Zarathustra: The Laughing Prophet

by OSHO

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

Osho clarifies the true nature of the superman - Nietzsche’s concept that was so tragically perverted by Adolf Hitler. He unveils the superman as a man inalienably connected to the cosmos, as a mystic and an innocent, cleansed of the need for conquest. He also discusses Nietzsche’s concept of will-to-power, revealing how it can integrate man and lead him towards creativity.

Table of Contents:

Chapter   1: Of the Famous Philosophers
Chapter   2: Of Self-Overcoming
Chapter   3: Of Scholars
Chapter   4: Of Poets
Chapter   5: Of Redemption
Chapter   6: Of Manly Prudence
Chapter   7: Of the Stillest Hour
Chapter   8: The Wanderer
Chapter   9: Of Blissful Islands
Chapter 10: Before Sunrise
Chapter 11: Of the Virtue That Makes Small
Chapter 12: Of the Apostates
Chapter 13: The Home-Coming
Chapter 14: Of the Three Evil Things
Chapter 15: Of the Spirit of Gravity Part 1
Chapter 16: Of the Spirit of Gravity Part 2
Chapter 17: Of Old and New Law Tables Part 1
Chapter 18: Of Old and New Law Tables Part 2
Chapter 19: Of Old and New Law Tables Part 3
Chapter 20: The Convalescent
Chapter 21: Of the Meeting with a Higher Man
Chapter 22: The Greeting
Chapter 23: Of Laughter and Dance

Excerpt from Zarathustra: The Laughing Prophet

"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."

Chapter 8