With the Samanas

• physically: Siddhartha begins his travels with the shramana. During his travels he is taught the practices of self-abnegation and meditative absorption. Slowly his health begins to become effected by his fasting. The flesh on his body becomes scarce and he starts to experience fevered dreams. After a period of time Siddhartha and Govinda leave the shramana to hear the teachings of Gotama, the buddah.
• mentally: Once Siddhartha begins to live the life of a shramana, he is stripped of all that he had. While passing through local cities and examining the people, he begins to view all possessions that the people carry to be lies. 
• spiritually: Siddhartha's current goal is to die away from himself and become completely empty so he can find his inner self. He concludes that life is pain and questions whether what he is doing is right or if he is just traveling in a circle. Siddhartha does not believe that he is close to attaining Nirvana because even the oldest shramana has not attained it. This is one of the main reasons Siddhartha chooses to leave and seek out the teachings of Gotama. 
• socially: Once the older shramana saw Siddhartha learning quickly, they showed admiration to him as others had before. Siddhartha was again not content and confided in Govinda his feelings of abandoning the shramana's. The eldest shramana was very angered by his wish to leave, until Siddhartha mentally showed all he had learned by practicing with the shramana. 

*"We have learned a great deal, Siddhartha, and there remains a lot more still to learn. We are not going in a circle, we are moving upward. The circle is a spiral; we have already advanced through a number of stages" (15).
- This quote represents Siddhartha's journey. Each time Siddhartha comes to a new enlightenment, he climbs higher up in this spiral of a journey. All of the knowledge he obtains from the different groups of people he stays with, is a new chapter in his life, and a new climb up into his spiral of a journey.