A person can see himself either as a corporeal or as a spiritual being. A person who sees himself as corporeal cannot be free. On the other hand, for a spiritual being there cannot even be a question of any kind of unfreedom.
Most certainly I tell you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. Most certainly I tell you, the hour comes, and now is, when the dead will hear the Son of God’s voice; and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, even so he gave to the Son also to have life in himself.
— John 5:24–26
What is “love for God” if not an intense striving to bring the highest creative energy into your existence? Divine creative power is found in everything, but its greatest manifestation in this world is in the human being; and for it to work, a human being must recognize it.
Without recognizing that he is capable of doing what is best, a human being inevitably ends up doing what is worst.
— From “The World’s Advance Thought”
I know that I must constantly watch myself, I know that Heaven knows everything and that its laws are immutable. I know that it sees everything, is part of everything, is present in everything. Heaven penetrates into the depth of every heart as sunlight illuminates a dark room. We must strive to reflect its light the same way that two musical instruments, equally tuned, respond to one another.
— Shijing
The nature of a human being is straightforward. If this straightforwardness is lost during his life, a human being cannot be happy.
— Chinese wisdom
When you contemplate the nature of the soul, it is much more difficult to understand what the soul imprisoned in a body is, in which it lives as if in a foreign country, than what it is when it frees itself from the body and merges with that which it feels itself a part of.
— After Cicero
Only when you truly say with all your heart that in all the things in which you recognize the will of God, you do not have your own, that your actions are governed only by his wishes, only then will you become completely free.
— Epictetus
A human being feels his freedom to the degree that he transfers his life from his corporeal existence into the spiritual.
