Because you believe that you are incomplete, you need to constantly validate the person you purport to be. By throwing yourself into the company of others, especially those easily beguiled by the stories you concoct of yourself, you distract your mind in other directions and avoid the pain of gaining any real knowledge of yourself. Even the distraction of a hobby is a way of getting away from the facts of your life when it serves only as a distraction, a way of passing the time. Vivikta (विविक्त) is the act of separating yourself from others, not as a means of alienating yourself from society, but as a way of separating yourself from worldly things so that you may be free from their influences. The pre-Christian concept of contemplation is what the ancient mystics valued most highly. Aristotle believed that contemplation (theōria) is the ultimate culmination of all thought and action. It is the means to ascertaining truth, and truth may only reveal itself in complete stillness. In the great Eastern traditions, this truth or self-knowledge has an extraordinary meaning. It is the full and total acceptance of yourself and the nature of the world around you. It is the letting go of the need to control and direct things, especially your being itself, and accepting what you actually are from moment to moment—accepting your fragmented self and your utter helplessness within the vast integer of the universe. Therein lies the primacy of contemplation over the vita activa: that all man’s achievements pale in comparison to the perfection of the universe; a magnificent, perpetual clockwork mechanism whose cogs interlock in perfect synchronicity, right down to the escapement beating in his own heart. A perfection that has alone made possible the continuity of life over millions of years and gives living beings the chance to be more than what they were by a continual evolution or mutation or any other myriad ordered changes in their organism. This truth discloses itself only when all movement and activity is at perfect rest. To be humbled by this true knowledge of yourself is then the ultimate revelatory aspect of the solitary life.

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