A Friend and I discourse together. Would like to share. Alysia
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The historical figure of Zarathustra was "founder" of Parsism, a belief system which contains a good spirit/creator (Ahura Mazda) and a demon (Ahriman)  There are also similarities concerning the idea of the resurrection of Parsism and Christianity.
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for sure both systems of thought are based on dualism. In this age of shifting consciousness,  we are to go beyond dualism into nonduality, which is essentially Monroe’s model of there is nothing bad, there is nothing good, All Just Is. Think about acceptance, think about the spaciousness and freedom of such a consciousness, think about the unifying aspects of oneness. PUL unites. Duality is Division. All Just Is and all is in it’s natural unfoldment.
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It was Nietzsche's idea to create a human being that concentrates more on his/her free will choices and so religion, spiritism, pantheism, etc. this super human would have to overcome, so to say, faith as human weakness.
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We need to define faith. blind faith versus knowing.  Faith is a creative force, the father of trust, trust is born from the works of faith or courage. one would not say to a child you had born; you are blind. so blind faith is not a weakness in my estimation. just my opinion. but I can see you are thinking in terms of sheep-like mentalities concerning religious concept; perhaps we can then see the master’s hand to shear the sheep in metaphor. This would be life, that none escape the shearing.  which is basically an ego death, or self image dying which can take place within a person before their body is put down.
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So it is not in fact the god fleeing from himself, or searching himself hereafter....
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I should have said earlier,  god cannot flee from himself as himself follows but he can find himself in mirror reflections of aha moments. and thats when the fun starts. (my opinion and experience) we might be able to see god as an energy construct within the heart when the mind opens to the possibility that you are divine.
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this author would seem to say that a  god (was created) to flee his incapabilities that are given to his body,
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To my mind he’s talking about the fight or flight instinct which we can say is built into our DNA. I would surmise the incapabilities he’s discussing are called by TMI, the limited consciousness of C1 level. When the ego dies, or I should say is surrendered to the higher self purposes, or if a person is religious, they would say that they have given up idol worship, or the false image of a god, the physical vehicle complies with the intelligent light/spirit and incapabilities can be reversed.
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According to the story, Nietzsche expresses through Zarathustra, that God is man made
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I agree for the most part god, the conception of god is man made, the spirit is not something we can say we made ourselves.  This man made conception applies to false idols, false images of god, such as the golden calf, the sacred cow, etc. the man in the sky with a white beard who smiles benevolently. these are images we need to get beyond, and more into the hands across the world type of god. this author is struggling to create his reality, I wouldn’t say it has anything to do with his nationality though.
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The whole discussion about a world beyond for him, seeing the earth as a system full of flaws, the world as imperfect, so if there is god, he is also, but since for him god is man made, this whole discussion seems to be nonsense (at least for him).
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well its circular thinking and frustrating. he’s saying the world is flawed, he hasn’t had a good day in like forever, and now he’s teed off because he realizes man has a penchant for making a god into man’s own image. He is not in a nondual state of mind yet, getting there, but it’s hard.
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Religion as a type of fleeing the reality,
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Religion is only a set of rules laid down. like road signs on a map a soul can travel towards, like Moses and the commandments. I would not agree that to accept a religion means one is necessarily running away, but more like one is running towards something. In his case, I think he is saying that the folks around him are not realistic, because they are having a different experience that he is not privy to. I don’t see his stuff as pessimistic so much as I see a struggle going on, but the same struggle we all go through.
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He says humanity won't accept that the life on earth is all they have, and afterwards are ceasing to exist, so they should rather rely on their possibilities they have during this period.
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wow, he looks like a total atheist now, yet as an atheist he still struggles to say something good, something positive rather than be all 100% negative and just shoot oneself in the head.
I would say, if I were to sit down and chat with the author(s) I would say the stuff of the universe, those possibilities, those probabilities, the human is made up of the stuff of the universe the same.  we should be giving the benefit of the doubt to divine intelligence working here, even though we cannot see it, we can sense and feel it in life overviews and belief system crashes, once we move beyond the crashing point.
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He calls out religion as madness of the old and dying
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picture the atheist drowning..who does he call out for? God of course.  its human nature. If we fall back on “there is no bad, there is no good” religion itself is not the problem. neither is the gun to blame for shooting someone, so banning guns or religion is not really an answer.
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Religion as a kind of invention that should cure the thoughts of being ceased to exist after death, and heaven or hell as reward or punishment systems as guarantee for a further existence.
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he’s right, we invent religions, or we misinterpret what started out good and true. but I hardly think that destruction of one thought system is an action in alignment with constructing a thought system that can stand the test of time which degrades all thoughts naturally that man takes up.
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He preaches to love the earth and life like it is, doing everything to grow out of their human costume, overcome fear and uncertainty
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I agree with this part, now he’s striving for a solution; to overcome fear though is the development of faith, my opinion; I should say faith and will, inferring we have choice which direction we focus on.
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This is also connected to his "God is dead"-thesis . he talked about the cured humanbeing (he used the picture of the sick humanbeing, the infection for him was religion/faith in a higher principle/god, that man made, not accepting his natural bounds, the body)creeping around the grave of his god).
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its almost like the Germans believing that Jews were vermin. man cannot accept what this author calls natural boundaries..if he did, he would be rolling over and dying without a fuss in his spirit; we were designed to extend ourselves beyond boundaries. this author does not seem to have experienced any PUL in his life at this point. he is an intellectual.
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The new kind of humanbeing shall be able to life in full acceptance of being ceased after this life.
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this thinking of the super human lacks a finished thought to it. there is ego death to consider which does bring with it a full acceptance of one’s lack of importance in the entire scheme, but I’d say, this thought is more one of humility in the face of the divine which appears. we can accept that, but not the thought of ceasing to exist in any form. I submit from my viewpoint, this is an impossibility, and because of the eternal quality of PUL experiences and some other experiences of viewing my death which actually catapulted me into greater vistas of life. yet I am aware people kill themselves here all the time from thinking there is nothing to live for. did this author commit suicide?
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and living this live according to free-will choices that are manmade and not limited by own creations of fear
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I agree fear is a self limiting thing. there is too much reflection on the problem rather than the solution and he exudes depression.
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the creations of fear were given names and were praised to act in favour of humankind (the possiblity of the existence of divine beings
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you know, Earth just may be the proving ground for divine beings, it doesn’t seem like he thought of that yet
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was not proven or disproven at this time or now) , i think it was more the philosophical problem called "theodizee-problem" that was still held as the source of knowledge of no divine existence).
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sounds like the scientist mentality who looks for evidence or proof, I think we already covered that point, proof is relative and experiential.
and always personal and barely conversational.
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But phantasy is still the strongest ability of humanbeings
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I have to fall back on the numbers guy, Einstein, who eventually got around to admitting that imagination was more important than knowledge.
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Fantasy  can be used either for scientific research, art, philosophy, to give us the possibility to understand the world. So why not the same thing with divine revelations, could be that we gave the divine labels, names, abilities, and some of them outlooks, to be able to draw a picture in our mind about how divinity could be theorized to make it understandable. So if it is possible through imagination to explain the complex structure of the world, why not seeing dreams or revelation as a way of communication with the divine?
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thanks! why not? I do this all the time and make no apologies!
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Don't know why most of the german writers are so negative, or just want to point out humanity is only existant to serve human purposes, not having a cut down free will. But the ability of faith is lost in our modern society
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I agree the ability of faith is lost in modern times, yet just think about that whatever we truly believe in, we begin to see it manifest in spite of our doubts..yet I don’t see the word faith as specifically tied to religious concept but arising beyond the religious tenets into communion with your soul. maybe we can say faith is like having one-pointedness. or focusing in a single direction rather than all the commercials we are bombarded with daily.
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our religions are money, entertainment and if all breaks, there surely are the right pills to fix it
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we are both human animal and divine. change the word god to mean good. in the future when nonduality outlooks begin to be mainstream when one is placed in your path who is harming another person or who is ready for some self discovery, you will be given the go ahead to change the situation by a seemingly supernatural energy, but its really a part of you. and you don’t do anything really but stand there. I had this happen this weekend. I met a stranger and she told me her whole life story in an hour. by the time she was through, and her discourse was urgent, she was winded, she had figured something out on her own. all I did was listen in nonjudgmental fashion. spirit was there. thats what I mean by we are divine when we tune into each other to observe this.
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Nietzsche is one example of this downfall of faith, he sort of ridicules religion just to a point, that it is madness and over-imagination (for sure, I do not know an easier way to step back from believing as just saying it is wothless imagionary crap that shall cure our mind, how the heck can we know?)
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believing is one thing, knowing is another. surface knowledge is one thing, experience is another. there is no thing that is worthless thought, as the universe is keeping a record for you, of every thought you ever thought, every deed you ever did. its all saved for you to view upon transition or sooner if you want, thats what the bible meant when it said “every jot and tittle is accounted for.” its a mathematical universe in that sense. you seem to be doing your homework and thanks so much to let me respond.
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I think he could be stated as existentialist (concentration on our I /here, because for the existentialist there is no I /there Let's see if I find something on my bookshelf that is not that pessimistic
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some things we read are starting points to get us to the next item,  everything that has ever been written are different viewing points as we as humans cannot possibly look into every direction there is to see at once, except in meditation, we can get a wider perspective. nor to my opinion, is one single life going to afford all the experiences we might desire to have here, anymore than just choosing chocolate ice cream to eat is going to tell you what the flavor of strawberry tastes like.

I started doing out of body at an early age which set up my thought system to know we are more than we think we are. In Bruce’s books he would say such as yourself are trailblazers, those that come after, some will find your trail and it will be easier for them that way. thanks again, the chatting.

Hey alysia,

with believing i really think he thinks of everything that belongs to a belief, like faith, the awareness of being bound to god, prayers, even something like PUL, for him these things (for the believer essentials) were just overimagination.

so here is our problem :

Part 1, Chapter 3 : "Of the ones who belief in worlds behind" (the original says "Von den Hinterweltlern", it is difficult to put it in words, as Hinterweltler (hinter=behind, welt=world), in how it is normally used means something you would maybe call hillbillies, or people who tend not to think out of the box to try something new, this time Nietzsche uses is for "people believing in a world behind".)

Zarathustra:

"Once Zarathustra threw his madness behind the human (behind the human world, as a sort of afterlife belief, towards the throne of god), like those, who belief in the worlds behind this one. The world/creation seemed like a place made up by a suffering and tortured God.  
Like a dream seemed the world and poetry of God, coloured smoke in front of the eyes of an unsatisfied God.
Good and bad, lust and pain, I and you - coloured smoke seemed to be in front of the creators eye - he wanted to run away from himself, so he created the world.
Lustful joy it is for the suffering one, to look away from his pain and to lose himself. Lustful joy and to-lose-oneself seemed to be the world.
This world, forever imperfect, picture of an eternal contradiction and imperfect picture, a lustful joy to the imperfect creator-
the world seemed like this for me.
So I threw all my madness behind the human, like those who belief in the hereafter/ god.
But did I really threw it behind this world?
Oh my brothers, this god, created by me, was human's work and madness, like all gods.
He was human, just a poor piece of human, and me: from my broken bones and ashes this entity (ghost) came to me. But he did not come from behind this world.
But what happened to me, my brothers, I thought it over again, carried my ashes to a mountain (in the beginning of this essaye, Nietzsche gave him the role of an eremit, who went to a mountain to find himself)
and invented a brighter flame. And the entity (ghost) faded from me.
Suffering it would be for me, the healed one, and pain, to believe again. Suffering it would be now, and cutting myself down. So now I talk to the believers of the world behind.
It was simply pain and being incapable - that created all worlds behind, and every madness what I thought of to be luck, only the one in pain and suffering knows things like this.
A feeling of being tired, that wants the end soon, jumping into death, a poor, unknowing feeling of being tired, that has no will at all, this one created Gods and worlds behind.
Believe me, brothers, it was the body who fell into despair because of the body, touching the last walls with the fingers of a vivid spirit.
Believe me, my brothers. It was the body, that fell into despair because of the earth, he heard the voices from belly, talking to him (or e.g. sensoring the feelings of the belly, as the opposite of thinking rational in favour of Nietzsche's principle of a "Superhuman", a kind of evolutionary thing, that is blind for things that stop the human free will, a human living for humans sake, not a higher principle).
And he wanted to smash this last wall with his head, and not only with his head, going to the other side.
But that world is well hidden from the human eye, those unhumane world, like a heavenly nothing, and the belly (providing this religious feeling of  "to be") does not talk to the human, only as a human (not as a divine entity).
It is hard to proof the meaning of to be (the universal meaning of to be, containing all life from the start) , and it is hard to make this meaning talk to you (to reveal her, his, its essence).
Tell me, brothers, isn't the most astonishing thing the best thing to proof?
Yes, the I and te I's contradiction und confusion talks at least as clear from his "being alive" than the other things, this creating, willing and judging I, which is the devise of measuring and worth of all things.
And the fairliest being, the I, talks of the body, even wants it, if it is dreaming, and babbling and dares to fly with broken wings.
The more this I learns to talk fairly, the more it finds words to honour the earth and the body.
A feeling of being proud is one teaching of my new I, I want to teach those, who do not put their heads into heavenly things any more, to hold up high their earthbound head that creates the sense of the world.
I want to teach them to all of them, who do not want to step off my path like the old and dying.
The old and dying were the ones to hate the body and earth, who invented the heaven-like layers, and the healing blood-drops, but even this sweet drop of poison was taken by them from the earth and the body.
They wanted to run away from their misery, but the stars were to far away. So they said: "Oh, if there were just heaven-like ways to reach another state of being and luck!" - so they invented their bloody potions!
Being away from circle of body and world they now believed to be, the unthankful.
But who provided their gains? The body and this earth.
Zarathustra is not mad at the sick ones. He has no feelings of hate towards their ways of healing and unthankfulness. Be they healed and able to overcome their thinking, to create a higher body for themselves!
He (Zarathustra) is not mad at the healed ones, who looks at his own created madness, who creeps around his gods grave at midnight, and illness and ill bodies his tears are still.
There were lots of sick people, around the ones, who are poets and god-addicted, in wrath they hate the knowing one and his newest of his virtues, fairlyness.
Looking backwards to dark times, when madness and belief were different, when going mad of the reasonable mind was god-like, and scepticism was sin.
I know them, who want to be god-like too good, they want people to believe in them, and scepticism shall be sin.
And I know best, what they really believe in.
They do not believe in the worlds behind or the healing blooddrop: but they believe best in their body, and their own body is most important to them.
But the body is an ill thing for them, and they want to escape it.
So they follow the preachers of death, und preach worlds behind by themselves.
Better listen to the voice of the healthy body: it is a fairlier and purer voice.
Fairly and purer talks the healthy body, the perfect and right-angled one: and he talks of the sense of the world.

Also spoke Zarathustra.

hey, this guy worships the earth and the body. sounds like Hitler's "pure" race ideal to me. theres nothing here that really inspires me Pulsar, sorry. I worked all day on  my response to you yesterday, so it's not like I'm blowing you off, theres just nothing here to believe in for me, and I do not see belief, and faith as the same thing, belief is of the mind, faith is of the soul. faith can move mountains. I'm probably a mixture of the old and new, but definetely, I see the body, a life in a body as valuable and I'm thankful for the opportunity, but it's not the end all and be all, so I wouldn't get attached to anything like the body as a form of identity. and the punch line about looking to those who are healthy as way showers, that is rather like saying don't go to a sick physician, go to a healthy one. I agree, but on the other hand, and theres always another hand, being sick, being old, this is oftentimes a journey the spirit wants to endure, wants to experience and chooses before incarnation (my point of view)
suffering is what we do here. it can help us grow, not that we should seek out to make ourselves find suffering.  and this guy thinks having joy is to mislead ourselves..what kind of thinking is that, where even a feeling of joy is like something to feel guilt over?

I can tell he's never had a bonafide out of body adventure, and there is no mention of the sublime nature of PUL to call forth the light down into the earth plane.

maybe someone else here wants to comment on this work. I am getting that I should not be thinking about it anymore. best of explorations to you Pulsar!

Hey Alysia,

I have not thought of it as source of inspiration for spiritual growth, that is something I know nearly nothing about, just the point of view atheism vs. faith was the important thing in this case, to start a discussion what others think about a religious or nonreligious life, what brings more effort, or if it is just our need to please ourselves. I personally see religion not as a pleasing system for our incapability of bringing out evidence from where this world came and where it will go, I feel there is a connection to a "something more", but I am not in a state of being fully convinced about this relation, maybe my incapability to rely on something apart from facts.

Being in favour of nationalsocialism was one of the points critics relied on according to Nietzsche's way of thinking , but this "superhuman" idea has nothing to do with any kind of aryan ideals of the nationalsocialist movement (anyway, if it was sort of nazi-trash, i would not have had the intention even to read this, because I am strictly against politics, that discriminate and kill people because of their origin, honestly, furthermore, I would not dare to spread right wing propaganda, that would contradict my belief, that human rights belong to every humanbeing, not to a chosen few, I learned from the past, and that is the minimum of what can be done against facism, preventing your mind from being infected by facistoid thoughts, learning how much it is worth to be able to profit and learn from other cultures, learn to respect others like they are).
In fact Nietzsche's books were misused as propagandathing, as his sister was a nazi, and she used it according to what you just mentioned with the "pure race", mixing up Nietzsche's idea about a human only acting after his free will choice (yes, living according to and earth bound thinking) with the facist ideal of the aryan race. But only if the words sound similar, that makes their sense not similar, I think this one is the best example for it. He was never involved the nazi ideals. I have to say when I read his book, I immediately had the same impression, but it turned out, that it is not facistic at all. I had a hard time reading this book, because there was so much between the lines to figure out.
To overcome the "human" with its flaws (think we talked about..) is not bound to specific humanbeings, or  racial issues, it is in his view the effort every humanbeing is able to make. Yes, of course there is a kind of two class system, the ones, who have his way of thinking, and the others, who don't. But I think with this idea of "my philosophy ownes them all" he is not alone in the world of philosophy.
Strangest folk I ever heard of....just remembering what he said about pity, pity in his view is useless, because if you feel pity, you do not take away the pain from anyone, but double it through suffering with someone who has problems (omg....). This point of refusing pity sounds surely right wing, but again, it has nothing to do with pityless killing everyone who is not aryan type of sh** (I hope aryan is the word you use for the type of human that the nazis wanted to create).

Having a life in this body, I agree with you, is a blast of an experience, with the possibility to grow, mostly in mind, and as sort of our goal, in the spiritual part of ourselves. I also have the same way of thinking like you, refusing his strictly view on the body, but this is what according to his view of the world turns out, what is right for him. He saw no (like we do) spiritual life, it was just a manmade illusion, he thought human would be strong, if he relies just on himself, wether he is ceased to exist after dying or not, the important part in his eyes was, that man creates the values, not a dictation by the divine (it something to argue about, thinking about moral life in my point of view belongs to the transcendent possibilities for humanity, so it could be sort of a divine plan), we just learned, that the divine in his eyes is just something to overcome, because it holds back the human growth, according to free will choices (that's what Nietzsche thought according to this point). So for him the body is the only true form of existence, and the time, when we are living conscious in this body, we should live life to the fullest, and it is in fact not suffering, what he wants to spread. Suffering only comes from just relying on the old way of thinking what classifies a humanbeing, failure, weakness, a need for faith and guidance.
So the joy comes after leaving behind the old human, stepping to the free-choice one, that only relies on his own thoughts and changes he is able to provide. In fact is not a belief of him that joy is misleading, but suffering comes in his eyes from e.g. faith, hating the body you live in and just reach out for the next world.
He was just a here and now type of guy. Joy for him is revealed through acceptance of the human boundaries, and living life to the fullest, according to free will choices, so there is no need to feel guilty over enjoying the life, human-based and human bound.
The health issue belongs to those, who hold strictly belief only in human made things, according to his theory, not in a social darwinistic way of leaving the sick and old behind, like humble creatures, more in a way "it is their problem if they want to rely on the old view of humanbeings". May be arrogant, but it is his point of view.
Sick and old, he used this images, just to show how human relies on his body, even if he is a believer. He said through Zarathustra, that he thinks that the old and sick are unthankful to the body, because he is the one who feeds their believes.
So to say, Nietzsche created some kind of existentialistic creatures, whose religion it is to believe in themselves, and their free will choices. Not my point of view.

For myself, I have to say, I suffer more from the uncertainty about death, than being able to enjoy life, but this point of view was something I thought I left behind after dipping my nose too deep in a black cold death at the end of the line, but what else is there to say, old habits reappear... .
I wish I could think that positive (I think I wrote it in some of my comments here, not especially on this topic) about life, as I first had the impression of being able to reach out. But sorry, even if I made some progress, I struggle with this imagination or not topic the more, I read about experiences that are similar to the ones I had. But this is about being sceptical, it is a need, to proof ourselves that we really believe in what we are doing, and there are only two ways, trying again, or leave it alone (I think I would sometimes not believe in heaven/ afterlife even if it would be served on a golden plate).

Sometimes I believe if I think, it is the worst thing I do (thinking if it not belongs to subjects in school or the practical training I am doing now) according to present something. Nietzsche was a failure...anyway, maybe there is still interest in discussing the thread that Alysia opened for us, atheism vs. faith in god.

I think I bored you with explanations, but I have to say again, that I am not tending to present facistic propaganda on this board, this board and the people posting here have deserved better things than right wing shi**. And again, any facistic type of thinking is not my point of view, I believe in liberal politics, in the fact that multiculturalism is the biggest chance to bring effort to humankind, only if we respect each other, there will be the possibility of a better  life on this planet (strange, huh, even if I hate my life more than I love it, i believe in miracles....maybe the revelation of the something more...I don't know :) )

Love,

pulsar

I know your intentions were not to spread facism :) I'd never heard of this guy before you introduced me to him so as I was reading along it just occured to me he's not thinking correctly. as far as you're trying to understand human frailty, or flawed civilization I can add to that thought, that as a healer, or even as a philosopher, or as a healer who goes out of body to do reiki, that I know of, we must practice the art of seeing the frailty as "not there."  it's a TMI thing, we focus on the whole person. sickness is an allusion, or it's making an appearance. heres a good description of sickness FEAR: = False Evidence Appearing Real.  age is, an allusion.

so nuff said, thanks for showing up here, your doing good. love, alysia

That's heavy stuff guys  :). I must apologise for not having ploughed through every line in detail, but some garbled thoughts as i really don't have the framework to to properly write about this stuff.

Surely the adoption of a fixed view in absence of evidence that there is no God is as much a belief as deciding more or less arbitrarily that there is?

There's dualism in the 'man is alone' view. For example  - it's perfectly possible to (as Buddhism suggests we should) to take 100% responsibility for ourselves, for finding our own path through existence - while simultaneously operating in a continuously God created cosmos or total reality. Very probably (unconsciously) as some part of that God, or with the assistance/influence of that God.

i.e. the fact that man is required to act unconsciously or essentially alone  does not preclude the existence of God. And that's just using normal logic - it only requires that that's the way it's set up.

Moving to thinking that maybe reality is not the strictly newtonian cause and effect affair with ourselves as independent observers that we are told it is it gets even more interesting - because it's pretty clear that mind and intention are in fact very capable of moulding the reality.

Almost all traditions suggest that nothing happens until we make the first move.  Which implies that if we believe there is no God or alternate reality he won't show himself. But that if we at least have a little openness to the possibility that there will be that flicker in the corner of your eye that makes you wonder, that causes you to assign a little more belief. Which leads to a slightly larger flicker and so on...

Put another way. We've trouble getting a fix on the scheme of things precisely because our intention makes it whatever we think it should be. Not to mention that most of our systems of figuring our reality won't even admit subjective (internal experience), never mind a consequence of the interaction of the subjective and objective.....