Once we sufficiently free ourselves from this mental illusion and cultural provincialism and accept the implications of being at the threshold of a global civilization, two main possibilities nevertheless arise: either we can try so to extend the field of investigation of the present-day scientific mind that it will burst out of its five-century-old self-imposed (and also at first Church-imposed) limitations and lead us to a new realm of undismissable facts, or else we could try to start from postulates which we accept as basic metaphysical and even metacosmic Principles which older civilizations have considered to be self-evident and upon which their greatness was founded. Then by synthesizing essentials and forgetting superficialities, we could deductively and intuitively build up the kind of methodology which would lead us not only to the direct experience of superphysical facts, but also to experiencing in a new light already known physical facts.

The first alternative is being pursued by many progressive and dedicated scientists who are working in groups along the lines of parapsychology and metapsychiatry as well as in the field where atomic physics slides into metaphysics and mathematics into mysticism. The second alternative brings us to the threshold of ancient Occultism by way of a study of concepts and symbols hidden under the chaotic, distorted, and often bewildering remains of ancient religious, alchemical, and metaphysical traditions. It is the way which was incorporated in The Secret Doctrine nearly one hundred years ago.

This incorporation, considering the condition of the society to which it was addressed, could be only partially successful. Yet, at the core of its often confusing complexity and lack of over-all philosophical clarity, definite foundations for the development of a new type of non-Western, or trans-Western, knowledge are apparent. A way of knowledge is outlined that directly and unequivocally challenged and still challenges our Euro-American mentality.

The essential characteristic of a way or path is that one has to walk and proceed along the course it reveals. It is something to go through, not to dwell in. But "going through" means to keep one's perceptions clear, one's mind alert to the possibility of taking apparently similar by-ways which actually represent branchings-out and lead to long detours if not disaster. He who treads the occult way, even in its earliest stages, has to keep his sense of direction steady; and perhaps to carefully study a map he has been given for the journey. Singleness of purpose and an essential ineradicable self-dedication and undeviating will are needed. Yet, at this time of human history, also required is the ability to understand the character of the way and the nature of the goal to which it is to lead. A new light of understanding should now be shed on this occult path to knowledge and, above all on the one source of that knowledge. It is an integrated and indeed organic kind of knowledge, and all that can be called organic had its origin in one germinating wholeness of being. Failing to understand this fact is to court eventual disaster as one proceeds on the transphysical as well as transpersonal way.

Knowledge is of the mind. Occult knowledge belongs to an archetypal realm where ideas are like cells of a vast organism of mind. Whoever enters that realm can directly contact, experience or "see" ideas as functional parts of an integrated whole. There, the knower is the seer, and the light with which he sees is the basically one, yet functionally multicolored, radiance of a primordial revelation. It is a revelation inasmuch as it covers and differentiates the spiritual unity of the original divine Impulse, the Creative Word, by means of multicolored veils that are as many "principles of formation."

These principles can be known, but such a knowledge is inevitably dangerous in that it deals with the early manifestation of the one central Power from which a multitude of structured currents of energies have flown, passing through ever more differentiated forms, each representing a specific mode of release of power. Each of these modes has its functional place and purpose within the whole, somewhat as every life-form in the Earth's biosphere has its temporary function in the cyclically transformed ecology of the whole as representative of a particular type of vegetable, animal, human, and superhuman or extrahuman mode of activity and consciousness.

It is because man's mind has the latent possibility to reflect and respond to all these modes of activity and consciousness, at least within the total organism of one planet, Earth, that it is dangerous for him to ascend consciously to a realm that is close to the one source of all powers released in all the Earth's spheres (lithosphere, biosphere, noosphere, pneumosphere). If he could operate willfully in that realm he would be able to act upon currents of energy which would affect an immense variety of lower and far more differentiated modes of power release. Whoever pollutes the source of a river can destroy all lives that, in the plains, drink of its water. To put it differently: because cosmic processes are hierarchical, the closer to the summit of the pyramidal structure of "idea-forces" that control these processes, the greater the possibility, either constantly to adjust and readjust the dynamic manifestations of essential cosmic Harmony and Equilibrium, or to introduce discord and conflict. This means the possibility of being godlike, or a devil.

We should nevertheless understand that the introduction of widely destructive possibilities in any field of planetary or cosmic activity implies that the time is soon coming when the cyclic pattern according to which such a field operates has become saturated with waste products and its original and functional purpose on this Earth is no longer able to vitalize and inspire the new generations. Whatever it was possible to accomplish in this particular type of field has become by then self-defeating even if it can be considered a great intellectual and social achievement. Too many opportunities have been missed, too many wrong turns taken because of pride, greed, or insecurity. And this is where mankind in general, and especially our Western society, stands today. Our civilization seems to be fast reaching a point of no-return. Darkness has fallen and it is no longer possible to retrace our collective steps, because in the dark we could not find the old way and we would die of exhaustion and spiritual cold.

As we follow the first above-mentioned alternatives, science extends further its field of investigation until it bursts out of its limitations — he new discoveries unavoidably are being used by power-greedy men in control of the basic mechanisms of our society in such a way that the process of destruction of that society is accelerated. Should we deplore such an acceleration? Let us rather realize that this accelerated process also unavoidably polarizes a new Avataric descent. This realization may be the only thing that can save the sensitive and perceptive individual from a sense of futility if not despair.

The great problem nevertheless is: what will mankind do with what this new Avataric focusing of power — this new revelation — will bring?

What any individual or group of individuals will do with it largely depends on how they understand its character and its source. The quality of this understanding will condition mankind's over-all responses to what is being revealed and thus, spectacularly or not, brought out into the collective field of human consciousness.

The quality of our understanding: this is the decisive, indeed the crucial, factor in the impending world situation. Transformative forces are at work. Cathartic events have come; more intense ones may be ahead. But the essential issue is, and during this last quarter of the century will remain, the quality of our mental understanding and our emotional response to them. Love and Knowledge: how we relate to other beings, and on what basis or knowledge our understanding of what changing, freer, more open modes of relating and cooperating in a vital awareness of the meaning of togetherness mean and are meant to accomplish.

Everything depends on meaning and understanding. Tomorrow we may meet a divine personage and never realize it or, if we dimly sense his power, fall worshipful at his feet. The meaning of such a meeting would be that we, individually or collectively, have reached the threshold of a new world of reality, and that the opportunity finally has come for us to walk, erect and strong, through that threshold as a link between what was — our past and mankind's past in us — and what must and will be. Always, everywhere and at any level, the one essential question is: How much of the new potentiality whose time for manifestation has come, can we actualize, and what will be the quality and scope of our actualization?

The basic character of the occult way and of truly transpersonal living is that it brings us in contact at an accelerated pace with the potentiality of periodically renewing our consciousness, our feeling responses, and our capacity for action by resonating to new potentialities latent in the planetary (and eventually galactic) archetype, Man. It is indeed a question of "resonance" and the future science will come to learn that power can and should be released by resonating to various modalities of cosmic power, rather than by destroying matter. Destruction inevitably leaves toxic waste products, but he whose whole being has become attuned, and therefore can resonate, to the great rhythms of universal Motion (only an aspect of which we know as life) he alone can act as a focusing agent for the Creative word. At whatever level he operates, he is an Avataric being; and it is the togetherness of all such seed men that factually is the living Presence of the Avatar.

This Presence is active, here and now, in this era of transition toward a New Age. It is around us, above us, deep within us if we let it operate. We need not prostrate ourselves to worship it; it needs no worshippers. It needs only powerful, clear, understanding minds, feelings free from self and possessiveness, and the capacity to stand, erect and tall. Then its power radiating from behind us will be able to pass through our being, and move our hands, our tongue, the whole of us, in blessings to emergent tomorrows.