The Holy Om

In the novel Siddhartha, there are many recurring motifs, including knowledge, the Self, and the river. one that really stuck out to me was the holy Om. The holy Om really starts to emerge after Siddhartha lived a rich man’s life. The first place where I see the holy Om having an influence is when Siddhartha is hanging over the river, about to fall to his death. “Then from the remote part of his soul, from the past of his tired life, he heard a sound. It was one word, one syllable, which without thinking he spoke indistinctly, the ancient beginning and ending of all Brahmin prayers, the holy Om’ (Hesse 89). In this scene, the holy Om that Siddhartha head was what saved him and reawakened him from his confusion with life.

The next place that I see the holy Om as influential is when Siddhartha fell asleep under the tree after his near-death. “Softly he said the word Om to himself, over which he had fallen asleep, and it seemed to him as if his whole sleep had been a long deep pronouncing of om, thinking of Om, an immersion and penetration into om, into the nameless, into the Divine” (Hesse 90). this occurrence of the holy Om is significant because after Siddhartha wakes up from his slumber he is reawakened in a new way, which may have been because of the holy Om within his soul.

The third place that I see the holy Om as being significant is After he wakes up and he is with Govinda. As he watched Govinda depart, he said to himself, “And at that moment, in that splendid hour, after his wonderful sleep, permeated with Om, how could he help but love someone and something. that was just the magic that had happened to him during his sleep and the Om in him- he loved everything, he was full of joyous love towards everything that he saw”(Hesse 94). During this scene, the holy Om that punctured his sleep state seems to have brought back the caring, knowledgeable man that he once was. It reignited the fire in his soul.The motif of the holy Om in Siddhartha appears to have had quite a bit of influence on the man that Siddhartha was forming again.              

~Sydney Bates~