The opening chapter of Siddhartha presents a pair of friends, both sons of Brahmans; but Govinda is the devoted follower while Siddhartha is marked as leader. Siddhartha overcomes his father in a gentle but inflexible contest of wills reflecting Indian passive resistance. Behind this Indian mask it is easy to glimpse Hesse's self-assertion vis-a-vis his own father and the priestly path ordained for him. Both friends abandon home, family, and caste to join the Samanas, thus becoming indigent "holy men." For the images of life are "not worth a glance, everything deceived, everything stank, stank of falseness, everything gave an illusion of meaning and happiness and beauty, and yet everything was unacknowledged decomposition" (Hesse, III, 626). At this stage, the aim is an ascetic denial of life, a suppression of the ego: "One goal stood before Siddhartha: to become empty, empty of thirst, of wish, empty of dream, of pain and pleasure. To die away from himself, to be no longer I, to find peace in his emptied heart, in his de-individualized thinking to be receptive to miracles, that was his goal. If the ego was completely overcome and extinguished, if every yearning and every instinct died in his heart, then the ultimate had to awaken, the inmost essence which is no longer ego, the great secret. (Hesse, III, 626)." It is the purpose of this paper to explore the conditioning of Siddhartha in his life with the Samanas to achieve self-recognition - oneness. 5 pgs. Bibliography lists 3 sources.
