The Outsider

I began to feel a strange uneasiness, as though I had forgotten something. And suddenly I remembered that I had forgotten to remember myself.’ (Ouspensky: In Search of the Miraculous, p. 120.)

Nietzsche himself began as an other-worlder, agreeing with Schopenhauer that ‘Life is a sorry affair’, and that the best way to spend it is in reflecting on it. We began this study of the Outsider with a man who spent his evenings looking through a hole in his wall and ‘reflecting’ on what he saw.

This is penetrating commentary; but then, it is only a reversal of Hesse’s statement that every man has a residue of unfulfilment at the bottom of him: boredom, unfulfilment, they amount to the same thing.
They do not know themselves. They live in prison. How can an individual hope to escape the general destiny of futility?

‘Not to be born is the best thing, and death is better than life’

The greatest heights of self-expression—in poetry, music, painting—are achieved by men who are supremely alone.

it lies in his position as an intellectual Outsider, a man who thinks too much to enjoy living

It is possible that nothing important or real has yet been seen or known or said? Is it possible that mankind has had thousands of years in which to observe, reflect, record, and allowed these millennia to slip by like the recess interval at school in which one eats a sandwich and an apple?
Yes, it is possible.
Is it possible that, despite our discoveries and progress…we still remain on the surface of life?…
Yes, it is possible.
Is it possible that the whole history of the world has been misunderstood?…
Yes, it is possible.
Is it possible that these people know with perfect accuracy a past that has never existed? Is it possible that all the realities are nothing to them, that their life runs on, unconnected with anything, like a watch in an empty room?
Yes, it is possible…
But if all this is possible—if it has even no more than a semblance of possibility—then surely…something must be done. The first-comer…must begin to do some of the neglected things…there is no one else at hand.28

I must live alone, alone with my fatal thought that had exiled me

He is always intensely aware of his physical being. Now compare with Lawrence and Van Gogh; Lawrence’s problem is that ‘he is never alive in what he does’, he never feels what he thinks. He could write: ‘I am insight through mind, not through feeling.’ Van Gogh could write: ‘I am insight through feeling, not through mind.’ It is Nijinsky who can say: ‘I am insight through flesh, not through either mind or feeling.’

I love life and I want to live, to cry but cannot—I feel such a pain in my soul—a pain which frightens me. My soul is ill. My soul, not my mind. The doctors do not understand my illness…Everybody who reads these lines will suffer…My body is not ill, it is my soul that is ill.35