One particular point we have emphasized is the idea of three stages of consciousness. In the first stage, a man or woman accepts things as they are without question or interest. For whatever reason, a man may become dissatisfied and seek for his own explanations. He may have a conversion and adopt a religious faith. He may be attracted to scientism and see physical science as the answer to every question. Or he may adopt an ideology such as Marxism, post-modernism, existentialism, and so on.

However, there is a certain unease about that, since the epistemological question remains unresolved in the back of his mind. Thus he reads books, develops arguments, amasses evidence … anything to stave off the awareness that his point of view may not be true. To protect his fragile belief system, he feels the need to evangelize, convince, defeat his intellectual rivals of other ideologies.

Many a man has spent his life that way. He may even be praised and his books read. Yet there are some small few who still are unconvinced and go seeking deeper. Is it really man’s fate that he can only believe? Is there no possibility of a true and certain gnosis? Such a man goes on a quest. He explores many false leads. Yet perhaps along the way he encounters a group or a man or maybe even a graced moment, when a crack in the world egg appears and he pecks his way through.

This is not for everyone. It can be vertiginous, even frightening, to empty one’s mind of all cherished beliefs, and to only accept what one can know. There are no facts to memorize, no system to learn. Instead a man must actually change his very being. Such a transformation feels like a death, and it is the death of one’s former self, so the dread of death will stop many at this point. They will then adopt the dress and demeanor of how they envision a wise man should dress and act.

Even fewer will persist. There is no single method, no map where X marks the spot. That is why the hero has a thousand faces and each man must forge his own trail.