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[ What does freemasonry teach is being answered in
different ways. The learned author commences with the basis that Freemasonry
teaches moral lessons and self-knowledge and takes us through all the degrees of
the Craft and in the Masonic path and has explained the Spirit of Freemasonry in
his inimitable style.
The author, W.Bro. Julian Rees, an erudite Masonic Scholar
had delivered this brilliant lecture at the The Cornerstone Society at
Freemasons Hall, London on 22 nd June 2002 . Please
read on…]
In The
Spirit Of Freemasonry
Freemasonry, according to our own Grand Lodge,
teaches moral lessons and self-knowledge. Here we take our stand. From this
point, we as Freemasons start our journey, our quest for self-knowledge, a path
leading us to the inmost parts of ourselves, our own psyche and our own soul.
Against the imperative of this self-knowledge, all other activities in
Freemasonry in which we engage, whether social, charitable or ritual, must take
second place, however laudable they are and however much they may act as
adjuncts to the main quest.
An initiate coming into our Order, who perhaps does
not listen too carefully to the words of the ritual, might be forgiven for
feeling that Freemasonry is a social club with charitable activities, clothed in
a set of arcane mystery plays and with complex regalia adornments indicating
higher rank. But if he does stop and feel the words of our ritual, he may be in
for a surprise. He has just humbly solicited to be admitted to mysteries and
privileges.
Humbly? Mysteries? Privileges?
These are not words which are heard too often in
post-modern 21st century conversation! And how does he hope to obtain these? By
the help of no less a being than God Himself. In other words, a mere fourteen
lines or ninety-two words into the first degree ritual, we are already
invoking the Deity and we are about to invoke the blessing of heaven to enable
the candidate to unfold the beauties of true godliness. Our candidate affirms
that God, it is on whom he relies in cases of difficulty and danger, not his
mother, not his wife, not his boss nor the insurance salesman who has promised
him indemnity against the difficulties and dangers of this life - no, none of
these will suffice, only God. Are we serious about God? These references to the
Deity, to the power of the Deity and to the spirituality manifest in all of us
and in our world, increase as this candidate progresses through his three
degrees. We find repeated and increasing references to God and to our relations
with Him. But it actually goes deeper than this.
If we consider that the secularisation of Masonic
ritual has been going on for some 300 years, we can begin to assess how much
spiritual reference has been lost over that period. In the 1780 ritual of
one of the German masonic orders, references to the Deity and to the nature of
our own spirit are far more numerous than they are today. Admittedly this ritual
is Christian in concept, but then so was most if not all masonic ritual in those
days. Here then we may have stumbled across the reason for such secularisation,
that in the 18th century moves to de-christianise the Craft, the baby was thrown
out with the bathwater; spirituality was sacrificed along with doctrine and
dogma. The teaching of moral lessons and self-knowledge, in other words the
approach to our own spirit, must be our minimum requirement. If we are to stay
true, at least to that minimum requirement, we might perhaps want to regain that
dimension to our Craft that has been lost, the dimension giving us access to
that knowledge of our self, to our spirit, to that ‘otherness’ in ourselves.
What do we mean by that? We mean that attention to
our physical wellbeing, acknowledgment of and care for the material side of our
existence are not enough. Knowing ourselves does not involve understanding our
bodies and how they work, valuable though such knowledge is. It means
understanding the non-material, non-physical side of ourselves, understanding
our heart, mind, psyche and soul. It means knowing our true selves,
understanding that greater spiritual matrix of which we are a part. It means
being with ourselves, owning ourselves, getting to know ourselves, having a
balanced appreciation of our talents and our failings, so that we need not try
so hard to prove ourselves before others. Then we are approaching that
‘otherness’ that is such a precious part of our own existence. We are, after
all, ‘speculative’ freemasons in this pursuit, from the latin specula, a mirror.
We are indeed a reflection of divinity.
Writing about the ancient Mysteries in his book
Freemasonry - a Journey Through Ritual and Symbol, W. Kirk MacNulty puts
this concept of ‘otherness’ into perspective, "The universe is limited by the
extent of physical phenomena [but] that of the ancient world was conceived as
containing vast non-material realms which were not available to ordinary
perception but were still considered to be part of the universe as it was then
understood . . . Events occurring within these non-material domains were
considered to be governed by the same natural law which gave consistency to the
world of ordinary experience. The Mysteries were schools which provided
knowledge of the natural laws operating in those non-material realms. Their
knowledge was imparted by a process of development represented by advancement
through a series of grades, and the instruction itself involved ritual and
elaborate symbolic structure used to communicate the principles". The objective
was to train people to live in consonance with natural laws as they operate in
the non-material domains and MacNulty goes on to tell us of the exploits of the
Gods of mythology, men and women with remarkable powers engaged in astonishing
adventures governed by arbitrary rules and occurring in unlikely situations.
All a little abstract, removed from reality,
superstitious even? Well, removed from contemporary scientific materialism,
certainly. But even in our own lives today we have experiences on the border of
reality when we dream, when we explore that landscape on the borders of our own
consciousness, the borders of our own psyche. The fact is, conditioned as we are
by the materialist orientation of our society, any perception of our ‘otherness’
will seem bizarre, to others if not to ourselves, until we pass what I call the
‘reality’ barrier, and interpret the symbols for what they communicate, rather
than taking them at face value. As Freemasons, we have a unique chance, using
symbols and allegory, to free ourselves from the spiritual limitations of
scientific materialism and to own up to the otherness in ourselves without which
active knowledge of ourselves is not possible. Religion uses the oldest devices
for this - myth, ritual, devotion and social action - as ways of coping with the
fundamental human desire to come to terms with the mystery of our own existence.
But spirituality pre-dates the great world religions. Since time began, we have
needed to know that life makes sense. We need to know our part in it. In short
each one of us, as a unique part of the creation, needs validation. While
following the doctrines of the religion which we follow, our spirituality,
though it may owe something to the faith we practise, is ours alone. And if we
practise no faith at all, then all the more important it is for us to explore
and validate our own spirituality, to turn the key to open the mystery that is
ourselves.
We all too often misunderstand what the masonic path
is trying to teach us. In Freemasonry we have a comprehensive allegory of birth,
moral awakening, life, pursuit of knowledge, experience, through to ultimate
wisdom and the knowledge of ourselves, right up to the importance of the
death of our old self to attain re-birth and perfection. And is our spiritual
path rooted only in intellectual, academic or rational concepts? Not at all. The
prominent Catholic theologian Hans Küng reminds us that ‘faith would only be
half a thing were it to address only our understanding and reason and not the
whole person, including our hearts.’ I spoke earlier about the difference
between our material existence and our ‘otherness’, that vital part of ourselves
beyond the material. In order to reach that inmost part of our being, we might
like to shed the material, to discover indeed that within this perishable frame
does reside a vital and immortal principle, inspiring holy confidence. We need,
in the Christian description, to ‘die to ourselves’, to contemplate our
inevitable destiny, in order to guide us to that most interesting of all human
studies. The holy confidence referred to is that in ourselves we can be perfect;
we can in ourselves defeat defeatism, defeat pain, suffering, low self-esteem,
insecurity, inner chaos and outer hostility, and lift our eyes to a brighter
horizon. But in order to do this, we need a closer understanding of the nature
or essence of God to further our quest for self-knowledge and the mystery of our
own existence. It is quite clear that one candidate’s expression of a belief in
God may not match that of another. It is also clear that we are going to get
nowhere if we try either to prove the existence of God, or to define His nature.
But then we might like to remind ourselves that ‘prove the existence of’ does
not mean the same thing as ‘believe in’. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer says ‘A God who
is there, is not God’. God, understood most deeply and ultimately, cannot be
simply an object. If God were that, that would not be God. God is, by
definition, that which cannot be defined, cannot be limited. In all the Holy
Books of the world, God is nowhere demonstrated by argument. Our powers of
reason, bound as they are by space and time, cannot prove what is outside space,
outside time. By reason, we can prove neither that God exists nor - atheists
please note - that He does not exist. There are no strict proofs, but there are
good reasons for His existence. To be aware of His existence therefore will
depend on us opening our hearts. In my youth, like many people, I had a closed
heart. I went through an atheistic phase. Whenever I asked followers of
different religions questions like - What is God? - Where is God? - I got
answers like - God is everywhere - God is in you - and finally - You are God.
That didn’t make sense at the time, so great was my antipathy towards, and
mistrust in, the very concept of God. I only paid attention to it much later,
and in a slow dawning I began to see what it could mean.
When I became a Freemason, I wondered in particular
what was meant by the following, “Endue him with a competency of Thy divine
wisdom that, assisted by the secrets of our masonic art, he may the better be
enabled to unfold the beauties of true godliness”.It gradually became clear that
I was being made a promise. A promise that, assisted by the secrets, real
secrets of meaning, not passwords and signs, I could set out on a path of
understanding, or science, of the divinity, not some abstract divinity removed
from my proper understanding, but the divinity already resident in myself. This
is true empowerment: acknowledging, by meditation, the divinity that is mine,
and owning it, being at the centre bounded by the equidistant parts of the
circle, at a point where, as a Master Mason, I cannot err, I am truly myself.
It is interesting to note that this view is supported
also by Christian theologians. Hans Küng again writes that Christians today are
convinced that the meaning of this life is not simply ‘God’ or ‘the divine’ in
the abstract, but human beings themselves, the all-embracing humanum. Not
just to know God, love God, serve God, but also self-fulfilment, self
development, love of neighbours and those far away. And mustn’t above all human
relationships be included? I should say here that it is important to distinguish
between self-centred egotism which is negative, and self-awareness, which can
lead to so much that is positive. This is not the only support Hans Küng gives
to such a view. He writes, “ As a human being I have, in reasonable trust in
God, an ‘Archimedean point’, a firm standpoint from which I can at least
determine, move and change ‘my world’, an absolute I can hold on to. Free
commitment to this one absolute gives me great freedom over against all that is
relative in this world - no matter how important and powerful it may be. In the
end I am responsible only to this God and not to the state or the church, to a
party or a firm, to the Pope or any leader”. This belief in God is thus the
anchorage for an alternative basic ethical attitude [whose] centre is freedom
and love, and whose focal point . . . . new hope and joy in life.
The ‘death to self’ mentioned earlier is a key to
this freedom, and is rendered in parts of our ritual, little vestiges of the
spiritual dimension we have all but lost. But the overall effect of this is to
make the candidate so unsure of himself and his surroundings that he no longer
unthinkingly trusts the material world around him, the evidence of his senses.
In each degree he advances through this state of insecurity, expanding his
consciousness to embrace a new level in the Temple of the psyche. Initiation may
properly occur not during the ceremony itself, but as a consequence of it - the
ceremony plants a seed and the actual raising his level of consciousness
follows. When this is achieved, when the initiate’s heart is open, then he is
truly an Entered Apprentice. His initiation takes place on the ground floor of
his psyche, that part related to the physical world but separate from it. The
candidate has agreed to be deprived, symbolically, of worldly riches. His
clothing is half-undone, a metaphor much more striking in the elaborate dress of
an 18th century gentleman perhaps than it is today. He has allowed a
noose to placed around his neck, a powerful image of submission. And, most
importantly, he has agreed to be deprived of the power of sight, to be led
around in darkness. If we have prepared our candidate properly, in mind as well
as physically, he ought by now to feel humbled, submissive, and blind to more
than just material light, for how long he does not know. He is going on a
journey in darkness and deprived of so much in his everyday life that allows him
to feel secure. The object here is to focus the mind away from the sensuality of
the world into the candidate’s own being and consciousness. He comes a step
closer to shedding his materialist outer garment. He will almost certainly feel
threatened by sharp objects. His future in this new way of life is far from
sure. He is advised against rashness, impetuously rushing forward, and also
against retreat, reticence. But note that these risks are so constructed that to
avoid the one is to increase the other. He can be neither impetuous nor can he
hold back, and by this means he is taught resolute but cautious perseverance.
One of the principal attitudes required of an Entered Apprentice is fidelity to
secrets. I believe the concept of masonic secrets is one of the most
misunderstood. We cannot surely mean signs, tokens and words, still less the
form and content of our degree ceremonies. These have been so extensively
published they can in no circumstances be regarded any more as worth hiding from
the profane world. I myself read Walton Hannah’s Darkness Visible before
my initiation and, perversely, it gave me an even greater desire to become a
Freemason! No, we are talking about quite different secrets to these.
Freemasonry, viewed as it should be, is not a physical organisation, but rather
an activity in pursuit of divinity, of greater light. Our secrets are those
things we hold dear, secrets of our own creation and creativity, which we are
therefore reluctant to expose, much as a novelist dislikes showing his work to
others until it is finished. These are also secrets because to disclose them
would negate the good effect they would have on future initiates. The Entered
Apprentice is represented by the Rough Ashlar. Kirk MacNulty puts this very
well,
“ While the rock remains in the quarry, it is part of
the mass and experiences what the mass experiences. The candidate in the Entered
Apprentice degree is about to separate himself out, and to undertake to live
his life as an individual, to be a separate stone. It is a step which only he
can take; and he can take it only for himself. When he has done it, when he has
recognised himself to be an individual, like the rough ashlar which will never
be part of the bedrock again, the Entered Apprentice can never go back. To put
it another way, when he has had an insight into his nature, when he has a
glimpse of the fact that he really is, inside, at the core of his being the
‘Image of God’, he can never unknow it "
But of course in the second degree he is going to
work on this rough ashlar and make of it a smooth ashlar which, when it is
complete, will willingly integrate with his fellows and bear the burden with
them, will integrate in the same way that the keystone of an arch must fit
smoothly with its adjacent stones in order to support the entirety perfectly. In
the second degree the hidden mysteries of nature and science are not imparted in
the course of the ceremony, but the candidate is told that he is permitted to
extend his researches into them. Here again, the fruits of the degree become
accessible as a result of the work the candidate undertakes subsequent to the
ceremony. The mysteries of nature and science are hidden; and by now you will
have guessed that they are not hidden because we have something to hide - they
are hidden because we cannot yet see them, and they are mysteries because we
cannot yet understand them. It requires our own input to make them manifest. It
requires us to journey on our masonic path, and to work. A mystery is of no
value if it is ‘in your face’.Its value lies in the very work we have to do to
reveal it. Only the foolish man would confer a university degree on someone who
has made no study of the subject. In the first degree we are presented with a
ladder depicted on the tracing board, incorporating a great deal of symbolism,
but that ladder is a promise for the future; we do not ascend it in the course
of the degree. In the second degree, by contrast, we are required to ascend the
winding staircase of three, five, seven or more. By the three we can perceive
the three lesser lights and their attendant columns; the Corinthian, imparting
beauty, referring to the heart; the Doric, imparting strength, referring to the
mind, and the Ionic, imparting wisdom and knowledge of self, referring to the
soul. By the five we learn of the five orders of architecture and their
attendant symbolism. By the seven we enter into the liberal arts and sciences.
Time permits only this brief exposition, but this is true work, work to smooth
the rough ashlar and make of it something which will be ready for the last and
greatest trial of the third degree. Nor does time permit me to take you more
than fleetingly to the third level of consciousness, parts of which we have
already explored here. Suffice to say that, if all has gone well, if we have
truly progressed along our masonic path, we have by the third degree achieved
some level of self-knowledge, learned how to free ourselves to focus on our
inner world, achieved some inner harmony, peace and joyous fulfillment, so that
we truly can be at the centre, imbued with all that divinity bestows on us and
requires of us and able, as Freemasons, to discharge our duty to ourselves, and
through that to the world around us, to live in harmony with that world and to
realise our own potential. There is no greater gift, no greater achievement, no
brighter light.
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