Chastity is actually only an exaggerated emphasis upon the principle of proper "spacing" in all relationships that do not seek to reconstitute the original Egg (the male-female whole) and thus to close a cycle. The French speak of "I'egoisme a deux," a phrase difficult to translate tersely, but which refers to the fact that the male and female in productive union (or in a short circuited state of involved bliss, lost in each other) actually build jointly a larger and more final ego. All egos long for finality, for the closed cycle within which all is perfect, finished — the successful person, the happy home!

Such an ideal can produce beautiful and wholesome results, as far as they go; but it can only bring to a conclusion what has been released in the beginning of the relationship. Then the cycle closes and a new one, of the same kind and at the same level, must begin. This is Samsara, the ever-resurgent urge to repeat the past, whether individually as a separate individual self, or collectively as a generation compelling the following generation by unconscious pressures and semi-hypnotic example to repeat its patterns or to rush rebelliously to the exact opposite, which is as compulsive and binding a procedure as unconscious imitation.

The only other solution — besides some form or other of self-destruction (and there are so many of these forms) begins with a refusal to close the cycle in exhaustion of vital energy and inner weariness; it is a breakthrough into the realm of those who, as brothers and sisters, exist in a state of ever-renewed potentiality and essential virginity which is indeed Nirvana, the condition of infinite latency from which all is possible and nothing is ever final or finished.

This does not mean leaving this world or reaching the timeless and unconditioned. Gautama the Buddha accepted the time, the place, and the conditions of India's society, culture, and climate in the sixth century B.C. After having become liberated from the desire to bring his cycle of existence to a final close through yoga practices and starvation, and having been revitalized by the milk given him by a simple milkmaid, he understood ("stood under") the World-Process. For forty more years of radiant peaceful living he presented to his society an infinitely noble, beautiful, and self-contained example of freedom and of peace. He transformed his society and the whole of Asia.

We are not Buddhas, of course. Yet we can rise beyond the compulsive living which must end in exhausted power and pattern — frozen consciousness; we can awaken in us the Virgin-potency that is exhaustless and unbound by repetitive actions. This is perhaps what mystics try to say when they speak of living in the Now, unconditioned by precedents and unburdened by expectations. But to call this state timeless is just as fictitious and glamorous a statement as to speak of and to desire the end of time (as in Biblical eschatology).

There are forever cycles. This moment is within one of them. Each man exists at this moment, in this cycle. Even denying time must necessarily take time, must occur in time. We should live this moment, because it is what we are essentially. We are not different from it in the living of it. We have to live it, to love it; because indeed it alone exists for us now, because we are its fulfillment. We are time. Consciousness is time, cyclic, rhythmic, harmonic, whole in its divine condition, as an Eon; partial, biased, tormented by conflicts in the human mind. The real fallacy is to think that we are only a small part of a cycle of existence and that this now fulfillment is all there is of us. We potentially are the whole cycle; more still we have in us the potentiality of always breaking through the fulfillment of any cycle into the vast measureless Movement which unceasingly calls forth new potential out of the infinite expanse of Virgin SPACE, within and from which all is possible.

Yet one should not think of escaping into this ineffable, nameless ocean of possibilities, this ever-Virgin Nirvana. The gates to Nirvana are seen only within the fulfillment of now, but in a fulfillment which does not close anything, which leaves the quest, the movement, the ascent unresolved. Nothing is ever resolved. No cycle ends in total perfection, for the very search for perfection rises by stepping upon one's own and mankind's rejected imperfections. The rejected must again be met, absorbed in love, integrated; this forever and ever.

Why? Because there are always greater possibilities; always the Virgin — Alaya, Soul of unbounded Space — calls, with new dreams, with her infinite latency, her inexhaustible potency of form-releases, of time and cycles. Possibilities are exhaustless; Cosmic Motion is unceasing. If we aspire toward a final condition, an end of process and the absorption of time into a timeless ecstasy, we merely create illusion for ourselves. Our passion for a formless state is as binding a form of desire as any narrow dogma freezing the Virgin within us into a set pattern of consciousness. Every existence has form; and it is powered by the as-yet-unformed Virgin-potency, ever ready for any and all possibilities of formation and transformation. It is all here, now; yet this "here and now" are but one moment in the infinite Movement that releases forever new potentialities into eventually inevitable actualities, in whose fulfillment lies the seed of future cycles. Cling to the moment, and you have lost it. Escape into the Movement, and you are lost, only to be found again and institutionalized in a future, more rigid framework of karma.

It really is all so simple! One should not have to talk about it, which is like trying to catch atoms with a butterfly net, or painting the iridescent ever-moving panoply of northern lights with thick oil paint and coarse brush. All that one can do is to call, to stir, to awaken to the ever new possible, to evoke and to move on before the vision sets and the ever-Virgin becomes impregnated, patterned-out by the male "fact," caught into the mesh of productivity, compelled to repeat words which repetition makes meaningless because familiar.

Familiarity is the negation of spirituality. Promiscuity, lack of bearing, sloppiness, are insults to the Virgin. There should always be distance, proportion, form, effective focusing of attention, self-discipline and a vast, deep quietness of emotional vibrancy. And yet all this not definitive, not final, not binding.

Acts do not need to bind the actors. The Avatar is both Eon and man; Krishna is the lover of the Gopis as well as the "beginning, middle and end" of the universal cycle. The now, lived in full concentration on the potentiality it is called upon to release as one phase of a vast cycle, is one with the cycle — IF the wholeness of the cycle is evoked and focused in the act here and now. This is avatarhood, divine manifestation. This is the transpersonal way.

All living is a "performance." What is essential is not to be bound by the form. Use this form. Pour yourself unreservedly, utterly, into that form and into the releasing act. Then, pass on; walk on. Now is always with us, always demanding to be lived as if it alone existed; but also to be lived in the consciousness that it is but one among the infinitude of drops in the ocean of potentiality, but one of the many smiles of the Virgin of all possible worlds.