Zarathustra: The Laughing Prophet

On Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra
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Osho talks on Friedrich Nietzsche′s famous work Thus Spake Zarathustra, a work overshadowed by its link with Adolf Hitler and his horrific manipulation of Nietzche′s concept of the "superman" during the Second World War. Here Osho lifts Nietzsche beyond the blight of history, and restores his innocence, turning his great work into a feast of wisdom that we can all appreciate.
Osho talks on Friedrich Nietzsche′s famous work Thus Spake Zarathustra, a work overshadowed by its link with Adolf Hitler and his horrific manipulation of Nietzche′s concept of the "superman" during the Second World War. Here Osho lifts Nietzsche beyond the blight of history, and restores his innocence, turning his great work into a feast of wisdom that we can all appreciate.

Excerpt from: Zarathustra: The Laughing Prophet, Chapter 8
"One of the most fundamental things to be understood by all those who are in search –in search of a path, in search of a direction, in search of a meaning, in search of themselves – is that they will have to become wanderers. They cannot remain static. They have to learn to be a process rather than being an event.

"The greatest distinguishing mark between things and man, between animals and man, is that things remain the same; they cannot become wanderers. Animals also are born complete –they don’t grow up, they only grow old. A deer is born a deer and will die a deer. There is no process between birth and death, no becoming.

"Man is the only being on the earth – and perhaps in the whole universe – who can become a process, a movement, a growing. Not just growing old, but growing up to new levels of consciousness, to new stages of awareness, to new spaces of experience. And there is the possibility in man that he can even transcend himself, he can go beyond himself. That is taking the process to its logical end.

"In other words, I would like you to remember that man is not to be understood as a being, because the word being gives a wrong idea –as if man is complete.

"Man is a becoming.

"Man is the only animal who is not complete. And that is his glory, not his curse; it is his blessing. He can be born as a man, and he can die as a Zarathustra, or as a Gautam Buddha, or as a Jesus Christ – who have transcended humanity and reached to a new space you can call enlightenment, you can call awakening, you can call godliness, but something superhuman. Man is a becoming. Zarathustra uses the parable of the wanderer for this fundamental truth about man.

"ZARATHUSTRA SPEAKS TO HIMSELF – and naturally when somebody like Zarathustra speaks to himself he speaks more authentically, more truthfully than when he speaks to others. Speaking to others, he has to concede and compromise with the others; otherwise he will be speaking a language which is only going to be misunderstood. He has to come down from his heights to the dark valleys of those with whom he is speaking.

"But when he speaks with himself he can speak on the sunlit peaks, without any compromise. He can say exactly what he wants to say because he is saying it to himself, not to anybody else; there is no problem of being misunderstood. The monologue and the dialogue are two totally different phenomena.

"One of the most significant Jewish philosophers of this century, Martin Buber, has contributed to world thought the idea of the dialogue. According to him, dialogue is the most significant thing. But perhaps he does not know that monologue has a height which no dialogue can ever have. So when Zarathustra speaks to himself, listen more carefully, because he is speaking from the very source of his heart – and without any compromise, without any concern that he may be understood or not understood.

"He is talking to himself, and these are the most important statements that he makes.ZARATHUSTRA SPEAKS TO HIMSELF:" Osho
In this title, Osho talks on the following topics:
love... power... light... life... enemy... pleasure... question... zarathustra... superman... ramakrishna...
More Information
Type Series of Talks
Publisher Osho Media International
ISBN-13 978-0-88050-403-4
Number of Pages 875
File Size 2.0 MB
Format Adobe ePub