As he went on speaking and Vasudeva listened to him with a serene face, Siddhartha was more keenly aware than ever of Vasudeva's attentiveness. He felt his trouble, his anxieties, and his secret hopes flow across to him and then return again. Disclosing his wound to this listener was the same as bathing it in the river.
As he went on talking, Siddhartha felt more and more that this was no longer Vasudeva, no longer a man who was listening to him. He felt that this motionless listener was absorbing his confession as a tree absorbs the rain, that that motionaless man was the river itself, that he was God himself, that he was eternity itself. As Siddhartha stopped thinking about himself and his wound, this recognition of the change in Vasudeva possessed him, and the more he realized it, the less strange did he find it; the more did he realize that everything was natural and in order, that Vasudeva had long ago, almost always been like that, only he did not quite recognize it.
Siddhartha looked into the river and saw many pictures in the flowing water. He saw his father, lonely, mourning for his son; he saw himself, lonely, also with the bonds of longing for his faraway son; he saw his son, also lonely, the boy eagerly advancing along the burning path of life's desires; each one concentrating on his goal, each one obsessed by his goal, each one suffering.
"Do you hear?" asked Vasudeva's muted glance. Siddhartha nodded. "Listen better!" whispered Vasudeva. Siddhartha tried to listen better. The picture of his father, his own picture, and the picture of his son all flowed into each other. Kamala's picture also appeared and flowed on, and the picture of Govinda and others emerged and passed on. They all became part of the river.
The water changed to vapor and rose, became rain and came down again, became spring, brook and river, changed anew, flowed anew. But the yearning voice had altered. It still echoed sorrowfully, searchingly, but other voices accompanied it, voices of pleasure and sorrow, good and evil voices, laughing and lamenting voices. Siddhartha listened. He was now listening intently, completely absorbed, quite empty, taking in everything. He had heard all of this before, all the numerous voices in the river, but today they sounded different. He could no longer distinguish the different voices - the merry voice from the weeping voice, the childish voice from the manly voice. They all belong to each other; the lament of those who yearn, the laughter of the wise, the cry of indignation and the grown of dying. They were all interwoven and interlocked, entwined in a thousand ways. And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. When he did not bind his soul to any one particular voice and absorb it in his self, but heard them all, the whole, the unity, then the great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word: Om, perfection.
"Do you hear?" asked Vasudeva's glance once again. Vasudeva's smile was radiant; it hovered brightly over all the wrinkles of his old face, as the Om hovered over all the voices of the river. His smile was radiant as he looked at his friend, and now the same smile appeared on Siddhartha's face. His wound was healing, his pain was dispersing, his self had merged into unity. From that hour Siddhartha ceased to fight against his destiny.
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