A key concept in Nietzsche is the idea that the body is a thing-in-itself. Zarathustra’s meeting with an acrobat from a circus illustrates this. The acrobat loses his balance and falls to his death. Zarathustra gently consoles the dying man and tells him that he does not need to fear heaven or hell. His soul will be dead even before his body. (Italics mine)Human life is meaningless. Even a buffalo may prove fatal to it. Nietzsche introduces the idea of materialistic monism. The ‘creating’ body creates for itself a ‘spirit’ as a tool for its will.[1] People do not have bodies. They are bodies. The world is a physical entity and nothing more:
‘Body am I entirely, and nothing more; and soul is only the name of something in the body...Behind thy thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a mighty lord, an unknown sage - it is called Self; it dwelleth in thy body, it is thy body.’[2]
Swami Vivekananda dismisses this ‘all I am is the body’ concept:
‘There is a great discussion going on as to whether the aggregate of materials we call the body is the cause of manifestation of the force we call the soul, thought, etc., or whether it is the thought that manifests this body. ...There are schools of modern thought which hold that what we call thought is simply the outcome of the adjustment of the parts of the machine which we call body....What makes the body...What force is there which takes up material from the mass of matter around and forms my body one way, another body another way ... To say that the force called the soul is the outcome of the combinations of the molecules of the body is putting the cart before the horse. How did the combinations come; where was the force to make them? ...It is more logical to say that the force which takes up the matter and forms the body is the same which manifests through that body. To say ...that the thought forces manifested by the body are the outcome of the arrangement of molecules and have no independent existence has no meaning: neither can force evolve out of matter. Rather it is possible to demonstrate that what we call matter does not exist at all. It is only a certain state of force. Solidity, hardness, or any other state of matter can be proved to be the result of motion... A thread of a spider’s web, if it could be moved at almost infinite velocity, would be as strong as an iron chain and would cut through an oak tree. Looking at it in this way, it would be easier to prove that what we call matter does not exist. But the other way cannot be proved.’ [3]
There is one, undifferentiated consciousness. When it is condensed, we get a solid state. This consciousness becomes finer and finer as in a thread of the spider’s web until it becomes pure spirit. Normally we think of every human being as having a body-mind-soul-spirit complex. The body lives and dies. The mind disintegrates. The atma/soul-spirit is eternal. What is the difference between body and spirit? Here is Swami Vivekananda’s explanation:
‘This pure and perfect being, the soul is one wheel, and this external hallucination of body and mind is the other wheel, joined together by the pole of work, of Karma. Knowledge is the axe which will sever the bond between the two, and the wheel of the soul will stop ...But upon the other wheel, that of the body and mind, will be the momentum of past acts; so it will live for some time, until that momentum of past work is exhausted...and then the body and mind fall, and the soul becomes free.(4)
1. Nietzsche, Friedrich, (2005)Thus Spake Zarathushtra,(Mumbai, Wilco Press), p.47
2. ibid, p. 46
3. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda,9 vols., (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1-8, 1989: 9, 1997), 2.75-76
4. ibid,2.81
4. ibid,2.81
No comments:
Post a Comment