As most of you on this forum i am very enthusiast about Hesse's novels.
When i read Siddhartha a second time (and understood it completely), i felt something very strange.( It was during a travel to Rome)
When i came home, i felt like i could compose my life (just like one does with music). I had the feeling of a structured timeless' world in which we live. Like it was one big 'plan' based on strong personalities. Then i discovered that Hesse too (and Mann) describes about this way of thinking, and relates it to other written texts across history (pythagoras etc.). I am about to read the glass bead game and hope this will help me further.
Can anybody understand what i mean (i can't, i just feel it) and thus help me in my quest?

Yes Wulve, I understand your comment. Hesse, Mann and Gabriel Garcia Marquez have the exceptional talent to express in words the difficult concepts we are unable to express. Perhaps, that is why these three great writers have won Nobel prizes for literature. They are creative writers who could reach their reading audience by explaining a reality that scientists would not explore. The notions of "structured" or "bounded" timelessness are irrational. They are contradictory. Yet, even though we cannot understand, we can and do experience a timelessness. Anyone who has walked in the mountains or sailed the ocean has experienced this treasure. Because I can't explain or understand it, I am thankful for Hesse, Mann, Garcia-Marquez, and other writers who can interpret these sensations in words. Do not be disappointed with the GlassBeadGame, where Hesse describes an organization of excessive structure and tells of its disasterous impact on the creativity, the naturalness and the free-spiritedness of humanity. My recommendation is to read "Wanderung". It is no longer published in English, but the German edition is available.

Is there any way of obtaining an English copy of Wanderung?

You can buy a used paperback edition on Amazon.com. What sold for $2.95 in 1975 now goes for $30.00. My 401K should have been vested in English translations of Hesse's books. Many are out of print.

can anyone see a link between the transcendental philosophy expressed by writers such as Emerson, Hawthorne or even Mark Twain and the Budhist approaches to 'the meaning of life' in Hesse's books?
I am trying to write a paper on Emerson and I think German romanticism and Budhism are both influential in Emerson and Hesee. Is this comparison too far-fetched? Can you help me?

I recommend that you read some literature by R.D Laing on this subject. He truelly experienced moments of timelessness and could expand his mind to express his genious.

I am no lion of literary promise or conviction but I cant see the link between transcendantalist puritanism and Hesse's eastern thought. Emerson's sugar daddy was johny edwards who invented born again christians. Emmerson did not approve of thorough's spin on his philosophies. He was only cordial to him because of thorough's popularity. Not that Thorough was all that eastern either. Henry David was the first hippie to die a virgin. good luck.