Humanity &
Reincarnation

Humanity is the collective of human monads: the fourth natural kingdom and, in a wider sense, the fourth creative hierarchy, the human parallel evolution extending from the human stage toward the fifth kingdom and world 46. Its task is to develop intelligence into self-consciousness, then causal awareness, and finally conscious participation in higher unity. Its instruments are the first triad and its envelopes of incarnation, later the causal envelope, through which self-consciousness becomes possible and initiation begins. Thus humanity is not merely a biological species but an evolutionary stream, equipped with senses, emotional and mental faculties, and causal growth, whose goal is liberation from lower form and entry into superhuman consciousness.

Reincarnation is the repeated rebirth of the human monad through new lives in the human kingdom. The causal envelope, being the permanent human envelope, is what incarnates, involving into new mental, emotional, and physical envelopes for each life. Reincarnation is governed by the laws of transformation, re-formation, destiny, and reaping: old forms dissolve, similar forms are renewed, and each new life furnishes the experiences, conditions, and tendencies needed for further development. The skandhas and permanent atoms preserve latent dispositions, abilities, and unresolved effects from previous lives. Man is reborn as man, never as animal, until human experience is exhausted and higher consciousness can be attained in the fifth kingdom of nature.

Human envelopes are the five vehicles through which the human monad functions in incarnation and between incarnations: organism, etheric envelope, emotional envelope, mental envelope, and causal envelope. The organism is the dense physical body; the etheric envelope is its vitalizing and formative counterpart; the emotional envelope is the seat of desires and feelings; the mental envelope is the instrument of thought; and the causal envelope is the permanent human envelope, the bearer of self-conscious continuity and the repository of experience. Except for the organism, the envelopes are aggregate forms of matter, built around the triad. Together they mediate sensation, emotion, thought, development, and the monad's gradual evolution toward higher consciousness itself.