According to Osho, the urge to swing between solitude and company is the mind’s pendulum: while in one pole it accumulates momentum for the other. If aloneness isn’t enjoyed, it turns to loneliness; if togetherness lacks awareness, it feels like bondage. Recognize the grass-is-greener habit, remain watchful, and learn to relish aloneness as freedom and relationship as love, rather than compulsive oscillation.
Your mind is like a swing: when you’re alone it craves people, and when you’re with people it craves space—notice this and enjoy each side for what it offers.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
[A sannyasin says: I'm isolating myself -- and I feel I should be doing something else. At first I felt good alone, but now it's changed.] Then move out of it! One should always be watchful, because if one is not feeling happy in any situation, in any mood, then one should come out of it. Otherwise that becomes your habit, and by and by you lose sensitivity. You will go on being miserable and living in it, which simply shows a very deep insensitivity. There is no need! If you are not feeling good in isolation, then come out of it. Meet with people, enjoy company, talk and laugh -- but when you feel you are fed up with it, move into isolation again. Always remember to judge everything by your inner feeling of bliss. If you are feeling blissful, everything is alright.
Beloved Osho, when I am among people, after a while I want to be alone. When I am alone, after a while I want to be among people. So I cannot enjoy one or the other fully. Should I live on the inside or on the outside?
The extrovert is half: he is continuously running after things and continuously feeling guilty that he is missing the inner -- maybe the real bliss is there. Perhaps the Buddha and the Jina and the Christ are right, that the kingdom of God is within. And the person who is sitting silently, looking inside, is continuously wondering, "Am I wasting my time? People are enjoying and I am foolishly sitting here, waiting for the spring to come and the grass to grow by itself! And who knows whether it grows by itself or not? And even if it does grow, so what? It will still grow whether I am sitting silently or not! The spring will come and the grass will grow, so let it grow! And there is some juicy party going on, and there are so many beautiful hotels and restaurants and clubs and nightclubs...." Even a man…
It is just that sometimes you cannot allow things to remain perfect; then you create some kind of negativity. That's your creation, and you seem to be one of the expert people around here who can create negativity. But it is a created thing -- bogus. It is nothing true it is just that you enjoy creating it. You get into it... but you get into it. It is not that the negativity comes to you; you invite it. When everything is going well you start feeling a little uneasy: 'How can things be so good?' -- you can't trust. And when things are going well you are not in control; you want to remain in control and you can be in control only when things are negative. That's your expertise. And I know it is very difficult to drop one's expertise.
The other day, soon after I arrived, the battle began between sex and silence, relationship and aloneness. I felt at the time that a synthesis was impossible. It was as if I had to choose one or the other and that either way I would miss out. It seemed at the time possible to go straight to the sky without going through the earth.
Now, aloneness will look not like aloneness but loneliness. Now there will be a change -- the honeymoon is finished. Aloneness will start turning into loneliness. You will have a great desire to find the other. In your dreams the other will start appearing. Go and ask the monks what they dream: they dream only about women; they cannot dream about anything else. They dream of somebody who can unburden them. Ask the nuns: they dream only about men. And the thing can become pathological. You must be aware of the Christian history. Nuns and monks start dreaming even with open eyes. The dream becomes such a substantial reality that you need not wait for the night. Even in the day, the nun is sitting there and she sees the Devil coming, and the Devil is trying to make love to her. You will be surprised: many times it happened…
[A sannyasin says: I'm not sure which direction to take -- whether to go out more to people or to go inside myself more. I'm not sure which is best for my growth. Osho checks his energy.] Good, come back. The energy is really good. You have to do both. Choosing won't be good. These are not alternatives -- whether one should go out, meet, mix with people, or should go in. Both are needed together. If you move towards one, you will become lopsided. So sometimes go out, mix with people, forget yourself. Then really go out. And make it part of meditation that going out is good. Balance is needed; choice is not needed. All choice is wrong, because these are are not alternatives; they are complementaries. Together they make the whole, and together they make you holy and healthy. Together they will heal you.