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Abstract
Nietzsche, Steiner, and Jung are not generally considered mystics of the
first rank, as are their approximate contemporaries, Ramakrishna, Ramana
Maharshi, and Krishnamurti. However the projects that the former engaged
in throughout their lives have religious, spiritual, and mystical overtones,
and one can ask the question: were they (in various degrees) on the mystical
path, or were they engaged in some other task, perhaps even diametrically
opposed to the mystic endeavour? In order to focus this debate the concept
of the One in the mystical path will be explored, and the relationship of
Nietzsche, Steiner, and Jung evaluated with respect to it.
The One in mysticism
In the study of mysticism considerable attention has been paid to the seeming
diversity of accounts and experience of the mystics, with the perennialists
proposing a central 'core' experience from which different accounts derive
because of personal and cultural contexts and the contextualists who propose
that there is no 'core' experience, and that all experience arises from
the context. This paper will follow a middle path, assuming that there is
a core experience, which moreover can be characterised as some encounter
with the One, but that expressions of it are not so much culturally mediated
but fall broadly into only two categories determined by the (mostly) culturally-independent
orientation of the individual: descriptions of the One mediated through
love, and descriptions of the One mediated through awareness. This is to
say that the experience of the mystic is of some kind of unity, but reached
through two different orientations (heart orientation or head orientation);
the inner representation of the experience by the individual flavoured either
by love or awareness, and the final oral or written report presented in
a language that will be more or less culturally dependent. Thus the final
accounts are very diverse: a head-oriented mystic may have to express their
experience in the language of a heart-oriented religion, for example Dionysius
the Areopagite and the author of the Cloud of Unknowing are clearly head-oriented
(or on the via negativa), but have to use the language of Christianity
which is love-oriented and theistic. The theistic mystics (or heart-oriented
mystics or devotional mystics) in Christianity, such as Richard Rolle and
Teresa of Avila, don't have a much easier time because their love-mysticism
goes too far for the language of their religious tradition.
It is important to expand a little on the theme of head- and heart-orientation,
as it may appear at first glance too crass a distinction to be useful. It
is not intended here to carry any value-judgement: neither orientation is
'better' than the other. Nor is it intended here to imply that a heart-oriented
person is over-emotional, or incapable of rational thought or logical exposition,
or the appreciation of things intellectual. Nor is a head-oriented person
devoid of feeling, love, or compassion. It is more a question of balance:
one characteristic is stronger in one individual than another, and tends
to dictate their first response to situations. The idea relates to
Gurdjieff's 'three brains', and his three paths: the path of the fakir
(corresponding to the body 'brain'), the path of the monk (corresponding
to the heart 'brain'), and the path of the yogi (corresponding to
the head 'brain') [1]. Gurdjieff's work was to bring these three parts of the
human being into harmony, that is to restore to each part its correct functioning.
His teachings also involved the concept of the Fourth Way, as a synthesis
of the three existing ways. I disagree with him in this: firstly I don't
believe that the path of the fakir is a path in its own right, and that
a fakir must, to be successful, adopt one of the other two ways. Secondly,
I believe that the head/heart distinction is so universal that it is pointless
for a head-oriented person to attempt a heart-oriented path or vice versa,
and hence a synthesis of ways is not possible, at least not in the early
stages. What is clear from some mystics is that at the end of their
journey the distinction may disappear. Gurdjieff is also right in attempting
to balance out body, head, and heart, where the imbalance is pathological.
The picture may also be confused by mystics or others who attempt an over-correction,
but we are left with so many clear examples of the two orientations that
it seems absurd not to work with the distinction. The Buddha was head-oriented,
Christ heart-oriented. Ramana Maharshi was head-oriented, Ramakrishna heart-oriented.
Krishnamurti was head-oriented, Mother Mira heart-oriented. I would suggest,
(to take some examples) that many of the mistakes that Otto and Zaehner
make are because they do not understand the head-oriented mystic, and many
of the mistakes that Bharati makes are because he does not understand the
heart-oriented mystic.
Nature mystics, such as Walt Whitman and Richard Jefferies, may represent
a third type of orientation; these spurn existing religious language and
invent their own, which places them on the fringes of religious discourse.
It may be that nature mystics on closer examination can also be divided
into those with a head orientation and those with a love orientation. Whitman's
attitude to nature, and in particular, to people, is that of love, while
Jefferies remains detached from his fellow-men, and separate from nature.
That Whitman writes poetry (and even calls them songs) confirms his heart-orientation:
Jefferies writes prose. That God is absent from Whitman's poems in no way
makes him less heart-oriented than the same absence in Jefferies' prose
proves him head-oriented. The evidence for their orientation comes from
the warmth and coolness respectively of their work, and would need much
more space to explore properly. It is just worth mentioning in passing that
few Western commentators on mysticism have taken Whitman's mystical credentials
seriously, the exception being Bucke [2] (who is in turn not taken seriously, partly because
of his claims for Whitman) and Dorothy Mercer [3]. Two scholars of Indian extraction
have however produced detailed and convincing studies of the parallels between
Leaves of Grass and Advaita Vedantism: V.K.Chari [4] and V.Sachitanandan
[5].
Indian mystics, because of the richness
and variety of their inheritance, may find it easier to use the ready-made
language of either the devotional or non-devotional path, and someone like
the devotional Ramakrishna will continuously debate 'God without form or
God with form' as an object of worship. Ramana Maharshi, an 'awareness'
type couches his experience in the language of 'seeing who you are'. Krishnamurti,
perhaps suffering from the over-abundance of religious language and metaphor
of his tradition (and also from the extremes of his training) dumped it
totally, and presented a non-devotional system that looks more as if it
came from the cognitive sciences.
To sum up: the perennialist view will be taken in this essay that the experience
itself is 'core', or a priori, but that the varieties of expression
of the mystical experience may arise more from the orientation of the individual
than from their culture. The core experience is some way or other of the
One, which may express itself (for the heart-oriented) as God, or for the
awareness-oriented as the Void, or Nirvana, or of Wholeness. To introduce
a useful shorthand, the terms panenhenic, monistic, and theistic
mysticism will be used to describe nature-mysticism, awareness-mysticism,
and love-mysticism respectively. These terms derive from Zaehner [6] , but will
be used on equal footings, rather than with his connotations of sacred and
profane, with the resulting value implications. In examining the question
of whether Nietzsche, Steiner, and Jung are engaged in projects that have
a mystical endeavour, their concern with the One will be examined. The orientation
of each will be examined, not just in terms of the panenhenic / monist /
theist distinction, but also from the point of view of humility. The term
humility here will be used to suggest, not a conventionally 'humble' ego
(as we can find many great mystics who seem to be anything but humble in
this sense, Gurdjieff for example), but an orientation to the One of receptiveness.
This humbleness is that of making oneself available, for example a Richard
Rolle or Rumi will express this through sighs of longing for the 'Beloved';
a Zen or Yoga adherent may force themselves to sit in great discomfort for
hours on end for the slightest glimpse of the void; while a Richard Jefferies
will tramp for hours around his beloved Wiltshire to refresh his soul-longings.
We have refined our original question a little now: what characterises the
orientation of Nietzsche, Steiner, and Jung towards the One, and to what
extent are they receptive towards it?
The lives and work of Nietzsche, Steiner, and Jung
In their different ways all three men have had a profound impact on Western
thought this century, though in the case of Steiner one could argue that
his influence is more of an undercurrent. Nietzsche's pronouncement that
'God is dead' may have only captured the middle-European mood of the middle-to-late
19th Century, but the more general impact of his works, and particular his
model of the 'Superman' have left an indelible mark, though perhaps less
so in the United States where the mood was more expansive and optimistic,
and perhaps dictated by those who had left behind a peculiarly European
contraction of the soul. Steiner's work could never achieve the wider reading
that Nietzsche attracted, because of the 'occultist' tag to it, but his
influence probably has touched more lives directly, through his pedagogy,
his bio-dynamic farming, his art and architecture, and through the surviving
Steiner industries. Jung's work, though not quite in the household-name-category
of Freud, is widely known for his theory of the collective unconscious and
the archetypes, and has touched many directly through his psychoanalytical
therapy.
The three men have some important characteristics in common. They came from
humble middle-European backgrounds, with religious influences on them, either
directly from their fathers (Nietzsche and Jung) or from those close to
the family (Steiner). They stood out as academically brilliant from an early
age (though not necessarily in a conventional sense), and read voraciously
in philosophy, literature, and the sciences of their times. All were influenced
by Goethe (whose shaping of the middle-European soul is evident in them).
All were loners, in the sense of having a profound inner life which they
found hard to share, though Nietzsche stands out as suffering most from
loneliness.
Nietzsche
Nietzsche was born in 1844 as the son of a Protestant pastor. His father
died of a brain disease when the boy Nietzsche was young, and so he grew
up mainly in the company of women. He was unusually intelligent, and gained
a scholarship to Schulpforta (one of the best schools in the country) in
1858 at the age of 14, where he was mostly first in the class. He was often
ill as a boy, and had a conspicuous stare, often with a wild or threatening
look. He was very serious however, and nicknamed 'the little pastor' because
of his religious interests, but his passion was for books and writing: he
wrote an autobiography at the age of 14 and named it after Goethe's autobiography
(who was to remain one of his heroes). He also liked to play war-games with
toy soldiers, and would invent games with his sister and childhood friends,
taking a dominant role in these. He went on to University to study theology
in his father's footsteps, in 1864, and attempted to enter the usual social
life of students in those days including the joining of an undergraduate
fraternity. He persisted in spite of a lack of natural gregariousness, and
apparently even visited a brothel with his fraternarians, though he confined
himself to playing the piano which he discovered there to his great relief.
His physical and mental deterioration in later life may have been partly
due to syphilis, so a return visit to the brothel may have taken place with
less piano-playing. Theology did not satisfy him however, so he changed
to philology at which he excelled, and transferred to Leipzig under the
tutelage of Professor Ritschl. He founded the Leipzig Philological Society
and contributed a paper to it, which impressed Ritschl. Despite his brilliance
at philology, he began to take more of an interest in philosophy, and read
Schopenhauer, who was an important early influence, but whom Nietzsche never
met. In 1867 he entered the army, but after serving for a few months he
fell of his horse, broke his ribs, and suffered an infection that probably
also weakened his health in later life. Nietzsche met Wagner, whose music
impressed him greatly, and entered a period of orbiting this great man,
writing to him and about him, and spending time with him and his mistress
Cosima. In 1869, at the age of 24, Nietzsche was appointed to the chair
of classical philology at Basel, and received an honorary doctorate for
his writings in philology. He was noted for being a good and kind teacher
to his students, who may have appreciated him also for being closer to their
age than most of their lecturers. He even received a raise for excellence
in teaching.
In 1870, France and Prussia went to war, and Nietzsche enlisted as a medical
orderly. This was quite voluntary, as he had given up his Prussian citizenship
in order to work uninterrupted at Basel, an act that left him officially
stateless up to his death. The human carnage of both French and German soldiers
challenged his patriotism, and had a great impact on him, turning him to
philosophy for consolation. He soon became ill himself, with dysentery and
diptheria, and he was discharged to recuperate at home. It may have been
this experience that made him a critic of both militarism and statism.
In his teaching years at Basel he continued his friendship with Wagner.
Wagner was enthusiastic about one of Nietzsche's early books The Birth
of Tragedy, but the friendship eventually waned, as Nietzsche considered
that Wagner had 'sold out' to the German public. Nietzsche grew impatient
with philology and began to consider that philosophy was more important
to him, but the University refused to let him transfer. In 1876 Nietzsche's
health deteriorated to the point that he had to give up teaching, and from
then on he lived on the tiny University pension he received, publishing
his works at his own expense.
In 1881 he started on Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but his health worsened
and only a few works follow this (which he reckoned to be his finest achievement)
before his complete breakdown by 1890. In 1888 the first signs of madness
appeared, and in his very last letter dated 6th January 1889 he begins:
'Dear Professor, in the end I would have much preferred being a Basle professor
to being God. But I did not dare to carry my private egoism so far that
for its sake I should omit the creation of the world ...' He caused a public
commotion soon after this letter by throwing his arms around an old cart-horse
whose misery aroused in him such pity that he was overcome. Pity was one
of the emotions he railed against endlessly in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
He was nursed, first by his mother, and then by his sister, up to his death
in 1900. In the last twelve years of his life he was considered insane,
and was unable to converse or even dress himself.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra was written in short periods and in unusual
circumstances. According to his notes on the subject in Ecce Homo,
it was in August 1881, while walking in the woods by lake Silvaplana that
the concept of eternal recurrence (a redemption of the past based
on affirmation) came to him, and which forms a theme in the book. Nietzsche
lived in a quiet bay of Rapallo, not far from Genoa, and spent his mornings,
health permitting, walking in the woods up in the hills above, and in the
afternoons in walking around the bay. The concept of Zarathustra
grew on him in this period, or crept up on him, as he says. He considers
that the book came from him almost as an act of revelation:
- Has anyone at the end of the nineteenth century
a distinct conception of what poets of strong ages called inspiration?
If not, I will describe it. - If one had the slightest residue of superstition
left in one, one would hardly be able to set aside the idea that one is
merely incarnation, merely mouthpiece, merely medium of overwhelming forces.
The concept of revelation, in the sense that something suddenly, with an
unspeakable certainty and subtlety, becomes visible, audible, something
that shakes and overturns one to the depths, simply describes the fact.
One hears, one does not seek; one takes, one does not ask who gives; a
thought flashes up like lightening, with necessity, unfalteringly formed
- I have never had any choice. An ecstasy whose tremendous tension somehow
discharges itself in a flood of tears, while one's steps now involuntarily
rush along, now involuntarily lag; a complete being outside of oneself
with the distinct consciousness of a multitude of subtle shudders and trickles
down to one's toes; a depth of happiness in which the most painful and
gloomy things appear, not as an antithesis, but as conditioned, demanded,
as a necessary colour within such a superfluity of light; an instinct
for rhythmical relationships which spans forms of wide extent - length,
the need for a wide-spanned rhythm is almost the measure of the force of
inspiration, a kind of compensation for its pressure and tension ... Everything
is in the highest degree involuntary but takes place as in a tempest of
a feeling of freedom, of absoluteness, of power, of divinity ... The involuntary
nature of image, of metaphor is the most remarkable thing of all; one no
longer has any idea what is image, what metaphor, everything presents itself
as the readiest, the truest, the simplest means of expression. It really
does seem, to allude to a saying of Zarathustra's, as if the things themselves
approached and offered themselves as metaphors (- 'here all things come
caressingly to your discourse and flatter you: for they want to ride upon
your back. Upon every image you here ride to every truth. Here the words
and word-chests of all existence spring open to you; all existence here
want to become words, all becoming here wants to learn speech from you
-'). This is my experience of inspiration; I do not doubt that one
has to go back thousands of years to find anyone who could say to me 'it
is mine also' [7].
Nietzsche's insights alone might make Zarathustra
a book of wisdom, but there is also an expansivity and inspiration in it.
There are many ecstatic passages scattered throughout the book, of which
parts of the 'Night Song' are good examples:
It is night: now do all leaping fountains speak
louder. And my soul too is a leaping fountain.
It is night: only now do all songs of lovers
awaken. And my soul too is the song of a lover.
Something unquenched, unquenchable, is in me,
that wants to speak out. A craving for love is in me, that itself speaks
the language of love.
Light am I: ah, that I were night! But this
is my solitude that I am girded round with light.
Ah, that I were dark and obscure! How I would
suck the breasts of light!
And I should bless you, sparkling stars and
glow-worms above! - and be happy in our gifts of light.
But I live in my own light, I drink back into
myself the flames that break from me.
We gather that Nietzsche himself was moved by
the 'Night Song', because in 1884, when he gave a copy of Zarathustra
to Resa von Schirnhofer (one of his female companions of the time) he immediately
asked her to read it out to him, upon which he was left silent and emotional
for some time. In another passage Zarathustra looks beyond the stars:
'You, however, O Zarathustra, have wanted to
behold the ground of things and their background: so you must climb above
yourself - up and beyond, until you have even the stars under you!'
Yes! to look down upon myself and even upon
the stars: that alone would I call my summit, that has remained
for me as my ultimate summit!
Compare this with a passage by Jefferies from The Story of My Heart
[8]
:
I now became lost, and absorbed into the being
or existence of the universe. I felt deep down into the earth under, and
high above into the sky, and farther still to the sun and stars. Still
farther beyond the stars into the hollow of space, and losing thus my separateness
of being come to seem like a part of the whole.
Jefferies uses the same imagery of going beyond the stars, but seems to
have already achieved Zarathustra's ultimate summit. Another lyrical passage
in Zarathustra reminds one of Jefferies:
O sky above me! O pure, deep sky! You abyss of light! Gazing into you
I tremble with divine desires.
To cast myself into your height - that is my depth! To hide myself in
you purity - that is my innnocence!
The god is veiled by his beauty: thus you hide your stars. You do not
speak: thus you proclaim to me your wisdom.
(Before Sunrise)
Jefferies also loves the sky:
Then I addressed the sun, desiring the soul equivalent of his light
and brilliance, his endurance and unwearied race. I turned to the blue
heaven over, gazing into its depth, inhaling its exquisite colour and sweetness.
The rich blue of the unattainable flower of the sky drew my soul towards
its, and there it rested, for pure colour is rest of heart. [9]
The whole of 'Before Sunrise' is of a mystical flavour, and would not compare
badly with passages from Whitman or the Gita. The last section of
Part Three is similarly buoyant: here is the seventh and last part of it:
If ever I spread out a still sky above myself and flew with my own wings
into my own sky:
if, playing, I have swum into deep light-distances and bird-wisdom came
to my freedom:
but thus speaks bird-wisdom: 'Behold, there is no above, no below! Fling
yourself about, out, back, weightless bird! Sing! speak no more!
'are not all words made for the heavy? do not all words lie to the light?
Sing! speak no more!'
Oh how should I not lust for eternity and for the wedding ring of rings
- the Ring of Recurrence!
Never yet did I find the woman by whom I wanted children, unless it
be this woman, whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!
For I love you, O Eternity!
('The Seven Seals', part 7)
It is worth remembering that these would have been the last words in Zarathustra,
had Nietzsche not chosen to add Part Four the following year. Zarathustra
is not however a book of light alone, there is much darkness in it, and
in Part Four we see the unmistakable signs of Nietzsche's impending breakdown.
There are many passages in Zarathustra that suggest, at least
on the surface of it, that Nietzsche is expressing some fundamental insights
into the nature of man's existence. We may accept that Nietzsche had a contempt
for the mediocre - so did Krishnamurti for example; however, it is crucial
in considering Nietzsche's reality that we have a clear idea of his feelings
for others, and we cannot overlook his consistent and monumental expressions
of contempt. Let us look at some examples of his intolerance:
Much about your good people moves me to disgust, and it is not their
evil I mean. How I wish they possessed a madness through which they could
perish, like this pale criminal.
('Of the Pale Criminal')
There are preachers of death: and the earth is full of those to whom
departure from life must be preached.
The earth is full of the superfluous, life has been corrupted by the
many-too-many. Let them be lured by 'eternal life' out of this life!
('Of the Preachers of Death')
Many too many are born: the state was invented for the superfluous!
Just see how it lures them, the many-too-many! How it devours them,
and chews them, and re-chews them!
...
Just look at these superfluous people! They steal for themselves the works
of inventors and the treasures of the wise: they call their theft culture
- and they turn everything to sickness and calamity.
Just look at these superfluous people! They are always ill, they vomit
their bile and call it a newspaper. They devour one another and cannot
even digest themselves.
Just look at these superfluous people! They acquire wealth and make
themselves poorer with it. They desire power and especially the lever of
power, plenty of money - these impotent people!
See them clamber, these nimble apes! They clamber over one another and
so scuffle into the mud and the abyss.
('Of the New Idol')
Flee, my friend, into your solitude: I see you stung by poisonous flies.
Flee to where the raw, rough breeze blows!
Flee into your solitude! You have lived too near the small and pitiable
men. Flee from their hidden vengeance! Towards you they are nothing but
vengeance.
No longer lift your arm against them! They are innumerable and it is
not your fate to be a fly-swat.
Innumerable are these small and pitiable men; and raindrops and weeds
have already brought about the destruction of many a proud building.
[and so on for a while ...]
Your neighbours will always be poisonous flies: that about you which
is great, that itself must make them more poisonous and ever more fly-like.
Flee, my friend, into your solitude and to where the raw, rough breeze
blows! It is not your fate to be a fly-swat.
('Of the Flies of the Market-Place')
But that which the many-too-many , the superfluous, call marriage -
ah, what shall I call it?
Ah, this poverty of soul in partnership! Ah, this filth of soul in partnership!
Ah, this miserable ease in partnership!
All this they call marriage; and they say their marriages are made in
Heaven.
Well, I do not like it, this Heaven of the superfluous!
('Of Marriage and Children')
Alas! They are always few whose heart possesses a long-enduring courage
and wantonness; and in such the spirit, too, is patient. The remainder,
however, are cowardly.
The remainder: that is always the majority, the common-place, the superfluity,
the many-too-many - all these are cowardly!
('Of the Apostates')
These selections make for depressing reading, and there are many more. They
are of course scattered throughout the text, and have a different effect
because of it: they tend to cancel out the ecstatic or otherwise benign
sense of the sections they are found in. Nietzsche is so graceless in his
despising of the common people that we are ashamed for him. Even worse is
his attitude to women: as an admirer of Schopenhauer we may not expect him
to rise above the attitudes of his time (any more than Jung did in this
respect), but the following passages show that he did not just learn well
from his teacher, but added his own measure of bile:
Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer than into the
dreams of a lustful woman? ('Of Chastity')
In woman, a slave and a tyrant have all too long been concealed. For
that reason, woman is not yet capable of friendship: she knows only love.
In a woman's love is injustice and blindness towards all she does not
love. And in the enlightened love of a woman, too, there is still the unexpected
attack and lightning and night, along with the night. [and may this continue!]
Woman is not yet capable of friendship: women are still cats and birds.
Or at best, cows.
Woman is not yet capable of friendship. But tell me, you men, which
of you is yet capable of friendship? ('Of the Friend')
Man should be trained for war and woman for the recreation of warriors:
all else is folly.
...
The man's happiness is: I will. The woman's happiness is: He will.
'Behold, now the world has become perfect!' - thus thinks every woman
when she obeys with all her love.
And woman has to obey and find a depth for her surface. Woman's nature
is surface, a changeable, stormy film upon shallow waters.
But a man's nature is deep, its torrent roars in subterranean caves:
woman senses its power but does not comprehend it.
...
'Give me your little truth, woman!' I said. And thus spoke the little old
woman:
'Are you visiting women? Do not forget your whip!'
('Of Old and Young Women')
The 'whip' passage is possibly the most famous in Zarathustra and
should really be forgotten, but it is not an isolated comment as we see,
and is part of our picture of his views on women. It should be noted that
Nietzsche does not even have the courage to put the words into Zarathustra's
mouth: they are spoken by a woman, and an old woman perhaps to lend authority
to them. Nietzsche slips up though: he follows the whip statement with the
usual 'Thus spoke Zarathustra', which he leaves out in other sections where
another person is the last to speak. Interestingly women who knew him have
defended this statement in a variety of ways, in particular his sister [10]
. But if women are cows at best, why not
use a whip?
As the book progresses there are a growing number of contradictions, and
of course the continuing antipathy to the ordinary person, and women. Zarathustra
is maturing however in himself and in his teachings, so can we not
accept these blemishes, blemishes that make him possibly endearing to us?
The life-affirming nature of his teachings do seem to grow, to the point
where he even accepts the idiocy of the Higher Men's ass-worship in a good-humoured
and friendly way. Perhaps all the faults can be redeemed in the finale of
the book, perhaps Zarathustra finally reveals the depth of his wisdom, that
would cause kings, popes, philosophers and poets to revere him. Perhaps
all the contradictions and disparagements are to be resolved. What actually
happens then, at the end of the book, that could redeem Zarathustra as a
true seer, and the founder of a new vision? What actually happens is that
the Higher Men are 'healed' by Zarathustra's wisdom (or the fresh air in
the mountains, we are not sure): they become convalescents, and their first
act as Zarathustra's disciples of the affirmation of life is to invent a
new ritual: the Ass festival. Zarathustra takes it in his stride - this
must mean that the real teaching is about to come. Not a bit of it: they
eat, drink and make merry, and the following morning when Zarathustra gets
up before his guests he walks out to a rock, and is flocked about by gentle
birds, and in the midst of this confusion, he finds himself stroking a lion.
But, as he was clutching about, above and underneath
himself, warding off the tender birds, behold, then something even stranger
occurred: for in doing so he clutched unawares a thick, warm mane of hair;
at the same time, however, a roar rang out in front of him - the gentle,
protracted roar of a lion.
'The sign has come,' said Zarathustra, and
his heart was transformed. And in truth, when it grew clear before him,
there lay at his feet a sallow, powerful animal that lovingly pressed its
head against his knee and would not leave him, behaving like a dog that
has found his master again. The doves, however, were no less eager than
the lion with their love; and every time a dove glided across the lion's
nose, the lion shook its head and wondered and laughed.
('The Sign')
The Higher Men then get up to offer Zarathustra their greetings; surely
now Zarathustra will enlighten us and them from the depth of his wisdom,
that the lion must be a symbol of? Not a bit of it. The lion roars at them
and they conveniently disappear, leaving Zarathustra alone to comment that
his pity for them had had its day and now it was time to get on with his
work, about which he enlightens us no further. The fact is that the finale
to Zarathustra is a childish nonsense posing as wisdom. The lion
is the last straw: for it to behave like a fawning dog would be a betrayal
of its nature fit only for a circus, and a betrayal of the reality
which the mystic is the sober inhabitant of. The lion here is no sign of
Zarathustra's wisdom or 'voice of command' that he mourns the lack
of earlier in the book, but a teddy-bear, a comforter and protector,
a mummy. Zarathustra has returned full-circle to childhood. And in Nietzsche's
case the return to childhood was an entry into madness, with the added poignancy
that his mother was to nurse him in the early stages of it.
The episode of the tight-rope walker at the beginning of Zarathustra is
a symbol for Nietzsche's eventual madness: Nietzsche is the buffoon who
jumps over the tight-rope walker, despite his own advice:
There are diverse paths and ways to overcoming:
just look to it! But only a buffoon thinks: 'Man can also be jumped
over.'
('Of Old and New Law-Tables')
Nietzsche is the tight-rope walker who fell to his death. Nietzsche's
best legacy is as destroyer of the false and hypocritical in his age, and
previous ages. His rage against decadence is so profoundly expressed that
he tears himself apart. He says:
O my brothers, am I then cruel? But I say:
That which is falling should also be pushed!
Everything of today - it is falling, it is
decaying: who would support it? But I - want to push it too!
(Of Old and New Law-Tables)
Nietzsche is hurling all the decadence of his age of a cliff, and himself
with it. His exposure of decadence is to do with honesty:
There have always been many sickly people among
those who invent fables and long for God: they have a raging hate for the
enlightened man and for that youngest of virtues which is called honesty.
(Of the Afterworldsmen)
Why is honesty the youngest of virtues for Nietzsche?
My guess is that it is a certain type of honesty that he is talking about,
not the traditional honesty in financial matters, the distaste for lying,
and the honouring of promises, but an honesty to oneself - the type of honesty
that separates 20th century thought from the previous eras. This youngest
of virtues became needed when man became false, and Nietzsche is one of
the first prophets of this honesty, and partly for this reason is seen as
the precursors of the existentialists. Perhaps Nietzsche sees it as the
youngest of virtues because he cannot grasp it fully, existentially, in
his own life; if he had, his writings would have amplified themselves in
their meaning, and reduced in froth.
References for Part 1
[1]
Ouspensky, P.D. In Search of the Miraculous
- Fragments of an Unknown Teaching, Arkana, ?, p. 46.
[2] Bucke,
R.M. Cosmic Consciousness - A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind,
Olympia Press, London, 1972
[3] Dorothy
F. Mercer wrote a series of articles on Whitman between 1946 and 1948 in
the journal Vedanta and the West, published by the Vedanta Society
of Los Angeles.
[4] Chari,
V.K. Whitman in the Light of Vedantic Mysticism, Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 1976
[5] Sachitanandan,
V. Whitman and Bharati: A Comparative Study, The MacMillan Company
of India Ltd., Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi, Madras, 1978
[6] Zaehner,
R.C. Mysticism Sacred and Profane: an Inquiry into some Varieties of
Praeternatural Experience, Oxford 1957
[7] Nietzsche,
F. Ecce Homo, Penguin Books, London, 1979, p.102
[8] Jefferies,
R. The Story of My Heart, MacMillan St Martin's Press, London 1968
[9]
Jefferies, R. The Story of My Heart, MacMillan
St Martin's Press, London 1968, p. 3.
[10] Gilman,
S.L. Conversations with Nietzsche, New York, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1987 pp.123-124
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