1 Cor 2:14 indicates that the natural man, before he has been born of the Spirit, will not, and indeed, cannot know, or ask anything about spiritual things.
It does not say the natural man "cannot know or ask anything about spiritual things" in 1 Cor. 2:14.
This is the biblical process of conversion according to scripture. The natural man is soulish (psuchikos) and is living from His soul/mind (PsuchE) which has been programmed by his culture, his instincts and the demonic powers with all kinds of false ideas about reality and God. The objects of this man's faith are man-conceived ideas, man made technologies, flesh and blood persons, demon-sourced gnosis and powers. He cannot access the spiritual inheritance God has available through the Holy Spirit for His children to enjoy,m unless he is first born of the spirit through choosing to make the Father and Jesus Christ the objects of his faith.
How can God convert the soulish/natural man's confidence in the above idols to confidence in Jesus and God without violating thr man's free-desire/ free-will by merely unlaterally replacing that man's chosen desires/will with an imposed love for Him? We love God because He first loved us. God uses the testimony of His sacrificial love for the rebellious creatures whom He allowed to slaughter Him on the cross and to whom He afterwards still offers mercy, to dispel the lies of the devil that God is like fallen kings and acquires submission and loyalty by issuing threats and imposing punishment. In the cross we see that God wins allegiance not by using His almighty power to force submission. He uses foolish-to-the world divine power and wisdom of self-sacrificial love to reveal His true nature, which does not look anything like the kind of gods that Satan, demons and fallen men envision to be in their own broken images.
This revelation of the true nature of God draws men's attention away from their idols and onto this gracious, merciful and loving Saviour King in whom they begin to put trust. They hear and learn about
the things of Jesus, the Holy Spirit bearing witness to the truth heard, ideally with signs following, and when they trust this message, and believe it, they receive the risen Christ. They are reckoned righteous by faith and are born again of the Holy Spirit. They receive a new spirit, which includes a new conscience that replaces the one that was perverted by the flesh, the world and the devil: perverted by appeasing their fleshly instincts when God through their conscience had been telling them to go against their instincts; and perverted by appeasing their cultural and philosophical expectations, when God through their conscience had been telling them to go against their philosophy's and culture's norms; and perverted by appeasing the demonic temptations to lording-over-others-power, when God through their conscience had been telling them to go against their lust for power over others. Into this new spirit, the Holy Spirit comes. They are no longer natural/soulish (psuchikos), because they now have the Holy Spirit. They have become babes in Christ to whom the Holy Spirit begins to open scripture showing them all the things in them concerning Christ and the inheritance of those in Him, and they start to learn from Him to discern good from evil and to choose the good.
As they submit to the Holy Spirit's guidance through their conscience and the Word, they mature and are capable of understanding more and more of
the things of the Spirit, the things that the Holy Spirit brings with Him and He has for God's children to enjoy; the
things that
the natural/soulish man cannot receive because they are in the Holy Spirit, whom they do not have. If he co-operates with the Holy Spirit, the Christian's soul's false thoughts are gradually replaced with God's revealed truths taught him by the Holy Spirit. And so he becomes more and more Christ-like in thoughts, words and actions. The saint who has not been through this process of divesting themselves of the false thinking they inherited and absorbed before conversion remains largely controlled by those fallen attitudes and habits, i.e. is fleshly (sarkikos), and behaves badly.
The disciples did not need to have the Holy Spirit in them to understand who Jesus was and to trust in Him as the Messiah, saviour and Lord. They received the Holy Spirit AFTER confessing their faith in His risen lordship, not before. See John 20: 19-23 -
19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.
21 Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”