According to Osho, when loneliness and panic appear, recognize that aloneness is our natural destiny; the mistake is trying to escape it. Drop every effort to avoid it—that very dropping is meditation. In supreme solitude, bliss descends. Your fear is learned; beneath it lives the womb’s memory of peace. Surrender to aloneness, rest in silence, or even try a womb-like float tank to taste bodiless ease.
Instead of running from feeling alone, sit quietly with it—if you relax, it can feel safe and peaceful, like floating in warm water.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
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…Read the full discourse →
When there is nobody, not even a thought of anybody and you are really alone, you start sinking, you drown into yourself. Don't be afraid. In the beginning that drowning will look like death and a gloom will surround you, a sadness will surround you, because you have always known happiness with people, in relationships. Just wait a little. Let the sinking go deeper, and you will see a silence arising and a stillness which has a dance to it... an unmoving movement inside. Nothing moves, and still everything is tremendously speedy... empty, yet full. Paradoxes meet and contradictions dissolve. So for one month you delight in it, and just wait for something to happen. Sit silent, relaxed, yet tense because you are waiting, something is going to descend on you. And I am going to do something.Read the full 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.Read the full discourse →
Osho, you say meditation is a solitary journey. And I am very afraid of loneliness. Give me courage.
Someone gives you a hard shove—there is a quarrel. Where is there space to remember yourself? Someone embraces you, loves you—where is there space to remember yourself? Your loves and your quarrels, your friendships and your enmities—all do one thing: they keep you tangled, they keep you busy. They give you no chance to take a small look within. There, you must move on alone. Go on alone If none walks with you upon the pilgrim’s hour, go on alone. Yes, fear arises in becoming solitary—but only until you truly enter it. Once you do, you will be astonished: peace, aloneness, silence. When the experience of inner solitude dawns, you will be amazed—fear vanishes. Because in that solitude it is known that you are nectar, amrit—“amritasya putrah,” children of immortality! You have no death; how can there be fear? You yourself are the Divine—pure sat-chit-ananda, being-consciousness-bliss. What can frighten you?…Read the full discourse →
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…Read the full discourse →