Anger. Brightness. Fire. I could see all of these meshed into one face: the face of the sun. It was no ordinary sun. Not exactly the one we rise up to every morning. Not the silent, steady ball of fire that warms our days and disappears during the nights. The one that I faced that night was different in many ways. It had a person’s face, to mention one. Again, not an ordinary face one sees everyday. It had a uniquely sullen look. The eyes, cheeks, and forehead were molded into anger and resentment. That night, it was clear to me that this strange body I perceived as the sun had something to say, or perhaps more accurately, wanted to vent to me. And I had no choice but to perceive, as I was strapped to my bed, unmoving, lost in a world of dreams where the darkness of the night and the brightness of the sun coexisted.

Soon enough, the sun spoke, but only a language of silence. Or, was it silence at all? Its mouth moved angrily. Its eyes twitched, and its head moved vigorously in every direction. All in silence. However, it spoke, all the same. It spoke a language to be felt, not to be heard. A language that required no deciphering whatsoever, a language of emotions. And I was terrified!

I had this dream when I was around 12 years old. By then, I could not have any idea of what it meant, but it made such an impression on me that the image kept coming back throughout my teenage years. Could it have meant anything? Was it just a nightmare? Unconsciously, I kept searching for answers to these questions. And after several years, I found that a 19th century German philosopher may have had something to say about it.

Among the major ideas that Friedrich Nietzsche poetically presents in his “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” is the notion of the overman and of self-overcoming. In the Prologue, Nietzsche’s mouthpiece Zarathustra descends from his solitude in the mountains to preach to people about the overman, the fully self-actualized human being. “Mankind is a rope fastened between animal and overman — a rope over an abyss,” he says to the people. For Nietzsche, the overman is to a human being what a human being is to an ape. He represents our highest developmental apex. The overaman symbolizes humanity’s highest hopes and goals. He is the nourisher of (psychological) meaning to this life, the ultimate end goal of all of our pursuits, our ideal. Now, one may ask: how would one go about realizing the overman?

But even before that, it is worth asking: why pursue the overman? Nietzsche responds to this question by clarifying what life itself is.

Life, for Nietzsche, is a continual process of self-overcoming. As Zarathustra says, “And this secret life itself spoke to me: ‘Behold,’ it said, ‘I am that which must always overcome itself.’” Before reaching this conclusion, however, Zarathustra takes a few steps. First, he states that, from his observations, all living is obeying. Second, the one that cannot obey itself is commanded. And third, since the commander is responsible for all obeyers and is risking his own life in doing so, commanding is harder than obeying.

After outlining these three assumptions, Zarathustra inquires about the underlying force that “persuades” the living to obey and command, “and to still practice obeying while commanding.” Whatever this force may be, it is also responsible for the continuous risk — including sacrifice — the commander counterintuitively takes while experimenting. Zarathustra calls this force the will to power. While expounding on it, he says, “wherever there is decline and the falling of leaves, behold, there life sacrifices itself – for power!” According to Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, even good and evil are not eternal; being part of life, they also undergo continuous transformation: “Truly, I say to you: good and evil that would be everlasting – there is no such thing! They must overcome themselves out of themselves again and again.”

This is where Nietzsche answers the previous questions about the overman. For Nietzsche, the overman represents the ‘culmination’ of this natural process of self-overcoming; and it resides where creation coincides with destruction, the highest goodness with the highest evil. Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, a 19th century character named after and inspired by a 6th century B.C. Persian prophet who first represented the concept of good and evil as two opposing forces, once again revives the ancient idea of the coincidence of opposites, opening a gate to understanding the dream of the sun that I presented at the beginning.

Joseph Campbell in his “The Hero With A Thousand Faces” states that “the hero of yesterday becomes the tyrant of tomorrow, unless he crucifies himself today.” Taken at face value, this statement may appear nihilistic. Why would heroes need to destroy themselves? Is that not counterintuitive? Is there any value to be obtained through this destruction? The answer is found hidden within the various myths that have been told for millennia throughout the world. Incorporated within the hero’s destiny to realize their full potential lies the necessity of tragedy. In fact, the mythological hero passes “into depths where obscure resistances are overcome, and long lost, forgotten powers are revivified, to be made available to the transfiguration of the world.” This passage, also described by Nietzsche as “a dangerous crossing, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking back, a dangerous shuddering and standing still,” is central to the hero’s transformation.

Now, I return to my dream of the terrifying Sun. What could it have been possibly expressing to me? Could the dream have been an alarm? A warning to the metaphorical sleeper within me who is not up for the challenges that I would be facing moving forward? Could it have been a call to resolutely and unmovingly face my deepest fears and overcome my mediocre self? Could the dream have been revealing to me what I would expect to see if I fell off Nietzsche’s rope bridging the terrible abyss? Or could it simply have been an expression of the possible — perhaps unconscious — dissatisfaction I had over my then ‘not-so-great’ self? I can only wonder. But what I remember and know for sure is that, that night, the blazing eyes of the nighttime Sun imbued my soul with extreme emotions that I woke up breathing heavily, several hours before it rose up in the sky.