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The Simpleton
Tale of the Brothers Grimm [1810] translated by Undine
Interpretation by Undine & Jens in green [2025]
After attempting to get to the spiritual bottom of the earth, we would now like to turn to the mystical element of water. Since, it wasn’t for nothing that we were called “Undine & Jens”… Let’s begin with a very short but profound fairy tale, true to the motto: Keep it simple and stupid!
Once upon a time, there was a Hans who was so incredibly stupid that his father chased him out into the wide world. He runs along until he reaches the seashore, where he sits down and starves. Then an ugly toad approaches him and croaks: “Embrace me and sink!” So, the toad comes twice, but he refuses, but when it comes the third time, he follows it. He sinks and arrives in a beautiful castle beneath the sea. Here he serves the toad. Finally, the toad commands him to wrestle with her, and he wrestles, and the ugly toad turns into a beautiful maiden, and the castle with all its gardens stands on earth. Hans becomes clever, goes to his father and inherits his kingdom.
At first, we might think of a father who chased his son from his house, and if he was a king, even from his kingdom, into the external world, just as Adam and Eve were chased by the Father of Creation into an external world after they had eaten from the tree of knowledge of worldly opposites. But here we are talking about a “simpleton” who lives little or not at all from this tree, so presumably the father also missed this “worldly intelligence” with the corresponding zeal. Therefore, let us now think more about how he chased his son into an internal world. And in truth, the “wide world,” as stated above, is probably more within than without, for our external and superficial earthly world is actually an extremely “narrow world,” just a thin coating on a tiny speck of dust compared to the vastness of the entire universe. Some children even escape into this inner world when they lack external love, and some adults do the same when they are fed up with the outside world.
In any case, our Hans is “running along” meaning he sees himself consciously running until he can go no further and reaches the shore of a sea. This sea can be thought of as our subconscious, which the ordinary ego-mind cannot penetrate. This is why we often sit on the earth and feel hungry, just as we sit at water and feel thirsty. Yes, because we would suffocate in the earth and drown in the water, for our ego-mind is a superficial consciousness that lives, so to speak, on the surface and feeds on opposites there, thus eating from the earth and drinking from the water.
Now a strange being appears, a toad, a being of the earth or physicality, croaking at our Hans, telling him to embrace it and sink himself. Wow! Sounds creepy, and yet we do it every day when we embrace this animal body, not to sink ourselves, but to raise ourselves into the outer world, to keep the ego “above water,” for without a body of our own, we believe we will perish. But now it’s supposed to go into the inner world, and the ego-mind is supposed to allow itself to sink into an unknown sea, where it will surely drown and die. That’s why it usually refuses, terrified of losing its external, superficial world.
Well, our Hans doesn’t seem to have much to lose here. His father chased him away, and there’s no mention of his mother or siblings. So, after the third croaked “quack”, he says “yes” and enters the underworld of quarks... No, not quite yet, but in principle, at least in that direction. In this “underworld,” or in the “subconscious,” he finds a kingdom with a beautiful castle, where he serves the physical world or nature, for the superficial ego, which likes to drink from water, has now drowned in the water and is dead or ineffective. And that makes sense, for only in this way can consciousness truly serve, for it no longer seeks its own advantages but can practice true humility (in German: Demut), which etymologically means “courage to serve” (German: Mut zum Dienen). And thus, the formless consciousness reveals itself more and more, for whoever wants to serve must be willing to take on any desired form, without clinging to any wilful form. Yes, here lies the golden key to looking deep into the sea bottom of the world.
There is also a profound song by Karat called “The Ocean”:
I’ve often discovered the depths, the silence and the wine.
Treasures await hidden there, and then also soleness.
Dancing with the primordial tides, for a moment,
I want to glide down into paradise, a little bit.
For I know, I know, I know, and I believe,
the ocean exists within us after all...
On the seabed on my back, from stone to stone, from reef to reef,
there I always find new gaps and sometimes a sunken ship.
Dancing the roundel, I have not drowned,
for only in clear silence can I find the bottom and back.
For I know, I know, I know, and I believe,
the ocean exists within us after all...
Now, one could certainly find many people who would describe this triple “I know” and the single “I believe” as “stupid.” And yet, it is precisely this stupidity that brings us to the depths and, in this fairy tale as well, closer to the happy ending: What does “wrestling (German: ringen) with the toad” mean? Here, one might think of a wrestling match of love in the mutual recognition of spirit and nature, a wedding dance, two wedding rings, and perhaps even a wedding night. One could also speak of self-knowledge as the ring of wholeness. For the toad is often used symbolically for a female being of Mother Nature, while the frog is more reminiscent of a male being of the spirit, which we also know from “The Frog- King.” Thus, the ugly toad transforms into a beautiful maiden, which reminds us of the soul of nature, which the spirit has recognized and won in the inner world through his faithful service. Thus, spirit and soul recognize and unite each other again within the person, and the inner kingdom simultaneously becomes an outer one, because spirit and nature are also reunited, and the separating ego-mind has lost its external dominion. For now, holistic reason once again rules the intellect, which now appears quite spontaneously or intuitively when needed in the external world, like a tool that one grasps when needed and no longer has to be constantly carried around. In this way, the stupid and simple Hans can become not only “clever” but even a Saint John, and “goes to the father and inherits his kingdom,” which can even remind us of the divine kingdom of all creation.
From this perspective, we could further reflect on the expression “water of eternal life”: When water on Earth flows externally from the source and becomes a river, it flows through space and time and becomes transient water, while the water itself can be eternal. At least most hydrogen atoms are as old as the entire universe, and all other matter originated from them. It is similar with light. When it flows through space and time, it becomes transient and can be dimmed, but the light itself is eternal beyond space and time. The same could be imagined for information or consciousness. When consciousness takes form in space and time, it becomes transient, but it is itself eternal. Just something to think about...
Hail! All hail! With newer voices;
How my spirit rejoices,
By the True and the Beautiful penetrated:
From Water was everything first created!
Water doth everything still sustain!
Ocean, grant us thine endless reign!
If the clouds thou wert sending not,
The swelling streams wert spending not,
The winding rivers bending not,
And all in thee were ending not,
Could mountains, and plains, and the world itself, be?
The freshest existence is nourished by thee!
(Goethe, Faust II)
Finally, we would like to add a short story of our own, about the eternal water of life and the waves on the sea of consciousness. OM
The Sea and the Waves
Two small, young waves meet in the vastness of the ocean:
Greetings, you merry fellow! You wear a pretty cap made of foam. -
Yes, yes, I am still a small wave. But someday I will be as big as my parents. Do you see them, these mighty waves behind me? Mighty is their form and great is their power.
After a long time, the two waves meet again:
Oh, you have grown mightily. But where are your parents? -
Ah, they have died and I feel lonely. -
Why do you feel lonely? I tell you, you are not just a wave, you are the entire great sea. -
No, how can I believe that? I am a wave, just like you. I was born, grow, live, and will die, like my parents and everything around me. Can you prove to me that a single wave is the entire sea? -
How could I prove that? Even if I were able to gather the entire sea, all the rivers, lakes, and clouds of this world within myself, I still couldn’t show it to you, because you wouldn’t be standing before me anymore.
The wave pondered for a long time. Much time passed before this knowledge became its own. It is true, in stillness I am the entire sea, in motion a mighty wave. It is beautiful to be an eternal sea. No birth, no death, not even my parents have ever died. If only I could be this mighty, vast, deep ocean forever and never again a lonely wave! And yet it seems as if the forces multiply the closer one comes to the truth. Wave upon wave, full of pain, the more powerful, the greater the suffering.
Mighty wave or calm sea? An unbridled force curves the sea into a wave.
• ... Table of contents of all fairy tale interpretations ...
• King Thrushbeard - (topic: holy and healthy marriage)
• Saint Solicitous - (topic: beard and violin)
• The old witch - (topic: true Love and Reason)
• The Jew among Thorns - (topic: Reason and Mind)
• The Princess and the blind Blacksmith - (topic: Christmas)
• The Hare and the Hedgehog - (topic: I’m already here)
• Hans my Hedgehog - (topic: Reason and Nature)
• The Simpleton (topic: Nature of the sea)
• The Water-Nix - (topic: Source and River)
• The Nix of the Mill-Pond - (topic: Water-being)
• The Little Mermaid Undine - (topic: Wave dance)
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[1810] Brüder Grimm: Kinder- und Hausmärchen, Handschriftliche Urfassung, 1810 |