Osho - In love with life: reflections on Friedrich Nietzsches Thus spake Zarathustra

It is the destiny of the genius to be misunderstood. If a genius is not misunderstood, he is not a genius at all. If the common masses can understand, that means the person is speaking at the same level where ordinary intelligence is.

Friedrich Nietzsche is misunderstood, and out of this misunderstanding there has been tremendous disaster. But perhaps it was unavoidable. To understand a man like Nietzsche you have to have at least the same standard of consciousness, if not higher.

Adolf Hitler is so retarded that it is impossible to think that he can understand the meaning of Nietzsche; but he became the prophet of Nietzsches philosophy. And according to his retarded mind he interpreted not only interpreted, but acted according to those interpretations and the Second World War was the result. When Nietzsche is talking about will to power, it has nothing to do with the will to dominate. But that is the meaning the Nazis gave to it.

The will to power is diametrically opposite to the will to dominate. The will to dominate comes out of an inferiority complex. One wants to dominate others, just to prove to himself that he is not inferior he is superior. But he needs to prove it. Without any proof he knows he is inferior; he has to cover it up by many, many proofs.

The really superior man needs no proof, he simply is superior. Does a rose flower argue about its beauty? Does the full moon bother about proving its gloriousness? The superior man simply knows it, there is no need for any proof; hence he has no will to dominate. He certainly has a will to power, but then you have to make a very fine distinction. His will to power means that he wants to grow to his fullest expression. It has nothing to do with anybody else, its whole concern is the individual himself. He wants to blossom, to bring all the flowers that are hidden in his potential, to rise as high as possible in the sky. It is not even comparative, it is not trying to rise higher than others it is simply trying to rise to its fullest potential. Will to power is absolutely individual. It wants to dance to the highest in the sky, it wants to have a dialogue with the stars, but it is not concerned with proving anybody inferior. It is not competitive, it is not comparative.

Adolf Hitler and his followers, the Nazis, have done so much harm to the world because they prevented the world from understanding Friedrich Nietzsche and his true meaning. And it was not only one thing; about every other concept too, they have the same kind of misunderstanding.

It is such a sad fate, one which has never befallen any great mystic or any great poet before Nietzsche. The crucifixion of Jesus or poisoning of Socrates are not as bad a fate as that which has befallen Friedrich Nietzsche to be misunderstood on such a grand scale that Adolf Hitler managed to kill more than eight million people in the name of Friedrich Nietzsche and his philosophy. It will take a little time. When Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and the second world war are forgotten, Nietzsche will come back to his true light. He is coming back.

But Friedrich Nietzsche has to be interpreted again, so that all the nonsense that has been put, by the Nazis, over his beautiful philosophy can be thrown away.

People understand according to their own level of consciousness. It was just a coincidence that Nietzsche fell into the hands of the Nazis. They needed a philosophy for war, and Nietzsche appreciates the beauty of the warrior. They wanted some idea for which to fight, and Nietzsche gave them a good excuse for the superman. Of course, they immediately got hold of the idea of superman. The Nordic German Aryans were going to be Nietzsches new race of man, the superman. They wanted to dominate the world, and Nietzsche was very helpful, because he was saying that mans deepest longing is will to power. They changed it into will to dominate.

Now they had the whole philosophy: the Nordic German Aryans are the superior race because they are going to give birth to the superman. They have the will to power and they will dominate the whole world. That is their destiny to dominate the inferior human beings. Obviously, the arithmetic is simple: the superior should dominate the inferior.

These beautiful conceptsNietzsche could not ever have imagined they would become so dangerous and such a nightmare to the whole of humanity. But you cannot avoid being misunderstood, you cannot do anything about it. Once you have said something, then it all depends on the other person, what he is going to make of it.

But Nietzsche is so immensely important that he has to be cleaned of all the garbage that the Nazis have put on his ideas.

~

Even if Nietzsche had not written anything else but Thus Spake Zarathustra, he would have served humanity immensely, profoundly more cannot be expected from any man because Zarathustra had been almost forgotten. It was Nietzsche who brought him back, who again gave him birth, a resurrection. Thus Spake Zarathustra is going to be the Bible of the future.

Osho

from The Golden Future and Books I Have Loved