THE FREE-MASON’S MYSTICAL JOURNEY
The Free-Mason’s Mystical Journey G
enuine initiation is the development of major human qualities and faculties at higher levels which are not generally innate and have to be acquired through Man’s own creative efforts. HUMAN NATURE: Most esoteric systems scribe humanity as including four bodies corresponding to increasingly subtle states of consciousness, namely: (1) the mineral, physical body; (2) the vegetative “astral” body, similar to the life force animating plants; (3) the animal, instinctive body, with its reactions of attraction, repulsion, or indifference to external causes; and (4) the divine or “causal” body, with its reflexive moral consciousness. In the Orient, the essentially inanimate mineral body is represented as the cart; the animating vegetative body, with its rudimentary feeling, is the horse; the animal body, with its simple thinking process, is the coachman; and the divine body, with its individuality, consciousness and willpower, is the Master. In the West, human nature is nowadays most often described as the means with which Nature has endowed Man so that he may dominate and exploit the external world, most often, regrettably, in a selfish and greedy manner. Present-day materialism generally tends to give prominence to the physical and vegetative bodies and consider the animal body as an additional asset for those who want to do and earn more. As for the divine body, it is generally considered as a luxury for marginal dreamers!
Andre Salmon, PM
instance. This also explains how, in our present times, masses of human beings are manipulated through external stimuli and exert themselves to satisfy their physical instincts or artificially induced needs. In the opposite case, control comes from the highest body which has conquered external influences as well as the impulses of the lower bodies. It becomes all the more individual and autonomous from mundane domination as its degree of refinement and subtlety is higher. Such is the case of spiritual masters. These masters teach and demonstrate that human potentialities are immense and can be realized through appropriate methods, perseverance and progressive practice, like gymnastics. Oriental philosophers, in general, teach to work more on oneself than on the external world, in order to attain a higher level of reality. Such Indian thinkers as Rabindranath Tagore or Sri Aurobindo focus on Man’s mastery over himself, to control his physical and mental life and live in spiritual bliss, compared to which mastery over things is what a soap bubble is to a rock. This is similar to the Greek philosopher Plato’s concept which taught that actual, durable reality is that of the Mind, whereas matter is essentially perishable, impermanent, and the world of forms, including human life, is a constantly evanescent illusion, like the rainbow.
“Initiation leads indeed to
wisdom which invites us to realize the essential
evanescent nature of all things and the general
equilibrium in the universe.”
The three lower bodies, however, do not actually belong to the individual; they are governed by external laws of physics and chemistry that rule the whole universe. When the lower bodies are in command, they rule the highest body, often to the point of exterminating it. Such is the case of drug addicts, for The Voice of Freemasonry
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INITIATION: Initiation to higher levels of consciousness for a number of spiritually powerful individuals, as one would expect to find in Masonic lodges, is a way to polarize the highest potentialities of the human species. Initiation leads indeed to wisdom which invites us to realize the essential evanescent nature of all things and the general equilibrium in the universe. This balance of the whole is a dynamic process resulting from the constant interaction of its different
