Notes on Thus Spake Zarathustra 06: The Search for Hell

Part I: Backworldsmen, Thus Spake Zarathustra

“Ah, ye brethren, that God whom I created was human work and human madness, like all the Gods!
A man was he, and only a poor fragment of a man and ego. Out of mine own ashes and glow it came unto me, that phantom. And verily, it came not unto me from the beyond!
What happened, my brethren? I surpassed myself, the suffering one; I carried mine own ashes to the mountain; a brighter flame I contrived for myself. And lo! Thereupon the phantom WITHDREW from me!”

Perhaps the supernaturalism of God lies in the very fact that Nature's favourite child, Man devised such an ingenious and unparalleled higher ultimate value. Who would have thought that such an omniscient, almighty ideal could be born out of the imperfect Man? When he is sickened by the realisation of tragedy and malevolence, he turns towards the opposite extreme in a desperate attempt to escape from his disease, and invents it, if he cannot find it in his world. He projects those ideals from his unconscious out onto the cosmos, and begins living by the belief that amid the stars and planets there reigns a supreme being, a Creator, an ultimate value that Man must strive towards in order to give his life the meaning that was lost when Man began applying all manner of interpretations to the world before his eyes.

“Suffering was it, and impotence—that created all backworlds; and the short madness of happiness, which only the greatest sufferer experienceth.
Weariness, which seeketh to get to the ultimate with one leap, with a death-leap; a poor ignorant weariness, unwilling even to will any longer: that created all Gods and backworlds.
Believe me, my brethren! It was the body which despaired of the body—it groped with the fingers of the infatuated spirit at the ultimate walls.”

It was the witnessing of pain and suffering that led Man not to despair, but to hope instead. There could be nothing more real than pain: all men agreed on this, no one attempted to argue it out of existence. So on becoming aware of the reality of Hell, it only made sense that there was an opposite of it as well, or at least there was something that was not Hell. Even this was good enough for the ailing man; therein, he conceptualised a world where things were the best they could be, where there was no pain, no disease, a place of eternal bliss for the redeemed.

“And then it sought to get through the ultimate walls with its head—and not with its head only—into “the other world.”
But that “other world” is well concealed from man, that dehumanised, inhuman world, which is a celestial naught; and the bowels of existence do not speak unto man, except as man.”

With this picture in mind, the diseased man sought to confront potential and transform the image of Heaven into reality. But the stories man wove of heaven, hell, God, Devil and the soul’s journey did not lie outside his perceptual frame. The world could not be interpreted but subjectively, because man, the interpreter, was the subject. Only a purely human conception of the world was possible, for it was consciousness which interacted with the world of objects and gave it meaning. Indeed, this means that metaphysical reality sprang from mankind, but so did the scientific view. The scientific conception of the world did not belong to a super-human realm of Truth, rather, it is the view of the scientific man.

“From their misery they sought escape, and the stars were too remote for them. Then they sighed: “O that there were heavenly paths by which to steal into another existence and into happiness!” Then they contrived for themselves their by-paths and bloody draughts!
Beyond the sphere of their body and this earth they now fancied themselves transported, these ungrateful ones..
Neither is Zarathustra indignant at a convalescent who looketh tenderly on his delusions, and at midnight stealeth round the grave of his God; but sickness and a sick frame remain even in his tears.”

As the development of science and technology, not to mention, laws and tradition, made our world secure, the lack of sufficient challenge and deprivation eliminated the need for a “heaven” altogether, for it became harder and harder to conceptualize hell while basking in the comfort of our materialism. The gods died at our hands, for the ancient images of heaven and hell remained symbols whose meaning had been long forgotten. But is the collective spirit of the modern men any less facile as the now-strange symbols of the forefathers? And what will become of those who crave discomfort more than anything else? What will call us into being, now that necessity is being dispelled at every corner? 

May we find our Hells, so our Gods may be born again.