Siddhartha: Hermann Hesse’s ‘Prilgrim’s Progress’

SIDDHARTHA
HERMANN HESSE’S “PILGRIM’S PROGRESS”

Hermann Hess’s Siddhartha is a pilgrim’s progress with a difference. Hess’s novel is something of an allegory whereas Bunyan’s allegory is also something of a novel. Hesse presents a pilgrim of Eternity not burdened with sin but fire of aspiration burning in his heart. Siddhartha arrived at not the city of God outside himself but to a state of ecstasy within. The samsara which Siddhartha passed through for sometime could be taken as a kind of Vanity Fair. Towards the end he could be said to have plunged into the Slough of Despond before he attained his goal. Since Hesse’s is primarily a novel and only secondarily an allegory there is no one-to-one correspondence between the events and characters and what they are embodiments of. The characters are persons rather than personifications of abstract qualities.

The characters and events of the novel take us to the sixth century before Christ. At the beginning of the novel we see the Buddha, having attained his Enlightenment, spreading his gospel of the Eightfold path. At the end we hear of his impending death. Jainism had already become a religion of self-­inflicted mortifications. Brahminism was no more than ritualism. The spiritual knowledge and realisation behind the rituals as shown to us by Sri Aurobindo are not heard of in the society as depicted by Hesse.

We sec Siddhartha and his companion Govinda dissatisfied with the Brahmincial rituals turning to the mortifications of the Samanas and being dissatisfied with them moving on to the Enlightened One. Siddhartha’s companion, Govinda, was so highly impressed by the Buddha that he embraced his creed immediately. But much as Siddhartha admired him he could not choose to become his follower. Siddhartha discovered that the great Enlightened One did little to communicate his profound spiritual experience, the state of Enlightenment he reached under the Bodhi tree in the gospel of the Eightfold path. Siddhartha admired more what the Buddha was than what he taught. We see in the novel that religion brought to and practiced by the common man is always a far cry from the spiritual experience it has its origin in. Only a true seeker like Siddhartha could become a siddha + artha = one who attains the object of his seeking.

It may be interesting to note that the Buddha’s original name was Siddhartha. Though the protagonist of the novel, his namesake, could not embrace his creed and follow the Eightfold Path, felt a kind of identity with him. His thoughts at the moment he took leave of Gotama are significant:

‘The Buddha has robbed me, thought Siddhartha. He has robbed me, yet he has given me something of greater value. He has robbed me of my friend, my friend who believed in me and who believes in him; he was my shadow and is Gotama’s shadow. But he has given me Siddhartha, myself”.

The words more than suggest the identity between himself and Gotama. Siddhartha told himself:

‘I will learn from myself the secret of Siddhartha. He had to pass through a number of experiences before he could learn the secret of Siddhartha and become a Siddha+artha.’

First he had to pass through the Vanity Fair of Life, called samsara (sex, money and attachment). For any other man such an involvement would mean only a fall. Siddhartha had to become a samsara panka nimagna, one immersed in the mire of the world before his samuddharana, his being lifted up and released to a higher state was possible. The ever-present upward push from the start, what could be called the samskara, on the one hand and the help of Vasudeva, the Ferryman at the end made the samuddharana easy.

During the time Siddhartha was with Kamala and Kamaswami Siddhartha remained a samana at heart with his sense of detachment from outward things. He played with money or sex as a game.           Both Kamala and Kamaswami knew it to their cost. But Kamala was a courtesan of genius and had a sense of discrimination that Kamaswami did not possess. We could say that she was a counterpart of Siddhartha in her own sphere. After Siddhartha left her she could turn to the Buddha with whom she had felt a sense of identity.

For a time atleast Siddhartha’ s involvement in the samsara killed or suspended the operation of the samana in his heart. Hesse says,

‘The world had caught him; pleasure, covetousness, idleness, and finally also the vice he had dispised and scorned as the most foolish, acquisitiveness, possessions had caught him.’

It was when he was deeply stuck in the samsara panka, the mire of the world, he had a dream. In the dream Kamala herself asked about Gotama and expressed her desire to become his disciple. It was followed by her enticement of him into a fierce and passionate love play. Siddhartha could then see how close sex act was to death.

It must be stated that the dream just mentioned like the other dreams he had as for instance the dream he had before meeting Kamala, - his embracing Govinda and Govinda turning into a woman, - or the one he had after leaving her, - the dream of the death of her song – bird have a Jungian influence. Hesse was as much drawn to the Jungian psychology as to the Eastern thought.

Siddhartha did not stay with Kamala for long after the dream. Govinda, who had never understood him, happened to see him fast asleep in the woods after his return from her place. Not recognizing him as he was in a rich man’s clothes, took him for a stranger and wanted to protect him from snakes and other dangers common in the woods. When Siddhartha awoke and spoke to him he was totally baffled and he left him with a formal greeting.

After Govinda left him Siddhartha came to the river near by, the river he had once crossed before meeting Kamala, At the river, for a while, he had a death-wish. But soon he heard within the old Brahminical syllable, the one with which the Brahmin began and ended his prayers - OM. All that should last in the past experience abode with him; we saw he was a samana at heart when with Kamala and that the ideal of Buddha never left him. Now the Brahminical syllable of his early days came to him. Murmuring OM he slept soundly and he awoke a new man. Hesse tells us vividly what happened to Siddhartha now:

‘Softly he said the word OM to himself over which he had fallen asleep and it seemed to him as if the whole deep sleep had been one long and deep pronouncing of OM, thinking of OM, an immersion and penetration into OM, into the nameless, into the Divine.’

The pilgrim at last arrived at his goal, at least for the time being.

The late Prof. K. Swaminathan in his admirable Introduction to the rendering of the novel into Southern languages (published by the National Book Trust) tells us that the vision of the novel is the same as that of Sri Ramana Maharshi and Jiddu Krishnamurthi, Ramana Maharshi says,

‘In this matter there is no place for God, the Vedic Mantras, sacrificial rituals, money-gifts to priests. Meditate with     undivided concentration on the soul, filled with the soul and through the soul.’

Krishnamurthy also would speak almost with the same words. Hesse shows like Krishnamurthy that inner experience cannot be communicated with words.

But is it possible to equate Hesse’s vision with Ramana’s and Krishnamurthy’s? Can we equate even the Maharshi’s with Krishnamurthi’s vision? Perhaps all equations go wrong outside Mathematics and Physical Sciences! And yet none can deny strong resemblances between what Hesse presents and the two masters say.

It was perhaps not a coincidence that Siddhartha should meet Vasudeva soon after his realising the Divine within himself with the help of OM. Those who know declare that there are really no coincidences or what we call accidents in life. Meeting him gave him a suitable companion to live with and a proper place to live in. Vasudeva helped him to “listen” to the river and live delightfully forgetting his self.

But in the midst of the smooth flow of the river of a joyous life he got stuck once again in the mire of the world. Kamala, who had a son by him, brought the boy to Siddhartha and left him with him as she proceeded to see the dying Buddha. But Kamala herself died of snake-bite before she went far. And the boy became a real problem to Siddhartha. On the one hand the boy was refractory; on the other the attachment, the sense of my-ness (mamakara) prevented him from listening to the words of Vasudeva to leave the boy to himself. Fortunately the boy solved the problem by going away from Siddhartha. But the boy’s leaving only meant for him being pulled out from the mire of the world and thrown into the Slugh of Despond. It was Vasudeva who slowly helped him to come out of it and regain his inner harmony.

At this stage Vasudeva thought he should leave Siddhartha to be the Ferryman in his place to help people to cross the river both literally and figuratively. And Siddharth’s name spread far and wide as a sage-Ferryman. Govinda, still seeking his goal, hearing about the Ferryman-sage wondered if he could be of any help to him. Little did he know till he saw him it was none other than the old friend whom he had left in the woods. As usual Siddhartha’s words made no sense to him when he spoke of the futility of seeking something outside himself. Siddhartha therefore, asked Govinda to kiss him on the forehead. The kiss conveyed a bliss beyond words and gave him a vision of all life and truth beyond all life. Siddhartha had known and communicated to his friend the great Reality transcending all expression.