THE KARMA OF THE CRAFT

THE KARMA OF THE CRAFT

To some minds it may seem as though the analogy of the Craft to the material body is somewhat strained and fantastic, and is, moreover, unscientific. The following references to modern scientific works where the analogy is insisted on from the opposite side, viz. of a material body to a commodity, may therefore be useful:-

...What is the organism? A community of living cells, a little state, well provided with all the appurtenances of upper and under officials, servants and masters, great and small."

(Maudsley, "Physiology of Mind").

"There is evidence that the semi-independent cells which go to make up a complex organism are not destitute of intelligence. A complex organism may be said to be a community of cells."

(Syme on "The Modification of Organisms").

It all be useful now to see what species of body it was that the early Freemasons took is the analogy to the visible Craft, and as to this they leave no doubt whatever. It was the body of Hiram, as described in the Order rituals. Here observe that no question of the historic truth of the Craft central legend is involved; that belongs to a totally different part of the argument. All we need now is (1) The Craft, being an association which had provided itself with definite machinery for ascertaining and dec laring its will and thought, deliberately designed and adapted certain myths as its canon of teaching. (2) The principal myth of the Craft system is that of the death And burial of Hiram Abiff narrated in the traditional history. (3) According to this narrative the visible body of the alleged Master Builder passed through certain adventures, and had certain characteristics. (4) This body is taken as typical of, or analogous to, the body composed of ind ividual members united in an association. Though it be said that the whole narrative is an allegory, this part of the argument is untouched. In that body so described lay what the association chose to adopt as the microcosmic type of its own life, and such, therefore, must be considered to be the Craft's thought of itself. Now, one great and prime characteristic of the body so described was suffering, and the suffering of a physical body means disunion and disharmony of its molecules, whether arising from some of them being only imperfectly governed by or in active opposition to t he central will or from the presence of some foreign body either passively or actively hostile to the common life.

(7)..Pain and suffering in the human body correspond to disunion in the Craft, and are the result of Karmic laws.

This follows from the correspondence of individual human beings to the molecules of an organic body. In the healthy human being every molecule is permeated by the corporate life, and consequently perfectly fulfils its function. But directly any molecule is cut off wholly or partially from these life-currents and becomes separate, its semi-independent condition becomes a wholly independent condition, with the self strongly accentuated, and it is consequently a foreign body. Immediately, by the laws of its being, there is a great effort to cast out the foreign body and because more or less of the tissues become involved in the struggle, inflammation and suffering result. All the pathology of disease may practically be reduced to the presence in the organism of molecules which do not obey the central will, and this disease and suffering is in strict accordance with Karmic laws.

If, then, nations and associations have their Karma as well as human individualities, the presence in an association of members whose conduct, ideas, etc., are out of accord with the spirit of the association and its purposes, whether these be actually foreign bodies (so to speak) or members from whom the spirit has departed, the result is the same, disease and suffering proceeding from Karmic laws, though we may be unable to see where the Karma was generated. So the spirit that has from the first animated the Craft, finds as St. Paul found "a law in its members warring aga inst the law of the Spirit." The Spirit of the Craft has to be "m ade perfect by suffering", and that suffering is the presence of molecules (members) mechanically part of its organism but not polarised to the vital currents. The cure in the human body is the strengthening of the life principle, until it dominates and subjugates every molecule to the good of the whole body. The cure in the case of the Association is similar by promoting brotherhood and unity, by subjecting every individual to the life curre nts animating the Association, by checking us from self-assertiven ess, from vainglorious striving after power, in a word by killing the self. In the reality perfect Order every member bows to the authority of the Order and seeks no power or honour for himself apart from his brethren.

We have seen that, as with a living body, so with an Association, the spirit of life-monad manifests itself in and through material particles, or cells or human units, gathered from and partaking the character of its environment, and that the greater or loss adaptability of the visible body to the needs and impulses of the monad depends on the law of Karma. The two Aspects of this law must also be kept in view, the Karma to which the monad is subject on entering its material body (in the case of a human bei ng that which was earned in a prior incarnation), and that which it generates and reaps in the continuance of its present material existence. It would be rash to attempt to trace the prior history of the animating spirits of Associations - it is enough to assume that somehow or other they come under the some Karmic law as human beings, and have not necessarily earned in their present incarnation (if we may use the word) all the results they reap. If the law of Karma be true at all it must be true, exactly i n so far as applicable, to every independent or semi-independent existence, to the cell therefore, as much as to the body which is built up of cells, and to the Association composed of human beings as much as to the several human beings composing it. This, which seems elementary, leads irresistibly to the next proposition.

(8).. Provincial Grand Lodges and all Private Lodges have a semi-independent existence, as Associations within the parent Association, like the organs of the human body; their organisation or government corresponding to the nerve-ganglia governing the human organs, and like these semi-independent, capable of sustaining life; but not of initiating action in regard to the parent Association.

This proposition with regard to Associations is the necessary corollary of what has gone before. Every Association, however small has a separate existence "qua" Association, and a certain modified autonomy to the extent of regulating its own affairs as such Association. Each Association is, however, a part of some greater Association, a race or nation it may be, and finally a part of humanity itself, to whose general laws its own autonomy is necessarily subject, and hence it is only semi-independent. In t he living human body the nerve-ganglia governing different organs are to a considerable extent automatic, that is to say they act without the conscious interference of the central will, though not in opposition thereto, and they sometimes react, by a reflex action, to external stimuli, without conveying the impression of that stimulus to the central consciousness, yet the central consciousness and the central will can generally, to some extent at least, know and control their action.

Thus these ganglia are semi-independent and the correspondence is practically complete. The analogy holds for every association. Thus the business of a State is carried on by Departments, each of which is semi-independent, to the extent that in the healthy normal state it does its own work without troubling the central authority, but the object of that work is the good of the whole State. Suppose what is called corruption to be present in any department, this means that the heads of that department and possibly all connected w ith it, are using for selfish ends and for their own benefit the powers entrusted to them for the general good of the State.

This is separateness, and in time produces a feeling of discomfort so widespread that the central will is compelled to strive to cast it out. The period longer or shorter before the central will comes into operation depends on the strength, vitality, and health of the Association or State. What is termed mortification (or really corruption) of a part of the human body is precisely analogous to this. Corruption of the body politic is a most apposite term.

In the Craft, looked upon as an Association, there are Departments, Subsections and Branches, each organised and therefore semi-independent. By the original constitution every private Lodge was such a Subsection, and looking for the moment upon these Lodges as units, we get a conception of the Craft as a homogeneous multicellular organisation. In the process of development, as we have already shown, the central authority was lodged i n the Grand Lodge whereat all Masters and Wardens represented their own Lodges. Within the Lodges the organisation, as we have demonstrated, constituted in itself an association. And thus the whole Craft in its normal and healthy state forms an association consisting of semi-independent organic associations with one central will, consciousness, and power of expression (or living voice); each of the constituent associations (Lodges) being in its turn com posed of human beings (like semi-independent cells) org anised by the division of labour into various departments fulfilling various functions. As the constituent elements of the Craft are drawn from its environment, so are the constituent elements of the Lodges which form the Craft, and as these are local and racial in their constitution, their elements necessarily vary, and thus differentiation in the character of the Lodge's themselves will necessarily result, and this differentiation may be the source of dis union, which has been shown to depend on Karmic la ws. In considering the character of a friend, we recognise at once that to blame him for a hasty word uttered in pain or sickness as though it were a deliberate opinion, would be unjust.

Far more so to blame him for unavoidable weakness, illness, or deformity. We know (or we feel intuitively) that this all belongs to the lower principles, in fact to the house our friend, by his Karma, is compelled to live in, not to himself. In speaking of the Craft, justice requires that the same distinction should be ke pt in view, and therefore in the second part of this Paper we propose to trace somewhat further the analogy in the Craft to the Seven Principles of man, with a view of working out the more esoteric side of the subject.

As a fitting conclusion to the first half of our Paper, let us apply to the Craft the further analogy of an acorn - a small and exteriorly unimpressive object, which nevertheless enshrines the life-force of the great oak that cast it, and which contains energies capable of expanding into another tree greater than its parent. So with Freemasonry. It is the humble off-spring of the great Mystery systems that once were the only means whereby Divine Wisdom was revealed to men in this world; and it enshrines, i n compressed and simple form, the essential immutable principles of their teaching. The time has now come when those severely compressed principles can be released, interpreted, and given an infinitely wider field of usefulness than was possible in antiquity. Which field our world-wide Order provides, for it is an organism that is being gradually evolved, a "body prepared," for the dissemination on a wide scale of philosophic secrets and mysteri es which, in earlier states of society, could only be imparted to the initiated few, but which can now be comparatively broadcast. In this Study Circle we aim at helping on that movement, at releasing and revealing what lies compressed and concealed within our system.

"THERE IS NOTHING HIDDEN BUT SHALL BE REVEALED"