Loneliness

Dec. 20, 2005

  • Loneliness is NOT a life reality but an inescapable vital reality to the Mind.
  • In an atmosphere where air movements are full, Man builds four walls around and complains of sultriness and suffocation which are real to him.
  • Man ALWAYS wants solutions as he is, without changing anything in himself, much as a diabetic seeks a treatment without stopping from eating sugar. The treatment MAN wants for diabetes is to eat more sugar. He would appreciate a treatment delivered to him through gilt-edged sugarplums. It is irrational, but irrationality is the pride of MAN. It is Man's prerogative to pride in his 'rationality', as in his view, it is irrational to expect him to progress or change.
  • Those who have taken to tapas to reach God developed their ego. Those who have come to an ego-abolishing yoga have readily organised themselves as the greatest sadhaks in abolishing the ego, like the Japanese post office which wrote to an American customer who in a letter to his friend had complained about the Japanese post office opening personal letters, saying that his information was wrong.
  • The right, rational, spiritual remedy for loneliness is to become selfless or self-giving. Selfishness organised as individuality is loneliness. Loneliness is the psychological by-product of mistaking individuality for narrow self-centred nature.
  • The remedy is simple to explain, not so simple to practise. The trader was known to be indifferent, dominating, authoritative and offensive to his customer a hundred years ago. He still is when the product is in the seller's market. His bargaining is stingy, mean. He taunts the customer who is at his merciful disposal. A realisation that a pleased customer is an ever expanding market has made the trader pleasing to the customer for his own selfish profit. Air hostesses are compelled to smile till their lips ache and they are unable to smile off duty. He who is lonely; if he can take the other man's point of view in every human transaction will no longer be lonely.
  • Let a lonely man relate to others, conceive what would interest them, what their point of view of the topic of conversation is, he will see the walls of his loneliness developing spy holes in innumerable spots.
  • Sri Aurobindo says all creation is one, ego has walled itself all around and complains of loneliness.
  • To shed the separation, outgrowing the ego spiritually will enable one to discover that there is no evil in creation. To do so mentally i.e., psychologically will surely make him see there is no loneliness anywhere around. It is figment of his own fancy, but a figment of reality with an unparalleled forcefulness.
  • It is too much to expect Man to be rational. Perhaps no rational man has been born yet. The biographies of a dozen great souls of the 20th century argue that they were irrational with a vengeance or they made organised irrationality their exalted personal ideals. Still, if anyone ventures to move towards the penumbra of rationality in any subject, he will at once discover that loneliness dissolves.
  • Affectionate people cannot be lonely, as true affection does not expect anything in return.
  • Selfishly affectionate people grow painfully lonely when they unconsciously insist that all world should give them affection while they are incapable of extending an affectionate attitude to no one who will not reciprocate.
  • No pious Christian can be lonely if he believes in the tenets of the Bible or even in the ten commandments. Hypocrisy organises a wall around personality and renders it lonely.
  • If one is possessed of any ONE good quality in a marked measure – sincerity, loyalty, honesty, honour, integrity, purity, goodness, comprehension, love, joy, sweetness, etc. -- it is impossible for one to be lonely.
  • Loneliness is hypocritical smallness organised around virulent selfishness which present it to himself as an ideal of politeness, non-interference, personal PRIVACY and unpardonably as individuality. He who is an individual cannot be lonely.