This process occasionally happens to a man in ordinary life:

• Someone or something from a higher level makes a strong contact with him, and irrevocably awakens his conscience.
• Many lives pass, but no connection to an esoteric school is made. Gradually and inevitably, wrong crystallization occurs.
• Between lives, he sees that something has been wrongly crystallized, and cannot be decrystallized without great suffering.*   Here, the Way of Humiliation is offered him.  This is such a desperate measure that most beings refuse, but his contact with the Higher is so strong that he agrees.

[* “Such a man will not possess the possibility of further development.  In order to make further development possible, he must be melted down again, and this can only be accomplished through terrible suffering.”   In Search of the Miraculous  P.32]

The Way of Humiliation:

• Among other, less-fiery beings, he is born in circumstances where he becomes a victim, a prisoner, a slave; he is completely dominated by another or others, completely humiliated.  This is not masochism; there is no element of pleasure in this for him.  Horrible tortures, degradation and insoluble dilemmas reduce him to a kind of semi-human pulp; even suicide is not a viable option.  In these circumstances, many forget that they have agreed to these conditions and give up, or move to the next stage before they have been completely decrystallized.  Those who do not forget are totally permeated with fear, hatred, anger and self-loathing, and consumed with thoughts of revenge.  Only the voice of conscience can lead a man through the next stage, and beyond.
• He gradually becomes one of a class of predators, of carnivores; he causes pain, fear and suffering to those in the previous stage, and thus serves a useful (if ghastly) function to this Way. The emotions of the previous stage are exactly the same here, especially hatred and self-loathing; revenge dominates.  Again, only help from his conscience can rescue a man from this stage.  If he comes into this stage still wrongly crystallized, a man may get stuck here, and then the real possibility exists for him of being born without a conscience—a sociopath.
• Here, there must be a break with the past, a renunciation. A man turns toward the light.  The danger here is madness: a premature connection to higher forces.  This, too, must be renounced.  Here a man seeks out help.  If a man can be helped by higher influences, then the third stage, the goal of this Way, can be reached.  The man gradually sees the pattern, sees that he agreed to undergo this process, remembers the Higher, and finally chooses to be harmless (but not out of powerlessness).  And with that, at last he can become useful to the Higher.

.                          Lou Gottlieb                              7/25/09                         version 7