Siddhartha

by Hermann Hesse

While he still went on speaking, still went on making admissions and making confession, Siddhartha felt more and more that it was no longer Vasudeva, no longer a human being, who was listening to him; that this motionless listener was absorbing his confession as a tree absorbs rain; that this motionless one was the river itself, God himself, the Eternal itself And while Siddhartha ceased to think about himself and his wound, this realization of Vasudeva’s altered state took possession of him; and the more he felt and penetrated this, the less strange it became and the more he saw that everything was in order and natural, that Vasudeva had been so for some time now, almost always, but that he himself had not altogether realized it; in fact, he saw that he himself was just barely different from Vasudeva. He perceived that he now saw old Vasudeva the way the common people see the gods, and that this could not last; he began to take leave of Vasudeva in his heart. And all this while he went on speaking.