As the human kingdom is reached in the world-process a new situation slowly develops. Man acquires reflective consciousness, a consciousness centered around an "I" subjectively aware of being both center and consciousness. Any living organism is a whole, a limited field of activity; but while it has a life-center this is not an individualized center of consciousness, a Self. The form of the entity characterizes a species of life, not an individual center of I-consciousness.

This is a tremendous difference. It implies that in man the trend toward actualization and objectivity has reached a point at which it is increasingly pervaded with the opposite trend toward repotentialization and subjectivity. Man's presence announces the nearness of a symbolical equinox point, as at the equinoxes, day and night are of equal duration. In man, actuality and potentiality are coming close to a condition of equilibrium. Because of this, man has the at least latent capacity to repotentialize his consciousness, and to some extent his physical organism. Even when this organism can no longer be renewed, death can be a conscious and deliberate act of repotentialization. It can be a conscious entrance into a realm of relative nonmanifestation and subjectivity in which potentiality has won over actuality. It can mark the beginning of a seed state at the level of mind-consciousness. In that state an equally conscious mutation can be subjectively experienced, polarized toward a new birth, a new beginning.

It can be, but it need not be and perhaps rarely is. Most human beings are still operating mainly at the level of biological energies and their psychic overtones. Because the I-consciousness in them is most of the time identified with one or another body function, encased in sociocultural forms, and focused in the ego, (a socialbiological compound which people usually think of as "I-myself") this consciousness is no longer able to envision totally new beginnings. It has lost what may be called "originability" — the ability to envision, and then to perform acts which can be origins of new developments — acts which release new potentialities not strictly implied in a person's birth, and especially which were not defined by the limitations of physical ancestry and social-geographical environment.

In order to envision such new possibilities, a man does not have to think of existence itself as illusion; and while the Hindu term, maya, is usually translated "illusion," Maya was also the name of Gautama the Buddha's mother. Existence at the human level implies the possibility to be born out of it and to transcend its fate as the Buddha did. And the word "fate" simply refers to the inertia of existential forms and the entropy of energies that operate through all biological-emotional, social-cultural and ego-controlled forms of living. The human condition so tragically depicted by self-defeated men of a civilization stifled by inertial institutions and fears, actually is a condition of allowing conscious and deliberate self-renewal through the creation of always new forms, or at least through the radical alteration, expansion, and recharging of the form of an individual selfhood refusing to bend to the pressure of the past and accept defeat.

How can such a recharging, repotentialization or creative rebeginning be accomplished? The first condition is to believe in the possibility of it; then to dare be open to new images that may well up from the deepest center of being. Through that center a new influx of potentiality may surface into the consciousness of the existential mind.

The belief in the possibility of rebeginning or rebirth has evidently to take a form consonant with the individual's metaphysical or religious beliefs. The way the process of repotentialization is described and the names and symbols used in this description vary, but essentially what is experienced is an attunement of the consciousness to "That" which to the mind represents an infinite potentiality of as yet unknown modes of existence — cosmic, spiritual, psychic, human, cellular, or molecular as these modes may be according to the level at which the consciousness operates.

If one believes totally in the validity of the great images of the Christian tradition, one undoubtedly tends to picture to oneself a personal all-loving and all-powerful God. One will believe that, as the Gospel states, "With God all things are possible." One also believes in the infinite power of God's "Grace." We have to believe without any shadow of a doubt that in our life, God is a constant Presence aware of all our needs and ready to assist our disenthrallment or redemption from the dualistic oscillations, the fears and passions of our biological and egocentric existence. We must be willing to let Him point to us the new goal, the vibrant way of life, which follows our rebirth.

This divine Grace gives us the potency to neutralize the karmic tendencies of our past — the residue of the unfinished business of past cycles and the negative cosmic imprints of ancient unremembered acts. We have first of all to empty our consciousness of all ghostly presences and unconscious tendencies before we can be radically repotentialized. To the disciples of Sri Aurobindo this divine Grace is presented as the Mother-Force — and even to Christians Mary the Mother appears as the Mediatrix who channels down to weary and distraught humans the "living water" of Christ's immense love. According to ancient Hindu traditions the guru who has experienced his divine state is able to assume the karma of his disciples' past lives — a karma operating at the unconscious level — just as the Christ was born to wipe away the stigma of an Original Sin deeply rooted in man's collective unconscious. But the disciple has always to take care by himself of all that he is conscious of — thus, of the karma of his present life.

An individual person may have developed his mind and his courage to the point where he can assume without fear the totality of his own karma, and deliberately seek to attune his whole being and his boundless imagination to the rhythms of the infinite ocean of potentiality. Yet this would be a lonely way if constantly pursued without the help and love of other human beings, and also without the realization that there are presences that, invisibly in most cases though often not without voice, surround the wayfarer and guide his or her confused steps in the darkness of a materialistic, competitive, and lustful society. Christianity speaks of "Guardian Angels"; other religions refer to them under other names.

In many cultures, since patriarchal times, and even more since the great movement of chivalry and particularly in Southern France during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the capacity to be attuned in feelings and intuition to a vast reservoir of spiritual inspiration and/or healing love has been considered a natural role for a woman, provided she is true to the highest and purest potentiality of her nature; for woman may also be pictured as the Temptress, la femme fatale, who embodies the entropy of material energies and leads to passionate disintegration. Today, the modern woman is confused and , in her demand for equality and liberation — such ambiguous and deceptive ideals! — she tries hard to identify herself often unreservedly with the great gods of Productivity and social success, while relying increasingly upon an asexualized intellect able to memorize data, handle computers, and manage systems. By so doing she almost inevitably becomes, like most men, a mere mechanism in the production lines of factories and managerial offices. Just because she demands to be fully "actualized," she tends to lose her contact with the great ocean of potentiality.

To use Jungian terms, she loses the capacity to act as an anima figure, as a mediatrix between the vast realm of the unconscious (or superconscious) and the actively exteriorizing and systematizing mind characteristic of the male sex, at least during the last millennia of human evolution. As this happens, the men she tries to emulate and socially compete with may tend to develop the contrasexual aspect of their nature. Theoretically this may be a valid trend and it may be related to the emergence of a new kind of humanity — the sixth sub-race of which H.P. Blavatsky announces the gradual but slow development. Nevertheless the immediate result is very often emotional confusion and mental instability — all of which is caused by a disturbing feeling of lack of functional purpose and by the ambiguity of unclearly defined roles in interpersonal relationships.

One may refuse to accept traditional roles, but one should also be able to understand that these roles, especially if based upon biological imperatives and functional differentiation, are the reflections of great archetypes. New archetypes may be brought to act on the stage of human evolution, but until they are truly understood and actualized, they may remain a deeply disturbing potentiality within the unconscious of individuals who are not yet free enough of the past — or, just as important! — of an emotional rebellion against this past, to envision new modes of relationships, and have not yet the strength and courage required to compel society to accept them.