The Glass Bead Game

Second book into Hesse’s corpus and I’m noticing Hesse has quite the obsession with the balance between ascetic intellectualism and giving in to worldly desires/instincts and nature… I like it.

He picks up on his theme of self-actualisation and discovering ‘true’ love of the world again quite well—somehow his characters feel fresh despite all their developments essentially being through the same wanderer arc? The neuroticism of some of his characters—Tegularius in specific—is finely executed and is reminiscent of Dostoevsky’s ‘troubled’ archetype.

5/5 So good I might get into Indian philosophy and a bit of Nietzsche myself…

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‘World history is a race with time, a scramble for profit, for power, for treasures. What counts is who has the strength, luck, or vulgarity not to miss his opportunity. The achievements of thought, of culture, of art are just the opposite. They are always an escape from the serfdom of time, man crawling out of the muck of his instincts and out of his sluggishness and climbing to a higher plane, to timelessness, liberation from time, divinity. They are utterly unhistorical and antihistorical.’

I read this book 3 to 4 or 5 times. I cannot even remember the exact number of times. Every time I had different consciousness shift and every time I am reminded why it is my favorite. I first read The Glass Bead Game almost 40 years ago and have since followed the Hesse's thought - I would one day be able to play the Game, be able to meditate, be able to connect to the higher states of consciousness. It set a path, or changed my life. I remember my first meditation attempts, as a teen being only 18 years old, spending evenings visualizing a white glass pearl in my mind's eye. The book saved me from another favorite author, Dostoyevsky, who almost led me to a suicide invading my mind, in quite a different way. I still love Dostoyevsky, yet would not recommend him to faint hearted... Hesse has opened the door for Tolstoy and his most wonderful wisdom. That in turn led me to an exploration of Greek, Hindu, Chinese philosophers. This in turn got me writing about metaphysics, cosmos, life.

I read this book 3 to 4 or 5 times. I cannot even remember the exact number of times. Every time I had different consciousness shift and every time I am reminded why it is my favorite. I first read The Glass Bead Game almost 40 years ago and have since followed the Hesse's thought - I would one day be able to play the Game, be able to meditate, be able to connect to the higher states of consciousness. It set a path, or changed my life. I remember my first meditation attempts, as a teen being only 18 years old, spending evenings visualizing a white glass pearl in my mind's eye. The book saved me from another favorite author, Dostoyevsky, who almost led me to a suicide invading my mind, in quite a different way. I still love Dostoyevsky, yet would not recommend him to faint hearted... Hesse has opened the door for Tolstoy and his most wonderful wisdom. That in turn led me to an exploration of Greek, Hindu, Chinese philosophers. This in turn got me writing about metaphysics, cosmos, life.