Faust and Tattvartha Sutra - Goethe's Masterpiece in a New Light

The paper was published in The Voice of Ahinsa - The Indo-German Special Number (Vol. VI, No. 10 - October 1956, pp. 367-377, 397)

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Some of the greatest achievements of Western Literature betray a peculiar relationship to Eastern Thought. So the cosmology of Dante's 'Divine Comedy' is according to Heinrich Zimmer strangely similar to Jain cosmology. In the great philosophical novel of Honore de Balzac 'Peau de Chagrin', we find the whole profoundness and subtlety of Brahmin thought and it is an old Brahmin, who gives to the hero of the narrative the miraculous, wish-fulfilling Peau de Chagrin (skin of Chagrin leather), warning him, that at each fulfillment of a wish (self-indulgence), the skin shrinks and indicates a shortening of life. Francois Poncet, the former French High Commissioner in Germany, has given in his 'Diaire d'un Captif' a brilliant analysis of the Peau de Chagrin, comparing the creative power, revealed in it, with that we find to a really miraculous extend in Goethe's Faust. But there is also a certain relationship of thought. Faust, in fact, is perhaps the most outstanding example to what an extent East and West can meet in the realm of idea, in the higher sphere of thought.

In the beginning of Faust we have the prologue in Heaven, which reminds one of Kālidās, the Indian Shakespeare. There are also passages, which remind one of the book of Job. But these resemblances, at least, as far as Kālidās is concerned, are more of an exterior, aesthetical character and limited only to few passages. But there is one book in Indian Literature, which inspite of a great dissimilarity of the exterior form, seems to explain and to put in a revealing light all secrets of the Faust. In the first chapter of the Tattvārtha Sūtra, written 2000 years ago by Umāswāti, the triple path consisting of the three ratnas (pearls): Right Belief, Right Knowledge and Right Conduct is revealed. These three jewels are also the Leitmotif (idee Maïtrese) of Goethe's Faust, as well as the philosophical meaning as the exterior form is ooncerned.

This becomes already evident in the prologue in heaven, which is marked by a subtle humour - Mehistopheles.

“… It's really kind of such a noble lord.

So humanly to gossip with the Devil!”

Like in the book of Job we have here a bet between the Lord and Mephisto (in Goethe's Faust: the spirit of eternal negation):

The Lord says to Mephistopheles:

“Enough, what thou has asked is granted.

Turn off this spirit from his fountain head

To trap him, let thy snares be planted

And him, with thee, be downward led;

Then stand abashed, when thou art forced to say:

A good man, through obscurest aspiration,

Has still an instinct of the one true way.”

This instinct of the right way is already the germ of Right Belief. It is Margaret, symbolizing Right Belief in its most initial form, who is the main figure in the first part of Faust, which is concerned with the individual side of human life.

But this simplicity of Margaret is not shallow. It is in fact so profound that it almost overlaps the boundaries established by school-theology. That is evident from the scene 'Martha's Garden':

Margaret:	Promise me Henry!
Faust:	What I can!
Margaret:	How is it with thy religion, pray? Thou art a dear, good-hearted man, And yet, I think, dost not incline that way.
Faust:	Leave that, my child! Thou knowest my love is tender. For love, my blood and life would I surrender; And as for faith and Church; I grant to each his own.
Margaret:	That's not enough: we must believe thereon.
Faust:	Must we?
Margaret:	Would that I had some influence! Then, too, thou honourest not the Holy Sacraments.
Faust:	I honour them.
Margaret:	Desiring no possession 'Tis long since thou hast been to mass And to confession. Believest thou in God?
Faust:	My darling, who shall dare 'I believe in God!' to say? Ask priest or sage the answer to declare And it will seem a mocking play A sarcasm on the asker.
Margaret:	Then thou believest not?
Faust:	Hear me not falsely, sweetest countenance! Who dare express Him And who profess Him, Saying: I believe in Him! Who feeling, seeing, Deny His being, Saying: I believe Him not! The All-enfolding The All-upholding Folds and upholds He not Thee, me, Himself? Arches not there the sky above us? Lies not beneath us,firm,the earth? And rise not, on us shining Friendly, the everlasting star? Look I not, eye to eye, on thee, And feel'st not, thronging To head and heart, the force. Still weaving its eternal secret Invisible, visible, round thy life? Vast as it is, fill with that force thy heart, And when thou in the feeling wholly blessed art, Call it, then what you wilt, Call it Bliss I Heart! Love! God! I have no name to give it! Feeling is all: The name is sound and smoke, Obscuring Heavens clear glow.
Margaret:	All that is fine and good to hear it so Much the same way the preacher spoke Only with slightly different phrases.
Faust:	The same thing, in all places, All hearts that beat beneath the heavenly day Each in its language - say Then why not I in mine as well?

This conception of God is expressed elsewhere - In the 'Orphische Urworte':

Wär nicht das Auge sonnenhaft Die Sonne könnt es nicht erblicken	If the eye were not related to sun It would never be able to perceive the sun
Läg nicht in uns der Gottes Eigene Kraft Wie könnt' uns Göttliches entzücken?	Were not God's own strength within us? How else could the Divine delight us?

Goethe, who describes thus in a poetical way the qualities of Jīva, the first of the six dravyas, considers the Universe not as a Chaos but as an harmonious Cosmos. This corresponds to the world conception of one of the greatest German philosophers Baron von Leibnitz and to the Sapta Bangha in Jainism, which teaches the interdependence of all things in the Universe. The tolerance of Faust with the naivety of Margaret corresponds to the principle of the Syādvāda-logic, the Right Belief, already in its initial stage, is exposed to many dangers by the daemonic forces in the Universe, represented by the strange figures in the Romantic Walpurgis-Night and the whitch-hitchen.

Faust in his study (by Rembrandt, ca. 1652)

Right Belief in its initial form might still go astray even if in the end it will not miss the scope. Margaret commits the fault, which love commits so easily if it is accompanied with compassion and simplicity. She dies haunted by soul torments, exposed to the sneer and brutality of a selfish, hypocritical world in prison. Her love in its depth was a moral and spiritual love. Her last words 'Henry, Henry!' are a mixture of love and sorrow.

The main figure in the second part of Faust is Helena,taken like the others of this part from Greek Mythology who represents beauty in the largest sense, bodily moral and intellectual beauty. She is a creation of art, performed by Faust, the artist according to the order of the emperor, who is a lover and protector of art. She symbolises the initial stage of Right Knowledge. She is the bearer of light:

“The horrid birth of night doth Phoebus, Beauty's friend.

Drive out of sight to caverns, or binds them fast.”

In the Tattvārtha Sūtra we have two ways to acquire Right Knowledge: Pratyakṣa and Parokṣa-Pratyakṣa is the way of intuition, Parokṣa the way of investigation. In Goethe's Faust we have the 'mothers', who stand for creativity in art and reveal us the beauty and harmony of the Universe due to its underlying spirituality as its ruling force. And it is Homunculus, who stands for creativity and Beauty of Nature and the science to explore it and to make use of it. The secret of the Mother's is revealed in the 5th scene of the second part of Faust:

Faust:	… The emperor orders, he will instantly Helena and Paris here before him see The model forms of men and women, wearing, Distinctly shown, their ancient shape and bearing Now to the work I dare not break my word.
Mephistopheles:	Unwilling, I reveal a loftier mystery In solitude are throned the Goddesses, No space around them, place and time still less, Only to speak of them embarrasses. [for he symbolizes negation] They are the Mothers!
Faust:	[terrified] Mothers!
Mephistopheles:	Hast thou dread?
Faust:	The mothers! Mothers! - a strange word is said!
Mephistopheles:	It is so. Goddesses, unknown to Ye. The Mortals, named by us unwillingly Delve in the deepest depths must thou to reach them T's thine own fault that we for help beseech them.
Faust:	Where is the way?
Mephistopheles:	No way! - To the Unreachable, He'er to be trodden! A way to Unbeseechable Never to be besought! Are thou prepared? There are no locks, no latches to be lifted; Through endless solitudes shalt thou be drifted. Hast thou through solitudes and deserts fared?

Goethe described here the characteristical features of Pratyakṣa darśana (intuition), which is always concerned with the whole, while parokṣa starts from the detail.

Faust and Wagner outside the gate (by Gustav Schlick, 19th century)

Homunculus is the form seeking entelechy (basic idea) according to Goethe's own remarks in his 'Conversations with Eckermann'. Homunculus is created by Wagner, the Famulus (assistant) of Faust, in a furnace:

Wagner:

It brightens-see! Sure, now, my hopes increase, That if, from many hundred substances, Through mixture-since on mixture all depends - The human substance gently be compounded, And by a closed retort surrounded, and fed and slowly founded Then in success the secret labour ends 'Twill be! The mass in working clearer Conviction gathers,truer, nearer The mystery which for man in Nature lies We dare to test, by knowledge led; And that which she was wont to organise We cristallise, instead.

Goethe outlines here the essential features of parokṣa, starting from the detail: from experiments and tests. The Christal symbolizes in the most perfect way the realisation of form in nature; it is from this aspect the highest type of organisation in matter. - This principle of form-realisation is also active in the creation of man (Karmic body) as it is alluded in the quoted words of Wagner and the following of Mephistopheles:

Who lives, learns many secrets to unravel.

For him, upon this earth, there's nothing new can be

I've seen already, in my years of travel,

Much crystallized humanity!

To Homunculus is associated Proteus, the principle of eternal change of forms.

As the Universe is conceived as an harmonic cosmos also science is concerned with beauty and is in this way related to art. Beauty, conceived as spiritual and moral beauty is averse to any kind of bloodshed. So Helena did not like the command of her husband Menelaos to keep the axe ready for sacrifice and thinks it contradictory to the real will of god. She will find a way to avoid it.

Helena:

Thereafter further came my lord's imperious speech: Now when all things in order thou inspected hast, Then take so many tripods as thou needful deem'st And vessels manifold, such as desires, at hand Who offers to the Gods, fulfilling holy use, - The kettles, also bowls, the shallow basin's disk; The purest water from the sacred fountain fill In lofty urns; and further, also ready hold The well-dried wood that rapidly accept the flame. And let the knife, well sharpened, fail not finally; Yet all besides, will I relinquish to to thy care So spoke he, urging my departure; but no of living breath did he, whos ordered thus, appoint that shall, to honour the Olympian Gods, be slain 'Tis critical, and yet I banish further care, And let all things be now to high Gods referred Who that fulfill, where to their minds may be disposed Whether this by men 'tis counted good, or whether bad; In either case we mortals, we are doomed to bear. Already lifted oft the Offerer the axe In consecretion o'er the bowed neck of the beast And could not consummate the act; for enemies Approaching, or Gods intervening hindered him."

On the other side moral ugliness symbolized by Phorkyas, a hideous, old women and the Phorkyads ('Daughters of Chaos are we' - 'we born in night, akin to gloom alone') is always longing for bloodshed. The daemonic forces, represented by her are threatening beauty at its very root: when Helena refuses to offer animals for sacrifice Phorkyas demands her own sacrifice.

Phorkyas:	All is ready in the palace Vessels, tripods, sharpened axe, For the sprinking fumingating: show to me the victim now!
Helena:	This the king not indicated.
Phorkyas:	Spake it not? O word of woe!
Helena:	What distress has overcome thee?
Phorkyas:	Queen, the offering art thou.

There is some interconnection between the killing of animals and that of men.

Phorkyas:

She will die a noble death. But upon the lofty beam, upholding rafter, frame and roof, As in birding time the throstles, ye in turn shall struggling hang!

Faust, the artist, is as all real artists, in love with his own work, with Helena and the child of imagination born from this love is Emphorion. But it is a premature birth, the conception of beauty is still too narrow, too much confined to bodily forms. So the child of this love is genial but quite unbalanced and bears the features of Lord Byron, the genial but unfortunate contemporary of Goethe. But in the end the spiritual beauty is conceived in its very essence, after the death of Emphorion:

Helena (to Faust):	Also in me, alas! An old word proves its truth, That Bliss and Beauty ne'er [mere beauty of outer form. - Editor.] enduringly unite. Form is the link of life, no less than that of love; So, both lamenting, painfully I say: Farewell! And cast myself again-once only-in thine arms. Receive, Persephone, receive the boy and me.
(She embraces Faust: her corporeal part disappears, her garment and veil remain in his arms.)
Phorkyas (to Faust):	Hold fast, what now alone remains to thee. The garment let not go! Already twitch. The Demons at its skirts, and they would fain.
	To the Nether Regions drag it! Hold it Faust! It is not more the Goddess thou hast lost
	But godlike is it, For thy use employ The grand and priceless gift, and soar aloft!
	Twill bear thee swift from all things mean and low To ether high, so long thou canst endure
	We'll meet again, far very far from here!

So even ugliness Phorkayas has in the end to pay homage to spiritual beauty (Right Knowledge) and betrays a longing for her. Dionysus yields to Apollo.

Like the Bhagavad Gita, Faust is the praise song of action. The whole Universe is beaming with action. This becomes already evident from the scene 'Night':

Faust:

Am I a God? - so clear mine eyes! In these pure features I behold Creative nature to my soul unfold What spirit-world enclosures fasten; Thy sense is shut, thy heart is dead: Disciple, up! untiring, hasten To bathe thy breast in morning red! How each the whole its substance gives Each in the other works and lives! Like heavenly forces rising and descending Their golden urns reciprocally lending, With wings that winnow blessing, From Heaven through Earth I see them pressing, Filling the All with harmony unceasing!

And then we have in Scene III ('Study') this interpretation of the Bible:

Faust:

… Tis written “In the beginning was the word” Here am I balked Who, now, can help afford? The word? impossible so high to rate it; And otherwise must I translate it, If by the spirit lam truly taught Then thus: “In the Beginning was the Thought” This first line let me weigh completely, Lest my impatient pen proceed too fleetly. Is it the thought which works, creates, indeed? “In the Beginning was the power”, I read Yet, as I write, a warning is suggested That I the sense may not have fairly tested, The spirit aids me now I see the light! “In the Beginning was the Act” I write.

Goethe's system of interpretation is dialectic and reminds of the Syādvāda system and the Sapta Bahangha in Jain logic. Like Jainism he denies that thought or ideas are the origin of every thing. For after putting question mark behind this explanation of the Universe he decides finally “In the beginning was the Act”. And with this he has found a realistic principle which is likewise valuable for the living as for the non-living and implies all possible world conceptions as partial truth, even the negation of Mephistopheles, who might stand for Shiva the destroyer.

Faust in his study (by Eugène Delacroix, 1827)

All existence is based on action; but on action guided by law and never by force; but so in Act 2, Scene III Thales says:

“Nature, the living current of her powers.

Was never bound to Day and Night and Hours

She makes each form by rules that never fail,

And His not Force, even on a mighty scale.”

And again:

“Yield the wish so wisely stated

And at the source be thou created!

Be ready for the rapid plan.

There, by eternal canons wending

Through thousand, myrial forms ascending,

Thou shalt attain, in time, to man!”

Here we have the doctrine of karma and rebirth. All the life is determinated by past actions, (including thought actions). ^[1]

So we have in the end of the first act Mephisto saying: -

“How closely linked are Luck and Doth never to thus fools occur:

Had they the Philospher's stone, I swear it

The stone would lack the philospher.”

This corresponds to the words of the Bible: “what thou so west thou wilt reap”. Even dead nature is dynamic and stands under the law of action: We read in the 2nd part Scene III: -

Homunculus:

Look yonder, where the pygmies fled! The round Hill has a pointed head I felt a huge rebound and shock Down from the moon had fallen the rock, And then, without the least ado, Both foe and friend it smashed and slew, I praise such arts as these, that show Creation in a night fulfilled; That from above and from below At once this mountain pile could build!

As the Universe is dynamic in its very essence,the greatest sin is stagnation, which ends always in retrogation. The highest form of action is Selfperfection, as the Self is potentially God (Bliss, Heart, Love). This striving for self-realisation meets with great difficulties as Faust, inspite, that he cannot bear the terrible look of the spirit of the earth, who appears him in the first scene, that means all the misery connected with birth and death and reincarnation, is attracted by him, as he has two souls in his breast: -

Part I, Scene II:

Faust:

Two soul's alas,! Reside within my breast, And each withdraws from, and repels, its brothers. On with tenacious organs holds in love And clinging lust the world in its embraces; The other strongly sweeps this dust above, Into the high ancestral spaces.

The first mentioned soul is the that with karmic body, the latter mentioned is the soul, striving for emancipation. As long real as Faust is striving for self-realisation Mephisto the spirit, who is always negating, has no power over him. But he consents to become his servant and to perish, as soon as, he should say to the moment, “delay thou art so fair”. From the very beginning the life of Faust is full of activity. First he seems to be a play-ball between the lower and higher forces within his heart, later his activities become more and more selfless. In the end Faust takes up the task of a Chakravarti. Preceding the ideas of modern socialism, he becomes a social benefactor of humanity. He builds dykes and extracts new land from the sea. And these activities give him so much happiness that he thinks himself entitled to say to the moment:

“Delay thou art, so fair

The traces cannot; of mine earthly being

In aeons perish-they are there.”

We know from the Jain Shāstras, that the danger to be drawn back is very great in a certain advanced stage, the 11th Gunasthāna. But as important as great state planning is and Goethe takes here sides with socialism-still more important, that is it what Goethe brings home to modern socialism are the activities directed towards the emancipation of soul. So Faust is staggering and Mephisto believes already in his triumph over him. But finally it is devotion (Bhakti Yoga) what saves Faust.

Devotional veneration of God, of the Divine, is indirectly a help from the Divine powers. They help by the very existence of their divine qualities, which provoke the veneration of the worshipper. It has a deep symbolical meaning, that the 'penitant' (formerly named Margaret) who represents Right Belief, addressed the Saint Virgin, sym-bolum of compassion:

“Incline, O Maiden,

With Mercy laden

In light unfading

Thy gracious countenance upon my bliss!

My loved, my lover, His trials over In yonder world, returns to me in this!”

And then we have a beautiful description of the great transformation of Faust to a perfect being and his lifting up to the Divine:

The Penitent (formerly named Margaret):

The spirit-Choir around him sung, How to himself, he scarce divines His heritage of new-born Being, When like the Holy Host he shines Behold how he each band hath cloven The earthly garb, of ether woven [2] The early force of youth is shown Vouchsafe to me that I instruct him! Still dazzles him the Days new glare Mater Gloriosa: Rise thou, to higher spheres! Conduct him, Who, feeling thee, shall follow there!

So Margaret (Right Belief) assumes a similar role as Beatrice in Dante's Divina Comedia. Goethe's Faust ends with these memorable words:

“All things are transitory

But as symbols are sent:

Earth's insufficiency

Here grows to Event

The indescribable

Here it is done

The Woman-Soul leadeth us

Upward and on”

The Indescribable or Unpredictable is what has no more form or shape-the spiritual, which is the basic force of the Universe. And even material things, as far as they are unpredictable are related (as subordinated) to the spiritual (see the 4th Bhangha of Śapta Bhangha). The woman-soul is the soul gifted with receptibility, which is particularly a feminine quality, for the noble and Sublime, for the Divine. That is the way of Bhakti Yoga. It is a also the very gist of Right Belief. So Goethe's Faust ends where it has started: with the praise of Right Belief as the basis of all other achievements.

The ideas of Goethe's Faust are so clearly expressed and its structure is so logical that it is strange that the interpreters of this great work have gone so astray and that they saw so many trees that they missed quite the sight of the beautiful in the intensity of its growth almost tropical forest. The reason is perhaps that the 19th century with its materialism had lost the flair for spiritual things. But the greatest Goethe-Biographer, the only real important among the Goethe-biographers, Hermann Grimm, knew that the time would arrive, when Faust would be clearly understood. It is only a relatively short time ago that the Western World due to Hermann Jacobi has become acquainted with Jain Philosophy. This philosophy offers in fact a suitable platform for a new interpretation of Goethe's main work. That is particularly true of the Tattvārtha Sūtra, the most important work in Jain literature. It is not an exaggeration to claim Goethe's Faust as a Jain Shāstra, written in a language full of poetical beauty. How is it possible, we may ask, that a Western poet, who knew nothing about Jainism could write a Jain Shāstra?

We are today inclined to think that only books can be the medium of knowledge. But in this case the explanation of this secret can only be found in the mysterious personality of Goethe. Already in his youth he was gifted with what is called in German, the Second face: He would forecast things with an astonishing security. In his Autobiography 'Poetry and Reality' he describes his impressions when he saw the French Queen Marie Antoinette when he was a student at Strasburg; he felt at once sure that she would perish on the scaffold, which happened in fact in the French revolution. This gift of Divination was even intensified in the old age of Goethe and it seems that he was gifted with a qualified Kṣayapaṣama jñāna, with the capacity to read thoughts and ideas and it might be, that from the view point of Goethe, his conversations with Eckermann were perhaps less a suit of sublime monologues then it is generally thought. It might not be altogether strange that a man with these supernatural gifts-also his strange supernatural experience of the earthquake of Lisbon, when he was a boy, points to this- might have found by the way of intuition the truth incorporated in Jainism. Faust might one day become the Bible of a new West-Eastern Humanism and the Truth of the world in the West-Eastern Divān might one day be felt and perceived every where:

“Gottes ist der Orient

Gottes ist der Okzident

Nord und südliches Gelände

Ruht in Frieden Seiner Hände”.

(To God belongs the Orient

To God belongs the Occident

North and the Southern regions

Rest in the peace of His protecting hands).