Here Zarathustra fell silent a while…. Masters are not orators. They are not practicing a particular kind of art of speaking, they are trying to transfer their experience to their disciples. Hence they use words and they also use wordless silences. More often their truth has to be found in the gaps, when they fall silent.

When you have heard a profound truth and the master becomes silent, suddenly words disappear and the presence of the master fills your heart. Something transpires in those silent moments, which nobody has ever been able to say, and nobody will ever be able to say. That transfer is possible only when the master is silent and the disciples are silent. Where two silences meet you experience the highest value; you experience love.

Here Zarathustra fell silent a while and regarded his disciples lovingly. In that silence there was nothing but a love radiating from the master and penetrating the hearts of the disciples. Nothing was said but everything was understood. And he was happy, and looked at the disciples lovingly, because the silence has not been empty; the disciples have been able to receive it, to become pregnant with it.

Then he went on speaking thus, and his voice was different.

Just a moment before he fell silent he was speaking about the highest value and its qualities. It was more a philosophical statement; more verbal, more in the words of the words – but now his voice is different. He is not speaking to an anonymous crowd, he is speaking to those who love him; he is speaking to those who can fall silent with him, who can be in a state of meditation with him.

Now his words and his voice have a difference – they are not dry, they have become more juicy; they are not philosophical, they have become more poetic. He does not have to give any argument to these disciples; he has given them the experience itself. Now he can talk to them without argumentation, without logic. Now he has the freedom even to be irrational – because all that is great in life is irrational. And he is immensely pleased.

Just as a disciple needs a master, perhaps the master needs the disciple even more. The disciple is groping in darkness, he is empty, he is not burdened. The master is overflowing; he wants to share, and he is in a hurry to find those who are capable of being receptive, open – who are capable of communion.

Stay loyal to the earth.

That is one of the fundamentals of Zarathustra, he is against all religions. They say, “Remain loyal to heaven; remain loyal to God, who is far away beyond the clouds.” Zarathustra’s insistence is:

Stay loyal to the earth, my brothers, with the power of your virtue!