Esoteric Christianity. Annie Besant

follows against the false prophets, the teachers of the dark Mysteries, is most apposite in this connection. No student can miss the familiar ring of these words used in this same sense in other writings. The "ancient narrow way" is familiar to all; the path "difficult to tread as the sharp edge of a razor,"[49] already mentioned; the going "from death to death" of those who follow the flower-strewn path of desires, who do not know God; for those men only become immortal and escape from the wide mouth of death, from ever repeated destruction, who have quitted all desires.[50] The allusion to death is, of course, to the repeated births of the soul into gross material existence, regarded always as "death" compared to the "life" of the higher and subtler worlds.

      This "Strait Gate" was the gateway of Initiation, and through it a candidate entered "The Kingdom." And it ever has been, and must be, true that only a few can enter that gateway, though myriads—an exceedingly "great multitude, which no man could number,"[51] not a few—enter into the happiness of the heaven-world. So also spoke another great Teacher, nearly three thousand years earlier: "Among thousands of men scarce one striveth for perfection; of the successful strivers scarce one knoweth me in essence."[52] For the Initiates are few in each generation, the flower of humanity; but no gloomy sentence of everlasting woe is pronounced in this statement on the vast majority of the human race. The saved are, as Proclus taught,[53] those who escape from the circle of generation, within which humanity is bound.

      In this connection we may recall the story of the young man who came to Jesus, and, addressing Him as "Good Master," asked how he might win eternal life—the well-recognised liberation from rebirth by knowledge of God.[54] His first answer was the regular exoteric precept: "Keep the commandments." But when the young man answered: "All these things have I kept from my youth up;" then, to that conscience free from all knowledge of transgression, came the answer of the true Teacher: "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come and follow me." "If thou wilt be perfect," be a member of the Kingdom, poverty and obedience must be embraced. And then to His own disciples Jesus explains that a rich man can hardly enter the Kingdom of Heaven, such entrance being more difficult than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle; with men such entrance could not be, with God all things were possible.[55] Only God in man can pass that barrier.