Is man free or not? For a thou­sand years this has been a ques­tion for every think­ing man. Free as a bird, free as the wind – all these expres­sions speak of being unbound. True, the bird soars freely, but it flies under com­pul­sion; nor does any­one tell the wind which way to blow, yet once it has set out from some­where, it is com­pelled to move in exactly the oppos­ite dir­ec­tion: the west wind, towards the east.

What kind of free­dom should we ascribe to man? Free­dom of move­ment? Free­dom of decision or of action? Free­dom of thought or of will? If we con­sider the three great spheres of human exist­ence – action, speech and thought – what kind of free­dom does man have? Phys­ic­al lim­it­a­tion is a fact. The body's build and the chan­nels of the senses allow only so much room to move, just as social status does. And yet man must be cap­able of some kind of self-lib­er­a­tion. Bio­lo­gic­al free­dom is what we can speak of least of all; to be coded for exist­ence is not free­dom but com­pul­sion, and a wil­ful exit from it is no escape either. When bod­ily life ceases, or is ended, exist­ence as a prin­ciple does not cease. And for all the push­ing at bio­lo­gic­al lim­its, reshap­ing bod­ily exist­ence only changes the con­di­tions of com­pul­sion; it gives no free­dom, at most the illu­sion of it. It is as if, to escape, one dug a tun­nel out of a pris­on cell and came up in the cell next door: out of the fry­ing pan into the fire. This, of course, is true of chan­ging most social con­di­tions as well; man trades one cap­tiv­ity for anoth­er.

If bio­lo­gic­al free­dom is impossible, social free­dom is more impossible still. As long as free­dom is regarded as a polit­ic­al or social factor, think­ing falls into a fatal trap. Here again, polit­ic­al free­dom seeks to change not the mode of exist­ence but the sys­tem of con­di­tions. So what is needed is not bio­lo­gic­al, not social or polit­ic­al free­dom, but meta­phys­ic­al free­dom: the lib­er­a­tion of con­scious­ness.

This idea will prob­ably appeal to free thinkers, though our think­ing, too, is determ­ined, con­fined and codi­fied a thou­sand times over. It is enough to leaf through a volume of Aris­totle to recog­nise that for mil­len­nia we have fol­lowed sim­il­ar pat­terns of thought, almost uncon­sciously. Now, to depart from these ingrained habits, these modes of think­ing, is extremely hard; the bonds can scarcely even be recog­nised. To set human con­scious­ness on entirely new found­a­tions, every avail­able spir­itu­al resource must be mobil­ised. What secures the lib­er­a­tion of human con­scious­ness is the imper­ish­able divine con­scious­ness, the order­ing prin­ciple of all things – this is worth accept­ing as a premise, and it means chan­ging not only the con­di­tions but the mode of exist­ence! For this, the ignor­ance that keeps man far from the Imper­ish­able must first be dis­pelled, in the spir­itu­al sense. The next ques­tion rightly arises: how can this Imper­ish­able high­er con­scious­ness, the divine intel­li­gence, be known? It is more accur­ate to put it thus: how can this con­scious­ness be recog­nised, how can man awaken to this high­er real­ity? At first sight the Imper­ish­able is unknow­able and indes­crib­able; yet if it is the order­ing prin­ciple of all things, then lib­er­a­tion from the lim­ited state of mater­i­al exist­ence is pos­sible through the Imper­ish­able, which is why it is indis­pens­able to catch it in the act.

That is pre­cisely why it is import­ant to speak of the reg­u­lat­ive prin­ciples of free­dom. Even in the state of lib­er­ated con­scious­ness there are laws that hold, only they dif­fer from those that have hitherto determ­ined human think­ing by com­pul­sion. Thus free­dom (or its illu­sion) lasts as long as ignor­ance lasts. Who­ever pos­sesses know­ledge is no longer free, for truth binds, pre­scribes what con­duct is right and what is to be avoided, and marks out the dis­tant goal and man's etern­al call­ing. Sup­posed free­dom is a bond, but this bond is free­dom…