In another place the saint explains quite at length the necessity of passing from meditation to contemplation, the reasons for doing so, and the signs which denote that the time for this change has arrived. The state of beginners, he says, is “one of meditation and of acts of reflection.” After a certain stage of progress has been reached, “God begins at once to introduce the soul into the state of contemplation, and that very quickly, especially in the case of religious, because these, having renounced the world, quickly fashion their senses and desires according to God; they have, therefore, to pass at once from meditation to contemplation. This passage, then, takes place when the discursive acts and meditation fail, when sensible sweetness and the first fervors cease, when the soul cannot make reflections as before, nor find any sensible comfort, but is fallen into aridity, because the spiritual life is changed.… It is evident, therefore, that if the soul does not now abandon its previous ways of meditation, it will receive this gift of God in a scanty and imperfect manner.… If the soul will at this time make efforts of its own, and encourage another disposition than that of _passive, loving attention_, most submissive and calm, and if it does not _abstain from its previous discursive acts_, it will place a complete barrier against those graces which God is about to communicate to it in this loving knowledge.… The soul must be attached to nothing, not even to the subject of its meditation, not to sensible or spiritual sweetness, because God requires a spirit so free, so _annihilated_, that every act of the soul, even of thought, of liking or disliking, will impede and disturb it, and break that _profound silence of sense and spirit_ necessary for hearing the deep and delicate voice of God, who speaks to the heart in solitude; it is in profound peace and tranquillity that the soul is to listen to God, who will speak peace unto his people. When this takes place, when the soul feels that it is silent and listens, its loving attention must be most pure, _without a thought of self, in a manner self-forgotten_, so that it shall be wholly intent upon hearing; for thus it is that the soul is free and ready for that which our Lord requires at its hands.”[19]