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"The Builders"
Excerpt from Chapter
4: "The Secret Doctrine"
The following is an excerpt from "The
Secret Doctrine", found in Chapter IV of The Builders. This excerpt speaks
of the higher truths or hidden wisdom that many people mistakenly believe
Freemasons strive to conceal.
I
God ever shields us from premature
ideas, said the gracious and wise Emerson; and so does nature. She holds back
her secrets until man is fit to be entrusted with them, lest by rashness he
destroy himself. Those who seek, find, not because the truth is far off, but
because the discipline of the quest makes they ready for the truth, and worthy
to receive it. By a certain sure instinct the great teachers of our race have
regarded the highest truth less as a gift bestowed than as a trophy to be won.
Everything must not be told to everybody. Truth is power, and when held by
untrue hands it may become a plague. Even Jesus had His "little flock" to whom
He confided much which He kept from the world, or else taught it in parables
cryptic and veiled (Matt. 13:10,11). One of His sayings in explanation of His
method is quoted by Clement of Alexandria in his Homilies:
It was not from grudgingness that
our Lord gave the charge in a certain Gospel. "My mystery is for Me and the sons
of My house."
This more withdrawn teaching, hinted
in the saying of the Master, with the arts of culture employed, has come to be
known as the Secret Doctrine, or the Hidden Wisdom. A persistent tradition
affirms that throughout the ages, and in every land, behind the system of faith
accepted by the masses an inner and deeper doctrine that has been held and
taught by those able to grasp it. This hidden faith has undergone many changes
of outward expression, using now one set of symbols and not another, but its
central tenets have remained the same; and necessarily so, since the ultimates
of thought are ever immutable. By the same token, those who have eyes to see
have no difficulty in penetrating the varying veils of expression and
identifying truths; thus confirming in the arcana of faith what we found to be
true in its earliest forms-- the oneness of the human mind and the unity of
truth.
There are those who resent the
suggestion that there is, or can be, secrecy in regard to spiritual truths
which, if momentous at all, are of common moment to all. For this reason Demonax,
in the Lucian play, would not be initiated, because, if the Mysteries were bad,
he would not keep silent as a warning; and if they were good, he would proclaim
them as a duty. The objection is, however, unsound, as a little thought will
reveal. Secrecy in such matters inheres in the nature of the truths themselves,
not in any affected superiority of a few elect minds. Qualifications for the
knowledge of higher things is, and must always be, a matter of personal fitness.
Other qualification there is none. For those who have that fitness the Secret
Doctrine is as clear as sunlight, and for those who have it not the truth would
still be secret though shouted from the house-top. The Grecian Mysteries were
certainly secret, yet the fact of their existence was a matter of common
knowledge, and there was no more secrecy about their sanctuaries that there is
about a cathedral. Their presence testified to the public that a deeper than the
popular faith did exist, but the right to admission into them depended upon the
whole-hearted wish of the aspirant, and his willingness to fit himself to know
the truth. The old maxim applies here, that when the pupil is ready the teacher
is found waiting, and he passes on to know a truth hitherto hidden because he
lacked either the aptitude or the desire.
All is mystery as of course, but
mystification is another thing, and the tendency to befog a theme which needs to
be clarified, is to be regretted. Here lies, perhaps, the real reason for the
feeling of resentment against the idea of a Secret Doctrine, and one must admit
that it is not without justification. For example, we are told that behind the
age-long struggle of man to know the truth there exists a hidden fraternity of
initiates, adepts in esoteric lore, known to themselves but not to the world,
who have had in their keeping, through the centuries, the high truths which they
permit to be dimly adumbrated in the popular faiths, but which the rest of the
race are too obtuse, even yet, to grasp save in an imperfect and limited degree.
These hidden sages, it would seem, look upon our eager humanity much like the
patient masters of an idiot school, watching it go on forever seeking without
finding, while they sit in seclusion keeping the keys of the occult. All of
which would be very wonderful, if true. It is, however, only one more of those
fascinating fictions with which mystery-mongers entertain themselves, and
deceive others. Small wonder that thinking men turn from such fanciful folly
with mingled feelings of pity and disgust. Sages there have been in every land
and time, and their lofty wisdom has the unity which inheres in all high human
thought, but that there is now, or has ever been, a conscious, much less a
continuous, fellowship of superior souls holding as secrets truths denied to
their fellow-men, verges upon the absurd.
Indeed, what is called the Secret
Doctrine differs not one whit from what has been taught openly and earnestly, so
far as such truth can be taught in words or pictured in symbols, by the highest
minds of almost every land and language. The difference lies less in what is
taught than in the way in which it is taught; not so much in matter as in
method. Also, we must not forget that, with few exceptions, the men who have led
our race farthest along the way toward the Mount of Vision, have not been men
who learned their lore from any coterie of esoteric experts, but, rather, men
who told in song what they had been taught in sorrow-- initiates into eternal
truth, to be sure, but by the grace of God and the divine right of genius!
Seers, sages, mystics, saints-- these are they who, having sought in sincerity,
found in reality, and the memory of them is a kind of religion. Some of them,
like Pythagoras, were trained for their quest in the schools of the Secret
Doctrine, but others went their way alone, though never unattended, and, led by
" the vision splendid," they came at last to the gate and passed into the City.
Why, then, it may be asked, speak of
such a thing as the Secret Doctrine at all, since it were better named the Open
Secret of the world? For two reasons, both of which have been intimated: first,
in the olden times unwonted knowledge of any kind was a very dangerous
possession, and the truths of science and philosophy, equally with religious
ideas other than those in vogue among the multitude, had to seek the protection
of obscurity. If this necessity gave designing priestcraft its opportunity, it
nevertheless offered the security and silence needed by the thinker and seeker
after truth in dark times. Hence there arose in the ancient world, wherever the
human mind was alive and spiritual, systems of exoteric and esoteric
instruction; that is, of truth taught openly and truth concealed. Disciples were
advanced from the outside to the inside of this divine philosophy, as we have
seen, by degrees of initiation. Whereas, by symbols, dark sayings, and dramatic
ritual the novice received only hints of what was later made plain.
Second, this hidden teaching may
indeed be described as the open secret of the world, because it is open, yet
understood only by those fit to receive it. What kept it hidden was no arbitrary
restriction, but only a lack of insight and fineness of mind to appreciate and
assimilate it. Nor could it be otherwise; and this is as true today as ever it
was in the days of the Mysteries, and so it will be until whatever is to be the
end of mortal things. Fitness for the finer truths cannot be conferred; it must
be developed. Without it the teachings of the sages are enigmas that seem
unintelligible, if not contradictory. In so far, then, as the discipline of
initiation, and its use of art in drama and symbol, help toward purity of soul
and spiritual awakening, by so much do they prepare men for the truth; by so
much and no further. So that, the Secret Doctrine, whether as taught by the
ancient Mysteries or by modern Masonry, is less a doctrine that a discipline; a
method of organized spiritual culture, and as much has a place and a ministry
among men.
- - - Newton, Joseph
F. "The Secret Doctrine". Chapter IV, Section I in The Builders. Lexington,
Massachusetts: The Supreme Council, 33rd Degree, A.A.S.R., 1973. pp.51-57.
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