“It is possible for any reasonable person to see that the greater part of the troubles that beset mankind at this time are due to the fact that those who have the power to take, take, and they disregard the consequences to those who are not able to. All of us probably feel that this is a wrong thing.”

“When we really come near this question of freedom, something in us revolts entirely against it. I remember very well when my work did bring me to a point where I knew and saw that I had the power—I saw that I knew exactly how to do it, so that I could feel exactly what I chose to feel. If I could do that, then I would be responsible for my life and I could no longer blame anything outside myself; because what was outside me could not touch me. Therefore, I had to be the answer. If I was in a bad state, I was able to change it; and if I did not change it, I could not blame any one else. But I wanted to be able to blame people. I wanted to say that it was not possible that it could have been different.”

“So I think that anyone who comes to have a real taste of what it is like to be free then also understands how strongly something else in us does not wish for it. Someone who says he is quite sure he wants to be free is still very superficial. That person has not yet experienced what is really involved. It is not only that to be free requires a price that one has to pay, but when one is free then one has a new trouble, and that is that a free man is a responsible man. Beneath it all, we do not want to be responsible.”

“One partial purpose of this exercise [the theme of ‘freedom from like and dislike’] is to bring objective meaning into words, not imagination. Another is that we need to know more about like and dislike if we are to make use of this as material for our work.” _ An excerpt from JG Bennett. The First Liberation, Chapter 1, “Freedom from Like and Dislike”

Egg Transformation, by Barbara June Appelgren