The Faustian Bargain: Temptation, Possession, Self-Realization: An Evening With Tim Lyons

"You do not suffer from evil because you recognize it, but because it affords you secret pleasure, and because you believe it promises the pleasure of an unknown opportunity."

--Carl Jung, Liber Novus

The legend of Faust originated in the Middle Ages, but its lesson impacts our modern personal and technology-driven collective identity to the core and our bodies at a neurobiological level. In this presentation, we will explore Goethe’s magnum opus, Faust, and the archetype of the pact with the devil.  At best, confrontation with temptation compels us to become aware through self-realization, or, at worst, our soul becomes possessed and enslaved into damnation. Jung wrote: “Here at last, is someone, I thought, taking the devil seriously and even concluding a blood pact with the adversary …who saw the evil and its global power and more that is, the mysterious role it plays in the salvation of people from darkness and suffering. To that extent Goethe became a prophet to me” (Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 60).

In Goethe’s version, Faust, a striving scholar, has become disillusioned with the limits on his quest for knowledge. In despair, pondering suicide, Faust becomes the target of Mephistopheles, who tempts him by claiming he can satisfy Faust’s desire for unlimited knowledge, the pleasures of eternal youth, and magical powers. But, in exchange for Faust’s self-experiment, after an allotted time, the devil will possess his soul forever. Jung explained: “the dichotomy of Faust-Mephistopheles came together within myself … I was directly struck and recognized that this was my fate” (Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p.235). This realization was central to motivating Jung’s self-experiment of shadow integration in his confrontation with the unconscious. In Liber Novus Jung wrote: “I had to recognize and accept that my soul is a child and that my God in my soul is a child.”

The Faust-Mephistopheles split may develop from the unloved, lonely, traumatized, inner child, who regresses into codependence. This suppresses the divine child that embodies rebirth, creativity, and the potential for biological and psychic wholeness. Our inner children mirror these unconscious splits in outer relationships. We may then experience repetition compulsions, a cycle of repeated self-destructive behaviors and addictions to suffering. This cycle is part of the archetypal mystery for humanity’s inborn temptation for pacts with the devil.

What boundaries do we set to temptation when the alchemy of temptation itself may also be our salvation? We need to listen more to how our bodies create somatic symptoms from our emotions. The dynamic of self-crucifixion and self-realization, ignited by painful sparks from our repetition compulsion, can lead to redemption if we can awaken the capacity for unconditional love for the vulnerable parts of ourselves. Remarkably, in Goethe’s version of Faust, even Mephistopheles is entranced and distracted by angels as Faust is rescued from hell at the last minute.