That is exactly Nietzsche’s case, so he is always at variance with his body; we dealt with that in connection with the rope-dancer and on several other occasions.
Therefore when he tries to describe a real ekstasis, he naturally lays particular weight upon the body, because herealizes here that it is not the spirit in his case that gives the revelation.
To an intuitive-intellectual the source of revelation is the body: the unconscious is then burdened with the body because the mind and the intuition don’t take care of it.
As Nietzsche is quite identified with Zarathustra, who is a pneumatic being, a breath, naturally he is always in the air above his body, and there he has nothing to eat but breath or air.
So anything substantial that comes to him must come from the body, because the unconscious is identical with the body.
Of course that is not so with a sensation type whose mind and consciousness are very much in the here-and-now; in such a case you would hear that the revelation comes from above, from the spirit.
Now, inasmuch as the whole age is too much hypnotized or fascinated by the body, you naturally will be taught that the spirit always comes from above, out of the air.
It is a light that comes from heaven, or it is a wind, and revelation takes place out of the breath.
Miss Wolff: I think the translation is not very good here; auferstanden means literally resurrected, and that may be a subtle reference to Christ, because Christ was raised up on the cross and then he was resurrected. So perhaps one could say it might be not only a problem of Nietzsche’s time, but a problem of the whole Christian attitude, which is an intuitive attitude.
Prof. Jung: Well, that is just what I said, that it was a Christian teaching practically; that the revelation comes from the spirit and not from the body is a teaching that dates from antiquity, so it is coincidental with the spirit of Christian teaching.
Therefore, Nietzsche is apt to express all his personal psychology by something which is general, collective, and traditional.
Now the interesting thing is that when a revelation takes place in the kingdom of the spirit then the spirit is resurrected or healed, because it is then functioning; and when it happens from the side of the body, then that is resurrected and brought back to life.
And then of course for Nietzsche as the intuitive, or for the good Christian which he represents, the functioning of the body is a true revelation.
That the body is the here and the now if properly understood, is to the intuitive a true revelation; and inasmuch as the spirit of Christian teaching is thinking and intuition and identical with the air, it is a true revelation that there is a here and a now, and that it contains spirit, contains life, that it is something that really functions.
To the intuitive the here and the now is nothing but the desolation of a prison, and that is of course exactly the old Christian teaching-that our body is the prison of the soul, that the here and the now is a valley of misery and humiliation, and that we are here in a prison where we only suffer, where we are not free, and only come into our existence in a future life.
Mrs. Frost: Doesn’t Nietzsche in all these verses suggest a new synthesis? So far, there has only been the spirit, and here he means the body should join with the spirit in that new synthesis.
Prof. Jung: Absolutely, that is the great revelation, the union of the pairs of opposites, spirit and body. He brings about this union by a depreciation of the spirit in the nominalistic way.
The Christian would say the spirit is the Logos, the word, and that it is full of life and revelation.
But Nietzsche discovers and tells us that the spirit is Logos, but also that it means nothing but the word, and in so far the spirit is air.
Of course, one could maintain that this is a very one-sided definition of the concept of the spirit, and that is exactly what I would say; the traditional meaning of spiritos,
Logos, is surely a very one-sided idea.
The original meaning of the word Geist in German points to something other than the Latin word spiritus, which is definitely a breath of air, as the Greek word pneuma is just the wind, and has taken on the spiritual meaning only under the influence of Christianity; in the Greek contemporary texts the word pneuma does not mean spirit, but means wind or air.
So the Latin and Greek conception, or the word spirit, which we use, means definitely air, while Geist does not.
The word Geist, as I have explained several times, has to do with something dynamic; it is a welling up, a new manifestation, like the foam that comes out of a champagne bottle.
It is the volatile substance contained in the wine for instance, Weingeist; and spiritus vini is alcohol, the spirit coming back from the air. Geist had not the meaning of air originally, being a word that expresses a dynamic procedure, an outburst of something.
In the New Testament, the descent of the Holy Ghost in the form of tongues of fire or a powerful wind, is the dynamus of the spirit; where it appears in a wind or in a storm you have the dynamic quality, but it has lost that quality, as the German word Geist has lost that meaning to a great extent.
It perhaps still exists in the concept of Geistreich, which means that one is full of pep, that one produces, that one is brilliant; then one says Er hat Geist or is Geistreich, but that is faint.
So you see, the original dynamic conception of Geist has really disappeared.
Mrs. Jung: I think the word Gischt has this dynamic quality.
Prof Jung: Yes, the foam produced by a waterfall or the waves of the sea is called Gischt, and that is the same word. 808-810