Beyond Humanity

The Ultimate Experience

The experience of Oneness, which may be a brief life-changing flash or a sustained and controlled expansion of consciousness into realms very difficult to describe, has been called by different names in different religions:

The attainment of Christ-consciousness

Enlightenment

Self-realization

Cosmic consciousness

Nirvana

Liberation

All these are the same experience - the fusion of the personality self into a world of light and bliss where the Divine Reality, 'the center where all things are known', is experienced.

Paradoxically, it seems that the liberated individual retains uniqueness and the beautiful ending to Sir Edwin Arnold's Light Of Asia quoted below, could also mean that the ocean is poured into the dewdrop:

"The dew is on the Lotus; Rise, Great Sun and lift my leaf and mix me with the wave. Om Mani Padme Hum, the Sunrise comes The dewdrop slips into the Shining Sea."

Those who Guard and Guide Humanity

With the experience of oneness humans reach a level of consciousness beyond that of a normal person. Their personality selves are now completely surrendered to the Divine Purpose and exist solely to help humanity. Some of these Great Beings are known to us as the founders of religions - Jesus the Christ, Krishna and Buddha. But the Buddhist tra­dition also acknowledges the Bodhisattvas who on reaching this stage of perfect wisdom, voluntarily renounce their well-earned bliss to remain to help humanity.

In the theosophical tradition they are known as Adepts or Masters of the Wisdom who, with superhuman wisdom and compassion, work ceaselessly - sometimes in the world but mostly from superphysical levels of consciousness - to guide humanity and to protect it, as far as they can, from its own inhumanity. Several of these Masters aided Madame Blavatsky in the founding of the Theosophical Society, and the original letters written by two of them to A.P.Sinnett in the 1880s are now in the British Museum.

You may read them in the book The Mahatma Letters To A.P.Sinnett and judge their authenticity by the quality of their message.