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?

Onward then. In proceeding, the reader may well ask, what can possibly be said about religion that has not already been spoken or written about millions of times? And what can the topic of religion possibly have to do with “The Specter of Freedom”"? Well, read on!

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

In Asia, the womb of Europe and the original source of all great religions, flows a secret silent spring nourishing all true religious feelings ever to have sprouted forth and grown in mankind on earth, together with everything which in this day and age breaks through the crust of materially bound thinking.

These same feelings will even take nourishment from the same spring in the most distant future!

Although we can never see where life gets its viability, yet viability is manifested in what springs from it, in the same way this source of all genuine religious feeling is manifested just by its effects and only seldom is it known by very few.

Certainly, until this very day the most ridiculous fairytales have been circulating around the world finding believers who are truly ‘worthy’ of them. Yet the miracle’s champions in their well accustomed garb who stroll through these ‘fairytale books for the masses’ only live in the business-minded heads of their creators who are liberal in their use of magical accessories.

True mastery of reliable knowledge bears so little resemblance to the fictional imagery created by those speculating on the reading frenzy of fantasy addicts that there is no suitable measure of comparison, even if the enterprising inventors of these wondrously crafted tales have been able to ‘borrow’ material from writings available everywhere in order to benumb the aroused suspicions of innocently gullible minds.

It is really not a pleasant thought that nowadays, – in the middle of the modern world’s hustle and bustle, – there are more than a few people whose brains unresistingly tolerate the undignified idea that the Light of Eternity would reveal itself through fakir miracles and arcane arts of the sort one might ascribe to the sorcerer in an old magic opera! –

It behooves me to pluck the embarrassingly whimsical petals of this fairground romanticism so that what I will have to say will not be misused by turning my words into witnesses to some delusion or other!

We who are on this Earth do not only live our own individual lives but are deeply connected to all sentient beings, – and not just on this planet!

Although this bond with the universal has a significant influence within us, its effect is vastly surpassed by the effectual power of the earthly conditioned life of the conscious beings with whom we are interwoven here on Earth!

Far more influential, however, for the individual than the very bond with the Earth and Universe, is the group, well defined by the affinity of impulses, to which one belongs by soul! –

Without interruption one is exposed to its invisible influence, like all those belonging to the same group who are also continually under its influence! – –

People can be closely attached to this kind of ‘group’ who will never meet during their lives on Earth, will know nothing of each other in their external lives, speak no common tongue, and have grown up in completely foreign conceptual spheres. – –

All distances are bridged in these groups of kindred impulse!

Distance provides no hurdle to the reciprocal influence on those belonging to a group…

Just as electrical waves cover the whole orb of the Earth and yet can only be detected by antennae tuned into the same ‘wavelength’, so too invisible powers are broadcast from every human being, bringing each group of kindred impulse into the most certain connection without being perceived by other groups.

It has no bearing at all where you may be on Earth: – in all cases you will be reached by every effect coming from your group, regardless of whether those bound to you in this way live in your part of the Earth or another!

You have absolutely no power to break the connection made in this way, – unless you can change the impulses you are accustomed to follow and in doing so become ‘automatically’ connected to another group. –

Very different both in size and kind, many thousands of these invisibly united groups of souls permeate all human existence on Earth, – binding those who are separated by great distances, and very often dividing those who are nearest in space…

You participate in everything that occurs in every soul experienced within the group of those related by impulse without suspecting it! – –

You think you only perceive the stirrings of your own soul within you, and yet you are moved more than you might suppose by an occurrence of the soul experienced by one belonging to your group at the time, just as your experience can always be felt by all who share your impulses! – –

The things I want to bring to your understanding here may explain much that you often, to this day, had to abandon as a ‘mystery’…

Now you have an insight into the inner structure of the forms of attachments of the soul, and at the same time you know that you can determine what should influence you the most in experiencing your soul, – for: if you abandon those impulses which seem undesirable to you, even when they come to you as influences from those kindred to you by impulse, you will disappear from the group to which you happened to belong and find yourself united with another corresponding to what you now cherish within yourself. – –

You alone bear the responsibility for all your thoughts, words and actions, even if the impulses determining you came to you invisibly and unnoticed from another party!

Also those kindred with you by impulse and belonging to your soul’s group are influenced by you without knowing it and are responsible for their behavior in the same way.

It is now easy for you to say to yourself that the thousands of different groups of souls are layered ‘on top of each other’ in thousands of different levels of experience, and that you can only reach a higher experience of your soul if you tirelessly decide to abandon the lower impulses and always try to make the higher ones effective within you! –

Perhaps you will now also understand what I was saying about the silent ‘spring’ which still today, as thousands of years ago, feeds genuine religious feeling within mankind on Earth from the primal source of all spiritually animated religions, – from whatever conceptual forms such feelings might grow! – –

Perhaps you will now understand that I had to warn most explicitly against the spawn of superstition-saturated fantasy! –

Perhaps you now also recognize that I speak of a ‘spring’ whose waters flow from the innermost core of life, and that my words speak of nothing other than the highest and at the same time the smallest group of the soul of those kindred by impulse on Earth which reaches into the circle of Light of primal certain Being, – because they were already conscious within it long before earthly consciousness reached them! – –

You will also grasp that its influence can only come to those who yearn for the Light, – whatever the level of the group of those kindred by impulse to which they are attached. –

It is not through the closer kinship of impulse binding those few who are united in the Light that they can be perceived by other groups, but only by the power of that general inner bond in which all earthly human beings are interwoven, – and it will seem understandable to you that even there they can only approach souls whose entire striving is already leading them upwards!

We speak here only of the very innermost, and no curiosity, no kind of thirst for knowledge, no power on Earth can glimpse here more than what flows into the soul which has prepared itself to receive the Spirit-begotten ‘broadcast waves’ ceaselessly streaming from this group of Light-united beings to all their fellow humans on Earth! –

Very many indeed have long since been connected to this circle of Light, although they may interpret what has reached them according to the traditional teachings of their faith!

The ‘spring’ flowing here can fill every form created by spiritually enlivened faith, – and every deserving vessel is deemed worthy of receiving what it can ‘hold’…

Only ‘cups’ filled with the mud of the Earth and ‘sieves’ which are incapable of holding anything are unable to receive!

The teachings of your faith will certainly not hinder you, and your confession can only increase your ability to comprehend what is alive and must here be received…

You must only confess with your heart, and your faith must not just be rational presumption!

Look at the foundations of your faith, and test whether it has taken root within your soul!

If you see it is well founded and rooted in life, the Light-filled waters of wakeful knowledge will certainly never harm it, but rather make it first blossom and then bear fruit! – –

You must, it goes without saying, carefully weed out all superstition, for in order to feed itself, superstition will steal from your faith the strength needed for its development! –

Yet you must not confuse here mere jests and harmless ancient customs with that desolate delusion which wants to overgrow the soul! –

Even less must you seek to destroy forms of ancient belief which have only become ‘strange’ to you because they conceal symbols which you can no longer interpret!

Only folly tears up from the ground everything it does not recognize, and tramples wildly what it cannot make use of!

Religion too can only develop in true freedom, although the paths have largely been laid down since ancient times, on which the most varied forms of religious creativity alone have proven to be flexible and capable of transforming life.

In this way even religion can with certainty lead to genuine freedom and ensure you of your freedom! –

The wide variety of teachings and cults is deeply rooted in necessity!

It is self-deception to believe that differences in religious sentiment can be extirpated if the forms of a particular teaching and its cultic expressions have been spread over many countries! –

Everywhere words can indeed find their ‘servants’, and symbols demanding only conceptual comprehension can surely be interpreted by all peoples in the same way.

Religious feeling, however, – despite deliberate similarities in outward denominational form and cult – always finds its own way out of the assurance of the soul, a way which of necessity corresponds to its special nature.

From the outside it does indeed seem that the same religion rules in many different lands because the same cult has influence and the same words are heard everywhere, – yet inside exists what existed thousands of years ago and can never be extirpated, since it is firmly rooted far more deeply than the teaching and its cult which is perhaps ‘alien to the soul’. – –

It was not foolish ‘idolatry’, as modern man thinks, when ancient peoples honored the gods of their lands!

They knew that reality could be attained in this way, and this same reality is also attained even now in many lands and in many places on this Earth, even if the presentation created different images to comprehend it and external confession found new names for the powers hidden from it! – –

It is of little importance what has been recorded about the legendary ‘heroes’ of a people and what the tradition can tell us about the ‘local saint’!

Heroes and saints are ‘true’ only as: images of the presentation, and behind such images stands the Spirit-begotten reality which cares little whether it can be comprehended by the earthly through this or that image, – whether one builds altars to the divine in it or honors the spiritual human in it and consecrates him as the ‘patron saint’ of the churches of the land. – –

It is therefore not always right to ‘cleanse’ religions of all that lives within the created form which owes its existence to an earlier religious age! –

As an ancient picture, scarcely recognizable under blackened candle soot and church dust, can only be cleansed by the hand of an expert if it is to be recognizable again in all its former splendor, more than just the urge for rational clarity is needed, if religion is to be ‘cleansed’ from the soot which threatens to obliterate its clear countenance…

The price of this ‘cleansing’ of the teaching is too high if foolish ignorance too hastily washes away ‘signs’ which later on will painstakingly have to be added once more to the picture of the teaching for it still to speak to those who have regained the ability to interpret what in the meantime had been beyond interpretation! – –

Yet life is above teaching!

Your everyday life can show whether the teaching to which your heart is faithful is taking you towards true freedom or whether you are a servant to a teaching which dazzles you, so that you do not see that it is only a specter pretending to be ‘freedom’! – –

“People do not live on Earth for the sake of the Sabbath, but the Sabbath is instituted only for the sake of people!”

Only when teaching becomes part of life can it prove itself!

Confession anchored only in rational understanding is not much more than all ‘outward’ knowledge which is only of value – if you ‘give’ it value. – –

As long as your life is not ‘permeated’ with religion, you can make no use of your creed! –

Religion will only be ‘alive’ in you if it is forever present from the first moment you rediscover yourself on awakening until the last lucid experience you have of yourself before sleep hides it from you! –

Only if every event in your day is illuminated by your religious feeling, – in whatever form you comprehend it, – can you be certain that you correspond to what is ‘eternal’ in you! – –

Before this happens, you are an obstacle to your soul because you are stopping it from having its effect in this life on Earth! –

Before this happens, you are only aware of yourself in an animal way, even if you believe you recognize yourself spiritually! –

Though the whole world may revere you as one of its great people, you are subordinate in spirit to the least of those who immerse their daily work in the powerful rays of genuine religious feeling so that they may give fresh nourishment to their souls in everything they do! – –

From this inner permeation of all daily work with religion was once born on Earth all those cultures which you today admire and believe to be beyond our reach…

Our times too cry for a new world culture, – yet it seeks only to ‘construct’ culture in the way one would construct an iron bridge…

This era will only be able to ‘give birth to’ culture from itself when it can once again be permeated with genuine religious feeling! – –

But you who, as a ‘child of the times’, is alive here on Earth, – begin with yourself! –

If you have immersed your existence in religion, you will soon meet others, at every step on your way, seeking to transform themselves from mere earthly animals into people once more united with the Spirit…

Your life will then be the best teaching for them – and few words will be needed to confirm this teaching! –

If they put their faith in your words, how much more will they put their faith in your deeds!

If you are a living example of what fills your inner being, others will be able to live up to this example!

But you should not be a ‘spoilsport’ where others seek to savor the meager joys of their earthly lives, – nor should you, as a ‘sanctimonious hypocrite’ with eyes raised to the heavens, be ‘angered’ by the harmless, unrestrained folly of the joyful!

If all your everyday life is determined by the religion appropriate to you, you will indeed be able to laugh where one can do so without sin!

Soon you will discover that a joyful word can achieve more than miserable, over earnest warning and advice.

True religion is joyful freedom!

Distrust all that would present itself as ‘religious’ feeling if it does not confirm itself in the joy of the heart! – –

This ends Part 10 of 12 — “Religion”

Part 10 — One of the points to be made here is found throughout Bô Yin Râ’s teachings; namely that he does not advocate for any particular religion but declares that all genuine religions gain their vitality from the same source: the Luminaries who connect humanity with divine being. He goes on to explain what it means for a person to live his or her religion and ends with the declaration that “True religion is joyful freedom!” Along the way, Bô Yin Râ reminds us, in accordance with previous chapters of “The Specter of Freedom,” that we are all members, perhaps unwitting, of one of thousands of human groups that connects individuals on all levels, from the lowest of degrading impulses and actions, to the highest of spiritual attainment. He also explains how we make inner choices that elevate us from lower to higher groups where the joy of true religion can be felt.

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”

Part 7 of 12: “Competition”

Part 8 of 12: “The Craze for Catchwords”

Part 9 of 12: "Self-Realization"

“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.