The Deeper Symbolism of Freemasonry from The Meaning of Masonry by Walter Leslie Wilmshurst.

“Hence in the E.A. degree, we ask, ‘As a Mason, whence come you?’ and the answer, coming from an apprentice (i.e., from the natural man of undeveloped knowledge) is ‘From the West,’ since he supposes that his life has originated in this world.” [via]

Consider also:

  1. “Hence every Candidate upon admission finds himself, in a state of darkness, in the West of the Lodge. Thereby he is repeating symbolically the incident of his actual birth into this world, which he entered as a blind and helpless babe, and through which in his early years, not knowing whither he was going, after many stumbling and irregular steps, after many deviations from the true path and after many tribulations and adversities incident to human life, he may at length ascend, purified and chastened by experience, to larger life in the eternal East.”
  2. “I sometimes fear that the too conspicuous display of the emblems and trappings of mortality in our Lodges is apt to create the false impression that the death to which the third degree alludes is the mere physical change that awaits all men. But a far deeper meaning is intended.”
  3. “and herein we emulate what is written of the joy that exists among the angels of heaven over every sinner who repents and turns towards the light.”
  4. “In this degree it is that our attention is called to the fact that the Mason who has attained proficiency in this grade has been enabled to discover a sacred symbol, placed in the centre of the building, and alluding to the G.G.O.T.U. Doubtless we have often asked ourselves what that phrase and what that symbol imply. Need I repeat that the building alluded to is not the edifice we meet in, but is our own selves, and that the sacred symbol at the centre of the roof and of the floor of this outward temple is but symbolic of that which exists at the centre of ourselves, and which was spoken of by the Christian Master when He proclaimed that ‘the kingdom of heaven is within you’; that at the depths of our own being, concealed beneath the heavy veils of the sensual, lower nature, there resides that vital and immortal principle, which is said to ‘allude to’ the G.G. because it is nothing other than a spark of God Himself immanent within us.”
  5. “Tis scarcely true that souls come naked down To take abode up in this earthly town, Or naked pass, of all they wear denied. We enter slipshod and with clothes awry, And we take with us much that by-and-by May prove no easy task to put aside. Cleanse, therefore, that which round about us clings, We pray Thee, Master, ere Thy sacred halls We enter. Strip us of redundant things, And meetly clothe us in pontificals. [Strange Houses of Sleep by A. E. Waite.]”