I have always found Baba’s discourse on “The New Humanity” to be inspiring and hopeful but I also, like a kid in the back seat of his parents car, keep asking myself “are we there yet?”. The Discourse first discusses where we are (in the agonising travail of spiritual rebirth) and where we are headed (peace, harmony and happiness in social, national and international spheres). Baba describes how the seeds for the latter are being sown in the former and that it will all take time to emerge.

In my impatience, I wonder if it is emerging, when will it emerge and how long will it take. When I look around me I don’t honestly believe that humanity as a whole has shed all illusions and [gotten] established in the Truth.

But I don’t want to judge others so I will simply look inward and ask myself if I feel that I am part of the New Humanity. My answer to the question is no. I have made some modest attempts at self-improvement like lowering my carb intake and flossing but really nothing there that would qualify me as a member of a group that will shine in its own purity and beauty.

Through my years of being with Baba I may have made some type of spiritual progress but as Baba says, He takes us veiled. So if by His compassion and grace I have made any movement forward spiritually, I don’t know about it. Most likely it hasn’t happened but I’ll never know. Veiled.

The only time I think I can see a possible glimmer of hope for the New Humanity is in my children and their Baba friends. They seem to have been born with a very natural, deep, core love for Baba. As Baba says in the Discourse, through divine love the New Humanity will learn the art of co-operative and harmonious life. He seems to be giving these kids a great start. Even with this great start, how will it be possible for them when they are being raised by an old humanity (or on the cusp at best) parent like me?

My daughter Annabelle went to the Youth Sahavas for the first time this year. She came back glowing in Baba’s love. Seriously. Glowing. She told me how she cried tears of love at Baba’s House the last day of the Sahavas. It’s a rite of passage. Her love for Baba is hers now.

My feeling is that the Youth Sahavas is for the parents as much as the kids. Baba knows the challenges of parenting teenagers in the modern world so for one week of the year He handles it. It’s as if He says: I’ve seen how hard you work being a parent. Let me help you. Let me have them for a week out of the year. Baba handles the parenting for a week and the results are beautiful.

The kids are in bliss with Baba and each other. The amazing organizers, staff and worker-wallas work selflessly to provide for the physical needs of this village of teenagers. I have been there myself several years conducting music workshops. I have seen it first hand but this year I am seeing it through my daughter’s eyes and through them I can say it resembles a microcosm of what I might imagine the New Humanity to look like as Baba describes it in the discourse: Humanity will attain to a new mode of being and life through the free and unhampered interplay of pure love from heart to heart.