“As we said before, initiation lies at the core of any genuine
human life. And this is true for two reasons. The first is that any
genuine human life implies profound crises, ordeals, suffering, loss
and reconquest of self, "death and resurrection." The second is
that, whatever degree of fulfillment it may have brought him, at a
certain moment every man sees his life as a failure. This vision
does not arise from a moral judgment made on his past, but from
an obscure feeling that he has missed his vocation; that he has
betrayed the best that was in him. In such moments of total crisis,
only one hope seems to offer any issue-the hope of beginning
life over again. This means, in short, that the man undergoing such
a crisis dreams of new, regenerated life, fully realized and significant. This is something other and far more than the obscure
desire of every human soul to renew itself periodically, as the
cosmos is renewed. The hope and dream of these moments of
total crisis are to obtain a definitive and total renovatio, a renewal
capable of transmuting life. Such a renewal is the result of every
genuine religious conversion.”