The superman is just an open book. There is nothing to hide, and there is nothing to possess. In those wondering eyes of a childlike sage, all is possessed without possessing it. The superman is not poor – not poor enough to possess, not poor enough to brag about his superiority or his holiness. He knows nothing of bragging. He is so full of joy – a simple joy of the birds, of the flowers, of the rivers, a joy which costs nothing, because according to Zarathustra anything that has a price has no value; only things that don’t have any price are valuable.

The superman has all the values, but his values are not marketable; they are not commodities. He has tremendous love, he has immense clarity, he has purity of the soul, he is unpolluted by cunningness, politics, diplomacy. He is simply what he is, and he is available to all.

This parable is about the higher men, the pretenders who think that they are supermen. Always remember: wherever there are real coins, there is always a possibility of false coins. And there is a strange law that if you have in your pocket a few false coins and a few authentic coins, your first intention will be to use the false coins, to get rid of them. The same is true in the inner life of man. The higher man is the false coin, which comes before, pretending to be the superman.

The parable is:

Months and years pass, and Zarathustra’s hair grows white, as he waits until the sign that it is time for his descent to men again. One day, while sitting outside his cave, Zarathustra is visited by the old prophet, who warns Zarathustra that he has come to seduce him to his ultimate sin – that of pity, pity for the “higher man.”

The first thing to be understood is that a man like Zarathustra can wait patiently for the right time and the right season. He is never in a hurry. Impatience and hurry and speed are the symbols of a tense mind. Zarathustra is utterly relaxed. He becomes old, years pass, his hair grows white, but he is still waiting for the sign. But from where is the sign going to come? It is not going to come from outside; it is going to come from his innermost being. In his silence he is going to hear the still, small voice.

From outside come only orders, not signs – commandments from others, but not authentic signs. Authentic signs come only through a silent being. The being is in tune with the universe, relaxed. It is in communion. Existence is not going to speak to you from outside; existence always speaks from your inside, because that is the closest point to existence. From outside it is a very long journey.

While he is waiting, one day, the old prophet whom he had met while he was coming to the mountains, who used to live in the mountains in a cave…and he had wondered about the old prophet: “Is it possible that this old prophet has not heard the latest news yet, that God is dead? – because he is still worshipping God; he is still praying to God.”