Nietzsche's Yogic Superman

How the New Age Movement Killed the Future Übermensch

This article explores modern and classical yoga’s failure to embody the mystical element of Nietzsche’s Superman and how yoga unifying with the Western ideal of rationality/power (the other half of Nietzsche’s Superman) could change the world.

A clear bridge exists between Nietzsche’s German Superman and Yoga’s progressive Indian philosophy. For over a decade now, I’ve felt a synergy between Nietzsche’s action-orientated extroverted philosophy and yoga’s action-orientated introverted philosophy. Yoga’s love fills Nietzsche’s harshness, and yoga’s inaction can find energy in Nietzsche’s insane willpower.

Will Durant writes in “Story of Philosophy” that Nietzsche thinks the goal of “human effort should be not the elevation of all but the development of finer and stronger individuals.” Ancient and medieval India embodied this spirit through their caste system and spiritual institutions. Monks, hermits, and upper-caste members gained access to higher consciousness (access to mystical states) through the guru and ashram system. There is no better and more complete system to feel the totality of the universe and self than a disciplined yoga practice.

However, the passive social programming (not to rebel or push back against immoral rulers) in ashrams and the reluctance of hermits to leave nature prevented them from disintegrating the malignant societal hierarchies holding lower caste members down. The caste system remains to this day, and with over 15 million bonded child workers in India, the problem isn’t being solved. The world's spiritual enlightenment means nothing if you aren’t spreading it to others.

Yoga solved one half of the spiritual puzzle by teaching its acolytes to create and move energy (physical, mental, and spiritual) around/in the body and soul. But it was missing the second half practiced by the West: the use and management of that manifested spiritual energy.

Without asana, pranayama, meditation, and an appreciation of nature to manifest True Care, Christian, and 20th-century governments fell into the opposite trap. An-action based society rewarding aggressive energy and men with superiority complexes to seize power over the more sedentary personalities (reminiscent of the Comanches fucking up the chill Laguna Pueblos lol). In the best cases, the West’s ambition created men like Galieo, Chaucer, Spinoza, and even Nietzsche.

However, most of our Michelangelos, through our society's pessimism, never start their journey, and most who do get scooped up by corporations, the military, or governments to further increase their power. Or they suffer massive mental health issues (which mostly could be solved with Eastern practices.)

To mend the wounds of our failure to realize our vision of a Superman in the East and West requires us to utilize yoga’s transformational power and the West’s imaginative drive to help push the limits of what’s known. The yoga community’s passionate inaction and superficial addictions prevent it from touching the idea of using yoga as a tool to tap into the imagination. In contrast, the rest of the world's reluctance to engage in the greatest personal transformation system known to man (yoga) forces its ideas and aspirations to be small enough to get swept away by money, power, religions, and other voids.

But first, how can a ship sail if it doesn’t know its destination?

I have four Questions For you guys about Superman.

P.S. Ouspensky lists four integral questions to create our map in “The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution.”

1. “What does it mean that in the way of evolution man must become a different being?”

2.“What does “different being” mean?”

3. “Which inner qualities of features can be developed in man, and how can this be done?”

4. “Why cannot all men develop and become different beings? Why such an injustice?”

How Yoga Failed to Evolve

The new age and yoga community cannot answer these questions, and if they did, their monetary structures and bliss fields would evaporate.

Starting with question four, yogis won’t become different beings because they don’t want it. Plain and simple. They would rather exist in a safe pseudo-simulacra world where their forced altruism, cowardice, and other fake character archetypes garnish praise.

To become a different being takes immense amounts of physical labor, emotional pain, and mental consistency, which the average yogi sees no point in enduring. The social and monetary system in yoga punishes different beings. The politicization of yoga prevents many from breaking from the Indian influences of yoga. Rigid perceptions of what yoga is (creation and flow of energy) and the right way to run a studio (non-hierarchical gift economy based) from polluting any yogi’s actions and thoughts from trying something different.

Ouspensky writes of the common yogi as follows: “A passing desire or a vague desire based on dissatisfaction with external conditions will not create a sufficient impulse.”

Tapping into the impulse drives a yogi out of asana-centrism and toward exploring all five different types of yoga (Hatha, raja, bhakti, karma, jnana) and their various aspects. No asana sequence to date has built a progressive overloading system of pulling motions (back muscles) and leg strengthening. It’s impossible. Pulling strength and leg strength are two of the most important aspects of physical evolution. A simple ring and kettlebell routine twice a week is needed for 100% optimization of the physical body at a bare minimum. When was the last time your guru or favorite yoga Insta influencer told you to sprint?

Anyone who escaped from a passing desire would know that mindfulness meditation, which is what 99% of people practice, is doing nothing. One of yoga’s greatest minds, Gregor Maehle, writes in “Yoga Meditation” that

“For this reason the mind, if given the choice between formless, eternal, infinite and quality less awareness and finite, the impermanent objects of perception that possess quality and form, will always choose objects of perception and abandon the focus on pure awareness. This structure of our mind needs to be accommodated by structuring meditation accordingly, that is first learning to concentrate the mind by meditating on form.”

Without attaining the awareness of awareness, a mindfulness meditator becomes more of what they already are. Much like drugs, unless a categorical shift in focus/vision manifests, the user will become more conditioned in their worldview. But I just feel more enlightened about it. If you doubt this, look at the totalitarian nature of Silicon Valley, whose CEOs and managers have been performing mindful meditation for decades. When was the last time you heard a Silicon Valley shill recommending an advanced chakra meditation sequence with kumbhaka after an intense pranayama and asana session? You don’t…

Mindfulness meditation can help solve superficial character flaws. Still, until yogic meditation (Dharana is mastered,) it won’t help the adept tap into the infinite womb of nothingness and all the revelations that await them there.

Confronting your shadow and admitting where you’ve been wrong in life is hard work. Reading in isolation for thousands of hours can be miserable. Getting out of your comfort zone and learning new types of workouts, meditation techniques, and pranayama sequences isn’t glamorous. This grunt work never ends and will be a daily requirement for decades if one wants to develop an accurate perception of reality. You’ll hear millions of quick fixes from yogis, newagers, and modern culture quacks. A massive kundalini awakening won’t make up for knowledge you don’t know. Reading thousands of books won’t ever make you feel what a solid asana, pranayama, and meditation routine can. Ascending up the middle path of mildness between force and form will balance the brain, body, and spirit to prepare for true enlightenment.

Without massive philosophical changes to yoga’s approach to asana, pranayama, and meditation, the yoga community won’t be able to conjure the inner qualities required to turn humans into different beings. Ouspensky writes that a different being is someone “who must acquire qualities which he thinks he already possesses, but about which he deceives himself.”

Yoga and critical thinking done the right way reveal that education is the only path out. However, the public education system and Yoga Teacher Training don’t scratch the surface of this path. This type of education starts with individuals confronting their lust for absolute control. Every situation that escalates into violence starts with over-attached individuals. A world where superhumans can exist does not kill 250 million people in one century.

Viewing a yogi’s highest potential as a traveling yoga teacher, living a dream lifestyle, having a book with many reviews on Amazon, amassing many Instagram followers, and appearing happy remains a broken plane of thought. Knowing that a yogi’s highest potential can change billions of lives, create a nonviolent world, and transform humanity forever feels way more aligned with what yoga can accomplish. A yogi can get paid and have everything else listed above simultaneously, but that money should manifest from doing something great. If you changed yoga forever, do you think you’d be broke?

I will follow this article up with a critique of the Western mind’s failure to embody their side of the Übermensch energy!