If your faith has esoteric, i.e. hidden, secret, initiatory teachings - how well protected are they?
With one proviso (which I'll come to) the answer is no ... anyone can walk in off the street and receive the Eucharist.
Can anyone google them on the internet?
And some! As I've said elsewhere, there is 'Christian esoterism' and 'esoteric Christianity'. That latter, which rears its head periodically, is largely an elitist 'whoo-hoo' construct.
What happens to someone accessing teachings they have not been initiated to read?
I am of the opinion that, unlike the who-hoo esoterist with their secret chambers, the teavhings are in plain sight ... whether the person can see them is a whole other matter.
As an analogy, when I studied Japanese swordsmanship, there were two schools of thought: you start on the simple stuff, and keep the
okuden ('inner treachings') until the student shows maturity. Or, you show everything from the get-go, and the student grasps what they can, and this is an ongoing, deepening process.
Personally, I favour that latter, because I think organic growth is never a linear progression. I had an 'OMG' breakthrough moment studying one particular technique, and picked up an
okuden subtlety without being told (it was a small movement of the wrists which had a massive ergonomic effect), my instructor saw it, and then drew my attention to what I was doing, and then used to get me to demo that technique, but there was another one I was useless at!
I think we all have those 'OMG' moments. Likde, as I've said before, listening to a physicist explain that the heavy elements, particularly carbon atoms, need extraordinary conditions for their production – a stellar furnace – and that we are a lot of carbon, at which point the 'you are made of stardust' struck home and I could feel it deep in my guts.
But I don't understand the implications of Quantum Theory!
Do the mysteries protect themselves, or do the faithful have to protect them?
Ah ... a whole lot of discussion there. The best way to hide something is in plain sight, to make little of it ... but then there might be secrets I don't know!
In my Tradition, and others, I believe, there is a belief that there are always three people active in prayer, and that those three preserve the cosmos from destruction ...
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The proviso mentioned above is the idea of
apokatastasis, the 'final restoration' of all things according to their primordial perfection, a very dangerous teaching pastorally, because it offers a carte blanche to the sinner that his sins don't matter!
