Nietzsche is a complex philosopher whose writings cannot be taken at face value. In order to develop a full appreciation of what he is intending to say requires more than one reading. Each new reading of his work takes the reader to deeper levels of understanding. Part 4 of Thus Spoke Zarathustra suggests a parable of the process of seeking the true self or spirit within. This process is concerned with becoming rather than just being. It can also be analyzed and interpreted from two different directions. The parable is concerned with Zarathustra in the process of self-realization. However, it is also concerned with various persons in the process of seeking to become while Zarathustra represents a personified aspect of the true self.
Part 4 of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is centered around the pursuit of the higher man. The higher man is the true self or the spirit. It is that inner core of a being that is the purest essence of being. It is akin to the atman of Hindu philosophy. It is the seat of wisdom and the key to becoming rather than just being. Complete self-realization and actualization comes about by a complete recognition of the higher man.
In "The Honey Sacrifice," Zarathustra is the higher man, or atman , personified. He describes himself as casting out his happiness into a sea of human fish waiting for one to bite his bait. He waits without patience or impatience for the sign that a seeker of the higher man is ready to ascend to new heights. The higher man has transcended patience and impatience. He waits in eternal destiny for seekers knowing full well the time will eventually come in which each and every being will finally take the bait.
The higher man must wait for the seekers to come, though. Zarathustra as the personified atman explains in "On the Higher Man" that at one time he spoke to the mob of the market place. The mob could not hear his message. The wisdom of the higher man fell on deaf ears. The mob does not believe in the higher man. The mob are the masses of people who live each day seeking nothing more than simply to be. They have no desire to become a fully realized being. Resignation and surrender to whatever life throws in the way is the mentality of the mob. They seek to wallow in events rather than overcome them to realize the higher man. In such a state of being the higher man cannot be recognized. Zarathustra left the market place to instead fish from a high mountain to wait for the ones who are truly ready to seek out the higher man.
Zarathustra as the personified atman runs across a variety of persons who have taken the bait of searching for the higher man. Each one has taken a different approach to finding the way. In their collected cry of distress, Zarathustra looks for these men in his realm. Each of these persons has felt the pangs of the great nausea. The nausea is a melancholy brought about by a kind of waking from the emptiness of living the life of the mob. These men are on the path to learn how to become, finding themselves tired of just being.
They all seek one thing: Zarathustra. Zarathustra cannot ignore the cry of distress that he hears. The atman is always ready and waiting to run to the source of the cry for self-realization. When one is ready to find the self, it is always there to show itself. Each cry that Zarathustra hears sends him on his way to show himself to that person who seeks him. Each time he meets a new seeker he then sends him on to his cave to share in all he has.
Upanisadic thought of Hindu philosophy describes the atman as being found within the secret cave of the heart. It is a strong parallel that Zarathustra sends the seekers to his cave. For in the secret cave of the heart of Upanisadic thought, one finds the atman and the ability to share in all that the atman can offer. It is the true center of a person that one cannot recognize unless he finds himself nauseated with living the life of the mob. Until he is ready, one cannot utter the cry of distress to bring forth the atman or find the secret cave of the heart. Each of the persons Zarathustra met could not find Zarathustra or the cave until they became nauseated and uttered thier cry of distress.
From another perspective, Part 4 of the book is also a parable of one walking the path of self-realization. Zarathustra himself also is a man searching for the higher man. He is a man whose journey has been long and he is almost to the point of a full realization of himself as the higher man. There is one last step he must take, however, in order to find the higher man. He meets a soothsayer he once met before who tells him that he has one last sin to accomplish. The final sin for Zarathustra is pity. It is not enough to find the higher man purely with one's experiences. One must also learn to suffer with others in their experiences. Compassion is the final step Zarathustra must take to reach the higher man.
The soothsayer point out ot Zarathustra that until he learns pity, Zarathustra will not be able to truly dance. The dance comes with the realization of the higher man. As the higher man is the atman , the dance is the state of enlightenment. It is a dance of transcendence, leaving behind being to finally become. It is an actualization of the higher man. It is the acceptance of everything that is within the cave of the heart. The dance is a state of perfection, beyond good and evil, beyond happiness and unhappiness. It is a dance of joy in which every state is recognized along with its opposite and then transcended, such as the realization that joy cannot be completely accepted without also completely accepting all woe with it.
The soothsayer warns Zarathustra that he must dance or else he may fall from his search for the higher man. He is also urged to a recognition of the cry of distress of the higher man. Zarathustra, hearing this cry, recognizes it as the higher man and that he must seek out the higher man within himself. It is the cry of his own true self wanting to reach a state of enlightenment. Zarathustra takes it upon himself to experience his final sin and seek out the higher man.
As Zarathustra searches for his own self-realization, the persons he encounters become aspects of himself he has been on his way towards his own enlightenment. Zarathustra is clearly recognized as a sage within the book. It is only fitting that is is the soothsayer he meets first. The soothsayer represents the level of accomplishment Zarathustra has managed to achieve thus far in the pursuit of the higher man. He is a culmination of wisdom from numerous experiences gained through a progressive search for the higher man.
The kings are the expression that the higher man cannot be found through wealth or the games of the court. Noble life is "false and foul." It is an illusion in which all seems to be well all the time. Actions taken up within the court are nothing more than trained deceptions. Actions and words are carefully taught within the court to create a careful display of perfection to all who may witness it. Yet the kings say this life of the nobility brings nothing but nausea. It is the life of the mob, a life of lies that the kings no longer can tolerate. They seek the higher man so that they can overcome the nausea they feel.
Zarathustra next encounters the man who calls himself the conscientious in spirit. He represents a severely ascetic approach to the pursuit of self-realization. Zarathustra finds him with his arm in the swamp waiting for the leeches to feed on him. The man wishes nothing more than to completely know the brain of the leech. The leech represents austerities that the conscientious in spirit performs in order to find knowledge. He admits that there is not any other who is as hard, strict, or narrow as he is in matters of the spirit. By performing harsh austerities, the man finds that he can walk the path to complete knowledge in honesty. Partial knowledge is not good enough for it does not lead to full realization of the spirit. This realization also cannot come without total honesty.
The magician feels the weight of the lack of honesty in the search for the higher man. He is the master of deception and admits to Zarathustra that living in lie is breaking him. The magician is finding nausea from his art. Zarathustra tells him that in the instant the magician admitted his nausea and the acceptance that he was not the higher man, he was for once genuine. With all the deceits the magician could contrive, there was nothing he could ever do to disguise nausea and the fact that he wanted to pursue the higher man.
The next two that Zarathustra meet are the pope and the ugliest man. The pope seeks the higher man because the one he formerly served, God, is dead. The pope is lost, struggling to cope with how to live when faced with godlessness. For his godlessness, the pope has the ugliest man to thank. The ugliest man had to kill God because He saw everything, even man as he is. God was the witness and death was the revenge against the witness the ugliest man sought.
After the pope anad the ugliest man, Zarathustra met the voluntary beggar. He had renounced all belongings, giving everything away to the poor. Yet what he encountered by doing so was that the poor would not accept his gifts seeing them as a denigration to their status. The rich did not tolerate the voluntary beggar's actions either and would not continue to accept him within their circle. The voluntary beggar then turned to nature to learn. He found counsel and wisdom from the ways of animals, particularly from cows. He learned to live a life of purity from nature.
The final encounter Zarathustra has is with his own shadow. The shadow lived by experiencing all things that were forbidden. He is a character conflicted by the fact that he is always moving on his way somewhere. However, the somewhere he is moving to is without goal or direction. He has encountered everything yet everything takes from him, depleting him to a mere hint of a figure. Each time he followed too close to truth, it lashed out at him. He found that when he did run into truth it was only when he thought he was lying. The shadow only searches for a home to call his own.
Each one of these persons Zarathustra sent to his cave. When Zarathustra returned to his cave he found the cry of distress was composed of multiple voices emanating from the cave. The cry of distress was the cry of his own soul, the higher man within himself, eager to be realized. Each person he met was a representation of the steps he had taken on the way in the search for the higher man. In "The Welcome" Zarathustra tells the men gathered within his cave that they are only steps for the higher man to climb over to reach his height. In and of themselves, none of the persons can reach the higher man for they are only a small part of the process in the attainment of self-realization.
Zarathustra realizes he must take the lessons of each encounter, of each role he has played in his processs of self-realization, inclusively. Through the steps he has taken on his journey he has learned a union with nature, acceptance of his shadow side, wealth does not matter, renunciation of possessions in favor of purity, the ways of honesty and deceit, and letting go of God in favor of serving the higher man. Nature is as good a teacher as the sage. Evil is necessary in order to bring out the best in one's self. Giving is a special art of graciousness. Rich or poor does not matter if it is the life of the mob. Truth can never truly be known without also being capable of lying.
God is a matter of special consideration in the process of self-realizaion. In Part 4 of Thus Spoke Zarathustra Nietzsche makes a point of satirizing religious dogma. He also clearly points out with the ugliest man and the pope that it is necessary to kill God on the path to the higher man. Religious dogma is a hindrance to self-realization. Dogma does nothing but conceal the true nature of God. It is better to get beyond concepts of God and to live instead as a god for oneself. Recognizing the higher man is an actualization of the god within oneself, living in a transcendent state which is what God truly is. This idea of God within also corresponds to Hindu thought. Brahman is considered the ultimate, transcendent universal. Within man, according to Upanisadic thought, the atman is the pure reflection of Brahman. Recognizing the higher man is a recognition of the true god aspect.
This complete recognition comes at the moment of enlightenment. After meeting all the persons on his search, but before returning to his cave, Zarathustra naps. He has a momentary experience of enlightenment. He describes himself as asleep with his soul still awake. This description corresponds to experiences of the jivanmukti in Hindu philosophy, i.e. the one who experiences complete freedom while still embodied. In this experience Zarathustra is caught in a moment that is at the same time eternity. He realizes it is such a little thing which at the same time brings total joy. His only question is when this moment of enlightenment will come to take him for good.
He does get his chance to have complete self-realization in "The Drunken Song." The state of pure joy and eternity returns to him, but this time his enlightenment is to stay. He finds that even at midnight the day is equally as bright as it is at noon. All things have their opposites and both sides must be accepted. To say no to one is to say no to the other. He realizes that one cannot say yes to joy without also saying yes to suffering. All opposites must be accepted together to form a whole. They can then be transcended so that the sage can be equally a fool.
Zarathustra reaches his enlightenment by realizing his final sin of pity. This moment cannot come until he has learned to suffer with the persons who represent the steps he took to become a soothsayer. He followed back through his steps in inverse order as he walked his final step to learn pity. It is clear that if the order of the persons he meets is reversed, starting with the shadow and going backwards through the encounters to finish with the sage, a definite pattern exists of steps being taken.
The purity of the voluntary beggar is pointless without having a foundation of corruption from the shadow to stand on. Killing the pure God of religious dogma is irrelevant without first having an understanding of true purity and corruption to judge it against. The pope cannot retire from dogma until God is dead. Until God is left behind, the magician cannot seek for greatness elsewhere and promote his art of deception. The total honesty the conscientious in spirit wants to live for cannot be actualized until the deceit of the magician reaches its breaking point. In total honesty the kings can realize the lie that the life of the mob is. Through all these steps the wisdom of the sage can be realized and with it, the wisdom that there is still one step left to make. Until one can suffer with all others through their experiences, one cannot truly dance.
It is also at this moment in the cave when Zarathustra recognizes each step has its own dance, however feeble it may be. Once he has attained his last step he can see that each person, while not being able to suffer a complete suffering along with Zarathustra, can suffer with those at that particualr step. He encourages them to dance and to continue the dance as long as they can. He can see they are all in the process of searching for the higher man and that it will take many steps, as it did for himself, to finally reach the higher man.
The process of reaching the higher man is equally as important as finding the higher man. Without a complete understanding of what joy and suffering is, transcendence can never come. It is a definite process that is worth undertaking. Through this process one ceases just to be, but rather becomes. What one becomes is the higher man, a realization and actualization of the true nature of the self.
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