The Journey to the East, although the most challenging of Hesse's novels to understand, became one of my favorites upon reading. It left me with a vague yet powerful sense of apprehending a vital truth. It's like those essential words that seem to be right "at the tip of the tongue" but we just can't quite speak them. Or those aspects of memory that we know are there but can't recall. It's also similar to the revelations that come to us in dreams, in states of delirium, or under the influence of psychotropics.

Now, having essentially wasted a significant portion of my life and being the same age as the author, I view The Journey as a reflection of my youth. It particularly reminds me of the awakening of my intellect and ethical aspirations when I became acquainted with the great and timeless world of ideas that literature offers.

This theme, of course, runs throughout a large part of Hesse's writing and reaches its culmination in The Glass Bead Game. His works continuously explore the depths of the human psyche, the search for meaning, and the connection between the individual and the larger world of ideas. Hesse's novels have the power to make us question our own lives, our beliefs, and our place in the universe.

"Poet of the Interior Journey"

In my 20s, there was a period when I was completely obsessed with Hermann Hesse. I was truly a Hesse Obsessor. After all, he was held in such high regard as an author that he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946.

Now, something is luring me back to the novels I read then, like "Siddhartha" and "Steppenwolf". However, I initially thought of trying this one as a "wedgie" or a stopgap between more ambitious projects.

In truth, this work is more of a novella than a full-fledged novel. Even with a 30-page introduction by Dr Timothy Leary (who coined the term "Poet of the Interior Journey" for Hesse), it is still less than 110 pages long.

So, the question arises: is it any good? Well, the answer is yes, it's okay.

The Home of Light

The title of the novel suggests that in order to gain spiritual awareness, one must head towards the East. But this is not a strictly geographical concept. For the West, it doesn't necessarily mean Asia. It is a metaphor. As it is written, "We not only wandered through Space, but also through Time. We moved towards the East, but we also travelled into the Middle Ages and the Golden Age." The East is where the Sun rises. It is the Home of Light, the Home of Enlightenment. Even more simply, it is Home. "Throughout the centuries it had been on the way, towards light and wonder, and each member, each group, indeed our whole host and its great pilgrimage, was only a wave in the eternal stream of human beings, of the eternal strivings of the human spirit towards the East, towards Home." Wisdom and spirituality are not just found in the East; they are found at Home.

Lost Pilgrims

Another thing implied is that we can embark on our spiritual journey either individually or as a collective. Whichever way we choose, each of us can stray and end up as a lost pilgrim. The collective pilgrimage of Hesse's characters seems to fail, and they feel disillusioned, worthless, and spiritless. "There was nothing else left for me to do but to satisfy my last desire: to let myself fall from the edge of the world into the void – to death." For them, the confrontation with the void brings about a suicidal impulse.

The Inevitability of Despair

All along, there is only one enemy, Despair. The protagonist HH's ambition to write a book about his adventures is based on his desire to escape from Despair. "It was the only means of saving me from nothingness, chaos and suicide." Despair is not just the experience of Depression for an individual. It is not something that only the mentally imbalanced suffer from. All of us have to confront Despair at every step of our spiritual journey. In Hesse's eyes, it is a necessary part of the journey. "Despair is the result of each earnest attempt to go through life with virtue, justice and understanding and to fulfill their requirements. Children live on one side of despair, the awakened on the other side."

The Freedom to be Happy

Along HH's path, he imagines the source of his temporal Happiness. "My happiness arose from the freedom to experience everything imaginable simultaneously to exchange outward and inward easily, to move Time and Space about like scenes in a theatre." Note the fluidity, not just of Space, but of Time, which is why there was an earlier allusion to the Middle Ages and the Golden Age. You can see the appeal to Timothy Leary, who speculated (inaccurately in my opinion) that Hesse wrote the novella while on drugs.

Home is Where the Soul Is

Once again, Hesse's spiritual journey transcends geography. "Our goal was not only the East, or rather the East was not only a country and something geographical, but it was the home and youth of the soul, it was everywhere and nowhere, it was the union of all times." The Journey to the East is not just a journey to Asia but an Interior Journey, a Journey that begins and ends at Home and with the Self. This is where we will find true Happiness.

The Disappearing Self

In any spiritual journey, as in any other, we have to be cautious of spoilers. However, within the theistic framework of the novel, each individual member of the group must merge with the God figure. "He must grow, I must disappear." The enemy of Spirituality is the persistence of the Self or Selfishness. Ultimately, it seems that Hesse's message is that we must transcend the Self, embrace a Universal Love, and become one with that Love, if you like, a God. We don't need to go elsewhere to achieve this. The best place to seek the Self and Universal Love is at Home, the Home of the Soul.