Herman Hesse’s slim novel carries an enormous amount of wisdom—wisdom as relevant today as when it was written in 1922. Blending Eastern mysticism with Western ideas such as individualism, it tells the story of a man’s spiritual journey toward enlightenment. In my second novel, Discovery of an Eagle, the protagonist undertakes a similar journey. Unlike Siddhartha, however, Cosmo’s quest is unintentional. Yet both characters arrive at the same destination: the discovery of an indestructible core within themselves, often called the Self—a presence that lives within each of us. It is wise, all-knowing, and through which all joy springs. It is infinite and enduring, unlike the external world. As Siddhartha tells his friend Govinda, “Remember, the world of shapes is transitory.”
Siddhartha was a “golden child” who rejected the path laid out for him by his father and chose, instead, the road less traveled. This spirit of individualism—the main theme of my third novel, The Bird that Sang in Color—runs throughout Hesse’s novel. Although Siddhartha encountered many teachers who could impart knowledge, he ultimately learned that wisdom cannot be taught; it must arise from within. This realization comes to him as he sits by the river, where his Self finally emerges. The river—his greatest teacher—shows him how “to listen with a quiet heart and a waiting, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgment, without opinion.” Siddhartha at the river reminds me of a scene in Olive Branches Don’t Grow on Trees, when the protagonist, Silvia, watches the sun set in Cape May. In that moment of stillness and attention, she discovers the wisdom she has been seeking on her own peace-making journey—a wisdom that comes not from outside sources, but from her own Self. Nature, too, is my temple: the place where I hear the voice of my Self most clearly.
Siddhartha also learns that suffering is an inescapable part of life, and that peace comes from “stop[ping] resisting, to love the world and stop comparing it to some world he only wished for and imagined, some sort of perfection he himself had dreamed up.” Indeed, resistance is what creates suffering. He comes to see “how beautiful the world was when one just looked at it without searching—just looked, simply and innocently.” Whenever he searched outside himself for fulfillment, he felt despair, even longing “to be rid of himself.” As he tells Govinda, “I was afraid of myself, running away from myself.” He realizes that nothing external—not even the love of his parents—can truly complete him.
I ran from myself, from the pain inside that was too big to be with, even for a second. Like Siddhartha, I spent years searching for something outside myself rather than within. When I stopped searching for an escape from my pain, I found what I’d been looking for all along. Hesse distinguishes between searching and finding, the former being goal-oriented and related to something outside of ourselves, the latter being open to what one already knew or had inside. In keeping with this great spiritual novel, my forthcoming memoir is entitled What I Found When I Stopped Searching.
Grace Mattioli is the author of three novels: “Olive Branches Don’t Grow on Trees,” “Discovery of an Eagle,” and “The Bird that Sang in Color, ” and several short stories. She is currently working on a memoir. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and her cats. Her books are available from all major online book sellers, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple Books.
