Aloneness is Your Nature- by Osho

Aloneness is Your Nature- by Osho

The first thing to realize is that whether you want or not, you are alone. Aloneness is your very nature. You can try to forget it, you can try not to be alone by making friends, having lovers, mixing in the crowd... But whatever you do remains just on the surface. Deep inside, your aloneness is unreachable, untouchable.

A strange accident happens to every human being: as he is born the very situation of his birth begins in a family. And there is no other way, because the human child is the weakest child in the whole of existence.

Other animals are born complete. A dog is going to remain a dog his whole life, he is not going to evolve, grow. Yes, he will become aged, old, but he will not become more intelligent, he will not become more aware, he will not become enlightened. In that sense all the animals remain exactly at the point of their birth; nothing essential changes in them. Their death and their birth are horizontal -- in one line.

Only man has the possibility of going vertical, upwards, not just horizontal. Most of humanity behaves like other animals: life is just growing old -- not growing up. Growing up and growing old are totally different experiences.

Man is born in a family amongst human beings. From the very first moment he is not alone; hence, he gets a certain psychology of always remaining with people. In aloneness he starts feeling scared... unknown fears. He is not exactly aware of what he is afraid of, but as he moves out of the crowd something inside him becomes uneasy. To be with others he feels cozy, at ease, comfortable.

It is because of this reason he never comes to know the beauty of aloneness; the fear prevents him. Because he was born in a group he remains part of a group, and as he grows in age he starts making new groups, new associations, new friends. Already, existing collectivities don't satisfy him: the nation, the religion, the political party... He creates his own new associations: Rotary Club, Lions Club. But all these strategies are just to avoid one thing: never to be alone.

The whole life experience is of being together with people. Aloneness seems almost like a death. In a way it is a death; it is the death of the personality that you have created in the crowd. That is a gift of others to you. The moment you move out of the crowd you also move out of that part your personality.

In the crowd you know exactly who you are: you know your name, you know your degrees, you know your profession; you know everything that is needed for your passport, your identity card. But the moment you move out of the crowd, what is your identity, who are you? Suddenly you become aware that you are not your name -- your name was given to you. You are not your race -- what relationship has race with your consciousness? Your heart is not Hindu or Mohammedan; your being is not confined to any political boundaries of a nation; your consciousness is not part of any organization or church. Who are you?

Suddenly your personality starts dispersing. This is the fear: the death of the personality. Now you will have to discover freshly, you will have to ask for the first time who you are? You will have to start meditating on the fact: Who am I? -- and there is a fear that you may not be at all. Perhaps you were nothing but a combination of all the opinions of the crowd, that you were nothing but your personality.

Nobody wants to be nothing.
Nobody wants to be nobody.
And in fact everybody is a nobody.

There is a very beautiful story...
Alice has reached Wonderland. She came to meet the king and the king asked, "Alice, did you meet a messenger coming towards me?"
She said, "I met nobody."
The king said, "If you met nobody, why has he not arrived yet?"
Alice was very much puzzled. She said, "You are not understanding me rightly. Nobody is nobody."
The king said, "That is obvious that nobody is nobody, but where is he? He should have reached here by this time. It simply means nobody walks slower than you."
And naturally Alice was very much annoyed and forgot that she is talking to the king. She said, "Nobody walks faster than me."
Now the whole conversation goes on with that "nobody." She understands that he is saying, "Nobody walks slower than you."
"... and I am a fast walker. I have come from the other world to Wonderland, a small world -- and he is insulting me." Naturally she retorts, "Nobody walks faster than me!"
The king said, "If that is right then why has he not arrived?"
And this way the discussion continues.

Everybody is a nobody.

So the first problem for anybody is to understand exactly the nature of aloneness. It means nobodyness; it means dropping your personality which is a gift to you by the crowd.

As you move off out of the crowd you cannot take that gift with you in your aloneness. In your aloneness you will have to discover again afresh, and nobody can give you the guarantee whether you will find anybody inside or not.
Those who have reached to aloneness have found nobody there. I really mean no body. No name, no form, but a pure presence, a pure life, nameless, formless. This is exactly the true resurrection, and it certainly needs courage. Only very courageous people have been able to accept with joy their nobodyness, their nothingness. Their nothingness is their pure being; it is a death and a resurrection both.


Aloneness and courage. Courage comes out of love... Do you love yourself? Do you love this existence? Do you love this beautiful life which is a gift? It has been given to you without your being even ready for it, without your deserving it, without your being worthy of it.

If you love this existence which has given life to you, which goes on providing every moment life and nourishment to you, you will find courage. And this courage will help you to stand alone like a cedar of Lebanon, high -- reaching to the stars but alone.

In aloneness you will disappear as an ego and personality and you will find yourself as life itself, deathless and eternal. Unless you are capable of being alone your search for truth will remain a failure.

Your aloneness is your truth.
Your aloneness is your divineness or your greatness.

Meditation is just a strategy to take away your personality, your thoughts, your mind, your identity with the body, and leave you absolutely alone inside, just a living fire. And once you have found your living fire, you will know all the joys and all the ecstasies that human consciousness is capable of.

The old woman watched her grandson eat his soup with the wrong spoon, grasp his knife by the wrong end, eat the main course with his hands, and pour tea into the saucer and blow on it.

"Has not watching your mother and father at the dinner table taught you anything?" she asked.
"Yes," said the boy, chewing with his mouth open, "never to get married."

He has learned a great lesson: Remain alone.

It is really very difficult to be with others, but we are accustomed from our very birth to be with others. It may be miserable, it may be a suffering, it may be a torture but we are accustomed; at least it is well known.
One is afraid to step into the darkness beyond the territory, but unless you go beyond the territory of the collective mask, you cannot find yourself.

Groucho Marx has made a beautiful statement for you to remember: "I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set I go into the other room and read a book."

The teacher of a class of ten-year-olds is too shy to conduct the sex-education class and so she asks her class to make this a homework project.

Little Hymie asks his father who mumbles something about a stork. His grandmother said he came from a cabbage patch and his great-grandmother blushes and whispers that children come from the great ocean of existence.
The next day, little Hymie is called by the teacher to report on his project. Little Hymie says to the teacher, "I'm afraid there is something wrong in our family. Apparently nobody has made love for three generations!"

In fact, very few people have loved at all; they have pretended, have been hypocrites deceiving not only others but have deceived themselves too.

You can love authentically only when you are.
Right now you are only a part of a crowd, a cog in the wheel. How can you love? -- because you are not. First be; first know yourself.
In your aloneness you will discover what it is to be. And out of that awareness of your being love flows, and much more.

Aloneness should be your only search.

And it does not mean that you have to go to the mountains, you can be alone in the marketplace. It is simply a question of being aware, alert, watchful, remembering that you are only your watchfulness. Then you are alone wherever you are. You may be in the crowd, you may be in the mountains; it makes no difference, you are just the same watchfulness. In the crowd you watch the crowd; in the mountains you watch the mountains. With open eyes you watch existence; with closed eyes you watch yourself.

You are only one thing: the watcher.

And this watcher is the greatest realization. This is your buddha nature; this is your nature of enlightenment, of your awakening. This should be your only discipline. Only this makes you a disciple: this discipline of knowing your aloneness. Otherwise, what makes you a disciple? You have been deceived on every point in life. You have been told that to believe in a master makes you a disciple. That is absolutely wrong; otherwise, everybody in the world is a disciple.

Somebody believes in Jesus, somebody believes in Buddha, somebody believes in Krishna, somebody believes in Mahavira; everybody believes in somebody but nobody is a disciple, because to be a disciple does not mean to believe in a master. To be a disciple means to learn the discipline of being your self, of being your true self.

In that experience is hidden the very treasure of life. In that experience you become for the first time an emperor; otherwise you will remain a beggar in the crowd. There are two kinds of beggars: poor beggars and rich beggars, but they are all beggars. Even your kings and your queens are beggars.

Only those people, very few people who have stood alone in their being, in their clarity, in their light, who have found their own light, who have found their own flowering, who have found their own space they can call their home, their eternal home -- those few people are the emperors. This whole universe is their empire. They don't need to conquer it; it is already conquered.
By knowing yourself you have conquered it.

Read my verse on SOLITUDE IN THIS LINK

http://contentwriteups.blogspot.in/2009/04/solitude.html