MASONRY AND ITS SYMBOLS

Harold W. Percival

PREFACE

The subject matter of this little book was originally one of fifteen chapters of a manuscript entitled Thinking and Destiny, the publication of which was delayed owing to the paper situation during the Second World War. As time went on it was deemed advisable to delete this chapter from the manuscript, and to publish it at some future time under separate cover and with the assurance that it would not be disapproved by the Masonic Fraternity. It is now published on the suggestion of Masons who have read the manuscript.

In order to understand this book, it is necessary to be somewhat familiar with a few terms and general ideas advanced in Thinking and Destiny. That book deals generally with the entirety of the universe beyond the reach or range of human thought, but chiefly with mankind. It tells about the long-forgotten past of the present human being; about that life in a perfect, sexless, physical body (the “first temple”) in The Realm of Permanence; about the need of undergoing a trial and test of the sexes, and about the failure of the “Doer” in that perfect body to pass that test. Thereby was brought about the “fall of man” and his exile into this imperfect sexual world in which man finds himself now. The book tells further that each human will in some life free himself from this unbalanced world; that is, he must regenerate his human imperfect body and rebuild for himself another, perfect, sexless, immortal physical body,—the “second temple” of Masonry. In that “house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,” the Doer then takes up again and continues the work which was left unfinished, and goes on—in The Eternal Order of Progression—in being conscious in ever higher degrees of being conscious.

New and valuable information is given in Thinking and Destiny on such subjects as: Destiny; Re-existence; what the “soul” is; about The Government of the human world, and Triune Selves and the administrators of the law; about The Great Way, which is The Path on which the progress of the Doer in man proceeds while he is rebuilding that perfect, immortal physical body.

The reader should understand that what in him is his conscious self is “feeling-and-desire,” which is only a small fraction of the inseparable Doer part of a trinity, termed in the book the “Triune Self”; the other two parts of the Triune Self are the “Thinker-Knower,” who is the Doer’s “Lord God.”

Feeling, commonly spoken of as one of five senses, is not a sense at all, because feeling is part of the conscious self, the Doer of feeling-desire, and does not belong to nature. There are only the four senses of sight, hearing, taste and smell, and these do belong to nature.

“Breath-form” is another term that should be understood. The breath-form is the “trestle board” of the Mason. The form part of the breath-form unit is what has been spoken of as the “soul”; it is somewhat like a screen upon which are inscribed the Doer’s thoughts and deeds and the events of his life. With the first gasp of the infant at birth, the breath unites with the “form” in the body as the breath-form, the so-called “living soul.” It continues to build out the structure of the body according to the form’s pattern.

There is that which in the human relates the intelligent-side of the universe on which the Triune Self is, with the nature-side on which the breath-form is—here spoken of as the “aia.” It serves as an intermediary between the Doer and the breath-form.

To anticipate one difficulty which the reader is liable to have, namely, to understand how the author could possibly know about the things of which he speaks,—it should be explained that Thinking and Destiny was written in an unusual manner—not through revelation, not in trance, not by automatic writing, but through hard, persistent thinking according to a certain system which is explained in that book. In his Foreword the author tells something of the way he wrote the book. For the readers of Masonry and Its Symbols: In the Light of “Thinking and Destiny” the following extracts are here given:

Thoughtful persons have stressed the need of speaking here of some of my experiences in states of being conscious, and of events of my life which might help to explain how it was possible for me to be acquainted with and to know of things that are so at variance with present beliefs. They say this is necessary because no bibliography is appended and no references are offered to substantiate the statements herein made. Some of my experiences have been unlike anything I have heard of or read. My own thinking about human life and the world we live in has revealed to me subjects and phenomena I have not found mentioned in books. But it would be unreasonable to suppose that such matters could be, yet be unknown to others. There must be those who know but cannot tell. I am under no pledge of secrecy. I belong to no organization of any kind. I break no faith in telling what I have found by thinking, by steady thinking while awake, not in sleep or in trance . . .

“(While a small child) I realized that I was in a body from which I could not free myself. I was lost, alone, and in a sorry state of sadness . . . I could not help being observant of events. What I heard people say about things that happened, particularly about death, did not seem reasonable. My parents were devout Christians. I heard it read and said that ‘God’ made the world; that He created an immortal soul for each human body in the world; and that the soul who did not obey God would be cast into hell and would burn in fire and brimstone for ever and ever. I did not believe a word of that. It seemed too absurd for me to suppose or believe that any God or being could have made the world or have created me for the body in which I lived . . .

“From November of 1892 I passed through astonishing and crucial experiences, following which, in the Spring of 1893, there occurred the most extraordinary event of my life. I had crossed 14th Street at Fourth Avenue, in New York City. Cars and people were hurrying by. While stepping up to the North East corner curbstone, Light, greater than that of myriads of suns opened in the center of my head. In that instant or point, eternities were apprehended. There was no time. Distance and dimensions were not in evidence. Nature was composed of units. I was conscious of the units of nature and of units as Intelligences. Within and beyond, so to say, there were greater and lesser Lights, which revealed the different kinds of units. The Lights were not of nature, they were Lights as Intelligences, Conscious Lights. Compared with the brightness or lightness of those Lights, the surrounding sunlight was a dense fog. And in and through all Lights and units and objects I was conscious of the Presence of Consciousness. I was conscious of Consciousness as the Ultimate and Absolute Reality, and conscious of the relation of things. I experienced no thrills, emotions, or ecstasy. Words fail utterly to describe or explain CONSCIOUSNESS. It would be futile to attempt description of the sublime grandeur and power and order and relation in poise of what I was then conscious. Twice during the next fourteen years, for a long time on each occasion, I was conscious of Consciousness. But during that time I was conscious of no more than I had been conscious of in that first moment . . .

“The great worth in being conscious of Consciousness is that it enables one to know about any subject, by thinking. Thinking is the steady holding of the Conscious Light within on the subject of the thinking. Briefly stated, thinking is of four stages: selecting the subject; holding the Conscious Light on that subject; focusing the Light; and, the focus of the Light. When the Light is focused, the subject is known. By this method, Thinking and Destiny has been written.

“The special purpose of this book is: To tell the conscious selves in human bodies that we are inseparable doer parts of consciously immortal individual trinities, Triune Selves, who, within and beyond time, lived with our great Thinker and Knower parts in perfect sexless bodies in The Realm of Permanence; that we, the conscious selves now in human bodies, failed in a crucial test, and thereby exiled ourselves from that Realm of Permanence into this temporal man and woman world of birth and death and re-existence; that we have no memory of this because we put ourselves into a self-hypnotic sleep, to dream; that we will continue to dream through life, through death and back again to life; that we must continue to do this until we de-hypnotize, wake, ourselves out of the hypnosis into which we put ourselves; that, however long it takes, we must awake from our dream, become conscious of ourselves as ourselves in our bodies, and then regenerate and restore our bodies to everlasting life in our home—The Realm of Permanence from which we came—which permeates this world of ours, but is not seen by mortal eyes. Then we will consciously take our places and continue our parts in The Eternal Order of Progression.”

With an understanding of the above points the reader of Masonry and Its Symbols: In the Light of “Thinking and Destiny” should have no difficulty in intelligently following the text of this book.

THE AUTHOR
New York City
December 1, 1951