Hermann Hesse

“ All that is thought with thoughts and can be spoken in words will be one-sided, all will be half, all will be lacking in wholeness, in roundness, in unity. When the noble Gotama spoke of the world in his teachings he had to divide it into sansara and nirvana, into delusion and truth, into suffering and liberation. He who wishes to be a teacher has no choice in the matter, there is no other path for him to follow. The world itself, though, that which exists around us and within us, is never one sided. ”

“ But as she stood before him, she was completely transformed, and with a thrill he felt and saw that he had drawn into his embrace the whole world, which he had lost. She stood before him and surrendered herself to him, sky and wood and brook, all was decked out in lovely new colors, all belonged to him, and spoke his tongue. And instead of merely winning a woman, he had taken the whole world to his heart, and each star in the heaven glowed in him, and twinkling, communicated desire to his soul. He had loved, and thereby had found himself. But most people love only to lose themselves thereby. ”

“ How should he not know love, he, who has discovered all elements of human existence in their transitoriness, in their meaninglessness, and yet loved people thus much, to use a long, laborious life only to help them, to teach them! Even with him, even with your great teacher, I prefer the thing over the words, place more importance on his acts and life than on his speeches, more on the gestures of his hand than his opinions. Not in his speech, not in his thoughts, I see his greatness, only in his actions, in his life." ”

“ Life was a torment.
Siddhartha had but one objective: to empty himself, to empty himself of thirst, of desire, of dreams, empty himself of joy and sorrow. To die away from himself, to no longer be himself, to find peace by emptying his own heart, to stand open to the miracle by alienating his own thoughts, that was his objective. Once the whole of his self had been overcome and destroyed, once every need and every drive of his heart was silent, that was when the ultimate had to wake, the deepest part of his being, that which is no longer the self, the great secret. ”

“ The Biblical account of the Passion and Death of Christ had, from my earliest years, made a deep impression on me. As a little boy, on such days as Good Friday, after my Father had read out to us the story of the Passion, I had lived in imagination and with much emotion in Gethsemane and on Golgotha, in that world so poignantly beautiful, pale and ghostlike, and yet so terribly alive. And when I listened to the Passion according to St. Matthew by Bach, I felt the mystical thrills of this dark, powerful, mysterious world of passion and suffering. ”

“ As a boy I had nothing to do with anything but the gods and making sacrifices to them. As an adolescent I had nothing to do with anything but asceticism, with thinking and meditation, I sought to find Brahman, venerated the eternal in Atman. As a young man, though, I followed the path of penitence, lived in the forest, suffered heat and frost, learnt to hunger, taught my body to die away. It was wonderful when, at that time, knowledge came to me through the teachings of the great buddha, I felt knowledge of the unity of the world, felt it flow within me like my own blood. ”

“ Siddhartha walked through the forest, was already far from the city, and knew nothing but that one thing, that there was no going back for him, that this life, as he had lived it for many years until now, was over and done away with, and that he had tasted all of it, sucked everything out of it until he was disgusted with it. Dead was the singing bird he had dreamt of. Dead was the bird in his heart. Deeply, he had been entangled in Sansara, he had sucked up disgust and death from all sides into his body, like a sponge sucks up water until it is full. ”

“ That very morning, as he left the grove of Jetavana, the grove of the noble one, already awaking, already on the way to himself, it was his intention, an intention that seemed to be natural and a matter of course, that he would bring his years of living as an ascetic to an end and return home to his father. But now, only now at this moment when he stopped walking as if a snake lay on the path in front of him, he awoke also to this insight: I am no longer the person I once was, I am no longer an ascetic, I am no longer a priest, I am no longer a brahmin. ”

“ What Demian had said about God and the devil, about the official godly world and the suppressed devil’s world, that was exactly my own idea, my own myth, the idea of the two worlds or two halves of the world—the light and the dark. The realization that my problem was a problem of humanity as a whole, of life and thought in general, suddenly dawned on me, and this recognition inspired me with fear and awe as I suddenly felt to what an extent my own innermost personal life and thought were part of the eternal stream of great ideas. ”

“ Your stone, your tree, your river—are they actually a reality?”
“This too,” spoke Siddhartha, “I do not care very much about. Let the things be illusions or not, after all I would then also be an illusion, and thus they are always like me. This is what makes them so dear and worthy of veneration for me: they are like me. Therefore, I can love them. And this is now a teaching you will laugh about: love, oh Govinda, seems to me to be the most important thing of all. To thoroughly understand the world, to explain it, to despise it, may be the thing great thinkers do. ”

“ That is why he had had to go out into the world, to lose himself in fun and power and women and money, had had to be a businessman, a gambler, a drinker and to be greedy, till the priest and the samana within him were dead. That is why he had had to continue to endure these years of loathsomeness, to bear the disgust, the emptiness, the meaninglessness, of a life that was lost and barren, right till the end, till the bitter doubt, till Siddhartha the sybarite, Siddhartha the greedy, was even ready to die. ”

“ After having been standing by the gate of the garden for a long time, Siddhartha realised that his desire was foolish, which had made him go up to this place, that he could not help his son, that he was not allowed to cling him. Deeply, he felt the love for the run-away in his heart, like a wound, and he felt at the same time that this wound had not been given to him in order to turn the knife in it, that it had to become a blossom and had to shine. ”

“ Siddhartha walked more slowly as he pondered and then, gripped by these thoughts, came to a stop. And at that moment a new thought sprang out from them: There is a reason why I know nothing about myself, a cause for Siddhartha remaining so strange and unfamiliar to me, just one cause; I was in fear of myself, I was in flight from myself! I sought Atman, I sought Brahman, I had resolved to break my self apart, to flay it apart so that in its innermost, least known part I could find the kernel within all shells, Atman, life, the divine, the ultimate. ”

“ One was to choose nothing of all that; one was to want nothing, one was only to want oneself, one’s destiny. In that way had Pistorius served me, for a time, as guide.
In those days I walked about as if I were blind, storms roared within me, every step meant danger. I was conscious of nothing but the precipitous darkness in front of me, down to which all the roads I had trodden hitherto seemed to lead. And in my inward self I saw the picture of the guide, who resembled Demian, and in whose eyes stood my fate.
I wrote on a sheet of paper: “A guide has left me. I stand in complete darkness. ”

“ Oh how good is it to have fled, to have become free! How clean and beautiful is the air here, how good to breathe! There, where I ran away from, there everything smelled of ointments, of spices, of wine, of excess, of sloth. How I hated this world of the rich, of those who revel in fine food, of the gamblers! How I hated myself for staying in this terrible world for so long! How I hated myself, have deprived, poisoned, tortured myself, have made myself old and evil! No, never again I will, as I used to like doing so much, delude myself into thinking that Siddhartha was wise! ”

“ I truly hope that I, too, will be able to look and to smile, to sit and to walk as he does, so free, so venerable, so hidden, so open, so child-like and private. It is only the man who has penetrated to his innermost self who is truly able to look and to walk in this way. I, too, will do my utmost to penetrate to my innermost self.
I have seen one man, Siddhartha thought, just one, to whom I had to lower my eyes. I will not lower my eyes to any other man, not anyone. I will not be drawn into any teachings, as I was not drawn into the teachings of this man. ”

“ Demian said, “is a beautiful thing. But what we see blossoming everywhere is by no means that. It will arise anew from the mutual understanding of individuals, and after a time the world will be remodeled. What is now called community is merely a formation of herds. Mankind seeks refuge together because men have fear of one another—the masters combine for their own ends, the workmen for theirs, and the intellectuals for theirs! And why are they afraid? One is only afraid when one is not at one with oneself. They are afraid because they have never had the courage to be themselves. ”

“ But more than all the others he was loved by Govinda, his friend, the son of a Brahman. He loved Siddhartha’s eye and sweet voice, he loved his walk and the perfect decency of his movements, he loved everything Siddhartha did and said and what he loved most was his spirit, his transcendent, fiery thoughts, his ardent will, his high calling. Govinda knew: he would not become a common Brahman, not a lazy official in charge of offerings; not a greedy merchant with magic spells; not a vain, vacuous speaker; not a mean, deceitful priest; and also not a decent, stupid sheep in the herd of the many. ”