mess because it is an ungoverned world. It is a collection of some 200 “sovereign” states recognizing no enforceable law above themselves. It gives no effective governance for the planet, and this chaos only exacerbates, as I said above, the lack of growth toward maturity in the other three dimensions of human existence.

My first Parliament was 29 years ago at the 4th session in Barcelona, Spain, in 1996. My second was at Malta in November 2000, and I have been one of the main organizers since the 6th session in Bangkok, Thailand, in 2003. Since the passing of Dr Terence Amerasinghe of Sri Lanka in 2009, I have been President of the subsequent sessions. Neither the people nor the nations of Earth have responded to the calls and declarations made by these many sessions of the Parliament. Sri Aurobindo (one of the inspirations behind the Earth Constitution) said that the Cosmic Spirit was working within humanity to raise awareness to the levels necessary for “World Union.” Perhaps the Spirit has not yet been ready.

But most of those at the sixteenth session of the Parliament (both in-person and online) were more than ready. They understood very well that we are in a State of Planetary Emergency. In the light of this awareness, this session of the Parliament was truly unique. Its organizational process included the involvement of passionate people from a number of countries on different continents, and the Parliament is taking initiatives beyond anything done previously—a real leap toward a possible breakthrough into the awareness of the world and its recalcitrant nation-states.

First and foremost, the Parliament has approved the holding of another Constituent Assembly to update the Constitution beyond its 1991 version approved at the fourth Constituent Assembly. The Parliament has no power to alter the Constitution (since its very authority derives from it), but it does have power to call a 5th Constituent Assembly. The date for this may be next year or the following year. The Parliament will be attempting to get people and nations from around the planet to join in examining this “template” for world unity in diversity and to update it so that it becomes a candidate for real ratification and entry into force of an emerging Federation of Earth.

The significance of this is difficult to overestimate. The great risk, of course, is that a 5th Constituent assembly would gut the Constitution—its extensive bills of rights, its powerful authority to ensure climate-change action, its absolute authority to eliminate nuclear weapons and (eventually) disarm the nations. However, if we don’t gamble on a possible breakthrough, it will most certainly be too late for humanity to act in time to save itself and future generations. Today, there are many “climate nihilists” who think it is already too late, but the delegates to this Parliament were not among them.

Second, the Parliament voted to establish a Permanent Secretariat for the PWP in India (which may, of course, also have offices in other locations worldwide). For this, we, of course, need serious funding from those concerned with the future of our planet and who understand the State of Emergency recognized by this session of the Parliament. However, the number of people who understand this need increases daily, and we expect a vibrant Secretariat to be commenced immediately that will be the chief organizer of the 5th Constituent Assembly and will spearhead a number of other initiatives approved by the delegates at this session.

Third, and finally, this session of the Parliament will activate the “Earth Emergency Rescue Administration, EERA” which was an act passed by the second session of the PWP that took place in New Delhi in 1985 (that session opened by the then President of India and presided over by the Chair of the Lok Sabha (India’s lower House of Parliament). The EERA has never been seriously activated (for all sorts of reasons connected with the great difficulties that we have always faced in getting the world to grow to this level of maturity). The new EERA bill was rewritten to connect the composition of its 200 trustees (worldwide) to the willingness of nations and organizations to participate officially in the 5th Constituent Assembly.

Hence, these three initiatives should dovetail in their effect. A voice in the Administration commissioned to save our planet’s environment (the EERA) is contingent on officially participating in the study of the Constitution to update it for ease of ratification by the people and nations of Earth. And the Permanent Secretariat will host and spearhead both initiatives. They will, of course, invite the United Nations to participate as well. But as I published in several articles over the past few years, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will always be a non-starter precisely because they are formulated within a broken world-system that defeats the very possibility of their success.

Without true unity in diversity, human beings cannot possibly succeed in avoiding their own looming self-extinction. Today, ever more highly informed thinkers are voicing this truism (a truism that I have also been writing about for years).

Therefore, the Provisional World Parliament, at its 16th session, declared a State of Planetary Emergency and made the declaration available online for people everywhere to sign if they wish to do so. It could go viral. It could be that this Parliament session was a turning point for humanity, an awakening that activates growing up into the demand for an Earth Constitution premised on the unity in diversity of all, with a mandate and an authority sufficient to turn the suicidal direction of our planet around. Perhaps Sri Aurobindo’s “World Spirit” is ready and willing to aid in this upshift in consciousness and organizational maturity? Who knows what the future holds? Certainly not I.

But I do know that we are children of the Cosmos and part of the sacred upsurge of this cosmos that is taking place within all of us. Perhaps the time has come for the upsurge of the Cosmos to become known to all. The key will be the ratification of an updated Constitution for the Federation of Earth.