[A sannyasin says he is fighting with himself about being alone, running away from it.]
Osho – Nobody can run away from himself. One can only deceive but one cannot run away from it. There is no way – you are you. And the aloneness is so fundamental that there is no way to escape from it. The more you try to escape from it, the more you will feel lonely. If you start accepting it, if you start being in love with it, if you start enjoying it, all loneliness will disappear, and then aloneness has beauty, tremendous beauty.
We are made alone. If we were not alone we would not have been at all. Then what would be the difference between a machine and a man? The machine can never be alone; it has no soul. It can never be celibate. It is always with others, it is part of a crowd. Only man can be alone. Even in the crowd man can be alone. That aloneness is man’s freedom. And it is not against love… in fact, only a person who is alone and knows how to be alone will be able to love.
This is the paradox of love: that only the person who is alone can love, and the person who loves becomes alone. They come together…. So if one is not capable of being alone, one will not be capable of being in love either. Then all his so-called love will be just an escape from himself. It will not be real love, it will not be real relating. Who will relate with whom? You have not even related with yourself; how can you relate with the other? You are not there – who is going to relate with others?
So a bogus kind of love exists in the world: you are trying to escape from yourself and the other is trying to escape from herself or himself and you are both seeking shelter in each other, deceiving; it is a mutual deception. Sooner or later deceptions wear away and then you are lonely again. Search for another relationship and the same will happen again. And so on and so forth, it goes on.
The first thing is to know one’s celibacy, one’s fundamental celibacy, to know that our aloneness is our very individuality, and function from that aloneness. Even your love has to function from that base. Then you will be able to love.
Only two individuals who are not in any way trying to escape from themselves, but are rooted deep in their own soul can relate. And out of that depth, they embrace each other. Then it is a sharing, not an escape. Then love is really a joy…. Stop fighting with yourself. It is utterly futile, destructive, and suicidal. And now it is time to drop it….
Source: from Osho Book “The Tongue-Tip Taste of Tao”