The Road of Life
The article: Mental Prisons
Chapter 11
Mental prisons
Every time the terrestrial human being does not do the good he wants to do but, on the contrary, does the evil he does not want to do, he demonstrates that he is not a free being who can do what he wants. But if he is not a free being he can only be an "imprisoned" being. He is imprisoned in that which prevents him from doing the good he wants to do. And this prison will absolutely always consist of some "animal" tradition that he has not yet overcome and to which he therefore succumbs. The animal traditions, habits or tendencies are thus mental prisons within which the individual inflicts upon himself greater or lesser physical torture or mutilation, in proportion to the greater or lesser degree to which he succumbs to these animal habits or tendencies. That this is not a matter of only some few individuals but that it is, on the contrary, a matter of all terrestrial mankind, which is still to a great extent imprisoned in the animal way of living, is demonstrated by the great world wars, the political and religious wars and the great rush for profit in the name of "business" which have for so long tortured all terrestrial Man. It is not so surprising that more and more terrestrial human beings are beginning to see and understand that the Christian teachings or the biblical doctrines about neighbourly love they learned as children are not merely for the simple-minded or naive but that they also, to the very highest degree, have a message for all the people of the earth; indeed they are, so to speak, the absolutely "only thing needful" if the fate of terrestrial mankind as well as that of the individual is really to be turned into the possibility for the creation of a true "human" mentality in the physical "human" organism that the terrestrial human being already possesses. In truth, does one not think that the appropriation of the science of neighbourly love is rather more necessary and effective than ... the atom bomb in the creation of world peace? Does one believe that this bomb or any other so-called secret weapons or machines of death and destruction can remove the animal mentality from the "human" physical body, the organism of the terrestrial human being?