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RITES OF PASSAGE
Whatever occurs at the level of personhood and culture is deeply affected by functional processes and changes in the individual's biological organism. Thus, movement from one sublevel to another in the socio-cultural system in which a child is born normally is related to the factor of age, particularly to biopsychic periods of transformation such as puberty, change of life (or menopause), and the progressive deterioration of biological functions in old age. A person also experiences sociocultural transitions from narrower to more inclusive areas of interpersonal relationship if he or she moves from a village to a city, from a parental home to a university, or sooner or later shifts his or her sense of involvement and concern from a family group to a nationwide business or governmental organization or even to international issues and the future of mankind under the menace of a nuclear holocaust.
Unless precipitated by unpredictable catastrophes, all basic changes be they biological, biopsychic, sociocultural, or even more far reaching require a period of transition. If a critical event, decision, or move precipitates the change, a brief or long period of conscious or semiconscious preparation for or expectation of the actual occurrence nearly always precedes it, and the latter is followed by a time of readjustment. If the change is radical enough if it affects the very roots of the being and the framework of consciousnessit is a crisis. A crisis (from the Greek krino, to decide) is essentially a series of internal or external occurrences that forces a person to take a decision or (negatively) compels him or her (more or less unwillingly) to alter his or her way of feeling, thinking, and/or behaving. The alteration may affect relationships with other people, the environment, and/or society as a whole; or it may manifest as an inner transformation, a new perspective on life and the universe, a deep new feeling of what is valuable and "real."
In many ancient societies, a great deal of attention was paid to periods of biological and psychosocial changes resulting in a new type of relationship between the person experiencing the transformation and his or her community. "Rites of passage" were devised to accomplish definite purposes. Modern individualistic and materialistic societies usually fail to understand and appreciate these purposes and rites, and this failure has serious, negative ramifications in the psychological and sociocultural development of a personality. This does not mean that rites of passage or ritualistic processes are absent from Euro- American society; many sociocultural processes (especially in education, business, and politics) are de facto ritualistic. However, the element of "sacredness" is absent from them. If it is present theoretically, as in Catholic sacraments, most of the people performing the rites only superficially realize the essential meaning and vital challenges the rites were meant to convey to those experiencing them.
According to the Catholic tradition (which sadly is being diluted today), a sacrament has two aspects. It is a symbol of the progressive participation of a person in the community of the Church; and it theoretically establishes, actually and psychically (or spiritually from the Church's point of view), a two-way relationship between the person and God, through the intermediary of a consecrated servant of God, a bishop or priest. This vertical relationship begins with Baptism. From a theological point of view, it is "substantiated" and made effectual by the sacrament of Communion in which the member of the Church ritualistically partakes of substance of the "Body of Christ" in which we all "live, move and have our being."
From a holarchic point of view which seeks to interpret spiritual tradition anew, this Body is referred to or is a symbol of the spiritual level (the "pneumosphere") of the planet earth. The sacrament of Communion symbolically should bring to the communicant the sustaining power of the realization of being fully human in a universal, planetary sense. This obviously is not what happens to the present-day child who passes through the ritual of a "first Communion," and it probably was not the original meaning and intention of the ritual, which was derived from the practice of communal meals in ancient "Brotherhoods." Nevertheless, the Catholic rite of "first Communion" can be interpreted as the Christian equivalent of the puberty rite performed in most tribal societies; but since young children are allowed to receive Communion today, the connection has been lost.
In tribal societies, for a boy the puberty ritual usually meant leaving his mother's psychic womb and qualifying for participation in the tribe as an individual member. In India, the young Brahmin received his "sacred thread" (symbol of the thin current of spiritual force linking the outer person with its triune spiritual entity) and in some cases left his maternal home in search of a guru, a spiritual father-mother. The native American boy, after days in the sacred kiva (which represented the psychic womb of the tribe as a consistent and organic whole), was sent into the forest to fast until he received in a vision his "true name"the certification of his place and function in the tribal organism. In Africa, boys and girls had to pass through various tests and a ritual circumcision symbolizing a new openness to the inflow of the forever fecundant principle of life. In all cases, these rites originally were meant to sacralize as well as ritualize the biopsychic activation of sexual, reproductive energies and the archetypal end of a childhood which had been the embryonic stage of personhood within a safe, womb-like home.
After years of study or further biopsychic tutelage, the process begun with the rite of puberty was brought to a further level in the ritual of marriage, which held the promise of actual progeny and thus of the cultural-religious as well as the biological perpetuation of a particular tribe, race, creed, or nation.
In the Catholic Church, the repetition of Communion is intended to keep the root-power of the Church alive and vibrant in the participant at the level of collective psychism. The ritual of matrimony, in which God is understood to be invisibly present through the priest, insures the dedication of the intended future progeny to the perpetuation of a religious community, which is no longer tribal but considered all-inclusive, all-human, and thus "planetary." This "universal" community is believed to be the "bride of Christ," the planetary matrix out of which a "Communion of Saints" a spiritual organism to some degree comparable to what modern theosophy calls the "White Lodge" gradually is emerging, century after century.
The Catholic sacraments (baptism, first communion, marriage, and extreme unction for the dying) are, or should be experienced as, rites of passage; Protestant Churches, Judaism, and most other organized religions also have their own rites of passage. Unfortunately, all have become primarily social formalities. Commencement (graduation from college) is an instance of a secular rite of passage relevant to a change of social status; so is the coronation of a king or the inauguration of a president. All such rituals, however, have little value and even less "sacred" meaning if they are not (1) conceived and passed through as a conscious preparation for a crisis of transformation, and (2) referred to an encompassing "greater whole" be it the tribe, Church, nation, humanity-as-a-whole, or Christ as the planet's mystical body that actually or symbolically participates in the rite.
When such rituals are understood and performed in their original meaning as truly functional events, they focus the power of a new level of existence (a new "greater whole") upon the person or persons experiencing them. A rite of passage is a rite of empowerment and a true initiation into a new realm of being in which the experiencer receives the power to operate and is accepted by new peers. Only then can the new initiate have horizontal relationships with his or her elders; until then these relationships inevitably are vertical, even though their character as such may be disguised by kindness or compassion. It is also most important that the would-be initiate experience the rite and the passage in clear consciousness of what it is meant to accomplish. The elders, who already have experienced the passage and are established at the new level, usually prepare the aspirant for the ritual of empowerment beforehand, so that the person being transformed can pass through it as fully conscious of its purpose as possible.
In an unprepared person, deep-rooted changes from one sublevel of personhood to another may manifest as ominous feelings or forebodings, internal mental arguments, and/or psychosomatic pressures or illnesses. The total meaning and purpose, indeed the essential causes of these, usually are unknown or unclear to the experiencer or distorted by his or her rationalization of a self-protective ego. Ritualization gives meaning be it collective or generic, psychic or biological, or mental and spiritual to such a crisis by revealing it as a necessary phase of transition between two levels (or sublevels) of an impersonal, more or less universal process which inevitably obeys evolutionary rhythms and "laws." The understanding that the latter operate not only within the particular individual in crisis of transformation but in all human beings (and in one form or another in all systems of organization, be they material, psychic, or cosmic) should help dissipate the particular individual's resistance and fear, and help him or her pass fully consciously through the crisis.
Is Knowledge Always Constructive?
The ability to pass through a radical crisis consciously, with a fully open and aware mind, may make the difference between success and at least partial failure. The Greek oracle at Delphi exhorted everyone, "Know thyself"; but what is this "self" which should be known? What is to be "known" (at least at first) is not so much who "I" am, but what "I" am. This means the contents of the at least relatively insulated and differentiated sphere (or mandala) of the being centralized by this totally abstract feeling of being "I," a separate, different, relatively unique entity. The important facts to know refer to the "am," not to the "I." "I" is a universal, formless, level-less principle, active everywhere, without any possible qualifications. The "am" is the pattern of composite relationships constituting a definite system of organization. In a crisis, this pattern is upset (the deeper the crisis the more thorough the upset) because the fundamental character of the system itself is changing. The "I" remains what it is, as long as the system does not totally break down. If it does, the "I" vanishes, though persistent memories of its presence may keep the fragments relatively integrated for some time.
When the conscious understanding of the complex nature of the "am" is referred to the superpersonal reality of a persistent and significant greater whole, a breakdown of the total structure of the system of "personhood" can be avoided. A correct meaning can be given to the relationships operating at the new level, because the essential character and quality of that level is symbolized in the rite and at least to some extent explained during the preparation for it. The inner attitude (or emotional reactions) of the person preparing for the change is the basic factor, but it is deeply affected by the manner in which whoever assists in the process presents the change and the necessity (or inevitability) for it.
This is particularly evident in the special field of preparation for changes known and usually misunderstood as natal astrology. The essential purpose of astrology is to reveal to the "I" of the person the organization of its "am" as a biopsychic system. It is also to make the "I" conscious of the meaning of changes that can be expected periodically during the continuous process of unfoldment from birth to death. During this process what is only potential at birth is to be actualized through the complex relationships of the state of personhood within a sociocultural environment. The philosophical basis of astrology is the concept that all systems in nature operate according to the interactions of a few fundamental, interdependent principles of organic, functional order. While human beings observe and experience the operation of these principles all the time, when one is closely and subjectively involved with what they represent it is difficult to see beyond the play of superficial and seemingly chaotic experiences. In contrast, the order revealed by the periodic motion of celestial bodies in the universally human experience of the night sky refers to factors that are so remote and seem so simple that one can be very objective to what they convey concerning cyclic processes of change.
Nevertheless, the practicing astrologer is confronted by two basic problems: how to interpret these processes and give their phases concrete meanings that can be applied to events and relationships at the level of personhood; and how to effectively yet safely present these interpretations to a client about to meet a crisis of transformation. This is difficult because an abstract relationship (the angular distance between astrological factors, be they planets or other symbolic points) has to be translated into terms that make sense at the levels of biological, sociocultural, and personal-individual events. Furthermore, the exact nature of these events remains largely uncertain, as they may be internal or external, and often both. Another difficulty involves knowing intuitively or through empathy how the client will react to the announcement of an impending change perhaps a harsh crisis of transformation and how he or she will be affected subconsciously by the information. In any field of investigation, the basic question is always how valuable, usable, or safe is knowledge especially any knowledge which cannot be integrated immediately, securely, and intelligently into a more-than-personal picture of human existence, either as human existence is today or as it can be expected to be in the future.
A process of self-protection may operate in any situation involving a truly esoteric revelation, because an unready person simply will not understand what has been said or will even fail to realize that something of deep, previously hidden significance has come to light. Nevertheless, before new social or personal happenings actually can occur, human beings seem to need to be able to imagine them, even if the imagining is imprecise or confusing. Indeed, the anticipation of an impending change can produce powerful effects (or affects), including fear, strong emotional uncertainty, uncontrollable restlessness, and the urge to escape from what has been predicted. Such reactions weaken in advance the inborn yet still potential faculty which the future confrontation is meant to stipulate or arouse a faculty having its place and function within the total life-process, just as the crisis also has its place and purpose.
The only way to avoid such negative reactions to foreknowledge is to present the predicted event, as an unavoidable phase of a deeply significant and universal process which sooner or later all human beings will have to experience simply because they are "human." Painful and disturbing as the event or its anticipation may be, it should be given the meaning of being a necessary and inevitable step leading to a higher level of experience and fulfillment a means to be accepted in view of a magnificent end.
Whether predictive statements be astrological, psychological, medical, political, or astronomical, all forms of foreknowledge or mentally pictured expectations have to be evaluated in such a light. The validity of information conveyed depends entirely on the frame of reference within which it has meaning and value and on the temperament, character, and the quality of the will and understanding of the person or group being confronted with foreknowledge and new perspectives.
To live transpersonally is (in the highest sense of both these terms) to live in a state of transition between personhood and a Pleroma type of consciousness and activity. Because it implies consciously accepting to be an active, positive intermediary between the future and the present, it requires allowing the vibration, power, and light of a state of being which is only one's future to pass through one's organism as it presently is. The present state, not only of the consciousness and mind, but of the whole personality, including of course the physical body, its nerves and organs of action, has to be made to resonate in tune with rhythms operating at the higher Pleroma level. Periodic or occasional states of crisis inevitably result. Indeed what I have called "the transpersonal way" should be understood as a broader, less specific version of "the Path" referred to by most relatively recent esoteric traditions.
"The Path" as a Rite of Passage
The Path is, I believe, most significantly and constructively understood as a long and arduous rite of passage. The now popularized concept of a series of four or five "great Initiations," which is derived from Buddhist as well as from Masonic traditions, refers to crucial moments of this ritual process at which successive levels of Pleroma power and consciousness are brought to a focus in the individual treading the Path of total and irrevocable transformation. The whole process is a rite because the factors structuring it have a universal or rather planetary validity; they refer to the archetype of Man and what is generically possible to a member of the species homo sapiens. The form of the rite nevertheless is colored by the culture and religion of the individual undertaking the transformative process. The form is also affected by the responses that can be expected of an individual whose sub-conscious motivations have been conditioned since birth (or even before) by a particular set of early family patterns and religious assumptions which are extremely difficult, though necessary, to overcome.
The Path of radical transformation implies a vertical relationship between centers of consciousness and activity at two levels, between the person treading the Path and one (or more) Pleroma beings. The spiritual power of the planetary level becomes focused through the "Master" (the Pleroma being), for the purpose of assisting the "disciple," insofar as assistance is possible and safe. A more or less definite mode of communication may be established, normally involving prayer or meditation at the personal level and a concrete or symbolic, direct or indirect, answer from the Pleroma level. The human being's tendency to personalize the relationship and personify its spiritual pole is unavoidable in most instances and in a sense justifiable; yet it can cause the disciple to misinterpret and give an overly concrete, literal form to the products of a relationship which seems to take a personal form only because it is interpreted by a disciple still functioning in a very personal way.
Much depends upon the exact level at which the individual center of the disciple's being is able normally, or under abnormal pressures, to operate thus on his or her quality of will, purity of motives, and capacity of mind to picture the ritual process of transformation. The resilience and strength of the body are also very important, for a release of spiritual power would easily shatter a weak or unprepared organism. At the level of the collective psychism of the disciple's culture responsible for the structure of his or her mind, it also could arouse forces always ready to oppose any individually determined and effective ascent toward the Pleroma the spiritual all-human community. Such an opposition has been dramatized in "occult" novels and assuredly can be a powerful factor setting limits to what any individual on the Path can hope to accomplish in his or her present life span.
However, these limits should be considered manifestations of the individual's karma, thus of the legacy he or she received at conception from previous cycles of existence, either recent or long past. In addition to personal karma, collective racial and sociocultural karma also is involved, for both the individual and collective polarities of human existence inevitably are activated in any determined effort to radically transform the fundamental nature of mankind at any particular stage of planetary evolution. Just as the level of evolution of mankind affects the possibilities open to any particular person, so the success (or failure) of any one individual consciously entering the Path affects to some degree the entire evolutionary process on earth.
The situation can be understood more clearly by referring the Path, as a process of transformation, to the great cycle of being outlined in Part One of this book. The possibility of beginning this process can arise only in an individualized, conscious, determined, and relatively independent or self-induced manner at a particular stage of the evolutionary curve. This must occur somewhere past the midpoint between the symbolic Noon and Sunset, for such a midpoint symbolizes the definite beginning of the process of individualization. If ultimately successful, the process leads to the stage of Illumined Man, the Gate of Silence at which the principles of Unity and Multiplicity are of equal power and the human consciousness is illumined by the light, power, and presence of the creative God (the symbolic Sunrise or "first point" of a particular cosmic cycle). Strictly speaking, the "human" phase of the great cycle of being is consummated in Illumined Man; what human beings experience as objective existence passes into an increasingly subjective state of "inistence" leading to the Godhead state at which the principle of Unity attains its maximum value for the particular cosmic cycle.
As discussed in Part Three, what is rather inaccurately called "reincarnation" is actually the development of a relationship between a single spiritual Quality (one of the myriad Letters of the creative Word-in-the-beginning, or Logos) and a series of successive earth-born human beings developing within successive cultures. Such a series of increasingly individualized persons becomes gradually more attuned and responsive to the spiritual Quality seeking to find a perfect vehicle of expression in a human form and thus to consummate the "divine Marriage" of spirit and matter. The process of radical transformation called the Path begins when one of the personalities of this series becomes aware in an individualized and self-induced manner that it is connected with a spiritual Quality in whatever way his or her religion, philosophy, and culture names it and explains its existence and completely accepts union with it as an essential, ideal goal.
A particular person may not accomplish much toward this goal, but efforts made in that direction are not lost; they strengthen the subtle connecting link between the spiritual Quality and any new person drawn to the series. Every positive and successful step counts; every moment of crucial weakness, indecision, or collapse delays advance on the Path. Progress can be so delayed that the planetary cycle of mankind ends before the supreme moment of union occurs, in which case the process will have to begin again in another great cycle, and probably at about the same point at which the decisive delay previously took place. From the point of view of Wholeness, nothing can ever be lost, except the possibility for a particular participant in a cycle to experience Wholeness in that particular cycle.
If one thinks of the reason for the formation of a new universe, it is the loss of such a possibility which generates a new time. Many years ago I wrote, "Time is God's compassion for chaos." The polarization of God and chaos (or of Unity and Multiplicity, which has much the same philosophical meaning at the level of abstract principles) implies either time or an absolute dualism denied by the very fact of thinking about it; for the thinker evidently is neither God nor chaos but part of a movement of relatedness between these opposites. This dynamic process of relationship is the Movement of Wholeness.
Every whole in the universe, be it an atom, a galaxy, or a human being, is a phase of that movement. When a human being enters the Path, the movement accelerates. It takes the form of a ritual because every movement, every act, becomes symbolic. It becomes a mythos which must be lived by every person on the Path. It is a walk, a series of falls and recoveries. Each individual must tread it alone, yet his or her whole culture also is involved, for the culture has molded the individual's mind. The Pleroma, too, is involved, because the future includes the past whence the Pleroma has emerged through dynamic but always uncertain and dangerous presents. Whoever does the walking must carry the burden of time and causation, must experience the birthing of the future out of the womb of the past through individualized nows. The individualization of time of the meaning a person gives to a series of events, once he or she has started on the Path of transformation of the basic frames of reference to which these events are to be related is indeed an unrelenting necessity. So, at least, it must seem to the traveler on the Path.
Yet perhaps as one comes very close to the supreme moment of Illumination, this too may seem to be an illusion produced by an unbalanced relation between Unity and Multiplicity between "I" and the universe. As the Gate of Silence is reached and the opposite polarities of being are perfectly equilibrated for an instant, does not Wholeness reveal itself as changelessly perfect and whole? Is it "for an instant" only? Are transitions and rites of passage, from self-limiting levels to always more inclusive ones, never ending? Is even the continuum of change the ultimate illusion? Or does the supreme realization arise only when one totally accepts the fact that Motion is unceasing, that Wholeness is a tidal movement of being; and that peace and fulfillment can come only to the consciousness that has identified itself with that movement, whatever form its turning points and reversals of polarity may take? For such a consciousness every moment sings with a rapture of change and unceasing renewal.
