What does possessing a Tradition mean?
By Terje Dahl Bergersen. Editor of Entheos - A Journal for Gnosis and Tradition

If we consider the way religions spread and receive a constituency in the populace of our world, today, in the West as well as in the East - we must admit a tremendous change in the processes that determine the adherence of a people as well as individual persons to a fixed transmission and heritage.
For instance, we may have noticed the growing tendency towards conversion to Islam in the former Soviet Union states - and, not to neglect the West, the tendency towards conversion to or adoption of Buddhism by western devotees, living in America, Europe, Australia and so forth. The Traditions of the past were received as an inheritance from the former and preceding generations. We should be careful to admit that this is so, even today, especially since our appreciation of what a tradition is has become extended in its contemporary context.

It may take a special kind of courage to admit today that certain ideas and norms subsist whereas the structure we recognize as our worldview, changes all the time. It is to these changes in focus and values we become converted , a process we must appreciate as involving a metanoia ; a total turning-around of mind and heart. Now, some cultures have been more careful than the Christian West to maintain the integrity and above all other concerns; continuity - of the transmissions which we may call Tradition; because they have gained precedence and influence over all human phenomena; be it culture, be it art, be it crafts, be it science, be it, indeed, religion. To change course and focus in the context of an inherently personal and acute orientation towards the world - either needs great care and awareness, or great neglect and unconsciousness. By recognizing this we must admit, be we conservative or progressive in our values - that in some cases Tradition, in and of itself, works to our benefit - whereas in other cases, it is a malign and pacifying influence.Likewise, in some cases a Reorientation which departs from the old and tried roads traveled within the ships of our Traditions - works to our benefit - whereas it may also isolate and rob us from a greater comprehension of meaning and value. Our appreciation of community and communion has changed, it is no longer a gross overstatement to say that modern man has consciously or unconsciously reoriented himself, even if he is found within the very center of Traditional approach and views the world according to ancient and established standards of interpretation and order. His reorientation, if we have courage to admit it - poses an important question to the established norms of continuity and integrity within the context of religious and metaphysical contentions.

Man today, wants to belong and cheerfully adapt, although it takes decades in the maturing of his personality, to himself the very best, in his esteem, of his inheritance from his forefathers and foremothers - but his priority still concerns the originality, independence and personal integrity of his intellectual possessions; whatever contents these have, and whatever of it he takes care to preserve. He wants to travel, he wants to accumulate a wealth of perspectives - inasmuch as he even consider Tradition to be anything, it constitutes an Anchor, by which he may attach his ship to a point in his voyage of discovery - to a strange and new port, whose horizons are different from his vague memory of adolescent faith or even disbelief. If we neglect to avail ourselves of past experiences with this our predicament, we become much the poorer.

The dividing line between becoming worthy recipients of the inheritance of our forefathers and foremothers - and that of abusing this transmission for the sake of becoming settled, passive and idle in the works of faith - must be recognized.

By what light it is discovered, each and every one of us have to discover ourselves - my contention, is that the light of the Gnosis; whom all these inheritances invoke giving it so many different names and denotations - is helpful, nay, I will dare say the second word that comes to my attention now - it is absolutely necessary!