If a man has been alive, full of juice, full of youth, his last breath is only the death of the body. His consciousness, which is so alive, goes on dancing into another form on a higher level. He knows no death; he knows death as a freedom from a prison. He was confined in a small body which was going to be sick, which was going to be old, and now he is free from it and he is moving into a fresh and new body. And if this aliveness comes to its ultimate expression, he is not going to be confined in any body anymore, he will be part of the universal life – formless, infinite, and eternal. This is our real home: eternal immortality, universal existence.

But millions of people are concerned only with trivia. They are in the majority, in a big majority; and that majority helps them to remain dead, because they find everybody else is just like them. That is the reason why they don’t like strangers, they don’t like outsiders like Zarathustra. They are not the same as the crowd. They create suspicion. They create doubt about their own life, about their own style, about what they are doing. But the majority is doing the same thing: it is a great confirmation that whatever you are doing must be right – because the whole world is doing it.

But all the evolution that has happened – it is not much, but whatever evolution has happened in consciousness – the credit for it goes to a few strangers like Zarathustra, a few outsiders who risked their life to be hated, to be condemned, to be misunderstood, to be laughed at. They are the only people who are the very salt of the earth – without them humanity would have remained part of the animal kingdom. The little difference that has arisen between you and the animals is the contribution of these outsiders, whom you have rewarded greatly: by crucifying them, by stoning them to death, by poisoning them….

I need companions, living ones, not dead companions and corpses which I carry with me wherever I wish.

What are the believers? They may be believing in one religion or in another – they are not companions. In fact a Christian will feel that it is sacrilegious to feel himself a friend of Jesus. Jesus is God; they are poor human beings. A Hindu will not be able to conceive of himself as a companion of Krishna or Rama. He can worship them, but he cannot dance with them.

Why is Zarathustra interested in companions? Because no man of his caliber, of his consciousness, would like to reduce you to blind followers, to blind worshipers – it is simply disgusting. He wants friends, fellow travelers in the search of truth.

But I need living companions who follow me…

…not because following is going to give them truth. They follow me…

…because they want to follow themselves.

This is a very significant statement: They are not following me blindly, they are following me with clear insight that this is the way to follow themselves.