Question 4

Osho,

Never before have i felt so much love and never before so alone. thank you, Osho...

 

 

It is something very deep to be understood, something of great significance. Love always brings aloneness. Aloneness always brings love. They are never separate.

 

People think just the opposite. People think, "When you are in love, how can you be alone?" They don't make any distinction between two words: loneliness and aloneness. Hence the confusion.

 

When you are in love, you cannot be lonely; that is true. But when you are in love, you are bound to be alone -- that is even far truer. Loneliness is a negative state. Loneliness means you are hankering for the other. Loneliness means you are dark, dismal, in despair. Loneliness means you are frightened. Loneliness means you are feeling left behind. Loneliness means nobody needs you. It hurts. Loneliness is like a wound.

 

Aloneness is like a flower. I know your dictionaries will say that loneliness and aloneness are synonyms -- they are not. They are totally different phenomena. Loneliness is a wound and can turn into a cancer. Many more people die of loneliness than of any other disease. The world is full of lonely people, and because of their loneliness they go on doing all kinds of stupid things to somehow stuff that wound, that hollowness, that emptiness, that negativity.

 

The lonely person starts eating too much, just to feel full. The lonely person starts gathering fat. The lonely person starts taking alcohol or other drugs, from soma to LSD -- because he wants to forget himself The loneliness is so ugly, so scary, so deathlike that one wants to escape from it. The lonely person sits before his TV glued to the chair for four, five, even six hours. The average American sits for six hours before the TV -- just burning his eyes. But what else to do? Where to go? With whom to commune?

 

Communication has stopped. People are not talking to each other; at the most they talk at the other, but not to the other. People have forgotten how to reach the other; people have become parallel lines, running very close but meeting nowhere. Even husbands and wives, even friends, even so-called lovers, are parallel lines never meeting anywhere. Running very close, hoping that tomorrow the meeting will happen, but that is just a hope, that is just an illusion. That keeps people somehow going on.

 

It is like if you go to the rail-track and you see the rails running parallel -- far away in the distance they appear to be meeting, but they never meet. You can go to that place and you will not find them meeting. As you move closer, the meeting-point will move farther away. The distance between you and the so-called meeting-point will remain the same.

 

The world is very lonely; hence people go into drugs or into sex, or into any kind of entertainment that keeps them, at least for the time being, forgetful of the loneliness. The wound is oozing with pus. We hide it in many ways -- with great possessions, with a big palace, with much money, with new gadgets -- but the wound continues, gadgets won't hide it. You can have the biggest house in the world and still you will be as lonely in it as you were in your small cottage. It is not going to make any difference -- possessions cannot change your inner loneliness.

 

And then people go on relating with others, but because they are both lonely relationship is not possible; relationship cannot grow out of need. Relationship grows only out of overflowing energies, never out of needs. If one person is needy and the other is also needy, then both will try to exploit the other. The relationship will be that of exploitation, not of love, not of compassion. It will not be of friendship. It will be a kind of enmity -- very bitter, but sugar-coated. And sooner or later, the sugar wears out; by the time the honeymoon is over the sugar is gone and all is bitter. And now they are caught. First they used to be lonely separately, now they are lonely together -- which hurts even more. Just see a husband and a wife sitting in the room, both lonely. On the surface together, deep down lonely. The husband lost in his own loneliness, the wife lost in her own loneliness. The saddest thing in the world is to see two lovers, a couple, and both lonely -- the saddest thing in the world!

 

Aloneness is totally different. Aloneness is a flower, a lotus blooming in your heart. Aloneness is positive, aloneness is health. It is the joy of being yourself. It is the joy of having your own space.

 

Yes, when you are in love, Turiya, you feel aloneness. Aloneness is beautiful, aloneness is a blessing. But only lovers can feel it, because only love gives you the courage to be alone, only love creates the context to be alone. Only love fulfills you so deeply that you are no more in need of the other -- you can be alone. Love makes you so integrated that you can be alone and ecstatic. Love becomes the contrast: love and aloneness are two polarities of one energy.

 

And it is good to understand it, because sometimes it happens that lovers don't allow each other space enough to be alone. If lovers don't allow each other space to be alone, then love will be destroyed, because it is out of aloneness that love gets fresh energy, fresh juices. When you are alone, you accumulate energy to a point from where it starts overflowing.

 

That overflowing becomes love -- then you can go and share with your friend, with your woman, with anybody you love. You have enough to share now; in fact, too much -- you have to share. And it is not that you are obliging the other; in fact, you are being obliged by the other. When the cloud is heavy it has to rain, and it is grateful to the earth that it allowed it to rain, that it absorbed it, that it received it like a guest, that it welcomed it. When the flower opens, it has to release its fragrance. It is thankful to the winds that they have taken its fragrance in all directions.

 

When alone, one gathers energy. Energy is life and energy is delight, and energy is love and energy is dance and energy is celebration. Then everything is possible if energy is there. Then it will become a song, then it will become a dance, then it will become love. And when energy is too much there, only then can it become orgasmic.

 

Many people make love but have no idea of what orgasm is, because they are already dissipated. When they are making love, they are empty; when they are making love there is no energy to be shared. When they are making love, they cannot overflow. Their orgasm is at the most genital. Their orgasm is a very small, mediocre thing; nothing of any spiritual value. It is like a sneeze. Yes, after a sneeze you feel a little better. Or like scratching your back -- it feels good. You are relieved.

 

Orgasm is not a relief: orgasm is a celebration. And orgasm is a meeting of you, through the other, with the whole. Orgasm is always divine -- the other becomes the door and you enter into the divine. Orgasm is always spiritual, it is never sexual. Those who think that orgasm is sexual have not understood anything at all; they don't know anything about sex and they don't know anything about orgasmic experiences. Orgasm is always samadhi, ecstasy. But people don't know because they meet out of need, not out of overflowing energies.

 

So when you are in love, a great need arises to be alone -- ONLY IN love, remember, a great need arises to be alone. And real lovers are those who give freedom to the other to be alone. They will be full of energy soon and they will come together and shower their energy on each other. When alone, the great desire to share will arise. See the rhythm: when in love, you would like to be alone; when alone, soon you would like to be in love. Lovers come close and go away, come close and go away -- there is a rhythm. Going away is not anti-love; going away is just getting your aloneness again, and the beauty of it and the joy of it. But whenever you are full of joy, an intrinsic, inevitable necessity arises to share it. Nobody can contain joy -- and the joy that can be contained by you is not of much worth. The joy is bigger than you, it cannot be contained by you. It is a flood! You cannot contain it; you have to seek and search for people to share it with.

 

What happens in your love affairs happens on a higher plane to all the Buddhas. When Buddha became enlightened, he became so full of energy, so full of joy, that he had to share it. For forty-two years he went from one village to another, constantly sharing his joy.

 

That's what I am doing with you. I am not a teacher. I have nothing to teach, no teaching to impart, no information ... but I am here to share my being. I am too full, the cloud is too heavy. And if you can receive me, I will be grateful to you.

 

It is out of too much that sharing arises. And enlightenment, Buddhahood, Christ-consciousness, bridge you with the God. Infinite sources of energy become available to you. Inexhaustible sources are yours. You can go on sharing, and the more you share, the more goes on coming to you.

 

Aloneness has reached its ultimate peak. The Master is the most alone person in the world, and hence the Master is the greatest lover in the world. You cannot find a greater lover than a Buddha or a Christ. But now the love is so qualitatively different that it has the quality of friendship, compassion, empathy. The passion has disappeared.

 

Passion is tiny, small; compassion is immense, huge, enormous, infinite. When passion becomes infinite it is compassion.

 

Turiya, your experience is beautiful, and you have understood its beauty; hence, you have felt like thanking me.

 

You say: NEVER BEFORE HAVE I FELT SO MUCH LOVE AND NEVER BEFORE SO ALONE.

 

Those are two aspects of the same coin.

 

And you say: THANK YOU, OSHO.

 

YOU HAVE UNDERSTOOD IT. I am happy that you have been able to see the connection between love and aloneness. Enjoy both. Never choose one out of the two, because if you choose one both will die. Allow both to happen. When aloneness happens, move into it; when love happens, move into it. Aloneness means moving in, love means moving out.

 

Aloneness is the breath going in, love is the breath going out. And if you stop one, you will die. You cannot hold the breath in; you cannot hold the breath out. Breathing is a total process, and in the total process the in-coming breath is as much essential as the out-going breath. Love is the out-going breath, aloneness is the in-coming breath. And that's how your soul lives; that's how you become soulful. .

 

Allow both. Never choose! Choicelessly allow both. And go with wherever the breath is going. Aloneness is interiority, love is exteriority.

 

Carl Gustav Jung has made these words very famous. He divided people basically into two types: the introverts and the extroverts. That is a wrong division. People cannot be categorized that way. People cannot be pigeon-holed this way. I have never come across anyone who is just introvert -- he will die immediately, because he will have only the in-breath. I have never come across a person who is just extrovert -- he will die too. People are both.

 

It is possible that one is more of an extrovert than an introvert, and vice versa. And that's what brings imbalance to your personality. One should be both simultaneously. One should be balanced.

 

My sannyasins have to be extrovert introverts, introvert extroverts -- both together. This is one of the most important things to be understood, because in the past the monks have tried to be just introverts. They were called the other-worldly people, the people who renounce the world and move into the monasteries and the mountains and the deserts. They decided that only to be an introvert is the right way to connect with God -- as if God is not without, but only within.

 

And the other, the worldly person, has remained extrovert. He thinks he has nothing to do with introversion, meditation, prayer. His interest is in money, power, prestige, people, crowds -- the world. He never looks in. This is a very schizophrenic arrangement.

 

I would like my sannyasins not to be schizophrenic but whole. Be in the world and yet be not of it. Move between the outside and the inside, and let the movement become as smooth as possible, as simple as possible. Just as you come out of your house into the garden: it is too cold inside, you come out. It is too sunny outside; soon you start feeling hot, soon you start perspiring, and you move in -- into the house, into the coolness and the shade of the house. Just as you move inside the house and outside the house, go on moving in and out -- both are yours.

 

The old sannyasins, the old monks, claimed only the inner, they denied the outer. My message is: Nothing has to be denied -- the whole belongs to you. I give you the whole universe, the inner and the outer both. And I would not like you to become introverts, because those who are introverts against extroversion become ill, pathological, dormant, stagnant, closed, disconnected, uprooted. They start living a windowless existence. They start living in unnecessary misery. They never come to know what aloneness is, because aloneness cannot be known without love -- they only know loneliness. And loneliness is not health; loneliness is illness.

 

And the people who live only in the outside world and never think of the inner, they are on the other extreme. They know something of love, but their love is never more than lust -- because love cannot happen unless aloneness has also happened in you. Their love is a beautiful name for lust. They need the other, they exploit the other, they possess the other. And when you possess the other, the other possesses you. People become slaves, and people are reduced to things. People are no more people.

 

The person who lives only on the outside, without knowing his inside, is poor, very poor -- unaware of his inner treasures. And the person who lives only in the inside is also poor, because he never becomes aware of the beauty of existence, of the stars, of the sands and the sun, of the trees and the birds.

 

The inner and the outer are not two. The inner is the inner of the outer, and the outer is the outer of the inner. My sannyasin has to be both together. I would like to create a new man whom Carl Gustav Jung cannot categorize, whom he cannot call extrovert or introvert, for whom he will have to find a new word -- because he will be whole, he will be both. He will be as much in his body as in his soul; he will be a materialist as much as a spiritualist. He will be of this world as much as of that, and he will have no division in his mind, and no choice.

 

Turiya, something beautiful has happened to you go on moving in the same direction. Don't go astray, because it is very easy to go astray. Our old habits, our old concepts, go on dragging us back to the old patterns. Your mind will say, "This is not aloneness, this is loneliness." Your mind will try to destroy it by calling it loneliness. Beware! Beware of your own mind! because there is no greater enemy than your own mind.

 

And by 'mind' I mean your past. Go on dying to the past and go on learning new things. You have stumbled upon something tremendously valuable, utterly new and fresh. Love brings aloneness: aloneness brings love. That too will happen.

 

Now you have said: NEVER BEFORE HAVE I FELT SO MUCH LOVE AND NEVER BEFORE SO ALONE.

 

I would like each of my sannyasins to feel like Turiya -- feel alone and feel love. And never create any conflict between the two. Create a symphony out of the two, and you will have a richness which is very rare.

 

-Osho, “The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty, #3, Q4“