(arathustra: A God That Can Dance Commentaries on Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra Talks given from 26/03/87 pm to 07/04/87 pm English Discourse series 23 Chapters Year published: 1987 Zarathustra: A God That Can Dance Chapter #1 Chapter title: Prologue part 1 26 March 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive code: 8703265 ShortTitle: ZARA101 Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length: 118 mins BELOVED OSHO, PROLOGUE PART 1 WHEN ZARATHUSTRA WAS THIRTY YEARS OLD, HE LEFT HIS HOME AND THE LAKE OF HIS HOME AND WENT INTO THE MOUNTAINS. HERE HE HAD THE ENJOYMENT OF HIS SPIRIT AND HIS SOLITUDE AND HE DID NOT WEARY OF IT FOR TEN YEARS. BUT AT LAST HIS HEART TURNED -- AND ONE MORNING HE ROSE WITH THE DAWN, STEPPED BEFORE THE SUN AND SPOKE TO IT THUS: GREAT STAR! WHAT WOULD YOUR HAPPINESS BE, IF YOU HAD NOT THOSE FOR WHOM YOU SHINE! YOU HAVE COME UP HERE TO MY CAVE FOR TEN YEARS: YOU WOULD HAVE GROWN WEARY OF YOUR LIGHT AND OF THIS JOURNEY, WITHOUT ME, MY EAGLE AND MY SERPENT. BUT WE WAITED FOR YOU EVERY MORNING, TOOK FROM YOU YOUR SUPERFLUITY AND BLESSED YOU FOR IT. BEHOLD! I AM WEARY OF MY WISDOM, LIKE A BEE THAT HAS GATHERED TOO MUCH HONEY; I NEED HANDS OUTSTRETCHED TO TAKE IT. I SHOULD LIKE TO GIVE IT AWAY AND DISTRIBUTE IT, UNTIL THE WISE AMONG MEN HAVE AGAIN BECOME HAPPY IN THEIR FOLLY AND THE POOR HAPPY IN THEIR WEALTH. TO THAT END, I MUST DESCEND INTO THE DEPTHS: AS YOU DO AT THE EVENING, WHEN YOU GO BEHIND THE SEA AND BRING LIGHT TO THE UNDERWORLD TOO, SUPERABUNDANT STAR! LIKE YOU, I MUST GO DOWN -- AS MEN, TO WHOM I WANT TO DESCEND, CALL IT. SO BLESS ME THEN, TRANQUIL EYE, THAT CAN BEHOLD WITHOUT ENVY EVEN AN EXCESSIVE HAPPINESS! BLESS THE CUP THAT WANTS TO OVERFLOW, THAT THE WATERS MAY FLOW GOLDEN FROM HIM AND BEAR THE REFLECTION OF YOUR JOY OVER ALL THE WORLD! BEHOLD! THIS CUP WANTS TO BE EMPTY AGAIN, AND ZARATHUSTRA WANTS TO BE MAN AGAIN. THUS BEGAN ZARATHUSTRA'S DOWN-GOING. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE is perhaps the greatest philosopher the world has known. He is also great in another dimension which many philosophers are simply unaware of: he is a born mystic. His philosophy is not only of the mind but is rooted deep in the heart, and some roots even reach to his very being. The only thing unfortunate about him is, that he was born in the West; hence, he could never come across any mystery school. He contemplated deeply, but he was absolutely unaware about meditation. His thoughts sometimes have the depth of a meditator, sometimes the flight of a Gautam Buddha; but these things seem to have happened spontaneously to him. He knew nothing about the ways of enlightenment, about the path that reaches to one's own being. This created a tremendous turmoil in his being. His dreams go as high as the stars but his life remained very ordinary -- it does not have the aura that meditation creates. His thoughts are not his blood, his bones, his marrow. They are beautiful, immensely beautiful, but something is missing; and what is missing is life itself. They are dead words; they don't breathe -- there is no heartbeat. But I have chosen to speak on him for a special reason: he is the only philosopher, from East or West, who has at least thought of the heights of human consciousness. He may not have experienced them; he certainly has not experienced them. He also thought of becoming a man again. That idea, of descending from your heights into the marketplace, descending from the stars to the earth, has never happened to anybody else. He has something of Gautam Buddha, perhaps unconsciously carried over from his past lives, and he has something of the Zorba. Both are incomplete. But he is the only proof that Buddha and Zorba can meet; that those who have reached to the highest peaks need not remain there. In fact, they should not remain there. They owe something to humanity; they owe something to the earth. They have been born amongst human beings; they have lived in the same darkness and in the same misery. And now that they have seen the light, it becomes obligatory that they should come back to wake up those who are fast asleep; to bring the good news -- that darkness is not all, that unconsciousness is our choice. If we choose to be conscious, all unconsciousness and all darkness can disappear. It is our choice that we are living in the dark valleys. If we decide to live on the sunlit peaks, nobody can prevent us because that is also our potential. But the people who have reached to the sunlit peaks completely forget about the world they are coming from. Gautam Buddha never descended. Mahavira never descended. Even if they have made efforts for humanity to wake up, they have shouted from their sunlit peaks. Man is so deaf, so blind that it is almost impossible for him to understand people who are talking from higher stages of consciousness. He hears the noise but it does not bring any meaning to him. Nietzsche is unique in this sense. He could have remained an extraordinary, very superhuman philosopher, but he never forgets for a single moment the ordinary human being. It is his greatness. Although he has not touched the highest peaks, and he has not known the greatest mysteries, whatsoever he has known, he is longing to share with his fellow human beings. His desire to share is tremendous. I have chosen to speak on a few fragments which may be helpful to you, for your spiritual growth. Nietzsche himself had chosen Zarathustra to be his spokesman. Something about Zarathustra has also to be understood. Amongst thousands of great mystics, philosophers, enlightened people, Nietzsche has chosen as his spokesman, a very unknown person, almost forgotten to the world -- Zarathustra. The followers of Zarathustra are limited only to a small place -- Bombay. They had come to Bombay from Iran when Mohammedans forced Persians either to be converted into Mohammedanism, or to be ready to be killed. Thousands were killed; millions, out of fear, became Mohammedans; but a few daring souls escaped from Iran and landed in India. They are the Parsees of Bombay -- perhaps the smallest religion in the world. And it is amazing that Nietzsche was so interested in Zarathustra that he wrote the book, THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA. These fragments are from that book. He chose Zarathustra for the same reason that I chose him: Zarathustra, amongst all the religious founders, is the only one who is life-affirmative, who is not against life, whose religion is a religion of celebration, of gratefulness to existence. He is not against the pleasures of life, and he is not in favor of renouncing the world. On the contrary, he is in absolute support of rejoicing in the world, because except for this life and this world, all are hypothetical ideologies. God, heaven and hell, they are all projections of the human mind, not authentic experiences; they are not realities. Zarathustra was born at a time, twenty five centuries ago, when all over the world, there was a great renaissance: In India, Gautam Buddha, Mahavira, Goshalak, Sanjay Bilethiputta, Ajit Keshkambal, and others, had reached to the same peak of awakening; in China, Confucius, Mencius, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu and many others; in Greece, Socrates, Pythagoras, Plotinus, Heraclitus; and in Iran, Zarathustra. It is a strange coincidence that suddenly, all over the world, there came a flood of consciousness and many people became awakened. Perhaps enlightenment is also a chain reaction -- when there are enlightened people they provoke the same revolution in others. It is everybody's potential. One just needs a provocation, a challenge; and when you see so many people reaching to such beautiful heights of grace, you cannot remain where you are. Suddenly a great urge arises in you: "Something has to be done. I am wasting my life while others have reached the very destiny, have known all that is worth knowing, have experienced the greatest blissfulness and ecstasy... and what am I doing? -- collecting seashells on the beach." Out of all these people, Zarathustra is unique. He is the only one who is not against life, who is for life; whose god is not somewhere else; whose god is nothing but another name for life itself. And to live totally, to live joyously and to live intensely, is all that religion is based on. I feel a deep empathy, affinity, with Zarathustra. But perhaps because he was life-affirmative and not life-negative, he could not gather many followers. It is one of the strange things about human beings: anything that is easy, they cannot accept as worthy of being the goal -- the goal has to be very difficult and arduous. Behind it is the psychology of the ego. The ego always wants something impossible, because only with the impossible can it exist. You will never be able to fulfill desire, and the ego will go on pushing you towards more and more -- more greed, more power, more money, more austerities, more spirituality, more discipline. Wherever you find "more", remember, that is the language of the ego. And there is no way to satisfy the ego; it is always asking for more. Zarathustra's whole approach is exactly the same as Chuang Tzu: "Easy is right.