IN HIS BOOK, The Antichrist, NIETZSCHE STATES: ”PEOPLE WHO STILL BELIEVE IN THEMSELVES STILL ALSO HAVE THEIR OWN GOD. IN HIM THEY VENERATE THE CONDITIONS THROUGH WHICH THEY HAVE PROSPERED, THEIR VIRTUES – THEY PROJECT THEIR JOY IN THEMSELVES, THEIR FEELING OF POWER ON TO A BEING WHOM ONE CAN THANK FOR THEM.” WOULD YOU LIKE TO COMMENT?
Maneesha, Nietzsche wrote his book THE ANTICHRIST in the insane asylum. But he was such a genius, that even though he was declared insane by all the psychiatrists, his books prove they were wrong. Even in his insanity he was far saner than your so-called sane psychiatrists. Even in his death – he wrote his last letter to a friend – he did not forget... He had always made his signature, ”Antichrist, Friedrich Nietzsche”. Even at the moment of death he did not forget to write ”Antichrist” first, then his name.
And in that insane asylum he wrote many things which are of tremendous importance. THE ANTICHRIST is one of the books that will help you to understand Nietzsche’s depth. Although he never went beyond mind, he managed even with his mind to reach to great heights and to great depths.
He was anti-Christ his whole life, because he said, ”Christ’s teachings are a humiliation to humanity, because he calls humanity sheep and calls himself the shepherd. He says humanity has committed the original sin, and he calls himself the savior. Just believe in him and he will save you; this is the ultimate insult to anyone who understands.”
That’s why Sekito said, ”I would rather suffer eternal hell than ask you the question again. We don’t fit with each other. There is no harmony between my heart and your heart. My journey to you has been futile.”
In THE ANTICHRIST, he says many many things. His whole teaching is concerned with the superman. God is dead and man is free to be a superman, now he need not be a slave. Now he can declare his freedom, and in his freedom he will become superman.
With God he was just a slave kneeling down before statues and sculptures and scriptures, and praying to God like a beggar, believing in saviors, prophets, messiahs, who were nothing but archegoists. The whole humanity has been turned into a great spiritual slavery.
He was against Christ because he was telling lies: ”Blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the kingdom of God.” This is a lie. He is simply consoling the poor. And to console the poor is to destroy the possible revolution. And that’s what all the Christians are doing. They are protecting capitalism, they are protecting the people who are in power, and they are giving empty words as consolation to the poor: ”Blessed are the poor.” Nonsense!
And just to give them a deeper consolation, he condemns the rich. He says, ”Even if a camel can pass through the eye of a needle, no rich man will ever pass through the gates of paradise.” This is just to make the poor feel great: their poverty is spiritual, it is a gift of God, they are blessed. These people like Jesus have created poverty, and have destroyed the possibility of revolution, of changing the social structure, of creating a better society without classes, and finally, an ultimate society where the state also withers away.
People like Jesus are not the saviors, but consolers. They are functioning, perhaps not knowingly, as agents of the vested interests. That was the reason why Nietzsche continuously wrote before his signature, ”Antichrist”. He was very clear about it. Jesus says, ”If someone slaps you on one cheek, you give him your other cheek.” Nietzsche does not accept it, and I agree with Nietzsche, not with Jesus. The reason? Nietzsche gives a perfect argument for it. He said, ”If you give your other cheek to the person, you are insulting him. You are telling him, ‘I am holier-than-thou. You are just subhuman.’”
Nobody before Nietzsche has seen that this statement is an insult, that’s why I called him an original man. He just missed one thing: meditation. Otherwise, we would have had a greater buddha than Gautam Buddha himself, because he would have been absolutely contemporary.
Do you understand what he is saying? When you give your other cheek you are rejecting the man, his humanity. You are saying, ”I am a saint, and you are just an ordinary human being.” Nietzsche says, ”When somebody hits you on the cheek, hit him, as hard as you can. That makes you equal.” You accept the man’s dignity as a human being, and you also say, ”I am also a human being, I am not superior to you, I am not holier than you.” A strange argument, but absolutely perfect.
In this book, THE ANTICHRIST, he says, ”People who still believe in themselves still have their own God.” Now they have become gods themselves. But he does not know anything about meditation, that is the difficulty.
In meditation you enter as if you are a self, but the deeper you go, the more the self starts withering away. When you finally reach your center you are no more. The question of being a god does not arise. You are certainly godly, because the whole existence is godly. But it is not a power trip, because a power trip needs others to be lower than you and you to be higher.
In deep meditation you know that even trees are equal to you, that even animals and birds and rocks are equal to you. The whole existence lives in tremendous equality. That’s what I have been saying again and again. Only a spiritual, meditative person can be authentically communist and anarchist, nobody else, because as you go deeper into yourself you disappear, you are no more. So there is no question of any power trip, any ego number. And the whole existence suddenly becomes just as you are.
The ego is absent, the ”I” is absent; there is only a presence of light, of consciousness, of witnessing. And the whole existence seems to be as silent as you are, as ecstatic as you are. There is no higher, no lower. Both the movements – the movement of communism and the movement of anarchism – have failed in a way, because they missed the basic point of equality.
Only a meditator knows everything is equal, because we are all part of one organic cosmos. Different shapes and different forms create the beauty because they create variety. But deep down in the roots is the same juice; it is the same nourishment that is flowing in the tree, that is becoming a flower, that is flowing in you and becoming a buddha. Your unfoldment into a buddha is exactly the unfoldment of a lotus flower, there is no difference at all. Nobody is higher, nobody is lower.
Nietzsche is right. If people are not meditative and they drop the idea of God, they themselves will become gods, because who will prevent them from becoming gods? Their egos will become absolutely inflated, they will become more and more egoist. When God was there, they were humble, they were afraid of punishment, of hell. Now there is no God – who is going to prevent them from becoming great egos?
Once somebody objected to Napoleon Bonaparte, ”What you are doing goes against the constitution of the country. Napoleon said, ”I am the law. Throw away the constitution. Whatever I say is the constitution.” Now this is bound to happen. The egoists become the very law. Egoist people become gods.
Hirohito has died in Japan. The second world war was such a shock to the Japanese people not because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but because of the defeat of the Sun God. They believed that their emperor was a sun god, he was not a human being, he could not be defeated. Because he was never defeated the concept continued and became more and more ingrained: ”He cannot be defeated, there is no power which can defeat him, he is no more a human being, he is a god, a sun god.” But all great kings and emperors have believed that they share power with God. If there is no God, your kings, your emperors, the people who have power will start thinking, ”We are gods and everybody else is just an ordinary human being.”
So he is right. If you are not acquainted with meditation, mind is a dangerous phenomenon. Without God, it can become very inflated. It can start thinking about itself as being the God.
I am reminded of a beautiful incident. It happened in Baghdad, a Mohammedan capital, in the times of a certain Caliph Omar. A man declared that he has come with a new message from God, and it is a great improvement on the Holy Koran.
He was immediately caught and brought to Caliph Omar, to his court. ”This man is proclaiming that he comes from God and has brought a new message to humanity, more refined than Mohammed’s Holy Koran.” Mohammedans cannot accept any refinement on the Holy Koran, that is the last word of God.
Every religion says so. Mahavir is the last word, nothing can be changed, nothing can be refined. So is the Buddha the last word for the Buddhists. So is Jesus, so is Moses, every founder in the world has tried that. ”I am the final full stop. Everything stops with me; no more evolution.” But evolution does not care about these people, it goes on and on.
Omar was very angry. He said, ”You are a Mohammedan and you are claiming that you are a better prophet than Mohammed?”
He said, ”Of course, because I come after so many centuries. The world has changed, the time has changed, it needs a new Holy Koran. I have brought it.”
Omar was very angry. He told his soldiers, ”Give him good treatment. Bind him naked to a pillar in the prison and beat him for seven days. Don’t allow him to sleep, and no food. And after seven days I will come and see whether he has changed his mind or not.”
He was tortured for seven days continuously: no sleep, no food, and continuous beating. When on the seventh day Omar went to the jail, the man was simply full of blood, the whole body was oozing blood.
Omar asked, ”What do you think now? Have you changed your mind or not?”
The man laughed. He said, ”When I was coming from paradise taking the new message to humanity, God told me that I would be tortured. Every prophet has been tortured. These seven days have proved completely that I am the prophet. God was right.”
Omar could not believe his ears. And at that moment suddenly from another pillar came the voice of a man who had been brought one month before. He used to declare, ”I am God himself!” So he had been tortured in the jail – for one month. Omar had completely forgotten him – he had become interested in this prophet – but the man suddenly shouted, ”Omar! Beware! After Mohammed I have never sent any prophet to the world! This man is lying! I am God!”
What to do with these people? They are just insane.
No psychoanalyst can say that Jesus was sane if he is true to his scientific analysis and scientific approach. The man is calling himself ‘the son of God’. He needs hospitalization, he does not need crucifixion. That is absolutely wrong. He has not committed any crime, he is simply declaring his insanity. And you don’t put insane people on the cross, you have compassion on them, they need psychiatric treatment. But unfortunately there was no psychiatry and no psychology. It was waiting for another Jew, Sigmund Freud, to invent it. But he came too late, two thousand years after the first Jew, Jesus, was crucified.
It is really megalomania. If God is not there, there is every possibility that anybody who has an egoistic mind will move to the other extreme. First he was kneeling down before God. Now knowing there is no God, he moves to the other extreme. Now he declares, ”I am God.” God has to be there.
But this is the experience of one who only knows the mind and not anything beyond it. As you move beyond the mind, you are no more. There is no one to declare, ”I am the son of God,” or, ”I am God.” There is no one to declare, ”I am the savior of mankind,” or, ”I am a prophet,” or, ”I am the reincarnation of God.” All these people are simply insane. And you have been worshipping insane people because they declared themselves to be God. All these so-called founders of religion needed psychiatric treatment.
God is Dead, Now Zen is the Only Living Truth 51 ♡♥Osho♡♥
No comments:
Post a Comment