[alone with the Alone]
Dear Donagh,
In one of your books (I forget which one) you quoted the phrase, “Alone with the alone,” and then you added something like, “whatever that odd expression might mean.” But I saw a book with that very title, by Fr George Maloney. An Eight-day Retreat: Alone with the Alone, written in 1982. I didn't get my hands on that book yet, but I find it an attractive phrase. I would have thought that it describes meditation to a T. Why did you hesitate over it? Tom H.
Dear Tom,
I've come across that phrase again a few times recently, and it is worth looking at. It goes back a long way, and scholars are unable to agree about its meaning or its applications. It is almost an exact quotation from the 3rd-century Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus (204-270). “This is the life of gods and of godlike and blessed men: liberation from the things of this world, a life that takes no pleasure in earthly things, flight of the alone to the Alone.” However seductive the phrase might sound, it is important not to identify the pagan philosopher’s One with the Christian God. No-one has made this point with greater emphasis than Andrew Louth in his Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys, (OUP 2007). Here is a sample:
“‘The flight of the alone to the Alone’: the very familiarity of that phrase is a measure of the influence of Plotinus. It also enshrines the essence of the mystical quest as he sees it: a solitary way that leads to the One, sovereign in solitary transcendence. The One has no concern for the soul that seeks him; nor has the soul more than a passing concern for others engaged in the same quest: it has no companions. Solitariness, isolation; the implications of this undermine any possibility of a doctrine of grace — the One is unaware of those who seek it, and so cannot turn towards them — or any positive understanding of the co-inherence of man with man. These limitations, as we shall now begin to see, disclose a radical opposition between the Platonic vision and Christian mystical theology.”
Leaning to the other side was the French philosopher and Islamic scholar Henry Corbin (1903-1978). In 1969 he published Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi. He remained a Christian all his life, but he had a lifelong interest in Sufism.
Neither of these writers would encourage us to conflate pagan philosophy, Sufism, and Christian spirituality; nor to make uncritical use of the phrase ‘alone with the Alone.’ George Maloney was careful to make the necessary distinctions. His use of the phrase was, one can say, more devotional than philosophical. “We need to enter into an aloneness with the Alone, with God himself, if we are to find any meaning in our human existence. This is not escapism or avoidance of our responsibility to serve others. It is a movement of the Spirit to contact God and to experience him as the beginning and end of our lives.”He was careful to emphasise that this solitude was not a rejection of community nor a flight from the demands of charity.
Nor, of course, was it a rejection of the Trinity. For Christians, God’s inner life is not Aloneness, but a community. And the whole meaning of the Christian life is to realise in practice that we are Christ’s Body. This is especially clear in St Paul’s letters: “As in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.” (Romans 12:4-5)
We have lived through about four centuries of individualistic spirituality, from which we are now, we hope, emerging. In my childhood there was a ‘mission’ in our parish, during which the preachers distributed a leaflet to every household. Written on it were the words “Remember, man, thou hast but one soul to save, and after that the Judgment.” This was clearly the opposite of St Paul’s teaching, and a low point in the transmission of Christian spirituality. Our parents embodied the Faith despite such teaching rather than because of it.
There is another saying, more ancient than ‘alone with the Alone,’ and for a Christian far preferable. If is often attributed to Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC), and quoted by Christian writers through the centuries. “I am never less alone than when alone.” This, unlike the other, can find a home in Christian spirituality straight away. We are Christ’s Body even when we are alone. When you meditate you appear to be alone. Even when a room is full of meditators they all appear to be alone. Yet you know that you are deeply one with them all – more so than if you were chatting with them. And everyone knows the experience of feeling at some time utterly alone in a crowd.
I hope this has thrown a bit of light on the subject for you, Tom, and not a lot of darkness!
Donagh