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Third EssayWhat Do Ascetic Ideals Mean?17
But is he really a doctor, this ascetic priest? We already understand the extent to which he can hardly be permitted to call himself a doctor, no matter how much he likes feeling that he is a "saviour" and allowing himself to be honoured as a "saviour." But he fights only against suffering itself, the unhappiness of the suffering person, not against its cause, not against the essential sickness. This must constitute our most fundamental objection to priestly medication. But if for once we look at things from the perspective which only the priest adopts and understands, then it will not be easy for us to limit our amazement at all the things he has noticed, looked for, and found by seeing things in that manner. The alleviation of suffering, every kind of "consolation" - that manifests itself as his particular genius. He has understood his task as consoler with so much innovation and has selected the means for that so spontaneously and so fearlessly! We might call Christianity, in particular, a huge treasure house of clever forms of consolation - there are so many pleasant, soothing, and narcotizing things piled up in it, and for this purpose it takes so many dangerous and audacious chances. It shows such sophistication, so much Southern European refinement, especially when it guesses what kind of emotional stimulant can overcome, at least for a while, the deep depression, leaden exhaustion, and black sorrow of the physiologically impaired.
For, generally speaking, with all great religions, the main issue concerns the fight against a certain endemic exhaustion and heaviness. We can from the outset assume as probable that from time to time, in particular places on the earth, a feeling of physiological inhibition must master wide masses of people, but, because of a lack of knowledge about physiology, it does not enter people`s consciousness as something physiological, so they look for and attempt to find its "cause" and remedy only in psychology and morality (this, in fact, is my most general formula for whatever is commonly called a "religion"). Such a feeling of inhibition can have a varied ancestry; for instance, it can be the result of cross-breeding between very different races (or between classes - for classes also always express differences in origin and race: nineteenth-century European "Weltschmerz" [pain at the state of the world] and "pessimism" are essentially the consequence of an irrational, sudden mixing of the classes), or it can be caused by incorrect emigration - a race caught in a climate for which its powers of adaptation are not sufficient (the case of the Indians in India); or by the influence of the age and tiredness of the race (Parisian pessimism from 1850 on); or by an incorrect diet (the alcoholism of the Middle Ages, the inanity of vegetarians, who, of course, have on their side the authority of Squire Christopher in Shakespeare); or by degeneration in the blood, malaria, syphilis and things like that (German depression after the Thirty Years` War, which spread bad diseases in an epidemic through half of Germany, and thus prepared the ground for German servility, German timidity).
In such a case, a war in the grand style against the feeling of unhappiness will always be attempted. Let`s briefly go over its most important practices and forms. (Here I leave quite out of account, as seems reasonable, the typical war of the philosophers against this feeling of unhappiness, which always has a habit of appearing at the same time - that war is interesting enough, but too absurd, with too little practical significance, full of cobwebs and loafing around - as, for example, when pain is to be shown an error, on the naïve assumption that the pain must disappear as soon as it is recognized as a error - but, lo and behold, something prevents it from disappearing. . .)
First, people fight that domineering unhappiness with means which, in general, set our feeling for life at their lowest point. Where possible, there is generally no more willing, no more desire; they stay away from everything which creates an emotional affect, which makes "blood" (no salt in the diet, the hygiene of the fakir); they don`t love; they don`t hate – equanimity - they don`t take revenge, they don`t get wealthy, they don`t work; they beg; where possible, no women, or as few women as possible; with respect to spiritual matters, Pascal`s principle "Il faut s`abêtir" [it`s necessary to turn oneself into an animal]. The result, expressed in moral-psychological terms, is "selflessness," "sanctification"; expressed in physiological terms: hypnotizing - the attempt to attain for human beings something approaching what winter hibernation is for some kinds of animals and what summer sleep is for many plants in hot climates, the minimum consumption and processing of material stuff which can still sustain life but which does not actually enter consciousness. For this purpose an astonishing amount of human energy has been expended. Has it all gone for nothing? . . .
We should not entertain the slightest doubts that, with a rigorous training like this, such sportsmen of "holiness," which almost all populations have in abundance at all times, in fact found a real release from what they were fighting against. With the help of their systemic methods for hypnosis, in countless cases they were released from that deep physiological depression. That`s the reason their methodology belongs with the most universal ethnological facts. For the same reason we have no authority for considering such an intentional starving of one`s desires and of one`s physical well being, in itself, symptoms of insanity (the way a clumsy kind of roast-beef-eating "free spirit" and Squire Christopher like to do). It`s much more the case that it opens or can open the way to all sorts of spiritual disruptions, to "inner light," for example, as with Hesychasts on Mount Athos, to hallucinating sounds and shapes, to sensual outpourings and ecstasies of sensuality (the history of St. Theresa). It`s obvious that the interpretation which has been given for conditions of this sort by those afflicted with them has always been as effusively false as possible.
People should not fail to catch the tone of totally convincing gratitude ringing out even in the will to such a form of interpretation. They always value the highest state, redemption itself, that finally attained collective hypnosis and quietness, as an inherent mystery, which cannot be adequately expressed even by the highest symbols, as a rest and return home to the basis of things, as an emancipation from all delusions, as "knowledge," as "truth," as "being," as the removal of all goals, all wishes, all acts, and thus as a place beyond good and evil. "Good and evil," says the Buddhist, "are both fetters: the perfect one became master over both."; "what`s done and what`s not done," says the man who believes in the Vedanta, "give him no pain; as a wise man he shakes good and evil off himself; his kingdom suffers no more from any deed; good and evil - he has transcended both" - an entirely Indian conception, whether Brahman or Buddhist.
(Neither in the Indian nor in the Christian way of thinking is this "redemption" considered attainable through virtue, through moral improvement—no matter how high a value they place on virtue as a form of hypnotism. People should note this point - it corresponds, incidentally, to the plain facts. That on this point they kept to the truth might perhaps be considered the best piece of realism in the three largest religions, which, apart from this, are so fundamentally concerned with moralizing. "The man who knows has no duties" . . . "Redemption does not come about through an increase in virtue, for it consists of unity with Brahma, who is incapable of any increase in perfection; even less does it come through a lessening of one`s faults, for the Brahma, unity with whom creates redemption, is eternally pure" - these passages from the commentary of Shankara are cited by the first real scholar of Indian philosophy in Europe, my friend Paul Deussen).
So we want to honour "redemption" in the great religions; however, it will be a little difficult for us to remain serious about the way these people, who`ve grown too weary of life even to dream, value deep sleep - that is, deep sleep as an access to the Brahma, as an achieved unio mystica [mysterious union] with God. On this subject, the oldest and most venerable "Scripture" states: "When he is soundly and completely asleep and is in a state of perfect calm, so that he is not seeing any more dream images, at that moment, dear ones, united with his Being, he has gone into himself. Now that he`s been embraced by a form of his knowing self, he has no consciousness any more of what is outer or inner. Over this bridge come neither night nor day, nor old age, nor death, nor suffering, nor good works, nor evil works." Similarly the believers in the most profound of the three great religions say, "In deep sleep the soul lifts itself up out of the body, goes into the highest light, and moves out in its own form: there it is the highest spirit itself which wanders around, while it jokes and plays and enjoys itself, whether with women or with carriages or with friends; there it no longer thinks back to its bodily appendages, to which the prana (the breath of life) is harnessed like a draught animal to a cart."
Nevertheless, we need to keep in mind here, as in the case of "redemption," that no matter how great the splendour of oriental exaggeration, what this states is basically the same evaluation which was made by that clear, cool, Greek-cool, but suffering Epicurus: the hypnotic feeling of nothingness, the silence of the deepest sleep, in short, the loss of suffering - something which suffering and fundamentally disgruntled people have to consider their highest good, their value of values, and which they must appraise as positive and experience as the positive in itself. (With the same logic of feeling, in all pessimistic religions nothingness is called God).
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