It's essential that we understand just how elemental freedom is in Reality, how the Divine has instituted human freedom as an essential of humankind's evolution, even to the point of allowing for evil in the terrestrial realm. Some persons, such as Epicurus, have thought that God could have and therefore should have created a mortal realm free from evil. They do not understand that the evolution of humankind into intelligent, free individuals who have the potential to gain full understanding of themselves and the mortal and supersensible realms, requires human freedom to the point of allowing humans to perpetrate evil.

   Yes, God could have created beings who could carry out only good acts, never experiencing immorality and evil. But these beings would have been moral and intellectual automatons, not free, true humans. To be able to evolve and develop into moral beings who understand why evil is to be eschewed and why the good is to be chosen, requires beings who have the potential to perpetrate immoral, evil acts but choose not to and understand why they choose not to and choose good instead.

   It is overwhelming when we first realize just how important it is in God's plan that humans have the opportunity to develop into beings who understand what they do and why. It is so important that humans are given the potential to develop into autonomous beings that it requires the potential--and actuality--of evil in the mortal world.

   Humans cannot understand or achieve Goodness, one of the primary essences of God, unless they are given freedom to make mistakes and commit immoral acts. Achieving Goodness requires that you freely choose what you have determined through reason is the correct action and understand why the incorrect act is wrong. You cannot become a good person by following a pre-determined moral code--as the Puritans and other religious groups have illustrated.

   Freedom involves both freedom from certain kinds of restraint and freedom to carry out acts chosen by the individual. A human is not free if he is controlled by obsessions of any kind: physical (e.g. addiction), emotional or intellectual. One of the most insidious and destructive of contemporary obsessions is the element of allowing oneself to be dominated by the desire to remain unaware of what is happening in the world-- ignorant.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson "Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." Martin Luther King, Jr.

   The Form Freedom is, like all Forms, an archetype that has its being in the supersensible realm, independently of its embodiment in the terrestrial domain. Human reason has, over the centuries--beginning with Plato--gained understanding of the essence of human freedom:

• The individual does not receive government and authority from a deity who gives his secular sword to princes and magistrates to rule by His divine right.
  
  
• The individual does not have a subordinate place in a divinely inspired hierarchy, in which kings, noblemen, political leaders, and corporate executives are placed above him as 'your highness.'
  
  
• Governments should be voluntarily established by free individuals through a willful act of contract, individuals rationally consenting to limit their own freedom and to obey civil authority in order to have public protection of their natural rights.
  
  
• Government's purpose is to serve the interests of the people, to enable individuals to enjoy peacefully their rights to life, liberty, and property.

"The rational faculty of man was conceived as producing a common conception of law and order which possessed a universal validity. . . This common conception included, as its three great notes, the three values of Liberty, Equality and the brotherhood or Fraternity of all mankind. This common conception, and its three great notes, have formed a European set of ideas for over two thousand years. It was a set of ideas . . . of a sovereign law of nature imprinted in the heart and nature of man, to which kings and legislators must everywhere bow. It was a set of ideas which lived and acted with an even greater animation from the days of the Reformation to those of the French Revolution . . . spoken through the mouth of Locke, [they had justified] the English Revolution of 1688, and had recently served to inspire the American Revolution of 1776 . . . They were ideas of the proper conduct of states and governments in the area of internal affairs. They were ideas of the natural rights of man--of liberty, political and civic, with sovereignty residing essentially in the nation, and with free communication of thoughts and opinions; of equality before the law, and the equal repartition of public expenses among all the members of the public; of a general fraternity which tended in practice to be sadly restricted within the nation, but which could, on occasion, be extended by decree to protect all nations struggling for freedom." Ernest Baker, Traditions of Civility, 1948

    Those persons in the modern world who recognize that human freedom is an elemental force of nature given by God must realize that contemporary capitalist, fascist thugs have seized all financial, political, and military structures of power and are now murdering members of the working class on a daily basis.

   We recognize that the partial awakening of some Americans and Europeans in their outrage at banksters looting taxpayer money are merely momentary outbursts of popular outrage and will produce no effective change in the dire situation that faces us. We must act immediately to replace capitalism with commonwealth.

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." Martin Luther King Jr., speech at NYC Riverside Church , April 4, 1967

Supersensible Freedom
  Plato viewed the unchanging world of Forms as constituting a system of eternal principles emanating from Absolute Good which the present world merely shadows. Hence, Plato's Commonwealth, his discussion of the Forms Justice and Freedom, delineates the need for a society to be lead by Philosopher-Guardians who through their attaining understanding are prepared "to know the Good through rational insight and embody its ideals by ruling directly over the social order."

   As with all Forms, we gain an awareness of their nature by contemplating the Divine Order or Law of the supersensible realm. Terrestrial freedom is merely a most imperfect embodiment of supersensible freedom. The supersensible realm is governed by the Divine Creator according to the Law of Goodness and Love. Law is a body of rules and principles governing the affairs of a community and enforced by authority, custom, or agreement; a legal system.

  Jesus explained to his disciples that the Law of Goodness and Love is: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. And you shall love your neighbour as yourself."

  We have our being in a supersensible realm in which the Divine Creator rules through the Law of Goodness and Love. When we die and leave this terrestrial realm, we continue our being in the supersensible realm where the very essence, the basic principle, of life is love of God with all our heart and soul and love of our neighbors as ourselves.

  When we continue our eternal being in the supersensible realm, after death, we will realize--if we have not come to the realization while in terrestrial existence--that the prevailing anarchy (lack of law) which prevails in the terrestrial realm is a repudiation (rejecting or disowning or disclaiming as invalid; refusal to acknowledge or honor) of the Divine Law of Goodness and Love. Capitalism as the "law" of "dog-eat-dog" has become the prevailing state of lawlessness, disorder, and malevolence in the terrestrial realm.

  In the supersensible realm (as in the terrestrial realm), all persons are evolving toward ultimate Unity with the Divine. Let us take as an example the being of a person whose terrestrial life was filled with evil and malevolence. After death, he or she arrives in the supersensible realm essentially the vile, corrupt, malevolent person that they proved themselves to be during their terrestrial existence. But now they have their being and awareness in the transcendent domain where the Divine rules through Goodness and the essence of the individual's being has now become that of an evolving person. It is still possible, for a limited time, for this person to "phantasize" (to create in one's fancy or daydreams, to imagine) about doing harm to other beings, as this person not only phantasized but also carried out in their earthly existence. As Jesus explained (Matthew 5:27-28), one kind of "doing" is phantasizing about evil or incorrect behavior, a different kind of "doing" from actually performing a physical act.

  Persons in the supersensible realm still possess options as to what they will think and do. In the Divine realm of Goodness it is still possible for a person to perform a physical act of evil (ungood), but the very essence and structure of this realm makes that progressively unlikely. Individuals also have the freedom to choose how rapidly or slowly their evolution proceeds. As persons evolve, they gain understanding of how different options embody various degrees of goodness and efficacy. All persons in the supersensible realm ultimately come to understand and accept the Law of Goodness and Love, recognizing that the basic principle of being is love of the Divine Creator and acting in such a manner as to express love of neighbor as oneself. The very essence of this realm is that all persons evolve to the point of continually acting in such a manner as to advance the wellbeing of all others. With each evolving person, there ultimately is formed a pattern of the free choice of not thinking or acting in the manner of "dog-eat-dog" selfishness or malice and acting altruistically.

  It ultimately becomes increasingly unlikely for the evolving person to perform an act of physical or mental harm to another person because, first, the person being acted upon would be intelligent enough to realize that this is not in harmony with the law of Goodness and Love and wouldn't allow the act to be perpetrated against him or her. Secondly, other persons would not allow it because they recognize the law of love of God and acting in accordance with complete altruism is the Law of being and thus would not allow the evil act to be perpetrated against another. And, finally, the evolving person would, by exercising the freedom of choice, develop an altruistic nature which would increasingly act in a manner to treat one's neighbor as oneself.

  In the supersensible realm there is no "killing"--depriving a terrestrial being of his or her existence. In this realm we possess eternal being which cannot be taken from us by another.

  In the terrestrial realm, all persons' moral and intellectual evolution consists in coming to an increasing awareness of the law of Goodness and Love--recognizing the value of his being as bestowed by a loving Divine Creator and the value of living in complete altruistic harmony with other beings.






Notes:

¹ Previous studies of Platonic forms:

• Goodness
• Justice
• Beauty
  
• Commonwealth
  
• Human
  
• Wisdom
  
• Love