Hey Vicki! 

I'm crazy rushed right now, trying to get this to you, so I'll be brief and to the point. After having a hell of a time trying to decide what book to analyze according to the theories I have developed up to this point, I finally decided on Herman Hesse' Siddhartha. I had a great time with this book, and hopefully you'll enjoy my work. 

Things have been hectic trying to find somewhere to live. Finally I have, and it's actually just on the other side of Davis Square from you. I should be moving in there in a day or two. 

I'm a bit concerned because I never heard back from you on my fourth packet. Hopefully you got it? I left it in your door a few days after the due date. 

I'm wondering if you know anyone who might be willing to do some carpooling for the January rez. I could take the bus again, but I imagine that there must be a few other students living in the area.... 

Anyway - I gotta go. I'm sorry this is so short, but I can't even express to you how rushed I am right now. Please give me a call (350-6019) and hopefully we can meet one last time before the January rez. 

Take care and have fun, 

AIDRIAN 

Notes on Siddhartha; or 
An Exercise in the Law of Alternation 

It is rather obvious that when Herman Hesse wrote Siddhartha, he clearly understood the way in which the path of the would-be hero unfolds. One of the easiest ways to understand the path as portrayed by Hess, amongst others, is to interpret his work as an exercise in the Law of Alternation. I have previously defined this law, which is derived from the ancient discipline known as Sacred Geometry, but will do so again for clarity's sake. The Law of Alternation states that when any given aspect of reality is focused on by the human consciousness, it seems to swing back and forth from one side of a perceived duality to the other. Just as a pendulum swings, the aspect of reality moves a little less far into the extremes of the duality with each pass, coming closer and closer to the center balance point, which in this case represents unity. The hero's consciousness, if it is continually evolving as it progresses down its life path (as it would seem it must), can easily be interpreted according to the basic idea represented by the Law of Alternation, and we will see how in the following analysis. 

Siddhartha's life begins in a sort of uroboric ignorance. He is "The Brahmin's Son," and little else. He has been raised and educated by his father, and acts wholly within the realm of his father. He performs all of the ritual actions that a Brahmin's son would, with no real understanding of why he does what he does. If he does understand the actions, it is strictly in a theoretical sense - he has no inner connection with the symbolism of the rites. He is content playing this role for the majority of his youth, and does not question that this is the right place for him to be, and that these are the correct actions for him to take. Frankly, he is not aware that there is any other life that he could possibly leads, and thus his life feels whole and complete. At this point, for Siddhartha, ignorance is bliss. 

In order for our Law of Alternation to be set in motion, however, the unity of Siddhartha's uroboric youth must be shattered. And shattered it is, in the same way which many heroes experience - through the rejected of the Father. A group of Samanas comes into Siddhartha's little world at a time when he is beginning to question if the world his parents have to offer is enough to satisfy his need for knowledge and contentment. The Samanas presents a wholly different way of living than the boy has ever known, a way which represents to some degree defiance of his father's ways and even his father's world as a whole. Siddhartha becomes resolute on joining the Samanas, and his father, after some trepidation, allows him to leave. I might add that there is something to be said for Siddhartha's father, who realized that his son's time for separating himself from his father had come, and there was little that he could do to stop it. 

The next morning Siddhartha and his faithful friend Govinda set out to join the Samanas, and thus the pendulum of Alternation is set into motion. Before going any further, I want to define what we are specifically dealing with in the case of Siddhartha's path interpreted according to the Law of Alternation. Siddhartha himself is the pendulum, both as a body of consciousness and as a being who takes action. The field of duality in which he swings back and forth as time progresses has at one end world-negating spirituality, and at the other end spirit-negating worldliness. To relate this to my prior work, on one side of the dualistic field is Siddhartha's inner landscape, and on the other side is the outer material landscape which surrounds him. Siddhartha, being in effect a body of consciousness, is straddling these two worlds, and is continually becoming dominated by either one or the other, all the while wishing that he could find utter balance between the two. He may not always be consciously aware that his goal is balance between the two, but all we need remember is that the entire goal of consciousness, according to Neumann, is to unite opposites in the exact way which Siddhartha has done by the end of the book. Thus Siddhartha is like a pendulum, swinging repeatedly back and forth from the spiritual to the material. 

As stated, Siddhartha's first swing, initiated by his rejection of his father's world, is into the realm of world-negating spirituality. This is a common starting point for many hero figures, and can be likened to the adolescent hero stage discussed in my earlier work. This is the stage at which the hero is at war with his or her world, trying to slay dragons and conquer that which would stand in his or her way. As discussed by Neumann, at a certain level the consciousness is fighting against the uroboros in a war over libido, struggling to fend off the corrosive power of the world around and within it. With Siddhartha, we find that he cuts straight to the chase - he does not tarry with struggling against something external which might represent his internal struggle. Instead he fights a war against his very self, attempting to extinguish it with all his will. 

This war against the self could easily be misinterpreted to being related to the post adolescent hero stage which I have previously described in a similar manner. There is a very fine line which must be drawn in this case, and that is Siddhartha is not attempting to deal with negative byproducts of his consciousness' long war against the uroboros, which is how I previously defined the post-adolescent hero stage. Instead, Siddhartha is fighting a war against the world by attacking it at its very root - his own individual perception of it. He is escaping from the world by escaping from his own self, as there is no world if there is no self to perceive it. The post-adolescent hero attempts to come to terms with all of the worlds that he or she can perceive, and this is certainly not Siddhartha's conscious goal at this point in the story. 

After learning many of the self-negating techniques of the Samanas, Siddhartha comes to realize that his final goal is not self-negation. In his own words: 

"What is meditation? What is abandonment of the body? What is fasting? What is the holding of breath? It is a flight from the Self, it is a temporary escape from the torment of Self. It is a temporary palliative against the pain and folly of life. The driver of oxen makes this same flight, takes this temporary drug when he drinks a few bowls of rice wine or coconut milk in the inn. He then no longer feels his Self, no longer feels the pain of life; he then experiences temporary escape. Falling asleep over his bowl of rice wine, he finds what Siddhartha and Govinda find when they escape from their bodies by long exercises and dwell in the non-Self." (page 13) 

The pendulum, though still deep in spiritual territory, has begun to swing back towards the material realm. 

It is at this point that Siddhartha first begins to suspect that nothing can truly be learned by studying the words and works of another person, which is a fundamental step in realizing the importance of one's own existence to oneself. Rumors of Gotama, the Buddha, come to Siddhartha and Govinda, and the two young students leave the Samanas to discover for themselves whether the rumors of this great man are true or not. 

Siddhartha and Govinda travel to where the Buddha is staying, and they follow him around town, and listen to him teach. Govinda immediately joins Gotama's order, but Siddhartha is not so fast to act. He has learned from his time with the Samanas that another person's way can never fully be your own, and because of this he refuses to join the order. Before he leaves the grove where the Buddha lives, he happens to encounter the Illustrious One alone, and he questions him about the value of trying to teach, when teaching cannot convey true wisdom. Gotama, in good Buddha form, neither confirms or contradicts him, but Siddhartha is left profoundly changed none the less. The very way in which Gotama carries himself, the expression on his face, the way he sits, talks, eats - everything he does exudes a holiness, and Siddhartha does not even vaguely attempt to deny the fact. But, he must move on, "not to seek another and better doctrine, for I know there is none, but to leave all doctrines and all teachers and to reach my goal alone - or die." 

When Siddhartha leaves Gotama and Govinda, he experiences an awakening. This awakening is the pendulum swinging across the balance point, or unity, for the first time since it was set into motion. He feels as if he has a new lease on life, like he had left some part of himself behind, "like the skin that a snake sheds." He realizes that what he has left behind is his need for teachings, and also his fear of his own self. Up until this point, he has fought against his self, hoping to become one with the universe by conquering his self, which is, as stated earlier, directly related to the need to conquer the uroboros. It is at this point that Siddhartha realizes that he knows absolutely nothing of his own self, and that he has always feared his self and fled from it. This is the point of maturation for Siddhartha's hero quest. He is changing from adolescent hero, fighting against the world through his self, to the post adolescent hero, who no longer needs to war against what is. 

Many descriptions of what Siddhartha is experiencing at this point of maturation let us known that this is indeed a balance point in the pendulum's action, that Siddhartha has, if only temporarily, found unity. Color seems ultra-vivid to him, and the external world seems to appear as if Siddhartha had never seen it before. Material objects become of spiritual value, a sure sign of the spiritual and material worlds conjoined. "Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, all of them." (page 32). 

He feels as if he has been newly born, and with all of this comes the realization that he is for the first time truly alone. He is no longer the son of the Brahmin, or the ascetic belonging to the Samanas - he is simply Siddhartha, alone. The feeling brings an icy despair, perhaps comparable to the sad heart of the warrior as described by Chogyam Trungpa, and certainly similar to the despair any newborn creature might experience. But Siddhartha finds refuge in the fact that he is for the first time his own man, and he faces forward, prepared to accept what will come. 

While in this open state, so close to ultimate unity, every step teaches Siddhartha something new, something beyond words. It is at this point that he comes for the first time to the river, which turns out to be a symbol of the middle path which he is experiencing. After crossing the river, Siddhartha will go on to swing as far into the material realm as he has delved into the spiritual realm in the past, and "crossing the river" is both literal and figurative in this sense. 

Shortly after crossing the river, Siddhartha encounters Kamala, a courtesan, and instantly he is taken with her. She helps him to find a job working for a merchant in the nearby city, and tells him that to gain her favor he must dress and act like a man of culture. This Siddhartha does, and quite well at that. For some time he keeps the knowledge he has gained of the spiritual realm, and blends it with his actions in the material realm. People feel drawn to him, asking his advice and hoping to gain his favor. Siddhartha regards the merchant he works for as childlike, for the way in which he becomes so emotionally caught up in his money. For a time, the hero plays the merchant business as if it were a game, and he is amazingly successful at it. And in the mean time, he has become Kamala's favored lover, and has mastered those arts as well. However, the pendulum has crossed over the point of balance, has still has a lot of momentum as it swings into the material realm. 

And swing it does. As the years pass and Siddhartha becomes more and more comfortable in his material wealth, his spiritual side becomes buried deeper and deeper within him. Eventually he looses touch with it completely, and becomes bitter and hard. He treats his servants and those who work for him harshly, and the time he spends with Kamala is his only reprieve. He takes to gambling away his money, showing the utter contempt he feels for the empty riches that he has obtained, betting with stakes that even the most adept gamblers balk at. He comes to hate the emptiness that his life has become. 

Finally, he wishes nothing else than to end his miserable life. He leaves his comfortable but empty home and stumbles out of the city in a haze. Eventually, he comes across the river which he had crossed on his way into the city, over twenty years ago, and he prepares to throw himself in and destroy his existence. But, unbeknownst to him, the pendulum of his life stopped swinging into the material when he first came to regard his riches with scorn, and all this while had been swinging back toward balance. Just as Siddhartha is prepared to drown himself, from nowhere comes the very sound of reality occurring - "Om." It echoes inside the desolate man's head, and freezes him where he stands. He settles in a haze at the base of a coconut tree, and falls into a deep sleep. 

Before telling more of the story, I have to stress that this sleep is not your average nap. Once again, Siddhartha has swung to one extreme, this time the material, and has come back to the point of balance. As with the last time, when he wakes form this deep and profound sleep, he experiences a feeling of rebirth, of total renewal. Also to note is the fact that, as with last time, Siddhartha is back at the river. And this time he won't stray so far from it again. 

Interestingly enough, when Siddhartha awakes, sitting before him is none other than Govinda, his friend who stayed whom he left with Gotama, the Buddha. Govinda is yet another symbol that Siddhartha has returned to his spiritual side, representing the youth which he spent in pursuit of the greatest goal. After a brief interlude with Govinda, he goes on his way, and Siddhartha takes time to consider the way in which he has moved from ignorant child to thinker (spiritualist) to ordinary person (materialist), and back to ignorant child, here and now by the river. 

He is inspired by the absurdity of it all, and once again is prepared to look to the future with an attitude of preparedness. 

Simultaneously, Siddhartha experiences a love for the river which he has been drawn to. With his newfound awareness he hears the voice of the river itself, and he resolves not to leave it again so quickly. He travels up the bank of the river, and encounters the ferryman that ferried him across twenty years ago. Siddhartha tells the ferryman, Vasudeva, his life story, and explains that it is his greatest wish to stay with Vasudeva as his apprentice. Vasudeva agrees, and the pendulum swings into the realm of the spiritual once more. 

This time, however, Siddhartha is wiser, and he understands that he does not need to go to an extreme with his spirituality. The momentum of the pendulum has slowed dramatically, or perhaps been slowed by Siddhartha's greater wisdom. Siddhartha does not choose to live at the river's side as an attempt to deny life, or to escape from reality, but instead is affirming life by making this decision. He and Vasudeva live simply. They speak little, and listen to the river often, learning the ultimate truths of life by watching and listening to it. 

One of the various ways in which we can see that Siddhartha has changed, has managed to slow the pendulum's swing, is in the way that he deals with the many people who hear of the two wise men who live by the river, and come to Siddhartha and Vasudeva to ask them spiritual questions. Siddhartha does not answer their questions, instead content to appear "to be mute, rather odd and stupid" (page 89). This is certainly not because he is odd and stupid, but simply that he understands that there is no way to communicate what the river has taught him, and what it represents (balance, unity), other than to experience it for oneself. We can, however, tell that Siddhartha is definitely in the spiritual realm, and not at utter balance yet, by the way that he still feels the need to occasionally question Vasudeva on some of the various lessons the river has taught him. He is so close to balance, but still feels the need for external reassurances. 

Many years pass in this way, and then, as it must, the pendulum swings back into the material realm. It's swing is heralded by the same person who marked this point last time - Kamala. Kamala has long since given birth to Siddhartha's son, also named Siddhartha, and she is traveling with little Siddhartha near the river when she is bit by a poisonous snake. The two manage to make it to the ferry before Kamala collapses. Shortly thereafter, she dies, leaving the child in the care of his unknown father. 

The need for elder Siddhartha to take care of and deal with his son pulls him out of the spiritual realm and slams him abruptly into the material realm once more. His son has been used to a life of leisure and comfort, and has no love for his father and his father's ways. He refuses to work, and treats both Siddhartha and Vasudeva rudely. Siddhartha responds in the only way that he knows how at this point - with kindness. Young Siddhartha walks all over his aged father time and again, and the old man simply lays down and takes it each and every time. He loves his son with all of his heart, and, despite Vasudeva's urgings, the idea of scolding and disciplining the young brat is simply out of the question. He hopes that by showing the boy kindness, young Siddhartha will come to realize the inherent wisdom which his father has realized, and thus become less difficult. But the boy is in no place to care about wisdom, and in fact tells his father to his face that he resents the old man for his holiness. So old Siddhartha experiences the pain and anguish which is inherent in the material realm once more, this time through the form of his own son. 

Eventually, the child flees the river. Elder Siddhartha is not prepared to loose him yet, and leaves the river in search of his child. Note that he is not only leaving the river physically, but also leaving it in the figurative sense. His plunge into the material realm has caused him to completely leave the middle way, the river, once more. This time, however, he does not stray far before realizing that he must let go of his son, just as his father had to let go of him, and he returns to the river smarting from the wound in his heart. 

Finally, after returning from his search for young Siddhartha, the pendulum of the old man's life grinds to a halt, dead in the center. But before it can do so, Siddhartha must fully deal with the pain in his heart which was left over from loosing his son. This pain is, perhaps, simply representative of Siddhartha's need to hold on to some last vestige of the world, some part of his self. One day, despairing, he crosses the river with thoughts of going to find his son. He hears the river laughing at him for his pettiness, and by the time he reaches the other shore, he turns back. He talks to Vasudeva at length, telling him the story of his intentions and of the laughing river, and Vasudeva compels him to listen ever more closely to the river. Siddhartha does so, and after several attempts, he begins to hear many voices behind the laughter. 

"They were all interwoven and interlocked, entwined in a thousand ways. And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life. When Siddhartha listened attentively to this river, to this song of a thousand voices; 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." (pages 110-111) 

Thus Siddhartha finally attains perfect unity. He has finally gained the ability to completely surrender himself to the river, to life, and to simply float in the tides without attachment. With Siddhartha's final realization, Vasudeva stands, bids him farewell, and walks into the woods to die. Until this time, Vasudeva represented in some way Siddhartha's need to externalize ultimate realization, ultimate balance, but that need has now passed, and thus does Vasudeva pass as well. 

As a final encounter, Govinda, old symbol of Siddhartha's spiritual, thinking, questioning half, returns. He posses many questions to the old man, and I feel that this represents a potential temptation of Siddhartha to let the pendulum of his nature swing into the spiritual realm once more. But Siddhartha has realized balance, and is unshakable in his stance. Govinda leaves, not understanding many of the things which his old friend Siddhartha says, but understanding that every part of Siddhartha exudes untouchable holiness. 

 
Symbols in Siddhartha 

Govinda 

Govinda clearly represents the half of Siddhartha which is dedicated to the spiritual realm, and is portrayed as the somewhat naive searcher who is forever looking to an external source for answers to questions which cannot be answered by anyone but the self. He always appears, if only briefly, when Siddhartha is submerged in the spiritual, mental, world-negating stages of his life. He is Siddhartha's constant companion for his initial long plunge into the spiritual, which takes form in their three year stint with the Samanas in the woods. After leaving the spiritual, and Govinda, Siddhartha spends over twenty years deep in the material realm of comfortable city life, during which time Govinda, and the spiritual side which he represents, are all but forgotten. 

The next time that Siddhartha encounters Govinda is when he awakens by the river's edge, and awakens to his spiritual half once more. It is only appropriate at this point that Siddhartha should find Govinda sitting before him as he reawakens, both literally and figuratively. Govinda is critical of Siddhartha's fine clothes and shoes, just as the reawakened Siddhartha has become critical of his own materialism. 

The final encounter with Govinda comes in the last chapter of the book, and here we find that Siddhartha has grown into a different relationship with Govinda, and likewise his own spiritual self. At this point, Siddhartha has found total balance, and instead of Govinda returning as a herald of Siddhartha's return to the spiritual, his interaction with Siddhartha shows that it is no longer the spiritual which has dominance over Siddhartha, but instead that Siddhartha's state of unity can no longer be swayed by the questing need of the spiritual. The spiritual is no longer an ideal for Siddhartha, and instead it becomes frankly awed and submissive to the holy state which Siddhartha has realized. 

Kamala / Young Siddhartha 

Kamala is a symbol of Siddhartha's journey into the material realm. She is the first person that Siddhartha comes to know on the city side of the river, and she remains his most important relationship for the duration of his stay in the city. She educates Siddhartha not only in the ways of love making, but also teaches him the ways of love as an emotion, both of which represent the man's interaction with the material world. Kamala demands that Siddhartha, "must have clothes, fine clothes, and shoes, fine shoes, and plenty of money in his purse, and presents for Kamala," (page 45) before he approach her as a lover, and thus she propels him deep into the realm of materiality. It is interesting to note than even after Siddhartha has learned to despise his accumulated wealth, which was initially earned for the sake of Kamala's love, he still appreciates his time with Kamala above all else. Eventually Siddhartha leaves the worldly realm, and Kamala with it, as he swings back into the spiritual realm. 

However, Siddhartha is not through with the material realm, or with Kamala. She reappears briefly before dying at the ferry as the now elderly man is hurtled back into the material, and leaves with him her legacy in the form of their son, the young Siddhartha. In this way, young Siddhartha is an extension of Kamala - an extension of her as symbolic of Siddhartha's material side. Just as she represented Siddhartha's first dive into the worldly realm, now her son plays the exact same role. After spending some time dealing with the blind and painful love his son represents, the boy flees, and Siddhartha is left to come to terms with not only his attachment to his son, but on a greater scale his attachment to the material world as a whole. Only after Siddhartha has fully understood this attachment, and gone beyond it, can he go on to realize ultimate unity and balance. 

Vasudeva / The River 

Vasudeva is always present at those times in which Siddhartha realizes unity, and thus he becomes the external symbol of the hero's middle way. In the exact same way the river comes to symbolize the same thing, as whenever the river is present, so is Vasudeva. A distinction arises late in the book, and we will deal with this momentarily. 

After Siddhartha's initial swing into the realm of the spiritual (his stay with the Samanas), the pendulum crosses the point of unity, and where should Siddhartha happen to be but at the river, talking with Vasudeva, the ferryman. At this point, Siddhartha is far too naive to realize it, but he is at the place and with the person who can and eventually will teach him the most. But Siddhartha is destined to experience other things for now, and his time with the river and Vasudeva is brief. 

Once Siddhartha has spent ample time in the material realm, he comes back, seemingly by chance, to the river and its attendant ferryman. This time he is resolved to stay near the river and Vasudeva, and consequently stay near to the balance point. And this he does, for the most part, dipping into the spiritual realm briefly at the beginning, with his burning need for questions and answers, and then swinging back into the material when his son comes, and soon after leaves. Let it be noted that when Siddhartha sets out to search for his son, it is none other than Vasudeva, the herald of unity, who comes to escort him back to the river, and back to peace it represents. Also, the second time that Siddhartha begins to leave the river to search for his son, but quickly returns, it is the ferryman that the suffering father turns to. Vasudeva finally gives Siddhartha the last push that he needs to go beyond his attachment to his son, and the material world that his son represents, and realize ultimate unity through listening to the river. 

Now comes one of the most interesting aspects of the relation of Siddhartha to Vasudeva and the river, and it is this aspect that separates Vasudeva from being the exact same symbol as the river. Once Siddhartha has realized unity, Vasudeva walks into the woods to die. Thus, he represents Siddhartha's need to externalize divinity. Once Siddhartha no longer needs to project divinity onto an external person, but instead realizes it is his own self, the external person is no longer required, and he effectively disappears. The river, on the other hand, remains. It is for this reason that Vasudeva not only represents learning from paying attention to the world, but also represents Siddhartha's externalization of divinity. The river, on the other hand, remains symbolic of the same thing it always has - the potential teacher which is the world around us. It is not any one of the many characters in this book which teaches Siddhartha the most profound lessons of his life, but is instead simply a river - a piece of the natural environment with no readily apparent lesson to teach, no black and white doctrines to adhere to. 

Kamala's Bird 

Kamala's bird is comparably a more minor symbol than the others discussed here, but is certainly worth mentioning. Kamala's bird is symbolic of Siddhartha's spiritual self, and is similar to Govinda in this respect. However, the major difference is in that the bird is symbolic of this part of Siddhartha when he is firmly entrenched in the material realm, and has all but forgotten his spiritual side. Siddhartha's spiritual side is indeed at this time like a small, beautiful bird, locked away in a cage of gold. When Kamala realizes that Siddhartha has left the city, his material side, and her, behind, she takes the cage to the window, and lets the bird go free, a blatantly symbolic action of the return of Siddhartha's spiritual side. It is also interesting to note that from the moment Kamala lets the bird go free, she ceases her business as a courtesan, and later we find that she has turned to following the Buddha. Besides making her pregnant, Siddhartha obviously has had a greater influence on Kamala than he would ever know. 

The Two Dreams 

At two major turning points for Siddhartha, he experiences symbolic dreams, which tell of where he has come from and where he is headed towards at the times at which the dreams occur. 

The first dream comes just after Siddhartha has left Govinda with Gotama, the Buddha. He dreams that Govinda is weeping, and asking why Siddhartha has left him behind. Siddhartha embraces Govinda, who then changes into a beautiful woman with full breasts. Siddhartha drinks of her milk, and becomes intoxicated on the milk which "tasted of woman and man, of sun and forest, of animal and flower, of every fruit, of every pleasure" (page 40). It is no surprise that this dream comes at a time when Siddhartha has just left his spiritual side (Govinda) and the physical pleasure and comfort of his material side is soon approaching (the woman (possibly Kamala), the taste of the milk). 

The second dream occurs the night before Siddhartha decides that he must leave the materialistic lifestyle he is leading in the city. He dreams of Kamala's bird (see above), that it has become mute, and is not singing in the morning as it usually does. He approaches the cage which houses the bird, and sees that it is in fact dead. He cold-heartedly takes the dead bird from the cage and throws it in the street, and is instantly horrified by his own cruel act. After awakening from this dream, he knows that he cannot go on living the lifestyle he has lived in the city. 

This dream expresses Siddhartha's cruel and ungiving attitude toward his spiritual self. After all the years of materialistic comfort, the bird (his spirit) has become silent and to all appearances dead. When the man sees this in his dream, he is full of uncompassionate resentment for his own state, and tries to just be rid of his spirit once and for all. But as soon as he acts, he sees the error of his ways, and it is his own horror with himself that compels him to leave the city when he awakes. It is indicative of the author's beautiful sense of poetic thought that Kamala releases her bird when she finds that Siddhartha has left, having no idea of what the man dreamt on his final night in the city. 

Siddhartha as the Hero 

Siddhartha's life presents us with an invaluable lesson in understanding the reality of living the life of the hero, especially when my earlier theory of adolescent and post-adolescent hero stages is applied. What we find is that it is not so simple as first thought - the adolescent stage is not simply dealt with, and then followed up with the post-adolescent stage, which then leads directly to the full maturation of the hero. 

One thing that I want to clarify before advancing any further is that by my definition, the hero which has been discussed by so many is not simply a person who is on the path towards attaining the role of the hero. In order to be a fully realized hero, and live the life of the hero everyday, one must mature past the trials and tribulations which we commonly associate with the role of the hero. The fully mature hero is, by my definition, a person who possesses a similar state of mind to Siddhartha at the very last section of this book - at one with the unity of the inner and outer realms. Prior to attaining this state of mind, which so few of us manage to reach, we are like children, possessing the ability to play in this world, but without understanding the rules of the game, or even what our part is in the game. This is, of course, a rather dangerous position to be in, and the results of the majority of people never fully maturing can be readily observed in our culture today. I have previously discussed what some of the signs of our various follies are, and will not digress into that subject again. 

And so - back to Siddhartha and his path towards possessing the mindset of the hero. At various points in the book, the man possesses the mindset which is associated with the adolescent hero stage - he is at war with either the material world or the spiritual world, both of which are in reality just his own self, whether it be his external self (the material world) or his internal self (the spiritual world). This war grows and grows until it reaches some extreme point, and then, whether gradually or suddenly, he becomes aware of the negative aspects of his war, and the journey back towards the center begins. 

There are five times at which Siddhartha is at war, and thus within the adolescent hero stage. The first begins as soon as he rejects his father's world, and goes into the woods with the Samanas. At this point his war is on the material world, and his venture into the depths of the spiritual realm is an attempt to negate the material realm completely through sheer will power. He is rather successful in learning to negate the material world with his will, but eventually he comes to realize that world-negation will not lead him to nirvana, which is his ultimate goal. 

The next time Siddhartha experiences the adolescent hero stage is during his stint into the material realm - the riches and comfort of the city and Kamala. This time, the slightly less aggressive war is turned on his spiritual half, exactly opposing the previous war on the material. This, of course, hints at the swinging action of the Law of Alternation. Siddhartha becomes quite adept at earning money, comfort, and physical love, but at the expense of remaining in contact with his spiritual half, and eventually he realizes that he must end his war on the spirit. 

Once Siddhartha has gone to the river, he enters into another stage of adolescence. This time the war is more subtle than the last. He has re-entered the spiritual realm, and the only indication that there is indeed a battle being fought is his need to question Vasudeva about the lessons which the river is teaching him. The "war on the material" is in no way aggressive or conscious, but it is indeed a war, and this is because Siddhartha's preoccupation with the mental, thinking, questioning realm can only lead to an ignoring of the material realm. Gradually his need to question begins to taper off, but as it does, the arrival of young Siddhartha jerks him back into the material realm. 

Dealing with his son leads Siddhartha into another war, this time in the form of the spoiled child which has entered his life. Siddhartha's passive battle with his son drags the elderly man out of the spiritual realm and back into the material once more. As with the last battle, this causes an ignorance of the opposing spiritual realm. The battle here is not as simple as dealing with the young brat however, but is extended into Siddhartha dealing with his own selfless love for his child. This battle climaxes when the child runs away, and his father chases the boy to Kamala's grove, still trying to grasp onto the love he feels for his son. 

The final war in Siddhartha comes as a result of his son's departure. The old man swings back into the spiritual, questioning realm, in an attempt to come to terms with his need to grasp on to his son as his own. This war to end all wars finally ceases when Vasudeva compels Siddhartha to truly hear the river, and Siddhartha realizes unity once and for all. 

The five post-adolescent stages which Siddhartha experiences each come in succession after the five stages listed above, as the man is traveling back towards the center and balance after having swung to one extreme or the other. At first, Siddhartha believes that his journey with the Samanas will lead him to his goal. Eventually, however, he realizes that the Samanas cannot take him where he wishes to go, and as soon as he has left them, the post-adolescent stage has begun. Now he is left to deal with the mentalities which he has developed from his three years with the Samanas, which he realizes are not infallible. The next time he experiences this stage is after having spent so many years as a successful merchant, when he fully realizes that the mentalities he has adopted in the city can no longer suffice to fulfill his needs. After having spent time questioning Vasudeva about the river, he begins to see that the need to question itself is leading him away from balance, and he is left to reckon with that aspect of his personality. The next time of self-reckoning comes after his son has fled, and he sees that he must return to the river to deal with the grasping love which he has developed towards not only his son, but the world at large. Siddhartha's final self-reckoning comes when he learns to let go of his need to grasp, and he hears the river calling, "Om." 

The difference between the two stages which Siddhartha alternates between is subtle, but most definitely present. In order to clarify my work, I feel I must define the difference between the two stages in depth. When in the adolescent hero stage, Siddhartha is dealing with a new situation directly, whether it be internal or external. There is a process unfolding which is leading him towards a certain extreme, whether that extreme is internal and spirit based, or external and material based, and he is devoted to dealing with that situation. Once this situation has reached its climax, which can occur due to external influence or internal realization, a process beings where Siddhartha must turn away from the original situation, and deal with the repercussions of having existed in that situation for as long as he did. He must face the mentalities which he was forced to develop in order to succeed in the prior situation, and attempt to come to terms with the negative aspects of those mentalities. This acknowledgment of the negative aspects of one's current mentality, and the consequent will to be rid of those negative qualities is what the post-adolescent hero stage encompasses. 

As Siddhartha's life clearly shows, one could continually experience the growth of new mentalities and the subsequent need to deal with the negative parts of those mentalities for the duration of one's life. It could even be argued that this is the entire point of human existence, and perhaps for some, it is. But for the would-be hero, this cycle of alternating between material and spiritual, and also between adolescent and post-adolescent mentalities within those two realms, is a trap which must be worked through if there is any hope of ever realizing the true role of the fully mature hero. 

The cycle can only be stopped if the need to develop mentalities can be stopped, and frankly, that is not an easy point to reach. All one needs to do to understand just how difficult it is to attain a state where one ceases to develop mentalities is consider that attempting not to develop mentalities is a mentality unto itself. Like any other mentality, it will lead the would-be hero to an extreme (adolescent hero stage) and then the would-be hero will have to return from that extreme (post-adolescent hero stage), which means that the cycle of stages has certainly not ceased, but instead has just become more subtle. 

Despite the seeming impossibility to escape from adopting attitudes or mentalities, there is a way, and it has to do with simply letting go of the need to adopt attitudes and mentalities - not fighting against it, not trying to promote it, but simply letting go of it. This is something that frankly just has to happen of its own accord, though often times it seems to have the tendency to occur after a person has spent many, many years alternating from one extreme to another, and becoming aware of that alternation, and continuing to alternate all the same. Our example here is of course Siddhartha - a man who was comparably enlightened practically from his birth. No matter what Siddhartha put his mind to, he excelled at it. But when it came to putting his mind to not putting his mind to anything, it took him the vast majority of his life to realize this ultimate goal. And it is this very goal which all of us would-be heroes must strive for, without striving. 

The question might be raised, "But what is wrong with developing attitudes and mentalities?" I have dealt with the question often in the past, but will reiterate it here for clarity's sake. When we bring an specific mentality or attitude with us into a situation, that mentality keeps us from truly being a part of the situation. What an attitude or mentality is at its root is nothing other than prejudice in its most subtle form - our pre-formed ideas of what is occurring around and within us. If we keep ourselves separate enough from a situation that we can apply a certain pre-decided mentality to it, then we are not fully in the situation. We're taking in a part of the situation, and filling in the gaps with our predisposition. In effect we have one foot in the water (we're pretty scared to just dive right in), and we take the little bit of information we're getting from our foot and think that we know everything there is to know about the ocean. Attitudes and mentalities support us in our fear of just diving right in, and certainly end up keeping us from being a part of the unity that is all around and within us. 

  
Explaining the Chart 

Following is a visual aid to the verbal work I have done in this packet. I don't think that it will be very difficult to understand, but there are a few things which I would like to point out. 

By way of general explanation, the chart is divided vertically into three sections - the left, center, and right columns. These columns are labeled at the top in four categories - the actual physical realm, what that realm represents in the spiritual/material duality, what form of action is related to that realm, and which of the characters in the book personify that realm. The two parallel lines running down the center of the page represent the center column (the river). 

One thing which is particularly interesting to note is that, to some degree, the path which I have presented as Siddhartha's life varies from the river in not only a figurative sense, but also in the literal distance between Siddhartha and the river, or center point. I feel that a great deal could be learned from taking the time to pay close attention to the way in which Hesse planned his book this way. An example might be that the first time Siddhartha entered Kamala's grove, on the city (material) side of the river (balance point), he continued on into the city (materialism). However, we find that later on Siddhartha returns to Kamala's grove, this time in search of his son (materialism), but instead of continuing deeper into the city (materialism), he turns back, and returns to the river (point of balance). Many such "coincidences" can be noted on close observation of the following chart. 

There is no path in either of the uroboric circles at the top and bottom of the chart, because time and the path do not exist for Siddhartha when he is at on with the uroboros. We find the final encounter with Govinda at the center of the lower circle because it is the only occurrence described to us by the author, and thus is the only event to center the uroboric experience on.