“Here, at the very ground of becoming, we might find a tiny gate into a way of knowing that is not flat and one-dimensional, nor fixed on one point, but totally interactive among all dimensions of being.” Revelations of Mind, page 297.
Many such gates have been envisioned and described. But there is less agreement on where those gates are to be found, in what direction they point, and where the luminous beyond to which they lead may be located.
Christianity describes a number of such gates, some to be prepared for right now and some that will only manifest upon our death. The so-called ‘pearly gates’, where Saint Peter is the gate-keeper, requires that we die before we can stand before it, but we need to prepare now because it’s on the life we are now living that we will be judged. The gate to the Kingdom of God may be the same gate–described in terms of what kind of choices we have made in this life—but for some it is not good news to be told that a rich man will have as much difficulty passing through this gate as a camel through the ‘eye of a needle’.
On a more secular level, there are the rabbit holes, worm holes, and cracks in the ceiling of time that show up in this ordinary world, which lead to another time and space than what appears to border our present one.
The “White Rabbit”, rushing for an undisclosed but “very important appointment”, leads Alice down a mineshaft that wasn’t discernible until the rabbit opened it; and Alice just happened to slip into it before it had time to close. We never learn how we might get there ourselves but once inside we are treated to a tour through a different kind of time and space, which by the end we are probably relieved to be able to leave. Alas, such magical and sacred realms, while they interest us, frequently ask us to make more fundamental changes to our life styles than we are willing or able to make.
Then there are gated communities, prison guard towers, and fortified borders, designed to keep people out, not to welcome them to a shining citadel on the hill.
I believe that the truest gate is one where we are already inside and we must learn how to open it for the one who is still stuck outside.
All the other gates, unless we see them standing before us right now in the midst of the life we are currently living, are our ‘consumer minds’ imagining that what we want is on the other side of a barrier, inside wrapping paper, or under someone else’s control.
But paradoxically, what we all yearn to find is already here, speaking to us through that very yearning. Our misunderstanding is that we think we need to launch a missing-in-action search for the one who is already on the back of the horse of being. We imagine a fox’s tail disappearing into the underbrush, but it’s really a prayer flag showing us the way home.