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What Can I Do to Reinvent Humanism?
submitted by Steve Grant

Alain Pozarnik, Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of France, gives a conference this evening at 6:30 p.m. at the old Town hall of Saint-Denis, after a dedicatory meeting at 5:00 p.m.. He will also give an inaugural lecture Monday, November 28 at the University of Tampon on the topic "Criminology, Human Cruelty and Culture". Questions by non-Masons.

What is Freemasonry?
Freemasonry is an initiatory order which proposes a method of awakening of the conscience. The same questions always arise: what am I? Which is the direction of my life? How should I act? Humanity is divided between the mechanisms of its mammalian instincts and the call to being human, in fraternity, love, and justice, which remains an ideal. Humans have always thought about this question. One cannot answer it by accumulating knowledge, but by having a feeling, a different conscience. The Grand Lodge of France preserves a method which is addressed to the modern man. We are interested in myths, we transmit an awakening of the conscience. One does not live with theories but with living.

How does one become a Freemason?
It is enough to know a Freemason who judges that your interrogation into the human condition is sincere, that you show an interest in human research. It is not a social elitism, nor a philosophical elitism. It is enough to want to live in dignity, in research on humanity. One can also write directly to the Obedience. Before joining, there is an investigation of sincerity and probity. And one leaves very easily, as soon as one does not want to come any more. It is completely the opposite of a sect.

What view does Freemasonry have about God?
The initiatory order is not interested in your belief, nor with your political leanings. Believing or not believing, you are completely free. There were political deviates, racketeers who gave a bad press to Freemasonry. But the Masonic goal is to train men. It is a question of being interested in the future of civilization. With the loss of moral, religious, and social standards, men are disabled because they do not have a framework any more. We are all men with our fears, our desires, our sufferings. What can I do to reinvent humanism? Initiation must help one to better understand his own religion.

Which is the topic of your conference Friday evening?
Initiatory Freemasonry is the future of our civilization. Each one must know himself, to find his place in society. One can wake up this awareness, with new courses, to take awareness of self and the world. It is necessary to discover the interior of Man, to set out towards developing it. Initiation considers that until adulthood, we are like the animals, afterwards we develop the human side, and that one can voluntarily find direction in life. Because when one seeks for what one does not have, it is the revolt, that is why it is necessary to seek what one is.

The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite consists of 33 degrees, 33 stages, of different stages in the awareness of life, of the mechanism of thought, of feeling, to start to live with an interior being. The first 3 degrees study what I am materially; from the 4th degree to the 18th, it is a finer energy, metaphysical; from the 19th to the 28th, it is the discovery of the spirit, how to make it live, without losing contact with reality.