According to Osho, entering aloneness and silence reveals an inner joy, love, and bliss—a feeling of coming home. If it is true, it cannot be lost; if it fades, it was imagination. Test it in ordinary life and let it grow by sharing it unconditionally with all. Life deepens through giving without judgment; love itself makes the other deserving.
When you become quiet and alone, you discover a real happiness inside that lasts if it’s true, and it grows when you share it with everyone.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, the other day you talked so beautifully about the sadness which follows the first experience of our innermost silence. Is it necessarily so, that when I first experience this silence, I also feel with my whole being that I am absolutely alone on my journey?
Aloneness is also one of the fundamental experiences as you enter silence. In silence there is nobody else, you are simply alone. The deeper your silence will be, thoughts will be gone, emotions will be gone, sentiments will be gone -- just pure being, a flame of light, burning alone. One can get scared because we are so much accustomed to living with people -- in the crowd, in the marketplace, in all kinds of relationships. You may not be aware that in all these relationships -- with friends, with your husbands, with your wives, with your children, with your parents -- you are basically trying to avoid the experience of aloneness. These are strategies so that you are always with somebody. It is a well-known fact, psychologically established, that if a person is left alone in isolation, after seven days he starts talking... a little like whispering. For seven…
the second alternative is to experience your aloneness, your silence that absolutely virgin spot inside your being where nobody can enter, nobody can trespass that is your true world knowing it, experiencing it, one is surprised that there was no need to escape from it it is one of the most ecstatic experiences even love is secondary the person who has known his aloneness also loves but his love has a tremendous beauty t is positive: he is not escaping from himself he is rooted in himself, centred in himself and because of that rootedness and centering he is so full of joy that he wants to share it his love is a sharing, it is not an escape his love is a gift the other is not being used as a means the other is dignified by his love ordinarily love reduces people into slaves into bondage, into possessiveness,…
But if you go into love to seek happiness, then you are wrong. Then love will only give you misery. If you go into love to share happiness, then love is tremendously beautiful, the greatest experience there is. Can you see the distinction? If you go to find happiness you will find only misery, because you were already miserable. A miserable man moving into love is going into even deeper miseries -- and the other is also in the same plight. The other is also seeking somebody in search of happiness. Both are miserable, and both meet together in search of happiness. You can just see the absurdity of it! The misery will not only be doubled, it will be multiplied. So first become happy and blissful, then move into love. Love is a function of bliss.
Enlightenment comes just like grass growing -- by itself! No effort from your side is needed. All that is needed is a complete withdrawal of all efforts, as if you are not -- that's what is meant by silence. Sannyas is a suicide, effacing yourself completely, totally, categorically, not leaving even a small trace behind. The moment you are completely gone truth arrives, and arrives with such splendour and beauty, with such bliss and benediction, with such ecstasy, that it is impossible to imagine it. Then he talked of pleasure and of bliss, of how the former is what people know through relationships with others, while bliss needs the climate of aloneness. People are acquainted only with pleasure. Pleasure happens in relationship. The other is needed, the other is an absolute necessity, without the other pleasure cannot happen.
[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.] Blissfulness is like a bud opening as a flower. In misery one closes up; in misery one starts dying, one starts withdrawing from life, one starts shrinking. In bliss one expands, one relates; one dances, sings, celebrates. And that is the only way to find truth, god, love and all the great values. One has to drop all the stupid formality of civilization, one has to become more spontaneous, like primitive man; like a child. The child represents the primitive man, the child has yet to be civilized. Psychologists are aware of the fact that we cannot remember anything before the age of four.