Hermann Hesse's The Glass Bead Game

It was a slow story, like sipping a warm drink. 

It feels like nothing happens, and yet, everything passes in a man’s life, learning, and death. And by the time we realize the moment of animal ecstasy in the divining morning light, it’s gone, slipped by and we wonder how we could have missed it. 

  It was like a Zen garden, where you must sit quietly. 

Hermann Hesse has created his own glass bead game and trying to unravel the story, makes it hold together all the more. Like Hesse’s easier Narcissus and Goldman, there is a Yang-Yin balance between materialism and spirituality. But in The Glass Bead Game, he spirals into a Borgian gyre that never resolves.  The elements pull in together in paired clumps, like Beethoven’s 9th, with piano and forte, light and dark, classic and folk, Apollo and Dionysus. Is that the contrast between Knect and Plinio Designori?  A perfection surrounds the contemplative and there is still the physical. Or is it the math and the music? The counterpoint surrounds the story. Then you arrive at the end of Knect’s journey (does “Knecht” refer to “servant" or “knight” and is there a difference, for we are on Parsifal’s quest for the grail, are we not?)

But in the end, so what? We are living the life of the enlightened one. Why can’t Hesse just say that to us in a few short pages. Because we need to experience it. And once we follow the complete cycle of Joseph Knect through his orphan beginnings to the head of Castalia, then we can quickly ease into the shorter rotations of the rainmaker, shaman, and yogi. 

Each time, for me, it comes back to the animal, diving into the cold water, the physical of the moment. 

The book was dull, but so is life. Then in death, all the experiences collapse like dominoes and and we look back at the design and realize how masterfully this was setup. The sun rises, as Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. But then slips down into the dark depths again, never to again see the light.

Looking back at what I’ve written about The Glass Bead Game, I realize that I’m thrown into metaphor. The book defies definition or meaning. We can speak of pedagogy, enlightenment, utopia, religion, the nature of life, but at the end of the day, the story wonderfully defies such an easy classification. 

#enlightenment

Maybe lightning or a bright flash or a burning bush or a booming voice from the gray clouds of heaven. Maybe touching the ground and a choir of angels enfolds you in white wings and crowns you with a golden halo like Buddha.  Or perhaps, like Saul, you find yourself in a storm and a voice demands, “What the hell have you been up to with your life?” Better though is Gandalf, in Lord of the Rings, returning as Gandalf the White with a blinding aura around him mounted on his stallion, Shadowfax. Eureka! Enlightenment strikes!

However, my experience ranges more with the mundane drips and drabs of joy, tulips on a spring day, a “runners high”, elation at the sight of a rainbow. Though I confess I did once have a vision.  It sounds too dramatic for our agnostic day.

Another time, I sat in a cold Scottish Cathedral, with the scent of wood and dust from the pews. Something awakened, ecstatic, quiet, focused, and immediate. I sat knowing oneness. The brief moment passed and life continued.  I remember the Buddhist adage, “Before enlightenment, cut wood and carry water.  After enlightenment, cut wood and carry water.” 

Rumi says, 

Your intellect is in fragments, like bits of

gold scattered over many matters.

You must scrape them together so the royal stamp can be

pressed into you.

Enlightenment has been more an alignment and engagement with the universe.  Some days it’s there, some days not. Some days you feel like crap and pray and carry on. Some days you feel fantastic and on those days too you pray and carry on. Each day a gift.

I believe poetry—and all the arts—come from a divine grace: a Great Creator.  Muse works too. Experience through that one individual shared with others. The artist is a conduit bringing congruence between the outer and inner and shared with another. 

To the lover and visionary, it’s life as it’s being lived…

Being faithful is like the outside of a fruit peeling. It’s dry and

bitter because it’s facing

away from the center. Being faithful like the inside of

the peeling, wet and sweet.

But the place for peelings is the fire. The real inside is

beyond sweet and bitter. It’s

the source of deliciousness. This cannot be said: I’m 

drowning in it!

Even while we cut wood and carry water in our lives, we should wake to the deliciousness. We commute, head into the office on a Monday morning and start diving into our email. We meet with clients, have committees, share ideas, deliver results. Even there, though the peel separates the inner and the outer, be the deliciousness of now, of life, of living. In all the universe, you are the only chance to be. Create a masterpiece living in the moment in a realization of experiences, be it a flash, a booming voice, or just the juices of a ripe fruit on a warm day. 

(Rumi quotes fromColeman Barks, The Soul of Rumi)

Interviewed on Rise In Japan!

Interviewed by Fabien explaining the most challenging time in business and going bankrupt.

How do you answer the interview question, "Do You Have any Questions?"

In an interview, when asked, "Do you have any questions?" how do you answer?