Every transition between two states results in suffering; and the suffering is greatest when fear, a clinging to the past, or an exuberant eagerness to race ahead introduces tensions, inner conflicts, or false expectations into the process; and this is by far the most common state of affairs in our modern world. The individual in our Western society is caught into a collective process of transition, the historical transition between the archaic tribal state of natural living in tune with the rhythms of the biosphere — a state in which the whole tribe has a common psyche and a common will as it faces basic issues — and the state of at least relative individualization of each theoretically independent person, responsible for his or her own growth toward some kind of transcendent ideal. Individualization leads to conflicts between supposedly self-sufficient individuals proud of their difference and eager to expand and to conquer all obstacles; and conflicts produce the type of suffering based on inferiority, fear, deprivation, and a humiliating sense of failure — or the disappointment and emptiness which often follow success and fame.

The individual moving ahead on the transpersonal Way may not only experience all the suffering which these feelings at one time or another are bound to cause at the psychic and psychosomatic levels, but he has stepped out at least partially from the wheel of social success and failure into another kind of transition which is just as radical. In the depth of his consciousness he has left both the biological and the social levels at which his will can no longer exclusively and naturally function; yet he still operates as a biological organism and, try as he may to deny the fact, he is still conditioned by the culture that has provided him with a specific language and patterns of thinking-feeling, and even of behavior if he still lives among men. Three levels of consciousness, of activity and will speak their own language to the disciple on the Path. How can he fail to experience inner discords and suffering until he has, as the Buddhists say "reached the other shore." A difficult crossing!

It most likely is impossible to achieve this crossing unless in one way or another the aspirant has been prepared for it by those who have already passed to the other shore and who, after having left instructions to the novice, watch and are ready to proffer guidance and perhaps assistance, even if unnoticed by and unknown to the traveler. Yet, helped as he undoubtedly is, he alone must do the crossing; he alone must fight against the powerful current of material entropy, against overwhelming weariness, loneliness, and an insidious sense of futility. He has to accept pain and overcome its thrust against nerves taut and ready to break.

Any individual person can follow the wide road of planetary evolution caught in the swaying slow movement of the masses of mankind. This movement displays a cyclic but eminently repetitive character. There must be repetition because the person advancing — or it could be regressing — on this road too often is passively swayed by the up and down motions of the evolutionary tide. At best he uses his will in order to try to remain at the crest of the waves when there are waves that crest. Cycles come and cycles go. One person succeeds another person; and though the Soul to which they are linked by magnetic threads watches and tries to establish a closer intimacy, these successive personalities respond but feebly. The fire of the divine will burns low within their tepid, ever so normal emotions; or else it rages but for a moment and is gone, overwhelmed by the pressure of surrounding mediocrity, unable to carry through a half-hearted and fleeting commitment.

Then it must all begin again, alas, so often repeating the past that left so much unfinished business. It is so difficult at times for circles to turn into spirals! They can do so only if a centrifugal force steadily acts to overcome the inertia of circular motion; that force is the Promethean will. It is the will that every rebeginning should be a new beginning, a fresh, original, spontaneous release of new potentiality. There is no worse defeat than defeat by sameness and repetitiveness; no more monstrous concept than that of the "Eternal Return" imagined by the tragic mind of Nietzsche. The Ocean of Potentiality of which I have spoken is infinite. When the Christian repeats: "With God all things are possible," what he does is to personalize this infinite Ocean of Spirit, for spirit is the possibility to meet every need with a fresh, ever renascent will through which a new potentiality of answer is being mobilized and focused. The new possibility is always present; but the individual has to be ready with his unsheathed will. His hand does hold the sword, but the spirit, God, will move the hand if the man's consciousness is ready and willing to let go. Then the goal will be struck.

We must ever be ready to accept the totally unexpected, the miraculous. We never have to feel totally defeated. A new dawn can always occur, in some way unlike any previous dawn; but we must have faith. Faith is the intuitive, unchallengeable, even if intellectually unexplainable feeling-realization that the Ocean of Infinite Potentiality surrounds us; we live, move and have our being in it, but most of us refuse to feel, refuse to see, so wrapt are we in our frantic agitation, our fear, our masochistic concentration on how much we suffer. Such a suffering is in vain and calls for endless repetition.

We must become still, and "feel" the soundless sound of the vast tides of spirit lapping at the shores of our consciousness, or perhaps beating at the jagged rocks of our pride and our greed. We must turn our consciousness toward this inner sea and try to sense the end of a cycle of experience peacefully moving into the yet imprecise and unfocused beginning of a new cycle. We must dare to summon the potentiality of an essentially new and, for us, unprecedented beginning. We should become the altar and the sacrifice; and the perfume of the burnt offering of our past, and even of the most fragrant memories, will rise to the gods; and the gods will answer, for they are the glowing forms which new potentialities take when they appear to our open eyes. They are our luminous tomorrows, should they accept the descent and take birth within our inmost being.

These words may sound oversymbolic, mystical, and remote to the reader whose consciousness is caught in the seemingly hopeless entanglements of modern city living; yet everyone should find it possible to translate their generality into the particular language of his or her personal circumstances. It should not be difficult to think of people we have met who, in early or mid-life, or as old age comes near, are being or have been confronted with a crisis altering radically the pattern of their lives — the sudden or painful death of the marriage partner, a divorce, a crippling illness or accident, the loss of home, children leaving for marriage, or simply retirement after a life of intense business activity. Of crises there is no end. To every person they come in different circumstances. All have this in common: they challenge in us the desire, the power of imagination, and the will to make afresh start.

We may refuse the challenge and, in the acute feeling that now life has become empty and meaningless, settle to die more or less comfortably, perhaps at somebody else's expense of money or happiness, perhaps taking an unconscious revenge on others for our own failure of faith. Or we may move to some kind of California or Riviera and enjoy sunshine, play bridge, sip drinks while gossiping at some fashionable hotel. If we do, what of the energy, or talent, or wealth and influence have we? Will we let these go to waste? Will we stop actualizing our inherent potentialities of consciousness and personality unfoldment, defeated by circumstances? But these circumstances have called upon us simply and solely to offer us rebirth!

Anyone who is not born anew with a new faith and a new sense of potentiality after a basic crisis has accepted defeat. To return to the status quo, to "pre-war boundaries" or "the good old days," is defeat, even if celebrated with pomp as a victory. The Prodigal Son has returned home — with what? for what? I am not referring to goods and treasures, but to how transformed — how radically and permanently transformed — he is as he returns.

Yes, defeat is the only word for these revivals of ghosts, these political and international compromises fostered by the legalistic minds, the unimaginative "old men," the frightened holders of privileges. How many such defeats have we not seen after the tragic crises of our World Wars, in our debacle of policy in the Near East and the Far East. It is the same kind of defeat our modern psychiatrists perpetrate by way of brain-surgery (lobotomy), or less irrevocably, yet essentially with the same attitude, when pushing back the energies of an aroused, exploding mind into the subtle straightjacket of conformism: "You go home now, and you will be very good and blandly smile; it may not be very pleasant, but, you know, that's what living in society means." And so, one more crisis will have been in vain; one more war fought to no purpose . . . or was it perhaps to pave the way to a more total conflict between more exactly matched forces, as it occurred on the battlefield of Kurukshetra some 5,000 years ago!

Why is it so hard to summon the new potentialities of existence, to begin again with faith in "tomorrows that sing," to be once more virginal under the dawn that calls for expansive newness?

We don't know how to offer the New — ritualistically, in sacrifice — the fruits of our past to which we remain so attached; or we do not dare, because the ghosts of the closing cycle crowd upon us, oppress us, and block the door to the new possibility. How we love the dear old ghosts! We could never say a really good thing about our husband, but now that poor old John is gone, why, we are lost: "He was such a wonderful person, you know!" We weep, and John reappears as Paul, in whom the ghost comfortably settles. And the wheel whirls on — birth, decay, death, birth, decay, death, forever and ever the same. O Conformism, the religion of ghosts! . . . with the greatest ghost of all, the "Almighty God" of our Churches, enthroned in the ever more inclusive Past, whose servants refuse to even consider the possibility of an unprecedented Future.

Yet, I repeat, Jesus came to bring us the sword of severance! The Heaven within us of which he spoke is the field of infinite potentiality and creative abundance. He came "to baptize with fire." His apparent peacefulness was a scourge for all ghosts. He told us to leave behind and hate all that the conformism of his day and race taught to worship, to take our Cross and follow him. His way led to the most total crisis; thus potentially, to the most complete victory. How stubbornly has the Church that enthroned his name been recrucifying him throughout three long cycles of hell on earth, so perhaps to be terminated, as a New Age dawns! It is "religion," most of all, that has made us afraid, as it pictured God as a tremendous Personage far away; as it fed us forcibly with passionate emotions of guilt, sinfulness, and spiritual impotency. And the modernized rationalistic and social Churches that make Jesus safely human replace one kind of impotency with another, one type of conformism with another!

Courage is the need: the courage to have faith in man's inalienable right and responsibility to make new and unprecedented beginnings; the courage to dismiss and forget the ghosts; the courage to face the awesome darkness of the Night of the Soul in certainty of dawn; the courage to allow one's consciousness and ego to be ground like a lens to the perfect form that will enable the creative light of the new potentiality to become precisely, effectively, and accurately focused upon one's innermost center of being, and thence released in love for all. Courage, faith, and throughout the whole way, love, and clarity of mind: these are the essential requirements for whoever dares to enter the Path, the path of ever-renewed transformation.