One of the books that inspired me to create "Despondency: The Story of a Defeated Man", was Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse. I would like to share with you a passage I came across yesterday while reading the novel on my Kindle:
"And where was Atman to be found, where did He reside, where did His eternal heart beat, where else but in one's own self, in its innermost part, in its indestructible part, which everyone has in himself? But where, where was this self, this innermost part, this ultimate part? It was not flesh and bone, it was neither thought nor consciousness, thus the wisest ones taught. So, where, where was it? To reach this place, the self, myself, the Atman, there was another way, which was worthwhile looking for? Alas, and nobody showed this way, nobody knew it, not the father, and not the teachers and wise men, not the hole sacrificial songs! They knew everything, the Brahmans and their holy books, they knew everything, they had taken care of everything and of more than everything, the creation of the world, the origin of speech, of food, of inhaling, of exhaling, the arrangement of the senses, the acts of the gods, they knew infinitely much--but was it valuable to know all of this, not knowing that one and only thing, the most important thing, the solely important thing?"
- Herman Hesse, Siddhartha
I find this passage amazing and very inspiring. It moved me so that long ago, when the creation of "Despondency" was being forged in the hearth of my thoughts, it slowly infused into my writing and thus, the creation of a novel that explores the origin of self began to bloom.
