Freedom
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All of freedom lies within the concept of freedom of choice. When one is no longer free to choose one has lost all the freedom there is. The basic freedom of choice is between making and not making a postulate. In life this translates into the freedom of choice to play or not play a game. Thus, to the degree that the playing of games becomes compulsive freedom becomes lost. All entrapment is to be found in the compulsive playing of games. The route from entrapment to freedom, then, lies in the regaining of one’s freedom of choice to play or not play games.
As the being got himself into this trap, then only the being can get himself out of this trap. One being can show another the route out, but the trapped being must walk this route out himself. Thus, one being cannot free another; he can only help him to free himself. You will never find freedom ‘over that way’; no matter how thoroughly you ransack this universe in search of freedom you will only discover more and more traps. Indeed, the search for freedom over that way is one of the basic traps of the universe. You can say to another being, Free me, and with the best intent in the world he will only succeed in making you into his slave. The very best he can do for you is to show you the nature of life and games, and indicate the route out of the trap. The rest is up to you. This is the basic truth about freedom. Outside of this truth lie the freedom games: games which cash in on the desire of every compulsive games player to be free.
We always tend to imagine a slave master as a rather muscular man armed with a large whip. Such a man is not even a novice at the gentle art of making slaves, for all the very best slaves are voluntary slaves and would not give up their slavery for anything. They are convinced that they are on the ‘road to freedom’, and need no whips to keep them on it.
To trap you while promising to free you is probably the oldest game in this universe. This is the game of the ‘freedom maker’: he makes slaves out of those who walk a road to freedom that he has created for them. All the very best traps in this universe are clearly marked, “The road to freedom.” The game of the freedom maker is big business in this universe, and always has been - simply because the willing slave, deluded into walking the road to freedom, is always more than happy to work long hours for next to no pay, and so create enormous wealth for the slave master. The places where his willing slaves toil on their road to freedom are called Freedom Factories. (This is a slang term). The universe is strewn with them. Whole planets have become vast freedom factories. Very probably the first extra-terrestrial visitor to this planet will be an agent from a local freedom factory - scouting the territory to see if it’s worthwhile setting up shop here. The whole technique of the freedom maker is to suspend a carrot called ‘freedom’ in front of the person’s nose. The carrot is on a string joined to a stick, the other end of which is attached to the person’s back. Once the device is in place the person will follow the carrot forever down the road to freedom created by the freedom maker.
Freedom is the only thing that a being will permit himself to be put into slavery in order to achieve. Ponder these words as you ransack this universe in search of freedom, for the gates of the freedom factories are always open, and a new slave is always made most welcome while the carrot is being suspended in front of his nose.
The subject of freedom has always been bigger business in this universe than the subject of power. This is because the carrot of freedom is always considered a more valuable carrot than the carrot of power. It has been said that a man will sell his soul in exchange for power. What, then, is he willing to sell in exchange for promised freedom from the compulsion to be powerful? Why, his freedom, of course! It is the only thing he has to offer in exchange for such a prized goal. Hence the game of the freedom maker and freedom factories.
Postulates and “Reasons Why”
Reasons why for a postulate always come later than the postulate for which they are created as the reasons why. The postulate always comes later than the desire to make that postulate. The sequence is always: Desire - Postulate - Reasons why for that postulate.
The reasons why for a postulate are only justifications to convince others that the postulate is reasonable. Thus, reasons why are only created in order to justify a postulate, and always come later in time than the postulate. The postulate, in turn is always later than the desire to achieve the effect which the postulate puts into action.
The closest you can ever come to a ‘reason why’ for a postulate is that it seemed like a good idea at the time. Now this is not something dreamed up by me after a heavy night reading Alice in Wonderland. It happens to be the truth of the matter (Something I believe that gifted mathematician who wrote Alice suspected too). The fact that the mere suggestion we function in such a manner sends those with a mechanistic view of the mind crawling up their own synapses* is only indicative of how little they know about the mind, and how trapped they are within the whole subject of reasons why and conviction in general.
*Synapse: a junction between two nerve cells.
Now it is true that a being, feeling unable to dream up convincing reasons why to justify a postulate, will not make that postulate. But these are reasons why for not making a postulate, not reasons why for making one.
The truth is that a being never needs a reason why for making a postulate until he has made that postulate, and needs convincing reasons to justify it to others. His postulates stem from his desires, his desires stem from his urge to be alive and in there playing the game.
It’s easy to see how the general belief that the reasons why for a postulate preceded the making of the postulate came about. The being, having made a postulate and now having to dream up convincing reasons why he made that postulate in order to make the postulate appear reasonable to others, will always swear on a stack of bibles that his reasons for making the postulate existed prior to the making of the postulate. For to admit otherwise is to open him up to the charge that he’s making postulates without due reason why, and then justifying them afterwards. The only way he can defend his postulate as being reasonable is to swear that the reasons for making the postulate existed prior to the making of the postulate. Eventually he comes to believe his own lie and becomes trapped in a ‘web of reason’.
If a being ever needed a reason why to make a postulate, then the first postulate ever made in the universe could never have been made, for at the time it was made no reasons why for postulates existed. That first postulate could only have been made from a desire to achieve a certain state of affairs. That is the way it was then, and that is the way it has been ever since. First came the desire, then the postulate - and only later were reasons why invented to justify the postulate and make it convincing to others. See reasons why as pure and simple conviction phenomena and you have the entire flavor of all this.
The mind, then, is full of convincing reasons why one should not make postulates, but it contains no reasons why a postulate has been made. Of course, one can always point to some part of the mind and assign it as the reason why one has a compulsion to kick cats, say, but this assigning is coming later than the postulate to kick cats. If you wish to be free of your compulsion to kick cats you need to address this postulate to kick cats, and the whole subject of cats and kicking. There is clearly a compulsive games condition here between you and cats. Ransacking your mind and assigning reasons why to your compulsion to kick cats will not help you in the slightest. Any person can sit down and invent an infinity of convincing reasons why they have to kick cats. It’s a very interesting intellectual exercise, and can give insight into the whole subject of justification and reasons why in general, but don’t expect it to do anything about your compulsion to kick cats. That can only be resolved by resolving your compulsion to play games with cats.
The mind, then, is only resolved by addressing postulates, and the subject of games - postulates in conflict. Reasons why for the postulates always come later than the postulates and so have no part in the resolution of the postulates in conflict.
When you fully grasp this, you will stop ransacking your mind in a futile attempt to discover the reasons why for your current mental state. For the only reasons why you will discover there are the ones you are putting there now, and they are all later than the event. It’s futile searching a stable for a horse that has gone; but its bordering on the ridiculous to search a stable for a horse that was never there, and then convince yourself that the piece of straw you find is really the horse.
It is only ignorance of the truth of this matter that causes patients to spend years with psychotherapists in search of the reasons why for their troubles, and why psychotherapists waste their own and their patients’ time in such a futile search. The only justification for the activity is that its profitable for the therapist, and the patient always lives in hopes that he might one day get somewhere.
Whole ‘schools’ of psychotherapy have grown up professing to know the ‘real’ reasons why of behavior, and they vie with each other to see who can be the most convincing. As it’s possible to invent an infinity of convincing reasons why for any facet of the mind this activity has unlimited prospects for future games play, but bleak prospects for helping people to resolve their compulsion to play games.
Once you grasp the truth about this subject of postulates and reasons why you will also learn to cut through the smoke screen of reasons why that others throw up to justify their postulates and be able to see their naked desire and postulates clearly exposed. The brush salesman may give you a thousand convincing reasons why you ought to buy his brush, but all of them come later than the fact that he desires to sell a brush to you.
Life gets very simple once you realize that the correct sequence is: Desire - Postulate - Reasons why (Invented) for the postulate.
The subject of reasons why gets combined with the Blame/Guilt mechanism. Thus, a person may search their mind for the reason why of some unwanted mental condition. Having found (assigned) a reason why that is convincing to them, they promptly blame it for the unwanted mental condition. This is compounding the lie, and only traps them further in the Blame/Guilt mechanism, and in the whole subject of conviction and justification. The unwanted mental condition is essentially a postulate, which is held in place by the compulsive games condition with its opposition postulate within the goals package*. Only when addressed in this context will the unwanted mental condition resolve.
*In the ‘to know’ goals package, for example, ‘to know’ opposed to ‘to not be known.’ In a junior goals package, such as ‘to eat’ an example would be ‘to eat’ opposed to ‘to not be eaten. ‘To know’ and its four legs are the basic package, and other goals are junior to it. -The Editor
Some modern ‘schools’ of psychotherapy are what are known as evaluative schools. The practitioner of their type of school does not search in the mind of his patient for the reasons why of the patient’s difficulties, for he has already convinced himself that he knows the ‘real’ reason why for everyone’s difficulties. Therapy (if it can be called such) with this type of practitioner is not a matter of searching for anything, it is purely a matter of the practitioner convincing the patient of the practitioner’s beliefs. As some of these beliefs seem very strange to their patients - and to most other people, come to that - it can take years to convince them (All the difficulties in convincing are ascribed to the patient’s resistance to accepting the truth). Even after conviction has been achieved the patient still has his unwanted condition, but he now also possesses a thoroughly convincing argument as to why he has that condition.
These schools have come a long way from the definition of a workable psychotherapy: one that can vanish unwanted mental conditions. I suppose the acquisition of a set of convincing reasons why one has a mental condition is an improvement upon not having such a set, but it’s a very poor substitute for being free of the unwanted mental condition.
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