MASONIC BOOK REVIEW
“Siddhartha”
by Hermann Hesse

For most, religion provides an avenue for exploring this question. The organization and structure reduces the fear of those larger questions and gives some semblance of control and ease. But life has a way of popping the bubble so to speak. Although many people find stability in religion and growth, Siddhartha sees this as a stifling of his inner self, which is the real mystery he wishes to understand. As Hermman wrote:
Perhaps, as I suspect, we find our imperfections and mortality as reflections of something abhorrent or unworthy to being a vessel of knowledge. In our deepest thoughts, we perhaps think that our “self” isn’t worth the exploring. What if I’m truly unremarkable? Reflecting on my Craft as a physician, I’ve come to the conclusion that each person has a remarkable and unfolding story to share. Not because of their own individual story. But how their story is interconnected to everyone else. It is the interconnectedness of life within ourselves and the universe that embodies the unfolding nature of the divine and love that Hermann writes through Siddhartha:
And everything together, all voices, all goals, all yearning, all suffering, all pleasure, all that was good and evil, all of this together was the world. All of it together was the flow of events, was the music of life. And when Siddhartha was listening attentively to this river, this song of a thousand voices, when he neither listened to the suffering nor the laughter, when he did not tie his soul to any particular voice and submerged his self into it, but when he heard them all, perceived the whole, the oneness, then the great song of the thousand voices consisted of a single word, which was Om: the perfection.
It may be that Siddhartha was a reflection of Hermann’s own journey to understand himself. What did Hermann discover? I believe it is the main answer we learn in Freemasonry: love. For it is the human heart and our relationship to all of the universe that defines our journey and the divine journey as one. It is learning to see our journey as a part of the larger journey of God to discover itself. And to understand what that means.
Written by: Bro. Jonathan Kopel
Bro. Kopel is a MD PhD in his neurology residency in Washington DC. He is a member at Potomac Lodge #5 and Benjamin B. French Lodge #15 of the Grand Lodge of the District of Columbia, Washington, DC.
