—But is not solitude, too, a gate? Is there not at times disclosed, in stillest loneliness, an unsuspected perception? Can concern with oneself not mysteriously be transformed into concern with the mystery? Indeed, is not that man alone who no longer adheres to any being worthy to confront the Being? “Come, lonely One, to him who is alone”, cries Simeon, the new theologian, to his God.
—There are two kinds of solitude, according to that from which they have turned. If we call it solitude to free oneself from intercourse of experiencing and using of. things, then that is always necessary, in order that the act of relation, and not that of the supreme relation only, may be reached. But if solitude means absence of relation, then be who has been forsaken by the beings to which he spoke the true Thou will be raised up by God, but not he who himself forsook the beings. He alone adheres to various ones of these who is greedy to use them; but he who lives in the strength of present realisation can only be bound up in relation with them. And be alone who is so bound is ready for God. For he alone confronts the reality of God with a human reality.
Further, there are two kinds of solitude, according to that towards which they have turned. If solitude is the place of purification, necessary even to the man who is bound in relation, both before he enters the Holy of Holies and in the midst of his ventures between unavoidable failing and the ascent to proving true—to this solitude we are by nature disposed. But if solitude is the stronghold of isolation, where a man conducts a dialogue with himself—not in order to test and master himself for that which awaits him but in the enjoyment of the conformation of his soul—then we have the real fall of the spirit into spirituality. The man can advance to the last abyss, where in his self-delusion he imagines he has God in himself and is speaking with Him. But truly though God surrounds us and dwells in us, we never have Him in us. And we speak with Him only when speech dies within us.