"You are a god and never have I heard
anything more divine!" "You are a god and never have I heard
anything more divine!""The greatest weight -- What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This Life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable time more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everthing unutterable small or great in your life will have to 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 upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!' Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.' If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, 'Do you desire this once more and inumberable times more?' would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?" (#341) [from The Gay Science, by Friedrich Nietzsche]
To someone who is used to imagining that the suffering we experience in this life will somehow be made up for in the next, the notion that our life in this world constitutes the whole of our existence is extremely repugnant. Indeed, when one is disabused of that hope, life may become unbearable. To suggest, in addition, that not only does our life in this world constitute the whole of our existence, but that we are destined to live this life over and over again for eternity, is, indeed, to lay upon someone "The Greatest Weight." Having removed from considerations of value any imagined "afterlife," the highest good may now be sought only within the horizon of our existence in this world. This life must be construed as an end in itself. In despair, we might be tempted to commit suicide--or at least to look forward to the end, finding comfort in the notion that it will all be over soon enough, in any case, at which point we can "rest in peace." The thought of eternal recurrence, however, denies us even that consolation. There is no escape! Such a thought, at first nauseating, contains within itself the seeds of moral transformation. The despair implicit in all "otherworldly" hopes becomes explicit as one attempts to will the eternal recurrence. No longer seduced by "threats of hell and hopes of paradise," we are forced to come to terms with the reality of our own existence. To continue to despair would be, indeed, to sentence ouselves to eternal torment. To begin to say "Yes," on the other hand, is to begin to overcome the spirit of revenge. And overcoming the spirit of revenge is the bridge to our highest hopes!