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takes a new path. Mahavira remained in his solitude. Buddha remained in his aloneness, and the people who were watching, saw something had happened, something beyond their conceptions. These people were transformed; they had become luminous; they were radiating joy; they had a certain fragrance; they had known something; their eyes had a depth that was not there before; and their faces had a grace that was a totally new phenomenon.
A very subtle misunderstanding happened: the people who were watching thought that because these people went into the mountains, they had renounced life; hence, renouncing life became a fundamental thing in all the religions. But they had not renounced life.
I would like to write history completely from the very scratch, particularly about these people, because I know them from my own insight -- I don't have to be bothered about facts, I know the truth. These people had not gone against life: they had gone simply for solitude; they had gone for being alone; they had just gone away from distractions.
But the difference between Gautam Buddha and Zarathustra is that Gautam Buddha -- once he had found himself -- never declared, "Now there is no need for me to be a recluse, to be a monk. I can come back and be an ordinary man in the world."
Perhaps it needs more courage than going out of the world; coming back to the world needs more courage. Going uphill is arduous, but very gratifying. You are going higher and higher and higher, and once you have reached to the highest peak, it needs tremendous courage to come back downward into the dark valleys which you had left, just to give the message to people: "You need not remain always in darkness. You need not remain always in suffering and in hell."
This downward journey may even be condemned by those people whom you are going to help. When you were going upward, you were a great saint, and when you are coming downward, people will think perhaps you have fallen, you have fallen from your greatness, from your height. It certainly needs the greatest courage in the world, after touching the heights of the ultimate, to be again ordinary.
Zarathustra shows
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