Hortus Conclusus

On Prayer:

It is not arbitrariness that the image of ‘knocking’ finds a place in the ancient promise! – –

If ‘seeking’ is the immersion in oneself in order to find the innermost, most profound depth, – if ‘asking’ is willing with the secure confidence of ‘receiving’, – then ‘knocking’, – tapping in order to gain admission, – is an external, active form of behaviour which gives expression to a demand. –

Let it be said to those who would learn to ‘pray’ that they have the right to demand, to request – however presumptuous that may sound, – and that this sublime right can only be put into effect if they also know to pray practically: – when their actions as well match the conditions of true ‘prayer’. – – –

This applies to the overall attitude in all prayer, – even if it concerns matters pertaining to external existence. –

Only he will be heard who truly ‘knocks’ – really taps; – he who strengthens his rightful ‘request’, his expectation, with corresponding active behaviour, thereby allowing the demand to develop which will be fulfilled out of necessity. – – –

He who prays must not be surprised if he is not heard, despite his ‘seeking’ and ‘asking’ seeming to his eyes to be beyond reproach, if he does not also know how to ‘knock’ properly. – –

The third condition of perfect ‘prayer’ is still missing!

Perhaps he is praying for things which are to be granted to him in person, – but where prayer counts on his contribution; – where his active intervention is needed for these things, he does not lift a  finger…

Perhaps he wants to send help to someone else through his prayers so as to free him from material need, yet he is far from doing something for him using his own means, or taking opportunities which could be of practical use to the other person…

He would like to see himself or others freed of illness through his prayers, yet he shuns the doctor and makes no effort to seek a possible cure…

In all these and thousands of other cases is missing the fulfilment of that third basic condition of true ‘prayer’ found in the promise represented by the image of a man who does not just stand outside and wait until he is called in, but ‘knocks’, so that the door ‘is opened to him’. – – –

Even in that form of pious beseeching the heavens commonly taken to be ‘praying’, those who seek for help err for the most part in regarding active ‘prayer’ as completely superfluous. –

If it were not for this, many could be helped, although their conception of what is really meant by ‘praying’ is still based on ignorance. But some may through their fervour find access to a kind of imperfect ‘finding’ and ‘receiving’ in a vague and unconscious way…

Even if his ‘knocking’ took place in a similarly unsatisfactory way, it could result in what he in  good faith and commonly held to be praying, not being in vain. – –

There are also among those who still do not recognise what true ‘praying’ is in reality, enough people who do the right thing in all three respects from inner feeling, though they could achieve far more, were they familiar with the complete mystery of genuine praying. –

Nevertheless, in the promise, genuine ‘knocking’ does not refer simply to ‘praying’ for earthly things; on the contrary, primarily it should lead to obtaining admission to the sacred and sublime temple of eternity, in order to experience here shuddering the mystery of man: – his exit from light and return to light…

No one can gain admission to this temple who has not previously proved himself in ‘seeking’ and ‘finding’, – who has not previously learnt to ‘ask’ so he might ‘receive’. – –

‘Inside’ it is known, – and here as well one must look for the inner sanctuary of the temple only in man himself, – very precisely who it is who ‘knocks’ outside. The door will not be opened unto him before he has been able to fulfil the other two conditions of genuine ‘praying’.

‘Knocking’ here means giving active expression to one’s life, so that every action manifests the justified demand to be admitted to the temple’s inner sanctuary. Truly: – to those who ‘knock’ in this way the door will be ‘opened’ because they create the condition for this themselves. – –

In the course of the centuries people have imagined and sought the strangest secrets behind these words ‘knock’ and ‘open up’. And so, at certain times and in certain places, the most abstruse ‘practices’ have been invented by empty heads as well as by all too clever ones, practices which are supposedly meant to represent genuine ‘knocking’.

Today I also know certain people who, full of awe, retain the oracular sayings of confused zealots as the most precious sacred objects. They are modest enough to conclude from the fact that all such ‘practices’ have not brought them any kind of success despite all their fervent endeavours, that they have probably not ‘conducted them properly’. For their priest of the oracle must have achieved this success for himself, otherwise – oh, sancta simplicitas! – he would not have been able to write down these instructions dripping with stupidity. –

There are always new believers in such lunacy; time and time again mystics appear who either beguiled themselves or, because their trade will not prosper in any other way, play decoy with mysterious gestures of the worst folly.

That such things are possible can only be understood by the fact that for many seekers what is really demanded of them appears to be – too simple and insufficiently nonsensical; for they only reach the aroused state of willingness to believe when the absurd demands belief from them. – –

The friend of man is shocked to see such confusion and would like to use all his powers to save those who have been beguiled; yet all willingness to help is misplaced here.

One can only warn those who have not yet been misled and call by their proper name those things they perhaps already know by hearsay. One can only seek to show that the promise has not the slightest to do with all these eccentric ‘practices’ which have clearly been fabricated.

‘Knocking’ in the sense of the promise means ‘praying’ with acts and deeds; he who is incapable of taking it in this way will wait in vain for the door to be ‘opened up’ to him! – –

Yet one must not now succumb to the false idea that this ‘opening up’, in the sense of the promise, is a sudden opening to unsuspected spiritual majesty, – an immediate revelation of the most secret wisdom,– a flinging open of all the temple doors, and an immediate removal of the concealing curtain which protects the holy of holies from unprepared eyes!

The temple of eternity also has its outer chambers, and the neophyte may truly call himself lucky if he – speaking metaphorically – is permitted to set his foot in the outermost of these chambers…

He who comes with great ambitions and sees himself as worthy to enter, if not straightaway the holy of holies, then certainly one of the sanctuaries surrounding it, will not find the door being ‘opened up’ to him, so that he does not even see the outer courtyards. – –

Yet no one is being treated, as it were, ‘unjustly’ here!

Nothing depends on arbitrariness here!

Everything is arranged by spiritual law; this law is not some contrived work, but the consistent effect of spiritual life, immutable as the Godhead itself, whose nature and essence it reveals to those with knowledge after they have become ‘knowing’ through its fulfilment! – –

The Godhead is indeed within man himself, – its most sacred temple is indeed within man’s innermost being, – and ‘God’, however this word is interpreted, can indeed be reached and sensed by man only in the innermost part of the human soul!

But most men do not intuit the unending expanses which encompass their own ‘soul’, continually oscillating in eternal rhythm! –

Most have no inkling of the immeasurable distances lying between their consciousness and the conscious being of God, although ‘God’ fills them, and they only have their existence in ‘God’. – – –

In their conception they have an intimate relationship with God without having the slightest awareness of the sacrilege contained within this conception. – –

It is truly difficult to teach them that although God, in terms of divine life, is the very nearest to them, – in terms of conscious divine being, He is the very furthest; – a ‘Jacob’s ladder’ must be set up within themselves; on its rungs all the light-filled grades of spiritual hierarchies must first descend and join their hands, if consciousness of earthly man is to be capable of experiencing wakeful communication with the eternal, unimaginable, divine being, without fear of annihilation. – – –

Spiritual arrogance, full of stupid pride, thinks that nothing must come between God and man, – yet the only proper answer to this is the request: “Lord, forgive them, for they know not how they scorn you!” – –

He therefore who really wants the door to be ‘opened’ unto him when he dares with all his life and with all his earthly acts and deeds to ‘knock’, let him not expect ‘God’ – in whatever form he believes in him, – to be standing at the doorway, as eternal original being, to ‘open up’ to him! – –

He who will ‘knock’ properly must above all carry within him so much reverence for the Godhead that he would be boundlessly joyful if – speaking metaphorically – even only the lowliest temple servant of God were to ‘open up’ to him…

In no other way will ever be opened up to the one who truly prays what can only be ‘opened up’ within himself!