ON THE AFTERWORLDLY
ON THE AFTERWORLDLY3
AT ONE TIME ZARATHUSTRA also cast his fancy beyond man, like all the afterworldly. The work of a suffering and tortured god, the world then seemed to me.
A dream and a fiction of a god the world then seemed to me; colored smoke before the eyes of a dissatisfied deity.
Good and evil and joy and pain and I and you—colored smoke they seemed to me before creative eyes. The creator wanted to look away from himself, so he created the world.
It is drunken joy for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and lose himself. Drunken joy and loss of self, did the world once seem to me.
This world, eternally imperfect, the image of an eternal contradiction, an imperfect image—a drunken joy to its imperfect creator: thus did the world once seem to me.
Thus, at one time, I also cast my fancy beyond man, like all afterworldly. Beyond man indeed?
Ah, you brothers, that god whom I created was humanly made madness, like all gods!
Man he was, and only a poor fragment of a man and his “I”:4 out of my own ashes and glow it came to me, that ghost, and truly! It did not come to me from beyond!
What happened, my brothers? I overcame myself, the sufferer; I carried my own ashes to the mountains; I invented a brighter flame for myself. And behold! At that the ghost fled from me!
Now it would be suffering for me and agony for the convalescent to believe in such ghosts: now it would be suffering for me, and humiliation. Thus I speak to the afterworldly.
It was suffering and impotence-that created all afterworlds; and that brief madness of bliss which is experienced only by those who suffer most deeply.
Weariness, which seeks to get to the ultimate with one leap, with one death-leap; a poor ignorant weariness, unwilling even to will any longer: that created all gods and afterworlds.
Believe me, my brothers! It was the body that despaired of the body—it groped with the fingers of a deluded spirit at the ultimate walls.
Believe me, my brothers! It was the body that despaired of the earth-it heard the belly of being speaking to it.
And then it sought to get through these ultimate walls with its head-and not only with its head-over there to “that world.”
But “that world” is well concealed from humans, that dehumanizing inhuman world, which is a heavenly nothing; and the belly of being does not speak to man except as man.
Truly, it is hard to prove all being, and hard to make it speak. Tell me, you brothers, is not the strangest of all things best proved?
Yes, this “I”, with its contradiction and perplexity, speaks most honestly of its being-this creating, willing, valuing “I”, which is the measure and value of all things.
And this most honest being, the “I”—it speaks of the body, and still implies the body, even when it muses and raves and flutters with broken wings.
Ever more honestly it learns to speak, the “I”; and the more it learns, the more words and honors it finds for the body and the earth.
A new pride my “I” taught to me, and I teach that to men: no longer to thrust one’s head into the sand of heavenly things, but to carry it freely, a terrestrial head, which creates a meaning to the earth!
A new will I teach men: to will this way which man has walked blindly, and to affirm it-and no longer to slink aside from it, like the sick and decaying!
The sick and decaying—it was they who despised the body and the earth, and invented the heavenly world, and the redeeming drops of blood; but even those sweet and dark poisons they borrowed from the body and the earth!
From their misery they sought escape, and the stars were too remote for them. Then they sighed: “0 that there were heavenly paths by which to steal into another existence and into happiness!” Then they contrived for themselves their sneaky ruses and bloody potions!
Beyond the sphere of their body and this earth they now fancied themselves transported, these ungrateful ones. But to what did they owe the convulsion and rapture of their transport? To their body and this earth.
Zarathustra is gentle with the sick. Truly, he is not indignant at their kind of consolation and ingratitude. May they become convalescents and overcomers, and create higher bodies for themselves !
Neither is Zarathustra indignant at a convalescent who looks tenderly on his delusions, and at midnight steals round the grave of his god; but even so his tears still betray a sickness and a sick body to me.
Many sick ones have there always been among those who muse, and languish for God; violently they hate the lover of knowledge and that youngest among the virtues, which is called “honesty.”
They always gaze backwards toward dark ages: then, indeed, delusion and faith were something different. The rage of reason was godlikeness, and doubt was sin.
All too well do I know those godlike ones: they insist on being believed in, and that doubt is sin. All too well, also, do I know what they themselves most believe in.
Truly, not in afterworlds and redeeming drops of blood: but in the body they also believe most; and their own body is for them their thing-in-itself.
But it is a sickly thing to them, and gladly would they get out of their skin. Therefore they listen to the preachers of death, and themselves preach afterworlds.
Listen rather, my brothers, to the voice of the healthy body; it is a more honest and purer voice.
More honestly and purely speaks the healthy body that is perfect and perpendicular; and it speaks of the meaning of the earth.
Thus spoke Zarathustra.