Aloneness Versus Loneliness

Zen Master Osho: on the difference between aloneness and loneliness

"We are born alone, we live alone, and we die alone. Aloneness is our very nature, but we are not aware of it. Because we are not aware of it, we remain strangers to ourselves, and instead of seeing our aloneness as a tremendous beauty and bliss, silence and peace, at-easeness with existence, we misunderstand it as loneliness.

Loneliness is a misunderstood aloneness. Once you misunderstand your aloneness as loneliness, the whole context changes. Aloneness has a beauty and grandeur, a positivity; loneliness is poor, negative, dark, dismal.

Loneliness is a gap. Something is missing, something is needed to fill it, and nothing can ever fill it, because it is a misunderstanding in the first place. As you grow older, the gap also grows bigger. People are so afraid to be by themselves that they do any kind of stupid thing. I have seen people playing cards alone; the other party is not there. They have invented games in which the same person plays cards from both sides.

Those who have known aloneness say something absolutely different. They say there is nothing more beautiful, more peaceful, more joyful than being alone.





The ordinary man goes on trying to forget his loneliness, and the meditator starts getting more and more acquainted with his aloneness. He has left the world; he has gone to the caves, to the mountains, to the forest, just for the sake of being alone. He wants to know who he is. In the crowd, it is difficult; there are so many disturbances. And those who have known their aloneness have known the greatest blissfulness possible to human beings—because your very being is blissful.

After being in tune with your aloneness, you can relate; then your friendship will bring great joys to you. Because it is not out of fear. Finding your aloneness you can create, you can be involved in as many things as you want, because this involvement will not any more be running away from yourself. Now it will be your expression; now it will be a manifestation of all that is your potential.

But the first basic thing is to know your aloneness absolutely.
So I remind you, don’t misunderstand aloneness as loneliness.
Loneliness is certainly sick. Aloneness is perfect health.
Your first and most primary step toward finding the meaning and significance of life is to enter into your aloneness. It is your temple; it is where your God lives, and you cannot find this temple anywhere else."