Prologue Part 3
When Zarathustra arrived at the nearest of the towns lying against the forest, he found in that very place many people assembled in the market square: for it had been announced that a tight-rope walker would be appearing.
And Zarathustra spoke thus to the people:
I teach you the superman. Man is something that should be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?
All creatures hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and do you want to be the ebb of this great tide, and return to the animals rather than overcome man?
What is the ape to men? A laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment. And just so shall man be to the superman: a laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment.
You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now man is more of an ape than any ape.
But he who is the wisest among you, he also is only a discord and hybrid of plant and of ghost. But do I bid you become ghosts or plants?
Behold, I teach you the superman.
The superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The superman shall be the meaning of the earth!
I entreat you, my brothers, remain true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of superterrestrial hopes! They are poisoners, whether they know it or not….
Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy, but God died, and thereupon these blasphemers died too. To blaspheme the earth is now the most dreadful offense and to esteem the bowels of the inscrutable more highly than the meaning of the earth.
…Thus spake Zarathustra.
Every statement of Zarathustra is so pregnant with meaning that it is almost impossible to bring out all the implications, to open up all the mysteries hidden in it. And it becomes more difficult because he is absolutely against any tradition, any orthodoxy, any past. Ordinarily, our statements can be interpreted in the light of the past. They contain the past. They are conclusions of the past.
With Zarathustra, the situation is just the opposite. His statements contain the future, and the future is vast, the future is multidimensional. We can say definite things about the past because it is dead.
About the future, we can only say probabilities, possibilities, potentialities because the future is open. It has yet to happen, and there is no possibility to predict it – that’s its beauty, that’s its unknowability, that’s its grandeur.
Looking at the future, you can feel only a deep awe, a wonder, a surprise. In each nook and corner, so many treasures are hidden that unless you come to them, there is no way to say anything about them.
Gautam Buddha is simple, so is Jesus, so is Mahavira – they are all conclusions of the past.
Zarathustra is a prophecy for the future.
This should be remembered: that he is the most unpredictable mystic in the whole history of man.
When Zarathustra arrived at the nearest of the towns lying against the forest, he found in that very place many people assembled in the market square: for it had been announced that a tight-rope walker would be appearing.
Man is so miserable, that he wants to forget his misery in any kind of entertainment, howsoever stupid it may look to those who have a little intelligence. All our games are childish, but millions of people are so interested in them, as if they are going to give them a new life, a transformed being, as if they are going to take away their misery, their dark night of the soul.
If it is announced that a tightrope walker is appearing, thousands of people will assemble, just to see somebody walking on a tightrope – as if these people don’t have anything significant to do in their lives; as if they don’t know what to do with the time that existence has given them.