One of the most universally recognized formulations in modern human history is the phrase “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” stated as a principle by the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Indeed, we all have at least a vague awareness that these three elements are good, if not essential, for fulfillment of our life on this planet. Also, most of us, especially those in authority, adhere to our own perceived privilege, under a variety of circumstances, to deny these elements to one or more of our fellow human beings. Of course such denial also has limits, as expressed, for instance, in the U.S. Bill of Rights.

Which brings us to the question: What really is freedom?

While we wrestle with that question, we may recall the saying of Jesus, “The truth shall make you free.” (John 8:23)

What then, is truth? And how does that truth function in life to work its wonders and produce the stated freedom?

As readers of Three Sages are aware, for almost a year we have been the only US website to publish selections of Bô Yin Râ’s spiritual writings, along with background and commentary. See additional selections of recent articles HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.

Bô Yin Râ was the spiritual name of Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken (1876-1943), born in Aschaffenburg, Germany, educated as a landscape painter, by spiritual pedigree a “Luminary of Primordial Light,” and, through his writings, the creator of perhaps the most important compendium of original spiritual writings in modern Western history. His master work is the 32-volume Hortus Conclusus (“The Enclosed Garden”).

While most of the material carried by Three Sages by and about Bô Yin Râ has pertained to the spiritual pursuits of the human individual, his book “The Specter of Freedom” focuses on the life of society as a whole. It’s a relatively long work, one that will be carried here in 12 installments. Within this book, Bô Yin Râ, explains two different perspectives on “freedom.” One path is that of freedom as a “specter”—a “ghost” or “illusion” that people follow believing it will lead them to happiness while instead it deceives them into falling into a pit of despair and, ultimately, destruction. The other path is real freedom that comes only when the price for it has been paid.

But what is that price? What are the practices and conditions that must be followed to create something really worth having? One of the conditions clearly is to study the teachings of spiritual masters who know what they are talking about. In our experience, Bô Yin Râ stands in the forefront of those individuals. Another is certainly Jesus, whose advice includes, for instance, the practices spelled out in the Sermon on the Mount.

The group of people involved in presenting material by Bô Yin Râ on Three Sages have provided these definitions of “The Specter of Freedom”:

1. The idiotic idea that we should be “allowed” to do just about anything we desire (as long as we don’t get caught?).

2. That enticing notion we conjure up thinking how being free from various earthly restrictions will allow us to fulfill our dreams but which ultimately disappoints because we did not take into account spiritual law and our spiritual inheritance.

3. In Polish, “Specter of Freedom” is “Upior Wolnosci,” which is a great translation as it would mean a “negative, lingering ghostly presence/entity.”

4. What can “freedom” possibly mean for a person who has not achieved complete control of thoughts, speech, and actions?

1. Mirage

2. Necessity

3. Communality

4. Authority

5. The Urge to Associate

6. The Failed Economy

7. Competition

8. The Craze for Catchwords

9. Self-realization

10. Religion

11. Science

12. Consciousness of Reality

Although the ancient Greeks raised their gods to a most elevated position, the wise ones of the time recognized a higher, mysterious principle to which they considered even the gods to be subordinate, namely: – ‘ananke’, = necessity.

Let those who want to renounce the ‘mirage’ of the ever changing, insubstantial appearance of freedom, – those who finally renounce their obedience to the specter of freedom, – tarry here a while.

The wisdom of the ancients might make itself felt in their souls…

They were certainly searching for genuine freedom when they encountered its specter in the past, and they only believed in it because they thought it was that freedom born of reality they were ardently striving to attain.

If they now really want to experience the mark of genuine freedom, it will be lit with unsuspected brightness once they see how humans in ancient times subordinated their gods – the freest of the free – to necessity. – –

The specter born in human brains is quick to cast shadows upon the mark of genuine freedom and, to awaken hope with dazzling images, that freedom can also liberate from every demand made by the law of necessity…

But true freedom grows only out of the most perfect fulfilment of this law!

No one has ever become genuinely free without having been ‘liberated’ by necessity! –

Those, however, who ascribe the same worth to a deception as to genuine freedom are truly not worthy of freedom!

To be free means thinking, speaking and acting as necessity requires – and those knowing the way freedom comes about can turn around their suffering! –

Truly! – no power is ever capable of stealing from them the freedom they have made their own!

Those blinded by the specter have little idea of the things this freedom opens up to those who could acquire it. – –

Necessity is not ‘compulsion’, – otherwise no one could stand in its way!

Necessity is the highest spiritually ordering principle in human beings, as in all life, and; this is precisely what the ancients sought to acknowledge in placing ‘ananke’ above the gods themselves! – –

Compulsion is simply force conditioned by earthly circumstances – the true caricature of necessity!

You can be forced and you can force others into doing many things which certainly have nothing to do with necessity. – –

Necessity is the fixed ordering of the totality in which the individual participates.

No one can escape this totality and its order for one moment, even were one to seek to negate everything on behalf of one’s imagination, apart from oneself!

In reality one is always united with the immeasurable whole, – one harms oneself if one acts against this whole, and one harms the whole when one does not develop oneself out of inner order. –

Only what really happens is decisive here!

The dreamer who sits in one’s cave and stokes the fire of one’s fantasy until it delivers to one’s imagination any heavenly realm one may prefer, – the lofty aesthete who separates oneself from all external activities to live ‘in beauty’ and produces one’s world of values remote from everyday life, – they are worth as much to the immeasurable whole as the brutish hedonist who only satisfies one’s bestial instincts which are in a continual state of arousal. – –

Such deluded persons are in ‘reality’ poor people who succumb to their own cravings and fail to fulfil what ‘ananke’: that necessity transcending the gods which orders all life, demands of them. –

Whatever one has created as one’s own world remains insubstantial, even if one manages to project its reflection onto the brains of thousands of other people!

Nothing real has been achieved through it!

If you want to attain genuine freedom you must fulfil what necessity commands you to fulfil!

The specter of freedom will arouse you so that your fantasy will affect your every thought!

You will make demands on yourself and others which are not founded in necessity but in the compulsion of your ‘overwrought’ thinking…

Because you demand too much you cannot achieve anything or far too little, and what you seek to steal greedily for yourself will be immediately taken away by those who were once your companions…

The yardstick which alone applies to all life is lost to those who follow the specter of freedom in their frenzied haste!

You call your criticism ‘justified’, – but how will you within yourself find a justification for creating ruin? – –

Criticism is like an avalanche crashing down from the icy glaciers.

Barriers must be constructed for it to be of benefit! –

It is understandable that you would like to see all that is around you ordered in the way you desire, – but have you already been ordered within yourself?!?

How can you expect the whole, of which you represent a tiny cell, to order things as you desire?!?

You will only learn to recognize what will add to your well-being when you learn to put your trust in necessity!

Necessity alone can teach you the things which will remain forever yours once acquired!

Only by fulfilling the law of necessity can you attain the true freedom you yearn for, even if you are still trapped in the delusion that freedom must surrender itself to you as capriciousness. – –

Wherever freedom was sought without fulfilling the law of necessity life became grey and murky!

The insubstantial specter of freedom rises with a smirk over vast territories and poisons every seed of the true will to freedom with its life killing breath. –

All the soul’s strength is beyond the responsibility of those who – even though in good faith – take it upon themselves to lead others into a delusion which beckons into such despair! – –

Unbearable also is the responsibility of those enticed who could not resist when promised impossible things although they surely knew that anything here on Earth which ever tried to resist the order of necessity was bound for ineluctable destruction, despite earthly compulsion often still resisting deterioration for a while…

Necessity calculates by different realities of time than those surveyed within the life of a human on earth! –

It can never ‘miscalculate’, for it is the value and content of all numbers!

All the reality of earthly and otherworldly existence is founded upon it!

It carries the firmament of the solar hosts; its ordering forces give measure and form to every grain of sand in the desert!

Humanity vainly seeks a continually flowing source of earthly well-being which is not contained by such fixed order! –

Those who vainly strive for freedom seek in another way than by fulfilling every demand of necessity!

It is not only the gods who must submit to ‘ananke’ but – the human being of the earth as well…

This ends Part 2 of 12

Part 2—”To be free means thinking, speaking and acting as necessity requires – and those knowing the way freedom comes about can turn around their suffering!” The chapter on “Necessity” introduces one of the most important, yet least understood, concepts in philosophy. Today’s humanity is constantly making the fatal assumption that reality can be altered by whim—that by dint of wishful thinking, or political grandstanding, or money, or power, or threats, or lies, or force, the fundamental nature of things can be overcome or abolished. An obvious example is that people must work in order to live. Another is that any given race, or nation, or individual, will fight for its right to survive if that right is threatened. Another is that there are two sexes—male and female. There are also innate senses of fairness, of responsibility, of consequences. None of these things is arbitrary, and a mature person will always take them into account. In terms of the ancient Greek culture, not even “the gods” had a higher rank than the law of necessity. In today’s terminology, no one is “above the law,” assuming the law itself is rooted in necessity. In Bô Yin Râ’s terms, it’s the “Scourge of Freedom” that tries to deceive us into believing otherwise, making it essentially a diabolical force, a kind of madness.

Part 1 of 12: "Mirage"

“The Specter of Freedom” is Book 13 of the Hortus Conclusus: the standard-translation© of the Hortus Conclusus (The Enclosed Garden), encompassing the spiritual teachings in thirty-two books by Bô Yin Râ. (Bô Yin Râ is the spiritual name of Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken 1876-1943.)

All rights, copyrights included, reserved by Posthumus Projects Amsterdam, 2014. Posthumus Projects Amsterdam is responsible for this standard-translation©. Posthumus Projects Amsterdam has provided general permission for reprinting and transmission of its publications with attribution. Edited for Three Sages.