I would like to report to you about an article recently published in the Southern California Research Lodge F.& A.M. in April 2009. In an article by John White, 32 degree KT the concepts of Christianity, evolution, the holy grail and the Templars are explored.  Sir Knight White's words and concepts are well written and I'll will share some of them with you as we explore these concepts along with him.

"Christianity, rightly understood, is a Western enlightenment tradition.  Just as Buddha did not teach Buddhism, Christ did not teach Christianity.  Both taught systems for liberation or God-realization." *  To liberate is to "set free" and carries a meaning "to free an occupied territory from the enemy".  To realize something is to "make something actual, to understand clearly".  To "set free" the humans who sought God, to make God something "real" and clearly understood to their followers was the mission of each of the above teachers.

"In the West, however, those who preserved the system too often failed to understand it.  As a result, the religion of Jesus became a religion about Jesus, a cult of personality rather than a path for self-transcendence.  Christianity thereby became Churchianity, whose primary objective was the ego-driven maintenance of power, authority and wealth.  Whether within the Church or outside it, individuals, sects and movements which challenged the establishment with the teaching that direct access to Godhead was not only possible but actually the purpose of Christianity, were generally suppressed." *

"Consequently, the enlightenment aspect of Christianity was forced underground, and only now is reemerging publicly because of two factors:  the discovery of lost Gnostic texts which challenge traditional dogma and the huge hunger around the globe for self-transcendence and acceleration of evolution to a higher form of humanity." *  Sir knight White proposes that the huge interest in stories like the Da Vinci Code, National Treasure and the like illustrate this desire.

"An underground stream of teaching and teachers kept alive the knowledge of enlightenment, just as Jesus himself had done in his time for a tradition whose origin goes back at least to pharoanic Egypt. Among those who rightly understood Jesus were the Order of the Temple, or Knights Templar...they were the ones who first publicized the Holy Grail [which] initiated the story of the the Grail Quest." *

White then relates a bit of Templar history as background information and notes: "The principle charge against the knights was the accusation that they worshiped the head of a bearded man.  In an irony totally lost on their accusers, we now know that...the Templars had come into possession of the burial cloth of Jesus, otherwise known as the Shroud of Turin.  It was kept folded in a wooden box or casket with an opening which allowed the face of the Man in the Shroud to be viewed as a form of [veneration].  The viewing window of the Shroud's wooden container was framed with latticework." *  White quotes Frank Tribbe, author of The Holy Grail Mystery Solved, and explains to us that "the Old French word groille which referred to the lattice frame or grillwork, was translated over time into the English grail." *

White shares the tradition with us that using the term groille was "a shorthand way of referring to the tangible evidence of holiness which it displayed, the cloth imprinted with the image of the risen Christ formed at the moment of resurrection and his attainment of the final stage of enlightenment....The Templars understood...that the Shroud was mute testimony to the fact that Jesus trans-substantiated himself in the grave through an act equivalent to a self-controlled nuclear explosion which transformed his flesh, blood and bone into a body of light, the resurrection body, and thereby conquered death.  He attained enlightenment to the ultimate degree; he actually became light and is now known as the Light of the World." *

White continues and explains his belief in the purpose of the Shroud and the Templars veneration:  "That was his teaching demonstration and he intended it for all humanity.  He wanted people to understand that the human potential can change the human condition.  He wanted people to understand that egoic hell can become ecstatic heaven through an ascent in consciousness to the non-dual realization that 'I and the Father are one.'  He did not claim an exclusive relationship with God, but rather an all-inclusive one....He spoke and acted on the premise that all people have the capacity to attain enlightenment (which he called the kingdom of heaven), even to the ultimate degree, and that if a sufficient number of people did that, the world would be transformed into heaven on earth, manifesting outwardly what was already the case inwardly. (Heaven means a state of unbroken communion with God, i.e. God realization, liberation, or enlightenment, and is not limited to the postmortem state...)." *

White then investigates some of the theories about the Templars coming to the new world prior to anyone else, because "of their experience with the corruption of the Old World, the Templars apparently set in motion a long-term project for the creation of a new and uncorrupted society in the New World." *  He provides several theories from several sources and concludes his proposition with "If so then America is a social-political experiment in evolutionary enlightenment.  Understanding that leads directly to the recognition that a global culture and political system founded on universal wisdom and unconditional love is not only possible, but actually within our grasp..."

In his article Franklin-Freemasonry and the Enlightenment by Richard E. Fletcher, published in the same source,  observes the following about our modern culture:  "It could be fairly said that many people no longer go to church for spiritual contemplation or read a newspaper to learn.  The successful churches and the successful TV newscasts or print media are those who entertain. We have become a nation who worships mediocrity and..no one can rise to the level of excellence.  We can only rise to the same level of mediocrity shared by our fellow students or co-workers...We do this so that no one will have low self-esteem.  High self-esteem is now praise for doing nothing and accomplishing nothing....it is always easier to go along.  Benjamin Franklin was not a man who went along." **  Neither is it the way for the Templars.

Benjamin Franklin wrote his own epitaph, Fletcher tells us:  "The body of Benjamin Franklin, Printer (like the cover of an old book, its contents torn out and stripped of its lettering and gilding), lies here, food for worms; but the work shall not be lost, for it will (as he believed) appear once more in a new and more elegant edition, revised and corrected by the Author."  **

Now THAT is the Templar Way.


* Evolutionary Enlightenment and the Holy Grail, by John White, 32 degree KT; Southern California Research Lodge F.& A.M.; April 2009

** Franklin-Freemasonry and the Enlightenment, by Richard E. Fletcher, Southern California Research Lodge F.& A.M.; April 2009