Faust Part III

About the Book

Faust, Part III, explores the primacy of emotion in dreams, myth and art, using a poetic or feeling approach. Dreams are viewed as emotional statements, and a number of precepts are presented that reveal a method for uncovering emotional meaning in dreams that is accessible to everyone, and not just a learned elite. Understanding the emotional message in your dreams is the gateway to finding and maintaining balance and creativity in your life. Desire, so highly regarded in the ancient world, and so depreciated over the centuries by our civilization, is rediscovered and restored as the source of our creative and spiritual energy. Life that loves and laughs without guilt is once more placed on the throne of a rich, mythological kingdom that has deep, spiritual dimensions. Faust III is an attempt to briefly explore the primacy of emotion and desire in the ancient world, and to consider its relevance to dreams, religion, myth and art in contemporary life. With a renewed appreciation for emotion and feeling, we may once more cultivate awe and reverence for nature and Mother Earth from whom our civilization has so recently been separated. We bond with our earthly mother in a warm, nourishing, feeling relationship that is our first experience with love. It is learning while being rocked by her heartbeat and nourished with her sweet milk and warm kindness. Hopefully, it will lead to a life in which there is ample room for Pascal’s adage: “The heart has its own reasons, which reason know not.” The Dalai Lama uses the example of a mother’s love, and the infant’s need and response to it, as evidence that our adult feelings of love and compassion are rooted in this very early emotional experience. Something in us is waiting for affection and is responsive to it, and when it is lovingly given we are nourished and grow spiritually. On our million year journey to becoming human, we also bonded with Mother Earth. Societies everywhere have stood in awe at her bounty and beauty. Corn mother, Demeter, and today, Gaia, all attest to our search for our Earth Mother. I am proposing a renewed love affair with Earth, and that requires a reawakening of our feelings for her. For thousands of years the natural world of forests, fields, mountains, streams and oceans has produced feelings of wonder in us, and we need to refresh these feelings. Even among city dwellers today the moon is seldom viewed as a cold rock in space that man briefly visited. We gaze at the moon and strange things happen to us. We become “moonstruck” and hold hands and embrace and look for starlight in our beloved’s eyes. Each of us becomes a poet when fall leaves flutter to the earth, or winter brings mysterious, crystal snowflakes, no two alike, to blanket the earth, or when jonquils push past winter’s remains. Our feelings for these things are still alive, but an exaggerated rationalism and the marketing of a material, urban culture has dulled them. The countryside is increasingly forgotten in the loud, commercial clamor of the city. I find it refreshing to visit two seldom quoted passages from the Bible when considering our feelings for earth and the natural world. In the one, we are directed to “…ask the animals and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you.” (Job 12:7-10) In the spirit of the good news that the animals and earth teach, it is heartening to picture a creation story that is environmentally sound, humane, and emotionally uplifting: “Then God said, I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground---everything that has the breath of life in it---I give every green plant for food. And it was so.” (Genesis

About the Author

Edward Janisch’s background includes many years of world travel while in the Merchant Marine, teaching European history and political theory at several universities, and mastery of the preparation of Chinese Buddhist vegetarian cuisine. He currently directs the Collegium For The Study Of Dreams, Myth and Art, and is completing a story, Faust, Part III, which explores the primacy of emotion in dreams and myths.