Awakening and decision to follow own path

After leaving the grove Jetavana, where the Buddha Gotama remained and where his childhood friend Govinda had taken refuge in the teachings, Siddhartha felt that his past life had also stayed behind and parted from him. He pondered this sensation deeply, letting himself sink down to the ground of the sensation, down to the place where the causes lie, because to identify the causes, so it seemed to him, is the very essence of thinking, and by this alone sensations turn into realizations and are not lost, but become entities and start to emit like rays of light what is inside of them. Slowly walking along, he realized that he was no youth any more, but had turned into a man. He realized that one thing had left him, as a snake is left by its old skin: the wish to have teachers and to listen to teachings. He had also left the last teacher who had appeared on his path, even him, the highest and wisest teacher, the most holy one, Buddha—he had left him, had to part with him, was not able to accept his teachings.

The Self as the True Object of Search

Siddhartha asked himself what he had sought to learn from teachings and from teachers that they were still unable to teach him. He found the answer: "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." He realized that no thing in this world had kept his thoughts thus busy as this very own self, this mystery of being alive, of being one and being separated and isolated from all others, of being Siddhartha—and that there was no thing in the world he knew less about than about himself. He saw that his ignorance of himself stemmed from a single cause: he was afraid of himself, fleeing from himself. He had searched for Atman, for Brahman, willing to dissect his self and peel off all of its layers to find the core, but he had lost himself in the process.

A New Way of Seeing the World

Siddhartha opened his eyes and looked around; a smile filled his face and a feeling of awakening from long dreams flowed through him from his head down to his toes. He declared to himself that he would no longer let Siddhartha escape from him, that he no longer wanted to begin his thoughts and his life with Atman and with the suffering of the world, nor to kill and dissect himself any longer to find a secret behind the ruins. He resolved: "I want to learn from myself, want to be my student, want to get to know myself, the secret of Siddhartha." He looked around as if seeing the world for the first time. Beautiful was the world, colourful was the world, strange and mysterious was the world. Blue was blue, river was river, and if also in the blue and the river, in Siddhartha, the singular and divine lived hidden, it was still that very divinity's way and purpose to be here yellow, here blue, there sky, there forest, and here Siddhartha. The purpose and the essential properties were not somewhere behind the things, they were in them, in everything. He scorned his former self for having scorned the symbols and letters of the visible world, calling them a deception, and realized that he had awakened and had not been born before this very day.

The Shock of Complete Aloneness

Suddenly, as if a snake lay in front of him on the path, Siddhartha became aware that he was no longer the one he was—no ascetic, no priest, no Brahman. Whatever should he do at home and at his father's place? All that was over, all of that was no longer alongside his path. Motionless, he remained standing there, and for the time of one moment and breath, his heart felt cold, as a small animal would when seeing how alone he was. For many years he had been without home and had felt nothing; now he felt it. Nobody was thus alone as he was. There was no nobleman who did not belong to the noblemen, no worker that did not belong to the workers, no Brahman who would not be regarded as Brahmans, no ascetic who would not find his refuge in the caste of the Samanas. Govinda had become a monk, and a thousand monks were his brothers. But Siddhartha—where did he belong to? With whom would he share his life? Whose language would he speak? Out of this moment of cold despair, when the world melted away all around him and he stood alone like a star in the sky, Siddhartha emerged more a self than before, more firmly concentrated. He felt that this had been the last tremor of the awakening, the last struggle of this birth. And it was not long until he walked again in long strides, heading no longer for home, no longer to his father, no longer back.

The Transformation of Perception

Siddhartha learned something new on every step of his path, for the world was transformed and his heart was enchanted. He saw the sun rising over the mountains and setting over the distant beach, the stars in the sky, the crescent of the moon floating like a boat, trees, stars, animals, clouds, rainbows, rocks, herbs, flowers, the glistening dew, birds singing, bees buzzing. All of this had always been there, but in former times it had been nothing more to him than a fleeting, deceptive veil before his eyes, looked upon in distrust, destined to be penetrated and destroyed by thought. Now his liberated eyes stayed on this side; he saw and became aware of the visible, sought to be at home in this world, did not search for the true essence, did not aim at a world beyond. Beautiful was this world, looking at it thus without searching, thus simply, thus childlike. Differently the sun burnt the head, differently the shade of the forest cooled him down, differently the stream and the cistern, the pumpkin and the banana tasted. He was with the world, he was part of it. Light and shadow ran through his eyes, stars and moon ran through his heart.

The Deeper Understanding of the Self

On the way, Siddhartha remembered his conversation with Gotama and realized that what he had said to the Buddha—that his treasure and secret was not the teachings but the unexpressable and not teachable thing he had experienced in the hour of enlightenment—was nothing but the very thing he now had gone to experience. He understood that he had never really found his self because he had wanted to capture it in the net of thought. The body was definitely not the self, nor the spectacle of the senses, nor the thought, nor the rational mind, nor learned wisdom. Both the thoughts and the senses were pretty things, but the ultimate meaning was hidden behind both of them; both had to be listened to, both had to be played with, neither scorned nor overestimated. From both, the secret voices of the innermost truth had to be attentively perceived. He wanted to strive for nothing except what the voice commanded him to strive for, to dwell on nothing except where the voice would advise him to do so. To obey like this, not to an external command, only to the voice, to be ready like this—this was good, this was necessary, nothing else was necessary.