There are only two alternatives: either suicide or superman.

Man cannot go on lingering the way he has been for thousands of years. For thousands of years there has not been any evolution as far as man’s consciousness is concerned. Yes, once in a while a Gautam Buddha, a Zarathustra, a Lao Tzu have blossomed; but they are not the rule, they are the exceptions.

But even their existence has been of tremendous help – to go on hoping that if it can happen to Zarathustra it can also happen to you. One has to create the superman. One has to become a womb; one has to become pregnant with the idea of superman.

…and behold, it turned out that he could not find them, except he first create them himself.

The only way to find them is to create them. This is a tremendous change of direction. He was wasting his time in looking for them – as if they are somewhere already in existence, you have just to find out where they are. They are nowhere in existence.

One of the great mystics of this century, George Gurdjieff, has shocked the whole spiritual world by a very significant statement: all men don’t have souls. Never before has anybody said that. It has been taken for granted that everybody has a soul. But Gurdjieff’s meaning was misunderstood; hence the shock.

He was not saying that you don’t have a soul, he was saying you have only the possibility of a soul. You don’t have the actual soul unless you create it. You can have it, but you don’t have it right now. You will have to be a creator – a creator of yourself. And that is the highest creation in the world.

Creating a painting is one thing; creating a statue, creating poetry, or creating music are all trivia in comparison to creating yourself. That is the hardest work, the most arduous, but the most fulfilling, most blissful.

In the depths of your silences the superman is asleep as a seed. You have to find the right soil; you have to find the right season; you have to take every care, and you have to wait. Wait with deep love, with great hope, with patience.

Zarathustra finds that now in the afternoon of his life he has to begin his work again from a totally different angle: he has to create superman.

Thus I am in the midst of my work, going to my children and turning from them: for the sake of his children must Zarathustra perfect himself.