According to Osho, the pain you feel is not aloneness but loneliness, a craving to be with someone. Aloneness is a luminous, contented state at the height of consciousness; loneliness is a dark, needy valley. Until you mature into joyful aloneness, use provisional teddy bears (belonging, a master, meditation) to ease the ache, then drop them and celebrate yourself.
It hurts because you’re lonely (wanting others), not truly alone; use kind supports until you can enjoy being with yourself.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
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;…
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.
Osho, never before have I felt so much love and never before so alone. Thank you, Osho...
Carl Gustav Jung has made these words very famous. He divided people basically into two types: the introverts and the extroverts. That is a wrong division. People cannot be categorized that way. People cannot be pigeon-holed this way. I have never come across anyone who is just introvert -- he will die immediately, because he will have only the in-breath. I have never come across a person who is just extrovert -- he will die too. People are both. It is possible that one is more of an extrovert than an introvert, and vice versa. And that's what brings imbalance to your personality. One should be both simultaneously. One should be balanced. My sannyasins have to be extrovert introverts, introvert extroverts -- both together. This is one of the most important things to be understood, because in the past the monks have tried to be just introverts. They were called…
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.
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…