Table of Contents
As Siddhartha indulges in sense pleasure the inner voice, which has been strong during his Samana life, diminishes gradually. He is in fact moving away from the Self. Hence his inner voice becomes inaudible. Dramatically, properties and possessions which he considers to be vices and follies trapped him. He becomes a non-vegetarian and drank wine. He also acquires some of the characteristics of an ordinary man like envy, anxiety, childishness and impatience. “But strongly and imperceptibly, with the passing of the seasons, his mockery and feeling of superiority diminished.” (Hesse, Siddhartha 77).
Siddhartha is disheartened to notice the marks of wrinkle and weariness in Kamala’s face. “His heart was so full of misery; he felt he could no longer endure it” (Hesse, Siddhartha 81). He sits under the mango tree and ruminates on his past life. There is a call from his inner voice. “A path lies before you which you are called to follow. The gods await you” (Hesse, Siddhartha 83). Suddenly he realizes that he has to shed the life of a Samsari and he renounces the beautiful Kamala, the pleasure garden, and all his properties and walks away from them.
In the third phase, Siddhartha wanders in the forest with a sense of guilt for having indulged in sense pleasures. When he reaches the bank of the river, he even wishes to commit suicide by drowning in the river, as he feels ashamed of his meaningless life. He realizes that instead of moving forward towards eternity, he has gone backward astray. At that moment, he perceives the sound of “Om” – “the ancient beginning and ending of all Brahmin prayers, the holy Om which has the meaning of the perfect one or “perfection” (Hesse, Siddhartha 89). The sound Om is Brahman. “Om is something that is eternally there in one’s being and the realization of this does not come from listening to it with the organic ear” (Narasimhaiah 59). He pronounces Om inwardly and falls asleep on the bank of the river.
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When Siddhartha wakes up from deep sleep, he feels that he is reborn. Govinda, who passes by the way with other monks, is surprised to see Siddhartha in rich clothes. Siddhartha explains that the appearance of the world and people’s life style are all transitory right from: an embryo to a child; a child to a boy; a boy to a youth; and a youth to an old man. In each fraction of a second, there occurs a change in each cell of the body. Cells grow, mature, die and reproduce anew. This represents a complete cycle, in which, changes occur from time to time. These changes are invisible to the naked eyes.
Grey hair announces the forthcoming old age and death. A person who is seen an hour ago is not the same an hour later. Innumerable changes have taken place in his body. Old cells die and new cells grow. Hence everything is transitory. Formerly, Siddhartha has conquered his senses, “Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goal, if he can think, wait and fast” (Hesse, Siddhartha 60).
Siddhartha is given a shelter by the ferryman Vasudeva, who helps him before twenty years to go to Kamala’s town. Siddhartha too leads a life of a ferryman and learns many things from the river. After a few years Siddhartha meets Kamala who has been bitten by a snake on her way to visit the dying Buddha. She is accompanied by her eleven year old son, who is also named Siddhartha. That night she dies leaving her son under the care of Siddhartha, the father of her child. Now, Siddhartha is enmeshed in the strange bond of love and affection towards his son. However, his happiness does not last long as his son runs away from him. Only at this stage Siddhartha realizes the affinity among people. At present people are not alien to him. He treats them with warmth, sympathy and brotherliness. Their trivialities and vanities are no longer absurd to him. He sees Brahman in people’s desire.
He obtains a higher stage of self-discipline. Gradually the knowledge of the Divine Wisdom begins to unfold in him. “It was nothing but a preparation of the soul, the capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life” (Hesse, Siddhartha 131). Siddhartha realizes the subtle cord of life, which hangs from the Creator to the puppet of the mankind. When Siddhartha sorely suffers his son’s separation, Vasudeva comforts him. When Siddhartha looks into the river, it reflects his father’s image. He realizes that this is how his father must have suffered, when Siddhartha forsook him and chose to lead an ascetic life.
It is Vasudeva, who guides him from the beginning and says that the river teaches everything. Though Vasudeva is weak, his face radiates. It beams with serenity, happiness and childlike innocence. When Siddhartha confesses his anguish to Vasudeva, he feels that he has taken bath in the river to cleanse him. Suddenly, Siddhartha “felt that this motionless listener was absorbing his confession as a tree absorbs the rain, that this motionless man was the river itself, that he was God Himself, that he was eternity itself” (Hesse, Siddhartha 133).
There is no change in Vasudeva from their first meeting to the end. It is Siddhartha who does not recognize Vasudeva’s Godliness. But Vasudeva, it would seem, has been patiently waiting for this hour to raise Siddhartha’s consciousness to the cosmic level. The guru or the master, at the final stage of his spiritual evolution, ushers his disciple into cosmic consciousness to help the disciple attain Self-Realization. On the flowing water, Siddhartha sees the pictures of all the people including his parents, neighbours, son, Kamala and strangers suffering and toiling towards their goal.
He hears the echo of the rivers, it reflects sorrow and joy, good and evil, lament and laughter and a thousand other voices. The world is composed of this mixture. Siddhartha feels that he is entirely absorbed in it and has learned the art of listening from the river.
Suddenly he is unable to distinguish the different voices. He could no longer distinguish the different voices – the merry voice from the weeping voice, the childish voice from the manly voice. They all belonged to each other: the lament of those who yearn, the laughter of the wise, the cry of indignation and the groan of the dying. They were all interwoven and interlocked, entwined in a thousand ways. When Siddhartha listened attentively to this river, to this song of a thousand voices; when he did not listen to the sorrow or laughter, when he did not bind his soul to any one particular voice and absorb it in his Self, but heard them all, the whole, the unity; then the great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word: Om – perfection. (Hesse, Siddhartha 135-136)
When Vasudeva throws a radiant smile, Siddhartha reflects the same. Siddhartha is relieved from the suffering. “His wound was healing, his pain was dispersing; his Self had merged into unity” (Hesse, Siddhartha 136). The radiant smile appears only when one is completely absorbed in peace and serenity.
When Vasudeva bids farewell to Siddhartha, his footsteps are “full of peace” and his form emitted “full of bright” light. (Hesse, Siddhartha 137). This radiant light and peace are similar to that of Buddha. Hence Vasudeva like a guru leads him to salvation. Vasudeva says, “The river knows everything; one can learn everything from it” (Hesse, Siddhartha 105). So he guides Siddhartha and asks him to listen from the river.
The realized man’s mind remains calm and peaceful even when he faces adversity and sorrow. He goes beyond the existence of duality. Siddhartha achieves the same state. “There shown in his face the serenity of knowledge, of one who is no longer confronted with conflict of desires, who has found salvation, who is in harmony with the stream of events, with the stream of life, full of sympathy and compassion, surrounding himself to the stream, belonging to the unity of all things” (Hesse, Siddhartha 136). This proves that Siddhartha is a Self-Realized person.
People consider Siddhartha to be a sage. Govinda meets this sage to clarify his doubts. Siddhartha gives the difference between seeking and finding. “Seeking means: to have a goal: but finding means: to be free; to be receptive to have no goal” (Hesse, Siddhartha 140). Siddhartha explains to Govinda that time is a mere illusion. Therefore the bisecting line between events is also Maya. Hence past and future, good and evil, worldliness and eternity, sorrow and happiness are also illusions. Siddhartha, a sinner, can attain Brahman and can become Buddha. Here the sinner does not travel to become a Buddha one day. But the Buddha already exists within him. The future exists there already. It is his illusion that a sinner turns a new leaf.
The reality is that he does not realize or recognize the Buddha who exists within him when he is a sinner. No man is completely good or bad; neither a sinner nor a holy man. Hence “During deep meditation it is possible to dispel time, to see simultaneously all the past, present and future, and then everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman” (Hesse, Siddhartha 144). A stone can become a plant, soil, animal, human being and Brahman. Therefore everything is Brahman. “Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another” (Hesse, Siddhartha 137).
Siddhartha at the end of the novel tells Govinda that love, admiration and respect for the world form the pedestal of the Divine in the sanctum sanctorum of man. In the beginning of the first phase, Siddhartha considers love as a hindrance for Self- Realization and as a corollary he gets detached from his parents and people. At the end of the second phase he wanted to live amongst the people and yet leading a detached existence. Towards the finale he realizes that “love is the most important thing in the world” (Hesse, Siddhartha, 147).
Hesse has foretold the experience of Siddhartha through a subtle premonition. The important land marks of his journey of life were pre-visualized through dreams. Dream is a medium through which Siddhartha gains divine guidance until he attains Self- Realization. When Hesse introduced Siddhartha, it was well-wrought that Siddhartha brought happiness to everyone but Siddhartha himself was not content and joyful. “Dreams and restless thoughts came flowing to him from the river, from the twinkling stars at night, from the sun’s melting rays” (Hesse, Siddhartha 5). They indicate him that all the worldly relationships, materialistic desires and life of man are all impermanent. Hence the impermanency of life is the first stimulator which kindles the fire of quest for the Self.
In Vedant philosophy, the path of enlightenment consists of four basic goals of human life. They are ‘Kama’, ‘Artha’, ‘Dharma’ and ‘Moksha’. The first goal ‘Kama’ is related to the physical pleasure. The second goal ensures worldly pleasure in which material possession is the target of man. The goal of ‘Dharma’ is a renunciation of worldly life in order to serve humanity at large through religious and moral laws. The last ‘Moksha’ is the way of redemption which is the highest goal of these goals.
In Hesse‟s Siddhartha, we observe the influence of this philosophy on the lives of four characters. Kamala a beautiful courtesan stands for the goal of ‘Kama’. Next character Kamaswami who trains Siddhartha in business matters denotes the goal of ‘Artha’. Govinda’s wish to achieve enlightenment through following laws prescribed by a teacher demonstrates the goal of ‘Dharma’. Finally, Siddhartha achieves the highest goal of ‘Moksha’ because he pursues and goes beyond all these stages whereas other characters stick to only one goal in their life.
In Siddhartha, Vasudeva plays the role of a catalyst in achieving ‘Moksha’. He helps Siddhartha to recover from the pain of separation he gets from his son. He encourages Siddhartha to merge his consciousness into the power of river while being a ferryman. As a result, Siddhartha’s grief is healed. While listening to the many-veiled song of the river, he finds a path to enlightenment. Therefore, no one can deny the strong influence of eastern culture and philosophy on Hesse’s Siddhartha.
Conclusion
At the end of his journey Siddhartha realises that the God is within each and every creation. He also realizes that man is not making an external journey towards God, who is always within him. But it is his journey within from ignorance to Divine Wisdom. His ignorance brings an illusion that he is different from God. When a man realizes himself this difference vanishes. Each man has to find realization in his own way, which does not depend upon any teachings. Throughout the novel, at each crucial stage, Siddhartha has introspected himself. Thus, self-analysis leads to development. He learns the philosophy of ‘timeless unity’ from the ‘river’. (Misra 119). Hesse also says “there is only one teaching and there is only one religion” (Mohapatra 121).
Hermann Hesse conveys through his fictional works is that each individual must come at the journey to the inner-self alone. One can gather simply guidance from others but one has to be on one’s own journey of understanding the self and, thus may be able to realize with one’s struggles; therefore, individual’s paths may interlace and intersect at various points with others on their journey.
Nevertheless, each of us must have to trade on the path eventually alone. Hesse speaks about the different characters of humans whom we will deal with our own journey; some who have little sense of their human beings, and hence, have little trust for their self-development. Others, who are still controlled by their animal nature, need to learn to have control over those instincts. They gradually, and with much efforts overcome the lower nature. There will be also others who are too looking for achievement the higher stages of self-development. Hermann Hesse’s insistence on the individual causing the journey of self-discovery solely hinges on his faith that we must trust on our own self for the teaching of this journey. Self-discovery deals with searching one’s own self and fulfilling one’s desired destinations about one’s self. Nature and self of a person are closely linked to each other. Through different experiences from nature, an individual is able to recognize his own self. Life is a circle of goals, as one goal is fulfilled; it would be replaced by another goal. One comes at experience through the accomplishment of these goals which leads a person toward self-discovery.
