the illusion of self as a unity

 

Even the most spiritual and highly cultivated of men habitually

 sees the world and himself through the lenses of delusive formulas

 and artless simplifications — and most of all himself. 

For it appears to be an inborn and imperative need of all men

 to regard the self as a unit. However often and however grievously

 this illusion is shattered, it always mends again… 

And if ever the suspicion of their manifold being dawns upon men

 of unusual powers and of unusually delicate perceptions, 

so that, as all genius must, they break through the illusion 

of the unity of the personality and perceive that the self is made up

 of a bundle of selves, they have only to say so and at once

 the majority puts them under lock and key.

Every ego, so far from being a unity is in the highest degree

 a manifold world, a constellated heaven, a chaos of forms, 

of states and stages, of inheritances and potentialities.

 It appears to be a necessity as imperative as eating and breathing

 for everyone to be forced to regard this chaos as a unity 

and to speak of his ego as though it were a one-fold

 and clearly detached and fixed phenomenon.

 Even the best of us shares the delusion.

[These selves] form a unity and a supreme individuality; 

and it is in this higher unity alone, not in the several characters, 

that something of the true nature of the soul is revealed.

Love of one’s neighbor is not possible without love of oneself… 

Self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism, 

and in the long run breeds the same cruel isolation and despair.

~ Hermann Hesse

from Steppenwolf

with thanks to The Marginalian by Maria Popova

the world cleanses itself this way

There are more like us. All over the world

There are confused people, who can't remember

The name of their dog when they wake up, and people

Who love God but can't remember where

He was when they went to sleep. It's

All right. The world cleanses itself this way.

A wrong number occurs to you in the middle

Of the night, you dial it, it rings just in time

To save the house. And the second-story man

Gets the wrong address, where the insomniac lives,

And he's lonely, and they talk, and the thief

Goes back to college. Even in graduate school,

You can wander into the wrong classroom,

And hear great poems lovingly spoken 

By the wrong professor. And you find your soul,

And greatness has a defender, and even in death you're safe.

~ Robert Bly

from Morning Poems

the teachings of my blood pulsing within me

 

I have no right to call myself one who knows. 

I was one who seeks, and I still am,

 but I no longer seek in the stars or in books;

 I'm beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me.

 My story isn't pleasant, it's not sweet and harmonious 

like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment,

 of madness and dream, like the life of all people 

who no longer want to lie to themselves.

~ Hermann Hesse

from Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth

art by Van Gogh

with thanks to whiskey river

wonder and unity

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wonder is where it starts, and though wonder is also where it ends,

 this is no futile path. Whether admiring a patch of moss, a crystal,

 flower, or golden beetle, a sky full of clouds, a sea with the serene,

 vast sigh of its swells, or a butterfly wing with its arrangement of crystalline ribs,

 contours, and the vibrant bezel of its edges, the diverse scripts and ornamentations 

of its markings, and the infinite, sweet, delightfully inspired transitions

 and shadings of its colors — whenever I experience part of nature,

 whether with my eyes or another of the five senses, whenever I feel drawn in,

 enchanted, opening myself momentarily to its existence and epiphanies,

 that very moment allows me to forget the avaricious, blind world of human need,

 and rather than thinking or issuing orders, rather than acquiring or exploiting,

 fighting or organizing, all I do in that moment is “wonder,” like Goethe, 

and not only does this wonderment establish my brotherhood with him,

 other poets, and sages, it also makes me a brother to those wondrous things

 I behold and experience as the living world: butterflies and moths, beetles,

 clouds, rivers and mountains, because while wandering down the path of wonder,

 I briefly escape the world of separation and enter the world of unity.

Our universities fail to guide us down the easiest paths to wisdom… 

Rather than teaching a sense of awe, they teach the very opposite: 

counting and measuring over delight, sobriety over enchantment, 

a rigid hold on scattered individual parts over an affinity for the unified and whole. 

These are not schools of wisdom, after all, but schools of knowledge,

 though they take for granted that which they cannot teach — 

the capacity for experience, the capacity for being moved,

 the Goethean sense of wonderment.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Hermann Hesse

from  Butterflies: Reflections, Tales, and Verse

with thanks to the marginalian

 

in everything...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I seek to reach the innermost part of myself...

One thing no longer existed for him, the wish to have teachers
and to listen to teachings.

He asked himself - "But what is this, what you have sought to
learn from teachings and from teachers, and what they, who
have taught you much, were still unable to teach you?" And
he found: "It was the self, the purpose and essence of which
I sought to learn. It was the self I wanted to free myself from,
which I sought to overcome. But I was not able to overcome
it, could only deceive it, could only flee from it, only hide from
it.

No thing in this world has kept my thoughts thus busy, as this
my very own self, this mystery of one being one and being
separated... And there is nothing I know less about... I know
nothing about myself! I searched Atman, I searched Brahman,
I was willing to dissect myself and pull off all of its layers, to
find the core of all peels in its unknown interior, the Atman, life
the divine part, the ultimate part. But I have lost myself in the
process. I do not want to kill and dissect myself any longer, to
find a secret behind the ruins.

I want to get to know myself, the secret of Siddhartha.

[The beauty of this world] was no longer the veil of Maya, was
no longer a pointless coincidental diversity of mere appearance,
despicable to the deeply thinking Brahman, who scorns diversity
who seeks unity, but the beauty was also in Siddhartha, the singular
and the divine lived hidden - the purpose and the essential
properties were not somewhere behind the things, they were in
them, in everything...



~  Hermann Hesse

from: Siddhartha

with thanks to Mystic Meandering

 

 

 

stages

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As every flower fades and as all youth

Departs, so life at every stage,

So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,

Blooms in its day and may not last forever.

Since life may summon us at every age

Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor,

Be ready bravely and without remorse

To find new light that old ties cannot give.

In all beginnings dwells a magic force

For guarding us and helping us to live.

 

Serenely let us move to distant places

And let no sentiments of home detain us.

The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us

But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.

If we accept a home of our own making,

Familiar habit makes for indolence,

We must prepare for parting and leave-taking

Or else remain the slaves of permanence.

 

Even the hour of our death may send

Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces,

And life may summon us to newer races.

So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.

 

 

 

 

~ Hermann Hesse

translation by Richard and Clara Winston

 

 

 

 

 

proverb

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You must become brother and sister

to each and every thing,

so that they flow through you

dissolving every difference

between what belongs to you and others.

 

No star, no leaf shall fall -

you fall with them -

to rise again

in every new beginning.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Hermann Hesse

from The Season of the Soul

art by Picasso

 

 

 

 

 

to each and every thing

 

 

 

 

 

You must become brother and sister

to each and every thing

so that they flow through you

dissolving every difference

 between what belongs to you and others.

 

No star, no leaf shall fall -

you fall with them -

to rise again

in every new beginning.

 

 

 

 

~ Hermann Hesse

From The Seasons of the Soul

 

  

I live in my dreams

 

 

 

"The things we see,” Pistorius said softly, “are the same things that are within us.

 There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people 

live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality 

and never allow the world within to assert itself. You can be happy that way.

 But once you know the other interpretation you no longer have the choice

 of following the crowd. Sinclair, the majority’s path

 is an easy one, ours is difficult."

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself.

 What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.” “Each of us has to find out

 for himself what is permitted and what is forbidden.. Forbidden for him.

It’s possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.

 And vice versa.

I live in my dreams — that’s what you sense. 

Other people live in dreams, but not in their own. 

That’s the difference.

 

 

 

~ Hermann Hesse

excerpts from Damian 

 art by Alaira Bird

 

Demian is the story of a boy, Emil Sinclair, and his search for himself.

 Emil was raised in a good traditional home at the turn of the century 

in the young nation of Germany. His family is rather wealthy

 and they have a reputation as an upright, godly family.

 As a boy, Sinclair views the world within the walls of his home

 as representing all that is good, pure, innocent, and godly.

 But starting at a young age he feels a constant inner conflict between this world, 

which he refers to as the “world of light” and the outside world,

 or “forbidden realm” which represents sin, lowliness, deceit, and insecurity. 

And although his mother, father, and two sisters remain within the “world of light”,

 he constantly feels drawn to the outside realm and is in this way

 somewhat estranged from his family and their sphere of security.

 He ends up vacillating between both and not belonging to either

 

 comments by Susan Sontag from Art and Thoughts

 

 

 

stages

As every flower fades, so with all youth

And age brings different flowers at each stage of life,

Blooms each and every virtue and wisdom

In their time, and may not last forever.

From within every heart,  life calls, be

Ready for parting, and each new endeavor,

To bravely and without remorse

Find new beauty in the next other.

In all beginnings dwells a magic

Protecting us and helping us to live.

We shall traverse realm on realm,

cleaving to none as a home,

The world of spirit wishes not to fetter us,

He will raise us higher, to wider spaces.

We're hardly at home in one circle,

 Familiar habits make for indolence,

In someone who is ready to depart and travel,
 The crippling habit may dismiss itself.

Perhaps even the hour of death

may bring us home to new fresh spaces

The call of life to us is never ending ...

Well, my heart, bid farewell continually!

~ Hermann Hesse

steps

Like ev'ry flower wilts, like youth is fading

and turns to age, so also one's achieving:

Each virtue and each wisdom needs parading

in one's own time, and must not last forever.

The heart must be, at each new call for leaving,

prepared to part and start without the tragic,

without the grief - with courage to endeavor

a novel bond, a disparate connection:

for each beginning bears a special magic

that nurtures living and bestows protection.

 

We'll walk from space to space in glad progression

and should not cling to one as homestead for us.

The cosmic spirit will not bind nor bore us;

it lifts and widens us in ev'ry session:

for hardly set in one of life's expanses

we make it home, and apathy commences.

But only he, who travels and takes chances,

can break the habits' paralyzing stances.

 

It even may be that the last of hours

will make us once again a youthful lover:

The call of life to us forever flowers...

Anon, my heart! Do part and do recover!

~ Hermann Hesse

translated by Walter A. Aue

when someone is seeking

.

"When someone is seeking," said Siddhartha,

 "it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking;

 that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything,

 because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking,

 because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal.

...'someday' is illusion; it is only a comparison. ... 

The world, Govinda, is not imperfect 

or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection.  

 

No, it is perfect at every moment; ... 

I just love the stone and the river

 and all these things that we see and from which we can learn. 

 I can love a stone, Govinda, and a tree or a piece of bark. 

 These are things and one can love things.  

 

But one cannot love words. 

Therefore teachings are of no use to me;

 they have no hardness, no softness, 

nor colors, no corners, so smell, no taste - 

they have nothing but words.

  Perhaps that is what prevents you from finding peace, 

perhaps there are too many words, for even salvation and virtue.

 

  Samsara and Nirvana are only words, Govinda. 

 Nirvana is not a thing;

 there is only the word Nirvana."

.

 

~ Hermann Hesse

from Siddhartha

happiness

As long as you chase happiness,

you are not ready to be happy, 

even if you owned everything.

As long as you lament a loss,

run after prizes in restless races,

you have not yet known peace.

But when you have moved beyond desire,

become a stranger to your goals and longings

and call no longer on happiness by name,

then you heart rises calmly

above the ebb and flow of action

and peace has reached your soul.

~ Hermann Hesse

translation by Ludwig Max Fischer 

 

proverb

You must become brother and sister

to each and every thing

so that they flow through you

dissolving every difference

between what belongs to you and others.

No star, no leaf shall fall -

you fall with them -

to rise again

in every new beginning.

~ Hermann Hesse 

 translated by Ludwig Max Fisher, PhD

photo by Eliot Porter

 

I learned through my body and soul

I learned through my body and soul
 that it was necessary for me to sin,

that I needed lust,

that I had to strive for property,

and experience nausea and the depths of despair

in order to learn not to resist them,

in order to learn to love the world ...

Hermann Hesse, from 'Siddhartha'

 

dark eyes

My love and my yearning for home

ignited in the heat of this night

like the sweet fragrance of foreign flowers

fanning the flames of a fierce fervor.

My love and my yearning for home

and all my fortune and misfortune

now stand like silent stanzas of a song

in the dark mirror of your mythic gaze.

My love and my yearning for home

have turned away from the noise of this world

and in your dark eyes

have built a vast, secret throne.

~ Hermann Hesse

from The seasons of the Soul

translated by Ludwig Max Fischer

that is home

For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers.
 I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves.
 And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons.
 Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great,
 solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles,
 their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle 
with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves
 according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. 
Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree.
 When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, 
one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk:
 in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, 
all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years
 and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. 
And every young farm boy knows that the hardest and noblest wood
 has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger
 the most indestructible, the strongest,
 the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, 
whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth.
 They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred
 by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. 
The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, 
unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves
 in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form
 and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, 
I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me.
 I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. 
I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. 
Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, 
then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! 
Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts… 
Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you,
 or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening.
 If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel,
 its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, 
though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother,
 for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, 
every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: 
Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours.
 They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. 
But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness
 and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy.
 Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. 
He wants to be nothing except what he is. 
That is home. That is happiness.





~ Hermann Hesse
with thanks to brainpickings 

Sometimes

Sometimes, when a bird cries out,

Or the wind sweeps through a tree,

Or a dog howls in a far off farm,

I hold still and listen for a long time.

My soul turns and goes back to the place

Where, a thousand forgotten years ago,

The bird and the blowing wind

Were like me, and were my brothers.

My soul turns into a tree,

and an animal, and a cloud bank.

Then changed and odd it comes home

And asks me questions.  What should I reply?

~ Hermann Hesse

.

leading a strange life

At times he heard within him a soft, gently voice, which reminded him quietly, complained quietly, so that he could hardly hear it.  Then he suddenly saw clearly that he was leading a strange life, that he was doing many things that were only a game, that he was quite cheerful and sometimes experienced pleasure, but that real life was flowing past him and did not touch him.  Like a player who plays with his ball, he played with his business, with the people around him, watched them, derived amusement from them; but with his heart, with his real nature, he was not there.  His real self wandered elsewhere, far away, wandered on and on invisibly and had nothing to do with his life.  He was sometimes afraid of these thoughts and wished that he could also share their childish daily affairs with intensity, truly to take part in them, to enjoy and live their lives instead of only being there as an onlooker.

~ Herman Hesse

from Siddhartha

throw it all away

take each step

then throw it all away again,

suddenly,  beauty

overflows 

~ Hermann Hesse

from Rosshalde