:: RELATIONSHIP ::

ALONENESS

We are alone. The whole earth may be crowded but still every individual is alone. Even when you are in a crowd you are alone. This loneliness is unbearable and you want to get rid of this loneliness, so you create these relationships to forget yourself and your loneliness. For some time you feel that you are not alone.

“Man is lonely, very lonely. With this loneliness you can do only two things: either you make a world of your own or you enter sannyas. Making a world means making relationships so that loneliness can be forgotten. And the meaning of entering into sannyas is accepting this loneliness because this is your nature. Do not run away from it, do not avoid it; accept it, embrace it. This is your nature. You will not get anywhere by running away from it. You have done this in innumerable lives and you have failed. You have gained nothing except failure.
Sannyas means: one who has accepted his loneliness -- now he does not whistle, he does not sing, nor does he make any relationship -- he is absolutely satisfied with himself.

It is very interesting to note that the more you run from yourself the more you will have to run -- the more you will get scared of loneliness. The more you accept to be with yourself the more you will be able to find that the loneliness is not loneliness but aloneness. There is a difference between loneliness and aloneness. Loneliness means that you miss the presence of the other. To be alone means that being by oneself is enough. Loneliness is painful but there is bliss in being alone. When Shankara is alone he is by himself, but when you say that you are alone you are lonely.

Being lonely means that you feel the absence of the other. Aloneness means that you are happy to be with yourself. Aloneness means you have fallen in love with yourself. Meditation means to be in love with yourself. Meditation means to make such a relationship with yourself that there is no need to make a relationship with anyone else.
Meditation means to be fulfilled in oneself. Your world, your whole world is in you. There is nothing lacking. You are complete, you are whole, you are the divine, there is no need for you to go anywhere. This inner state means sannyas.

We make the world because the loneliness hurts. We try to fill this loneliness with money, with friends, with family, with religion, caste, nation. We make so many efforts to fill this inner void because this wound is painful. But it is wrong to think of it as a wound; it is not a wound.

Last night a sannyasin came to me and said that since she has started meditation her heart seems to have died. There is no desire to make any relationship with anyone, there seems no interest in love; even friendship seems meaningless. She was very sad... because she has come from the West and in the West if love starts disappearing then people think that the whole of life is finished, if feelings disappear and relationships break, then people think that now there is no meaning in life. This is their definition. So she was sad.

We in the East have done a deeper research. We have discovered that when a person stays wholly within himself, then all relationships dissolve. It is a very fortunate thing to happen; it is not something to be unhappy about. When a person becomes stable within himself, sex dissolves and the keenness to make relationships with others also disappears. The feeling of gratitude is so much that one does not want to make any relationship with anyone. No longer will that person beg of others to have some relationship with him, no longer will he say that "I cannot live without you." Now he can live alone. And the person who can live alone, really lives! The other type of living is only a deception, an illusion. If you cannot live alone how can you live with others?

So I told that young woman, that sannyasin, "Do not be scared, do not be unhappy. This definition of yours is wrong. This definition of the West is wrong. Be happy, be blissful; how fortunate you are that you no longer desire any relationship."

Relationship only gives you pain and anguish. This is quite natural also, because when two unhappy persons meet how can they give happiness to each other? The mathematics is quite clear: when two unhappy persons meet, then the unhappiness does not just become double, it multiplies many times more. You are looking for the other person because you are not happy. You are not happy alone, so you are looking for the other. The other is also not happy to be alone and he is also looking at you with the same expectation. Like this two unhappy people meet in the hope of getting happiness. But they do not get happiness. It is not possible because two beggars are begging of each other and neither of them is a giver -- both of them are beggars. Both of them go on expecting from each other. Whenever you love anyone you expect him to return your love.
People tell me, "We give lots of love to others but others do not love us." How can you love? Love flows only from the heights of bliss. The river of love only comes out of the peak of bliss. You are not happy, you are not blissful, you are begging, and the other person is also begging. Neither of you has anything to give to the other, but you go on waiting to receive some love in charity! As you go on waiting the disappointment starts.
Until a person is happy within himself no one else can make him happy.”

_The Great Transcendence
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