When Siddhartha left the grove, where the Buddha, the perfected oayed behind, where Govinda stayed behind, then he felt that in this grove his past life also stayed behind and parted from him. He pondered about this sensation, which filled him pletely, as he was slowly walking along. He pondered deeply, like diving into a deep water he let 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 aloions turn into realizations and are not lost, but bee entities and start to emit like rays of light what is inside of them.
Slowly walking along, Siddhartha pondered. He realized that he was no youth any more, but had turned into a man. He realized that ohing had left him, as a snake is left by its old skin, that ohing no longer existed in him, which had apanied him throughout his youth and used to be a part of him: the wish to have teachers and to listen to teags. 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 teags.
Slower, he walked along in his thoughts and asked himself: "But what is this, what you have sought to learn from teags and from teachers, and what they, who have taught you much, were still uo teach you?" And he found: "It was the self, the purpose and essence of which I sought to learn. It was the self, I wao free myself from, which I sought to overe. But I was not able to overe it, could only deceive it, could only flee from it, only hide from it. Truly, no thing in this world has kept my thoughts thus busy, as this my very own self, this mystery of me being alive, of me being one and being separated and isolated from all others, of me being Siddhartha! And there is no thing in this world I know less about than about me, about Siddhartha!"
Having been p while slowly walking along, he now stopped as these thoughts caught hold of him, and right away ahought sprang forth from these, a hought, which was: "That I know nothing about myself, that Siddhartha has remaihus alien and unknown to me, stems from one cause, a single cause: I was afraid of myself, I was fleeing from myself! I searched Atman, I searched Brahman, I was willing to to dissect my self and peel off all of its layers, to find the core of all peels in its unknown interior, the Atman, life, the divine part, the ultimate part. But I have lost myself in the process."
Siddhartha opened his eyes and looked around, a smile filled his fad a feeling of awakening from long dreams flowed through him from his head down to his toes. And it was not long before he walked again, walked quickly like a man who knows what he has got to do.
"Oh," he thought, taking a deep breath, "now I would not let Siddhartha escape from me again! No longer, I want to begin my thoughts and my life with Atman and with the suffering of the world. I do not want to kill and dissect myself any loo find a secret behind the ruins. her Yoga-Veda shall teach me any more, nor Atharva-Veda, nor the ascetior any kind of teags. 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 he was seeing the world for the first time. Beautiful was the world, colourful was the world, strange and mysterious was the world! Here was b