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"Go on," I urged him.
"Unless your experience enables your brother to stand where you stand, turn back. By this alone you will know that your living is incomplete. Then you must go back to the temple. You must conquer every one of the other rivers. Each gate is a science that opens the pathway to new realms of truth. You must travel those rivers again and again, for the land of love is also a land of tireless labor and of great responsibility."
I nodded. I said I understood. At least I thought I understood.
The gatekeeper smiled and laid a hand onto the hand wheel to raise the gate. Creaky and rusty, the old Iron Gate rose to let me pass.
As I plunged back into the river to swim on, immediately, found myself in a cathedral. An usher approached me and demanded total silence.
I looked around. Over the altar of the cathedral hung a series of large paintings, one depicted a lone star shining above a dim night of chaos. The next showed Jesus raising a young woman to life. "This scene is the miracle that will rescue humanity from its tiny marriages," said a voice echoing in my head as if someone had spoken and stirred the great silence.
The next paining in line showed a woman writing in a book; and the next one was that of a Christmas party. Among the guests of the party was a woman despondently absent, reclining in a wheelchair, accompanied by another woman. The wheelchair was pushed by a benign gentleman in black, who leaned over them both. Was I that man? He was shown in a caring manner, having one hand on the wheelchair, the other on the shoulder of the woman who looked longingly into his face.
"Do you understand the death that results from the care of one who has not grown up towards a greater completeness?" that voice from within spoke to me again. "Do you understand the emptiness of the care of a person who seeks to find his completeness from others?"
I looked at my marriage with Sylvia, as it had been along time ago. Had I treated Sylvia that way? Heather was there, too. She had been in the wheelchair with her. I had been pushing that wheelchair, but neither of them had been helped by me in any way, because of my incompleteness. I also knew, that this had been a long time ago. All of that had been changed.
The next paintings depicted a Christmas morning, and the resurrection of woman. I saw a woman clad in white garments, followed by scenes of Christian healing in which the sick person is always a male and the healer that same woman, clothed with sun, so it seemed, that represents our humanity as the gate keeper had revealed. And one of the last images showed that woman again in the form of an angel bidding entrance into the house of humanity with her hands on the door-knocker that resembled a person with folded hands that would hit where that person's genitals would be. The image was titled: Truth versus Error.
"Do you understand the meaning of the pictures?" whispered that voice from within.
I nodded. "I do understand," I replied.
If you do, you are ready to go on, to function in democratic association built on the divinity love that is your divinity.
I closed my eyes, and immediately I was on a river again. But the draw gate past the city of glass towers was open this time. The gatekeeper waved as I swam beyond it, and instantly I found myself in a wide mountain meadow. In front of me stood Anton. She wore a white gown with a golden belt around her waist, and on her feet soft Chinese shoes. I was also aware of yet another person. I looked, and saw Sylvia standing beside me. She smiled, but said nothing. We were surrounded by a vast sea of yellow flowers, ringed in the distance by tall blue mountains. We seemed to match this beauty. We were all beautiful to each other. We loved each other's smile and expression; we loved the way we dressed; we loved the way our hair moved in the gentle breeze, the way we spoke to each other, the way we thought. Our gestures were inviting and reassuring. There was peace in this world and a feeling in the heart that no sexual elation could equal, though it seemed to be an element of it. "This is the sublime," said the voice from within. "This moment will change and uplift your life, and will uplift humanity with it. You have become free."
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