Loneliness

 

 

The enlightened person also seeks the other just as the unenlightened person seeks, but there is a qualitative difference. The unenlightened person seeks the other because he feels a negative nothingness in him. Left alone he does not feel aloneness, he feels loneliness.

 

Remember, loneliness and aloneness are not synonymous, notwithstanding what the dictionaries go on saying. It is not a question of language; it is something existential. Loneliness is negative -- you are missing something; aloneness is positive -- you have found something.

 

The unenlightened seeks the other because it is his need; he is needy and greedy. He grabs the other, he clings to the other. He is always afraid the other may leave. Husbands are afraid, wives are afraid, parents are afraid, children are afraid, everybody is afraid. Even your so-called religious teachers are afraid their disciples may leave them, so they have to concede and compromise with the disciples. Can you see the irony of it? [....]

 

The unenlightened seeks the other because he feels lonely. It may be the teacher-disciple thing, it may be the husband-wife trip, it may be friendship... it may be any kind of relationship. You seek the other out of your loneliness, and the other is also seeking you out of her or his loneliness. And two lonelinesses are bound to create hell, great hell, because both are negative. And when two negatives meet it is not a simple addition, it is a multiplication. The same is true about two positives: when they meet it is not simple addition, it is multiplication.

 

The enlightened also seeks the other. Jesus moved from one village to another -- for what? Mahavira traveled thousands of miles on foot -- for what? For forty-two years Buddha was going... he was always on the go. Even when he was very old, eighty-two, he was still moving from village to village, for the simple reason that somebody had to be found with whom he could share. But now it was not a need, hence he will not compromise. It is not a need, hence he will not possess. It is not a need, in fact it is just the opposite of it: it is abundance. [....]

 

When you drop all content consciously, deliberately, you are not lonely: you become alone. And aloneness is beautiful, loneliness is ugly. Loneliness is like a wound, aloneness is like a flower. Loneliness is sick -- Soren Kierkegaard has called it "sickness unto death" -- and aloneness is life, abundant life. It is health. [....]

 

People are not rooted in their own selves, hence they are clinging to others. All clinging is an indication that you are afraid that if you are left alone you will not be alone, you will be simply lonely, miserable.

 

The West has yet to recognize this tremendously significant fact. The Western religions have remained confined to prayer. They have not touched even the periphery of meditation, for the simple reason that meditation means nothingness, and to them nothingness has only one connotation: that of loneliness, emptiness. And they start feeling that if you are nothing then you will start falling into an abyss, you will be lost.

 

But we have tasted a totally different quality of nothingness. We have tasted the hidden godliness in it, we have known the uttermost of bliss in it, we have known its benediction.

 

It is my own experience that there is no greater joy than to be alone; the joy of love is secondary. And the joy of love is possible only if you have known the joy of being alone, because then only do you have something to share. Otherwise, two beggars meeting each other, clinging to each other, cannot be blissful. They will create misery for each other because each will be hoping, and hoping in vain, that "The other is going to fulfill me." The other is hoping the same. They cannot fulfill each other. They are both blind; they cannot help each other. [....]

 

That's what happens: you are lonely, the other is lonely -- now you meet. First the honeymoon: that ecstasy that you have met the other, now you will not be lonely any more. But within three days, or if you are intelligent enough, then within three hours... it depends on how intelligent you are. If you are stupid, then it will take a longer time because one does not learn; otherwise the intelligent person can immediately see after three minutes..."What are we trying to do? It is not going to happen. The other is as lonely as I am. Now we will be living together -- two lonelinesses together. Two wounds together cannot help each other to be healed. Two blind people leading each other..." Kabir says, both are bound to fall in a well sooner or later, and more possibly sooner than later.

 

But, Nothingness, meditativeness, no-mindness is a totally different phenomenon. Loneliness is natural. You are born lonely, and immediately the child starts searching and seeking for the other; for the mother he starts searching, he starts groping. He clings to the mother; he does not want to be left alone even for a few moments. He starts crying, he starts screaming; he makes much fuss so the mother comes back. He learns the language of how the mother can be manipulated. It is a very strange world! Even small babies become politicians. They know how to manipulate. They will start crying. they will start weeping.

 

-Osho, "Guida Spirituale, #11, Q1“