Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Are You The Gatekeeper?
About halfway through the novel, Socrates sets up a metaphor for Dan: the gate. Socrates says:
“The realm of the warrior is guarded by something like a gate. It is well hidden, like a monastery in the mountains. [...] The gate exists inside you, and you alone must find it.” (4.69-71)
It's something we're told that Dan has to “blaze some kind of inner path” to (4.77).
So, like, what is it? Tune in to Socrates again: “To the gate! To unreasonable happiness! To the one and only goal you've ever had but didn't know it.” (6.11)
Okay. So the gate unlocks unreasonable happiness, the ultimate aim of Dan's, as per Socrates' teachings. Um, then why not just head over there, Dan, and waltz in?
Well, remember Dan's fear of death? That's the scary thing Dan has to overcome to make it through the gate. It's what he heads into the Sierra Nevada mountains to confront. It's only after he's exhausted himself searching for answers that he finally sells everything and makes his final stand in the wilderness.
That's the cave where Socrates tells him “This is your final journey” (8.60) and gives him his final mystical vision (8.61-72). It's that weird sight of himself decomposing over thousands of years, the landscape and everything else changing too. It dawns on Dan, witnessing his own death, that “nothing could possibly matter” (8.71) since mortal, human Dan is no big deal—just flesh that will decompose—and real Dan, and real everyone else, is “the Consciousness that observed all, was all” (8.66) forever and ever, the whole of reality.
This insight enlightens Dan into unreasonable happiness. He realizes the whole business of calling the mind-trip a gate was just some word-play Socrates tricked up to move Dan along toward confronting his fear of death—making the challenge a bit more tangible, in other words. As Dan puts it:
“I had lost my mind and fallen into my heart. The gate had finally opened, and I had tumbled through, laughing, because it, too, was a joke. It was a gateless gate, another illusion, another image that Socrates had woven into the fabric of my reality.” (8.82)
So there you have it, folks. The gate is gateless. It's an illusion, just like the fear of death. Dang, that's deep.