THE TEACHINGS OF MASONRY

BY BRO.  H.L. HAYWOOD

PART XVI - ENDLESS LIFE


"Tis true; 'tis certain; man though dead retains
Part of himself; the immortal mind remains."



THESE WORDS, written by Homer 3,000 years ago, remind us how that
ages before the ferment of modem thought and all the crusades of our
modern religions, men believed in immortality as we do now.  If one were
to push himself behind Homer into an age long anterior to his, and as
ancient to him as his is to us, one would and men cherishing the same
hope.  Imhotep, the father of architecture in stone, builder to the Egyptian
King Zoser, lived 5,000 years ago, but for all that he believed in immortality
as did Homer.  And so with those to whom Imhotep looked back as to
those grown ancient to him; and also with them in their turn; and so on to
the beginning of things when the first half-wild hunter paused long enough
in his search of meat to gaze wistfully across lovely valleys, where floating
gossamers reminded him how frail and how fleeting is human life.

It is useless to try to prove by logic or by demonstration the immortality of
man.  We believe it, there is an end of it! And we do not believe it because
we have proved it, but we try to prove it because we already believe it.  It
is a hope, a kind of inward certainty which finds its support not in this fact
or in that, but in the cast and colour of life as a whole.  It rises up into our
minds like an exaltation from all our thoughts, all our experiences, all our
dreams, as the odour that drifts across a summer field distills from
numberless unnoted plants.  We are never so puzzled as when we are
challenged to give a reasoned proof of this hope: and we are never so
unreasonable as when we cease to believe it.  Men everywhere and always
have believed it not because priests have taught them or because scientists
have found out the secret of it, but because life itself has taught them, and
it is something that the universe itself is always whispering to them.  The
priests and the churches have not created the belief: it is the belief that has
made the priests and churches, and no amount of ignorance, baseness, or
superstition appears able to blot out that great hope.  The cannibals cling
to it, and we ourselves though we sleep in a gutter, hear it announced
within that whispering gallery which we call the soul.

"Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither."

How long have men believed in immortality? Who was Homer? Imhotep?
Why do you believe in immortality? How would you set about to prove it?
How do we know that men have always believed it?


It is impossible to form any mental picture of the future life.  No two
religions describe it in the same way, and some of them, ancient
Buddhism, for example, have refused to describe it at all.  Our modern
spiritists who follow in the train of Sir Oliver Lodge, Conan Doyle, Camile
Flammarion and their school, believe themselves to have received authentic
news from the Beyond but unfortunately they have never been able to
agree as to the nature of things in that unknown realm.  It appears that
such descriptions as are given through the mediums, ouija boards and
such other occult means of communication usually conform in a general
way to the preconceptions of the spiritists themselves.  The Eskimo spiritist
is told that heaven is a beautiful place full of icebergs and polar bears; the
American Indian learns that it is a happy hunting ground; the Chinese
spiritist - spiritism has been developed in China to a degree of
respectability and perfection never attained elsewhere - is informed that
heaven is a gloried China organized strictly in accord with the principles of
ancestor worship.  All this would indicate that if bona fide communications
ever do penetrate the veil the conditions are such as to preclude the
transmission of accurate or definite information, so that spiritists themselves
are in like case with the rest of us who find that eye hath not seen nor ear
heard nor hath it entered into the mind of man to conceive what the future
life is like.

Nevertheless it is difficult to cherish even the thinnest hope of a continued
life without trying to fashion some sort of conception of it, because the
mind cannot otherwise handle the idea at all.  Because we hold immortality
as a belief we are compelled to think it as a thought, and it is this
psychological necessity, perhaps, that has led men in every country and
in all ages to make for themselves some picture of heaven.  One should not
try to quarrel with this, because one cannot do so successfully: man is so
made that he must behave in this manner, and that is an end of it.

But it is for this reason, I believe, that we should be all the more careful that
our thinking about the future life be strictly reasonable.  If our nature
compels us to think out some conception of immortality, that same nature
similarly compels us to fashion a conception that won't insult the
intelligence or fly in the face of known facts. It is necessary to be
reasonable while we reason about Eternal Life. It seems to me - and I
speak here only for myself - that this principle in itself is one of the
teachings of Freemasonry concerning this subject.  Our Fraternity leaves
it to each individual to fashion his own conceptions of the Beyond but at
the same time, and by all the arts at its command, persuades its votaries
ever to remain in the Light, to seek more Light, and to fear to walk farther
than the Light can lead them: and this Light itself is, of course, nothing
other than reason, and knowledge, and right thinking.  When the subject
passes beyond into the darkness of the unknowable it is better to cease
pursuing it further, lest we fall into superstition.  It is better to remain
agnostic about what the future life is like than to hold fast to unreason.

How do you picture the future life in your own mind? What is spiritism?
Name a few leading spiritists now living.  Do spiritists agree among
themselves as to the future life? Give an example of some conception of
the future life that is contradicted by facts as we know them, and that is
unreasonable.  Why should we try to make our picture of the future life as
reasonable as possible?


It is both safe and wise to hold fast to the principle that all reality is bound
up together into a great unity - for the which reason we call it a Universe -
and that one part of this system does not contradict or give the lie to any
other part.  There is no good reason to suppose that death makes any
profound change in the scheme of things.  Death is a part of the Universe
and always has been and, it may possibly prove, always will be. It is
reasonable to suppose that the Universe will be the same after we are dead
as it was before, and that therefore the "future life," as we call it (it is no
longer "future" to those now living it) will in all essentials be of a piece with
this present life.  Why should we expect marvels, wonders, and
impossibilities there when such things are not found here? What right have
we to suppose that the experience of death will change our world out of all
recognition, and transform ourselves into beings utterly different from what
we are?

"What is human is immortal," said Bulwer-Lytton. Why is not the reverse
also true? "What is immortal is human." We are here in closest relation to
an earth, out of the surface of which we labour to wrest our bread each and
every one of us is the member of one race - the human - and of some one
grand division thereof, in consequence of which we differ greatly in colour,
language, appearance, and a hundred other things.  The race as a whole
is equally divided between two sexes, the members of which are so unlike
each other in many important respects as to cause one to believe that
sexual differences extend into the inmost recesses of human nature, and
are not to be put on or off by any possible change. We are each one
organized in a physical body, and it is ceaselessly necessary for us to
work, to strive, to endure, to eat and sleep, and to suffer.  It may be that all
these things will be carried over into whatever life, or lives, may be waiting
for us beyond.  They are neither superficial nor accidental and are so
woven into the general scheme of things that it is difficult to understand
how human life could know itself after death with all such things omitted.

In spite of one's self such a discussion leads into theology, the most
irritating of all subjects, and the least appropriate to these pages.  In a field
where no landmarks are marked out for us we are necessarily forced to fall
back on private opinion, a thing I have done throughout this paper, and
with the most cordial invitation to the reader to disagree if he is so
disposed.  I have no interest as a Mason in theological beliefs concerning
the future life save to secure for ourselves a principle that will guarantee for
us the full protection of the present life and all its values.  It may be said
that what a man believes about the future is his own private affair and
should be respected as such.  This is very true as long as the man's beliefs
about the life to come do not seriously interfere with the life that now is, a
thing that often happens.  If my beliefs cause me to be illiberal or harsh, or
unkind, or if they are such as to destroy my happiness, then my beliefs
become matters of concern to my fellows, and they have a right to
challenge me thereon.  It is true, as I remarked above, that Freemasonry
leaves the fashioning of this religious belief to the individual, nevertheless
the Fraternity's spirit and teachings are distinctly opposed to beliefs that
lead a man into unbrotherly behaviour or unmasonic conduct.  What
Masonry has to teach concerning immortality is necessarily of a piece with
its other teachings.  If democracy, equality, charity, brotherly love, truth,
kindliness, and honourable labour are good things now they cannot cease
to be good things in the life to come.  If such things are of God in this life
it is hardly possible that they will cease to be divine in the next life.

If a man were to ask me point-blank, "what, in so many words, does
Freemasonry teach about the endless life?" I should be hard put to make
a reply "Freemasonry does not teach anything about it after the manner of
an old-fashioned church catechism, but all its rites and ceremonies, its
spirit and its laws are filled with immortality as the sky is suffused with light. 
Immortality is the motif of the Masonic symphony.

There is one word to be said in addition. ln the great drama of the Third
Degree there are things done and said that give one a new and enlarged
conception of everlasting life.  The initiate has it brought home to him that
if there are some things which abide for ever, so that they are undestroyed
by all the deaths that are, it is possible to search out such things now, and
to mould his life about them, and give them the place of control at the
center of the heart, so that one can live the eternal life in the midst of time. 
This is not easily gained, as many a man has learned to his cost: there are
ruffians at the gates, lions in the path, and often it will seem to one who
seeks this Royal Secret that his days are become a succession of deaths.

"He who flagged not in the earthly strife,
From strength to strength advancing - only he
His soul well-knit, and all his battles won,
Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life."

What do we mean by saying that we live in a universe? What is your theory
about the part death plays in the life of man? What are the things in human
nature least liable to change after death? What is meant by theology? What
kind of beliefs about the future life cause men to be harsh and unkind?
What has Masonry to teach concerning immortality? What is the meaning
of the drama of the Third Degree? In what way does the Third Degree teach
eternal life?

SUPPLEMENTAL REFERENCES

THE BUILDER:

Vol. I (1915) - Immortality - The Circle, p. 133; After Death Shall We Live
Again? P. 300; Realization of the Truth, p. 211.

Vol. II (1916) - Reflections on the Philosophy of Albert Pike, p. 9; The Spirit
of Man, P. 187; The Three Grips, P. 30; The Third Degree, p. 126;
Toleration, p. 265.

Vol. III (1917) - The Landmarks, p. 211; The Feet of Time, p.25; Life After
Death, p. 123.

Vol.  IV (1918) - Where the Rainbow Never Fades, p. 162; The Ancient
Mysteries p. 223; Symbolism of the Three Degrees, p. 291.

Vol. V (1919) - Studies in Blue Lodge Symbolism, p. 136; Eleusinian
Mysteries, p 240; The Plan of Freemasonry p. 266; Immortality, p. 145.

Vol. VI (1920) - Psychical Research, p. 918; Eternal Life, October C.C.B. p.
3; Freemasonry Among the American Indians, p. 295.

Vol. VII (1921) - The Immortality of the Soul, p. 50.

Vol. VIII (1922) - Death, the Liberator, p. 11; The Future Life, p. 126.

Mackey's Encyclopedia-(Revised Edition):

Buddhism, p. 122.  See also related topics under Aranyaka, p. 74; Aryan,
p. 80; Mahabharata, Mahadeva, Mahakasyapa, p. 460; Pitaka, p. 569;
Puranas, p. 601, Ramayana, p. 607; Sakti, p. 661, Sastra and Sat B'hai, p.
664; Shaster, p. 685; Shesha, p. 686; Sruti, p. 710; Upadevas, Upanishad,
p. 818; Vedanga, Vedas, p. 824; Zenana, Zennaar, p. 878.

Egyptian Hieroglyphs, p. 231; Egyptian Mysteries, pp. 232-234; Immortality
of the Soul, p. 347; Master Mason or Third Degree, p. 474; Religion of
Masonry, pp. 617-619; Speculative Masonry, p. 704; Spiritualizing, p. 706;
Spiritual Lodge, p. 706; Sublime, p. 732.


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