Keep knocking and it will be given to you
I find the teaching ‘keep knocking and it will be opened to you, ask and you will be given’ extraordinary, because it works perfectly in the subtle planes.
Other small pearls of wisdom are: ‘chatting doesn’t cook the rice’, ‘you never stop learning’ and ‘exams never end’.
I have always paid attention to people better than me, indeed I looked for them. I have traveled far and wide to find them, but this wasn’t the most difficult part. It was harder to introduce myself and gain their familiarity. Modesty always worked in obtaining my interlocutor’s consideration. It wasn’t subjugation, which is too close to adulation, but the intellectual modesty of someone who listens a lot and talks very little. After all, what could a beginner talk about?
From what I see, though, modesty is unknown to many novices. They read something somewhere and behave like people who know what they are talking about and defend it with all their might. And a strenuous defense of an indefensible matter is the most pathetic side of it. ‘Constructive criticism’ is the salt of the teaching; yet, many people seem to suffer it rather than appreciate it. They are obviously proud and shortsighted on the limits of what they think they know and they react with a sense of ‘lese majesty’ that makes them look more stupid than they are.
A Master said: “a false disciple is the man who, as soon as he learns an idea, starts running around the market shouting it out”.
Intelligence is the only antidote against the profane essence; yet in many novices presumptuousness accompanies mental blindness. I am convinced that the inconsistency of many aspirants, beginners or apprentices is a mental pathology, especially for those who think they are on the spiritual path. We can protect ourselves from this pathology by mentally and spiritually orientating on planes where the reason doesn’t find any grip. Consider how unreasonable it is to think that ‘a reasoning of the physical mind can connect to a metaphysical concept’; it is impossible, unless its mental structure becomes ‘lighter’.
There is an ‘esoterical’ reason why we believe in the usefulness of (trans-personal) psychology. When the occult energy originated by the contact with ‘esoterical’ concepts starts working in the physical mind (the profane inside us), it ‘energizes’ all that it finds, both good and bad. A little arithmetic is enough to imagine that the main things it finds are bad ones. Bad habits, prejudices, wrong opinions, ignorance, malice and superstition are only the most common examples. Therefore if the dark side is still prevailing in a personality it will gain the biggest advantages from the occult energization; it will become more malicious and able to protect itself. What happens is like a ‘slow drunkenness’; the personality is filled with the ‘fumes’ of the dark side, it generates pride, conceit and presumptuousness and it increases the egocentric drives. Without even realizing it (slow drunkenness) we will be convinced that we are a good ‘touchstone’ or a ‘good measure’. Once the measures are mistaken, deviations (Delusions, Maya) originate, tormenting the processes of growth of the aspirant.
In old times masters and guides helped overcoming the loneliness of the Pupil and accompanied him to the Free Will.
Today we can’t perceive these correspondences any more; therefore it is useful to remember them. On the initiatory path to consider oneself self-sufficient is a huge mistake; it would be like someone starting University and thinking he is comparable to a Nobel prize winner. A (true) Initiate corresponds to esotericism like an Academic or a Nobel prize winner corresponds to a university freshman. If we learn to use esoterical psychology, it serves as a mirror; it reflects the deformations that can occur to people who think that they can ‘exercise’ the subtle planes of conscience, where the physical mind doesn’t have a place. It would be better to use the sense of the heart, which is not love, but a measure for wisdom.
The measure for wisdom is the balanced justice that in the subtle planes means omni-comprehensive Love. Finding the measure for wisdom starts the (true) initiatory path; its preface can be ‘clever modesty’. It means to ‘steal’ with eyes and ears from those better than us, provided that we are able to reach them; indeed, finding them is a merit.
“To those who knock it will be open”, the rule says, “To those who ask it will be given”.
Proud people can’t knock, yet they expect to be listened to. Therefore it is wise to ‘avoid taking part in concerts between deaf people’.
by Athos A. Altomonte
