The Road to Initiation
The article: The Road to Initiation
Chapter 31
Pride is the most effective way of closing one's senses to higher occult experience or cosmic clear-sightedness
In the above we have thus provided a brief outline of "pride's" most extreme representatives and representations.
We have learned how in every situation the diametrical opposite of "humility" is an overestimation or false idea of one's own I and an exaggerated worship and adoration of this I or self, which is based on this overestimation or false idea.
It is naturally a matter of course that with this illusory or false attitude of consciousness and illusory or false attunement of the senses one cannot possibly be in accord with "neighbourly love".
By cultivating and worshipping oneself to such a dominant extent, one turns one's fellow being into nothing other than an "underdog".
In order to satisfy this worship, in order to "elevate" oneself, one must to a corresponding extent "oppress" one's "neighbour".
To be an oppressor of one's "neighbour", which is the same as an oppressor of life, is to be against the creation of the universe or the forces of Providence; it is to argue with the thunder and lightning; it is to want to change the course of the sun and the orbit of the Earth; it is to want to teach and dictate to the eternal Providence or Godhead.
It does not take cosmic clear-sightedness to see that a human being with such an attitude of consciousness will invariably shut himself out of life's highest and most beautiful reality.
"Pride" is the most effective way of closing one's senses to deliberation on higher cosmic or intellectual insight into life.
How could a "proud" being possibly gain access to another being's confidence in situations outside the purely marital realm or sphere of amorous love?
One does not go to boastful, complacent human beings with one's sorrow and unhappiness.
One does not choose these boastful self-worshippers as one's intimate friends and co-workers either.
And who can teach, guide and in other ways give intellectual support to beings who, with their boastfulness and false self-confidence, can look upon their own primitive and unfinished state only as intellectuality and perfection, indeed, even to such an extent that they sometimes feel that they are superior authorities in relation to everybody and everything?
Who can teach pupils who believe they are cleverer than the teacher?
Can the obstruction or barring of the road towards a true understanding of life be more effective or realistic than in just such a case?
Can the "guardians of the threshold" be more real than in situations where the being has stagnated in his imagination of his own "infallibility" or "all-outshining perfection"?
It is also established as a fact for the developed human being that it is the opposite attitude of consciousness, namely "humility", that is needed in order for one to be at all receptive to both physical and mental support and clarity, and in order for one to thereby gain access, through the path of understanding or high intellectuality, to the recognition or revelation of real, true life, which is "love".