THE LAW OF FREEDOM

Introduction

”Life is freedom. Without freedom there is no development, which is the meaning of life.”

The cosmos has been formed in order that the individuals should have the opportunity of acquiring consciousness and final omniscience. This plan is actualized in many different kinds of processes of manifestation, which afford the individuals all the opportunities and possibilities they need for their development. These processes of course must go on according to law and be methodical.

All monads are free in the respect that no god in the entire cosmos can forbid anything or judge anybody. When the individual has acquired knowledge of the Law and applies this knowledge right, he is free to the extent of his knowledge and ability.

Absolute freedom is an absurdity. It would mean that we all had the right to kill each other. Freedom without law abolishes itself. Freedom presupposes limits. And these limits of life are laws of nature and laws of life. Only by acquiring knowledge of these laws and ability to apply them can we attain the highest degree of freedom. The more ignorant we are, the less free we are, since we do not know the laws or how we are to apply them. Development entails increased freedom through increased insight, increased knowledge of reality and of the laws of life.

The law is, first and foremost, freedom. The law is freedom for without freedom there is no development of individual character. Saying this entails some risks, because men have a tendency, acquired over incarnations, to abuse any freedom as well as power. As long as there is an inherent tendency to “defy the law”, the result will not be more freedom but less.

Freedom is in danger anywhere where power is concentrated. The lower the level of development, the greater the risks. Supreme power affords the greatest possible freedom though always within the limits of self-acquired knowledge, insight, and understanding of law.

The will is not “free” but determined by motives, by the strongest motive. Increased freedom means increased understanding of a greater number of possibilities to choose, insight into how to make any motive whatever the strongest. Free is the man who can always decide himself what thoughts he will think and what feelings he will cherish. Unfree is the man who cannot control his mental and emotional life, in whom undesired, disturbing, and destructive thoughts and emotions come and go as they like.

Such criticism as is aimed at a person’s own circumstances as a private individual, thus such criticism as violates the individual’s right to freedom according to the law of freedom, is not warranted and can never be defended.

The law of freedom includes the principle of tolerance: to allow all people to hold their own views in peace from the criticism of others. Everybody has an absolute right to his own opinion. We have full freedom to hold the most erroneous views on everything. They will be corrected eventually during thousands of incarnations with more or less painful experiences.

It is a difficult thing to be able to help others in the right way. We have no right whatever to blame them or criticize them, like moralists judge them. It is none of our business to “change” them. We all have the same faults, although to different degrees. The ability to help requires loving understanding. Without it we make nothing but mistakes. Having it, we always find ways and means.

Others may! You must not! And that depends on the laws of destiny and reaping.

Henry T. Laurency:
– Knowledge of Life One, The Law, Law of Freedom
– The Philosophers Stone, Esoteric Live View, Law of Freedom www.laurency.com
Lars Adelskogh, The Explanation, Section Seven, Law of Freedom www.hylozoik.se

Freedom Is Law

”It is our right as well as our duty to be free, free from everything that does not agree with our individual character, our way of looking at things, our capacity for comprehension, understanding, and realization.”

Life is meant for freedom. If the meaning of life is the development of individual consciousness, how would this be possible if not all unique individuals were allowed to choose their own ways in which to develop? In the most profound sense, freedom is individuality: right to, but also capacity for, individual character and individual activity within the limits set by the equal right of all to the same. Life is freedom.

All beings must obey laws if they are to live and develop at all. At all stages the individual’s measure of freedom is a direct result of his ability to live according to the laws. Man is the lowest kind of evolving being that can reach an understanding of laws of nature and laws of life, live intentionally according to the laws. The better he follows them, the higher he reaches. Life is law.

Thus life is freedom and law at the same time. This is an enormously important realization that we can reach through esoterics alone. Freedom and law of life are, esoterically, two aspects of the same thing: without freedom no life according to law, and without law no freedom.

People ignorant of esoterics have thought that they find a paradox in freedom: the greater freedom for some certain individual or group, the less freedom for all the others. There are plenty of examples in our world; the dictator with unlimited power (or freedom) over a subdued, fearful nation is an instance.

Common sense tells us that if we view freedom as a paradox, then it is more likely that our concept of freedom is false than freedom itself would be illusory. As long as freedom is regarded as a right to arbitrariness and violation of the right of others, so long it must remain a paradox. When freedom is understood as the equal right of all, as law in other words, then the paradox dissolves.

Also our concept of law has its origin in ignorance and, therefore, is erroneous. From the hylozoic point of view, the most serious feature of the misconception is that law is made subordinate to god, that law is considered as tantamount to the inscrutable will and power of an infinite being. According to hylozoics, there is no such being. All “gods” are finite beings, omniscient and omnipotent only in a relative sense. And all “gods” obey the law. They are gods by virtue of their power to understand and apply the law in a sovereign manner within their limited (albeit to us enormous) sphere of life.

In hylozoics, law is above god. And this is the condition of freedom and evolution. No god can or even wants to prohibit anything, punish or judge anybody. Religions containing such doctrines reflect in this mere man-made fictions. Instead, hylozoics asserts the inviolability of the individual as a logical consequence of his potential divinity. For all monads will some time reach the highest divine stage. Only the time for this is different for all. And those who are now at the highest stage know that they would never have been able to reach it without their divine right to freedom.

Lars Adelskogh, The Explanation, Section Seven, Law of Freedom www.hylozoik.se

Freedom Must Be Conquered

”Development is the path from ignorance to omniscience, from bondage and impotence to omnipotence, from isolation to unity with all life, from suffering to happiness, joy, and bliss.”

The goal of the existence of the cosmos is the omniscience and omnipotence of all monads. This harmony is an existence of the greatest possible freedom and, at the same time, the greatest possible lawfulness for all.

From the beginning, the monad is totally unconscious and totally unfree. Its path to final cosmic divinity is named development. This implies self-realization. The monad will itself conquer all the necessary qualities and abilities by having experiences and learning from them. Just so the monad gains knowledge, insight, and understanding. Just so the monad forms its ever unique individual character.

Man works at increasing his freedom by obeying the laws of life. To do this, he need not be aware of them. When he has discovered them, however, he can with greater energy and purposiveness work for his own and other beings’ liberation, evolution to something higher. In order to discover the laws of life, man must first learn to apply them.

Man is at every stage, on every level in evolution, relatively free, relatively not free. He is free to the extent that he has acquired knowledge, understanding, ability. The limit of his knowledge, understanding, and ability indicates the limit of his freedom. The condition of reaching the greatest possible freedom at every stage and level is that man has acquired such extensive knowledge and such activated ability to apply knowledge as is possible at his stage and level.

Man develops under the balancing of freedom and law. This is what is called responsibility. When we prove our sense of responsibility for others, standing up for their freedom and right, then the consequence according to the law of responsibility or reaping is that our own freedom will increase. And, conversely, when we infringe the right of another, we lose the same measure of freedom ourselves. It can happen in this life or later. The law can wait. But a sowing will some time be reaped. The better we know the laws of life, the better we can live our lives. We then avoid infringing the right of others and so have greater freedom, being spared such limitations of freedom as are conditioned by reaping. That curtailment can manifest itself in various respects: envelopes that are unserviceable for consciousness development, uncongenial environment, uncongenial social and cultural conditions. This fact can be ascertained only by studying hundreds of previous incarnations.

The individual’s freedom is thus a result of development. Freedom is not anything that is but something that must be acquired during the sojourn in the human kingdom; the acquisition of knowledge of the laws in the worlds of man and the ability to apply this knowledge. Man becomes free by identifying himself with an attainable ideal, by developing emotional attraction and mental understanding, by applying the Law according to his own insight, by fulfilling his duties and willingly reaping old bad sowing. The laws of life coincide with the purpose of life. “Absolute” freedom is the accordance of the individual will with this purpose.

The individual is free when he has entered unity. He then lives without causing friction with others, in full harmony. He applies the law of unity and therefore automatically lives inharmony with the Law, since the law of unity is the sum of all the laws of life that work in self-realization.

The path to freedom goes through consciousness, self-consciousness, knowledge, the power to apply, the freedom to choose, the knowledge of the Law, the power to apply the Law. It is only by discovering and applying the Law that we gain power to an unceasing and increasing extent. Lawlessness implies abuse of power and results in loss of power and impotence.

Lars Adelskogh, The Explanation, Section Seven, Law of Freedom www.hylozoik.se
Henry T. Laurency, Knowledge of Life One, The Law, Law of Freedom www.laurency.com

The Limits to Freedom

”Freedom is abused, as is power. From this it follows that freedom and power begin where abuse, individual or collective, ends.”

Men apprehend the concept of freedom as arbitrariness. There is no arbitrary freedom, for such mistaken freedom always leads to chaos. Lawless freedom means anarchy, the war of all against all. On that basis no society can be built or endure. That may be called the irrational concept of freedom.

The law of freedom is freedom and law, not freedom without law, not law without freedom. The law of freedom guarantees the freedom of everybody. Anyone who makes himself a law to others suspends his own freedom.

Our right to freedom is limited by the equal right of all. The borderline runs there. Mankind has not realized even this. And that is the first thing that educators should inculcate. The principle of reciprocity (measure for measure) is the legal principle of justness. All rights and obligations, all relations between individuals, rest on the basis of reciprocity, which can never be disputed.

According to the law of freedom everybody has the right to think, feel, say, and do as he thinks fit within the limits of everybody’s equal right to that same inviolable freedom. It has been thought that that formulation is not sufficient, since most people are unable to decide where the limits to their own and other people’s right are and that the limits may appear different to different individuals. Then they forget that it is a matter of a law of life which holds good independently of their ability or inability to see limits. Those who have reached the humanist stage, however, and realize that the laws of life are inescapable (so that violations of them have inevitable consequences), try to apply them in their lives according to their knowledge and ability.

No formulation holds good as long as people cannot tell right from wrong, cannot distinguish the finer (ever finer) degrees of right and wrong (the “razor-edged” middle path).The formulation is quite sufficient for those who just want to do the right, who are not reckless egoists infringing the right of others. For the latter, however, all formulations are unserviceable and the dividing-line between right and wrong must be carefully given in each particular case; a thing of which jurists have sufficient experience. Common sense, uprightness, the will to unity sees very clearly where the limit is. The given formula accords fully with another one: Treat others as you would be treated by them.

The mistake made by all occult societies or schools is that they prescribe to people how they should form their private lives. The law of freedom grants men full freedom in that respect. It is the individual’s private business whether he wants to be a vegetarian, give up smoking and drinking alcohol, etc. When the individual is given the knowledge of reality and life and the laws of life, then he will, himself and to the best of his ability, arrange his private life, which he has a right to keep in peace from other people. On the other hand, it is not our private business how we relate to our fellow human beings. It is better to be an agnostic and eat beef-steak than to interfere with other people’s business, speak ill of others, and hate them. For such things are proof of hypocrisy and a Big Brother attitude.

Henry T. Laurency:
– Knowledge of Life One, The Law, Law of Freedom
– The Philosophers Stone, Esoteric Live View, Law of Freedom www.laurency.com

Freedom and Responsibility

”All life has its freedom on the hard conditions of its own.”

Only men domineer and prohibit. No power of life may do so, for that would conflict with the law of freedom and with the individual’s divine sovereignty. The law of freedom grants to man the right to be his own freedom and his own law, as long as he does not infringe the right of all beings to that same inviolable freedom. This right of the individual is inalienable and divine.

Men’s abuse of the word responsibility demonstrates that they have no idea of its meaning. Would it not be incomparably easier to conform just sufficiently to a number of poor commandments? Every mistake as to the laws of life (known and unknown ones) entails inevitable consequences in lives to come. The number of incarnations is unlimited, until all the bad sowing has been reaped unto the last grain. None will escape his self-formed destiny. Most people blithely continue sowing their daily seed of hatred in thoughts, emotions, words, and actions. They need grace to go on abusing freedom with impunity. Nobody has told them the truth, just lulled them into the absurd belief in the possibility of escaping the consequences. The simplest reason ought to tell them that freedom of responsibility would abolish freedom, that arbitrariness of any kind would abolish all conformity to law.

Philosophers construct moral laws and moralists increasingly more prohibitions. Life does not know of any moral law, or of any prohibition. Life does not know of any grace, only of unerringly just law. Prohibitions are psychological blunders of moralists, abortive attempts of the helpless to force the unwilling into obedience. In their ignorance of life, the moralists make the mistake of turning human fabrications into divine dictates, something akin to blasphemy. The gods are no dictators but incorruptible administrators of the immutable laws of life. The moralists’ greatest idiocy of life, however, is their self-assumed right to judge. In their presumption they think themselves capable of acquitting and convicting, to which not even any god has a right. And these blind leaders of the blind – who daily crucify man, these fault-finders ignorant of life who every now and then make the most fatal mistakes as to the laws of life – appoint themselves guides of mankind.

Individual development takes place under the balancing of freedom and law. Freedom abused limits, abolishes freedom. Freedom rightly used affords increasingly greater freedom. The individual’s freedom is secured by the freedom of all, and is perfected by the individual’s realization of unity.

All violate every now and then the right of others to inviolable freedom and all are accessories, also those who impartially witness to the violation of freedom. Only when the individual’s freedom is not violated any more, only then can development continue quietly and harmoniously, and life grant to every being its greatest possible joy and happiness. The only way to regain a lost right to happiness is to make others happy and not to increase the hardship of living for anyone. People are a long way short of the self-evident understanding of life.

Henry T. Laurency, The Philosophers Stone, Esoteric Live View, Law of Freedom www.laurency.com

Equality

”Every individual is something quite unique. Every attempt to force individuals into any kind of mould is a violation of the Law of Life.”

“All men are equal.” They are equal in the respect that everybody has a causal envelope (acquired at the transition from the animal to the human kingdom). This is the envelope that makes them human beings. They are also equal in the respect that all are on their way towards the same goal, the fifth natural kingdom. In order to reach that goal they must within the human kingdom step by step acquire ever more widened consciousness, a series of ever higher consciousness levels. Men are different in the fact that their transition from the animal kingdom did not occur simultaneously but during widely different epochs, which has entailed that those with older causal envelopes have managed to reach higher consciousness levels than those with younger such envelopes. The difference is thus a matter of age. Since all mankind makes up one great family, it is the duty of the elder brothers to help their younger brothers.

There can never be any equality. Classes are the natural order of things in all kingdoms of nature, lower as well as higher ones. The natural classes indicate different age classes. The difference in age between human individuals can amount to seven eons. The immense difference in experience of life is greater than ignorance can possibly grasp.

Some people are healthier, stronger, faster than others. Some have greater capacity for the arts, philosophy, science, religion, business than others. Some have greater “luck” than others. Every individual is unique, for the long journey he has behind him has made him the individuality he is. The individuals of the human kingdom may be found on any one of the 777 levels of developmental. During thousands of incarnations they have had individual experiences and developed qualities and abilities in countless respects to highly different percentages. However, we all belong to the human kingdom and can demand to be recognized as human beings with everything which that implies in the matter of personal integrity.

Those who have realized that all life develops and that every individual is found somewhere on the seemingly endless gamut of development from the mineral stage to the highest divine stage, those also realize that the democratic ideal of equality is an illusion of life-ignorance and envy. That nobody really believes in equality appears in the fact that although pride refuses to recognize anyone as its superior, yet contempt always sees untold multitudes below itself.

People have a mania for making everything absolute. They group each other into either–or instead of both–and. You are either an optimist or a pessimist, good or evil, knowing or unknowing, reasonable or foolish. There are no such people. We are all a mixture of everything. Sometimes or in certain respects or under certain conditions we are one thing or the other. During thousands of incarnations ever since the stage of barbarism we have been acquiring all the good and bad human qualities. We have them all at some percentage in our subconscious. What their percentages are we do not know and no other human being either. Which of these good or bad qualities will manifest themselves in any one incarnation depends on physical heredity, upbringing, environment, opportunities of development, etc.

Every individual is something quite unique. Every attempt to force individuals into any kind of mould is a violation of the Law of Life.

Henry T. Laurency:
– Knowledge of Life One, The Law, Law of Freedom
– The Philosophers Stone, Esoteric Live View, Law of Freedom www.laurency.com

Social Freedom

”With highly developed citizens, any social system will be ideal. With comparatively lowly developed citizens – as is the case now – the most ideal social system will be an unrealistic armchair product.”

The basic factors in physics are force and matter. The dynamic factors in society are power and people. Power arises from the will and action of people but can subsequently live on more or less independently: the power of tradition, the power of ideas, the power of conventions are examples of that.

Power is force. And if power is not to be a blind, destructive force of nature, it must be controlled and directed. This is the task of consciousness. The higher the level of consciousness in an individual or collective, the greater the power he or it may use according to the laws of life. Higher consciousness entails a greater knowledge of the laws of life, a greater ability to apply them faultlessly.

Power is in itself neither evil nor good. Power is in itself nothing “bad”. Power is necessary to keep people together, to counteract chaos, to drive people to action, to carry through necessary changes. Whether power is to be a force for evil or good depends on the wielder’s level of consciousness, degree of egoism (will to power) or altruism (will to unity), his ability of prevision, and the actual result – a good resolution may as we know have a bad result.

In its ideal form, the wielding of power both aims at, and leads to, greater freedom for all, deeper unity between all, better self-realization for all, more efficient activation of all – in short – higher developed consciousness in all.

In its ideal form, power is always balanced by equally much responsibility exacted. Power without responsibility is despotism. Responsibility without power is oppression. The fact that the law of reaping always exacts responsibility for abuse of power does not hinder us human beings from doing it as well.

The more responsibility a man is willing and able to bear, the greater the power the Law entitles him to wield. The greatest possible responsibility presupposes the greatest possible knowledge and ability but entitles to the greatest possible power or freedom. For power and freedom are the same thing as seen from different view-points and with boundaries drawn differently between the individual and the collective. Everybody has, according to the law of freedom, a right to live his own life in his own way, as long as he does not violate the right of others to the same.

But freedom over the lives of others (that is: power) should be given only to those who have reached such a degree of insight and ability that they can bear the responsibility accompanying this freedom, should be given only to those who have learnt to obey the laws of life. Any authority is hostile to life which lacks the knowledge of reality and life and the laws of life and tries to force the individual to accept the illusions and fictions of ignorance.

The problem of the ideal society is a problem of freedom. The greatest possible freedom to the greatest number of people, respect for everybody’s right, must be guiding principles. Those who want to introduce the ideal society by using violence against the law-abiding, restriction of freedom and right, are on the wrong path. They believe they can promote the abstract or ideal good by violating the concrete and real good. That demonstrates the power of “ideas” (actually: fictions) over thought.

The four freedoms, which have been definitively established to apply for all nations that claim to be cultural and not barbarian nations, are: Full freedom of thought and expression for everybody. Full freedom for everybody to have his own world view and life view. Everybody’s right to means of physical existence. Everybody’s right to freedom from fear, which means protection against illegal actions and, where nations are concerned, disarmament (protection against war). These demands are in full agreement with the Law (the laws of life). They constitute basic human rights.

The ideal society is not brought about by means of a certain social system. Democracy is no guarantee of freedom, no more a guarantee against abuse of power than any other kind of government: one-man rule, clique rule, rule by a class, or by the majority. Democracy presupposes ideal men.

Societies can never be constructed beforehand. They take shape while growing according to the collective character of people. Generally it can be said that the determining factors in society do not concern organization or system. They never have as much to do with form as with content, that is: function, dynamics, and consciousness. And it is people that make up the content of the organization or system. Of course social forms are dangerous that concentrate power in a few persons’ hands. And certainly that social form is the best which distributes power the most evenly between different interests and classes, contains powerful barriers to abuse of power, and has efficient, incorruptible authorities of scrutiny. But the solution lies nevertheless in people themselves. When a sufficiently influential minority of citizens (it will take a very long time before they will be in the majority) have understood the law of freedom so that they act on this understanding, they will force their rulers to such concessions that freedom will be achieved and their society will be the very best with respect to the developmental stages of the population. With highly developed citizens, any social system will be ideal. With comparatively lowly developed citizens – as is the case now – the most ideal social system will be an unrealistic armchair product. For it is people that succeed or fail in living up to the ideals; and it is people that in so doing make up the content of the system.

Lars Adelskogh, The Explanation, Section Seven, Law of Freedom www.hylozoik.se
Henry T. Laurency:
– Knowledge of Life One, The Law, Law of Freedom
– The Philosophers Stone, Esoteric Live View, Law of Freedom www.laurency.com