understand. No one is expected to carry a burden beyond his strength and
powers. There are "natural-born magicians"; Mystics and Occultists by
birth, and by right of direct inheritance from a series of incarnations
and aeons of suffering and failures. These are passion-proof, so to say.
No fires of earthly origin can fan into a flame any of their senses or
desires; no human voice can find response in their souls, except the
great cry of Humanity. These only may be certain of success. But they
can be met only far and wide, and they pass through the narrow gates of
Occultism because they carry no personal luggage of human transitory
sentiments along with them. They have got rid of the feeling of the
lower personality, paralysed thereby the "astral" animal, and the
golden, but narrow gate is thrown open before them. Not so with those
who have to carry yet for several incarnations the burden of sins
committed in previous lives, and even in their present existence. For
such, unless they proceed with great caution, the golden gate of Wisdom
may get transformed into the wide gate and the broad way "that leadeth
unto destruction," and therefore "many be they that enter in thereby."
This is the Gate of the Occult arts, practised for selfish motives and
in the absence of the restraining and beneficent influence of
Âtma-Vidyâ. We are in the Kali Yuga and its fatal influence is
a thousand-fold more powerful in the West than it is in the East; hence
the easy preys made by the Powers of the Age of Darkness in this cyclic
struggle, and the many delusions under which the world is now laboring.
One of these is the relative facility with which men fancy they can get
at the "Gate" and cross the threshold of Occultism without any great
sacrifice. It is the dream of most Theosophists, one inspired by desire
for Power and personal selfishness, and it is not such feelings that
can ever lead them to the coveted goal. For, as well said by one
believed to have sacrificed himself for Humanity--"Strait is the gate
and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life" eternal, and therefore