As far back as back goes are tales of people critically determined to
get-to-the-bottom-of-understanding  --  living-alone:
forest philosophers; desert hermits; mountain recluses, hidden mystics,
and the common mind’s eye pictures men in physical solitude,
but such is not the actual key.
 

Those who arrive here with the extreme urge to understand something extraordinary have a natural sensation that isolation is a component to realizing their want;
there is a common feeling that other humans not sharing this interest interfere,
whether knowingly or not,
and thus do such people commonly pull away from the mass of collective society,
and pursue their uncommon goal in physical private.
Many of man’s hobbies no doubt are best exercised in private,
but in this particular instance, physical separation from other people
is not the true order, but it is the easiest to do and ergo the most popular,
but the real key of living-alone is of another sense altogether.
 

If those with that rare ingrown neural hair get stuck on the belief that it is
other people who bar their path to the SecretUnderstanding
they may well develop/display a misanthropic streak:
becoming so relentlessly critical of man as to favor his shunning.
To the eye lacking necessary insight, it can easily appear that ordinary mankind,
with their ordinary lives and views are precisely what stands between an, “extraordinary man” and his exceptional goal  –  who else?  --   what else could it be?!
The hindrance must either be mundane or supernatural,
(and in your case, discounting the latter as to not be insulting) --
what else can it possibly be in a person’s life other than other humans
that is interfering with  --  keeping him from touching some certain,
presently-unidentified secret spot that will open all closed curtains,
and calm all anomalous itches.

A reasonable person looks around and what else is there?
If man is not victim of some super human curse, then whatever it is that burdens,
and restrains him must be coming from other humans;
and even adopting the psychological view that what is interfering in a man’s
direct living of his own life is his own psychic burdens,
they too are still seen as caused by other people  --   so there you are.

So what could be more appropriate than to abandon this mindless environment --
go away and pursue the elusive muse while  --   living alone.
 
 
 

While there is no intrinsic harm in this, neither is there any pertinent restoration;
what the few feel to be obstructionist about other human beings is not their
physical presence, which to the contrary is salubrious and supportive;
it is the natural, near irresistible viscidity of their non physical being with which
the select unwitting contend.
In an instance of Understanding-Lite,
those who might otherwise have become hermits will live together if
everyone keeps their mouth shut;
such a common monastic setting offers at least diluted acknowledgment of
the fact above noted  --  but even their effort still misses the target altogether,
for it is not actually the words and ideas of other humans which interfere with
a man’s pursuit of the-truth-about-things –
it is what goes on in his mind in reaction to their words and ideas.

Other people’s ideas do not exist in their minds --
now that you know of their ideas  --   they exist in yours;
what is in books is not on the paper --  it is in the minds of the readers;
movies are not on film  --  but in the minds of the viewers;
ideas expressed by others are not stored in their minds  --
but in the minds of those who heard and remembered the expressed ideas.

The proper execution of  --  living-alone is to get everyone else out of your head,
a task more difficult than ridding a room of microbes.
Man is genetically programmed to seek mental companionship no less ardently than
he does physical,
and same as how quarrelsome physical relationships can last a lifetime,
so too need not a man’s mental ones be based on harmony;
the mind n’er feels more at home than when arguing,
be it with another live human,
with another human’s words in a book,
or another human’s words in your mind.

This continual living with the words/ideas of others  –   in your mind,
is what the unenlightened attempt to flee by their physical reclusion,
but their overrun mind, --  full of squatters, boarders, and many actually invited guests --
goes along with them wherever they go, and thus.........well, you know the thus.
 
 

What the few yearn for, in fact what the extraordinary condition that occurs in the brain, commonly labeled by those interested in the matter as,
“the experience of Enlightenment” is,
is a neural state in which consciousness --  the mind – is suddenly, and unnaturally cleared of inhabitants  --   ideas:  your apparent ideas, and everyone else’s as well.
You are fully conscious but no longer does mind consist of nothing but ideas:

Living alone physically will not take anyone to the new place in the brain;
living alone mentally however is the key to the place’s door.
If you decide to proceed in this fashion,
you will predictably begin by engaging in selective-eviction;
you will decide to stop reading gory novels and watching slasher flicks,
and replace them with spiritual texts and metaphysical lectures,
but the day is supposed to come (if there was any damn justice in the damn world!)
when you realize that it makes not a wit of ultimate difference
whose ideas are occupying your brain along with the tatters of you --
Buddha’s ideas in your mind are just as distracting as those of Billy Bob Boomhowzer;
useless intruders are useless intruders no matter how entertaining they may be,
or where they came from.

You cannot get other people’s words/ideas out of your mind by throwing them out,
for every time you put your hands on them to do so,
the act merely reinforces the attraction between you and the ideas.
The end goal of Waking-up, (or anything else you care to currently call it),
is to move your consciousness to a new, normally unused area of your brain
thereby initiating what in practice amounts to  --  a whole new mind,
which, in everyone who achieves it, comes with no boarders or squatters,
and in fact has an automatic disinterest, (verging on aversion),
to entertaining thought-visitors or house mates.
 

To know a quite real, yet needless fact about --  being alive  --
(the only thing that will finally satisfy the few),
you must --  live alone;
but you must consider well what this actually means in practice  -- to you;
why it is necessary  --  for you,
and then how you can go about accomplishing it.

Okay, here is a small hint, true and meaningful only for the anomalistic few:
as regards the fact you seek,
absolutely everything that every other human knows and says is wrong –
worse than wrong  --  wrong can be reversed, made right and learnt from –
but what every ordinary human knows and says is useless,
irrelevant to the aim;
impertinent to the cause --
totally, unconditionally useless.
 

The SecretFact is all around you  --  all-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l  around you,
you simply cannot see for all the people/ideas/words crowded around you in your head:
they surround you  --  you are boxed in and cannot move  --  cannot see
beyond that tight little knot of other people’s words & ideas that have you hemmed in.