Aloneness

 

 

Aloneness and silence are two aspects of one experience, two sides of the same coin. If one wants to experience silence one has to go into one´s total aloneness. It is there.

 

We are born alone, we die alone. Between these two realities we create a thousand and one illusions of being together - all kinds of relationships, friends and enemies, loves and hates, nations, races, religions. We create all kinds of hallucinations just to avoid one fact: that we are alone. But whatsoever we do, the truth cannot be changed. It is so, and rather than trying to escape from it, the best way is to rejoice in it.

 

Rejoicing in your own aloneness is what meditation is all about. The meditator is one who dives deep into one´s aloneness, knowing that we are born alone, we will be dying alone, and deep down we are living alone. So why not experience what this aloneness is? It is our very nature, our very being.

 

Because of this aloneness two possibilities open up. one, to escape from it. then whatsoever you do in the name of love is false. because you don't love the person. you are simply trying to find an excuse in the other person to escape from yourself and the other is also doing the same. it is a very negative kind of love. the other is trying to escape from his or her aloneness and you are just an excuse the person who chooses the first alternative of escaping from one's reality becomes pseudo in all his love, in all his relationships.

The second alternative is to experience your aloneness, your silence that absolutely virgin spot inside your being where nobody can enter, nobody can trespass. that is your true world. knowing it, experiencing it, one is surprised that there was no need to escape from it. it is one of the most ecstatic experiences. even love is secondary.

The person who has known his aloneness also loves but his love has a tremendous beauty. it is positive: he is not escaping from himself. he is rooted in himself, centred in himself and because of that rootedness and centering, he is so full of joy that he wants to share it. his love is a sharing, it is not an escape, his love is a gift. the other is not being used as a means, the other is dignified by his love. Ordinarily love reduces people into slaves into bondage, into possessiveness, into jealousy into all kinds of ugly things. real love is a by-product of the experience of silence and aloneness.

I teach meditation and i teach love through meditation. when love is grounded in meditation, then it is alive, then it is exactly synonymous with god, then it brings freedom, and it brings great blessings and benedictions. Very few people have known really what love is. because very few people have entered into their own innermost, silent, alone space. A sannyasin has to do only one thing. he has to rejoice in his aloneness, then love comes just like a shadow of its own accord.

 

-Osho, "The Sound of One Hand Clapping, #14"

 

 

 

An inside journey is a journey towards absolute aloneness; you cannot take anybody there with you. You cannot share your centre with anybody, not even with your beloved. It is not in the nature of things; nothing can be done about it. It is easier to go to the moon because you can have company. Even if you don’t have company you can have a connection with the earth; you can phone the people here. You can get directions from the outside, from the far away earth, but still you are connected. The moment you go in, all connections with the outside world are broken; all bridges are broken. In fact, the whole world disappears.

 

That’s why the mystics have called the world illusory, maya, not that it does not exist but for the meditator, one who goes in, it is almost as if it does not exist. The silence is so profound; no noise penetrates it. The aloneness is so deep that one needs guts. But out of that aloneness explodes bliss. Out of that aloneness, the experience of god. There is no other way; there has never been any and there is never going to be.

 

-Osho, "Just the Tip of the Iceberg, #18"