You can reach a stage in which you begin to have a feeling of freedom from your moods, your emotions, and your thoughts. This is the beginning of inner freedom, spiritual freedom. Maurice Nicoll

The Nature of True Freedom

“All freedom is gained by rising in the vertical scale of creation and so passing under fewer laws.” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p128

“The laws you put yourself under lead to your own inner evolution and eventual freedom from the laws of the earth.” Commentaries, p173

“We in the Work use the word freedom in connection with an idea of great density of meaning which has the Ray [of Creation] behind it. It is C influences—descending from Greater Mind—from above our level. It is not a man-made idea of freedom—as if Man, who could not make a simple part of his brain or body, could be free in the common sense. This is sheer vulgarity. Can you be free when you do not understand in the least how you are made? Yet, as you know, the word freedom has escaped from the control of the real, esoteric ideas behind it and has, so to speak, lost its origin, its parentage, and wanders about in the world as a common danger.” Commentaries, p1155

“The domain of freedom—the spiritual life—is found placed between two gravitational fields with two different centers. The Gospel designates them as ‘heaven’ and ‘this world’, or as the ‘Kingdom of God’ and the ‘kingdom of the prince of this world’. And it designates those whose will follows or is submitted to the gravitation of ‘this world’ as ‘children of this world’, and those whose will follows the gravitation of ‘heaven’ as the ‘children (or the sons) of light’.” Meditations on the Tarot, p306.

Freedom vs. Mechanicalness

“The realization that one is a machine is underlined in this teaching as the first step towards inner freedom and individual evolution.” Commentaries, p918

“All that is not mechanical—physical, psychic and intellectual—is miraculous, and all that is not miraculous is only mechanical—physical, psychic and intellectual. Freedom is a miracle and man is only free in so far as he is not a machine—physical, psychic and intellectual. We have no other choice than between the machine and slavery, on the one hand, and the miracle and freedom, on the other hand.” Meditations on the Tarot, p349-350.

“It is more than pure and simple healing which is the object of sacred magic; it is the restoration of freedom, including here freeing from the imprisonment of doubt, fear, hate, apathy and despair. The ‘evil spirits’ which deprive man of his freedom are not at all beings of the so-called ‘hierarchies of evil’ or ‘fallen hierarchies’. Neither Satan, nor Belial, nor Lucifer, nor Mephistopheles have ever deprived anyone of his freedom. Temptation is their only weapon and this presupposes the freedom of he who is tempted. But possession by an ‘evil spirit’ has nothing to do with temptation. It is invariably the same thing as with Frankenstein’s monster. One engenders an elemental being and one subsequently becomes the slave of one’s own creation.” Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, p61.

The Path to Inner Freedom

“We are all fastened inside to wrong things which we take as ourselves—wrong thoughts, worries, etc. We take them as us. Work is to separate ourselves from them. This is the beginning of inner freedom.” Commentaries, p306

“You can reach a stage in this Work in which you begin to have a feeling of freedom from your moods, your emotions, and your thoughts. You observe them starting off, but you do not go with them, because you do not feel that they are you.” Commentaries, p870

“What you can observe internally you cease to be identified with. This begins inner freedom. You then can at night go through the day and all its mechanical effects on you. By observation, both at the time and in retrospect, you separate from all these effects. This is a marvelous gift. And if you employ it, the results are marvelous.” Commentaries, p1144

“A man can only grow from his own understanding, which is inner freedom, and not from his acquired views.” Commentaries, p1067

Freedom as Choice

“No one ‘sends’ us anywhere—freedom not being a theatre. It is we ourselves who make the choice. Love existence, and you have chosen heaven; hate it, and there you have chosen hell.” Meditations on the Tarot, p83.

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Logion 50
Yeshua says...
Suppose you are asked,
"Where have you come from?"
say, "We have come from the Light at its source,
from the place where it came forth
and was manifest as Image and Icon.
If you are asked, "Are you that Light?"
say, "We are its children,
and chosen by the Source, the Living Father."
If you are questioned,
"But what is the sign of the Source within you?"
say, "It is movement and it is rest."

Logion 28
Yeshua says...
I stood to my feet in the midst of the cosmos,
appearing outwardly in flesh.
I discovered that all were drunk
but none were thirsty,
and my soul ached for the children of humanity,
for their hearts are blind.
They cannot see from within.
They have come into the cosmos empty,
and they are leaving it empty.
At the moment you are inebriated,
but when freed from the effects of wine,
you too may turn and stand.

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Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll refer to Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Eureka Editions:2020) unless stated otherwise. 

Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, Jeremy Tarcher, 1985

Quotations from the Gospel of Thomas are from Lynn C Bauman, Ward J Bauman, Cynthia Bourgeault, The Luminous Gospels (Praxis 2008)

Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.