Demian

by Hermann Hesse

All I really wanted was to try and live the life that was spontaneously welling up within me. Why was that so very difficult?

The contemplation of such shapes, the surrender to irrational, confused, rare natural forms, engenders in us a feeling that our own mind is in harmony with the will that gave rise to these forms—we soon feel the temptation to look on them as our own caprices, as our own creations—we see the borderline between us and nature tremble and dissolve, and we become acquainted with the mood in which we don’t know whether the images on our retina are coming from external impressions or from within us. In no other way than through this practice do we discover so simply and easily how very creative we are, how much our soul always participates in the perpetual creation of the world.