According to Osho, joy in aloneness appears when you stop borrowing consolations and meanings to avoid loneliness. Religions and beliefs were props to escape emptiness; maturity is to drop them and face life's meaninglessness directly. Truth stands on its own feet: when you no longer demand meaning or company, aloneness becomes your own space - not fear - and a quiet, self-sustaining joy arises.
Let go of make-believe comforts and just be with yourself; when you stop chasing reasons and company, being alone starts to feel peaceful and friendly.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: BELOVED OSHO, IT SEEMS THAT ONE OF THE GREATEST HURDLES THAT FACES A HUMAN BEING IS TO BE ALONE, TO STAND ALONE IN THE FACE OF THE OPINIONS OF THE WORLD, TO STAND ALONE IN THE FACE OF THE LIES OF THE WORLD, TO BE ABLE TO BE PHYSICALLY ALONE, AND, ULTIMATELY, TO BE ALONE WITHOUT EVEN OUR MINDS -- THE COMPANION OF LAST RESORT. WE REALLY KNOW WE ARE ALONE, WE KNOW WE WILL DIE INTO ALONENESS, WE KNOW THAT EVERY CONTACT OUTSIDE OURSELVES IS TRANSITORY -- ONLY YOU REFLECT THE SILENCE OF THE STARS, THE SILENCE OF INFINITY, THE SILENCE OF ETERNITY -- YET JUST BELOW THE HEART THERE IS A PAIN, A KNOT, A FEAR... THE FEAR OF BEING A LITTLE BOY WITHOUT FRIENDS, THE FEAR OF FAILURE AND REJECTION, AND THE PAIN OF PRETENDING I DON'T CARE.
Osho, why do I feel that if life is meaningless and empty? It seems that I am deathly afraid of being alone. How can I go totally into my aloneness with joy instead of fear?
I am not in favor of all these five "existentialists" -- in quotes -- because I am not even ready to call them existentialists. Kierkegaard never really lived, or if you call his life, life, then it was worse than death. He came out of his house only once a month, and the house was not much, just a small room. His father, seeing that his son seemed to be a little crazy -- continuously reading and writing -- tried to read his books, and threw them away because he could not manage to figure out what Kierkegaard wanted to say. And he goes on and on about nothing, much ado about nothing. Kierkegaard never got married. One foolish woman was in love with him... must have been foolish, because he was an ugly man in the first place, and a strange type, eccentric, who lived in the darkness of…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, NOTHING TO HOLD ON TO NOWHERE TO BELONG TO NOWHERE TO GO BELOVED OSHO, WHY IS IT PAINFUL TO FEEL MY ALONENESS? Dhyan Parijato, "Nothing to hold on to, nowhere to belong to, nowhere to go -- why is it painful to feel my aloneness?" What am I here for? For the time being hang around me, hold on to me. Go with me wherever I am going. Belong to this caravan which is simply enjoying, not going anywhere. It is not the Jewish caravan that Moses was leading continuously for forty years. And just now they have discovered the reason was they had lost a quarter. They searched the whole Middle East -- it took forty years, and still they could not get it! This caravan is not searching for anything. This caravan is just remaining herenow.
Master, after the tidal wave of events and with the memory of a profound experience, I face new aloneness. Efforts to share or escape into distractions have bad results. Why do I cling to this habit of escaping aloneness? A few comments may help me for the task ahead.
And, Amrito, what has happened to you has been aloneness, but your interpretation is wrong. Your interpretation is coming from your past experiences, from your past mind. It is from your memory. Your mind is giving you a wrong idea. You drop the mind. You go into your aloneness: watch it, taste it. All the aspects of it have to be looked into. Enter into it from all the possible doors; it is the greatest temple there is. And it is in this aloneness that you will find yourself -- and to find oneself is to find God. God is alone, and once you have looked into it without the mind interfering you will not want to be distracted at all. Then there is nothing to distract, then there is no need to be distracted. Then you would not like to escape from it because it is life, it is…
Beloved Osho, I am loving my aloneness. I am feeling fulfilled, nourished, fresh with new energy and ecstatic. However, there are days when I feel lonely. Then I get sad, unmeditative and even grumpy. Osho, can you talk about how to go through the transition period from loneliness to aloneness?
You just have to make your aloneness more and more strong. So you don't have to do anything with your sadness or your grumpiness, or your fear that the old habit may come back again. You have not to think about that at all. You have to pour your whole energy into the joy of being alone. You have only a certain amount of energy -- either you can dance or you can be sad. If you dance half-heartedly, then you are saving energy for sadness. That's why I insist: live every moment totally and so intensely that no energy is left to be invested in sadness, in misery, in anger; there is simply no energy left. So the whole effort has to be very positive. Feed and nourish your aloneness with all that you have, pour your love, and you will be surprised that those gaps of sadness and…