Chapter 1 – New Humanity – God To Man and Man to God –

As in all great critical periods of human history,
humanity is now going through the agonizing travail of
spiritual rebirth. Great forces of destruction are afoot and
seem to be dominant at the moment, but constructive and
creative forces which will redeem humanity are also being
released through several channels. Although the working of
these forces of light is chiefly silent, they are eventually
bound to bring about those transformations which will make
the further spiritual advance of humanity safe and steady.
It is all a part of the divine plan, which is to give to the
hungry and weary world a fresh dispensation of the eternal
and only Truth.

At present the urgent problem facing humanity is to
devise ways and means of eliminating competition, conflict
and rivalry in all the subtle and gross forms which they
assume in the various spheres of life. Military wars are, of
course, the most obvious sources of chaos and destruction.
However, wars in themselves do not constitute the central
problem for humanity, but are rather the external symptoms
of something graver at their root. Wars and the suffering
they bring cannot be completely avoided by mere propaganda
against war; if they are to disappear from human history it
will be necessary to tackle their root-cause. Even when
military wars are not being waged, individuals or groups of
individuals are constantly engaged in economic or some other
subtle , form of warfare. Military wars, with all the
cruelty which they involve, arise only when these
underground causes are aggravated.

The root-cause of the chaos which precipitates itself in
wars is that most persons are in the grip of egoism and
selfish considerations, and they express their egoism and
self-interest individually as well as collectively. This is
the life of illusory values in which men are caught. To face
the Truth is to realise that life is one, in and through its
manifold manifestations. To have this understanding is to
forget the limiting self in the realisation of the unity of
life.

With the dawn of true understanding the problem of wars
would immediately disappear. Wars have to be so clearly seen
as both unnecessary and unreasonable that the immediate
problem would not be how to stop wars but to wage them
spiritually against the attitude of mind responsible for
such a cruel and painful state of things. In the light of
the Truth of the unity of all life, cooperative and
harmonious action becomes natural and inevitable. Hence, the
chief task before those who are deeply concerned with the
rebuilding of humanity, is to do their utmost to dispel the
spiritual ignorance which envelops humanity.

Wars do not arise merely to secure material adjustment;
they are often the product of uncritical identification with
narrow inter- ests which through association come to be
included in that part of the world which is regarded as
“mine.” Material adjustment is only part of the wider
problem of establishing spiritual adjustment, but spiritual
adjustment requires the elimination of self not only from
the material aspects of life but also from those spheres
which affect the intellectual, emotional and cultural life
of man.

To understand the problem of humanity as merely a problem
of bread is to reduce humanity to the level of animality.
But even when man sets himself to the limited task of
securing purely mate- rial adjustment, he can only succeed
in this attempt if he has spiritual understanding. Economic
adjustment is impossible unless people realise that there
can be no planned and co-operative action in economic
matters until self-interest gives place to self-giving love.
Otherwise, with the best of equipment and efficiency in the
material spheres, humanity cannot avoid conflict and
insufficiency.

The NEW HUMANITY, which emerges from the travail of
present struggle and suffering, will not ignore science or
its practical attainments. It is a mistake to look upon
science as anti- spiritual. Science is a help or hindrance
to spirituality according to the use to which it is put.
Just as true art expresses spirituality, so science, when
properly handled, can be the expression and fulfillment of
the spirit. Scientific truths concerning the physical body
and its life in the gross world can become a medium for the
soul to know itself; but to serve this purpose they must be
properly fitted into the larger spiritual understanding.
This includes a steady perception of true and lasting
values. In the absence of such spiritual understanding,
scientific truths and attainments are liable to be used for
mutual destruction and for a life which will tend to
strengthen the chains which bind the spirit. All-sided
progress of humanity can be assured only if science and
religion proceed hand in hand.

The coming civilisation of the New Humanity shall be
ensouled not by dry intellectual doctrines, but by living
spiritual experience. Spiritual experience has a hold on the
deeper truths which are inaccessible to mere intellect; it
cannot be born of unaided intellect. Spiritual truth can
often be stated and expressed through the intellect, and the
intellect surely is of some help for the communication of
spiritual experience. But by itself, the intellect is
insufficient to enable man to have spiritual experience or
to communicate it to others. If two persons have had
headaches they can co-operatively examine their experience
of headache and make it explicit to themselves through the
work of the intellect. If a person has never experienced a
headache, no amount of intellectual explanation will suffice
for making him understand what a headache is. Intellectual
explanation can never be a substitute for spiritual
experience; it can at best prepare the ground for it.

Spiritual experience involves more than can be grasped by
mere intellect. This is often emphasised by calling it a
mystical experience. Mysticism is often regarded as
something anti-intellec- tual, obscure and confused, or
impractical and unconnected with experience. In fact, true
mysticism is none of these. There is nothing irrational in
true mysticism when it is, as it should be, a vision of
Reality. It is a form of perception which is absolutely
unclouded, and so practical that it can be lived every
moment of life and expressed in every-day duties. Its
connection with experience is so deep that, in one sense, it
is the final understanding of all experience. When spiritual
experience is described as mystical one should not assume
that it is something supernatural or entirely beyond the
grasp of human consciousness. All that is meant is that it
is not accessible to limited human intellect until it
transcends its limits and is illumined by direct realisation
of the Infinite. Christ pointed out the way to spiritual
experience when he said, “Leave all and follow me.” This
means that man must leave limitations and establish himself
in the infinite life of God. Real spiritual experience
involves not only realisation of the soul on higher planes,
but also a right attitude towards worldly duties. If it
loses its connection with the different phases of life, what
we have is a neurotic reaction that is far from being a
spiritual experience.

The spiritual experience that is to enliven and energise
the New Humanity cannot be a reaction to the stern and
uncompromising demands made by the realities of life. Those
without the capacity for adjustment to the flow of life have
a tendency to recoil from the realities of life and to seek
shelter and protection in a self-created fortress of
illusions. Such reaction is an attempt to perpetuate one’s
separate existence by protecting it from the demands made by
life. It can only give a pseudo-solution to the problems of
life by providing a false sense of security and
self-completeness. It is not even an advance towards the
real and lasting solution; on the contrary, it is a
sidetracking from the true Path. Man will be dislodged again
and again from his illusory shelters by fresh and
irresistible waves of life, and will invite upon himself
fresh forms of suffering by seeking to protect his
separative existence through escape.

Just as a person may seek to hold onto his sepa- rative
experience through escape, he may also seek to hold it
through uncritical identification with forms, ceremonies and
rituals or with traditions and conventions. Forms,
ceremonies and rituals, traditions and conventions are in
most cases fetters to the release of infinite life. If they
were a pliant medium for the expression of unlimited life,
they would be an asset rather than a handicap for securing
the fulfillment of divine life on earth; but they mostly
have a tendency to gather prestige and claims in their own
right, independently of the life which they might express.
When this happens, any attachment to them must eventually
lead to a drastic curtailment and restriction of life. The
New Humanity will be freed from a life of limitations,
allowing unhampered scope for the creative life of the
spirit; and it will break the attachment to external forms
and learn to subordinate them to the claims of the spirit.
The limited life of illusions and false values will then be
replaced by unlimited life in the Truth, and the
limitations, through which the separative self lives, will
wither away at the touch of true understanding.

Just as a person may seek to hold onto his separative
existence through escape or identification with external
forms, he may seek to hold it through identification with
some narrow class, creed, sect or religion, or with the
divisions based upon sex. Here the individual may seem to
have lost his separative existence through identification
with a larger whole. But, in fact, he is often expressing
his separative existence through such an identification,
which enables him to delight in his feeling of being
separate from others who belong to another class,
nationality, creed, sect, religion or sex.

Separative existence derives its being and strength by
identifying itself with one opposite and contrasting itself
with the other. A man may seek to protect his separate
existence through identification with one ideology rather
than another or with his conception of good as contrasted
with his idea of evil. What results from identification with
narrow groups or limited ideals is not a real merging of the
separative self, but only a semblance of it. A real merging
of the limited self in the ocean of universal life involves
complete surrender of separative existence in all its
forms.

The large mass of humanity is caught up in the clutches
of separative and assertive tendencies. For one who is
overpowered by the spectacle of these fetters of humanity,
there is bound to be nothing but unrelieved despair about
its future.

One must look deeper into the realities of the day if one
is to get a correct perspective on the present distress of
humanity. The real possibilities of the New Humanity are
hidden to those who look only at the surface of the
world-situation, but they exist and only need the spark of
spiritual understanding to come into full play and effect.
The forces of lust, hate and greed produce incalculable
suffering and chaos, but the one redeeming feature about
human nature is that even in the midst of disruptive, forces
there invariably exists some form of love.

Even wars require co-operative functioning, but the scope
of this co-operative functioning is artificially restricted
by identification with a limited group or ideal. Wars often
are carried on form of love, but it is a love which has not
been understood properly. In order that love should come
into its own, it must be untrammeled and unlimited. Love
does exist in all phases of human life, but it is latent or
is limited and poisoned by personal ambition, racial pride,
narrow loyalties and rivalries, and attachment to sex,
nationality, sect, caste or religion. If there is to be a
resurrection of humanity, the heart of man will have to be
unlocked so that a new love is born into it-a love which
knows no corruption and is entirely.free from individual or
collective greed.

The New Humanity will come into existence through a
release of love in measureless abundance, and this release
of love can come through spiritual awakening brought about
by the Masters. Love cannot be born of mere determination;
through the exercise of will one can at best be dutiful.
Through struggle and effort, one may succeed in assuring
that one’s external action is in conformity with one’s
concept of what is right; but such action is spiritually
barren because it lacks the inward beauty of spontaneous
love. Love has to spring spontaneously from within; it is in
no way amenable to any form of inner or outer force. Love
and coercion can never go together, but while love cannot be
forced upon anyone, it can be awakened through love itself.
Love is essentially self-communicative; those who do not
have it catch it from those who have it. Those who receive
love from others cannot be its recipients without giving a
response which, in itself, is the nature of love. True love
is unconquerable and irresistible. It goes on gathering
power and spreading itself until eventually it transforms
everyone it touches. Humanity will attain to a new mode of
being and life through the free and unhampered interplay of
pure love from heart to heart.

When it is recognised that there are no claims greater
than the claims of the universal divine life which, without
exception, includes everyone and everything, love will not
only establish peace, harmony and happiness in social,
national and internation- al spheres, but it will shine in
its own purity and beauty. Divine love is unassailable to
the onslaughts of duality and is an expression of divinity
itself. It is through divine love that the New Humanity will
tune in with the divine plan. Divine love will not only
introduce imperishable sweetness and infinite bliss into
personal life, but it will also make possible an era of New
Humanity. Through divine love the New Humanity will learn
the art of co-operative and harmonious life; it will free
itself from the tyranny of dead forms and release the
creative life of spiritual wisdom; it will shed all
illusions and get established in the Truth; it will enjoy
peace and abiding happiness; it will be initiated in the
life of Eternity.