When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bounds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be. -PatanjaliThe publication of a new, peer-reviewed scholarly journal is an auspicious occasion. It holds the promise of advancing understanding, practice, and experience; stimulating and engaging a newly participative dialogue; and fostering interdisciplinary and intercultural exchange, which in turn develops the field, its depth, and its meaning. We approach the task, opportunity, and challenge of founding and editing this new journal both humbled and enthusiastic. We take this opportunity to introduce the new Journal of Transformative Education (JTE), its genesis, rationale, initial collaborators, and inaugural articles. The way in which the journal came to be is telling of its intentions and goals.

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The human condition has changed radically in the past 100 years. Educational institutions, formal and informal, have not kept pace with technological innovations, the lengthening life span, or the need for ongoing reeducation to reinvigorate lives. The authors distinguish between learning and education and, more significantly, between transformative learning and transformative education. They then introduce the path of transformative education following a Navaho healing ritual that illuminates the mega-myth of death and rebirth as a model on which to organize ideas of adult transformative education across an extended life span. The purpose is to highlight the need for a fourth level of education suitable to 21st-century society, and to engage a global, cross-disciplinary dialogue to inform transformative educational practice across its personal, productive, instrumental, emancipatory, and holistic goals.Beyond the looking glass, in a monastery, through the gate of purgatory, or under the tutelage of a master, there is a liminal place in which education can transform individuals, organizations, and societies. There one can get an education distinct from that acquired on the traditional path taken from infancy to majority. An education that is transformative redirects and reenergizes those who pause to reflect on what their lives have been and take on new purposes and perspectives. The transformation begins when a person withdraws from the world of established goals to unlearn, reorient, and choose a fresh path.The archetypal form of transformative education is the path of death and rebirth, of regression in the service of a forward leap-"reculer pour mieux sauter" (Koestler, 1964). It is a generator of revolution for a society and revitalization for

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A new, occasional feature in the Journal, this article introduces a number of organizations and online resources of potential interest to JTE readers, drawing on scholarly and lay organizations, the various disciplines and communities of practice participating in the transformative education dialogue, individual and institutional membership organizations, and a variety of orientations and geographical bases. Organizations wishing to be considered for feature in future issues of JTE are invited to write to journal@isote.org. Organizations and Web sites included in this issue are: ADEA Working Group on Non-Formal Education (http://www.adeanet.org/wgnfe); ASPBAE Asian South Pacific Bureau of Adult Education (http://www.aspbae.org); The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society (http://www.contemplativemind.org); Instituto Paulo Freire (http://www.paulofreire.org); International Longevity Center (http://www.ilcusa.org); Max Planck Institute for Human Development (http://www.mpibberlin.mpg.deen/sitemap/index.htm); MIDMAC Midlife Research, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Midlife Development (http://midmac.med.harvard.edu./midmac.html); Positive Aging (http://positiveaging.net); and Second Journey (http://www.secondjourney.org).