According to Osho, you truly do not belong anywhere; aloneness is the fundamental fact of being, not a negative perception. The urge to belong breeds crowds and consolations that mask this truth. Sannyas means courageously accepting aloneness—then even death only removes illusions. Love becomes two alonenesses sharing, without losing their centers. Embrace aloneness to find freedom and fearlessness.
Feeling you don’t belong isn’t bad—it’s life telling you you’re basically alone, so accept it and share from that space.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved master, sometimes there is such a feeling of not belonging anywhere that even my orange and my mala are no consolation. Are we really so alone, or am I just being negative and closed when I feel that?
You cannot escape. If you are going to die in Samarra, you will reach there somehow. You cannot escape death and you cannot escape aloneness. Try as you will -- try, but all efforts fail. Nobody has ever succeeded in avoiding aloneness, because aloneness is your being. When you are avoiding aloneness you are avoiding yourself -- how can you avoid yourself? How can you escape from yourself? In trying to escape, you miss -- you miss the beauty of being alone. In fact, you start thinking of yourself as lonely because you have missed the beauty of aloneness. Aloneness is tremendously beautiful, loneliness is ugly. They don't mean the same, notwithstanding what the dictionaries say. Aloneness is such a beautiful experience. You ARE -- pure, uncontaminated by anybody else's presence; no shadow falling on you -- a clarity, unclouded... your being pure, virgin -- nobody has ever travelled in…
Question: OSHO, NEVER BELONGED, NEVER BEEN ON THE 'INSIDE', NEVER FELT 'AT ONE' WITH ANOTHER, WHY SUCH A LONER ALL MY LIFE? LIFE is a mystery, but you can reduce it to a problem. And once you make a mystery a problem you will be in difficulty, because there can be no solution to it. A mystery remains a mystery; it is insoluble -- that's why it is called a mystery. Life is not a problem. And that is one of the most basic mistakes we all go on committing: we immediately put a question mark. And if you put a question mark on a mystery, you will be searching for the answer your whole life and you will not find it, and naturally it brings great frustration. My observation of you, Madhura, is that you are a born meditator. Rather than making it a problem, rejoice!
Question: Third question: Osho, is there truly no one who is our own in this world? The Buddhas have said: Be exhilarated in being alone. Find the juice of aloneness. Whenever you get the chance, close your eyes and go within. People don’t do that. Some run outward toward money, and some run away from money. But both are running outward. Money is outside; renunciation is outside. So I do not tell my sannyasin to give up wealth, or position, or wife. Stop this whole racket of “giving up.” Nothing is yours. What is there to leave? What is there to grasp? You are nobody’s, and nobody is yours. We met on the road for a while—river-and-boat happenstance. We will travel together a little while, then our paths will part. While we are together, share your fragrance if you can—share it. Share your perfume if you can—share it.
It has been asked: “Even while living amid home and family, I feel that no one is really mine.”
It feels perfectly right, auspicious, true. But chances are your efforts are running in the opposite direction: you’re trying somehow to get rid of this aloneness; in fact, you want someone to truly be yours. Many will even reassure you, “We are yours,” but that’s only reassurance, consolation; you’re being lulled. Those who are not yours—how could they ever be? And how can anyone truly belong to anyone? However much a son tells his mother, “I am yours,” tomorrow the mother will die—the son won’t go with her. However much a husband says, “I am yours forever,” when the wife dies, the husband will not die with her. Who goes with whom? These are just words—necessary perhaps, because man is very restless. He needs the liquor of consolation; he needs an opium so he can sleep, so he can keep the notion that all are his. “What a full, brimming…
"we come into this world alone, we depart alone" -- this also is illusion. I will teach you the way not to come, not to go!
WE EAT, EXCRETE, SLEEP, AND GET UP; THIS IS OUR WORLD. ALL WE HAVE TO DO AFTER THAT IS TO DIE. I SHAN'T DIE, I SHAN'T GO ANYWHERE, I'LL BE HERE; BUT DON'T ASK ME ANYTHING, I SHAN'T ANSWER. WHATSOEVER IT MAY BE, IT IS ALL PART OF THE WORLD OF ILLUSION, DEATH ITSELF NOT BEING A REAL THING. SHOULD YOU WISH TO KNOW THE WAY IN BOTH THIS WORLD, AND THAT OTHER, ASK A MAN OF MERCY AND SINCERITY. A MONK ASKS MASTER PAI-CHANG, "WHO IS THE BUDDHA?" PAI-CHANG ANSWERS, "WHO ARE YOU?" You are one with the whole. How can you be alone? And how can you be together? -- because there is nobody other than the whole. The whole is the whole -- nothing besides, nothing outside it -- so it cannot be together with anybody. That's why togetherness is impossible. But you cannot be alone either,…