u/Beautiful-Height-311

Preface: This translation took me a few weeks, and I am euphoric to say that I have finally completed it. It took me a lot, in this short period I may have searched up definitions a few hundred times. I carefully looked through the essay making sure there was no grammatic error and, because I cannot translate Mainländer's poetic use of the German language in its entirety here, I looked at countless examples of other authors and their "archaic" writing styles to mirror a similar feeling. This essay, in my opinion, is the most profound piece of literature on Christ's character. I believe without a single doubt Mainländer understood Christ more than any theologian or scholastic thinker. His character-portrait of Christ is eerily similar to that of the Greek author Kazantzakes, and his portrayal of Christ in The Last Temptation. This is the preface, now here's the essay.

However, this is the true Christian faith, that we worship one God in three Persons, and three Persons in one Godhead.Athanasius.Thou sayest it: I am a king.

John 18:37.

The life of Christ is to those, who were raised in the Christian doctrine as to non-believers living in Christian states, too well known for me to make it the subject of an essay. However, his character-portrait is still fluctuating and I want to try to shape it from passages in the New Testament. We will find that the Mighty One possessed many qualities of Buddha, but also great peculiarities. The two doctrines are identical if one focuses solely on the essential; but Buddha was an Indian, Christ a Jew; they could therefore not have the same character: the mother's milk was not the same.

Let us first establish what they have in common.

Christ was, like Buddha, a genius. He had a grand imagination, a strong understanding, a clear, signifcant faculty of judgement. His mind was a pure mirror of the outside world and had a luminous self-awareness. Just as he saw through people, correctly assessing their weaknesses and their presumed happiness, no fold of his own heart remained hidden from him, and no state within his breast escaped his notice.

He was furthermore like Buddha not a scholar. Had he been a scholar, he would never become a teacher of humanity. Everyone inspired by God can become a scholar if they want to; for if they want it, what should hinder them? He is a genius, and to polymathy belongs only talent, time, and perseverance: nothing more. But what wise hero ever sat with pleasure upon a scholar's char? Not a single one. By force, these glorious beings are held to the anvil amidst the rebellious uprising of their innermost nature, and with feverish impatience, they forge the sword that is indispensable to them. Their thoughts are lightning bolts flashing through a fighting, turbulent individuality; their ideals are hurled from the boiling and glowing depths of their mind into the clear ether of their spirit, just as Vesuvius casts its masses of lava into the sunny, peaceful landscape of Naples. With the surest instinct, with the full acumen of their daemon, they are drawn away from polymathy, which would turn their mind into a superficial surface force at the expense of profound depth. Instead, the daemon drives them, as instinct drives the bee, to all the flowers and blossoms of the general human spirit, and they suck in the nectar suited to them with the strangest haste, as if they had only a few hours to live, shaping it and processing it into honey even as they absorb it.

In this way, they never dissolve into flatness, nor do they lose their own precious thoughts to foreign ones, as a drop of water is absorbed by the sun. They allow themselves to be fertilized, but not trsmpled. They allow themselves to be deepened and concentrated by external pressure, but not flattened and scattered. Their knowledge resembles a bowl full of pure jasmine oil, the most precious oil there is; that of the polymaths resembles a barrel of water with a single such drop. Because Christ was not a scholar, yet nevertheless showed himself well-versed in all fields of knowledge of that time and possessed an overwhelming eloquence, there arose, on the one hand, the mockery of the shallow legal experts, the Pharisees, and on the other, the great admiration of the people.

And the Jews marvelled, saying, How knoweth this man letters, having never learned? (John 7:15)

And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. (Luke 4:22)

And they were astonished at his doctrine: for his word was with power. (Luke 4:32)

Naturally, the petty, shallow minds fixated on Christ's occupation before he went into the wilderness, pointing mockingly at the "carpenter's apprentice," just as the trembling Brahmins had pointed at the prince from the warrior caste.

Howbeith we know this man whence he is. (John 7:27)

Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? (Mark 6:3)

These poorest souls have always believed that truth can only be unveiled by a polymath, or more precisely: that it can only be found within certain castes or circles.

Art thou also of Galilee? Search, and look: for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet. (John 7:52)

And because not one of them possessed the faculty of judgment, no one saw then, and no one will ever see, that the holy vessel of the Grail is delivered only to a Percival—that is, to one who would rather listen to the birdsong in the green woods than absorb subtle cleverness and stale thoughts by a smoking lamp, or watch hair-splitting activity.

Yet when he shot the little bird,

From which such sweet song just had flowed,

He wept aloud and punished even

His innocent hair by tearing it.

His body was clear and bright:

On the meadow by the spring

He washed himself every morning.

Also little care did he have

Except the song of the birds above him,

Which penetrated his heart so sweetly:

That expanded his little breast.

With weeping he ran into the house.

The queen spoke: "Who did this to you? You were just out on the meadow."

Then he knew not a word to tell her.

Wolfram von Eschenbach

So much for Christ's intellectual resemblance to Buddha.

Turning to the side of the will, the character, the daemon, we find first of all mercy, the suffocating compassion for mankind, just as Buddha felt it.

And when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. (Matt. 9:36)

The sign of the false prophet has been from the beginning of humanity and will be until its end: that he engages with his fellow human beings out of a thirst for honor, fame, and distinction. He is driven by smbition and a lust for power (the Gracchi, Mirabeau, Robespierre, Lassalle). False prophets do great things, they accomplish significant deeds for humanity, they give it a mighty push forward, but every child feels within themselves the vague notion that they must not be placed alongside the true prophets, the wise heroes, that a heaven-wide gulf separates these two classes from one another.

What drives the true prophets—drives them in such a way that they think a storm wind has seized them like a linden leaf and is whirling them forward, ever forward, unstoppably in flying haste—is the heart-breaking compassion for their darkened, bestialized brothers.

And this compassion is a thousand times greater than the suffering of the brothers; for just as the eye cannot see itself, these too cannot objectively recognize their own condition. Just as only he can taste something bitter as bitter who has already experienced sweetness, so too is the suffering over bestializatipn dependent upon the preceding sensation of pure peace of heart. This contrast, necessary for the emergence of genuine human love, can spring only from a pure soul—a soul that has glowingly taken the divine law into itself and tasted all its blessings.

My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me.If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.

He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory: but he that seeketh his glory that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him. (John 7:16-18)

The true prophets alone can do something for others without having any personal advantage from it other than peace of heart. They want to be free from the compassion for others that swells their throat up to their neck and threatens to choke them; they want to mortify this positive suffering within themselves, and therefore, though they resist, they are driven back with irresistible force from the peace and exquisite solitude of the desert into the bustle and turmoil of men, where they are trodden upon, whipped, spat upon, and finally crucified by those for whom they have made the highest sacrifice they can possibly make: their outer tranquility.

Strange! They hover above humanity; nothing that can move the dreary seed of Adam, neither fame, nor power, nor gold, can tempt them; they revel in the full bliss of a pure and luminous individuality; they would suffice unto themselves even if they were to live a thousand years;—and yet they are hurled from this paradise of their solitary, luminous individuality into the land, hurled from the golden peak down into the dark, sultry, narrow valley. Why? Because they are merciful, and only because they are merciful.

And so they step, immovable within, into the violent, restless, outer movement. Their tender, delicate hands seize the rebellious, hard human material, and with their nails alone they seek—the greatest artists on this earth!—to carve into granite the ideal shape that lives in their spirit and floats before their intoxicated eye as a painless humanity, as a humanity without distress and misery. Oh, how the tender hands bleed! How their nerves are split a thousandfold and every fiber is wrenched and stung! But they do not rest, they keep working on and on, because they must.

They have only their nails: only their speech, only redeeming words. But what power lies therein! The human word is mightier and stronger than the elements. It has, subjectively expressed, causality, and the causality of no natural force can be compared with its own. Just as a word full of deadly poison can separate people further from each other than the waves of the sea in a storm, or sever them more surely than the sharpest knife, so can the redeeming word unite them inextricably and turn thornbushes into apricot trees, which the brooding, blessing sunlight, the best soil, and the most fruitful rain would not be able to bring about.

And the whole multitude sought to touch him: for there went virtue out of him, and healed them all. (Luke 6:19)

This very important passage can only be explained from this point of view; only the most perverted thinking could call upon animal magnetism for help. Like Buddha, Christ was also a fatalist. Just as the former cut off his hair and threw it into the air to force a counsel from without because his inner self was silent, so too did the noble Jew in critical situations time and again ask fate—more precisely, his God—and pray that he might give him a sign, a hint.

And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book [literally: tossed the book about], he found the place where it was written:The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised. (Luke 4:17-18)

And when he tossed the book about! How this accidental opening of the significant passage must have filled him with courage for his mission! Everyone who looks back on his life will find at least one case where he was actually at a loss for counsel. His inner self was completely mute, and among his friends and relatives he found no counsel either. Then it was perhaps an old scrap of paper that he happened to find, or a little bird that happened to sit down before him and sing, or the word of a person he saw for the first time, or even the state after a prayer to God that flowed from the heart only as a wordless, concentrated current—in short, something sudden, purely accidental, that clearly showed him the right path. If he finds such a case, he will hardly smile at my interpretation. I also decidedly reject the insinuation that I am a simple-minded card-reader, lead-pourer, or bible-opener. On the contrary, I confess that I occasionally open the Bible, or Kant, or Spinoza, or Schopenhauer with the definite intention of letting the first sentence at the top, right or left, or at the bottom right or left, serve as my guideline. It happens very rarely, only in very critical situations, and always I am alone.

Am I acting foolishly? In no way, judged not even from the most superficial standpoint. For from this standpoint, the essence of chance is neither fathomed nor, were that the case, acknowledged. In this instance, there is merely the sovereign establishment of a causality which I boldly set up for myself. I create a cause for myself, which then possesses the same power as the arm of a person pushing me aside, or their shove that hurls me ten feet forward. Now an action manifests itself, which can be fully integrated as a necessary link into the natural chain of causality, and I act as out of necessity as when I leave a burning house, or in summer, drawn by the water, take a refreshing bath.

From this standpoint, therefore, I do not acknowledge at all that an almighty wisdom, guiding the destinies of men, led me to find precisely this passage in the Gospel of John, precisely this passage in Spinoza, etc, which then becomes the cause of an action. To end my wavering, I merely create an external causality for myself.

But how does the matter stand if I rely, for example, on the dogma of the Trinity? In that case, the movement of the smallest mote of sun dust was determined before the creation of the world, amd the world lies in a necessary interconnectedness. In other words: there is no such thing as chance, as Schiller said.

Because this is the correct view of the world, we see precisely the most significant men of the past always creating a causality for themselves whenever none was present; for if one is present, that is, if either the inner self or the outside world speaks clearly, they can never find themselves in the position of arbitrarily creating a cause for themselves.

This procedure, which may be called a questioning of fate, is of course far, far removed from that of the superstitious, although both procedures share one and the same origin: the clear or vague concept of a world thoroughly ruled by necessity because it sprang from a simple unity. The practitioner of the former method, a rational fatalist, will under no circumstances make himself dependent on Fridays, on the number thirteen, on encountering a funeral procession, a flock of lambs or one of pigs, on a moaning stove fire, on dreams, on the pronouncement of a gypsy woman, etc., etc. He keeps himself free from all this simple-minded rubbish and creates for himself a cause for action only in critical situations.

Thus Buddha. Thus also Christ.

This procedure is most clearly evident in Christ in that he linked his individual mission most closely with the prophecies of the Old Testament prophets. Through this, he created a causality for himself that drove him to his death; for may one not assert that he would never have been crucified had he not arbitrarily wound this bond around himself?

And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. (Luke 24:44)

The passage already cited above also belongs here:

Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be? (Matt. 26:53-54)

Now let us immerse ourselves in those character traits of Christ which were either entirely peculiar to him, or bore only a remote resemblance to those of Buddha.

Buddha fought all his battles as a prince or in the wilderness. When he left the desert and began to teach, his soul was an ever-pure mirror that nothing could cloud any longer. No more wavering, no more passion, but full confidence in his mission, perfect goodness, perfect pride.

Not so Christ. He was made of different stuff than Buddha; he was a Jew, not an Indian; he had lay at the breast of Mary, not at that of Queen Mahamaya.

When the Jews were still a closed nation, they bore the character of all Semites: at one moment they puffed themselves up like a pouter pigeon or strutted like a peacock, at the next they contorted themselves like a worm and whined like a kicked dog. They vacillated between boundless contrition and boundless self-exaltation. The poor kings who had to govern this faint-hearted and defiant bunch! Very many Jews of our time still display this character. They show the most repulsive arrogance, insolence, and impertinence where they feel safe, and the most unworthy self-abandonment, the basest and most disgusting sycophancy when they lie in the dust.

Christ, too, moved in both directions and displayed the vacillation between the two, but naturally only on the foundation of a noble, thoroughly cultivated, magnificent individuality: as the ideal of a Jew.

At one moment he was faint-hearted and anxious, struggling with doubt regarding his mission; at the next he glowed under the kiss of the conviction that he was the purest vessel of God.

My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me. (Matt. 26:38)

I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled? But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished! (Luke 12:49-50)

In contrast, in the state of the most blissful knternalization:

The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here. The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here. (Matt. 12:41-42)

And as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistering. (Luke 9:29)

In the latter passage, "raiment" can only be understood as the raiment of the spirit, the countenance. The immense enthusiasm turned him pale and transfigured his features.

This constant vacillation between these two states of nameless anxiety and most fervent enthusiasm could not but make the Savior's essence deeply earnest and lend him the imprint of the most touching melancholy. The longing for death, the yearning for complete annihilation—which was intensified by the fact that he recognized his sacrificial death, the baptism of blood, as indispensably necessary, incessantly battled with the trembling flesh. Only a monster can read the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of John without tears.

The features of Buddha, on the other hand, always showed calm equanimity, friendly kindness, and unassailability. But for this very reason, Christ stands much closer to us, and his life moves and grips our heart far more powerfully than the life of the great Indian.

Closely intertwined with the discussed vacillation is also Christ's confidence. While Buddha carried within himself the rock-solid certainty that not a hair on his head could be harmed in this world because he was a teacher of mankind, Christ at one moment begged that the cup might pass from him, and at the next prayed with somber determination: Thy will be done.

Therefore, he did not attain, as Buddha did, a feeling of omnipotence, complete independence, and absolute sovereignty, nor the exalted pride of Buddha born from it:

I am the greatest of lords on earth, with me no one can be compared. (Manual on Buddhism, 146 and 361.)

instead, he always placed his pride in relation to a foreign power before which he bowed in humility. Toward men, he took the standpoint of Buddha. There he spoke the proud words:

I receive not honour from men. (John 5:41)

or

Thou sayest it: I am a king. (John 18:37)

but toward the pure god of light, the noble Galilean merely rejoiced in the wisdom and power received, not generated within himself.

In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight. All things are delivered to me of my Father: and no man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father. (Luke 10:21-22)

From that vacillation and melancholy, one can furthermore derive Christ's passionateness and his lack of fine irony. Buddha, as a teacher, was never passionate again. I remind you that against wicked people and simpletons, he used at most the word: mogha purisa (foolish or empty man).

How it raged and stormed within Christ at times, by contrast! How bright anger filled him when he wrestled with the conceited Pharisees and had to reach with his hands into human filth at all!

His eightfold woe unto the Pharisees in the 23rd chapter of the Gospel of Matthew sprang from the angriest conceivable upwelling of the heart; and not only did he shatter the money changers in the temple with words like ashlar stones, but his deep indignation also found expression in his overturning the tables of the money changers, hurling the chairs of the dove-sellers into the street, chasing the buyers and sellers out of the temple, and not permitting anyone to take a shortcut through the temple. Yes, even more. He sought refreshment from a fig tree, and when he discovered its barrenness, he cursed it.

Take the latter however one wishes, according to the letter or the spirit, one always stands before an easily aroused passionateness, a vacillating, a deeply agitated mind, which was admittedly conditioned by great genius.

And as rich as the Buddhist writings are in passages where the calm, serene sage showed the finest irony, the Gospels are equally meager in this regard. One finds only the single passage:

Then said they unto him, Who art thou? And Jesus saith unto them, Even the same that I said unto you from the beginning. (John 8:25)

which was indeed a most delightful persiflage of the sterile hair-splitting of the narrow-minded Pharisees and their life in cloud-cuckoo-land.

There remains now only one main character trait of Christ to discuss, namely his passive resilience, which Buddha would likely also have shown had he been forced to move within the circumstances of the Savior. As it is, Christ alone displays it, and indeed in a manner that cannot be surpassed.

Then said Pilate unto him, Hearest thou not how many things they witness against thee? And he answered him to never a word; insomuch that the governor marvelled greatly. (Matt. 27:13-14)

When the Glorious One had recognized that his death was necessary, he enclosed himself entirely within his sweet individuality, as a snail withdraws into its shell, and let them do with him what they would: he quietly let himself be mocked, scourged with rods, crowned with thorns, and finally crucified. It had to be, if his doctrine, with which he stood and fell, was to become a tree that shades the world. He fled into his luminous awareness and did not yield here by a hair's breadth.

I wish to note further that a very large part of Christ's essence, completely independent of his nationality, can be derived solely from the sexual drive which he entirely suppressed. The consequences of virginity would then only have been intensified by his original character, because the Jews were a voluptuous nation and were and are very fertile. Genius is indeed not a product of virginity, but if the former is already present, it is driven by the latter to a height unattainable by other geniuses: that is the reward of abstinence. The sperm is not sweated out, but reabsorbed into the blood; it is the most concentrated human force, and this force now benefits the brain: the brain burns, as it were, in pure oxygen instead of ordinary air.

Virginity therefore exerts a clarifying influence on the mind; on the heart, however, or rather the entire life of the blood, it exerts a darkening, melancholy-inducing influence. At one moment the heart soars high above the clouds, at the next it sinks unimaginably deep into gruesome melancholy, anxiety, and trepidation. The life of Buddha had to be completely different from that of Christ for this reason alone. Buddha had a stormy youth with women behind him by choice when he became a hermit, much like Augustine found rebirth in the brothels. Buddha is to be very precisely distinguished from Prince Siddhartha. The former touched no woman anymore. Thus the mind could reap the fruit of abstinence from sexual pleasure, while the calm blood was no longer significantly altered by chastity.

What Christ wished to attain was granted to him after death. The image of the crucified carpenter's apprentice, who went to his death for humanity, stands in the same clear light as the image of the Indian king's son, who renounced the throne of his fathers, ate dirty, begged rice, and for forty-five years, untiringly teaching and fighting, wandered through the land to redeem mankind. And no other stands beside these two; no one will ever stand beside them. Only two others stand on a lower step at their right and left: Kant and Schopenhauer, heroes of the mind, yet not of the mind and the heart. What are all other outstanding people in all fields of culture in comparison to them? What Moses? What Phidias? What Raphael? What Spinoza? What Newton? What Goethe? What Beethoven? And blessed are human beings that they have these four! Happy is he who can nourish himself with their milk! Of them and their teachings hold the beautiful, vigorous words of Fichte, with which he alone praised Christ and his teaching:

It remains eternally true that with our whole time and with all our philosophical investigations we are placed upon the ground of Christianity and have proceeded from it: that this Christianity has intervened in our entire education in the most manifold ways, and that we ourselves would be absolutely nothing of all that which we are, if this mighty principle had not preceded in time. We cannot abolish any part of our being inherited from earlier events; and no sensible person occupies himself with investigations of what would be there if that which is there were not. And thus it confirms itself in every way that until the end of days all sensible people will indeed bow deeply before this Jesus of Nazareth, and all, the more they are themselves, the more humbly will they recognize the transcendent glory of this great phenomenon.

Der Solipsismus ist die radikale philosophische Deutung, wonach alle Dinge, die wir wahrnehmen, nur deshalb existieren, weil wir sie wahrnehmen. Das wahrnehmende Subjekt ist letztlich das Einzige, dessen Existenz dem Subjekte gewiß ist. Im Zusammenhang mit dieser Deutung stellt sich eine faszinierende Frage, nämlich: Welche Rolle spielt das Subjekt in diesem Weltbilde?

"Für den Augenblick ist sicher, dass man sein tiefstes eigenstes Wesen nicht selbst verstehen kann. Und es gilt auch wirklich: man wird, wenn man überhaupt verstanden wird, immer nur von anderen, nie von sich selbst verstanden."

- Otto Weininger

Wo liegt das Subjekt in seinem Weltbilde? Er ist kein Teil des Weltbildes. Er nimmt alles wahr, außer sich selbst. Er ähnt das Auge, das sich selbst nie betrachten kann. Das philosophische Subjekt (Oder das Ich) wird in der Realität nie gefunden. Ohne Eigentum oder Ort, es gleicht den Punkt mit null Dimensionen. Wenn das „Ich“ auf absolut nichts bezogen ist, verliert das Wort „mein“ die übliche Bedeutung. Im Alltage sagt man nur deshalb „Das ist mein Auto“, weil es andere Menschen gibt, die andere Autos besitzen. Das Wort „mein" sollte einen Gegensatz voraussetzen. Doch wenn es kein anderes „Ich“ oder „mein" gibt und das eigene „Ich“ oder „mein" bloß eine leere Grenze darstellt, muss man nicht mehr „Das ist meine Erlösung.“ sagen, denn man kann einfach sagen: „Das ist die Erlösung.“

Also, bei der äußersten logischen Grenze des Solipsismus gibt es kein „Ich" mehr. Wenn es kein „Ich" gibt, verschwindet auch die Möglichkeit, dass alles bloß im eigenen Kopfe des Solipsisten passiert. Die Welt bleibt lediglich ganz genau wie sie erscheint, und wie sie existiert. Der reine Solipsismus und der reine Realismus gleichen sich hier, in der engsten Beziehung möglich.

I don't know much about him and all I know about him is from clips on the internet and according to my brother he makes great music. The limited clips I've seen of him kinda give me a solipsist vibe, I don't know how to explain it.