Aloneness

One who is immersed in the Atmic Bliss, says Sathya Sai Baba, who has achieved this supreme Joy and has realised that intentions and desires in relation to sensory object cause petty pleasures and sorrow, laughter and weeping, knows the secret of life, the wisdom of real, permanent Joy. Such a person “will always exult in the Joy of companionship with oneself, the contemplation of One’s Own inner Reality.” (Prasanthi Vahini, Sri Sathya Sai Books and Publications trust, Prasanthi Nilayam, Andre Pradesh, India, 1962, p.67). 

“Loneliness is where you are missing the other. Aloneness is when you are finding yourself. Aloneness is the finding of your true and authentic being.” - Osho (Diamonds, New Dawn, New Delhi, India, 2000, ‘19 December’). 

“You can never be lonely if you experience your aloneness as all-oneness.” – (Inspirational Thoughts: A Compilation of Wonderful Quotations for Your Personal Growth by Tycho Photiou, p.39). 

“Tao says: If you are alone, absolutely alone, and your happiness remains the same, then you have attained – otherwise you have not attained.” - Osho (Tao: The Pathless Path, Renaissance Books, N.Y., U.S., p.45). 

Osho, recounting the parable of Lin Lei in The Book of Lieh Tzu: A Classic of Tao (translated by A.C. Graham, 1990), explains that people feel lonely because they have not yet created a relationship with themselves. They have yet to fall in love with themselves:

“If you are nonambitious you are happy because frustration will have no entry in you. And he has no wife and no son so what is there to be miserable about? Try to understand his meaning. He is absolutely alone – nobody to disturb his aloneness. His solitude is unperturbed. I am alone, free, absolutely my on master. Nobody to drag me here and there, no family, no relations – what is there to be miserable about? Remember, when you are alone, you are not alone; you are lonely, you miss the company of the other. You miss the company of the other because you have not yet learned how to be in your own company. You miss the company of the other because you don’t know how to be with yourself. Loneliness is negative, the absence of the other. Aloneness is positive, the presence of your own being. Loneliness is solitariness, aloneness is solitude. Loneliness is ugly, aloneness is beautiful. Aloneness has a luminosity in it...What is there to regret? I am alone, like a great peak of the Himalayas...alone. Everything is beautiful and silent and blissful.” - Osho (Tao: The Pathless Path, p.78-79).

“I think a person needs to learn from childhood to find himself alone. It means to not be bored when you’re by yourself, because a person who finds himself bored when alone – as it seems to me – is in danger.” - Andrei Tarkovsky, A Poet in the Cinema.