A New Humanity

COMING to its senses from seeming insanity, a new humanity is “raising its voice” Theosophy declares.

The words signaled Helena Blavatsky’s welcome to an expected New Age of humanity, written more than a hundred years ago.

The world is trending today as she envisioned: “in those authoritative tones to which the men of old listened in reverential silence through incalculable ages.”

Characterizing this new humanity she described in her article “The Tidal Wave” how “the Spirit in man has returned like King Lear, from seeming insanity to its senses.”

She was not the first to acknowledge the arrival of a newly awakened humanity.

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The Deathless Self

EVOLUTION as defined in the occultism of Theosophy, is a triple-faceted scheme — a blend of spirit, mind, and matter.

They are, Blavatsky wrote, “inextricably interwoven and interblended at every point.”

True and lasting self-knowledge is acquired gradually and lovingly — and largely unawares at first — through a long, but finite series of reincarnations in human form.

A major factor in our self-development lies in recognizing the continuity of life, Theosophy says — and that for the soul, there is really no such thing as death.

Self-knowledge evolves gradually out of the recognition, as the philosopher-mystic Teilhard de Chardin famously claimed, that we are “spiritual beings having a human experience,” not the other way around.

We are first and foremost spiritual beings, and humanity is our field of experience. But what happens to our human self after death? Does our consciousness die with the body?