Secrets of spiritual blindness
by Athos A. Altomonte
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Q : …it is not easy to find one's way in the panorama of many organizations and orders that deal with initiatory growth…for example, if I look at Freemasons, which more than others should express certain features connected to initiation, I struggle to recognize what is said… G.

A.: Dear Friend, experience suggests to me that the numerous exoteric Orders used only to ‘decorate' with Licenses many –little egos- are especially valuable for those who have misunderstood the value of essentiality, which is an unconditional value.

For this reason whoever has achieved this status doesn't need pompous titles or decorations and frills to demonstrate its validity in principle. Therefore I am strongly convinced that the many ‘exoteric forms' which the initiatory Principle (unique at any latitude and longitude of the human sphere) has been ‘covered' with, are more useful to give prestige to their thinker than to transmit the principles of the initiatory re-cognition. That is the faculty to recognize (know again) what inside was an objective reality known for itself.

This, I repeat, is what I learnt. In the limits of this life.

Overall, then, I consider the exoteric representations of Orders and Churches as matters of human interest. If, as you say, you can't catch a glimpse of what is described in many Masons, this is probably due to the fact that they don't know yet what the initiatory Principle is and where it is.

To cover with dignity this big gap then, the bureaucrats of the initiation use the paradox of imagining secrets even where everything should be crystal clear. Instead of acknowledging with healthy modesty a predictable lack of preparation, they prefer to use the immodest ‘unspeakable mystery' like devotionals do, in order to disguise their spiritual blindness and justify their condition through the idea of ‘sin and punishment'.

Among the exoterically educated fringes of every Order and Church it is repeated the tale that the Knowledge of the Word is lost. They use a mystery that is not as such at all. The only mystery about it is the inability to recognize its signs spread everywhere, in the teachings hidden in ritual sentences, symbols, forms and colors of the furniture and paraments; most of all in what has been ‘invisibly transmitted' in the forms of the Starred Vaults of the Domes and Temples.

We must say, though, that signs are not either of fundamental importance. All the testimonies ‘around us' are only shadows of answers that everyone, Man and Woman, has already ‘inside Oneself'. This is true even if presumptuousness doesn't allow many eyes (of the mind) to see them. What stops the observer from recognizing (know again) some meanings is to presume an understanding from the outside of those meanings which are veiled from the forms used to contain them.

Words of wisdom remind us that talk is cheap! It is just so.

There's so much talking about initiation, but not much it is done to understand its aims and meanings. Initiatory principles are usually experienced in their exterior form, depriving them of their meaning, subjecting them to ‘mutual' graduations and recognitions.

What difference does it make to ‘confer' initiatory licenses among peers? This is not the way, then.

I believe that the –way of knowledge- and the –initiatory way- are synonymous of an unlimited inner development that from the fallacy of the physical reason leads to a wider horizon given by empathic and intuitive intelligence. This is only the threshold that leads to the so-called –Pure reason-.

It is a path made of acquisitions (expansion of conscience) of inner values already existing. All that results outside them is a reflection, an often distorted image, the shadow of a reality of conscience that on its own can let man go beyond the mediocrity of the physical mind.

Through this principle we must acknowledge the right proportions to every element of ourselves.

Can a shadow be more valuable than the human being that reflects it? Can there be a reflection if the sun doesn't allow it?

The correct answers to these simple questions should lead any researcher (of Self) to the healthy modesty originated by the understanding of the right proportions of every aspect of oneself and the life that animates us. Especially because without life animating us, we, as personalities, would only be puppets of motionless matter.

Fraternally