"My life, as I saw it, was to be a transcendence, a progress from step to step, a series of realms to be traversed and left behind one after another, just as a piece of music perfects, completes and leaves behind theme after theme, tempo after tempo, never tired, never sleeping, always aware and always perfect in the present. I had noticed that, coincidental with the experience of awakening, there actually were such steps and realms, and that each time a life stage was coming to an end it was fraught with decay and desire for death before leading to a new realm, and awakening and to a new beginning."

- An excerpt from Hermann Hesse's The Glass Bead game. The main character, Joseph Knect, is explaining an experience he coins an "awakening"