Scrutinies
{I} I resist, I cannot accept this hollow nothing that I am. What am I? What is my I? I always presuppose my I. Now it stands before me -- I before my I. I speak now to you, my I:
[1] We are alone and our being together threatens to become unbearably boring. We must do something, devise a pastime; for example, I could educate you. Let us begin with your main flaw, which strikes me first: you have no correct self-esteem. Have you no good qualities that you can be proud of? You believe that being capable is an art. But one can also learn such skills to some extent. Please, do so. You find it difficult -- well, all beginnings are difficult. [2] Soon you will be able to do it better. Do you doubt this? That is of no use; you must be able to do it, or else I cannot live with you. Ever since the God has arisen and spreads himself in whichever fiery heavens, to do whatever he does, what exactly I do not know, we have depended upon one another. Therefore you must think about improving, or else our life together will become wretched. So pull yourself together and value yourself! Don't you want to?
Pitiful creature! I will torment you a bit if you do not make an effort. What are you moaning about? Perhaps the whip will help?
Now that gets under your skin, doesn't it? Take that -- and that. What does it taste of? Of blood, presumably? Of the Middle Ages in majorem Dei gloriam? [3]
Or do you want love, or what goes by that name? One can also teach with love, if blows do not bear fruit. So should I love you? Press you tenderly to myself?
I truly believe that you are yawning.
How now, you want to speak? But I won't let you, otherwise in the end you will claim that you are my soul. But my soul is with the fire worm, with the son of the frog who has flown to the heavens above, to the upper sources. Do I know what he is doing there? But you are not my soul, you are my bare, empty nothing -- I, this disagreeable being, whom one cannot even deny the right to consider itself worthless.
One could despair over you: your sensitivity and desirousness exceed any reasonable measure. And I should live with you, of all people? I must, since the strange misfortune occurred that gave me a son and took him away.
I regret that I must speak such truths to you. Yes, you are laughably sensitive, self-righteous, unruly, mistrustful, pessimistic, cowardly, dishonest with yourself, venomous, vengeful; one can hardly speak about your childish pride, your craving for power, your desire for esteem, your laughable ambition, your thirst for fame without feeling sick. The playacting and pomposity become you badly and you abuse them to the best of your ability.
Do you believe that it is a pleasure rather than a horror to live together with you? No, three times no! But I promise you that I will tighten the vise around you and slowly pull off your skin. I will give you the chance to be flayed.
You, you of all people wanted to tell other people what to do?
Come here, I will stitch a cloth of new skin onto you, so that you can feel its effect.
You want to complain about others, and that one has done an injustice to you, not understood you, misinterpreted you, hurt your feelings, ignored you, not recognized you, falsely accused you, and what else? Do you see your vanity in this, your eternally ridiculous vanity?
You complain that the torment has not yet come to an end?
Let me tell you: it has only just begun. You have no patience and no seriousness. Only when it concerns your pleasure do you praise your patience. I will double the torment so that you learn patience.
You find the pain unbearable, but there are other things that hurt even more, and you can inflict them on others with the greatest naivety and absolve yourself all unknowingly.
But you will learn silence. For this I will pull out your tongue -- with which you have ridiculed, blasphemed and -- even worse -- joked. I will pin all your unjust and depraved words one by one to your body with needles so that you can feel how evil words stab.
Do you admit that you also derive pleasure from this torment? I will increase this pleasure until you vomit with joy so that you know what taking pleasure in self-torment means.
You rise against me? I am screwing the vise tighter, that's all. I will break your bones until there is no longer a trace of hardness there.
For I want to get along with you -- I must -- damn you -- you are my I, which I must carry around with me to the grave. Do you think that I want to have such foolishness around me all my life? If you were not my I, I would have torn you to pieces long ago.
But I am damned to haul you through a purgatory so that you too will become somewhat acceptable.
You call on God for help?
The dear old God has died, [4] and it is good that way, otherwise he would have had pity on your repentant sinfulness and spared me the execution by granting mercy. You must know that neither a God of love nor a loving God has yet arisen, but instead a worm of fire crawled up, a magnificent frightful entity that lets fire rain on the earth, producing lamentations. [5] So cry to the God, he will burn you with fire for the forgiveness of your sins. Coil yourself and sweat blood. You have needed this cure for a long time. Yes -- others always do wrong -- and you? You are the innocent, the correct, you must defend your good right and you have a good, loving God on your side, who always forgives sins with pity. Others must reach insight, not you, since you have a monopoly on all insight from the start and are always convinced that you are right. And so cry really loudly to your dear God -- he will hear you and let fire fall on you. Have you not noticed that your God has become a fiery worm with a flat skull who crawls red-hot on the earth?
You wanted to be superior! How laughable. You were, and are, inferior. Who are you, then? Scum that disgusts me.
Are you perhaps somewhat powerless? I place you in a corner where you can remain lying until you come to your senses again. If you no longer feel anything, the procedure is of no use. After all, we must proceed skillfully. It really says a lot about you that one needs such barbaric means for your amendment. Your progress since the early Middle Ages appears to be minuscule.
***
[6] Did you feel dejected today, inferior, debased? Shall I tell you why?
Your inordinate ambition is boundless. Your grounds are not focused on the good of the matter but on your vanity. You do not work for humanity but for your self-interest. You do not strive for the completion of the thing but for the general recognition and safeguarding of your own advantage. I want to honor you with a prickly crown of iron; it has teeth inside that bore themselves into your flesh.
And now we come to the vile swindle that you pursue with your cleverness. You speak skillfully and abuse your capability and discolor, tone down, strengthen, apportion light and shade, and loudly proclaim your honorableness and upright good faith. You exploit the good faith of others, you gloatingly catch them in your snares and speak of your benevolent superiority and the prize that you are for others. You play at modesty and do not mention your merit, in the certain hope that someone else will do it for you; you are disappointed and hurt if this doesn't happen.
You preach hypocritical composure. But when it really matters, are you calm? No, you lie. You consume yourself in rage and your tongue speaks cold daggers and you dream of revenge.
You are gloating and resentful. You begrudge the other the sunshine, since you would like to assign it to those whom you favor because they favor you. You are envious of all well-being around you and you impertinently assert the opposite.
Inside yourself you think unsparingly and coarsely only what always suits you, and with this you feel yourself above humanity and not in the least responsible. But you are responsible to humanity in everything that you think, feel, and do. Do not pretend there is a difference between thinking and doing. You rely only on your undeserved advantage, not to be compelled to say or do what you think and feel.
But you are shameless in everything where no one sees you. If another said that to you, you would be mortally offended, despite knowing that it is true. You want to reproach others for their failings? So that they better themselves? Yes, confess, have you bettered yourself? From where do you get the right to have opinions of others? What is your opinion about yourself? And what are the good grounds that support it? Your grounds are webs of lies covering a dirty corner. You judge others and charge them with what they should do. You do this because you have no order within yourself, because you are unclean.
And then -- how do you really think? It appears to me that you even think with men, regardless of their human dignity; you dare think by means of them, and use them as figures on your stage, as if they were how you conceive them? Have you ever considered that you thus commit a shameful act of power, as bad as that for which you condemn others, namely that they love their fellow men, as they claim, but in reality exploit them to their own ends. Your sin flourishes in seclusion, but it is no less great, remorseless, and coarse.
What is concealed in you I will drag out into the light, shameless one! I will crush your superiority under my feet.
Do not speak to me about your love. What you call love oozes with self-interest and desirousness. But you speak about it with great words, and the greater your words are, the more pathetic your so-called love is. Never speak to me of your love, but keep your mouth shut. It lies.
I want you to speak about your shame, and that instead of speaking great words, you utter a discordant clamor before those whose respect you wanted to exact. You deserve mockery, not respect.
I will burn out of you the contents of which you were proud, so that you will become empty like a poured-out vessel. You should be proud of nothing more than your emptiness and wretchedness. You should be a vessel of life, so kill your idols.
Freedom does not belong to you, but form; not power, but suffering and conceiving.
You should make a virtue out of your self-contempt, which I will spread out before men like a carpet. They should walk over it with dirty feet and you should see to it that you are dirtier than all the feet that step on you.
[7] If I tame you, beast, I give others the opportunity to tame their beasts. The taming begins with you, my I, nowhere else. Not that you, stupid brother I, had been particularly wild. There are some who are wilder. But I must whip you until you endure the wildness of the others. Then I can live with you. If someone does you wrong, I will torment you to death, until you have forgiven the wrong suffered, yet not just by paying lip service, but also in your heavy heart with its heinous sensitivity. Your sensitivity is your particular form of violence.
Therefore listen, brother in my solitude, I have prepared every kind of torture for you, if it should ever occur to you again to be sensitive. You should feel inferior. You should be able to bear the fact that one calls your purity dirty and that one desires your dirtiness, that one praises your wastefulness as miserliness and your greed as a virtue.
Fill your beaker with the bitter drink of subjugation, since you are not your soul. Your soul is with the fiery God who flamed up to the roof of the heavens.
***
Should you still be sensitive? I notice that you are forging secret plans for revenge, plotting deceitful tricks. But you are an idiot, you cannot take revenge on fate. Childish one, you probably even want to lash the sea. Build better bridges instead; that is a better way to squander your wit.
You want to be understood? That's all we needed! Understand yourself, and you will be sufficiently understood. You will have quite enough work in hand with that. Mothers' little dears want to be understood. Understand yourself, that is the best protection against sensitivity and satisfies your childish longing to be understood. I suppose you want to turn others into slaves of your desirousness again? But you know that I must live with you and that I will no longer tolerate such abject plaintiveness. [8]
***
{2} After I had spoken these and many more angry words to my I, I noticed that I began to bear being alone with myself. But the touchiness still stirred in me frequently and I had to lash myself just as often. And I did this until even the pleasure in self-torment faded. [9]
[10] Then I heard a voice one night; it came from afar and was the voice of my soul. She spoke: "How distant you are!"
I: "Is that you my soul, from which height and distance do you speak?"
S: "I am above you. I am a world apart. I have become sunlike. I received the seeds of fire. Where are you? I can hardly find you in your mists."
I: "I am down on the murky earth, in the dark smoke that the fire left us, and my gaze does not reach you. But your voice sounds closer."
S: "I feel it. The heaviness of the earth penetrates me, damp cold enshrouds me, gloomy memories of former pain overcome me."
I: "Do not lower yourself into the smoke and the darkness of the earth. I would like that which I am still working on to remain sunlike. Otherwise I will lose the courage to live further down in the darkness of the earth. Let me just hear your voice. I will never want to see you in the flesh again. Say something! Take it from the depths, from which fear perhaps flows to me."
S: "I cannot, since your creative source flows from there."
I: "You see my uncertainty."
S: "The uncertain way is the good way. Upon it lie possibilities. Be unwavering and create."
I heard the rushing of wings. I knew that the bird rose higher, above the clouds in the fiery brilliance of the outspread Godhead.
[11] I turned to my brother, the I; he stood sadly and looked at the ground and sighed, and would rather have been dead, since the burden of enormous suffering burdened him. But a voice spoke from me and said:
"It is hard -- the sacrificed fall left and right -- and you will be crucified for the sake of life."
And I said to my I: "My brother, how do you like this speech?"
But he sighed deeply and moaned: "It is bitter, and I suffer much."
To which I answered: "I know, but it is not to be altered." But I did not know what that was, since I still did not know what the future held (this happened on the 21st May of the year 1914). In the excess of suffering I looked up to the clouds and called out to my soul and asked her. And I heard her voice, happy and bright, and she answered:
"Much happiness has happened to me. I rise higher, my wings grow."
I was seized with bitterness at these words and I cried: "You live from the blood of the human heart."
I heard her laughing -- or was she not laughing? "No drink is dearer to me than red blood."
Powerless anger seized me and I called out: "If you were not my soul who followed the God to the eternal realm, I would call you the most terrible scourge of men. But who moves you? I know that divinity is not humanity. The divine consumes the human. I know that this is the severity, this is the cruelty; he who has felt you with his hands can never remove the blood from his hands. I have become enslaved to you."
She answered: "Do not be angry, do not complain. Let the bloody victims fall at your side. It is not your severity, it is not your cruelty, but necessity. The way of life is sown with fallen ones."
I: "Yes, I see, it is a battlefield. My brother, what is with you? Are you groaning?"
Then my I answered: "Why should I not groan and moan? I load myself with the dead and cannot haul their number."
But I did not understand my I and therefore spoke to him: "You are a pagan, my friend! Have you not heard that it is said, let the dead bury their dead? [12] Why do you want to be burdened with the dead? You do not help them by hauling them."
Then my I wailed: "But I pity the poor fallen ones, they cannot reach the light. Perhaps if I haul them --?"
I: "What is this? Their souls have accomplished as much as they could. Then they encountered fate. It will also happen to us. Your compassion is sick."
But my soul called from afar: "Leave him compassion, compassion binds life and death."
These words of my soul stung me. She spoke of compassion, she, who rose up following the God without compassion, and I asked her:
[13] "Why did you do that?"
For my human sensitivity could not grasp the hideousness of that hour. She answered:
"It is not meant for me to be in your world. I besmirch myself on the excrement of your earth."
I: "Am I not earth? Am I not excrement? Did I commit an error that forced you to follow the God into the upper realms?"
S: "No, it was inner necessity. I belong to the Above."
I: "Has no one suffered an irreplaceable loss through your disappearance?"
S: "On the contrary; you have enjoyed utmost benefit."
I: "If I heed my human feeling about this, doubt could come over me."
S: "What have you noticed? Why should what you see always be untrue? It is your particular wrong that you cannot stop making a fool of yourself. Can you not remain on your way for once?"
I: "You know that I doubt, because of my love for men."
S: "No, for the sake of your weakness, for the sake of your doubt and disbelief. Stay on your way and do not run away from yourself. There is a divine and a human intention. They cross each other in stupid and godforsaken people, to whom you also belong from time to time."
Since what my soul spoke about referred to nothing that I could see, nor could I see what my I suffered from (since this happened two months before the outbreak of the war), I wanted to understand it all as personal experiences within me, and consequently I could neither understand nor believe it all, since my belief is weak. And I believe that it is better in our time if belief is weak. We have outgrown that childhood where mere belief was the most suitable means to bring men to what is good and reasonable. Therefore if we wanted to have a strong belief again today, we would thus return to that earlier childhood. But we have so much knowledge and such a thirst for knowledge in us that we need knowledge more than belief. But the strength of belief would hinder us from attaining knowledge. Belief certainly may be something strong, but it is empty, and too little of the whole man can be involved, if our life with God is grounded only on belief. Should we simply believe first and foremost? That seems too cheap to me. Men who have understanding should not just believe, but should wrestle for knowledge to the best of their ability. Belief is not everything, but neither is knowledge. Belief does not give us the security and the wealth of knowing. Desiring knowledge sometimes takes away too much belief. Both must strike a balance.
But it is also dangerous to believe too much, because today everyone has to find his own way and encounters in himself a beyond full of strange and mighty things. He could easily take everything literally with too much belief and would be nothing but a lunatic. The childishness of belief breaks down in the face of our present necessities. We need differentiating knowledge to clear up the confusion which the discovery of the soul has brought in. Therefore it is perhaps much better to await better knowledge before one accepts things all too believingly. [14]
From these considerations I spoke to my soul:
"Is all that to be accepted? You know in what sense I ask this. It is not stupid and unbelieving to ask thus, but is doubting of a higher type."
To this she answered: "I understand you -- but it is to be accepted."
To which I replied: "The solitude of this acceptance terrifies me. I dread the madness that befalls the solitary."
She answered: "As you already know, I have long predicted solitude for you. You need not be afraid of madness. What I predict is valid."
These words filled me with disquiet, since I felt that I could almost not accept what my soul predicted, because I did not understand it. I always wanted to understand it with regard to myself. Therefore I said to my soul: "What misunderstood fear torments me?"
"That is your disbelief, your doubt. You do not want to believe in the size of the sacrifice that is required. But it will go on to the bitter end. Greatness requires greatness. You still want to be too cheap. Did I not speak to you of abandonment, of leaving be? Do you want to have it better than other men?"
"No," I replied, "No, that is not it. But I fear committing an injustice to men if I go my own way."
"What do you want to avoid?" she said; "there is no avoidance. You must go your way, unconcerned about others, no matter whether they are good or bad. You have laid your hand on the divine, which those have not."
I could not accept these words since I feared deception. Therefore I also did not want to accept this way that forced me into dialogue with my soul. I preferred to speak with men. But I felt compelled toward solitude and I feared at the same time the solitude of my thinking which departed from accustomed paths. [15] As I pondered this, my soul spoke to me: "Did I not predict dark solitude for you?"
"I know," I answered, "but I did not really think that it would happen. Must it be so?"
"You can only say yes. There is nothing to do other than for you to take care of your cause. If anything should happen, it can only happen on this way."
"So it is hopeless," I cried, "to resist solitude?"
"It is utterly hopeless. You should be forced into your work."
As my soul spoke thus, an old man with a white beard and a haggard face approached me. [16] I asked him what he wanted with me. To which he replied:
"I am a nameless one, one of the many who lived and died in solitude. The spirit of the times and the acknowledged truth required this from us. Look at me -- you must learn this. Things have been too good for you." [17]
"But," I replied, "is this another necessity in our so very different time?"
"It is as true today as it was yesterday. Never forget that you are a man and therefore you must bleed for the goal of humanity. Practice solitude assiduously without grumbling so that everything will in time become ready. You should become serious, and hence take your leave from science. There is too much childishness in it. Your way goes toward the depths. Science is too superficial, mere language, mere tools. But you must set to work." [18]
I did not know what work was mine, since everything was dark. And everything became heavy and doubtful and an endless sadness seized me and lasted for many days. Then, one night, I heard the voice of an old man. He spoke slowly, heavily, and his sentences appeared to be disconnected and terribly absurd, so that the fear of madness seized me again. [19] For he spoke the following words:
[20] "It is not yet the evening of days. The worst comes last.
The hand that strikes first, strikes best.
Nonsense streams from the deepest wells, amply like the Nile.
Morning is more beautiful than night.
Flowers smell until they fade.
Ripeness comes as late as possible in spring, or else it misses its purpose."
***
These sentences that the old man spoke to me on the night of the 25 May of the year 1914 appeared to me dreadfully meaningless. I felt my I squirm in pain. It moaned and wailed about the burden of the dead that rested on it. It seemed as if it had to carry a thousand dead.
This sadness did not leave until the 24th June 1914. [21] In the night my soul spoke to me: "The greatest comes to the smallest." After this nothing further was said. And then the war broke out. This opened my eyes about what I had experienced before, and it also gave me the courage to say all of that which I have written in the earlier part of this book.
***
{3} From there on the voices of the depths remained silent for a whole year. Again in summer, when I was out on the water alone, I saw an osprey plunge down not far from me; he seized a large fish and rose up into the skies again clutching it. [22] I heard the voice of my soul, and she spoke: "That is a sign that what is below is borne upward."
http://rapeutation.com/redbookjungsymbol.1o_small.gif
-- The Pictorial Language of Hieronymus Bosch, by Clement A. Wertheim Aymes
Soon after this on an autumn night I heard the voice of an old man (and this time I knew that it was ). [23] He said: [24] "I want to turn you around. I want to master you. I want to emboss you like a coin. I want to do business with you. One should buy and sell you. [25] You should pass from hand to hand. Self-willing is not for you. You are the will of the whole. Gold is no master out of its own will and yet it rules the whole, despised and greedily demanded, an inexorable ruler: it lies and waits. He who sees it longs for it. It does not follow one around, but lies silently, with a brightly gleaming countenance, self-sufficient, a king that needs no proof of its power. Everyone seeks after it, few find it, but even the smallest piece is highly esteemed. It neither gives nor squanders itself. Everyone takes it where he finds it, and anxiously ensures that he doesn't lose the smallest part of it. Everyone denies that he depends on it, and yet he secretly stretches out his hand longingly toward it. Must gold prove its necessity? It is proven through the longing of men. Ask it: who takes me? He who takes it, has it. Gold does not stir. It sleeps and shines. Its brilliance confuses the senses. Without a word, it promises everything that men deem desirable. It ruins those to be ruined and helps those on the rise to ascend. [26]
A blazing hoard is piled up, it awaits the taker. What tribulations do men not take upon themselves for the sake of gold? It waits and does not shorten their tribulations -- the greater the tribulations, the greater the trouble, the more esteemed it is. It grows from underground, from the molten lava. It slowly exudes, hidden in veins and rocks. Man exerts all cunning to dig it out, to raise it."
But I called out dismayed: "What ambiguous speech, Oh !"
[27] But continued: "Not only to teach, but also to disavow, or why then did I teach? If I do not teach, I do not have to disavow. But if I have taught, I must disavow thereafter. For if I teach, I must give others what they should have taken. What he acquires is good, but the gift that was not acquired is bad. To waste oneself means to want to suppress many. Deceitfulness surrounds the giver because his own enterprise is deceitful. He is forced to revoke his gift and to deny his virtue.
The burden of silence is not greater than the burden of my self that I would like to load onto you. Therefore I speak and I teach. May the listener defend himself against my ruse, by means of which I burden him.
The best truth is also such a skillful deception that I also entangle myself in it as long as I do not realize the worth of a successful ruse."
And I was startled again and cried: "Oh , men have deceived themselves about you, therefore you deceive them. But he who fathoms you, fathoms himself."
[28] But fell silent and retired into the shimmering cloud of uncertainty. He left me to my thoughts. And it occurred to me that high barriers would still need to be erected between men, less to protect them against mutual burdens than against mutual virtues. It seemed to me as if the so-called Christian morality of our time made for mutual enchantment. How can anyone bear the burden of the other, if it is still the highest that one can expect from a man, that he at least bears his own burden.
But sin probably resides in enchantment. If I accept self-forgetting virtue, I make myself the selfish tyrant of the other, and I am thus also forced to surrender myself again in order to make another my master, which always leaves me with a bad impression and is not to the other's advantage. Admittedly, this interplay underpins society, but the soul of the individual becomes damaged since man thus learns always to live from the other instead of from himself. It appears to me that if one is capable, one should not surrender oneself as that induces, indeed even forces, the other to do likewise. But what happens if everyone surrenders themselves? That would be folly.
Not that it would be a beautiful or a pleasant thing to live with one's self but it serves the redemption of the self. Incidentally, can one give oneself up? With this one becomes one's own slave. That is the opposite of accepting oneself. If one becomes one's own slave -- and this happens to everyone who surrenders himself -- one is lived by the self. One does not live one's self; it lives itself. [29]
The self-forgetting virtue is an unnatural alienation from one's own essence, which is thus deprived of development. It is a sin to deliberately alienate the other from his self by means of one's own virtuousness, for example, through saddling oneself with his burden. This sin rebounds on us. [30]
It is submission enough, amply enough, if we subjugate ourselves to our self. The work of redemption is always first to be done on ourselves, if one dare utter such a great word. This work cannot be done without love for ourselves. Must it be done at all? Certainly not, if one can endure a given condition and does not feel in need of redemption. The tiresome feeling of needing redemption can finally become too much for one. Then one seeks to rid oneself of it and thus enters into the work of redemption.
It appears to me that we benefit in particular from removing every sense of beauty from the thought of redemption, and even need to do so, or else we will deceive ourselves again because we like the word and because a beautiful shimmer spreads out over the thing through the great word. But one can at least doubt whether the work of redemption is in itself a beautiful thing. The Romans did not find the hanged Jew exactly tasteful, and the gloomy excessive enthusiasm for catacombs around which cheap, barbaric symbols gathered probably lacked a pleasant shimmer in their eyes, given that their perverse curiosity for everything barbaric and subterranean had already been aroused.
I think it would be most correct and most decent to say that one blunders into the work of redemption unintentionally, so to speak, if one wants to avoid what appears to be the unbearable evil of an insurmountable feeling of needing redemption. This step into the work of redemption is neither beautiful nor pleasant nor does it divulge an inviting appearance. And the thing itself is so difficult and full of torment that one should count oneself as one of the sick and not as one of the overhealthy who seek to impart their abundance to others.
Consequently we should also not use the other for our own supposed redemption. The other is no stepping stone for our feet. It is far better that we remain with ourselves. The need for redemption rather expresses itself through an increased need for love with which we think we can make the other happy. But meanwhile we are brimming with longing and desire to alter our own condition. And we love others to this end. If we had already achieved our purpose, the other would leave us cold. But it is true that we also need the other for our own redemption. Perhaps he will lend us his help voluntarily, since we are in a state of sickness and helplessness. Our love for him is, and should not be, selfless. That would be a lie. For its goal is our own redemption. Selfless love is true only as long as the demand of the self can be pushed to one side. But someday comes the turn of the self. Who would want to lend himself to such a self for love? Certainly only one who does not yet know what excess of bitterness, injustice, and poison the self of a man harbors who has forgotten his self and made a virtue of it.
In terms of the self, selfless love is a veritable sin.
[31] We must presumably often go to ourselves to re-establish the connection with the self, since it is torn apart all too often, not only by our vices but also by our virtues. For vices as well as virtues always want to live outside. But through constant outer life we forget the self and through this we also become secretly selfish in our best endeavors. [32] What we neglect in ourselves blends itself secretly into our actions toward others.
Through uniting with the self we reach the God. [33]
I must say this, not with reference to the opinions of the ancients or this or that authority, but because I have experienced it. It has happened thus in me. And it certainly happened in a way that I neither expected nor wished for. The experience of the God in this form was unexpected and unwanted. I wish I could say it was a deception and only too willingly would I disown this experience. But I cannot deny that it has seized me beyond all measure and steadily goes on working in me. So if it is a deception, then deception is my God. Moreover, the God is in the deception. And if this were already the greatest bitterness that could happen to me, I would have to confess to this experience and recognize the God in it. No insight or objection is so strong that it could surpass the strength of this experience. And even if the God had revealed himself in a meaningless abomination, I could only avow that I have experienced the God in it. I even know that it is not too difficult to cite a theory that would sufficiently explain my experience and join it to the already known. I could furnish this theory myself and be satisfied in intellectual terms, and yet this theory would be unable to remove even the smallest part of the knowledge that I have experienced the God. I recognize the God by the unshakeableness of the experience. I cannot help but recognize him by the experience. I do not want to believe it, I do not need to believe it, nor could I believe it. How can one believe such? My mind would need to be totally confused to believe such things. Given their nature, they are most improbable. Not only improbable but also impossible for our understanding. Only a sick brain could produce such deceptions. I am like those sick persons who have been overcome by delusion and sensory deception. But I must say that the God makes us sick. I experience the God in sickness. A living God afflicts our reason like a sickness. He fills the soul with intoxication. He fills us with reeling chaos. How many will the God break?
The God appears to us in a certain state of the soul. Therefore we reach the God through the self. [34] [35] Not the self is God, although we reach the God through the self. The God is behind the self, above the self, the self itself, when he appears. But he appears as our sickness, from which we must heal ourselves. [36] We must heal ourselves from the God, since he is also our heaviest wound.
For in the first instance the God's power resides entirely in the self, since the self is completely in the God, because we were not with the self. We must draw the self to our side. Therefore we must wrestle with the God for the self. Since the God is an unfathomable powerful movement that sweeps away the self into the boundless, into dissolution.
Hence when the God appears to us we are at first powerless, captivated, divided, sick, poisoned with the strongest poison, but drunk with the highest health.
Yet we cannot remain in this state, since all the powers of our body are consumed like fat in the flames. Hence we must strive to free the self from the God, so that we can live. [37]
[38] It is certainly possible and even quite easy for our reason to deny the God and to speak only of sickness. Thus we accept the sick part and can also heal it. But it will be a healing with loss. We lose a part of life. We go on living, but as ones lamed by the God. Where the fire blazed dead ashes lie.
I believe that we have the choice: I preferred the living wonders of the God. I daily weigh up my whole life and I continue to regard the fiery brilliance of the God as a higher and fuller life than the ashes of rationality. The ashes are suicide to me. I could perhaps put out the fire but I cannot deny to myself the experience of the God. Nor can I cut myself off from this experience. I also do not want to, since I want to live. My life wants itself whole.
Therefore I must serve my self. I must win it in this way. But I must win it so that my life will become whole. For it seems to me to be sinful to deform life where there is yet the possibility to live it fully. The service of the self is therefore divine service and the service of mankind. If I carry myself, I relieve mankind of myself and heal my self from the God.
I must free my self from the God, [39] since the God I experienced is more than love; he is also hate, he is more than beauty, he is also the abomination, he is more than wisdom, he is also meaninglessness, he is more than power, he is also powerlessness, he is more than omnipresence, he is also my creature.
***
In the following night, I heard the voice of again and he said: [40]
"Draw nearer, enter into the grave of the God. The place of your work should be in the vault. The God should not live in you, but you should live in the God."
[41] These words disturbed me since I had thought before precisely to free myself from the God. But advised me to enter even deeper into the God.
Since the God has ascended to the upper realms, also has become different. He first appeared to me as a magician who lived in a distant land, but then I felt his nearness and, since the God has ascended, I knew that had intoxicated me and given me a language that was foreign to me and of a different sensitivity. All of this faded when the God arose and only kept that language. But I felt that he went on other ways than I did. Probably the most part of what I have written in the earlier part of this book was given to me by . [42]Consequently I was as if intoxicated. But now I noticed that assumed a form distinct from me.
***
{4} [43] Several weeks later, three shades approached me. I noticed from their chilly breath that they were dead. The first figure was that of a woman. She drew near and made a soft whirring sound, the whirring of the wings of the sun beetle. Then I recognized her. When she was still alive, she recovered the mysteries of the Egyptians for me, the red sun disk and the song of the golden wings. She remained shadowy and I could hardly understand her words. She said:
"It was night when I died -- you still live in the day -- there are still days, years ahead of you -- what will you begin -- let me have the word -- oh, that you cannot hear! How difficult -- give me the word!"
I answered dismayed: "I do not know the word that you seek."
But she cried: "The symbol, the mediator, we need the symbol, we hunger for it, make light for us."
"Wherefrom? How can I? I do not know the symbol that you demand."
But she insisted: "You can do it, reach for it."
And precisely at this moment the sign was placed in my hand and I looked at it filled with boundless astonishment. Then she spoke loudly and joyfully to me: [44]
"That is it, that is HAP, the symbol that we desired, that we needed. It is terribly simple, initially stupid, naturally godlike, the God's other pole. This is precisely the pole we needed."
"Why do you need HAP?" [45] I replied.
"He is in the light, the other God is in the night."
"Oh," I answered, "what's that, beloved? The God of the spirit is in the night? Is that the son? The son of the frogs? Woe betide us, if he is the God of our day!"
But the dead one spoke full of triumph:
"He is the flesh spirit, the blood spirit, he is the extract of all bodily juices, the spirit of the sperm and the entrails, of the genitals, of the head, of the feet, of the hands, of the joints, of the bones, of the eyes and ears, of the nerves and the brain; he is the spirit of the sputum and of excretion."
"Are you of the devil?" I exclaimed full of horror, "where does my flashing godly light remain?"
But she said: "Your body remains with you, my beloved, your living body. The enlightening thought comes from the body."
"What thought are you talking about? I recognize no such thought," I said.
"It crawls around like a worm, like a serpent, soon there, soon here, a blind newt of Hell."
"Then I must be buried alive. Oh horror! Oh rottenness! Must I attach myself completely, like a leech?"
"Yes, drink blood," she said, "suck it up, get your fill from the carcass, there is juice inside, certainly disgusting, but nourishing. You should not understand, but suck!"
"Damned horror! No, three times no," I cried in outrage.
But she said: "It should not irritate you, we need this meal, the life juices of men, since we want to share in your life. Thus we can draw closer to you. We want to give you tidings of what you need to know."
"That is horribly absurd! What are you talking about?"
[46] But she looked at me as she had done on the day I had last seen her among the living, and on which she showed me, unaware of its meaning, something of the mystery of what the Egyptians had left behind. And she said to me:
"Do it for me, for us. Do you recall my legacy, the red sun disk, the golden wings and the wreath of life and duration? Immortality, of this there are things to know."
"The way that leads to this knowledge is Hell."
[47] From this I sank into gloomy brooding since I suspected the heaviness and incomprehension and the immeasurable solitude of this way. And after a long struggle with all the weakness and cowardice in me, I decided to take upon myself this solitude of the holy error and the eternally valid truth. [48]
And in the third night I called to my dead beloved and asked her:
"Teach me the knowledge of the worms and the crawling creatures, open to me the darkness of the spirits!"
She whispered: "Give blood, so that I may drink and gain speech. Were you lying when you said that you would leave the power to the son?"
"No, I was not lying. But I said something that I did not understand."
"You are fortunate," she said, "if you can say what you do not understand. So listen: HAP [49] is not the foundation but the summit of the church that still lies sunken. We need this church since we can live in it with you and take part in your life. You have excluded us to your own detriment."
"Tell me, is HAP for you the sign of the church in which you hope for community with the living? Speak, why do you hesitate?"
She moaned and whispered with a weak voice: "Give blood, I need blood." [50]
"So take blood from my heart," I spoke.
"I thank you," she said, "that is fullness of life. The air of the shadow world is thin since we hover on the ocean of the air like birds above the sea. Many went beyond limits, fluttering on indeterminate paths of outer space, bumping at hazard into alien worlds. But we, we who are still near and incomplete, would like to immerse ourselves in the sea of the air and return to earth, to the living. Do you not have an animal form into which I can enter?"
"What," I exclaimed horrified, "you would like to be my dog?"
"If possible, yes," she replied, "I would even like to be your dog. To me you are of unspeakable worth, all my hope, that still clings to earth. I would still like to see completed what I left too soon. Give me blood, much blood!"
"So drink," I said despairingly; "drink, so that what should be will be."
She whispered with a hesitant voice: "Brimo [51] -- I guess that's what you call her -- the old one -- which is how it begins -- the one who bore the son -- the powerful HAP, who grew out of her shame and strove after the wife of Heaven, who arches over earth, for Brimo, above and below, envelops the son. [52] She bears and raises him. Born from below, he fertilizes the Above, since the wife is his mother, and the mother is his wife."
"Accursed teaching! Is this still not enough of the horrifying Mysterium?" I cried full of outrage and abhorrence.
"If Heaven becomes pregnant and can no longer hold its fruit, it gives birth to a man who carries the burden of sin -- that is the tree of life and of unending duration. Give me your blood! Listen! This riddle is terrible: when Brimo, the heavenly, was pregnant, she gave birth to the dragon, first the afterbirth and then the son, HAP, and the one who carried HAP. HAP is the rebellion of the Below, but the bird comes from the Above and places itself on the head of HAP. That is peace. You are a vessel. Speak, Heaven, pour out your rain. You are a shell. Empty shells do not spill, they catch. May it stream in from all the winds. Let me tell you that another evening is approaching. A day; two days, many days have come to an end. The light of day goes down and illumines the shadow, itself a shadow of the sun. Life becomes a shadow, and the shadow enlivens itself, the shadow that is greater than you. Do you think that your shadow is your son? He is small at midday, and fills the sky at midnight." [53]
But I was exhausted and desperate and could hear no more, and so I said to the dead one:
[54] "So you introduce the terrible son who lived beneath me, under the trees on the water? Is he the spirit that the heavens pour out, or is he the soulless worm that the earth bore? Oh Heaven -- Oh most sinister womb! Do you want to suck the life out of me for the sake of the shadow? Should humanity thus completely go to waste for divinity? [55] Should I live with shadows, instead of with the living? Should all the longing for the living belong to you, the dead? Did you not have your time to live? Did you not use it? Should a living person give his life for your sake, you who did not live the eternal? Speak, you mute shadows, who stand at my door and demand my blood!"
The shadow of the dead one raised its voice and said: "You see -- or do you still not see, what the living do with your life. They fritter it away. But with me you live yourself, since I belong to you. I belong to your invisible following and community. Do you believe that the living see you? They see only your shadow, not you -- you servant, you bearer, you vessel --"
"How you hold forth! Am I at your mercy? Should I no longer see the light of day? Should I become a shadow with a living body? You are formless and beyond grasp, and you emanate the coldness of the grave, a breath of emptiness. To let myself be buried alive -- what are you thinking of? Too soon, it seems to me, I must die first. Do you have the honey that pleases my heart and the fire that warms my hands? What are you, you mournful shadows? You specters of children! What do you want with my blood? Truly, you are even worse than men. Men give little, yet what do you give? Do you make the living? The warm beauty? Or joy perhaps? Or should all this go to your gloomy Hell? What do you offer in return? Mysteries? Will the living live from these? I regard your mysteries as tricks if the living cannot live from them."
But she interrupted me and cried: "Impetuous one, stop, you take my breath away. We are shadows; become a shadow and you will grasp what we give."
"I do not want to die to descend into your darkness."
"But," she said, "you need not die. You must only let yourself be buried."
"In the hope of resurrection? No joking now!"
But she spoke calmly: "You suspect what will happen. Triple walls before you and invisibility -- to Hell with your longing and feeling! At least you do not love us, so we will cost you less dearly than the men who roll in your love and patience and have you make a fool of yourself."
"My dead one, I think you are speaking my language."
She replied to me scornfully: "Men love -- and you! What an error! All this means is that you want to run away from yourself. What do you do to men? You tempt and coax them into megalomania, to which you fall victim."
"But it grieves me, pains me, howls at me; I feel a great longing, everything soft complains, and my heart yearns."
But she was unsparing. "Your heart belongs to us," she said. "What do you want with men? Self-defense against men -- so that you walk on your own two feet, not on human crutches. Men need the undemanding, but they are always wanting love to be able to run away from themselves. This ought to stop. Why do fools go out and preach the gospel to the negroes, and then ridicule it in their own country? Why do these hypocritical preachers speak of love, divine and human love, and use the same gospel to justify the right to wage war and commit murderous injustice? Above all, what do they teach others when they themselves stand up to their necks in the black mud of deception and self-deceit? Have they cleaned their own house, have they recognized and driven out their own devil? Because they do none of this, they preach love to be able to run away from themselves, and to do to others what they should do to themselves. But this greatly prized love, given to one's own self, burns like fire. These hypocrites and liars have noticed this -- as you have -- and prefer to love others. Is that love? It is false hypocrisy. [56] It always begins in yourself and in all things and above all with love. Do you believe that one who wounds himself unsparingly does the other a good deed with his love? No, of course you don't believe it. You even know that he only teaches the other how one must wound oneself, so that he can compel others to express sympathy. Therefore you should be a shadow since this is what men need. How can they get away from the hypocrisy and foolishness of your love if you yourself cannot? For everything begins with yourself. But your horse still cannot refrain from whinnying. Even worse, your virtue is a wagging dog, a growling dog, a licking dog, a barking dog -- and you call that human love! But love is: to bear and endure oneself. It begins with this. It is truly about you; you are not yet tempered; other fires must yet come over you until you have accepted your solitude and learned to love.
What do you ask about love? What is love? To live, above all, that is more than love. Is war love? You are bound to see what human love is still good enough for -- a means like other means. Therefore, above all, solitude, until every softness toward yourself has been burnt out of you. You should learn to freeze." [57]
"I see only graves before me," I answered, "what cursed will is above me?"
"The will of the God, that is stronger than you, you slave, you vessel. You have fallen into the hands of the greater. He knows no pity. Your Christian shrouds have fallen, the veils that blinded your eyes. The God has become strong again. The yoke of men is lighter than the yoke of the God; therefore everyone seeks to yoke the other out of mercy. But he who does not fall into the hands of men falls into those of the God. May he be well and may woe betide him! There is no escape."
"Is that freedom?" I cried.
"The highest freedom. Only the God above you, through yourself. Comfort yourself with this and that as well as you can. The God bolts doors that you cannot open. Let your feelings whimper like puppies. The ears on high are deaf."
"But," I answered, "is there no outrage for the sake of the human?"
"Outrage? I laugh at your outrage. The God knows only power and creation. He commands and you act. Your anxieties are laughable. There is only one road, the military road of the Godhead."
The dead one spoke these unsparing words to me. [58] As I did not want to obey anyone, I had to obey this voice. And she spoke unsparing words about the power of the God. I had to accept these words. [59] We have to greet a new light, a blood-red sun, a painful wonder. No one forces me to; only the foreign will in me commands and I cannot escape since I find no grounds to do so.