On the Afterworldly

Once Zarathustra too cast his delusion beyond the human being, like all the afterworldly. The work of a suffering and tormented god the world then seemed to me.

A dream the world then seemed to me, and the fiction of a god; colored smoke before the eyes of one divinely dissatisfied.

Good and evil and joy and suffering and I and you—colored smoke it seemed to me before creative eyes. The creator wanted to look away from himself,—so he created the world.

It is a drunken joy for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and to lose himself. Drunken joy and losing oneself, so the world once seemed to me.

This world, the eternally imperfect, the image of an eternal contradiction, and an imperfect image—a drunken joy for its imperfect creator:—so the world once seemed to me.

Thus I too once cast my delusion beyond the human being, like all the afterworldly. Beyond the human being in truth?

Ah, brothers, this god whom I created was human work and human madness, like all gods!

Human he was, and only a poor piece of human being and I: out of my own ashes and fire it came to me, this 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! Then the ghost gave way before me!

It would be suffering for me now, and torment for the one who has recovered, to believe in such ghosts: it would be suffering for me now and humiliation. Thus I speak to the afterworldly.

It was suffering and incapacity—that created all afterworlds; and that brief madness of happiness that only the one who suffers most experiences.

Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with a death leap, a poor ignorant weariness that no longer even wants to will: that created all gods and afterworlds.

Believe me, my brothers! It was the body that despaired of the body,—that groped at the last walls with the fingers of the befooled spirit.

Believe me, my brothers! It was the body that despaired of the earth,—that heard the belly of being speak to it.

And then it wanted to get through the last walls with its head, and not only with its head,—over into “that world.”

But “that world” is well hidden from the human being, that dehumanized inhuman world which is a heavenly nothing; and the belly of being does not speak to the human being at all, except as a human being.

Truly, all being is hard to prove and hard to make speak. Tell me, brothers, is not the strangest of all things still the best proved?

Yes, this I, and the I’s contradiction and confusion, still speaks most honestly of its being, this creating, willing, evaluating I, which is the measure and value of things.

And this most honest being, the I—it speaks of the body, and it still wants the body, even when it makes poems 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 body and earth.

A new pride my I taught me, and this I teach to human beings:—no longer to stick one’s head into the sand of heavenly things, but to carry it freely, an earthly head that creates meaning for the earth!

A new will I teach to human beings: to will this way that the human being has walked blindly, and to call it good and no longer to sneak aside from it, like the sick and the dying!

It was the sick and the dying who despised body and earth and invented the heavenly and the redeeming drops of blood: but even these sweet and somber poisons they took from body and earth!

They wanted to run away from their misery, and the stars were too far for them. Then they sighed: “Oh, if only there were heavenly paths by which to sneak into another being and happiness!”—then they invented their tricks and little bloody potions!

They now imagined themselves carried away from their body and this earth, these ungrateful ones. Yet to whom did they owe the spasm and rapture of their carrying-away? To their body and this earth.

Zarathustra is gentle with the sick. Truly, he is not angry at their kinds of comfort and ingratitude. May they become convalescents and overcomers and create a higher body for themselves!

Nor is Zarathustra angry with the convalescent when he looks tenderly at his delusion and at midnight creeps around the grave of his god: but even his tears remain to me sickness and a sick body.

There have always been many sickly people among those who make poems and crave God; furiously they hate the knower and that youngest of the virtues, which is called: integrity.

They always look back to dark times: then, of course, delusion and faith were another thing; frenzy of reason was likeness to God, and doubt was sin.

All too well I know these godlike ones: they want people to believe in them, and doubt to be sin. All too well I know, too, what they themselves believe in most.

Truly, not in afterworlds and redeeming drops of blood: they too believe most in the body, and their own body is to them their thing in itself.

But it is a sickly thing to them: and they would gladly jump out of their skin. That is why 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.

The healthy body speaks more honestly and more purely, the perfect and square-built body: and it speaks of the meaning of the earth.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.