It had the same impact for me. I shed a few tears, too, especially when I read the lyrics. It definitely recalls Siddhartha in the first two lines, as IndieJay wrote, and perhaps Samuel Butler’s Rasselas as well. I think the song has to do with how we incorrectly conceptualize our own natures and that the real truth resembles the asceticism of many Eastern religions.
I take the song in two parts: the first, from lines 1-11, ending with the first “of success and failure,” has to do with what the speaker used to think all her life, that is, that there was nothing she could do to be a saint, since “saints were born saints,” so she might as well “live the life of a prince,” a life of privilege, ascendancy over other people, and hedonism (as in Siddhartha). The idea here is that the speaker and everyone else can’t really change themselves or their own natures, that they were doomed to be what they have always been (“we didn’t stand a chance”), and were forever denied a higher state of being (sainthood). All she thought she or anyone else could be was an insalubrious (unhealthy) offshoot of nature “with hearts and minds of [their] own,” a step along the way as nature did its work to create true saints. Really, the only way she thought saints could be produced is to do is continue the species, so “all the daughters” and “all the sons” for centuries continue on “to unearth” (develop) “the creature,” that is, a more evolved state of being, and a world “where consciousness is higher.” “A costly process of success and failure” therefore evokes centuries of evolution or cultural development.
That is, however, until we get to the remainder of the song, where she describes the truth she has learned. The majority of the song is a repetition of these last few lines to stress their import. The song seems to rise and fall throughout this section, as if continuously building to apexes that reflect the continuous ecstasy of the truth she finds. She thought saints could only be born, but she “looked in the dirt” (studied the world) “and found wisdom is learnt,” that is, they can learn to become saints. “Wisdom is learnt” is, as others have said, both extremely profound and remarkably simple, and, as it is often repeated in this song and constantly rising in pitch and key, it is both a mantra and an almost religious ecstasy of enlightened truth. The second part repeats “a costly and process of success and failure” that appears in the first part, but in this context, rather than reaching wisdom or a higher consciousness after centuries of development, it can be “learnt,” that is, within one’s own lifetime. It may seem that the best lives we can live are as princes, but the speaker learns that we can, in fact, all be saints by studying the world, that the wisdom of a higher consciousness can be learnt. It is the realization of new purpose, the understanding that we can be the enlightened creatures we thought could only arise after the turning of a new age, that we can effect change within ourselves, our consciousness, and, collectively, within the world.
It had the same impact for me. I shed a few tears, too, especially when I read the lyrics. It definitely recalls Siddhartha in the first two lines, as IndieJay wrote, and perhaps Samuel Butler’s Rasselas as well. I think the song has to do with how we incorrectly conceptualize our own natures and that the real truth resembles the asceticism of many Eastern religions.
I take the song in two parts: the first, from lines 1-11, ending with the first “of success and failure,” has to do with what the speaker used to think all her life, that is, that there was nothing she could do to be a saint, since “saints were born saints,” so she might as well “live the life of a prince,” a life of privilege, ascendancy over other people, and hedonism (as in Siddhartha). The idea here is that the speaker and everyone else can’t really change themselves or their own natures, that they were doomed to be what they have always been (“we didn’t stand a chance”), and were forever denied a higher state of being (sainthood). All she thought she or anyone else could be was an insalubrious (unhealthy) offshoot of nature “with hearts and minds of [their] own,” a step along the way as nature did its work to create true saints. Really, the only way she thought saints could be produced is to do is continue the species, so “all the daughters” and “all the sons” for centuries continue on “to unearth” (develop) “the creature,” that is, a more evolved state of being, and a world “where consciousness is higher.” “A costly process of success and failure” therefore evokes centuries of evolution or cultural development.
That is, however, until we get to the remainder of the song, where she describes the truth she has learned. The majority of the song is a repetition of these last few lines to stress their import. The song seems to rise and fall throughout this section, as if continuously building to apexes that reflect the continuous ecstasy of the truth she finds. She thought saints could only be born, but she “looked in the dirt” (studied the world) “and found wisdom is learnt,” that is, they can learn to become saints. “Wisdom is learnt” is, as others have said, both extremely profound and remarkably simple, and, as it is often repeated in this song and constantly rising in pitch and key, it is both a mantra and an almost religious ecstasy of enlightened truth. The second part repeats “a costly and process of success and failure” that appears in the first part, but in this context, rather than reaching wisdom or a higher consciousness after centuries of development, it can be “learnt,” that is, within one’s own lifetime. It may seem that the best lives we can live are as princes, but the speaker learns that we can, in fact, all be saints by studying the world, that the wisdom of a higher consciousness can be learnt. It is the realization of new purpose, the understanding that we can be the enlightened creatures we thought could only arise after the turning of a new age, that we can effect change within ourselves, our consciousness, and, collectively, within the world.