According to Osho, transform loneliness into aloneness by stopping the flight into relationships and turning inward; see that aloneness is your nature. Accept the transitional pain, don’t fight sadness, and pour energy into enjoying being with yourself—sing, dance, paint, create. As you celebrate solitude, fear dissolves, old habits fall away, and love becomes possible from fearlessness and self-sufficiency.
When you feel lonely, don’t run to others; sit with yourself, make something, sing or dance, and slowly you’ll discover you enjoy your own company.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
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…
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, I feel so lonely that I panic and sadness surrounds me. What should I do? Lord, please guide me!
Do not stop me now, O pourer of wine! We are not ones to turn back and go away! Our thirst is endless—and your treasure is inexhaustible, inexhaustible—O giver, keep pouring! We have come to awaken the Unseen at your door! We have come to be dissolved at your door! Fill this empty cup—fill it, fill it, fill it! Make us intoxicated—make us, make us! We have been standing at the gate with hands outstretched— Make us immortal, O Immortal, give us your boon! In a single drop the ocean of life is contained— Fill to the brim this mind’s emptiness! From here on, gaining is losing; hidden in laughter at drinking is the sob of thirst. Let the rounds of bliss go on—let them go on! Let every corner of the heart be filled, even with sorrow! Reveal to us your boundless Presence! Teach us only to dissolve, to…
I am experiencing something that I am calling "the pain of myself". Can you say what this is?
Vandan, the ordinary life of humanity is a continuous effort to avoid oneself. Everybody is doing it, in different ways of course. Nobody can sit silently and be alone. Watch yourself, how fidgety you become if there is nothing to do. If the radio is not there and television is not there and the newspaper is not there and you don't have a book to read and nobody to talk to, just think how fidgety, restless you become. You are almost in a panic, as if you are dying. You need something to remain occupied with, you cannot be with yourself. And whenever you are with yourself you start feeling bored. Now, this is strange. And if somebody else feels bored with you, you feel very hurt, but you yourself feel bored with yourself! And everybody is the same: nobody feels good being alone. Man is constantly escaping from himself;…
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…