Dr.Faust and the Genie, Mephistopheles - the noumenal and the phenomenal side by Swami Krishnananda

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