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English writings, 1915–1921
St Nikolai Velimirović
The Spiritual Rebirth of Europe (1920), 3. III. Freedom’s Reality and Delusions
An Article published on
JANUARY 1, 1920
By the RIGHT REVEREND
DR. NICHOLAI VELIMIROVIC
BISHOP OF ŽIČA, SERBIA
IN THE MAGAZINE
NEW EUROPE
[During the dark days of war and exile no one did more to interpret to this country the soul of Serbia and the spirit of the Orthodox Church than Father Nicholai Velimirović, who is once more visiting England, this time as Bishop of Žiča, the most ancient diocese of Serbia.—Note by the Editor of “The New Europe.”]
It is now a year since the enslaved nations of Europe got their freedom. Are they not happy now? Some observers might say yes. But the frightful increase in the number of suicides in the liberated countries during the past year is the loudest proof of the contrary. And besides suicides there have been endless troubles rooted in deep dissatisfaction. Those who before were dissatisfied with their oppressors, are now dissatisfied with their own people and with themselves. Why? Why did not freedom bring the expected happiness? A good many explanations have been put forward, such as the grievous wounds from which Europe is only beginning to recover, or the impoverishment of some sections of the population, or the loss of friends and relatives. Yet no explanation hitherto seems sufficient and all-inclusive. It is perhaps not inopportune, standing on the threshold of the New Year, to reconsider once more our conception of, and our human expectations from, freedom.
It seems easier to bear slavery than to bear freedom. Therefore there have always been in history more brave and heroic men among the slaves than among the really free.
For a tyrannized man, a brave slave, has got a simpler duty, namely, to fight for right. But a free man has got a double duty: to treasure his own rights and to respect other people’s rights.
A long tyrannized slave has in the long run learned one lesson well, to fight to secure his rights. But when freed, he has to learn a new and harder lesson which he could not have learned from his tyrants—namely, to respect the rights of his neighbours. For it is easier for a man to see what is wrong than to define what is right.
The fatal misconception of the oppressed is that the oppressors are free men. Consequently when they themselves get freedom, they are inclined to imitate their former oppressors.
In their long experience under oppression they have learned to know two kinds of people: the oppressed and the oppressors. The oppressed they have named unfree men, and the oppressors they have named free men. Unfortunately they have not learned to know that both of them are equally unfree, yea, equally slaves.
When the newly freed are ashamed to use exactly the same oppressive methods as their former oppressors, they use them in a disguised form by accumulating wealth, and by organizing cliques, parties, secret societies, banks, newspapers. So that instead of suffering under one open oppressor the so-called free nations are suffering from a hundred oppressors, milder perhaps when taken separately, but when put all together weighing upon their shoulders with just the same weight.
Of course this is not true of the newly liberated only, but more or less of all the nations of the Continent. As Louis Capet was supplanted by a hundred of the known or unknown factors of oppression, so will the Kaiser be supplanted by similar factors, and so will Turkish and Austrian rule be supplanted by influences not unlike those obtaining in France and Germany. For France and Germany will be for a long time yet predominantly the guiding spirits in civilization of all the nations of the Continent. It is astonishing how little Anglo-Saxon ways are known, still less followed, among the lesser nations of Europe.
Now, what is this continental Franco-German civilization essentially? It is a civilization of divorce. Not only of the divorce of man and woman—no, this is merely a true symbol of its principal feature of that civilization—but of the divorce of all the great and creative agencies of human thought and action. Divorced is religion from science, science from ethics, ethics from art. And behold! emancipation of the sexes, emancipation of the classes, emancipation of the professions—divorce, divorce, and divorce.
Of nothing is so much talked in Europe as of freedom and organization. A free man does not talk much of freedom, just as a well-fed person does not talk of food. But the unfree man talks constantly of freedom, as a hungry man talks of bread, and the divided, the divorced, the dismembered, talk most of what they are not—organism, organization. The want of real freedom has made freedom the principal object of talk, writing and struggle in Europe during the past century, ever since the French Revolution, which was the beginning of divorce, of separation, of dismemberment.
Whenever on the European Continent there is talk of organization, or of emancipation—go to the root of it and you will see that what is meant is partly self-assertion and partly tyranny over others less organized and less emancipated. Whenever selfish motives lie at the root of a “struggle for freedom,” freedom comes as disguised tyranny, and brings disappointment and delusion. And honest but ignorant men, in their bewilderment and disappointment, turn to ideas of suicide.
Consequently, when we speak of European civilization, we cannot but say that it is not a civilization of free men, but rather of slaves, or at least of strugglers after freedom. For disguised tyranny walks among men in a new dress but always of the same gigantic size and weight.
There are three kinds of freedom: freedom from the brute forces of nature, freedom from oppressive men, and freedom from one’s self. The first freedom is achieved through science and force, the second through politics and force, the third through religion, without force.
In defeating nature men feel disappointed with the freedom they gain. For in struggling against the brute forces of nature, men themselves imbibe Nature’s unscrupulous methods. Though victors, they feel in reality defeated. Endless wars and mutual struggles ensue. For the liberated men replaced the defeated tyrant (Nature) whom they thought to be the possessor of freedom. And they acted accordingly; in other words, they dealt with each other in their victorious state as they saw Nature dealing with them before it was subdued.
The second kind of freedom is the freedom of nations from the oppressive nations, and of men from the oppressive men. What the struggle for this kind of freedom means is well known from the recent experience of the world war. And what its results are is described in the opening paragraphs of this article. An attentive reader can easily see that these results are similar to the results following the struggle of men against the tyranny of natural forces. In this stage men feel disappointed, just as in the first stage of freedom. Freedom is making them neither free nor happy. Though victorious, they feel somehow defeated. Hence—suicide!
The last kind of freedom is yet to be achieved. It is the freedom from one’s self. Very few have climbed to this freedom; and yet this is the only freedom which makes one definitely free and happy, and which does not disappoint nor lead to suicide.
Men are born tyrants. Struggling from the beginning of history against the tyrannical forces of nature and of other men, man, when freed, has always imitated his previous tyrants (for tyrants are the most impressive teachers), and later on inherited an inclination to tyranny.
To get rid of self means to stop an inward war, a war of contradictory desires, which are crying for an outward expression—for an outward war. For whatever we have in ourselves, be it war or peace, be it despotism or freedom, we are pushed irresistibly to project it into the outer world.
The seed of freedom must be sown first in the human heart, and from there the tree of freedom will grow and bring fruits within us and without. For real freedom is not a thing to be made or constructed by external means, but it is a thing to be slowly cultivated and painfully grown.
This real inner freedom, which alone is lasting and unchangeable, which cannot be repressed, which brings peace and happiness—this freedom is called in the Christian religion “the New Birth,” and in the two great Indian religions it is called “The Change of Karma.”
Of course this inner freedom can be conquered only by those who can rely upon the higher spiritual powers in themselves and in the Cosmos. He who has no window open to the Kingdom of God and His angels is in prison, and must naturally rely upon himself and upon other prisoners and the stones around him; and he must cry all his life long for freedom, and behave as a prisoner or a slave.
The true freedom, which is not delusive and which does not lead to suicide, can be acquired only by religious methods, which have been known to the world for thousands of years, and which are more sure both in their heroic premisses and their heroic results than the methods of positive science. For these religious methods are The Science, the oldest, the surest, and the most profitable of all sciences.
This science is supernatural, supernational, supereconomic, superpolitical, superartistic; but it illumines nature, makes nationalism nobler, settles easily economic strife, gives solidity to politics and sweetness and harmony to art.
A few have gained this glorious freedom, a very few in Europe (for religion seems not to be a special gift of Europe), and a few in Asia. They may be called spiritual heroes, but certainly they have been free men. Their efforts to conquer real freedom, internal and blissful, are greater than the personal efforts of Napoleon and the Kaiser to conquer the world.
Nominally they belong to one nation and one denomination. Yet practically all nations and all churches belong to them. The union of all churches and the league of all nations is a reality for them, in which they live constantly. Nothing is divorced in their soul, therefore they do not make for divorce in any way.
If Europe means, indeed, to be a new Europe, she must learn to know her spiritual heroes as well as what their inner and real freedom was and what are the religious methods of gaining this great treasure, the very foundation of every kind of freedom.
A reborn Europe will be a really new Europe. But a Europe merely set free geographically, politically, and economically without a spiritual rebirth, will be a technical delusion, a castle in the air, as she was before.
Freedom has been a sacred notion, closely connected with religion and mysticism, in every civilization but the modern European. This sacred word has been the very watchword of the highest religions, of the hardest spiritual training. If religion be put aside, what then is freedom but a mirage, a tyranny in disguise? Materialism in science, epicureanism in conduct and—freedom, these three cannot be blended into one, no, by no alchemy in all the universe. And yet this is the hopeless undertaking of the Continent which guides mankind and means to guide it!
To have faith in Europe’s future, to believe in a new Europe, needs, I confess, very great efforts. And yet Europe’s case is not quite hopeless. If she only could get to know that all knowledge cannot be got from books and newspapers! If she only could think without a cynical laugh of the self-flagellation of the medieval monks! If she could at least learn to detect soul and intelligence and kindness in all the stars rolling in space! Yea, if she only could open a small window towards the heavenly light!
Then—the most divorceful civilization in history would have eyes to see and to know that freedom means all that is deepest and highest in the universe, and, indeed, God Himself, and that it is the dearest treasure and the most difficult to be extracted from the inner depth of the human soul.
And if in the long run the European Continent is not plunged into the greatest misery recorded in history, caused either by new invaders or by internal disintegration, it only will be due to a painful spiritual rebirth through which a new vision and a new realization of freedom may be gained.
A spiritual rebirth of Europe would lead to a new, panhuman, organic, living and loving civilization of free men, which would replace the soulless corpse of civilization of so-called free-thinkers, whose watchword is—divorce.
Then, probably, would come a true New Year for Europe, which could be cheered not merely with the conventional words, “A Happy New Year,” behind which sadness is hidden, but with a real feeling of freedom and happiness—indeed a happy and indeed a new year.
For each year is just as happy as we are happy, and just as new as we are new. In this respect the past year has been very, very old. Our hopes in the New Year will only be realized, if they are accompanied by hard effort towards personal liberation from all the unclean spirits in ourselves, from all the inner agencies that make for war, dissension and tyranny. Thus the glorious day of freedom for mankind will dawn, full of peace and happiness.