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?…

“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 you feel aloneness. Aloneness is beautiful, aloneness is 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 longer 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….

END

Excerpted and abridged from Osho, The Fish in the Sea Is Not Thirsty, Talk #2 – Aloneness Is A Lotus Blooming In Your Heart

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