  The road towards unification of elementary interactions is thought to start
on the solid ground of a universal local gauge principle. I discuss the
different types of bosonic gauge symmetries in gravitational and
nongravitational (standard model) interactions and their extensions both
fermionic, bosonic and with respect to space-time dimensions. The apparently
paradoxical size and nature of the cosmological constant is sketched, which at
first sight does not readily yield a clue as to the envelopping symmetry
structure of a unified theory. Nevertheless a tentative outlook is given
encouraging to proceed on this road.
