A Quest For Meaning

by Barry Albin  MPS

In our modern world, we are con-
fronted with change at a radical rate. It
seems as if the prophecy of Daniel is
being fulfilled:

"But you, Daniel, shut up the words,
and seal the book, until the time of the
end. Many shall run to and fro, and
knowledge shall increase. " Daniel 12: 4.
RSV.

In our century, a mere ninety years, we
have gone from the horse and buggy to
the moon. We have seen all the planets
of our solar system except one, some of
which we did not even know about until
late in the last century. We are once again
living through an acute crisis of mean-
ing, an uncertainty about our direction
and our goals. The various systems, pro-
grammes and ideologies which, less than
a century ago, seemed to promise so
much have all, to one degree or another,
proved hollow. As in the first century
there is a pervasive awareness that life
has lost its meaning, and the young re-
sort to turning off and tuning out with
drugs, alcohol, sex, and television.

The activating forces most powerful
today are the search for meaning and the
retreat from fear. The second force is
most apparent in the rise of militant fun-
damentalism and of the drug culture
which are two sides of the same coin.
Both seek to avoid fear--one by escaping
this world into an artificially created eu-
phoria; the other by looking for unshak-
able doctrines to be our rock in the storm.
The vast majority are choosing the sec-
ond power.

But the first power is also attractive to
some. It is manifested by a growth in
monasticism, witchcraft, occult studies,
esotericism, and eastern mysticism.
Freemasonry once fit firmly into this first
power, but now only a few isolated affil-
iates provide this important solace.

Jesus says to Satan:

"Man does not live on bread alone, but
by every utterance that comes from the
mouth of God. " Matthew 4:4.

C.G. Jung, the great psychoanalyst
and mystic agrees. Jung says that man
needs internal, non-material needs as
profound, as urgent, as elementary as
the need for food, for shelter, for procrea-
tion. One of the most basic needs of man
is a raison d'etre, a meaning. The expan-
sion of knowledge has destroyed many, if
not all, of our myths and religion has lost
much of its scientific validity. Science has
tried, and miserably failed, to replace it.

With the loss of scientific validity, re-
ligion has felt its two great pillars shaken.
No longer is the scripture infallible and
no longer is tradition grounds for the
continuance of belief. The thoughtful
mind has lost its trust in dogma and the
power of the church fades. The mainline
churches fail, to be replaced by the fun-
damentalist demagogues, because they
provide the opiate of togetherness, the
illusion of love.

But society desperately seeks some-
thing to hold onto, to believe in, and to
trust. There is one technique for provid-
ing trust which has withstood the test of
time and it has successfully provided
meaning for millions throughout the
ages. That technique is the use of sym-
bols to activate and manipulate what
Jung calls archetypes. According to
Jung, an "archetype" is a certain
elemental experience, or pattern of ex-
perience, which men have shared from
time immemorial. Examples of arche-
types are birth, puberty, sexual initia-
tion, death, the traumas of war, the cy-
cles of the seasons, the yearning for a
spiritual resting place, and the quest for
meaning. Archetypes are powerful be-
cause as commonly experienced symbols
they bypass language and intellect and
directly effect the subconscious mind.

Freemasonry provides archetypal ex-
periences when the brotherhood is
functioning properly and the ritual is
being dramatically presented. The en-
hancement of robes, lighting, incense,
music, and rhetorical style merely serve
to build the atmosphere for the ex-
perience to be more powerfully im-
pressed on the candidates subconscious.
For example, in all three blue lodge
degrees in the York Rite, we provide
symbolic birth experiences by bringing
the candidate from darkness to light.
These initiatory experiences at a deep
level touch the candidate and he feels
reborn into a new brotherhood giving his
life new meaning. By allowing the
brother to advance in Masonry, we allow
him to experience the puberty archetype.
We deal with the archetypes of death and
resurrection, the two most powerful
adult archetypes, and provide symbolic
answers to those deep questions. The
Fraternity provides the valuable arche-
type of belonging which impresses the
importance of the moral virtues of
friendship and brotherly love. But most
importantly, the Fraternity provides
something to trust in--a new interpreta-
tion of morality as embodied in our ob-
ligations and lecture.

If our Fraternity is failing, if it is dying
as some say, and if we must change to
save it, what must be changed is our
approach to living out the archetypes in
such a way as to build trust. When we
promise to treat a brother in a given way
and tolerate a member treating a brother
differently, we destroy the archetype and
the trust that all had placed in it. When
we fail to provide light on how to access
spiritual power and even fail to pray, we
destroy the faith we place in that arche-
type. When we allow a brother to die
unattended by his brethren, we destroy
the archetype of the third degree. Our
actions must support, not destroy, the
trust we place in our Order. Only then
will our Order survive and only then will
it deserve to survive.

As for me, I still have faith that a leaner,
cleaner, rededicated Order is just around
the corner. I know that a fraternity has
nothing to do with buildings and per-
sonal acquisition of prestige and power.
Freemasonry has lasted at least 300 years
and will last another millennium, if it will
rededicate itself to the principles set forth
in its obligations and will forget about
Lodge buildings, grand titles, and quan-
tities of members. All those things flow
from a Fraternity providing the meaning
its members need.

