YouTube: The Narrow Gate of Self-Discovery
Maksim Klasanovic interview: In this interview, Klasanovic talks about why he was arrested, what he experienced in prison, and how one particular consciousness experience shaped his life.
“Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”
Matthew 7:13-14
Jesus often used opposing imagery to illustrate the principle of oneness with God. He referred to old and new wineskins, houses built on rock and sand, good and bad fish, wheat and chaff, sheep and goats, and so on. Here he employs the imagery of wide and narrow gates.
The immediate impression we get is that Jesus is issuing a warning about simply following the crowd. Mainstream religion is indeed a wide gate that opens to a clearly marked, superhighway of beliefs that much of the world follows. In contrast, the individual pursuit of a direct relationship with God is a narrow gate that opens to a footpath that is often only vaguely discernable to the one who takes it.
The wide and narrow gates are our intellectual and intuitive faculties. Mainstream religion, forged out of centuries-old statements of faith, rituals, and a tenacious hold on tradition, is by and large an intellectual pursuit. Yet at the beginning of each of these canonized systems of belief we find the lone, intuitively awakened mystic who took the superhighway offramp and traveled instead their own unique footpath of direct revelation.
Jesus spoke in parables to provide his own intellectually based society mental handles on principles that can only be discerned intuitively. The intellect builds its reality based on material appearances. He said, “Do not judge by appearances.” He pointed out that “God is spirit.” Like the wind you cannot see it, but you see its effects. To worship in spirit is to go alone into your inner room, to be still, and come to know God as your living source.
It was the towering intellectual, Albert Einstein, who came to know, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind (the intellect) is a faithful servant.” While today’s academic standards reverse these values, it is through our intuitive faculty that we experience direct exposure to the spiritual reality that opens the narrow gate to true self-discovery.