Everything short of the Whole is too small to be free. Only the Whole is self-contained, subject to no outside influences, complete, and quite alone. And when I claim to be free I am really claiming—with what effrontery!—to be the Whole.

Now it’s a fact that I’ve always felt free, and never seriously questioned the feeling. What’s more, I can make little sense of my life unless I really am free. Whenever I choose this and not that, and whenever I accept full responsibility for all I’ve done, I’m claiming that I have always been a free agent. How could I take any blame or praise for actions which I recognize as predetermined? My whole being rises up and declares that I’m no tool and that I’m doing what I want to do, and all the seemingly overwhelming evidence to the contrary is nonsense.

There is only one explanation of this remarkable fact: it is the still more remarkable fact that I include everything by which I’m conditioned. That is to say, I am free; and I am free because this 1st person is the only one who can be free—the Whole—and not a man at all. And directly I see this plain truth and realize Who I am, I arrive where I have always been—at Liberty’s only source. Now I am really gay and carefree.

From The Face Game by Douglas Harding, page 263.