B. Aloneness – Going Deep Inside

The second important point is aloneness. There are two types of people, one who wants to forget his misery and the second, who works towards solutions to the misery. I wish we all become the second category, where we are finding solutions to any misery we experience.

The one in the first category, who wants to forget the misery will find ways to hide it. He is scared of meeting his own self and always needs something to hang on to. In the form of chit chatting or gossiping. If no other person is available for gossip, then picking up a book and reading, or listening to music or watching TV or going to Facebook and Instagram, or if none of these things are available, even talking to oneself. So the first category of people are scared of themselves and then they look for ways and means to forget the misery. And if the talking stops, then the hand will move, the leg will move and they don’t even come to know that the leg is moving. There is so much activity in the mind and then that activity is reflected by any body movement. Somebody is sitting nearby, the need arises to start talking “How is the weather?” You can see how it is because you can feel and see it. What is there to ask. What they are really saying is “I can’t be with myself, I should not meet myself, I should not be alone.” There is a story of Eckhart, he was sitting in a jungle and his friends saw him, they came and said, “Eckhart we saw you sitting alone so we thought to give you company.” Eckhart responded, “I was with God, but you came and made me lonely. Being alone is supreme and you came and disturbed that aloneness, and disturbed that godliness.” So once we are alone with ourselves, that gives an opportunity to dive deep within ourselves. And the deeper we dive into ourselves, the outside naturally becomes brighter. The more we turn inward, the outside automatically becomes nicer. There once was a king and his deputy told him that if you want to punish someone, make him alone for three months and he will go mad. So the king said, “Why will he go mad, we will give him nice food, we will give him nice clothes, we will take care of him, why will he be mad?” So the deputy said, “If you want to test it, have one person and lock him behind bars, keep him absolutely alone for three months.” So they chose one person who was happy and was known as a good man. They picked him up and gave him nice food, nice clothes, but made him totally alone. Two, three days he screamed, shouted, wept, but after some time he started to accept food and started to eat. They also put a security guard near him who didn’t speak his language so they could not talk to each other. He started to go mad because there was nothing to do, no newspaper to read, nothing to do other than sit, eat, sleep. So then he started to talk with himself. You would notice whenever we are alone and we don’t witness, we are unaware, we start talking to ourselves. Some just in the mind and others out loud. That man started to talk with himself and within three months he became mad. Aloneness without loneliness, or aloneness with awareness is such that even if in the whole world, the entire earth, the entire universe nobody is there, we can still live alone happily and joyfully. Then one is in the state of aloneness where he has worked on himself. The more you figure out that most of this talking is unnecessary, the more you see how it is a waste of energy. Even if in the middle of the sentence, if you realize that you are talking unnecessarily, stop the sentence, don’t even finish it. Why the hell not. This way you make progress and the automatic talking would stop. Otherwise this behaviour will go on and on. The change in us will not come unless we change the behaviour, and only if we change then life will change.