Hermann Hesse

He real­ized that he was no youth any more, but had turned into a man. He real­ized that one thing had left him, as a snake is left by its old skin, that one thing no longer ex­is­ted in him, which had ac­com­pan­ied him through­out his youth and used to be a part of him: the wish to have teach­ers and to listen to teach­ings.

“You are like me, you are dif­fer­ent from most people. You are Kamala, noth­ing else, and in­side of you, there is a peace and refuge, to which you can go at every hour of the day and be at home at your­self, as I can also do. Few people have this, and yet all could have it.”

Like when someone, who has eaten and drunk far too much, vomits it back up again with ag­on­ising pain and is nev­er­the­less glad about the re­lief, thus this sleep­less man wished to free him­self of these pleas­ures, these habits and all of this point­less life and him­self, in an im­mense burst of dis­gust.

For how long had he not heard this voice any more, for how long had he reached no height any more, how even and dull was the man­ner in which his path had passed through life, for many long years, without a high goal, without thirst, without el­ev­a­tion, con­tent with small lust­ful pleas­ures and yet never sat­is­fied! For all of these many years, without know­ing it him­self, he had tried hard and longed to be­come a man like those many, like those chil­dren, and in all this, his life had been much more miser­able and poorer than theirs, and their goals were not his, nor their wor­ries

I’ve had to ex­per­i­ence des­pair, I’ve had to sink down to the most fool­ish one of all thoughts, to the thought of sui­cide, in or­der to be able to ex­per­i­ence di­vine grace, to hear Om again, to be able to sleep prop­erly and awake prop­erly again. I had to be­come a fool, to find At­man in me again. I had to sin, to be able to live again. Where else might my path lead me to? It is fool­ish, this path, it moves in loops, per­haps it is go­ing around in a circle. Let it go as it likes, I want to take it.

But out of all secrets of the river, he today only saw one, this one touched his soul. He saw: this wa­ter ran and ran, in­cess­antly it ran, and was nev­er­the­less al­ways there, was al­ways at all times the same and yet new in every mo­ment! Great be he who would grasp this, un­der­stand this!

Vas­udeva’s listen­ing gave Siddhartha a stronger sen­sa­tion than ever be­fore, he sensed how his pain, his fears flowed over to him, how his secret hope flowed over, came back at him from his coun­ter­part. To show his wound to this listener was the same as bathing it in the river, un­til it had cooled and be­come one with the river.

have ex­per­i­enced on my body and on my soul that I needed sin very much, I needed lust, the de­sire for pos­ses­sions, van­ity, and needed the most shame­ful des­pair, in or­der to learn how to give up all res­ist­ance, in or­der to learn how to love the world, in or­der to stop com­par­ing it to some world I wished, I ima­gined, some kind of per­fec­tion I had made up, but to leave it as it is and to love it and to en­joy be­ing a part of it.

to be­come empty, empty of thirst, empty of wish­ing, empty of dreams, empty of joy and sor­row.

But though the ways led away from the self, their end nev­er­the­less al­ways led back to the self.