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Title: On religion Author: Mikhail Bakunin Date: 1836 Language: en Topics: letter, religion Source: Retrieved on 30th August 2021 from https://www.panarchy.org/bakunin/religion.html Notes: Of Bakunin, on the theme of religion, we know above all, and perhaps almost exclusively, the phrase: “If God existed, He should be abolished”. But this sentence offers us a somewhat partial image of him. Bakunin is also the individual animated by a passionate love for freedom and justice for all human beings. And this impetus comes to him from a deep spirituality which can be found between the lines in his writings of the anarchist period but which appears overwhelmingly in this letter to his sisters. It would be out of place to think that the Bakunin of later years is totally different from the one who appears in this writings. Hence the interest this letter should have for all libertarians, especially those who are allergic and intolerant of any expression of spirituality and religiosity. Source: From a letter of Bakunin to his sisters, 1836, in, Arthur Lehning ed., Michael Bakunin selected writings, 1973.
My splendid, my delightful friend Tanyusha; you have no idea what an
impression your letter made on me. I am sure you cannot feel all the
sweetness and harmonious happiness which I experienced as I read it. And
you ask me whether I need your friendship, whether it can contribute to
my happiness! Does this mean that you do not realize, you do not see,
that to separate myself from you would, for me, be tantamount to
breaking with the one and only expression of my inner life? At last I
have found this heavenly harmony within my family, I have found this
pure and sacred tranquillity, a tranquillity so full of energy, so full
of love, a tranquillity which has in it all the future that I have been
seeking.
And so you belong to me, you are my sisters, not only by the instinctive
laws of nature, but by the life led by our kindred spirits and the
identity of our eternal aims. Oh, now I no longer fear the external
world! I have found in it what was essential for me; I have found in it
more than it usually gives: the echo of your hearts, and your selfless,
sacred love. I have found in it golden souls, that belong to eternity
rather than to this world. If all external misfortunes and assaults were
rolled into one, and tried out their strength on me, they could not
wreck my bliss. My bliss cannot be infIuenced by them, for it is not of
this world! My inner life is strong because it is not founded on vulgar
expectations or on worldly hopes of outward good fortune; no, it is
founded on the eternal purpose of man and his divine nature. Nor is my
inner life afraid, for it is contained in your love, and our love is as
eternal as our purpose.
Oh, I no longer fear the external world; I will find the means to carry
out the plans I have in mind. Now I am not alone, my spirit has been
sanctified by your sacred, selfless love. And yet you ask me if I really
need your love! It has sanctified and exalted me, it has made me worthy
of my calling, and, with its mighty strength, has drawn me on to my
everlasting aim. Love is the mighty rod which brings out living water
from the rock. Yes, I am happier than I deserve; I am now more than ever
under an obligation; I delight in what I have not deserved, and I must
deserve the joy given me by providence. Yes, I understand that a sacred
duty has been laid upon me, and I will carry it out; I am stronger than
I have ever been, I am strengthened by your love!
The earth, my friends, is no longer our inheritance. Our happiness is in
heaven and so is our life. Our spiritual activities do not seek the
earth or its delights: no, they have already been captivated by true
delight, and are indifferent to all that is earthly. Our religion, my
friends, is eternal, it contains within it all that is most beautiful,
all that is noble. It has nothing in common with what is physical or
dead. Our religion gives life to everything, and burning passion and
high ideals are sanctified by it: art, learning, all that is noble in
man, all that can excite his soul, all this comes from religion, all
this is sanctified by the holy baptism of love that is divine and not of
this world, and must reveal the eternal approach of the divinity in man
to the divine purpose, to that which has neither end nor beginning, and
yet both begins and ends in all that exists. My friends, my religion has
made our hearts eternal, it has given us love, love to all mankind; our
personal love and our personal life strive to flow into the absolute
love and into eternal life.
At this moment I do not hate anybody. I bless everybody. Let us have
pity for those who have still not reached our state of bliss. Let us
hate only evil, and not the unhappy victims of evil, for they are human
beings, and, although they have not fully developed themselves, they too
have the right to their divine inheritance, and they alone exclude
themselves from it. They are miserable; we must pity them, we must
increase our efforts to tear them out of this condition of death and
apathy. We must not allow failure to drive us to despair: when will has
moral force behind it, it is all-powerful. The moral will of man is the
will of God, and nothing can stop its plans being carried out.
And so, my friends, having conquered the moral world, we have at the
same time conquered the omnipotent. We desire Good, and Good must
prevail in spite of all the onslaughts of Evil. This is our purpose: to
widen more and more the sphere of our activity, and at the same time the
sphere of our love and our happiness; to cleanse our hearts of all that
is worldly, and, continually ennobling them, make them worthy sacrifices
of eternal Love; to carry the eternal heaven of our souls into the
external world, and in this way to raise the earth up to heaven; even to
put into practice, in the external world, ideas that are fine, lofty and
noble; ever to draw nearer to a sacred world, and to be united in a
mutual purpose, mutual hopes and mutal sacred love; ever to increase and
ever to purify our personal love and our personal joy.
My friends, what can stop us, what can make us despair? External,
passing sufferings cannot quell the determined soul, and in fact have
the opposite effect on it, purifying and ennobling it. Man is never so
ready to accept the truth as when he is spiritually sad and in a
condition of suffering. It is sorrow that calls up eternity, armoured in
finality, and it is sorrow that reveals on high the divinity of man. But
sorrow must be conscious, and then it can turn into joy. It is only
terrifying for those who have no spiritual life, and who are still not
acquainted with heaven. He who has not suffered cannot truly love,
because suffering is an act of liberation for man from all earthly
expectations, and from his bondage to instinctive, unconscious delights.
Therefore, he who has not suffered is not free, and without freedom
there is no love, and without love there is no happiness and no bliss.
Therefore, my dear Varya, let not your outward wtetchedness lead you to
despair. It should, on the contrary, be the basis of your happiness, of
your true, divine happiness, of a happiness that is beyond the reach of
profanation. Your wretchedness sanctifies you, my dear friend; and if
you will allow it to penetrate your consciousness, it will illuminate
you and set you on high.
Let religion become the basis and reality of your life and your actions,
but let it be the pure and single-minded religion of divine reason and
divine love, and not that religion which you used to profess, not the
religion which strove to disassociate itself from everything that makes
up the substance and life of truly moral existence. This religion is not
the restricting whim of some capricious god, nor is it a narrow, icy
feeling which opposes all that is perfect in the world of morals and
intellect, and threatens to sink itself in a pathetic sphere of activity
containing neither ideas nor feelings nor love. At least it is not that
religion which was totally inconsistent with true love, and which might
have destroyed a soul as full of fire and thirsting for love and all
that is highest as yours, so that it could not have been revived by any
moral force.
No, my dear friend, let yourself be penetrated by true religion, by the
religion of Christ, for ever free of the defiling touch of those who, in
attempting to understand it, inevitably tried to lower it to their
level. Look at Christ, my dear friend; He suffered so much, and did not
even have the joy of being completely understood by those around Him,
and yet He was happy, for He was the Son of God. His life was divine
through and through, full of self-denial, and He did everything for
mankind, finding His satisfaction and His delight in the dissolution of
His material being and in the fact that He was the saviour of mankind.
He is the Son of God for He belongs to all men, He is the Son of Man,
and He is our pattern. And if we were able to rise up to Him, or rather
if we had sufficient faith, sufficient strength, sufficient moral and
intellectual breadth to desire this — for indeed we could do this,
because we should, and because we All should, then Nothing is impossible
— if we could at last attain even a distant impression of the bliss and
divine love which He tasted, we should behave as He did, for His
suffering was indeed bliss.
This is what religion does. Outward sufferings proceed from the outer
world independent of our will. If we are conscious of ourselves without
possessing an inner life, then we become the victims of outward
sufferings, and we suffer without the possibility of being saved by any
sort of outward miracle. But if religion and an inner life appear in us,
then we become conscious of our strength, for we feel that God is within
us, that same God who creates a new world, a world of absolute freedom
and absolute love. Because we have been ‘baptized in this world and are
in communion with this heavenly love, we feel that we are divine
creatures, that we are free, and that we have been ordained for the
emancipation of humanity, which is still enslaved, and of the universe,
which has remained a victim of the instinctive laws of unconscious
existence. Everything. that lives, that exists, that grows, that is
simply on the earth, should be free, and should attain
self-consciousness, raising itself up to the divine centre which
inspires all that exist. Absolute freedom and absolute love — that is
our aim; the freeing of humanity, and the whole world — that is our
purpose.
Pagan stoicism was strong and stoical only because of the instincts of
human nature; but let us be strong in the knowledge of our divine nature
and of our purpose. Love and eternal bliss create the strength that is
within us. Have a careful look at this religion; be assured that all
that is perfect in man — art, learning, feeling, thought — belong to it,
and that all these varied aspects of human life merely express its
different forms. Understand thoroughly that every moment of human life
is the revelation of the Holy Spirit, the sole and absolute spirit which
speaks in man and forms his consciousness, and that, finally, the gospel
is the main source of revelation, and Jesus Christ is above all the Son
of God. If you understand all this thoroughly, your life, instead of
being poor and restricted, as it was, will become rich and eternal, and
the life of all mankind, past and present, will become yours. You will
find kindred souls who will no longer be able to remain strangers to
you, since you and they will have the same origins. Their purpose, their
suffering, their hopes, their moments of extreme joy, will be yours, and
will belong to you as they do to them. That is the only and indivisible,
harmonious entity, which strives towards absolute harmony and absolute
love.