Nietzsche, Steiner, and Jung: attitudes to the One

Essay #1 Analytical Psychology and Eastern Mysticism
Mike King
30/11/94

Contents

Abstract	1
The One in mysticism	1
The lives and work of Nietzsche, Steiner, and Jung	3
Nietzsche	3
Steiner	12
Jung	15
Commonalities - their Relation to Nature	18
The Project of the Mystics	22
The Projects of Nietzsche, Steiner and Jung	23
Nietzsche	23
Steiner	23
Jung	24
Conclusions	24
References and Notes	26
Appendix A - The Annotated Sermons ..............................................................................28

Nietzsche, Steiner, and Jung: attitudes to the One
Abstract
Nietzsche, Steiner, and Jung are not generally considered mystics of the first rank, as are their approximate contemporaries, Ramakrishna, Ramana Maharshi, and Krishnamurti. However the projects that the former engaged in throughout their lives have religious, spiritual, and mystical overtones, and one can ask the question: were they (in various degrees) on the mystical path, or were they engaged in some other task, perhaps even diametrically opposed to the mystic endeavour? In order to focus this debate the concept of the One in the mystical path will be explored, and the relationship of Nietzsche, Steiner, and Jung evaluated with respect to it.
The One in mysticism
In the study of mysticism considerable attention has been paid to the seeming diversity of accounts and experience of the mystics, with the perennialists proposing a central 'core' experience from which different accounts derive because of personal and cultural contexts and the contextualists who propose that there is no 'core' experience, and that all experience arises from the context. This paper will follow a middle path, assuming that there is a core experience, which moreover can be characterised as some encounter with the One, but that expressions of it are not so much culturally mediated but fall broadly into only two categories determined by the (mostly) culturally-independent orientation of the individual: descriptions of the One mediated through love, and descriptions of the One mediated through awareness. This is to say that the experience of the mystic is of some kind of unity, but reached through two different orientations (heart orientation or head orientation); the inner representation of the experience by the individual flavoured either by love or awareness, and the final oral or written report presented in a language that will be more or less culturally dependent. Thus the final accounts are very diverse: a head-oriented mystic may have to express their experience in the language of a heart-oriented religion, for example Dionysius the Areopagite and the author of the Cloud of Unknowing are clearly head-oriented (or on the via negativa), but have to use the language of Christianity which is love-oriented and theistic. The theistic mystics (or heart-oriented mystics or devotional mystics) in Christianity, such as Richard Rolle and Teresa of Avila, don't have a much easier time because their love-mysticism goes too far for the language of their religious tradition. 
It is important to expand a little on the theme of head- and heart-orientation, as it may appear at first glance too crass a distinction to be useful. It is not intended here to carry any value-judgement: neither orientation is 'better' than the other. Nor is it intended here to imply that a heart-oriented person is over-emotional, or incapable of rational thought or logical exposition, or the appreciation of things intellectual. Nor is a head-oriented person devoid of feeling, love, or compassion. It is more a question of balance: one characteristic is stronger in one individual than another, and tends to dictate their first response to situations. The idea relates to Gurdjieff's 'three brains', and his three paths: the path of the fakir (corresponding to the body 'brain'), the path of the monk (corresponding to the heart 'brain'), and the path of the yogi (corresponding to the head 'brain'). Gurdjieff's work was to bring these three parts of the human being into harmony, that is to restore to each part its correct functioning. His teachings also involved the concept of the Fourth Way, as a synthesis of the three existing ways. I disagree with him in this: firstly I don't believe that the path of the fakir is a path in its own right, and that a fakir must, to be successful, adopt one of the other two ways. Secondly, I believe that the head/heart distinction is so universal that it is pointless for a head-oriented person to attempt a heart-oriented path or vice versa, and hence a synthesis of ways is not possible, at least not in the early stages. What is clear from some mystics is that at the end of their journey the distinction may disappear. Gurdjieff is also right in attempting to balance out body, head, and heart, where the imbalance is pathological. The picture may also be confused by mystics or others who attempt an over-correction, but we are left with so many clear examples of the two orientations that it seems absurd not to work with the distinction. The Buddha was head-oriented, Christ heart-oriented. Ramana Maharshi was head-oriented, Ramakrishna heart-oriented. Krishnamurti was head-oriented, Mother Mira heart-oriented. I would suggest, (to take some examples) that many of the mistakes that Otto and Zaehner make are because they do not understand the head-oriented mystic, and many of the mistakes that Bharati makes are because he does not understand the heart-oriented mystic.
Nature mystics, such as Walt Whitman and Richard Jefferies, may represent a third type of orientation; these spurn existing religious language and invent their own, which places them on the fringes of religious discourse. It may be that nature mystics on closer examination can also be divided into those with a head orientation and those with a love orientation. Whitman's attitude to nature, and in particular, to people, is that of love, while Jefferies remains detached from his fellow-men, and separate from nature. That Whitman writes poetry (and even calls them songs) confirms his heart-orientation: Jefferies writes prose. That God is absent from Whitman's poems in no way makes him less heart-oriented than the same absence in Jefferies' prose proves him head-oriented. The evidence for their orientation comes from the warmth and coolness respectively of their work, and would need much more space to explore properly. It is just worth mentioning in passing that few Western commentators on mysticism have taken Whitman's mystical credentials seriously, the exception being Bucke (who is in turn not taken seriously, partly because of his claims for Whitman) and Dorothy Mercer. Two scholars of Indian extraction have however produced detailed and convincing studies of the parallels between Leaves of Grass and Advaita Vedantism: V.K.Chari and V.Sachitanandan. 
Indian mystics, because of the richness and variety of their inheritance, may find it easier to use the ready-made language of either the devotional or non-devotional path, and someone like the devotional Ramakrishna will continuously debate 'God without form or God with form' as an object of worship. Ramana Maharshi, an 'awareness' type couches his experience in the language of 'seeing who you are'. Krishnamurti, perhaps suffering from the over-abundance of religious language and metaphor of his tradition (and also from the extremes of his training) dumped it totally, and presented a non-devotional system that looks more as if it came from the cognitive sciences.
To sum up: the perennialist view will be taken in this essay that the experience itself is 'core', or a priori, but that the varieties of expression of the mystical experience may arise more from the orientation of the individual than from their culture. The core experience is some way or other of the One, which may express itself (for the heart-oriented) as God, or for the awareness-oriented as the Void, or Nirvana, or of Wholeness. To introduce a useful shorthand, the terms panenhenic, monistic, and theistic mysticism will be used to describe nature-mysticism, awareness-mysticism, and love-mysticism respectively. These terms derive from Zaehner, but will be used on equal footings, rather than with his connotations of sacred and profane, with the resulting value implications. In examining the question of whether Nietzsche, Steiner, and Jung are engaged in projects that have a mystical endeavour, their concern with the One will be examined. The orientation of each will be examined, not just in terms of the panenhenic / monist / theist distinction, but also from the point of view of humility. The term humility here will be used to suggest, not a conventionally 'humble' ego (as we can find many great mystics who seem to be anything but humble in this sense, Gurdjieff for example), but an orientation to the One of receptiveness. This humbleness is that of making oneself available, for example a Richard Rolle or Rumi will express this through sighs of longing for the 'Beloved'; a Zen or Yoga adherent may force themselves to sit in great discomfort for hours on end for the slightest glimpse of the void; while a Richard Jefferies will tramp for hours around his beloved Wiltshire to refresh his soul-longings. We have refined our original question a little now: what characterises the orientation of Nietzsche, Steiner, and Jung towards the One, and to what extent are they receptive towards it?
The lives and work of Nietzsche, Steiner, and Jung
In their different ways all three men have had a profound impact on Western thought this century, though in the case of Steiner one could argue that his influence is more of an undercurrent. Nietzsche's pronouncement that 'God is dead' may have only captured the middle-European mood of the middle-to-late 19th Century, but the more general impact of his works, and particular his model of the 'Superman' have left an indelible mark, though perhaps less so in the United States where the mood was more expansive and optimistic, and perhaps dictated by those who had left behind a peculiarly European contraction of the soul. Steiner's work could never achieve the wider reading that Nietzsche attracted, because of the 'occultist' tag to it, but his influence probably has touched more lives directly, through his pedagogy, his bio-dynamic farming, his art and architecture, and through the surviving Steiner industries. Jung's work, though not quite in the household-name-category of Freud, is widely known for his theory of the collective unconscious and the archetypes, and has touched many directly through his psychoanalytical therapy.
The three men have some important characteristics in common. They came from humble middle-European backgrounds, with religious influences on them, either directly from their fathers (Nietzsche and Jung) or from those close to the family (Steiner). They stood out as academically brilliant from an early age (though not necessarily in a conventional sense), and read voraciously in philosophy, literature, and the sciences of their times. All were influenced by Goethe (whose shaping of the middle-European soul is evident in them). All were loners, in the sense of having a profound inner life which they found hard to share, though Nietzsche stands out as suffering most from loneliness.

Nietzsche 
Nietzsche was born in 1844 as the son of a Protestant pastor. His father died of a brain disease when the boy Nietzsche was young, and so he grew up mainly in the company of women. He was unusually intelligent, and gained a scholarship to Schulpforta (one of the best schools in the country) in 1858 at the age of 14, where he was mostly first in the class. He was often ill as a boy, and had a conspicuous stare, often with a wild or threatening look. He was very serious however, and nicknamed 'the little pastor' because of his religious interests, but his passion was for books and writing: he wrote an autobiography at the age of 14 and named it after Goethe's autobiography (who was to remain one of his heroes). He also liked to play war-games with toy soldiers, and would invent games with his sister and childhood friends, taking a dominant role in these. He went on to University to study theology in his father's footsteps, in 1864, and attempted to enter the usual social life of students in those days including the joining of an undergraduate fraternity. He persisted in spite of a lack of natural gregariousness, and apparently even visited a brothel with his fraternarians, though he confined himself to playing the piano which he discovered there to his great relief. His physical and mental deterioration in later life may have been partly due to syphilis, so a return visit to the brothel may have taken place with less piano-playing. Theology did not satisfy him however, so he changed to philology at which he excelled, and transferred to Leipzig under the tutelage of Professor Ritschl. He founded the Leipzig Philological Society and contributed a paper to it, which impressed Ritschl. Despite his brilliance at philology, he began to take more of an interest in philosophy, and read Schopenhauer, who was an important early influence, but whom Nietzsche never met. In 1867 he entered the army, but after serving for a few months he fell of his horse, broke his ribs, and suffered an infection that probably also weakened his health in later life. Nietzsche met Wagner, whose music impressed him greatly, and entered a period of orbiting this great man, writing to him and about him, and spending time with him and his mistress Cosima. In 1869, at the age of 24, Nietzsche was appointed to the chair of classical philology at Basel, and received an honorary doctorate for his writings in philology. He was noted for being a good and kind teacher to his students, who may have appreciated him also for being closer to their age than most of their lecturers. He even received a raise for excellence in teaching.
In 1870, France and Prussia went to war, and Nietzsche enlisted as a medical orderly. This was quite voluntary, as he had given up his Prussian citizenship in order to work uninterrupted at Basel, an act that left him officially stateless up to his death. The human carnage of both French and German soldiers challenged his patriotism, and had a great impact on him, turning him to philosophy for consolation. He soon became ill himself, with dysentery and diptheria, and he was discharged to recuperate at home. It may have been this experience that made him a critic of both militarism and statism.
In his teaching years at Basel he continued his friendship with Wagner. Wagner was enthusiastic about one of Nietzsche's early books The Birth of Tragedy, but the friendship eventually waned, as Nietzsche considered that Wagner had 'sold out' to the German public. Nietzsche grew impatient with philology and began to consider that philosophy was more important to him, but the University refused to let him transfer. In 1876 Nietzsche's health deteriorated to the point that he had to give up teaching, and from then on he lived on the tiny University pension he received, publishing his works at his own expense.
In 1881 he started on Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but his health worsened and only a few works follow this (which he reckoned to be his finest achievement) before his complete breakdown by 1890. In 1888 the first signs of madness appeared, and in his very last letter dated 6th January 1889 he begins: 'Dear Professor, in the end I would have much preferred being a  Basle professor to being God. But I did not dare to carry my private egoism so far that for its sake I should omit the creation of the world ...' He caused a public commotion soon after this letter by throwing his arms around an old cart-horse whose misery aroused in him such pity that he was overcome. Pity was one of the emotions he railed against endlessly in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
 He was nursed, first by his mother, and then by his sister, up to his death in 1900. In the last twelve years of his life he was considered insane, and was unable to converse or even dress himself.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra was written in short periods and in unusual circumstances. According to his notes on the subject in Ecce Homo, it was in August 1881, while walking in the woods by lake Silvaplana that the concept of eternal recurrence (a redemption of the past based on affirmation) came to him, and which forms a theme in the book. Nietzsche lived in a quiet bay of Rapallo, not far from Genoa, and spent his mornings, health permitting, walking in the woods up in the hills above, and in the afternoons in walking around the bay. The concept of Zarathustra grew on him in this period, or crept up on him, as he says. He considers that the book came from him almost as an act of revelation:

- Has anyone at the end of the nineteenth century a distinct conception of what poets of strong ages called inspiration? If not, I will describe it. - If one had the slightest residue of superstition left in one, one would hardly be able to set aside the idea that one is merely incarnation, merely mouthpiece, merely medium of overwhelming forces. The concept of revelation, in the sense that something suddenly, with an unspeakable certainty and subtlety, becomes visible, audible, something that shakes and overturns one to the depths, simply describes the fact. One hears, one does not seek; one takes, one does not ask who gives; a thought flashes up like lightening, with necessity, unfalteringly formed - I have never had any choice. An ecstasy whose tremendous tension somehow discharges itself in a flood of tears, while one's steps now involuntarily rush along, now involuntarily lag; a complete being outside of oneself with the distinct consciousness of a multitude of subtle shudders and trickles down to one's toes; a depth of happiness in which the most painful and gloomy things appear, not as an antithesis, but as conditioned, demanded, as a necessary colour within such a superfluity of light; an instinct for rhythmical relationships which spans forms of wide extent - length, the need for a wide-spanned rhythm is almost the measure of the force of inspiration, a kind of compensation for its pressure and tension ... Everything is in the highest degree involuntary but takes place as in a tempest of a feeling of freedom, of absoluteness, of power, of divinity ... The involuntary nature of image, of metaphor is the most remarkable thing of all; one no longer has any idea what is image, what metaphor, everything presents itself as the readiest, the truest, the simplest means of expression. It really does seem, to allude to a saying of Zarathustra's, as if the things themselves approached and offered themselves as metaphors (- 'here all things come caressingly to your discourse and flatter you: for they want to ride upon your back. Upon every image you here ride to every truth. Here the words and word-chests of all existence spring open to you; all existence here want to become words, all becoming here wants to learn speech from you -'). This is my experience of inspiration; I do not doubt that one has to go back thousands of years to find anyone who could say to me 'it is mine also'. 

Nietzsche's insights alone might make Zarathustra a book of wisdom, but there is also an expansivity and inspiration in it. There are many ecstatic passages scattered throughout the book, of which parts of the 'Night Song' are good examples:

It is night: now do all leaping fountains speak louder. And my soul too is a leaping fountain.
It is night: only now do all songs of lovers awaken. And my soul too is the song of a lover.
Something unquenched, unquenchable, is in me, that wants to speak out. A craving for love is in me, that itself speaks the language of love.
Light am I: ah, that I were night! But this is my solitude that I am girded round with light.
Ah, that I were dark and obscure! How I would suck the breasts of  light!
And I should bless you, sparkling stars and glow-worms above! - and be happy in our gifts of light.
But I live in my own light, I drink back into myself the flames that break from me.

We gather that Nietzsche himself was moved by the 'Night Song', because in 1884, when he gave a copy of Zarathustra to Resa von Schirnhofer (one of his female companions of the time) he immediately asked her to read it out to him, upon which he was left silent and emotional for some time. In another passage Zarathustra looks beyond the stars:

'You, however, O Zarathustra, have wanted to behold the ground of things and their background: so you must climb above yourself - up and beyond, until you have even the stars under you!'
Yes! to look down upon myself and even upon the stars: that alone would I call my summit, that has remained for me as my ultimate summit!

Compare this with a passage by Jefferies from The Story of My Heart:

I now became lost, and absorbed into the being or existence of the universe. I felt deep down into the earth under, and high above into the sky, and farther still to the sun and stars. Still farther beyond the stars into the hollow of space, and losing thus my separateness of being come to seem like a part of the whole.

Jefferies uses the same imagery of going beyond the stars, but seems to have already achieved Zarathustra's ultimate summit. Another lyrical passage in Zarathustra reminds one of Jefferies:

O sky above me! O pure, deep sky! You abyss of light! Gazing into you I tremble with divine desires.
To cast myself into your height - that is my depth! To hide myself in you purity - that is my innnocence!
The god is veiled by his beauty: thus you hide your stars. You do not speak: thus you proclaim to me your wisdom.
						(Before Sunrise)

Jefferies also loves the sky:

Then I addressed the sun, desiring the soul equivalent of his light and brilliance, his endurance and unwearied race. I turned to the blue heaven over, gazing into its depth, inhaling its exquisite colour and sweetness. The rich blue of the unattainable flower of the sky drew my soul towards its, and there it rested, for pure colour is rest of heart.

The whole of 'Before Sunrise' is of a mystical flavour, and would not compare badly with passages from Whitman or the Gita. The last section of Part Three is similarly buoyant: here is the seventh and last part of it:

If ever I spread out a still sky above myself and flew with my own wings into my own sky:
if, playing, I have swum into deep light-distances and bird-wisdom came to my freedom:
but thus speaks bird-wisdom: 'Behold, there is no above, no below! Fling yourself about, out, back, weightless bird! Sing! speak no more!
'are not all words made for the heavy? do not all words lie to the light? Sing! speak no more!'
Oh how should I not lust for eternity and for the wedding ring of rings - the Ring of Recurrence!
Never yet did I find the woman by whom I wanted children, unless it be this woman, whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!
For I love you, O Eternity!
					('The Seven Seals', part 7)

It is worth remembering that these would have been the last words in Zarathustra, had Nietzsche not chosen to add Part Four the following year. Zarathustra is not however a book of light alone, there is much darkness in it, and in Part Four we see the unmistakable signs of Nietzsche's impending breakdown.
There are many passages in Zarathustra that suggest, at least on the surface of it, that Nietzsche is expressing some fundamental insights into the nature of man's existence. We may accept that Nietzsche had a contempt for the mediocre - so did Krishnamurti for example; however, it is crucial in considering Nietzsche's reality that we have a clear idea of his feelings for others, and we cannot overlook his consistent and monumental expressions of contempt. Let us look at some examples of his intolerance:

Much about your good people moves me to disgust, and it is not their evil I mean. How I wish they possessed a madness through which they could perish, like this pale criminal.
					('Of the Pale Criminal')

There are preachers of death: and the earth is full of those to whom departure from life must be preached.
The earth is full of the superfluous, life has been corrupted by the many-too-many. Let them be lured by 'eternal life' out of this life!
					('Of the Preachers of Death')

Many too many are born: the state was invented for the superfluous!
Just see how it lures them, the many-too-many! How it devours them, and chews them, and re-chews them! 
...
Just look at these superfluous people! They steal for themselves the works of inventors and the treasures of the wise: they call their theft culture - and they turn everything to sickness and calamity.
Just look at these superfluous people! They are always ill, they vomit their bile and call it a newspaper. They devour one another and cannot even digest themselves.
Just look at these superfluous people! They acquire wealth and make themselves poorer with it. They desire power and especially the lever of power, plenty of money - these impotent people!
See them clamber, these nimble apes! They clamber over one another and so scuffle into the mud and the abyss.
					('Of the New Idol')

Flee, my friend, into your solitude: I see you stung by poisonous flies. Flee to where the raw, rough breeze blows!
Flee into your solitude! You have lived too near the small and pitiable men. Flee from their hidden vengeance! Towards you they are nothing but vengeance.
No longer lift your arm against them! They are innumerable and it is not your fate to be a fly-swat.
Innumerable are these small and pitiable men; and raindrops and weeds have already brought about the destruction of many a proud building.
[and so on for a while ...]
Your neighbours will always be poisonous flies: that about you which is great, that itself must make them more poisonous and ever more fly-like.
Flee, my friend, into your solitude and to where the raw, rough breeze blows! It is not your fate to be a fly-swat.
					('Of the Flies of the Market-Place')

But that which the many-too-many , the superfluous, call marriage - ah, what shall I call it?
Ah, this poverty of soul in partnership! Ah, this filth of soul in partnership! Ah, this miserable ease in partnership!
All this they call marriage; and they say their marriages are made in Heaven.
Well, I do not like it, this Heaven of the superfluous! 
					('Of Marriage and Children')

Alas! They are always few whose heart possesses a long-enduring courage and wantonness; and in such the spirit, too, is patient. The remainder, however, are cowardly.
The remainder: that is always the majority, the common-place, the superfluity, the many-too-many - all these are cowardly!
					('Of the Apostates')

These selections make for depressing reading, and there are many more. They are of course scattered throughout the text, and have a different effect because of it: they tend to cancel out the ecstatic or otherwise benign sense of the sections they are found in. Nietzsche is so graceless in his despising of the common people that we are ashamed for him. Even worse is his attitude to women: as an admirer of Schopenhauer we may not expect him to rise above the attitudes of his time (any more than Jung did in this respect), but the following passages show that he did not just learn well from his teacher, but added his own measure of bile:

Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer than into the dreams of a lustful woman?	('Of Chastity')

In woman, a slave and a tyrant have all too long been concealed. For that reason, woman is not yet capable of friendship: she knows only love.
In a woman's love is injustice and blindness towards all she does not love. And in the enlightened love of a woman, too, there is still the unexpected attack and lightning and night, along with the night. [and may this continue!]
Woman is not yet capable of friendship: women are still cats and birds. Or at best, cows.
Woman is not yet capable of friendship. But tell me, you men, which of you is yet capable of friendship?	('Of the Friend')

Man should be trained for war and woman for the recreation of warriors: all else is folly.
...
The man's happiness is: I will. The woman's happiness is: He will.
'Behold, now the world has become perfect!' - thus thinks every woman when she obeys with all her love.
And woman has to obey and find a depth for her surface. Woman's nature is surface, a changeable, stormy film upon shallow waters.
But a man's nature is deep, its torrent roars in subterranean caves: woman senses its power but does not comprehend it.
...
'Give me your little truth, woman!' I said. And thus spoke the little old woman:
'Are you visiting women? Do not forget your whip!'
					('Of Old and Young Women')

The 'whip' passage is possibly the most famous in Zarathustra and should really be forgotten, but it is not an isolated comment as we see, and is part of our picture of his views on women. It should be noted that Nietzsche does not even have the courage to put the words into Zarathustra's mouth: they are spoken by a woman, and an old woman perhaps to lend authority to them. Nietzsche slips up though: he follows the whip statement with the usual 'Thus spoke Zarathustra', which he leaves out in other sections where another person is the last to speak. Interestingly women who knew him have defended this statement in a variety of ways, in particular his sister. But if women are cows at best, why not use a whip?
As the book progresses there are a growing number of contradictions, and of course the continuing antipathy to the ordinary person, and women. Zarathustra is maturing however in himself and in his teachings, so can we not accept these blemishes, blemishes that make him possibly endearing to us? The life-affirming nature of his teachings do seem to grow, to the point where he even accepts the idiocy of the Higher Men's ass-worship in a good-humoured and friendly way. Perhaps all the faults can be redeemed in the finale of the book, perhaps Zarathustra finally reveals the depth of his wisdom, that would cause kings, popes, philosophers and poets to revere him. Perhaps all the contradictions and disparagements are to be resolved. What actually happens then, at the end of the book, that could redeem Zarathustra as a true seer, and the founder of a new vision? What actually happens is that the Higher Men are 'healed' by Zarathustra's wisdom (or the fresh air in the mountains, we are not sure): they become convalescents, and their first act as Zarathustra's disciples of the affirmation of life is to invent a new ritual: the Ass festival. Zarathustra takes it in his stride - this must mean that the real teaching is about to come. Not a bit of it: they eat, drink and make merry, and the following morning when Zarathustra gets up before his guests he walks out to a rock, and is flocked about by gentle birds, and in the midst of this confusion, he finds himself stroking a lion.

But, as he was clutching about, above and underneath himself, warding off the tender birds, behold, then something even stranger occurred: for in doing so he clutched unawares a thick, warm mane of hair; at the same time, however, a roar rang out in front of him - the gentle, protracted roar of a lion.
'The sign has come,' said Zarathustra, and his heart was transformed. And in truth, when it grew clear before him, there lay at his feet a sallow, powerful animal that lovingly pressed its head against his knee and would not leave him, behaving like a dog that has found his master again. The doves, however, were no less eager than the lion with their love; and every time a dove glided across the lion's nose, the lion shook its head and wondered and laughed.
					('The Sign')

The Higher Men then get up to offer Zarathustra their greetings; surely now Zarathustra will enlighten us and them from the depth of his wisdom, that the lion must be a symbol of? Not a bit of it. The lion roars at them and they conveniently disappear, leaving Zarathustra alone to comment that his pity for them had had its day and now it was time to get on with his work, about which he enlightens us no further. The fact is that the finale to Zarathustra is a childish nonsense posing as wisdom. The lion is the last straw: for it to behave like a fawning dog would be a betrayal of its nature fit only for a circus, and a betrayal of the reality which the mystic is the sober inhabitant of. The lion here is no sign of Zarathustra's wisdom or 'voice of command' that he mourns the lack of earlier in the book, but a teddy-bear, a comforter and protector, a mummy. Zarathustra has returned full-circle to childhood. And in Nietzsche's case the return to childhood was an entry into madness, with the added poignancy that his mother was to nurse him in the early stages of it. 
The episode of the tight-rope walker at the beginning of Zarathustra is a symbol for Nietzsche's eventual madness: Nietzsche is the buffoon who jumps over the tight-rope walker, despite his own advice:

There are diverse paths and ways to overcoming: just look to it! But only a buffoon thinks: 'Man can also be jumped over.'
				('Of Old and New Law-Tables')

Nietzsche is the tight-rope walker who fell to his death. Nietzsche's best legacy is as destroyer of the false and hypocritical in his age, and previous ages. His rage against decadence is so profoundly expressed that he tears himself apart. He says:

O my brothers, am I then cruel? But I say: That which is falling should also be pushed!
Everything of today - it is falling, it is decaying: who would support it? But I - want to push it too!
				(Of Old and New Law-Tables)

Nietzsche is hurling all the decadence of his age of a cliff, and himself with it. His exposure of decadence is to do with honesty:

There have always been many sickly people among those who invent fables and long for God: they have a raging hate for the enlightened man and for that youngest of virtues which is called honesty.
				(Of the Afterworldsmen)

Why is honesty the youngest of virtues for Nietzsche? My guess is that it is a certain type of honesty that he is talking about, not the traditional honesty in financial matters, the distaste for lying, and the honouring of promises, but an honesty to oneself - the type of honesty that separates 20th century thought from the previous eras. This youngest of virtues became needed when man became false, and Nietzsche is one of the first prophets of this honesty, and partly for this reason is seen as the precursors of the existentialists. Perhaps Nietzsche sees it as the youngest of virtues because he cannot grasp it fully, existentially, in his own life; if he had, his writings would have amplified themselves in their meaning, and reduced in froth. 

Steiner
In his youth Steiner was so educationally advanced that it was said that he had a good understanding of descriptive geometry, probability calculus, and Kant's works by the age of seventeen; during his Polytechnic years he re-wrote Fichte's theory of knowledge, page by page; and at the age of 21 was editing Goethe's scientific works for publication.  However, this was the smaller part of Steiner's extraordinary inner life; he dwelled in a spirit world where from an early age 'he could follow the souls of the departed'. Up to his mid-thirties he found the material and scientific world in which he moved and studied less real than his spiritual life, and had to make great efforts even to memorise basic scientific data. His 'religious' experiences are those of the clairvoyant, in continuous contact with a world that most of us have no access to, and no reason to believe in. He seems to belong in the company of men like Swedenborg, and possibly Jacob Boehme. His stated life's work, to unite the spiritual and the scientific, is not that dissimilar to that of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, but took a profoundly different course. 
Steiner was born in 1861 in what was then part of Hungary, moving to an Austrian town where his father was station master and where Steiner spent a happy childhood. At the age of eight he moved across the border again, but went to school in Austria, leaving at the age of eighteen to attend the Polytechnic in Vienna where he read biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics. On graduating from the Polytechnic he was invited to help in the editing of the scientific writings of Goethe at the Goethe and Schiller archives in Weimar, Germany. This was a philological task, and one that proved tedious at times, though his conscientiousness soon led to his reputation as the leading expert in Goethe's scientific writings. Steiner missed Vienna, however, and felt that the seven years he spent in Weimar on the Goethe archives to be almost an exile. The period did lead to the publication of nearly a hundred articles, and also led to a meeting with Nietzsche which had a great impact on the young Steiner. The following passage tells us something about the meeting, and also about Steiner's spiritual outlook:

There on the lounge lay the one with benighted mind, with his beautiful forehead, artist's and thinker's forehead in one. It was early afternoon. Those eyes which, even in their dullness, yet worked with the permeating power of the soul, now merely mirrored a picture of the surroundings which could no longer find access to the mind. One stood there and Nietzsche knew it not at all. And yet it might have been supposed, from that countenance permeated by the spirit, that this was the expression of a mind which had all the forenoon long been shaping thoughts within, and which now would fain rest a while. An inner sense of shock which seized upon my soul was permitted to feel that it was transformed into understanding for the genius whose gaze was directed toward me yet failed to rest upon me. The passivity of this gaze, so long fixed, set free the comprehension in my own gaze, so that it could cause the soul force of the eye to work while it was not being met.
And so there appeared before my soul the soul of Nietzsche, as if hovering above his head, already boundless in its spiritual light, surrendered freely to spiritual worlds for which it had yearned before being benighted but had not found; but still chained to the body, which knew of the soul only so long as the world of spirit continued to be the object of yearning. Nietzsche's soul was still there, but only from without could it hold the body - that body which, so long as the soul remained within it, had offered resistance to the full unfolding of its light.
I had before this read the Nietzsche who had written; now I beheld the Nietzsche who bore within his body ideas drawn from widely extended spiritual regions - ideas still sparkling in their beauty even though they had lost on the way their primal illuminating powers. A soul which, from previous earth lives bore a wealth of the gold of light within it, but which could not in this life cause all its light to shine.

This passage, while interesting in its views on Nietzsche, is also illuminating of many of Steiner's concerns. Steiner was about 34 at that time, and shows, firstly, an extreme sensitivity to the 'absent' personality of Nietzsche. Secondly, his claims to 'see' Nietzsche's spirit, and also to have access to his previous incarnations, are typical of Steiner's occult gifts. Thirdly, the passage, to many, has a mystical overtone. I will return to this, but want to add in passing that the passage also conveys an impression of goodness - that Steiner is a good man. Those that argue that signs of the mystical experience must include a moral elevation, could point to the many indications of Steiner's high moral sense (which included for example the free provision of educational workshops to working men's associations) as possible confirmation of mystical status.
After his Wiemar period, Steiner found that the Theosophical Society, founded by Madame Blavatsky, and run by Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, was to become an outlet for his spiritual researches. He moved to Berlin, where Besant appointed him the secretary general of the German branch in 1901, but from the start he presented his talks as lecture in anthroposophy. In 1906 he found himself barred from the Theosophical Society because of their adoption of Krishnamurti as the second coming of Christ (and/or the Buddha Maitreia, the Buddha to come), which he rejected totally. He founded the Anthroposophical Society as an independent entity in order to promote his own teachings: an etymological move from a God-centred to a Man-centred organisation. It would not be fair to say that the promotion of Krishnamurti was Steiner's only reason for branching out on his own: he objected to much of the 'spiritualism' of the Theosophists (a distinction that would require more space than we have here to explore). However the following passage relating to Krishnamurti in his autobiography is significant:

But, from 1906 on, manifestations appeared in the [Theosophical] Society - upon whose general guidance I had not the least influence - reminiscent of the aberrations of spiritism, which made it necessary for me to warn members again and again that the part of the Society which was under my direction had absolutely nothing to do with these things. The climax in these manifestations was reached when the assertion was made about a Hindu boy that he was the person in whom Christ would appear in a new earthly life. For the propagation of this absurdity, a special society was formed within the Theosophical Society, that of the "Star of the East".

Johannes Hemleben, in his biography of Steiner, explains why the Steiner was against the adoption of Eastern spiritual practices, while acknowledging the profundity of the ancient wisdom of the Orient: 

However, he was convinced that there was nothing in the riches of the traditional wisdom of Asia that could give it the power to overcome the scientific materialism that sets the intellectual tone for the civilised world to-day. The power to do this resides in the mind of the West itself. The nameless 'Master' who had said: "Only he can overcome the dragon who can slip into the dragon's skin", pointed the way.
Modern science is not human development on the wrong track, as for instance the atomic physicist Jordan teaches, but the human intellect's road to Golgotha, by which through the spiritualization of this thinking man will achieve his resurrection and celebrate his Easter. 

This passage sums up many of the issues that comprise Steiner's project: firstly that materialism is the greatest threat to mankind, that science itself is the route to overcome it, through a spiritualisation of science, and that the mystery of Golgotha is the metaphor and drama for human progress. In fact Steiner makes the 'mystery of Golgotha' central to his teachings about the spiritual life, and to the state between death and rebirth, and to an understanding of the spiritual evolution of the individual, the solar system, and of the universe. Anthroposophy, despite its title, is a Christ-centred teaching, and Steiner is passionate that he must come again:

To speak fundamentally: we must find our way again to Christ. Christ must come again. This assumes that during the present century there will be men able to understand in what way Christ will announce His presence, in what guise He will appear. Otherwise terrible disturbances may be stirred up by people who, having in the subconscious depths of their being a premonition of this coming of Christ in the spirit, will represent it to others in a shockingly superficial way.

Steiner wanted to initiate his followers into a spiritual research, a form of investigation into the material universe to uncover the spirits ever-present in rocks, trees, animals, humans, planets, and stars; and to relate to the disembodied spirits or angels and the spirits of those between incarnations. He believed in progress, or evolution, but spiritual as opposed to a material one, and held that Christ was a central force (or archetype) in this evolution. From 1905 to 1925 the Anthroposophical Society revolved around his teachings and the implications of those teachings on art, science, community life, education, agriculture and industry. His teachings were also embodied in the extraordinary building called the Goetheanum, started in 1913 in Dornach, near Basel. The architecture and materials used in the building were unique, and its destruction by fire in 1922 was a huge loss to the movement, and to the world. The original structure was built largely of wood: its replacement (still standing today) was made of concrete. One of the principles behind Steiner's architecture was the softening of geometrical rectilinear design principles by the introduction of organic curvatures: these work on the souls of the inhabitant or onlooker to counter the deadening materialism of most modern buildings. Although the Goetheanum, the centre of what was now a world-wide organisation, was rebuilt, Steiner could not use it long, for he fell ill and died in 1925.
Jung
Jung was born in 1875 by lake Constance in Switzerland, studied medicine in Basel, and began his psychiatric practice in Zurich. In his autobiography Jung describes how his early inner experiences make him question his father's constricting adherence to religious dogma, and lead him to the kind of wider reading that we have seen with Nietzsche and Steiner. Jung was greatly impressed with Goethe's Faust, and also read Schopenhauer, going on to read Nietzsche, as well as all the philosophy and science he could lay his hands on. Jung shared Nietzsche's difficulties over the direction his life should take, but his eventual decision, as a medical student, to specialise in the then unrewarding field of psychiatric medicine, proved to be the right one: he spent his life in this field, and made extraordinary contributions to it.
Jung's inner life was as intense as Nietzsche's and Steiner's, and led him to a similar sense of isolation and occasional periods of acute loneliness. Nietzsche's experience greatly worried Jung as he started to read him, as he could identify with many of Nietzsche's struggles. Jung was a much more robust character however, and survived a period of intense trauma in his early thirties which formed the basis for much of his later theories. While Jung shared the ambivalences of Nietzsche, both in his early career difficulties, and in his psychological makeup, one has to say that Steiner seems to be without them. Steiner's complete and innocent certainty about his inner and outer worlds, while not making him either arrogant or uncaring, are wholly at odds with Jung's multifaceted, contradictory, and evolving personality. It is no coincidence that Memories, Dreams, Reflections ends with an ambivalent statement, or that Jung took little interest in Steiner. Jung mentions him in an article entitled Yoga and the West, as one who, along with Mme. Blavatsky, attempted to develop yoga into an organised religion. Jung goes on to explain why he is against the introduction of yoga to the West, blissfully unaware that Steiner was similarly outspoken against the adoption of Indian practices. In contrast, Jung devotes the theme of his seminars in the years from 1934 to 1939 to Thus Spoke Zarathustra, only breaking off because of the war. Steiner was lecturing throughout Europe when Jung was in his thirties and forties, and built his Goetheanum less than a hundred miles from Jung's home in Bollingen, Zurich. Strangely, Jung completed his equivalent (he called it his Tower, and intended it as a structure that would allow him to meditate on his interiority), shortly after the first Goetheanum burned down. There is little evidence that Jung read any of Steiner's voluminous publications, and he seemed to even lump Theosophy and Anthroposophy together. All this is quite consistent with Jung's world view however: he instinctively avoided religious teachers in the East, and so why should he make an exception in the West? Jung travelled to India in 1938, and makes these comments in Memories, Dreams, Reflections:

By that time I had read a great deal about Indian philosophy and religious history, and was deeply convinced of the value of Oriental wisdom. But I had to travel in order to form my own conclusions, and remained within myself like a homunculus in a retort. (p. 304)
I had searching talks with S. Subramanya Iyer, the guru of the Maharajah of Mysore, whose guest I was for some time; also with many others, ... On the other hand, I studiously avoided all so-called "holy men." I did so because I had to make do with my own truth, not accept from others what I could not attain on my own. (p. 305)

These extracts show an important aspect of Jung's character. In a positive light his unwillingness to expose himself to "holy men" can be read as a desire for authenticity, and a desire to be scientific in the sense of working only with data that he could test for himself. Amongst the "holy men" themselves one can find as many who avoided other "holy men" (both in their early and mature stages) as those who sought them out, so Jung's attitude is not of itself indicative of much. In a less positive light however, it could be read as a fear that Jung was not willing to confront. We need to look back to his accounts of early experience of the 'religious' to make more sense of this. As a child he developed an early distrust in the Jesus of his father's church, and an early interest in the Oriental. He had an intense inner life, and took an interest in nature. Dreams from his childhood presented him with images that he was absorbed with all his life. An important event in his inner life was an experience in his twelfth year: he was struck by the beauty of his local cathedral, but somehow it triggered a train of thought that he dare not complete. He wrestled against the emerging thought, for he sensed that it was blasphemous, and became almost ill with the struggle. He knew that to think it was wrong, because one should avoid evil, but on the other hand, why should nature or God urge him so strongly to complete this thought? What was God's will here? He finally decided that it must be God's will that he think it - that this was a test of his courage. The thought completes itself: God, enthroned high above his cathedral, lets drop an enormous turd that shatters it. The young Jung experiences a state of grace, and not the expected damnation and guilt, a formative experience for him. Jung learns from this that he is to follow his inner promptings, that Nature in the broadest sense of the term is to be trusted, while the authority of men and the Church is not.
Jung later goes on to identify the unconscious, and more precisely, the collective unconscious, as the source of all religious experience. The connotation of the term unconscious as being below the conscious mind is significant: for Jung the profound, religious, and transformative experiences come from below, and not from above. Thus, his religious and spiritual interests have their origin in the primitive, the archaic, and the mythological, and not in the transcendent, the downflow of grace, or the unitive. Jung prefers to speak about gods rather than God, and finds a parallel between the gods, and his archetypes, which are the 'messengers' from the collective unconscious. One can read too much into Jung's cathedral 'vision', but is the turd really an accident? In the place of grace from above we have a turd. Yet, it sets Jung free, and on a lifelong exploration that leads him to mythology, alchemy and Gnosis.
Looking again at his visit to India, Jung makes another revealing comment, in the context of his preoccupation with good and evil:

I saw that Indian spirituality contains as much of evil as of good. The Christian strives for good and succumbs to evil; the Indian feels himself to be outside good and evil, and seeks to realise this state by meditation or yoga. My objection is that, given such an attitude, neither good nor evil takes on any real outline, and this produces a certain statis. One does not really believe in evil, and one does not really believe in good. Good or evil are then regarded at most as my good or my evil, as whatever seems to me good or evil - which leaves us with the paradoxical statement that Indian spirituality lacks both evil and good, or is so burdened by contradictions that it needs nirdvandva, the liberation from opposites and from the ten thousand things.
The Indian's goal is not moral perfection, but the condition of nirdvandva. He wishes to free himself from nature; in keeping with this aim, he seeks in meditation the condition of imagelessness and emptiness. I, on the other hand, wish to persist in the state of lively contemplation of nature and of the psychic images. I want to be freed neither from human beings, nor from myself, nor from nature; for all these appear to me the greatest of miracles. Nature, the psyche, and life appear to me like divinity unfolded - and what more could I wish for? To me the supreme meaning of Being can consist only in the fact that it is, not that its is not or is no longer.
To me there is no liberation a tout prix. I cannot be liberated from anything I do not possess, have not done or experienced. Real liberation becomes possible for me only when I have done all that I was able to do, when I have completely devoted myself to a thing and participated in it to the utmost. If I withdraw from participation, I am virtually amputating the corresponding part of my psyche. (pp. 305 - 306, MDR).

This extract shows that Jung wishes to draw a line between East and West as surely as Steiner does. However, the East and West that Jung wishes to distinguish, has in fact nothing to do with the religion of India: all of Jung's above comments can only be addressed to Buddhist doctrine, or Buddhist-like doctrines in India. The comments are typical of anyone, Occidental or Oriental, who first confronts expressions of the zero-experience (to use Bharati's term), whether from the East or West, and who fails to grasp it. The two universal objections are raised: this takes me beyond good and evil, and it is an amputation. We will return to this later. In the meantime it is worth noting that Jung saw the Buddha as India's 'greatest light', finding little in Hunduism to match it, and commenting that  'in comparison, Islam seems to be a superior, more spiritual, and more advanced religion.'
Part of Jung's greatness was his continual reassessment of his position: right up to the time of his death he was prepared to look at things in new ways, though only within certain parameters it must be said. In his memoirs he makes much of a period of crisis in his early thirties, and the psychic material generated at that time as being the raw data on which he reflected and developed his theories over a lifetime. In 1916 Jung finds himself immersed in visions and dreams that threaten his sanity; he finds himself, ironically, dealing with the 'stuff' of mental illness, which up to then he had dealt with only in his patients. The crisis went on for several years, but, comparing himself to Nietzsche, he tells us that he 'did not succumb', and that his family and career circumstances were a stabilising factor. It is in his family home, with his family present in 1916, that he experiences a haunting which he eventually deals with by writing 'The Seven Sermons to the Dead'. This short tract is reminiscent of Thus Spoke Zarathustra on several counts: he puts words into a dead prophet's mouth, the prophet is unsure of his message and is harangued by his audience, and the ending has an emotional parallel. (See Appendix A - the annotated Sermons.) Although Jung later regretted the Sermons as a youthful indiscretion (though he was in his thirties at the time of writing them!) and one could argue that they are not typical of Jung, the Sermons do in fact give a clear picture of Jung's religious understandings. The explicit link to Gnosis is via the use of Basilides as the protagonist, but Jung's presentation of Gnostic elements such as the pleroma, Abraxas, and the opposites are his own and in keeping with the extracts I have quoted above. The most important elements in it are perhaps the attempt to explain nothingness, an attempt that fails firstly because of a too-logical approach, and secondly because of no direct experience of it. This is borne out by his attitude to nirvana, shown above. The other element is the instinct for polytheism, or the multiplication of religious entities. This is merely an expression of Jung's instinctive anti-theistic stance.

Commonalities - their Relation to Nature
We have dwelled on some of the commonalities between the three men: early religious influences, academically highly advanced from an early age, loners, profoundly influenced by Goethe, set apart from any religious tradition, deeply engaged in religious questions. One feature of their lives that we have not dwelled on up to now has been their interest in and sensitivity to Nature. This is pronounced in all three, though perhaps less immediately obvious in the case of Nietzsche, whose descriptions of nature are sketchy at best. The interest in nature relates to our attempts to determine their possible mystic orientation: it is clear that a panenhenic orientation may be discernible in each case.
Nietzsche echoes Whitman and Jefferies in praising the body; that they did this at a similar point in European history is no coincidence, as the Victorian morality and dread of the body's natural functions laid a dead hand over the imagination of the great thinkers of that period. We live in a time where the body is largely restored its natural place, or perhaps too greatly emphasised even, and may find it odd that these writers should lay so much stress on it. Let us look at some of Nietzsche's thoughts on the subject, as expressed through Zarathustra:

  Once the soul looked contemptuously upon the body: and then this contempt was the supreme good - the soul wanted the body lean, monstrous, famished. So the soul thought to escape from the body and from the earth.
  Oh, this soul was itself lean, monstrous, and famished: and cruelty was the delight of this soul!
  But tell me brothers: What does your body say about your soul? Is your soul not poverty and dirt and a miserable ease?
					('Zarathustra's Prologue')

  Listen rather, my brothers, to the voice of the healthy body, this is a pure voice and a more honest one.
  Purer and more honest of speech is the healthy body, perfect and square-built: and it speaks of the meaning of earth.
					('Of the Afterworldsmen')

  There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom.
					('Of the Despisers of the Body')

Nietzsche is emphatic about Nature as a whole, not just the body. He took a delight in nature as his long walks in the woods during the gestation of Zarathustra show. He would often take friend to the 'Zarathustra stone' a waterwashed boulder on the shore of Lake Silvaplana and wax lyrical in the beautiful surroundings on the origins of the book. There are not that many actual descriptions of nature in Zarathustra, but he spells out his views in this passage:

The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Superman shall be the meaning of the earth!
I entreat you, my brothers, remain true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of superterrestrial hopes! They are the poisoners, whether they know it or not. 
They are despisers of life, atrophying and self-poisoned men, of whom the earth is weary: so let them be gone!
Once the blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy, but God died, and thereupon these blasphemers died too. To blaspheme the earth is now the most dreadful offence, and to esteem the bowels of the Inscrutable more highly than the meaning of the earth.				(Prologue)

The modern ecologists could well take his slogan 'To blaspheme the earth is now the most dreadful offence', as prophetic.
Steiner was sensitive to nature in a conventional way, as this passage suggests:

The scenes amidst which I passed my childhood were marvellous. the prospect embraced the mountains linking Lower Austria with Styria: Schneeberg, Wechsel, Raxalpe, Semmering. the bald rockface of the Schneeberg caught the sun's rays, which, when they were projected onto the little station on fine summer days, were the first intimation of the dawn. The grey ridge of the 'Wechsel' made a sombre contrast.
The green prospects which welcomed the observer on every side made it seem as if the mountains were thrusting upwards of their own volition. The majestic peaks filled the distance, and the charm of nature lay all around.

In addition to this conventional appreciation Steiner had an occult appreciation of nature. This meant that he saw everything, from minerals and rocks, through plants and animals to humans, as possessing a spirit. In the following passage Steiner is explaining how in early times Man related to nature:

A man in those days had a feeling of intense sadness when looking at all that was most lovely in the sense-world. He looked at the flowers, springing out of the earth in their wonderful beauty, and watched the blossoms unfold. And he saw also how beneficent the flowers were for him. He saw the loveliness of the springs bubbling forth in shady places, and his senses spoke to him of their refreshing powers. But then, then, he said to himself: "It seems as though all this has fallen - fallen though sin from the world I bear within me and which I have brought down into physical existence out of the spiritual worlds." So the teachers in the Mysteries then had the task of explaining how in the flowers, in the rippling waters, in the woodland murmurings and the song of the nightingale - everywhere spirit is working and weaving, everywhere spiritual beings are to be found. They had to impart to men the great truth: What is living in you lives also outside in nature. For a man looked upon the external world with sorrow, with pain, at the very time when his sense were freshest and most responsive - a time when least of all the intellect spoke to him of natural laws, and he looked upon the outer world with primitive senses. The beauty of its sprouting and budding forced itself upon his sight, his hearing and other senses but all he felt was sorrow; for he was unable to reconcile it with the contents of his pre-natal existence, which still lived on in his soul. Thus it was incumbent upon the wise men of the Mysteries to point out how the divine-spiritual dwells in all things, even in those of the senses. It was the spirituality of nature that these teachers had to make clear.

This fragment of Steiner's teachings contains wonderful descriptions of nature, the statement of the spiritual in nature, and also the strange (to us) sense of sorrow that early man had in nature.
Jung was also sensitive to nature, with perhaps a glimpse of the spiritual that Steiner talks about. The following passage is typical of him:

And although I admired science in the conventional way, I also saw it giving rise to alienation and aberration from "God's Word," as leading to a degeneration which animals were not capable of. Animals were dear and faithful, unchanging and trustworthy. People I now distrusted more than ever.
Insects I did not regard as proper animals, and I took cold-blooded vertebrates to be a rather lowly intermediate stage on the way down to the insects. Creatures in this category were objects for observation and collection, curiosities merely, alien and extra-human; they were manifestations of impersonal life and more akin to plants than to human beings.
The earthly manifestations of "God's world" began with the realm of plants, as a kind of direct communication from it. It was as though one were peering over the shoulder of the Creator, who, thinking himself unobserved, was making toys and decorations. Man and the proper animals, on the other hand, were bits of God that had become independent. That was why they could move about on their own and choose their abodes. Plants were bound for good or ill to their places. They expressed not only the beauty  but also the thoughts of God's world, with no intent of their own and without deviation. Trees in particular were mysterious and seemed to me direct embodiments of the incomprehensible meaning of life. For that reason the woods were the place where I felt closest to its deepest meaning and to its awe-inspiring workings.
This impression was reinforced when I became acquainted with Gothic cathedrals. But there the infinity of the cosmos, the chaos of meaning and meaninglessness, of impersonal purpose and mechanical law, were wrapped in stone. This contained and at the same time was the bottomless mystery of being, the embodiment of spirit. What I dimly felt to be my kinship with stone was the divine nature in both, in the dead and the living matter.

This passage is interesting from many points of view. His descriptions of nature, and his attitudes to nature are sensitive, and also couched in the God-as-Creator terminology of his culture. He goes further than this where he sees animals and humans as 'bits of God'. While not exactly pantheistic, this outlook is consistent with the panenhenic. Despite his frequent use of the term 'God', Jung is more comfortable with gods, and in particular, with the archetypes, which can be seen as his reinvention of the gods. In fact, despite his professed belief in God (which he often equated with the unknowable aspect of the collective unconscious), it does not have anything of the flavour of the theistic mystic, as the following quote indicates:

The question then arises: What will become of Thee [God] and Me [Jung]? of the transcendental Thou and the Immanent I? The way of the unexpected opens, fearful and unavoidable, with hope of a propitious turn or a defiant 'I will not perish under the will of God unless I myself will it too.' Then only, I feel, is God's will made perfect. Without me it is only his almighty will, a frightful fatality even in its grace, void of sight and hearing, void of knowledge for precisely that reason.

Note that this passage (from a letter written by Jung in 1943) is quoted by Aniela Jaffe, in support of her contention that Jung is a mystic. Note also the equal capitalisation with Thee and Me: this is a clue to the tone of the passage, a tone that is a million miles from that of the theistic mystic. God's will alone is anathema to Jung.

The Project of the Mystics
Before attempting to characterise in more depth the projects of Nietzsche, Steiner and Jung, let us look briefly at the project of the mystics. At its simplest their project lies in two halves: first the attainment of the One (however we define this), and secondly the teaching of this attainment. For some, the two halves go hand in hand (that is they teach along the way), for others the first phase is noticeably absent (e.g. Krishna and Lao Tzu), and we can only assume that some mystics who attained the One remained silent, and therefore remained unknown to us.
We have indicated earlier that the orientations of the mystics can fruitfully be distinguished as monistic and theistic, and that a panenhenic orientation can also be observed, though possibly reducing eventually to either monistic or theistic. We have observed no obvious monistic or theistic mysticism in Nietzsche, Steiner, or Jung, but a possible panenhenic orientation. Attempting to go further, one can ask the question: is this a heart- or head-oriented? In each case we note little serious engagement with a God, or at least not a devotional engagement. In fact we are more likely to encounter gods than a God in each case (arguably a panenhenic symptom). In each case, therefore, we are left with a monistic panenhenic orientation, that is to say a type of head-oriented nature mysticism, if they are on the mystic path at all. According to my earlier discussion then, we would expect similarities with a man of the Richard Jefferies type.
One might object that Nietzsche and Steiner are more clearly head-oriented than Jung, who seems to project a warmer image. I would simply offer this quote to dispel the idea that Jung is heart-oriented (and remember that I do not intend the term head-orientation to mean lacking in warmth, love, and compassion):

I asked him [a Pueblo Indian] why he thought the whites were all mad.
"They say that they think with their heads," he replied.
"Why of course. What do you think with?" I asked him in surprise.
"We think here," he said, indicating his heart.
I fell into a long meditation. For the first time in my life, so it seemed to me, someone had drawn for me a picture of the real white man.

A heart-oriented person (white or otherwise) would not have asked the question that Jung asked in this passage, would not have been surprised at the answer, would not have needed to meditate on it, and would already have a picture of the white (head-oriented) man. (The whole subject of how educated Westerners have their heart-orientation stifled is fascinating but too big a subject to tackle here.)
Returning for now to the project of the mystics: if we leave out the teaching aspect, how can we further characterise it? Agehananda Bharati's views may be useful here. His definitions can be legitimately attacked for being framed in such a way as to make him, by his definitions, a mystic; on the other hand his definitions are useful because of his mystical experiences, and his encounters with mystics. The first part of his definition - a mystic is a person who says "I am a mystic", or words to that effect, consistently - is not that useful, and would rule out Whitman and Jefferies for a start. However, it could be usefully re-framed to indicate that a mystic will not usually make an attempt to deny that he is a mystic. We note that Jung consistently denied it. The second part of his definition is more useful: (the mystical experience) is the person's intuition of numerical oneness with the cosmic absolute, with the universal matrix, or with any essence stipulated by the various theological and speculative systems of the world. He goes on to say that this alone is the mystical effort and that the mystic pursues it as his overwhelmingly central avocation. Elsewhere in the book he reinforces this idea by quoting mystic's behaviour as obsessively focused on this goal, to the extent of having little small-talk, and even of discouraging the curious with rudeness and stone-throwing.
The Projects of Nietzsche, Steiner and Jung
Nietzsche 
We have seen that in the course of Nietzsche's life he struggled with his direction: firstly as pastor, secondly as philologist, and lastly as philosopher. Bertrand Russell classes Nietzsche as a literary philosopher: I would go farther and say that in fact his project in the end was artistic (though expressed in a literary way) and not philosophical at all. Nietzsche's contributions to philosophy are not that interesting or influential (in an academic sense), but his greatest work, Zarathustra, is a work of art, and one that derives from a fevered and doomed imagination at that, and highly influential on mid-European artists and intellectuals. If we take the thrust of his earliest work The Birth of Tragedy seriously, then we can see the persona of Zarathustra as the music-making Socrates, and to even see Thus Spoke Zarathustra, as having a common ground with music making. We cannot ignore the aphoristic nature of Nietzsche's project, or its prophetic pretensions, but where the work succeeds is as art.
Given this interpretation of Nietzsche's project, how close does it come (if at all) to the mystical project? Are there elements in his pastoral, philological, philosophical, and, finally, literary (musical) works that can be described as mystical? Is the poetry and wide sweep of inspired language, symbol, and metaphor in Zarathustra arising from a mystical impulse? The gestation of the work, on the shores of Lake Silvaplana, suggest that he had some kind of mystical experience there, and indeed that the music of the work may have its roots in the mystical. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh chose to interprets Zarathustra in a mystical way, making it the subject of a lecture series, and ignoring the negative aspects. This is in keeping with robust style of Rajneesh (modelled in part on Gurdjieff), but he does not look at the whole picture. Nietzsche's project is undeniably ecstatic, but it tips far too often into the frenzied and the rabid. You could not catch the 'Buddha disease' from him; his bite will sooner send you to the insane asylum.
Steiner
Steiner's project, from beginning to end, can be described as occult. This term is open to many interpretations, but in Steiner's case it could be characterised as a social form of occultism: the occult nature of his spiritual development and teachings was to be harnessed for the good of society, starting with the elementaries of life, from the growing of food, to housing, to education, and on to some kind of spiritual development of the race. Steiner's project is forward-looking, speaking of the spiritual evolution of man (we saw in an earlier quote how he could relate this to the earlier spiritual states of man). It is also scientific, though his attitude to technology is sometimes hostile (he cites the phonograph as the most pernicious invention of the twentieth century).  
Steiner as an individual the most mysterious and enigmatic of the three men discussed here. Nietzsche's mystique arises out of the depth of his artistry, but once this is realised, he takes his place with many other creative geniuses: as a society we are relatively comfortable with them. They are beyond the pale of course, but enrich us, and our trade with them is economically sound: they are tolerated, even venerated, in return for the products of their minds. If they go mad, so much the better, it adds piquancy to the product. Jung by comparison is downright homely - all his photographs suggest an avuncular fellow - terribly erudite of course, but not unlike many a college professor. Steiner seem to come from another planet. Perhaps he does.
Steiner's project seems to be mysterious, not mystical.
Jung
Jung's project is psychological and scientific. It is psychological in a clinical sense, where his discoveries of the archetypes, the collective unconscious and the process of individuation are used to help recovery in mental patients. Perhaps the most telling remark about his clinical work is his comment that his breakthrough was in getting at the patient's 'story'. In the treatment of physical ailments there are only fractures, lesions, bacilli, viruses etc.: the 'story' is mostly irrelevant. Jung's deep insight was that the 'story' for mental patients was everything, and the tools he employed can be seen as a way of entering the story, for both analyst and analysand. Jung's project was also scientific, and, I think, less successful than the clinical side. His discoveries, or perhaps inventions, were effective in treatment, but as a body of scientific 'knowledge' rather problematic. Where Steiner was forward looking, I would suggest that Jung's project is backward looking in nature.
In his memoirs Jung is preoccupied with the past: his personal past, the feelings of 'deja vu' he has in connection with places and people, mythological past, and racial past. He is comfortable with the occult, but only to a certain degree (more than Freud, less than Steiner). The goal of his project is individuation, the freedom from complexes that comes through identification with the archetypes. The emphasis is always on the past, and Jung has little suggestion as to what the fully individuated person engages with.
Conclusions
If we ask the straight question: were Nietzsche, Steiner, or Jung mystics? the straight answer would be no in each case. While it is possible to relate their orientations to that of a certain type of mystic (a panenhenic monist)  there simply exists in none of them the obsession with the unitive. By applying a form of Occam's Razor: do not needlessly multiply religious entities, we cut them out of the category of straight mystic. Each of them may have had mystical experiences, but mystical experiences do not, alone, make a mystic: we must also examine their orientation and project, in short their relation to the One. By examining their orientations and projects in more depth we can learn more, both about these men, and about what exactly the territory of mysticism is.
In the case of Nietzsche his orientation as a head-oriented panenhenic can be analysed further. He was a recluse, a characteristic shared by many mystics, and showed his bile mainly in his writings, which are of course terminally the worse for it. The mystic impulse that is at the root of Zarathustra, expressed itself, not as a unitive urge in the silent or devotional sense, but in an artistic, conquering sense. Whether he was finally overwhelmed by a disease that was completely organic in origin, or whether it was a spiritual breakdown, will always be a matter of debate, but there are signs in Zarathustra that as a vessel Nietzsche was simply not strong enough to deal with his insights and creativity, both of which may well have arisen from mystical experience. This is an important lesson in mysticism: a channelling of the mystic urge into the artistic can lead to madness. As an expression of his age - the need to conquer - may also have contributed to his breakdown, for the drop cannot conquer the ocean, even if it expands into a mighty torrent. However, Nietzsche's project is important to the mystics: if he had succeeded in realising the 'numerical oneness' his insights and artistry would have left us the most extraordinary testament. Returning to the question of humility or sensitivity, we have a deeply sensitive man, but not a humble man, at least in some important respects. This single quote may sum up his attitude to the divine:

But to reveal my heart entirely to you, friends: if there were gods, how could I endure not to be a god! Therefore there are no gods.
			('On the Blissful Islands')

Jung, as a head-oriented panenhenic, has made the clearest statements about the One: he considered nirvana as a form of amputation. However, he describes all kinds of mystical experiences in his memoirs, though there is no evidence that it changed his project. The fact that his project is backward looking is as irrelevant to mysticism as Steiner's forward looking. His focus on individuation, with its resonance (for me at least) with Gurdjieff's concept of crystallisation, suggest an impulse to the unitive, but sought in the realm of the psychological - the realm of the manifold, the realm of the ten thousand things. The multiplication of entities is necessary in this realm, but I would suggest that in Jung it was habit forming, and that his whole edifice of symbol and myth are far removed from the mystical project because of it. Like with Steiner, we could however view Jung's project as a preparatory phase in the mystic life. 
Like Nietzsche, Jung is mixture of sensitivity and lack of humbleness in respect to the divine at least. This quote sums the point up (for me):

"God is a contradiction in terms, therefore he needs Man in order to be made One. God is an ailment that man has to cure."

This is quoted by Jaffe (from a letter by Jung in 1952), again as evidence of Jung's mystic status!
Steiner is, for me, the most problematic of the three. As a head-oriented panenhenic he is social, and forward looking. Although I have characterised his project as occult, the fact is that, in relation to the mystic project, his project may not be comprehensible. A botanist responds to nature by multiplying entities (i.e. naming and taxonomising), whereas a panenhenic mystic responds to nature through silence and a sense of union. Steiner is responding to a spiritual world (that few of us have access to) by multiplying entities, instead of silence. But what is his project exactly? There is nothing in the zero experience, or the mystic state as described down the ages, to suggest that mankind evolves as a whole, or that if he does that it is relevant. If Steiner's project is some kind of spiritual evolution for the race as a whole, then this is irrelevant to the mystical. If, however, he is, like Gurdjieff, seeking to prepare the ground for individuals to enter the unitive state, then his project may be wholly relevant to the mystical. It is also worth noting that the arrogances of Nietzsche and (to a lesser extent) Jung are not so easily detectable in Steiner.
While Nietzsche and Jung help us in the study of mysticism, by helping to delineate what is not mysticism, Steiner probably deserves deeper study. This could be done in terms of the relevance of Steiner's project in the training of the mystic, if such a thing is possible. Jung's project may only be relevant to the degree that it allows sensitive individuals a degree of accommodation with their pathologies: sufficient to allow them to turn their energies to the unitive.
References and Notes