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 the past year we have been publishing 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”), which he completed in 1936, having relocated from Germany to Lugano, Switzerland in the early 1920s.

While most of the material carried by Three Sages by and about Bô Yin Râ has pertained to the spiritual destiny 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 is being carried here in twelve 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 truly 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 time-honored practices spelled out in the Beatitudes, advice that is as relevant today as when they were uttered: “Blessed are the peacemakers,” etc.

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

1. The 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?

It may seem puzzling to find Bô Yin Râ, after writing the chapter on the vast topic of “The Failed Economy,” should next turn to a seemingly much more limited and self-evident topic like “Competition.” But his explanations, when followed in detail, may lead to some surprising conclusions, including the guilt humans may carry into the afterlife.

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

Where contributions of the same type are offered by different people, it cannot be held against anyone who values such a contribution if he pays attention to differing quality and favors the better.

It makes no difference here whether we are only talking about some activity and the product thereof, – of minor services and trivial matters, or whether we have in mind specialized abilities and sublime works.

Every increase in human capabilities: – from skilled use of talent and judicious arrangement to the most sublime, artistic creativity, – is always to a large extent determined by the preference given to the perfect over the imperfect.

If a contribution or the results of it serve daily use, personal protection already compels one to prefer the best, and if the contribution is directed at a higher need, knowledge about the quality achieved by others will be dissatisfied with anything less.

The consequence of this perpetual choice is competition between the providers of a contribution for the favor and selection of those requiring it.

To this extent competition is rooted in necessity and is the expression of freedom which is born of reality!

You are free to choose what is to be of use to you, and what you want to acquire against a certain equivalent, – equally you remain free to make the contribution you are offering fit the requirements of the market.

You will not be the victim of any injustice if the one doing the choosing passes by your ‘contribution’, – your ‘work’, because he can find better!

You too have the choice to settle for the sake of convenience for a lesser contribution or for your best!

But if you decide, freely or conditioned by necessity, to give of your best, it must first be clear whether you are aware of the scope of your ability to contribute, – whether you can apply the correct standard to yourself…

You complain about ‘failure’ and find bitter words for the ‘injustice’ you think has been committed against you, – however: you do not ask whether it is not a presumption to offer to make a contribution which you will certainly never be capable of making! –

Perhaps you can produce your very best within your scope, whereas you will strive vainly to get the upper hand when competing with those who are inherently capable of much greater things! –

Thus very many consider themselves to be ‘plagued by misfortune’ and look enviously at others who are preferred to them, because they were more aware of the level of demand which could still be matched by their contribution. – –

Very many are shipwrecked because although they possess a good boat, it is far too small to cross the ocean, and they cannot constrain the ambition which tempts them into daring to set sail on the high seas. –

He who wishes to compete must above all know his fellow competitors! He must not seek to measure up to those who are measured by a completely different yardstick!

He must not regard his fellow competitors as his ‘enemies’ simply because they are capable of outstripping him!

He may only hope for victory where his powers can bear comparison with those who strive at the same time, along with him, for victory.

It is certainly better to achieve perfection in the most restricted of fields than to compete with insufficient means where only the greatest personal strength can entitle one to victory! –

Everyone carries within him the power to achieve perfection in any sphere of activity which truly suits him!

Anyone can experience his powers increasing if he most carefully seeks to develop them!

But you can only rely on what is bestowed on you as your own ‘possession’!

Although you may acquire a limited amount in addition, the nature and intensity of your innate powers will strictly determine what is due to you and what must surely remain out of your reach!

Thus you will only be victorious in competition if you know your limits and resist the delusion that they can be extended arbitrarily simply through your desire to be victorious!

Competing for pre-eminence among your fellow competitors does not have to become a ‘fight’ in any sense!

(Of course I am not talking about that kind of competition which is conducted only in contest because the ‘contestants’ wish to measure their powers.)

Let the requirement to contribute made everywhere by daily life, inspire us here!

Here the ‘fight’ of competition can certainly be avoided!

I know that these words will only release a tired smile in all who are engaged in this very fight, – but I also know that many things can be changed more quickly than some think, if only the will is capable of changing…

Hardly would it be risky to maintain that most people today who are already bleeding in the ‘competitive fight’, are fighting against their will because they long ago recognized that the energies the fight costs them, could be better employed. –

Here too the slippery specter of freedom is considered freedom itself, tempting so many into deserts of calculations where, with parched souls they turn into mummies which, in spite of all the sand of gold heaped upon them, cannot restore the soul’s free life…

Yet the specter becomes impotent as soon as one recognizes anew that only where one allows the soul its rights can true freedom develop!

It is pitiful and certainly unworthy of man for those seeking the favor of the buyer to become so entangled in the greed of the animal that they destroy their competitors economically or seek to achieve this goal without any sense of shame!

It is pitiful for competition to be conducted in such a way that it shies not from falsehood and weaves a noose from its disgusting threads to strangle one’s competitors!

It is unworthy and at the same time also foolish to seek to achieve personal success only by reducing to rubble everything others have built up!

You will tell me that considerable successes have only been made possible through this type of behavior, and that what has come about in this way still stands ‘firmly established’ today.

This situation is certainly familiar to me, but I calculate according to different concepts of time, and I know of more certain laws whose execution is rarely hurried…

The individual who has gained success for oneself and those who serve that one at this price are not the only ones who cannot escape this execution of the law, but that one’s behavior also puts at risk the prosperity of whole countries and continents! – –

It is far from the worst thing that could happen if a dark day on the stock exchange causes to collapse what soulless greed sought to erect on the rubble of honestly accumulated stockpiles! –

Where human community fails to restrict those things which desecrate the human soul, a heavy price will be paid by grandchildren and their children for the guilt an individual, even if one is not an ancestor of those affected, was once responsible for!

But those who did not shy away from such terrible guilty acts, even though they may still feel themselves to be the victors on their death beds, will find no one in Eternity to take pity on them before all the consequences of their guilt here on Earth have been extinguished…

Love propagated by God may only provide forgiveness where guilt was itself a consequence of love!

Where ‘love’ conditioned by the animal has made a person ‘guilty’, the ‘love of God’ will take away that guilt, as soon as the one who has brought guilt upon oneself has been freed by those sharing in the same guilt! –

But where selfish gain has led someone into guilt, one can only bring about liberation from guilt by removing it oneself!

Those deluded and enslaved to selfishness cannot free themselves from the consequences of their acts until what they generated themselves to serve their instincts here on Earth, has been exhausted! – –

A partition wall can never be erected between the impulses created by the human being of this Earth in one’s daily life and their consequences which will only have effect once one has long departed this earthly existence! –

This ends Part 7 of 12, “Competition”

Part 7 — It is not possible to understand Bô Yin Râ without realizing that his explanation of human life goes well beyond our relatively short existence in an animal body here on earth to encompass vast periods of time before coming into this incarnation followed by a life in eternity. Especially for people accustomed to thinking our life ends at death, Bô Yin Râ’s explanations make our decisions and conduct much more serious. This is the case with the idea of competition, where the condition that is most spiritually correct is complete freedom of the marketplace so that those who produce the best products are the ones chosen by consumers to provide them with goods and services. Further, actions people take to restrain free trade or to unfairly take down their competition incur spiritual guilt, which we know in popular culture as “bad karma.” Bô Yin Râ’s explanation that this bad karma persists as people pass into the afterlife shows what a serious matter it is that we are living at a time when “unfair trade practices” both within our culture and between and among nations are epidemic. Just look at the huge number of lobbyists who descend on the government to make money for their clients by eliciting advantages and favors over their competitors. It’s a worldwide scandal. Then there’s the whole culture of going to war to seize other countries’ resources. Where is free trade in all that? Look too at the advertising industry that thrives on influencing people to buy products they often don’t really need.

Part 1 of 12: “Mirage”

Part 2 of 12: “Necessity”

Part 3 of 12: “Communality”

Part 4 of 12: “Authority”

Part 5 of 12: “The Urge to Associate”

Part 6 of 12: "The Failed Economy"

“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.