mike king >> writings >> Krishna, Whitman, Nietzsche, Sartre

Nietzsche's insights alone might make Zarathustra a book of wisdom, but it is the expansivity and inspiration of it that also suggests a comparability with the Gita and Leaves of Grass. 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 [11]. 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!

(The Wanderer)

Compare this with a passage by Jefferies from The Story of My Heart:

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. [12]

Jefferies uses the same imagery of going beyond the stars, but seems to have already achieved Zarathustra's ultimate summit. (In fact, a reference to the stars as within one occurs regularly in mysticism from the devotional visions of Arjuna to the scientific headlessness of Harding.) 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 your purity that is my innocence!

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 loved 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. [13]

(Jefferies' praise of pure colour reminds us of Krishnamurti's daffodils.) The whole of 'Before Sunrise' in Part Three of Zarathustra also has 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. In this last passage from Part Three of Zarathustra Nietzsche is vowing love for eternity, and his concept of eternal recurrence. Nietzsche as a philosopher is remembered for his principle of eternal recurrence: is this idea the same as the mystics' sense of immortality? Nietzsche introduces us to the idea in a dream where a dwarf who represents the 'Spirit of Gravity' is carried by Zarathustra up a mountain. Zarathustra stops and tells the dwarf that the path ahead represents the future, the path behind represents the present and the gateway where they were halted at represents the present moment. The dwarf replies that time is a circle. Zarathustra then proposes the theory that everything will happen again, and everything has already happened; this theme is elaborated upon and leads up to the ecstatic ending to Part Three. Zarathustra hints at the meaning of it in this passage:

Then I wait impatiently, until the luminous sky at last dawns for me, the snowy-bearded winter sky, the white-haired, ancient sky

the silent, winter sky, that often conceals even its sun!

Did I learn long, luminous silence from it? Or did it learn it from me? Or did each of us devise it himself?

The origin of all good things is thousandfold all good, wanton things spring for joy into existence: how should they do that once only?

('On the Mount of Olives')

Could this be a hint that Nietzsche is older than the sun, like Krishna? Zarathustra, in his crisis before the end of Part Three, shows that eternal recurrence also has its drawbacks:

'The greatest all too small! that was my disgust at man! And eternal recurrence even for the smallest! that was my disgust at all existence!

'Ah, disgust! Disgust! Disgust!' Thus spoke Zarathustra and sighed and shuddered; for he remembered his sickness.

('The Convalescent')

He recovers, with the help of his animals, and they tell him:

'Sing and bubble over, O Zarathustra, heal your soul with new songs, so that you may bear your great destiny, that was never yet the destiny of any man!

'For you animals well know, O Zarathustra, who you are and must become: behold, you are the teacher of the eternal recurrence, that is now your destiny!

'that you have to be the first to teach this doctrine how should this great destiny not also be your greatest danger and sickness!

'Behold, we know what you teach: that all things recur eternally and we ourselves with them, and that we have already existed an infinite number of times before and all things with us.

('The Convalescent')

Zarathustra is to be the teacher of the eternal recurrence: there are countless passages where Zarathustra states his mission as teacher, and also his frustration at the slowness of his disciples. He also echoes what all great teachers have said, including Whitman, that the disciple must outgrow the teacher. This passage is from the end of Part One, where Zarathustra is taking leave of his disciples and returning to his mountain-top:

I now go away alone, my disciples! You too now go away and be alone! So I will have it.

Truly, I advise you: go away from me and guard yourselves against Zarathustra! And better still: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he has deceived you.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil. And why then, should you not pluck at my laurels?

You respect me; but how if one day your respect should tumble? Take care that a falling statue does not strike you dead!

You say you believe in Zarathustra? But of what importance is Zarathustra? You are my believers: but of what importance are all believers?

You had not yet sought yourselves when you found me. Thus do all believers; therefore all belief is of so little account.

Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you.

('Of the Bestowing Virtue')

(Note the reference to Jesus in the last sentence.) Consider now this passage from Whitman's Leaves of Grass:

Long enough have you dream'd contemptible dreams,

Now I wash the gum from your eyes,

You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life.


Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore,

Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,

To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, and laughingly dash with your hair.


I am the teacher of athletes,

He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the width of my own,

He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.

('Song of Myself' verses 46/47)

Whitman is more Zen-like here, but there are similarities: the repudiation of the teacher once the lesson is learned. In another passage Nietzsche echoes Lao Tzu's humbleness as a teacher:

Truly, you fill your mouths with noble words: and are we supposed to believe that your hearts are overflowing, you habitual liars?

But my words are poor, despised, halting works: I am glad to take what falls from the table at your feast.

('Of Immaculate Perception')

Lao Tzu says:

How does the sea become the king of all streams?

Because it lies lower than they!

Hence it is the king of all streams.


Therefore, the Sage reigns over the people by humbling himself in speech;

And leads the people by putting himself behind. [14]

Zarathustra has to create his disciples:

Once the creator sought companions and children of his hope: and behold, it turned out that he could not find them, except he first create them himself.

Thus I am in the midst of my work, going to my children and turning from them: for the sake of his children must Zarathustra perfect himself.

For one loves from the very heart only one's child and one's work; and where there is great love of oneself, then it is a sign of pregnancy: thus I have found.

My children are still green in their first spring, standing close together and shaken in common by the winds, the trees of my garden and my best soil.

('Of Involuntary Bliss')

Zarathustra also compares himself to Jesus in several other sections. In the beginning of Part Four, where he waits for the Higher Men to come to him, he makes reference to 'fishers of men':

And when I desired honey, I desired only bait and sweet syrup and gum, which even grumbling bears and strange, sullen, wicked birds are greedy for:

the finest bait, such as huntsmen and fishermen need. For although the world is like a dark animal-jungle and a pleasure-ground for all wild huntsmen, its seems to me to be rather and preferably an unfathomable, rich, sea,

a sea full of many-coloured fishes and crabs for which even the gods might long and become fishers and casters of nets: so rich is the world in strange things, great and small!

Especially the human world, the human sea: now I cast my golden fishing-rod into it and say: Open up, human abyss!

Open up and throw me your fishes and glistening crabs! With my finest bait shall I bait today the strangest human fish!

('The Honey Offering')

Another obvious reference to Jesus is in one of the last sections of Part Four, called the 'Last Supper', when Zarathustra provides a feast for the Higher Men who have come to his cave. Some commentators have also pointed out that the book begins with Zarathustra leaving his home for the mountains at the age of thirty, widely taken to be another reference to Jesus. Is Nietzsche really comparing himself to Jesus? Or is he using the implied parallels to comment on Jesus's life and teachings? Zarathustra never seems certain, though, of what he is teaching, but he sees this as no hindrance to teaching:

Are you pure air and solitude and bread and medicine to your friend? Many a one cannot deliver himself from his own chains and yet he is his friend's deliverer.

('Of the Friend')

We have seen 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, with similarities of intention and imagery to known mystics. Because we are looking for expressions of the inexpressible, we should not be at all surprised to find contradictions within a piece of mystical writing, or with other mystical writings, or to find completely new ways of putting things. An early problem in the study of mysticism is the extremes of avowal and disavowal of God or any kind of god: neither is it any good looking for personal convictions on the subject of celibacy, vegetarianism, or even the taking up of arms, as these are not common factors. We have to look at Zarathustra as a whole, and Nietzsche's life as a whole, past all the seeming contradictions to enquire of any mystical content.

Our first stumbling block, both in the man and his writings, is with his attitude to others. It is accepted that Nietzsche had a contempt for the mediocre but so did Krishnamurti to some degree; however, it is crucial in considering Nietzsche's reality that we have a clear idea of his feelings for others, and we cannot overlook the fact that his expression of contempt is consistent and monumental. To love your neighbour is not a moral exhortation in mysticism, but a measure of union with the whole it is not, however, the kind of love that many assume, and also rightly assume to be near impossible to genuinely feel for all people. That Whitman expresses love for the multitude, or rather for each individual in the multitude, is exceptional, even by the standards of mystics; the kind of love that one begins to expect in the mystic is more of an acceptance. Whitman himself remembers only four or five people in Specimen Days as being particularly close: perhaps one is lucky to find even that many in a lifetime. One's attitude to all the rest is what is under discussion here: a love that does not necessarily seek out an individual's company (for it might in fact be worse than no company at all) but that is simply a bigness: one is big enough for every one of the six billion people on this planet to exist, but more than this: a sense of proportion that tells one that Nature's profusion is good. Numbers are irrelevant; antipathies are irrelevant; this love can find fault as well as the next man, but somehow it tolerates, more than tolerates, it celebrates this diversity, even when nailed to the cross. It is this bigness that Nietzsche lacks so visibly, and makes one question his insights. 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')


You look up when you desire to be exalted. And I look down, because I am exalted.

('Of Reading and Writing')


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')


Life is a fountain of delight: but where the rabble also drinks all wells are poisoned. ...

And many a one who turned away from life, turned away only from the rabble: he did not wish to share the well and the flame and the fruit with the rabble.

And many a one who went into the desert and suffered thirst with beasts of prey merely did not wish to sit around the cistern with dirty camel-drivers.

And many a one who came along like a destroyer and a shower of hail to all orchards wanted merely to put his foot into the jaws of the rabble and so stop its throat.

And to know that life itself has need of enmity and dying and martyrdoms, that was not the mouthful that choked me most.

But I once asked, and my question almost stifled me: What, does life have need of the rabble, too? ('Of the Rabble')


I do not want to be confused with these preachers of equality, nor taken for one of them. For justice speaks thus to me: 'Men are not equal.'

And they should not becomes so, either! For what were my love of the Superman if I spoke otherwise? ('Of the Tarantulas')


I once vowed to renounce all disgust; then you transformed my kindred and neighbours into abscesses. Alas, whither did my noblest vow flee then?

('The Funeral Song')


I would rather be a day-labourer in the underworld and among the shades of the bygone! Even the inhabitants of the underworld are fatter and fuller than you!

This, yes this is bitterness to my stomach, that I can endure you neither naked nor clothed, you men of the present!

('Of the Land of Culture')


I go among this people and keep my eyes open: they do not forgive me that I am not envious of their virtues.

They peck at me because I tell them: For small people small virtues are necessary and because it is hard for me to understand that small people are necessary!

('Of the Virtue That Makes Small')


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')

I have deliberately collected all these sections together, and they make for depressing reading in this concentrated form. 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. I will return to this idea of Zarathustra being a self-cancelling text, but for now we will look at some of the above passages more closely. Nietzsche says that he finds it hard to understand that 'small people are necessary'; Whitman that he is curious for each and everyone - is this merely a matter of expression? Krishnamurti had little patience for the commonplace; we may remember that he was more interested in the daffodils than his fellow-diners in the restaurant, and, although he had endless energies for the seekers that came to him, his preference was to retire from society and criticise its shortcomings from a distance. Temperamentally Nietzsche was more like Krishnamurti than Whitman, but Krishnamurti does not propose that the 'superfluous' do not exist! A mystic also lives skilfully, though. One doesn't deliberately live with people one doesn't get on with; and if one has to, one attempts to do so with grace. Nietzsche is so graceless in his despising of the common people that we are ashamed for him. Rajneesh (and we shall look at affinities between him and Nietzsche shortly) repeated over and over again that each individual was unique and needed in the universe.

Let us look in this context at another popular view of Nietzsche as a misogynist: is this as mis-attributed to him as his alleged anti-Semitism? Unfortunately not, as the following passages show:

Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer than into the dreams of a lustful woman?

('Of Chastity')

These people abstain, it is true: but the bitch Sensuality glares enviously out of all they do. (ditto)


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 light.

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 their 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.

We might remember Anne Gilchrist's observation in the last chapter that "The full spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul of a woman above all," quoted in appreciation of Whitman; perhaps a similar sentiment to "The man's happiness is: I will. The woman's happiness is: He will". But we don't accept it from Nietzsche, in particular when it is elaborated on so unremittingly, and with no balance. Nietzsche's culture and time was misogynist but he had in addition a good mentor in erudite misogyny: Schopenhauer, who compared women to spiders (it is unfortunately true that the great C.G.Jung was also happy to use the same metaphor).

Despite the mass of negative passages in Zarathustra on the subject of Nietzsche's fellow-man and fellow-woman, we still have many ecstatic passages, and many insights, that should make the book of value to us. The negative passages do tend to cancel out or dilute the life-affirming nature of the more visionary and uplifting passages, so let us look again and more closely at some of the insights in Zarathustra. Are they flawed? An obvious feature of Nietzsche's prose is hyperbola: can we see this as just his style, or does it damage his work? Let us look at passages that typify his exaggerations:

But to reveal my heart entirely to you, friends: if there were gods, how could I endure not to be a god! Therefore there are no gods.

('On the Blissful Islands')


And the enlightened man shall learn to build with mountains! It is a small thing for the spirit to move mountains did you know that before?

('Of the Famous Philosophers')

The claims of the mystics could equally be considered full of exaggeration: the very starting point of Pure Consciousness Mysticism that we can apprehend the infinite and eternal seems to be exaggeration. Hence, we cannot criticise Nietzsche for this alone, for perhaps he is hiding his truths in them. Where we do find a strong counter-indication for a mystical claim to Nietzsche's work is in his attitude to the future. As we have seen the mystic's most common expression of their relationship to time is that they live in the eternal now, Krishnamurti stating that the process of thought was the biggest barrier to this state; Jefferies, dipping his hand in the brook, tells us that his soul can never 'be dipped in time'. Nietzsche, in contrast, sees no value in the present, other than to prepare for the future:

If you believed more in life, you would devote yourselves less to the moment. But you have insufficient capacity for waiting or even laziness!

('Of the Preachers of Death')


May the future and the most distant be the principle of your today: in your friend you should love the Superman as the principle.

My brothers, I do not exhort you to love of your neighbour: I exhort you to love of the most distant.

('Of Love of One's Neighbour')


Could you create a god? So be silent about all gods! But you could surely create the Superman.

Perhaps not you yourselves, my brothers! But you could transform yourselves into the forefathers and ancestors of the Superman: and let this be your finest creating.

('On the Blissful Islands')

Again, this is not conclusive, because we must bear in mind the difference between a mystic describing themselves and a mystic teaching the novice. Many teachings do stress that the initiate has to work towards a realisation in the future, though many also recognise that this emphasis is dangerous because it merely becomes a life-style (Harding's response to the fictional acolyte in The Trial of the Man who said he was God is a good analysis of the dangers). Nietzsche's metaphor of the tight-rope over the abyss is part of his stress on a movement towards a better future, but one is beginning to suspect that it lies in a despising of the present.

More puzzling is Nietzsche's concept of eternal recurrence. Although in the text it is intended mainly to convey an optimism about life, an optimism that can contemplate the infinite repetition down to the minutest details of our life, it could also be a profoundly pessimistic view. It is also at odds with the conviction that man needs to evolve into something better; does this repeat itself too? Few thinkers have taken Nietzsche's eternal recurrence seriously, and the fact that Ouspensky did for a period does not cast any further light on it (Gurdjieff teased him on the subject, calling it Ouspensky's 'little hobby' [15]). It may explain deja vu, but the theory is not that plausible, either from a mystical viewpoint or from a scientific viewpoint. No mystic has ever promoted it, and no scientist either; this is notwithstanding the particular problem that time causes for modern science. Science is generally at a loss to explain the privileged position that the present has for human consciousness, as opposed to the past or future, though it may be that recent developments linking chaos theory and quantum theory may help. For the mystic the problem is the reverse: how to make the pupil fully aware of the privileged position of the present, or rather to show the non-existential nature of past and future, the one a function of memory and the other of imagination.

The concept of the eternal is central to Pure Consciousness Mysticism; one of its means of expression is the imperishable or intransitory this usually being associated with awareness. Nietzsche is opposed to this idea.

I call it evil and misanthropic, all this teaching about the one and the perfect and the unmoved and the sufficient and the intransitory.

All that is intransitory that is but an image!

('On the Blissful Islands')

This is precisely the teaching of the mystics: the one and the perfect and the unmoved and the sufficient and the intransitory. Gandhi was sure that the Unmanifest was not apprehendible, Jung convinced that nirvana was an amputation, and Nietzsche considered teachings of the intransitory evil and misanthropic. But the mystics show that the intransitory is not only apprehendible, but fundamental to man! The elusiveness of it makes Nietzsche's stance understandable however, as is also Jung's and Gandhi's, but it begins to remove Nietzsche from serious consideration under PCM.

This might be a good point to consider more generally the idea that mankind as a whole evolves from a spiritual point of view, as this is the premise on which Zarathustra is based. R.M.Bucke's analysis of mysticism is strongly dependent on the idea that cosmic consciousness, present now in only a few individuals, will become widespread as the human race evolves; indeed its presence indicates such an evolution. (We have pointed out earlier that his work is underestimated, but this view on evolution is probably another flaw in it.) Darwinian theory tells us that in the period from the birth of the Upanishads to the present day, approximately 3,000 years, is far too short a time for any significant evolutionary changes in our genetic makeup, but is there evidence that we have evolved spiritually in this time? It is hard to make a claim that recent mystical writings are any more advanced than the Upanishads, our oldest, though it is reasonable to assert that each new mystic can improve our understanding through new expressions of the perennial reality. It is also hard to see from the perspective of Pure Consciousness Mysticism how an identification with the infinite and eternal can be a matter of degree or improvement. The kind of spiritual evolution that Rudolf Steiner preached is also not related to the infinite and eternal, but to a separate world of disembodied entities that PCM neither accepts nor dismisses, but makes no comment on. We are left only with the possibility that a bigger proportion of the population is reaching self-realisation, or that this will be the case in the future. However, the only evidence for this offered by Bucke is that during the period from the Buddha to Dante, eighteen hundred years, he counts five cases of cosmic consciousness, and during the following six hundred years he counts six cases, proving an 'acceleration' in modern times. [16] His inclusion of Balzac and Edward Carpenter in the modern period as fully developed cases of the cosmic consciousness is debatable and casts doubt on his overall tallies, as does his omission of dozens of other more suitable candidates in the earlier period.
That society and culture evolve is not in dispute, but the implications of this for the spiritual life are ambiguous at best. We may note that a parallel concept to the spiritual evolution of the race is the psychological development of the individual; attempts have been made to place enlightenment in the context of the psychological stages of infant, child and adult: Robert May does this in his Cosmic Consciousness Revisited [17], and it is central to the work of Ken Wilber. This approach cannot however deal with the cases of Krishna and Lao Tzu (both understood to have been enlightened from birth); and if these are dismissed on the grounds of insufficient evidence we have the case of Mother Meera, and examples that May quotes of children having transcendent experiences.

The converse view, that mankind as a whole is devolving spiritually, is just as widespread and just as unsustainable from the evidence. The hankering after a 'golden age' is a natural human tendency and finds expression in religious mythology all round the world: in the West it is found in the story of the 'fall' and expulsion from paradise, and in the East in the notion of our present age as the 'Kali Yuga' or of the lowest spiritual attainment. As metaphors for the reality of any present individual they may be useful ideas, but taken seriously they imply a lack of proportion.
That Zarathustra contradicts himself in espousing both eternal recurrence and the dawning of the age of the Superman in itself is no counter-indication of the mystic: take this quote from Whitman for example:

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

('Children of Adam', verse 51)

In Zen Buddhism the contradiction has been taken to its extreme in the Zen koan which is a teaching device in the form of an unanswerable question put to a student. The attempt to engage in the paradox may result in an insight, or even better for Zen, a sudden experience of no-mind, as the mental processes lose familiar landmarks and falter. Why then, if contradiction in all its various guises is a part of mysticism, should we be critical of it in Zarathustra? Because, taken to the extreme that we see in this book, it becomes a cancelling, a self-cancelling, that simply undoes any value for us in the insights propounded.

We see then that 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. Unfortunately the signs of Zarathustra's immaturity do not seem to wane. Let us look for these signs through the book: there are of course the exaggerations mentioned earlier; these are arguably way beyond the poetic and artistic license that any work like this has a right to. In the 'Funeral Song' Zarathustra laments that his enemies have destroyed all that was dear to him is it poetic exaggeration or is it the type of immaturity that we call paranoia?

And when I achieved my most difficult task and celebrated the victory of my overcomings: then you made those whom I loved cry out that I hurt them most.

Truly, all that was your doing: you embittered my finest honey and the industry of my finest bees.

You have always sent the most insolent beggars to my liberality; you have always crowded the incurably shameless around my pity. Thus you have wounded my virtues' faith.

And when I brought my holiest things as sacrifice, straightway your 'piety' placed its fatter gifts beside it: so that my holiest thing choked in the smoke of your fat.

And once I wanted to dance as I had never danced: I wanted to dance beyond all heavens. Then you lured away my favourite singer.

And then he struck up a gruesome, gloomy melody: alas, he trumpeted into my ears like a mournful horn!

Murderous singer, instrument of malice, most innocent man! I stood prepared for the finest dance: then you murdered my ecstasy with your tones!

I know how to speak the parable of the highest things only in the dance and now my greatest parable has remained in my limbs unspoken!

My highest hope has remained unspoken and unachieved! And all the visions and consolations of my youth are dead!

How did I endure it? How did I recover from such wounds, how did I overcome them? How did my soul arise again from these graves?

('The Funeral Song')

The answer to his last question is his Will. But who is it that murdered all these great and wonderful things in him? His enemies, one understands from previous passages, but who are they? It is simply not in the nature of things that your faith can be attacked from outside: if your faith is wounded then it is an internal matter; if external events test your faith, then what kind of faith is it that crumbles? It is only worth calling faith if it stands the test of adversity, otherwise what kind of fair-weather faith is it? And similarly for his other achievements it is immature to even call them achievements. That he struggled to achieve is something worth saying, but then we all struggle.

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References for Nietzsche, part Two
[11] Gilman, S.L. Conversations with Nietzsche, New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. 155
[12] Jefferies, R. The Story of My Heart, MacMillan St Martin's Press, London 1968, p. 6
[13] ibid, p. 3
[14] Wu, John C.H., (Trans.) Tao Teh Ching, New York: St John's University Press, 1961, p. 95
[15] Ouspensky, P.D. In Search of the Miraculous - Fragments of an Unknown Teaching, London: Arkana, p. 251
[16] Bucke, R.M. Cosmic Consciousness - A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind, Olympia Press, London, 1972, p. 61
[17] May, Robert M., Cosmic Consciousness Revisited, Element, 1991

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