'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything immeasurably small or great in your life must return to you-all in the same succession and sequence-even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over and over, and you with it, a grain of dust.'
- Friedrich Nietzsche Nietzsche & Superman.pdf
In the 19th century Friedrich Nietzsche in his book Thus Spake Zarathruska confronted the nihilistic beliefs of his mentor Arthur Schopenhaur by postulating his most famous idea 'the eternal return of the same.' This was an attempt to affirm life by reasoning that in the finite space that is the universe everything is ultimately obliged to re-occur exactly as before. Thus, life is a journey that always finds home. Both Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and later Heidegger in their different ways were attempting to describe the singular most important event of creation but lacked the necessary considerations to put it together correctly:
1) It is never possible to place one’s foot in the same stream twice. It is also not possible to think the same thought twice. The thought may be close just as placing one’s foot in the same stream may also be close. But, never the twain shall be met. This is common sense. However, there is a more logical explanation that eliminates the possibility of chance altogether: the big bang. It is commonly believed that the big bang kick-started our evolutionary process. No doubt this is true except that there is more than one 'big bang' . The big bang is occurring as often as necessary to support the formulations of our thoughts – in other words it is our thinking that initiates and maintains the big bang.
What an enormous power we have that is capable of zillions of big bangs just to support and maintain an idea we may have. There is a lot of big bangs going on to support all the thinking of everyone everywhere. And, furthermore, just as it is not possible to place one’s foot in the same stream twice nor is it possible for two big bangs to happen simultaneously.
2) This enormous power of the individual was described by Nietzsche as ubermensch translated to mean Overman (or Superman). In the 20th Century, the ideas of Nietzsche were misinterpreted by Adolf Hitler to further add to the growing fire of Nazism. In his own time Nietzsche was challenged for his ideas but because he lacked the essential information on the big bang and the nature of control he had no defense. He ended his days in an insane asylum.
3) Eternal recurrence is the constant of life but without awareness of the nature of control (codependency) it is destined to remain unknown. Without the knowledge of our recurrence we can never know the power that we are: the power we give away. We can never become Superman.
