Dr.Faust and the Genie, Mephistopheles
Divine Life
Society Publication: Chapter
1: Living a Spiritual Life by Swami Krishnananda
We belong to
two worlds at the same time: the mortal and the immortal. The mortal side is
the physical side of things, the processional character of Nature, and the
activity of people. The immortal side is an irrefutable affirmation taking
place in us every moment of time that we are perfectly stable, and we are not
changing. Even though we grow from childhood to adulthood, we have not changed;
we are the same person. Anything may change, but the continuity of the
awareness of this change is a permanent background of it.
Because of
the fact that we seem to belong to two realms of being, we are unhappy and
happy at the same time. The phenomenal side keeps us perpetually engaged in
some labour or work. The noumenal side keeps us asking for more and more, and
allows us not to be satisfied with anything. The world says in its
phenomenality, “I have everything for you.” But the noumenal side says, “I
cannot be satisfied with anything that the world can give”.
The whole
world of wealth and so-called security is not adequate to the noumenal demand.
When the noumenal is ignored and we engage ourselves excessively in the
phenomenal side of things, a threat is discharged from within us, keeping us
terribly upset and disturbed. This is the story of the famous German poet’s
work, Von Goethe’s Faustus.
There was a doctor called Faust, and he made an alliance with a peculiar genie
called Mephistopheles. Dr. Faust represents the noumenal side, and
Mephistopheles, the phenomenal side.
“I will give
you everything,” said the genie.
“Please give,” said Dr. Faust. “How much will you give?”
“I can give you everything, more than you expect from me,” said the genie.
“Give,” said
Faust.
“Very good.
I am immensely happy. But,” said Mephistopheles, “There is one condition. You
have to pay a price for it.”
“What is the
price?” asked Faust.
“Give me
what you are,” said the genie.
“What is
there in me?” Dr. Faust thought. “I can give myself, provided you give me the
whole world because, after all, I am a little puny nothing, an individual like
anyone else, but the whole world of glory is going to be given to me. Take me,
and give everything that you have.”
Mephistopheles
laughed a cruel laughter, and there was a thunderbolt breaking down existence
itself. Everything was sundered into pieces, and Dr. Faust was nowhere. He
was cast in all directions, like dynamite bursting, and he was nowhere because
he sold himself to gain a wealth which was not himself. Or, in a plain
language, the self sold itself to the non-self. When this takes place, we break
into pieces in one second.
As no one
seems to have sold oneself entirely to the world, this thunderbolt has not been
discharged upon us yet. But to some extent, we seem to be participating in the
activity of a possible transferring of ourselves into the world for the
comforts it can give us; to that extent, we are very disturbed inside, and we
cannot be really happy. The more we possess the things of the world, the less
we are in ourselves. The larger the world is to us, the smaller we are before
it, but as we have not become too small – to the point of extinction, as it
were – we are still comfortably existing under the impression that things are
very well.
Continue to read:
Living
a Spiritual Life – Chapter 1: The Process of Perception by Swami Krishnananda
