Euopa magazine. April-May, 1999
Freedom is an idea for divinity!
The Universal Charter of Human Rights is a stolen joy from mankind’s conscience – an expression against such incomparable cruelty in history before that and a shoreless longing in the human soul for peace, prosperity and freedom.
It is without doubt an achievement, as well as a political act of the duel between the two systems that had divided the world. One of the systems was defending the individual in its wholeness, but in its commercial tendency; the other one was supporting the idea of collective consciousness – it was destroying the individual in a collective grave. The supporters of the thesis for defending a group mind do not give way to the individual because he is able of thinking and therefore he is able also to destroy. The others protect the individual, but only in conformity with the official ethics of religions. One way or another, they all defend only the body in which, allegedly, there is some kind of a thinking apparatus.
The confessed religions give sufficient grounds to protect something else beside the body. This has been stated clearly by Christ: ‘Fear not them who kill the body, but fear that your soul may be killed’ (Matthew 10:28). This is the great secret! Nowadays man is being protected from being killed, but no one guarantees that his soul will not be destroyed! This is a problem, which has never before been raised so as to find out which elements kill man’s soul.
The Universal Charter of Human Rights does not satisfy only the Christian mind. It is also necessary and applicable for the other religions, which have their own different dimension in the doctrine man-soul. And what about Nietzsche’s concept that between overman and animal there is a bridge called man? Which substance inside us is the overman and what is being done for its protection?!
We have all heard the story about the bear that is wounded, but also insulted, when they told it that its breath foully stinks. The wound will heal in time, but the insult will stay… Since a tale like this, in which spiritual values are measured against physiology, can be created, then it is also possible to provide for protection of the wholeness of the soul, of the spiritual foundation of humanity as well!
People turned the magic carpet into a rocket in order to go to the Moon, but they still deny the magic carpet in man. Once the idea of flying had been accepted as a fantasy, as a mythology, but now we have made it a reality! At present we cannot accept our soul-being as objectivity, but in the third millennium our soul will have life. Man stands as a target in history’s life path and undoubtedly a Day for protection of his rights is born as a necessity of applied will and thought that man is a god-perceivable necessity, that he is a god in evolution.
There is no greater daring in the idea of freedom than what Christ gave as man’s right with the idea of equality and forgiveness – to have not only the quality of sabozhnik (man is essence from God, hence sabozhnik), but overhuman as well. Freedom, as an idea of equality, has been carried through all millennia and begins with the first religious thrill – with the birth of the prayer between man and God. The essence of the Universal Charter of Human Rights is so ancient, that if we go five thousand years back, we will find it in the Hindu religion in Krishna’s words who said that he would give his life for love. (Something which Shandor Petyofi would repeat later.) Later on Buddha – a predecessor of Jesus, would fight against castes (albeit unsuccessfully), and Moses would set that which we now accept with such protectiveness and respect – the rights of man! (Isn’t Moses’ law “Thou shalt not kill!” a right to life indeed?!) In mankind’s historical memory, even before the Ten Commandments, there are similar acts of protection – the Acadian Tablets of Destiny, the Twelve Tables of Rome. As a matter of fact, the legal doctrine of the Ten Commandments is borrowed from Hammurabi’s laws.
And when the Declaration was already in existence, discrimination was rampant in America and Martin Luther King was murdered. It is insulting that we turn a blind eye to such crimes and yet we flatter ourselves when we are tossed some kid’s toys. These are not freedoms!
Then where is the threshold of the joy that we have right to freedom, as well as the right to life? Life is unconquerable – everything else are shadows of obsolete actualities! This is why the idea of immortality remains – because the idea of life is unquestionable. And this is the source, this is also the applied reality – that man is! Therefore every present must create and guarantee being that ensures man’s right to life and labour – a protection from humiliation, poverty and hunger, and to safeguard the right to imagination, for imagination is freedom as an idea for creation.
- Man is being and freedom is a right of the Spirit to outpour itself in all its endowments!
Creativity brings forth religion, and culture, and art. And together with the believes, the legal formula Ecce Homo is defined.
There are two antipodes in world history and European culture – the Baptism of Jesus when God the Father says “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17), and the Trial when Pilate, who must judge a Deity, says “Behold the Man!” In this area mankind’s culture has been developing for the past two thousand years. During this period there are Inquisition and indulgences which are destructive enough. But there is something not less destructive that still stands – anathema. The religious institutions use this unhindered violent measure against man’s soul being.
- Anathema is a religious punishment that destroys human spirituality.
Article 189 of the Church’s Statute decrees*, as well as Paul the Apostle says further, that he who does not share or does not wish to accept Christ must be anathemized. And anathema is a condemnation over man’s soul and his spiritual essence. This is not the same as to mark with a branding scar, as at some religious councils heretics have been punished, be that Bogomils, be that others. The scar that cannot be seen is much more terrible. It reminds of the cruel order to slaughter 14,000 children out of fear of losing power, or the incessant cries of Rachel that a slavery has taken her children. What about the slavery of the soul?!
Anathema is a condemnation with excommunication. Then where is the harbour of the excommunicated man? The Charter of Human rights provides for rights to a most basic awakening, but where is the right of the soul not to be defiled, not to be stigmatized with a curse and socially isolated? Indeed now there are no councils in which whole heretic groups are stigmatized, but each individual, with the insult that their soul is cursed, is an element of the historical ethos. Everyone is a part of a nation’s wholeness and of the historical way of a people. So, it is not only a question of insult, but of responsibility before that invisible that is more real than anything else, because in its next reincarnation this soul will return to the historical life. It comes jagged and the wholeness of the national way will be disrupted, for entwined within it is the individual way of man in a state of humiliation.
Furthermore, the term ‘enemy’ is still incised on the social field. Whereas Christ reveals a whole philosophy. He says ‘Love thy enemy!’ He does not say ‘Love thy neighbour’ as it has been common until then, for what is the profit of loving only your brother? Or what is the profit of loving God Who you do not see but hate your brother and make him your enemy?
Civil rights guarantee the freedom of speech, but not protection against the insult of official institutions that call their adversary ‘enemy’. An adversary is a side which you are arguing with, while the enemy is something else entirely.
- Enemy is a stigma on man’s soul being! What are the reasons for all these negations?
Have the years of maturity been missing? No, what is missing is the insight that man is more than a body with a brain to think. And the brain does not think, it only receives. And when greatness is lacking, these terrible terms are used: anathema and enemy. Negation should not be impregnated, but the pith of maleficence should be taken out instead, so that the blessed table of forgiveness remains. Man needs to live through the duel between good and evil. And stigmatizing someone stops their ability to go through, to evolve evil into good. Thus the awakening of the Spirit is actually hindered in the man realizing himself for divinity.
Unfortunately, God is difficult to protect in man’s soul being. The religious conscience is protected from insult, but not God. This is the other absurdity which exists and of which an empowered atheism easily takes advantage. In our former Constitution was affirmed a right to atheistic, but not to theistic propaganda. In our current Constitution the same poorness regarding this matter exists. The Church is allowed, it is even traditional, but its right to propaganda is still to be restored. Yet, as an institution, it has the power to reclaim it.
Very mawkish are all tendencies that do not have the insight of god-inspirations and revelations. There is something insulting in establishing a day to remind of the human rights protection without giving an inner prayer to defend man’s soul. Battles have been fought for millennia for man’s freedom (often full of cruelties), but a battle has not yet been fought for the freedom of God in man!
- My first position which I would like to enter this battlefield with, my first defence is the following:
In the Charter of Human Rights a case on the protection of the soul to be included: for the soul not to be anathemized by any religion and for the civil law to be freed from the word ‘enemy’.
In view of our entering a new millennium I plead to have these rights provided for and to have them harboured with the respective case. For where is mankind’s conscience?! Man answers for his deeds before his conscience, i.e. before his Creator Whom some call ‘nature’ and rob it, others call ‘God’ and desecrate Him… Undoubtedly the Charter of Human Rights is a great dignity, but it should be known that when the United Nations legalize these rights on 10th December 1948, they had already existed in the Bulgarian history. Our Tangrism** did not allow slavery and also, according to the Tarnovo Constitution, every slave, regardless of their gender, faith or nationality, becomes free when they set foot on Bulgarian soil. And Levski says: The time for helping is now, once the uprising breaks out we shall need no one’s help. He also utters something very edifying: Once I free my people, I will go and fight for the freedom of others. As soon as we have security for our own freedom, we can then give it to others!
The idea of freedom is a winged bird which like a phoenix will burn and it shall rise again. Jesus Christ says ‘Only the Truth shall make you free!’, and freedom is the only thing that can make man sabozhestven [having the quality of sabozhnik***] – only freedom can give birth to gods! ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life!’ Life is a co-presence in Divinity!
In mankind’s history one works for the common, suffers for the worthy, sacrifices himself for the great, and resurrects for the Divine! May freedom resurrect, may it descend upon us like the Holy Pentecost!
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* Refers to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church Statute
** Tangrism the Bulgarian pagan belief
*** sabozhnik – every man is essence from God, hence sabozhnik
