MASONS, MORALITY AND MYSTICISM
by Bro. John White
Temple Lodge 16, Cheshire, CT
Our fraternity makes good men better, what is the meaning of “better”?
When we Masons tell the public that our fraternity makes good men better, what
is the meaning of “better”? When a man is raised as a Master Mason, what is the
meaning of “raised”? When a brother says he wants more light on Masonry, what is
the meaning of “light”?
There is a single answer to those questions. It is an answer which has profound
importance not just for Masons, but for all humanity. I’m grateful to the
Philosophic Lodge of Research for the opportunity to share my thoughts on this
subject. I hope it stimulates reflection and discussion among us and our Blue
Lodge brothers.
I petitioned to join our fraternity only after long consideration of
Freemasonry. I had been studying world religions and sacred traditions for three
decades, with a focus on what they say about God-realization and higher human
development. I’m convinced there is a common core, a unifying truth, to them,
which is ageless and universal. Regardless of the differences in doctrine and
ritual, their essence is, in a word, enlightenment. Rightly understood, the
world’s religions and sacred traditions provide a theory and practice for
attaining enlightenment. That attainment can be defined as union with the Divine
or realization of our oneness with God—not as a mere concept but as a living
experience which totally transforms the person.
Enlightenment is the final stage of human development as one grows from a
self-centered to a God-centered condition. As I studied Freemasonry, I came to
see it is a western enlightenment tradition, just as, for example, Buddhism,
Taoism and yoga are eastern enlightenment traditions.
The Body of Light
These traditions demonstrate that enlightenment or God-realization is not simply
a one-time psychological event. It is a process of human perfection which has
been described in the histories, myths and traditions of all cultures. The
process has progressive phases or substages of spiritual unfoldment. Physical
and mental changes occur as the person ascends in consciousness through mystical
or transcendent experiences.
In the last stage of enlightenment, the change is most dramatic. According to
esoteric teachings in various sacred traditions and hermetic schools, the human
body itself is changed from flesh into light, becoming immortal. Through the
transubstantiation or alchemical transmutation of flesh, blood and bone, one
actually becomes light. The process requires physical, biological death; the
transubstantiated body is raised or resurrected from death—not symbolically as
in the Master Mason degree, but literally.
For example, Arthur Edward Waite, in A New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, tells us
that the sprig of acacia used in the Master Mason degree is “a sign of
resurrection and immortality, as if in some later mystery the grave should give
up its dead in the fashion of one who henceforward would be alive for evermore.”
Likewise, when a brother is installed as Worshipful Master of a lodge, he is
charged to guide the brethren on “the path which leads to immortality.”
In the last chapter of The Lost Keys of Freemasonry, Manly P. Hall says the
Egyptian mysteries were progenitors of modern Freemasonry, and the ancient
rituals aimed at human perfection to the point which would bestow immortality.
Such immortals were symbolized by a mysterious two-headed bird, originally
called a phoenix but now called, in Scottish Rite, an eagle. The meaning of the
symbols and rituals, Hall says, is the creation of an immortal body for the
initiate—a body composed of light and not subject to death. Being raised by the
strong grip of the Lion’s Paw in the Master Mason degree is also symbolic of
attaining a resurrected body. (According to Rosemary Clark, Egyptologist and
author of the forthcoming book The Sacred Key to Ancient Egypt, the Lion Couch
in Tutankamun’s tomb is an example of this symbolism.)
Likewise, in The Meaning of Masonry, W. L. Wilmshurst says in explaining the
Royal Arch ceremony, “In the great Mystery-system of Egypt, which long anteceded
the Hebrew system, the regenerate candidate, who had achieved the highest
possible measure of self-transmutation of his lower nature, was accorded the
title of Osiris. It was the equivalent of attaining Christhood.” (p. 163) He
adds that when a Mason wishes for more light, it meant “not merely light in the
sense of being given some secret information not obtainable elsewhere or about
any matter of worldly interest, but the opening up of the candidate’s whole
intellectual and spiritual nature in the super-sensual light of the Divine world
and raising him to God-consciousness.” (p. 185)
Freemasonry has been defined as a system of morality taught by symbol and
allegory. Our fraternity says it “makes good men better” by such means.
Morality, or the moral dimension of life, is the foundation for the process of
higher human development to enlightenment.
But the process only begins there. As a person practices spiritual
disciplines—prayer, meditation and esoteric psychotechnologies—to deepen his or
her relationship with God, that person ascends in spirit to higher and higher
planes of existence. Mystical experience and arcane metaphysics come to the
forefront of the person’s consciousness, and the light of God shines ever more
brightly through every aspect of the person’s life. Ultimately, the quest for
enlightenment leads one to actually becoming light—i.e., attaining the light
body and becoming a being of light. (To seek more light to that degree would
make good men completely better!) Morality and virtue are then understood to be
the human reflection of divine attributes, and the practice of mysticism is
understood as a process of becoming, quite literally, more and more godlike. As
a contemporary Indian spiritual teacher, Satya Sai Baba, puts it, “On the
spiritual path, first you go toward the light, next you’re in the light, then
you are the light.”
Sacred Traditions for
Higher Human Development
If there is an inner unity or common core to world religions and sacred paths,
we should expect that the human potential for transubstantiation would be
understood by them. Indeed, that is just what we find. In fact, the “body of
light” is the key which unlocks the entire spectrum esoteric/spiritual pathways.
Some of the names given by enlightenment traditions to the body of light are as
follow: • In the Judeo-Christian tradition it is called “the resurrection body”
and “the glorified body.” The prophet Isaiah said, “The dead shall live, their
bodies shall rise.” St. Paul also called it “the celestial body” or “spiritual
body.” • In Sufism it is called “the most sacred body” and “supracelestial
body.” • In Taoism it is called “the diamond body” and those who have attained
it are called “the immortals” and “the cloudwalkers.” • In Tibetan Buddhism it
is called “the light body.” • In Rosicrucianism it is called “the diamond body
of the temple of God.” • In some mystery schools it is called “the solar body.”
• In Tantrism and various yogas it is called the “the vajra body,” “the
adamantine body” and “the divine body.” • In Vedanta it is called “the
superconductive body.” • In Kriya yoga it is called “the body of bliss.” • In
Gnosticism and Neoplatonism it is called “the radiant body.” • In the alchemical
tradition, the Emerald Tablet calls it “the Glory of the Whole Universe” and the
“golden body.” The alchemist Paracelsus called it “the astral body.” • In
ancient Egypt it was called “the luminous body or being.” • In Old Persia it was
called “the indwelling divine potential.” • In the Mithraic liturgy it was
called “the perfect body.” • In the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo it is called
“the divine body” composed of supramental substance. As I see it, these are
different terms for the same condition, what is certainly the ultimate stage of
human evolution—the condition in which a human being, by a combination of
personal effort and divine grace, attains a deathless condition through the
transubstantiation or alchemical transmutation of the ordinary fleshly body.
The traditions speak of the process in different ways. Is the immortal body
created or released, attained or manifested? Is it preexistent within the
individual and the gross matter of the body simply “burned” away? Or is the
gross matter of the body altered through a process not yet recognized by
physical science which changes the atoms of flesh into something unnamed on the
Periodic Table of Elements? Is there more than one route to the final, perfected
human body-mind? These are provocative questions which remain to be explored.
However this state is achieved, the perfected individual is then capable of
operating within ordinary space-time through that altered vehicle of
consciousness which is immortal. That body is no longer carbon-based as is
biological flesh. Rather, it is composed of a finer, more ethereal form of
energy-substance unknown to conventional physics, but long known to metaphysics
and higher mysticism. (One author, Musaios, in The Lion’s Paw, describes it as
“a glorious body of a new sort of an incorruptible, uncompounded substance, and
hence immortal…”) That condition is, for the individual, the most exalted stage
of higher human development in the enlightenment process; for humanity in
general, it is the final stage of evolution. It is an alternative to death or,
more correctly, the conquest of death. (Copyright (c) 2003 by American
Mason)
"I have more to say about this topic, and will conclude my remarks in the next
edition. They will focus on the resurrection of Jesus and the idea that others
have likewise attained the resurrection body."
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