1934 13 June LECTURE 6 Zarathustra Seminar
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Facebook Group
1934 13 June LECTURE 6 Zarathustra Seminar
Dr. Jung:
There are several questions.
Mrs. Crowley asks: “When you spoke of symbolic action interrupting the discourse of Zarathustra, did you mean the flow or progress of the conscious realization was interrupted?
In that case doesn’t it put a negative construction on the action? Yet if a dream is the messenger of the conscious realization, why isn’t such symbolic action another step in the development of the inner reality? In other words, do not the discourse and action serve as two aspects of the same reality?
If it is to be looked upon as a negative interruption, that gives one the sense of a break in the rhythm of its growth and I would like to know which you meant.”
I did not intend to convey the idea that the symbolic action was in any way inferior to the sermon.
It is simply that the sermon has led up to a point where another element must come in; as if you pushed an argument to the very edge where you cannot go any further, and then instead of discussing, you do something.
For instance, in Voltaire’s Candide, just at the end, when the philosopher Pangloss has finished his long talk about the world, that it isle meilleur des mondes and that everything in it is the best thing possible, Candide calls his attention to his most disgusting venereal disease.
But Pangloss proves that even his disease is most respectable, because he got it in a straight line from Columbus through the intermediary of a cardinal and his mistress.
(That is true Voltairian style!-I am not responsible.)
When he has finished his argument, Candide is quite overcome and says: Tout cela est bien dit mais ilfaut cultiver notrejardin, meaning that after all that talk they must do something reasonable because they had nothing to eat: they must plant their cabbages.
Now, that is by no means an inferior interruption, it is surely much better to be planting and manuring cabbages; everybody was glad when that long speech was interrupted.’
In this case, the sermon stops for the time being and of course it is difficult to see what is now corning up.
One usually notices in a series of fantasies that it is suddenly interrupted by something new, a different motive or an action.
Or in a dream you wake up and you understand why you wake up: it is because the situation has become intolerable, or because the dream argument is finished.
You have reached a certain amount of clarity and so it can Vanish and then another theme comes up. Now, here Zarathustra reaches a real culmination when he says: “Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is the lightning, he is that frenzy.”
That is the very essence of the idea he wants to convey to the audience.
And what would you expect after such a statement?
Mrs. Crowley: That the lightning would fall; it would have to be illustrated.
Dr. Jim[!;: Yes, you would expect that the lightning would now descend and that the audience would be struck by it-like the miracle of Pentecost, where the Holy Ghost descends in the form of tongues of fire.”
Nothing of the kind happens, however.
But something happens; the rope-dancer starts to work, the lightning has struck, as a matter of fact, but one does not see the effect.
Yet, it could be shown that an effect has taken place. It is not visible here in the text, because the whole trend of thoughts is going underground, but it is the real man
Nietzsche who writes those words.
It is not Zarathustra and it is not the rope-dancer; and as he writes, the lightning strikes him.
That will become obvious afterwards.
Mr. Allemann: Is it not also the word madness which struck him?
Dr. Jung: Exactly. Nietzsche could not have known his fate, but when he writes those words, the unconscious cries, “Halt.”
Then the whole thing goes underground, and a peculiar action begins which symbolizes
the coming events that could not be consciously foreseen.
Now Mrs. Baumann’s question: “Would you kindly say a little more about the heart being the secret source of a will that speaks through the head?
You spoke of it last time in connection with the paragraph where Zarathustra says: ‘I love him who is of a free spirit and a free heart; thus is his head only the bowels of his heart; his heart, however, causeth his down-going.’ ”
The idea is that his head is contained in the heart and the heart talks through the head.
It is simply a sort of metaphor indicating that there is a secret will in the heart, behind the head and superior to the head.
It is a well-known idea that people can argue in an apparently logical and rational way while really speaking the wishes of their hearts.
I think it is Isaiah, for instance, who reproaches the false prophets for speaking the wishes of their hearts instead of the words of the Lord.
There, of course, it is a sort of depreciative remark.
In this case it is appreciative. It means that there is a will to self-destruction in the
heart, which leads finally to the Superman.
The heart wills the drive towards the destruction of that lame and tame and despicable being called man, the most contemptible of all things to Nietzsche-the thing which should be overcome.
So the will of the heart, that secret will to destruction, forces the head, and no matter what the head may think, it will be forced by the heart which knows that goal.
The Superman can only live through the destruction of man as he is.
The political analogy to this is the secret will to destruction all over the world, not only in Germany; of course, you see it very clearly there at present, but it is everywhere.
Our actual collective unconscious seeks the destruction of millions. Why do they heap up ammunition and cannons? Surely not in order to play chess with them. Why do they invent poisonous gases? To kill of course. And why can nobody put a stop to it, damn it?
We can only explain it by the fact that there is a superior will which forces all
heads.
And Nietzsche says here that he loves that will to destruction; therefore he preaches war.
That is of course a sort of horrible nightmare to us, but the Eastern attitude would not see so much nightmare in it.
They would say, where there are too many people, the number must be lessened, and so naturally a time will come when people will be exterminated to a certain extent: that simply has to be.
Mrs. Crowley: Is that not the very argument between Krishna and Arjuna in the beginning of the Bhagavad Gita?
Dr. Jung: Well, you don’t need to read it in the Bhagavad Gita.
You can hear it in the East from the man in the street who has a natural wisdom
in his veins; he is quite convinced and therefore he has no particular commiseration.
You see, we make a hell of a fuss in Europe when several hundred thousand Chinamen are dying of starvation, or drowned by the floods of the Hoang Ho or the Yangtze-Kiang.
The Chinamen don’t bother so much. They say: Too much folk, they must go.
But we Christians have so little faith in life that we think we must preserve every little nuisance that has come into existence.
Of course, it is not nice for the individuals who are actually under the wheel, but, you know, we shall all be under the wheel when those bombs begin to rain down upon our cities.
And we ourselves are continuously bringing that about-nobody wants to but everybody is doing it.
Now here is a question by Mrs. Baynes in reference to a lecture given by a professor of the philosophy of law from Paris.
He was speaking about the psychology of power and the so-called antinomy of power,
namely, that power is both good and evil, which makes an insoluble antithesis in the very being of power.”
She says: “The lecturer at the Psychological Club on Saturday evening seemed to think that his standpoint was in direct agreement with that of analytical psychology.
He said that the solution of conflict was by the reconciliation of thesis and antithesis, or in a word, by the transcending function which takes into consideration each of the opposites to be reconciled.
But then he put forward the view that Christianity is still our best guide in the conduct of life.
Is it possible to deny that Christianity demands the sacrifice of everything to the one principle, i.e., spirit?
And has not analytical psychology shown that the psyche of modern man is in open revolt against this one-sidedness and forces to seek a new way that allows him to live the body as well as the spirit? Is not this the sum and substance of Nietzsche’s point of view?”
That is, of course, Nietzsche’s point of view, but on the other hand we must say that Nietzsche’s point of view is exceedingly mysterious to the majority of even highly educated people.
They don’t understand it. When Zarathustra came out, I was living in Basel and I heard them talking about it, and they were all profoundly bewildered; they had not the faintest idea what it was about.
It gave Jakob Burckhardt, the famous historian, a sort of shock. He was frightened by it.
And when the rumor got abroad that Nietzsche was in a lunatic asylum, they all said,
“Thank heaven!”
Then the case was clear: a nightmare was dissolved, and everybody was glad that that man Nietzsche was behind the bars.
He had said awful things, but happily enough it was all foolishness, the dream of a madman.
Something like that was the mood about fifty years ago, and nowadays it is not very different.
Mankind has not become so much more intelligent in the meantime.
Of course, we have had some experiences.
The world war helped a great many people to realize what Zarathustra means, or to what it refers at least.
But, for the most part, people were happily asleep in the dream of the Middle Ages and had no idea of such problems, as untold millions are still sleeping.
They could live just as well in a time when the sun was still revolving round the world.
So for such people the whole problem does not exist, and for them Christianity is still the best guide for their lives, no matter how the Christ symbol is understood.
You see, it can be understood in many ways, in the Catholic way, in the Greek Orthodox way-there are four hundred Protestant denominations making a fuss about nothing.
And then there are all sorts of nonorthodox and nonorganized ideas upon the subject.
But the central figure is still Christ.
As long as people are unable to realize what individuality is, what the self is, it is projected and there is nothing to be clone about it.
If it is not projected in Christ it is projected into another leader or a mythological figure, a Buddha or a new religious system.
And, of course, the number of people who are not conscious of the self, who have not begun to realize that there is such a problem, are countless.
Therefore, one has to reckon with the fact of Christianity and to take it quite seriously as the best guide in these matters; for two thousand years, this system has been the best guide for us, as Buddhism has been in India.
As long as people can live in such a system, if it really expresses the bets of the unconscious, then it is good and there is nothing to he said against it; you cannot even criticize it.
That means, of course, inasmuch as people are serious and have not simply put an a before their creed-instead of theism, atheism.
I should not call atheists serious: they don’t see that they are still theists in denying God.
I understand by “serious people” those who know that such a thing as a religious experience is possible, and that it means the greatest good one could possibly imagine.
Such people realize, of course, that the Christian symbol as it is handed down, as it stands now, does not provide a form through which a complete life is possible.
And inasmuch as this is again a truth, we have the problem of what we can do or how we can live when that symbol fails us.
For instance, we can assume that people who have such a problem are abnormal, that it is a sort of choice of unbalanced minds that simply cannot bow to tradition, who are too abnormal to be expressed by a fairly collective or normal symbol, so that even Christ as a comprehensive symbol, or what Buddha is in the East, is unable to express those particular whims of modern minds.
That is the attitude of very intelligent people.
They take it that these so-called modern problems are just sort of neurotic protuberances, more or less morbid, because they hold that everything that reasonably can be, is already expressed in the Christian dogma.
I had an opportunity lately to talk to some French people who are Catholic to the marrow of their bones, and for them that whole sphere of psychological or religious experience, which is so conspicuous in primitives for instance, simply does not exist.
It does not exist, because it is in the church.
But then you would assume that they believed in their Catholicism. Not at all!
They are Catholic with an a, a-Catholics, but they are in the church.
When they are positive, they say the soul is a religious problem, dealt with by the church, which has nothing to do with them; only inasmuch as they are connected with the church does the soul play any role at all.
If they are negative they say that everything in the church and the whole psychological experience is nonsense.
And they have to repeat it very often, with a spirit of insistence, in order to help the stored-up unconscious to abreact.
They organize themselves most probably in a free-thinking society or a society for
atheist propaganda.
But their whole psychology is still in the Catholic church in its positive or negative form.
To say anything about Nietzsche, or to mention analytical psychology to such people, is perfectly preposterous-you could talk to the penguins just as well.
I felt like St. Malo, only I was not blind and deaf: I saw that they were penguins.
They were only the conscious half of man-the unconscious didn’t exist-and the conscious half was the walls of the church.
The Christian symbol is still alive because millions of people are alive who need it very badly even, and for them everything is still contained within it, anticipating, one might possibly say, what we get through the collective unconscious in a certain form.
For we constantly need Christian concepts in order to understand the collective unconscious.
We apply Eastern concepts as well, but we also amplify them in order to explain what is in the Christian symbolism.
It is true that late Christianity has a peculiar one-sidedness which doesn’t fit our time, but that so-called spiritual attitude was once perfectly sound-it had to be.
The knowledge of the conditions of antique civilization makes you understand why such a religion as Christianity was needed.
Every emphasis laid upon the spirit was absolutely necessary; one cannot imagine what
the world would have come to if such a reaction had not taken place.
You know, when Buddhism first reached the barbarous people behind the borders of India, it came quite naked, without gods, because there were already two million gods in India.
They were simply swamped by them, so, of course, as Buddhism was a sort of protest against the prevailing Hinduism, they thought they did not need them.
They thought the decisive action took place in the sphere of man and not of the gods; even the gods had to become men in order to be redeemed.
But when Buddhism reached Nepal, Tibet, and China, that condition of the Hinayana, the so-called small vessel, did not fit.
They found there only the old tribal gods and fetiches and shamans, and all sorts of black magic, like the Bung religion in Tibet.
So Buddhism instantly felt the need of gods again, and they had a series of prophets who revealed the existence of the Mahayana deities.
The ideas of the bodhisattvas, who became even more important than Buddha himself, originated then, and all the goddesses, like Kwan Yin and the white Tara.
They naturally had to invent female gods, of course not artificially, but through special revelation for this purpose, coming from the unconscious.
So when this professor showed a very positive attitude to Christianity, I supported him, because I also have a positive attitude toward it.
I could give you, for instance, absolutely psychological proof of certain most abstruse dogmatic concepts, like the trinity, or that point they made against the Arians (the followers of Arius) in the early church, that Christ was hornomousios, of equal nature with God.
The Arians said that he was only homoimousios, similar in his substance to the Father.
That looks like pure nonsense to us, but they killed each other over the question, and it is of course of tremendous importance looked at from the psychological point of view.
We can be grateful to the old fathers of the church that they came to the conclusion that Christ must be homoousios, of the same substance as the Father: such a conclusion was absolutely necessary for our psychological development.
Also it was for certain psychological reasons that Gnosticism had to be abolished.
I am against the destruction of Christianity, because I hold that for thousands of years, the majority of people will not be able to get beyond the Christian conception; therefore, it ought to exist, one cannot abolish it.
One should cease the foolishness of thinking that all people are the same and have the same creed. It is absolutely impossible.
We are converting negroes for their own destruction, for example.
It would be better to go to Africa and shoot them down than to make them degenerate
by becoming Christians.
The missionaries preached that they ought to wear clothes, but then the English became intelligent enough not to allow it-well, they couldn’t help becoming intelligent after a
while, there is no merit in that.
In certain parts of Polynesia they give a good thrashing to the natives who wear trousers.
They must go naked.
But missionaries have unclean sexual fantasies if people are naked, so they tell them they are indecent.
People would have far fewer sexual fantasies if they did go naked-but it would be “horrible.”
Here is a question by Mrs. Bailward: “With reference to the prophecy about Christ that he might appear as the lowest of the brethren, does this mean a kind of Valentino, Mussolini, or mediumistic prizefighter?”
It is exceedingly improbable that Christ would appear in such a form, unless Mussolini, or the prize-fighter, should fall in love with you or you with him. Then it could be.
As long as such people are somewhere on the horizon or painted upon the wall, they do little damage.
Christ, being the symbol of the self, is the innermost thing and that only reaches you in the innermost.
Mussolini would never do that.
The reason why many people fall in love with fantastic tenors and Valentinos is because they are far away, so they are perfectly innocuous; every woman in love with a tenor knows in the bottom of her heart that he does not care a hang for her.
It only becomes dangerous when real love comes in between and then people run away as quickly as they can, for where God is the nearest the danger is greatest.
Mrs. Bailward: Where is the quotation from?
Dr. Jung: Miss Hannah also asks that in her question.
The quotation is from the fifth chapter of St. Matthew: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
That Christ can be the least of your brethren is, of course, very important.
The same thought is expressed in the more primitive Islamic mysticism, in a somewhat different and more complete way.
(I have already quoted to you what my Sufi head-man said to me.)'”
You see, the Self is such a disagreeable thing in a way, so realistic, because it is what you really are, not what you want to be or imagine you ought to be; and that reality is so poor, sometimes dangerous, and even disgusting, that you will quite naturally make every effort not to be yourself.
Therefore, the idea has been invented quite suitably that it is even very bad morally to be yourself.
You also should not think of yourself; you should love your brother or your neighbor but not yourself.
But unfortunately Christ said you should love your brother or your neighbor as yourself, and how can you love your brother if you don’t love yourself? Or how can you forgive your brother if you don’t forgive yourself?
So one of the earliest Gnostic philosophers, Karpocrates, translated a certain passage in the gospel of St. Matthew in a very peculiar way-that passage where Christ says:
Whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment; and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council; but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.
Therefore if thou bringest thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee,
Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.
But Karpocrates interprets that last verse: If thou bringest thy gift to the altar and findest anything against thyself, go first and reconcile thyself to thyself.
That is a custom in red Indian tribes; when a man is not at one with himself on the day of the council meeting, he doesn’t go to the meeting for he recognizes that he is not fit to be just and impartial and true if he is fighting himself.
Therefore, Karpocrates rightly assumes that you cannot forgive if you don’t forgive yourself; you cannot love if you don’t love yourself.
And that is really Christian.
But late Christianity, hoping to find a means to get away from oneself, invented this infernal idea that you should love your neighbor and trample yourself underfoot, in contradistinction to the words of the Lord that you should love your neighbor as yourself, supposing that you naturally do love yourself.
Otherwise, how can we be impartial, or how can we forgive?
Therefore, that Christian love of your neighbor has become most suspect.
If anybody tells me that he loves me more than himself and wants to sacrifice himself, I say: what does it cost? What do you want afterwards?
For afterwards a long account will be presented.
Nature will present it because it is not unselfish; there is no such thing as unselfishness in that sense.
But if you can love yourself, you will be on the way to unselfishness.
It is such a difficult and disagreeable task to love oneself that if you can do that, you can love any toad, because you are worse than the most disgusting animal.
Now Miss Hannah also says: “I understood you to say last time that you have to cast the mind away in order to see it is the body, and that this was what Christ meant when he said you may find him as the lowest among our brethren. I suppose I am like the Strasbourg theologians, but I can’t understand what this means.”
Well, not necessarily the body, but the body is naturally under the same prejudice; the body being the lowest in man is, of course, the lowest among the brethren.
Those Strasbourg theologians did not understand what I meant, because no Christian of these days understands this point; we are all twisted in our minds through education.
We are only told to love our neighbor and that it is wrong to love ourselves.
For instance, one of the most ordinary arguments against analysis is that it makes people self-conscious: they only think of themselves.
I say that is the very best thing you can possibly do if you do it systematically.
You have done it in a dilettante way-you have only made fantasies-but from now on you write those fantasies, and as they are apt to be disgusting, they instantly draw attention to themselves.
You find then that man is worth studying and also that it is well worthwhile to live with the body. Otherwise, what on earth are you going to live with?
You will probably evaporate.
Well, if you are going to disappear in a fast train to heaven within the next fortnight, I have nothing to say against it, but you cannot live as a disembodied spirit who by chance got into the body of a woman and doesn’t even recognize her own hands.
We will now continue our text.
You remember the fourth chapter ends with: “Lo, I am a herald of the lightning, and a heavy drop out of the cloud: the lightning, however, is the Superman.”
Those are almost the same words as in the end of the chapter before and again we have the interruption.
When Zarathustra had spoken these words, he again looked at the people, and was silent.
Waiting, obviously expecting that something ought to happen.
“There they stand,” said he to his heart; “there they laugh: they understand me not; I am not the mouth for these ears.
Must one first batter their ears, that they may learn to hear with their eyes? Must one clatter like kettledrums and penitential preachers? Or do they only believe the stammerer?
They have something whereof they are proud.
What do they call it, that which maketh them proud? Culture, they call it, it distinguisheth them from the goatherds.”
The German word is Bildung, which means a sort of education rather than culture.
“They dislike, therefore, to hear of ‘contempt’ of themselves.
So I will appeal to their pride.
I will speak unto them of the most contemptible thing: that, however, is the last man!”
Zarathustra is expecting some effect from the lightning, yet nothing happens apparently, so he assumes that he has not yet said the right word to reach the audience-the word which penetrates-and he thinks that he might reach them if he speaks of the most contemptible of all things.
You see, that feeling of not reaching his audience shows that in that inner event which is in the writer’s mind while writing, there is a similar situation.
He speaks the words and apparently something in him does not answer, something withholds his reaction.
Then naturally, as a writer always does, he projects the inner fact outside of himself into his writings.
Now what is the thing which does not react in him? What is so dull?
Mrs. Fierz: He speaks of Bildunk here but he himself is gebild.
Dr. Jung: His conscious conclusion is that they are proud of their culture or education and therefore would not react.
But I want to know why it is that when he speaks of the lightning, either the rope-dancer
goes to work or nothing happens at all-his audience doesn’t react, at least.
Dr. Bahadurji: Because the self in him does not come up to the level of his expectation, it doesn’t respond to him. He thinks with his head, but the self in him is not in it.
Dr. Jung: Yes, one could put it abstractly like that. And one could also
say that the thing which doesn’t react in him is the collective man, because the collective man in the symbolism of the unconscious is always represented by an assembly, an audience, a crowd.
And he is standing before the crowd in himself, so it would mean that the man of the crowd, the ordinary collective man in himself, does not react: he is dull.
But that man has very much to do with the self; in an integrated self that man is present.
He is even the outer fringe of the self; the self is like a crowd, therefore, being oneself, one is also like many.
One expresses a totality.
One cannot individuate without being with other human beings.
One cannot individuate on top of Mount Everest or in a cave somewhere where one doesn’t see people for seventy years: one only can individuate with or against something or somebody.
Being an individual is always a link in a chain; it is not an absolutely detached situation, in itself only, with no connection outside.
It is sort of neurotic late-Christian prejudice that you should not love yourself.
It is assumed that you would then be like a round ball lost somewhere in the universe without any reference to anything and with no relation to anybody.
But as a matter of fact, if you can think with concentration, you realize how much you are connected with other human beings, how little you can exist without being related, without responsibilities and duties and the relation of other people to yourself.
And all that remains completely in the darkness of participation mystique as long as you don’t think of it.
So if you are, as it looks, an egotist, indulging in your own fantasies, then you are simply indulging in the fantasy of being cut off, all alone with yourself.
Of course, public opinion helps you in that prejudice, assuming that anybody alone with himself is necessarily an egotist.
When a person is quite modest and does not speak because he thinks he is not competent, people say he is proud; whereas he may be a decent fellow who doesn’t want to make the same fuss as the other people, talking about things which they really don’t understand.
Individuation is only possible with people, through people.
You must realize that you are a link in a chain, that you are not an electron suspended
somewhere in space or aimlessly drifting through the cosmos.
You are part of an atomic structure, and that atomic structure is part of a molecule
which, with others, builds up a body. Life is a continuum, and nothing is absolutely severed from man within the living continuum; such a thing would instantly die and be cast away. Inasmuch as we live, we are in the continuum of life.
If you think you are separated, it is
nothing but a neurotic imagination, and that is of course morbid.
But that you are thinking of yourself does not mean that you are morbid.
It can be systematic.
So if a man feels as the writer does in this case, talking to an audience that does not understand him at all, it means that he is not in touch with his own collective man, or he underrates or overrates something in himself.
There is a lack of balance in his judgment.
Later on, Nietzsche explains it by the fact that he has been alone for too long a time, talking to the woods and the brooks and the trees.
It is perfectly true that if a man is too much alone, he loses the connection with the collective man in himself and talks about matters which are above the heads of other people; and that is egocentric, too much in his own sphere, so that he does not know the language spoken in collectivity.
Of course, that he has a new message is an additional difficulty.
Nietzsche did in reality live much alone. He naturally moved in a lonely sphere; then he discovered something new, which one can only discover in solitude, and he tried to convey that new message through language which was absolutely new and exceedingly difficult.
He didn’t know the collective language, so he naturally would choose the most impressive form, hallowed by age, a beautiful epic or hieratic language.
Such people always instinctively choose what we call a biblical style, in order to make an impression on people; it carries a certain authority. It stirs up all sorts of reminiscences of very early youth, and so is likely to strike home.
Even that language does not help in this case, however.
It glances off, as it were, and people remain quite dull: the collective man does not react.
But a certain reaction has taken place; even the collective man, though quite impervious to such language, can be reached through the unconscious.
So, while he was speaking of the lightning or the madness, something in himself was reached: the unconscious was beginning to stir.
It is also possible that in the collective man outside, the unconscious was stirred.
That is true historically.
One could not say that Nietzsche was completely understood-even those who made a
great fuss about him did not understand what he really meant.
But he created a stir, he tickled something in the unconscious; for he tried to
formulate what is actually happening in the collective unconscious of modern man, to give words to that disturbance.
Of course, Nietzsche could not expect an immediate reaction to his sermon because it must first go into the unconscious, into the belly of collectivity, and the reaction
will appear in a quarter where he did not expect it at all.
Well, he now tries another technique, he tries to speak to them about the most contemptible of all things, the last man.
It is time for man to fix his goal. It is time for man to plant the germ of his highest hope.
Now, how do you understand this? What is on Nietzsche’s mind here?
That is all spoken out of certain emotion.
Mrs. Baynes: Doesn’t it mean that he feels it to be a critical time for himself and for humanity?
Dr. Jung: Exactly. He expresses here his conviction, his great emotion, over the fact that it is now time, that it is even exceedingly urgent.
You find that in the chapter where Zarathustra is going to visit the happy islands and down into the volcano: Es ist Zeit, huchste Zeit.
Nietzsche’s feeling was that we are now at a great turning point in history and in the evolution of man. One calls that a “chiliastic mood.”
This is an ecclesiastical word, having to do with the Book of Revelation, and the idea of the kingdom of God to come, the millennium.
And this feeling of the great turning point was not realized by Nietzsche alone.
For instance, that book by Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, is in the same mood.
There is the same conviction that something is going to happen, that the times have been fulfilled and something new is coming.
Therefore, Nietzsche says that it is now time for man to think of himself, or to fix his goal; it is time for man to plant the germ of his highest hope, which is of course the Superman.
It is the idea that man must be ready to cast off or to change his former external
attitude in order to give birth to a new being.
St. Paul speaks of casting away the ole\ Adam and clothing oneself or taking on Christ, which is the same idea of a complete change, like a snake shedding its skin and creating a new one; or like the phoenix burning himself in his own nest in order to resurrect again from the ashes in a rejuvenated form.
These are all archetypal symbols for a time when old things are destroyed in order to make place for the new.
Now, whether that is true or not we cannot prove, but, sure enough, Nietzsche had the feeling that some great new revelation ought to take place, and he saw that in the idea of the Superman.
Still is his soil rich enough for it.
But that soil will one day be poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow thereon.
Alas! there cometh the time when man will no longer launch the arrow of his longing beyond man-and the string of his bow will have unlearned to whizz!
I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: ye have still chaos in you.
He obviously speaks here of the last man in contradistinction to the people of our time who are still chaotic.
The unconscious is not yet synthesized; that is, there is still a sort of melting pot in them where the elements can be re-formed, where new figures or new orders can be created.
The old alchemistic philosophy tried to do that.
The original condition of man was represented by chaotic pieces of elements that found themselves together with no order, quite incidentally; and then by the process of fire they were melted together, producing, it was assumed, a new spiritual development.
That was due to a fundamental idea of alchemistic philosophy which expressed itself by symbols of chemistry.
They could not use philosophical or even psychological terms, because the church made it much too dangerous to talk of such things.
But the existence of chemistry was in itself an evidence of the powers that were breaking loose immediately after the beginning of the Reformation.
That movement, however, which was really equal to modern psychology, had to move underground.
It has to express itself by intricate symbols, just as early Christianity used mystery terms. Instead of saying “Christ,” they used the word Poimen, for instance.
In the whole book of Hermas, which is surely Christian–at least, he was supposed to be the brother of the second pope-the name of Christ is not mentioned at all; he is referred to only as the poime.
And baptism and the communion could only he alluded to by certain symbols, because of the danger of persecution.
To have somewhat radical or liberal views was a very serious matter in the Middle Ages: one risked being roasted.
Of course, Nietzsche knew nothing of alchemy.
I am quite certain that he never read such stuff, for in his time those old medieval
philosophers were thought of as being sort of idiots with idiotic fantasies.
So that idea of the chaos in everybody is to him like a speech metaphor, but it is apt symbolism for the disordered condition of an unconscious that is not yet synthesized.
This is expressed in every individual by a certain lack of orientation, a vagueness, a feeling of being suspected, and of drifting, finding no direction and no meaning in life.
In certain stages of analysis, particularly in the beginning, people realize very clearly that they have chaos in themselves and they feel lost in it.
They don’t know where that chaotic movement leads: often they don’t understand at all what they are doing or what the analyst is talking about.
It all looks perfectly aimless and incidental. !Now, Nietzsche’s idea is that out of that lack of order, a dancing star should be born.
Here is the symbol of dancing again. Where have we met it before?
Miss Hannah: The old anchorite says Zarathustra is going his way like a dancer.
Dr. Jung: Exactly. So the dancing refers to Zarathustra, but there are other parallels later on.
The dancing star would be in the twinkling star for instance, and the star would symbolize what in this case?
Mr. Baumann: Individuation.
Dr. Jung: Yes, it would be a symbol of individuation, a symbol of the concentration of one living spark, the spark of fire that fell into creation, according to the Gnostic myth.
Mr. Baumann: Zarathustra said that one might find the germ of the highest hope in man. Does that mean that the individuated man is the last hope of man?
Dr . .Jung: Well, this germ of the highest hope is the star.
Man should plant a germ, which would grow up in the form of plant, and the plant would create a flower which would be the star.
It would be what we call the Yoga plant, with the star flower.
It is an age-old poetical metaphor to call a meadow full of flowers an image of the sky with its thousands of stars; flowers have those starlike forms, symmetrical structures.
So if man succeeds in planting that germ, it is as if he were pregnant with a twinkling star.
That explains also the dancing movement, the incessant twinkling of a star symbolizes its peculiar emanating activity.
And this idea or feeling or intuition-whatever one calls it-explains the many arms of the Hindu gods.
They represent the extraordinary twinkling activity of the divine body. Those arms are all moving.
They symbolize an enormous activity emanating from the god.
The figure of the creative Shiva, Shiva in his perfect manifestation-particularly in the
Lamaistic cult-has thirty-six arms, or sometimes even seventy-two.
They form a corona round him like the emanating rays of a sun or a star.
Therefore, Nietzsche says later on, speaking to man: “Art thou a new power and a new law, a first movement, a wheel that rolls out of itself? Canst thou force the stars that they turn round thyself?”
Here we have that same symbolism, the rotation and also the star.
Then again, later: “It is terrible being alone with the judge and the revenger of thine own law; thus a star is cast out into the empty space and into the icy breath of solitude.”
That is also a symbol of individuation.
Another reference to it is: “But my brother, if thou wan test to be a star” meaning the Superman.
And again, speaking of individuation: “The ray of a star may shine in your life and your hope may be called: ‘I am, I give birth to the Superman.’ ”
Then besides the star and the wheel,
there is the symbol of the golden ball. Perhaps you know the German fairy tale about the princess who lost her golden ball in a deep well where the frog prince was watching it.
She wanted to get it back, but he said: “Only if you allow me to share your seat at the table, eat from your own dish, drink from your own goblet, and share your little bed.”
She agreed very reluctantly, but when he crept into her bed, she threw him out against the wall, and then he transformed into a beautiful prince.”-there Nietzsche says: “Verily, Zarathustra had a goal, he threw his ball, now ye others, I throw the golden ball to you,” meaning: I, Zarathustra, have accomplished individuation and I now throw the
golden ball to you; this is the idea of the Superman again.
Now, Nietzsche speaks here of the last man who is not able to individuate, who has no chaos in himself and therefore no motive to give birth to a star.
That would be the man who is completely exhausted, who is absolutely satisfied, and who doesn’t know of any further evolution.
Therefore he asks:
“What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?”-so asketh the last man and blinketh.
The earth hath then become small, and on it there hoppeth the last man who maketh everything small.
His species is ineradicable like that of the ground-flea, the last man liveth longest.
“We have discovered happiness”-say the last men, and blink thereby.
They have left the regions where iris hard to live, for they need warmth.
One still loveth one’s neighbour and rubbeth against him; for one needeth warmth.
Turning ill and being distrustful, they consider sinful: they walk warily.
He is a fool who still stumbleth over stones or men!
What is this? What kind of attitude does he describe in this last man?
Mrs. Baumann: Playing for safety.
Airs. Fierz: In that book by William James about religious experiences, there is a good passage where he says we must be prepared for everything, we don’t know whether God exists or not, so we must make ourselves as if he lived and yet as if he did not live; we must say yes, and yet make safe and say no.”-,
Dr. Jung: Safe in every case.
Yes, it is a sort of opportunism, as what he describes here is a sort of opportunistic attitude.
He describes the collective man of his day, hoping to reach them by describing them to
themselves; he paints a picture of the last man for them and they think it is far away in the future, but what he describes is simply the ideal man, an ideal rationalist or the ideal opportunist.
He hopes to touch them in that way, that they may see, that their eyes may be opened to what they really are.
He could not sleep, he took chloral by the heap, so if he had discovered a little happiness, it would not have been so bad.
Then at the end of the chapter he says:
“And now do they look at me and laugh: and while they laugh they hate me too. There is ice in their laughter.”
They take what he says as something comical, a sort of cruel mockery.
The chapter ends with the recognition of an almost incurable difference between himself and the collective man of his time.
Now, that is of course a critical moment.
For the speech now ceases and the symbolic action begins.
should be conservative to a certain extent, or that everybody should have their little pleasures for the day and for the night, and have a regard for their health.
Nietzsche himself had no sense of pleasure well, perhaps he had a certain amount of pleasure out of life, but it was precious little-and as for his health, he lived on bottles.
He could not sleep, he took chloral by the heap, so if he had discovered a little happiness, it would not have been so bad.
You see, he reviles the collective man who really can live.
Of course, if one is doing nothing but that, life is not worthwhile; it is not meant that one should do that and nothing else.
But he means the ordinary collective man who unfortunately believes in the righteousness of his principles, his only mistake being that he overlooks the fact that the world has a certain depth, that there are certain things behind the screen, and that the future of mankind already casts its shadow.
Zarathustra is very impatient with that poor collective man, which is of course the reason why he does not reach him.
Mrs. Baumann: It sounds as if he were describing the Christian Scientists.
Or is sickness regarded as a sin more personal to him?
Dr. Jung: His description would fit Christian Science or any other “ism” because it fits the collective man as he is.
Then at the end of the chapter he says:
“And now do they look at me and laugh: and while they laugh they hate me too. There is ice in their laughter.”
That shows his attitude.
He feels a tremendous split between himself and the collective man. You see, he no longer talks of the lightning.
He realizes that there is a great split, and that he looks to them like a “mocker with terrible jests.”
They take what he says as something comical, a sort of cruel mockery.
The chapter ends with the recognition of an almost incurable difference between himself and the collective man of his time.
Now, that is of course a critical moment.
Here he simply gives up hoping to reach them by the lightning, that the lightning
could kindle fire in them. He says that he feels them to be cold like ice.
There is no warmth, no connection, nothing that would bridge the gulf.
That is the key word of the situation, and in that moment the rope-dancer begins; in that moment the rope-dancer is bridging the gulf, going from one side over to the other on the thin and dangerous rope.
For the speech now ceases and the symbolic action begins.
And the action will show what it means to Nietzsche to establish a connection
between the Superman and the collective man-in other words, what individuation means. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 91-109