THE LIFE PRINCIPLE OF FREEMASONRY

THE LIFE PRINCIPLE OF FREEMASONRY

It has been significantly stated that every man has three distinct personalities; the first the man as he is, the second the man he believes himself to be, and the third the man as others see him. Of these, the first can probably only be known to omniscience, but the synthesis of the second and third will come as near to it as it is possible for finite human intelligence to attain. Indeed, the man himself can no more know the outward presentment of his personality than others judging him can know (as he him self partially does know) the spirit and reason of that presentment, and its real meaning. So, by strict analogy; it is with the Masonic Order; outsiders who are not members of the Craft, may have a very full knowledge of its outward aspects, but of the inward realities they have no more knowledge than outsiders have of the true motives of a man's actions. Just as it is valuable to a man to be told by a friend how his conduct appears to others, but dangerous to j udge a man by appearance only; so the candid criticism of honest outsiders is of the greatest value to the Craft, and to the seeker after truth the account of our Masonic teaching and system as presented by an outsider, when collated with the explanation thereof given from within by the authoritative voice of the Order itself, affords the best possible information of what Freemasonry really is.

The writings of the modern Hermetic school are of great value in this respect; honest enough to see clearly faults as w ell as virtues, mystic enough to disce rn the spiritual side of Freemasonry, and able to look dispassionately on the outward presentment, they can know and describe the visible body of the Craft, into which the voice of the living Craft can infuse a living soul. We have used the expression "the living Craft," and the question naturally arises wherein does the life consist? Here again the analogy of the human body will assist us, for science informs us that the life principle of the body is resident in certain cells. In a cell-colony, the life a nd the power of continuance of the species resides in the germ-plastic cells, these are surrounded and overlaid by enormous numbers of somatic cells which are mortal, which come and go in the processes of metabolism, not the life of the colony, yet necessary to its life. And these germ-plastic cells are not homogeneous, but themselves undergo molecular changes whereby they become each, as it were, the microcosm of the whole colony, so that each germ-plastic cell has a potentiality of reproducing the entire colony.

On this molecular differentiation seems to depend the law of heredity, and the most reasonable conclusion appears to be that the germ-plastic of reproductive cell is a vehicle subject to continuous chance and differentiation, but carrying the subtle order or life principle, and capable of imparting it. That life principle must have been originally infused into the cell from some universal life or over-soul, or whatever name it may be called by. The vehicle, however; of the ge rm cell being the micro cosm of the cell colony, is itself imperfect and limited, and to this extent to be distinguished from the vital principle it carries, which, being drawn from universal life, is not subject to these imperfections. The Craft, as we have seen, growing together with a common life like a cell colony, arranged its own constitution and conditions, therefore, although outsiders may perceive that there is a life principle somewhere, it is only from within that the nature of that life can be stated, or the precise c onditions of it. Taking the analogy of members of the Craft to molecules of the human body, we should expect to find that life dependent on certain members and passed from one to another of them, a life moreover originally infused from without. This accordingly brings us to the next proposition:-

(6).. The corporate life of the Masonic Order resides in the rank or degree of Master transmitted by appointed means from the Grand Officers of the premier Grand Lodge, into whom the essential spirit of the Order was originally infused.

At one time, before the Grand Lodge at London of 1723, there existed among the Speculatives a special rank or degree of Master or Installed Master, one of great exclusiveness and reserved for Brethren who were experts in esoteric, philosophical, and occult matters. At the formation of our present system this Degree was not taken over; it probably was very little a degree in the sense of being a formulated ritual, but consisted rather of teaching transmitted orally. In any case, it seems to have been treated as displaced or superseded by the introduction of our present Third Degree, the Constitutions of 1723 enacting that our system should henceforth consist only of our present three Craft degrees plus the H.R. Arch; but, as to Installation, they provided that after a Master Elect of a Lodge has submitted to the ancient charges "as Masters have done in all ages". the Grand Master (or a deputy) shall "according to certain significant ceremonies and ancient usages" install him. This shows that "certain significan t ceremonies", brought forward from antiquity, were meant to be perpetuated for the future. Thus the theory of our Order regarding its own life is, and always has been, that it is dependent on and resides in, and is transmitted by, its Installed Masters; in other words, the Masonic equivalent of "the doctrine of the Apostolic Succession". Be it carefully understood that up to now there is nothing as to supernatural grace or personal revelation, or mo ral goodness. We are dealing simply with the human side o f a human organisation which has prescribed its objects and constitution, its mode of communication with human beings, and the ceremonial means whereby its common life is to be carried on. All these elements we may observe in more or less detail in every living association; in fact we are now looking at the four lower principles of the Association known as the Masonic Order.

To follow out the analogy, the general mass of members of the Craft are its Sthula Sharira (physical body), chaotic if regarded as an unorganised mass, but differentiated from the first into somatic and germ-plastic cells, the latter being represented by Installed Master; through these germ-cells the Prana, called Life in the case of a human beings, Divine Wisdom in the case of the Craft, is conveyed more or less vigorously and efficaciously to the whole organism.

The counter-proposition to Proposition 6 is that what is known as Apostolic succession conveys no spiritual vitality, that the inspiration or inward persuasion or intuitive sense which prompts a man to be teacher is the sole effectual warrant, and that any ceremony of ordination is merely the sign that a particular body of people for the time being accept one of their number as their leader, just as they might accept a member of Parliament. The answer to this counter-proposition is that it is true of the astral Craft alluded to in the Introduction to this Paper. The perso nal inspiration of, and revelation given to, prophets, se ers and initiated, was, before the formation of the visible Craft, their warrant for teaching. That such personal inspiration, altogether unconnected with ordination and the rank of Installed Mastery, may still exist, is nowhere denied by the Craft - indeed, in our Instruction Lectures it is positively asserted to exist (see First Section, First Lecture, "To seek for a and Master from him to gain instruction"). The Masonic Order, however, as previously shown, was to be a "visible" Order, i.e., the already existing astral form was to assume a material and objective existence. In the process of this formation the material process of carrying on the life of that material body was formulated. Thus, to recur to the human analogy, the life (if we may call it so) of an astral form, may be independent of the mechanism of germ-plastic cells; but so soon as the subjective form becomes objective or material, such mechanism or vehicle for the life principle becomes necessary. T he important point to note is that the orig inators of the Craft, intending a distinctly visible, tangible and material body, provided that its life principle should be clearly recognised, and the presence or absence thereof provable by ordinary historic methods and the rules of evidence.

The operation of the law of Karma on the lower principles of the Craft will be treated, in the next section of our Paper.