Love, Freedom, and Aloneness

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

Ref. 46D3-A

Only man has the possibility of going vertical, upward, 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.

Ref. 9A25-B

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

Ref. D043-C

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?

Ref. 67B0-D

My observation of the questioner is that she is a born meditator. Rather than making it a problem, rejoice! Not to belong is one of the greatest experiences of life. To be utterly an outsider, never feeling to be a part anywhere, is a great experience of transcendence.

Ref. 1F66-E

This world is just a pilgrimage—of great significance, but not a place to belong to, not a place to become part of. Remain a lotus leaf. This is one of the calamities

Ref. 333E-F

You are not even lonely. To be lonely means you are in need of the other; to be alone means you are utterly rooted in yourself, centered in yourself. You are enough unto yourself.

Ref. FAAB-G

Relationship is the need of those who cannot be alone. Two lonely persons fall into a relationship. Two alone persons relate, communicate, commune, and yet they remain alone. Their aloneness remains uncontaminated; their aloneness remains virgin, pure. They are like peaks, Himalayan peaks, high in the sky above the clouds. No two peaks ever meet, yet there is a kind of communion through the wind and through the

Ref. 8867-H

rain and through the rivers and through the sun and through the stars. Yes, there is a communion; much dialogue goes on. They whisper to each other, but their aloneness remains absolute, they never compromise.

Ref. 8DFE-I

There is no need! To be an insider in this world is to get lost. The worldly is the insider; a Buddha is bound to remain an outsider. All Buddhas are outsiders. Even if they are in the crowd they are alone. Even if they are in the marketplace they are not there. Even if they relate they remain separate.

Ref. 9BA3-J

My approach always is: Whatsoever existence has given to you must be a subtle necessity of your soul, otherwise it would not have been given in the first place.

Ref. 7483-K

I am utterly happy with you. If you stop creating problems for yourself … I don’t see that there are real problems. The only problem is, people go on creating problems! Problems are never solved, they are only dissolved.

Ref. 3816-L

And I am not saying don’t love. In fact, only a person who is capable of being alone is capable of love. Lonely persons cannot love. Their need is so much that they cling—how can they love? Lonely persons cannot love, they can only exploit. Lonely persons pretend to love; deep down they want to get love. They don’t have it to give, they have nothing to give. Only a person who knows how to be alone and joyous is so full of love

Ref. ADE3-M

And all are strangers, remember. Your husband, your wife, your children, all are strangers. Never forget it! You don’t know your husband, you don’t know your wife. You don’t know even your child; the child that you have carried in your womb for nine months is a stranger.

Ref. B575-N

This whole life is a strange land; we come from some unknown source. Suddenly we are here, and one day suddenly we are gone, back to the original source. This is a few days’ journey; make it as joyous as possible. But we do just the opposite—we make it as miserable as possible. We put our whole energies into making it more and more miserable.

Ref. 7F79-O

Strange … because it is almost universal. There is some reason in it. Deep down they hate each other, for the simple reason that they are dependent on each other for gaining happiness, and nobody likes dependence. Slavery is not the intrinsic desire of human beings. If a woman or a man gives you joy, and you become dependent, you are at the same time creating a deep hate—because of dependence. You cannot leave the woman because she makes you happy, and you cannot leave your hatred of the woman because she makes you dependent.

Ref. 1B9E-P

So all so-called love relationships are very strange, complicated phenomena. They are love-hate relationships. The hate needs to be expressed some way or other. That’s why whatever your wife likes, you don’t like; whatever your husband likes, you don’t like. On every small thing husbands and wives are fighting. Which movie to go to?—and there is an immense fight. Which restaurant to go to?—and immediately there is a fight. This is the hatred that is moving underneath the facade of happiness. Happiness remains shallow, very thin; just scratch it a little bit and you will find its opposite.

Ref. 1DAB-Q

great insight, that your sadness can help you more than your happiness. You have never looked at sadness closely. You try to avoid seeing it, in many ways. If you feel sad, you go to a movie; if you feel sad, you start the television. If you feel sad, you go and play with your friends, you go to a club. You start doing something so that you do not have to see the sadness. This is not the right approach. When you are sad, it is a momentous phenomenon, very sacred, something of your own. Get acquainted with it, go deeper into it, and you will be surprised. Sit silently, and be sad. Sadness has its own beauties.

Ref. 9411-R

Alone you are born, alone you will die. Between these two alonenesses you can deceive yourself that you are not alone, that you have a wife, a husband, children, money, power. But between these two alonenesses you are alone. Everything is just to keep yourself engaged in something or other, so that you don’t become aware of it. From my very childhood I have never been associating with people. My whole family was very much concerned: I was not playing with children, and I have never played with them. My teachers were concerned: “What do you go on doing when all the children are playing? You sit under the tree just by yourself.” They thought something was wrong with me. And I told them, “You need not be worried. The reality is that something is wrong with you, and wrong with all your children. I am perfectly happy to be alone.” Slowly, slowly they accepted that that’s how I am; nothing can be done about it. They tried in every way to help me to mix with other children of my age. But I enjoyed being alone so much that it looked almost neurotic to play football.

Ref. 5A4D-S

I had my tree, a very beautiful tree, behind my school building. It became known that it was my tree, so nobody would go there. I used to sit there whenever there was time for play, or time for any kind of neurotic activity—“extracurricular” activities. And I found so much under that tree that whenever I used to go back to my town, I never went to see the principal—his office was close to the tree; just behind his office was the tree—but I used to go to the tree just to thank it, to show my gratitude. The principal would come out, and he would say, “This is strange. You come to the town—you never come to me, you never come to the school, but you always come to this tree.” I said, “I have experienced much more under that tree than under your guidance and that of all kinds of mad teachers that you have. They have not given anything to me—in fact, whatever they gave to me I had to get rid of. But what this tree has given to me is still with me.”

Ref. 3CAD-T

A man who has no friends, a man who has strange thoughts, a man who is against all religions, against all traditions, a man who can oppose single-handedly people like Mahatma Gandhi, who is worshipped by the whole country—they thought, “It is better to keep away from this man. He can put some idea in your mind, and

Ref. 08BD-U

Whenever you feel sad, sit by the side of a tree, by the side of the river, by the side of a rock, and just relax into your sadness without any fear. The more you relax, the more you will become acquainted with the beauties of sadness.

Ref. 389A-V