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 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 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

I have seen people in action who have made impossible demands on everyone else, – yet have been incapable of making even the slightest demand upon themselves.

I have seen others who have made almost superhuman demands upon themselves, yet have also expected the same from others.

Both these situations are impossible where true freedom reigns!

Neither can be justified before the law of necessity!

One person can resemble another so much that you might easily confuse them, and yet no one’s soul is the exact copy of someone else’s!

The fact that you have created your own measure for the things you require of yourself does not give you the right to use that same measure when dealing with your neighbor!

The measure of every person is determined by one’s innate ‘stature’!

Much ruin is caused with the best of intentions because one assumes ‘rights’ based on fulfilled duties, yet without questioning the basis of the right to impose on others the demand one has freely accepted for oneself and is capable of fulfilling?? –

The child justifiably resists such imposed burdens, – young people justifiably defend themselves against them unless they are compelled to conform resentfully…

We are not talking here about the effects of giving an example which still allows those whom it influences every freedom; rather we are talking about that wicked kind which angrily seeks to impress on others its own values, – without any inkling that the real values of those others might always be foreign and therefore unrecognizable to it. –

As those convinced of their value have changed their direction a thousand times, now the others, over whom they have been given power, must change direction as well.

Countless are the examples found in everyday life which show how the urge to compel works in this way; countless too are the half-destroyed lives struggling to develop properly because too much concern or inflexible stubbornness ‘expelled’ their freedom…

But once freedom has been ‘expelled’ by compulsion, compulsion quickly becomes a bad guide: – seductively teaching the pursuit of the specter of freedom. –

Authority can be unconditionally united with the freedom of those who subordinate themselves to it, but the false image pretending to show a freedom which seems to be independent of eternal necessity, cannot! –

Compulsion, on the other hand, gnaws at and destroys every authority, for the rigid form of its demands invades the right of others to self-determination!

One should try and avoid compulsion wherever possible even if the welfare brought about by compulsion really seems to demand it!

Compulsion is always a poor expedient, – even when its use at times cannot be avoided!

In numerous cases, however, compulsion could be avoided if real authority, as the self-willed expression of assured freedom, of fulfilment of necessity, existed. – –

Where compulsion is still needed to support ‘authority’, one must ask the question: – whether authority really exists or whether there is merely its derisory image, trying to compulsorily survive?!

Authority can only be founded upon freely offered trust!

If there is no assurance that one’s own well-being is guaranteed, every free person will see the vital foundations of true authority demolished.

Authority is, just like everything that should stand firm and secure, determined by the ground which bears it and by the foundations which have been sunk into that ground; – it will only continue to exist unthreatened if there are neither floods to wash them away nor nocturnal creatures to undermine them…

Not that what claims to be: – ‘authority’ in the face of others becomes authority; however, where authority fails to exercise its right to guide, one will wait in vain for human abilities to develop! – –

Also all those, who seek to overthrow proper authority, are submitting themselves with a conscious will to their own authority, which demands the strictest adherence. –

Ultimately proof will be needed to show where real authority exists or where only compulsion and persuasion seek to maintain the rights which trust once gave but no longer can grant…

In these cases any decision may be delayed for a long time, – in the end, however, necessity will prevail, for it can only allow authority to exist where freedom and trust provide its foundations.

Wherever the specter of freedom finds followers, the consuming urge to overthrow existing authority rages and seeks to substitute it with its own authority through the force of compulsion.

A long time may elapse before the dreadful consequence of this pestilence finally forces the deluded to recognize that they have destroyed what they should have made use of…

Never yet has the day of recognition failed to come, and woe to those, who are hit by the hail of rubble when their own authority collapses within itself! – –

Yet necessity has always been able to re-establish true authority in genuine freedom, firmly established through trust, even though it could not provide restitution for the sacrifice previously required by mistaken striving.

Life knows how to defend again and again the incontrovertible laws of its self-preservation even where arbitrariness presumes to set up its own tablets of law…

The purest of intentions must in the end come to nothing if it seeks to alter the demands necessity makes to prevent the destruction of life. – –

Since insight cannot be bought, and all too often the mere urge to assert oneself tries to get its way, in the delusion that it can bring about the changes of which it dreams, already good sense calls for never blindly granting authority its right to exist when the overthrow of existing authority is advised in order to win freedom. –

One can always be sure that those who seek followers using this advice see only the specter of freedom ‘hovering’ before them, and they follow it in self-delusion without suspecting the catastrophe they are preparing for themselves and others!

Yet where real authority exists, founded in the trust of those who place themselves under its leadership, self-assured insight will not in any way feel that self-determined submission diminishes freedom.

Real authority is also always inherently protected from becoming rigid because it is animated by the individual wills of all who unite with it in free acknowledgment.

Rooted in the recognition of the law of necessity, it provides those who trust in it the help, which they need to fulfil that law, from which true freedom can only arise. –

Thus all abuse of assigned authority constitutes guilt almost beyond atonement, – yet this abuse is directed always at itself because it undermines the trust in which authority can only find its justification. So, wherever abuse occurs, whatever assailed authority’s continuance sooner or later must collapse within itself.

This ends Part 4 of 12: “Authority”

Part 4 — There may never have been a deeper and more insightful analysis of “authority” than the one presented here by Bô Yin Râ. He writes that “Authority can only be founded upon freely offered trust!” By contrast, authority based on compulsion—that negates the freedom of those under authority—must soon or later “collapse within itself.” Authority successfully exercised is therefore essentially leadership—above all, leading by example. But this is rare in today’s world. Instead we see authority based on fear, on rewards and punishment, on threats, and on violence—including authority among and between nations. In a world like ours that is armed to the teeth, or where financial power dominates, civilized values disappear behind authoritative measures backed by legal dicta, court action, covert subversion, punishment, or even physical annihilation. The abuse of authority also leads to attempts by others to overthrow that authority and impose its own brand of compulsion on others. Abuse of authority also involves trying to control others through censorship, propaganda, and medical procedures such as forced administration of psychiatric drugs. The list is endless, with victims often seeking to escape by turning to the “specter of freedom” in their own lives. All these things attempt to negate the law of necessity which is inherently just and life-affirming. “Thus all abuse of assigned authority constitutes guilt almost beyond atonement.”

Part 1 of 12: “Mirage”

Part 2 of 12: “Necessity”

Part 3 of 12: "Communality"

“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.