The authentic religion has only one concern, and that is the exploration of your inner world, the opening of the inward eye. In the East we have called it the third eye; that is only a symbol, a metaphor. But one can see inwards.

In silence, in utter silence, when the mind stops its constant chattering, suddenly you become aware of a great space which is far more beautiful than you could have ever dreamt of. You become aware of yourself, and your whole life is transformed.

Just seeing yourself is the beginning of a superman in you. Then you are no longer the old, rotten, prejudiced, blind follower of somebody, who himself may be in the same boat in which you are.

The man who can see himself becomes free from all bondage – religious, ideological, theological, philosophical – because now he has his own vision. He need not depend on anybody else. He does not need any saviors, he is already saved.

Listening to Zarathustra’s statements, remember: they are not based on rational analysis of questions, they are not answers to any particular questions. They are his insights, his experiences, which he is trying, with great effort and with great success too, to convey to people for whom the world of their own interiority is absolutely unknown.

This is one of the greatest problems – talking about light to people who don’t have eyes. But everybody has the potential to be cured, to be healed. All that he needs is to put aside all prejudices and all beliefs and be as innocent, unknowledgeable, unprejudiced as a child. Innocence can understand the language of a seer, because the seer is also a child – on a higher level, but there is something similar in both.

The child does not know anything, and the seer has known everything and dropped it, because it was all rubbish. Both have come very close, and it is possible to have some kind of communion. That is what is needed when you are trying to understand a man like Zarathustra. It is not a question of your intellectual acumen, it is a question of your innocent heart.

He says:

It is not the height, it is the abyss that is terrible!
The abyss where the glance plunges downward and the hand grasps upward. There the heart grows giddy through its twofold will.

He is talking about every human being who is trying to go beyond himself, who is trying to transcend himself, who is trying to become something superior to what he is. He faces the problem – his hands are moving upwards, but below him there is a terrible abyss. The danger is, if you lose your grip, rather then becoming super-human you may fall into a subhuman existence.