You Are Alone

"You are alone in existence. You come alone, you die alone. Between birth and death, of course you can deceive yourself that someone is with you - your wife, your father, your mother, your husband, your friend - but this is just make-believe. you come alone, you go alone; you are alone between birth and death."

- Osho (from Freedom the Courage to Be Yourself)

"This is the life of gods and of the godlike and blessed among men, liberation from the alien that besets us here, a life taking no pleasure in the things of Earth, [the flight of the alone to the Alone]"

- Plotinus (Enneads VI, 9)

"You are alone with your God, and there is no one around you. This is the truth. Rest your mind on this, and attain peace."

- Swami Krishnananda

There are more than 6 billion humans on planet Earth today but even if there were 600 billion you would be just as alone then as you are today. Crowds create only crowding.

You have been sold a bill of goods. In your youth you were read to stories about "living happily ever after" and your parents may have occasionally lied to you about how they would never leave you. As soon as your cuteness and novelty wore out, you were no longer of any interest to them. In fact, you were a nusiance.

In your adolesence you learned that there is no Santa Claus, no Easter Bunny, and no Tooth Fairy. There was no saviour, no prince, no gift-bearer and nobody that heard your cries at night. You had to do it for yourself.

In your teenage years, you were bombarded incessantly with love songs and impossible dreams of a lover that is everything to you. Yet each and every lover, if you were fortunate enough to find even one, abandoned you as soon as the cuteness and novelty wore off. Instead of joy, you found frustration and instead of pleasure you found jealousy, deceit and all manner of selfishness.

In your early adulthood, you began to see how former friends could care less if you drop dead. You tired of being the one that had to initiate the phone calls, letters, and emails, without any reciprocation. When your friends moved away or 'settled down" it was as if you no longer existed to them.

When you began to have different thoughts you were ostracized, when you took up different interests, you were discarded, when your appearance changed, you were mocked, and when you needed help, no help was to be found. Your inner thoughts could not be understood, your journey was yours and yours alone.

Listen, my friend - it doesn't matter. Everything is as it should be.

To be alone does not equate with loneliness - far be it! Alone means to be ALL ONE. To understand your aloneness is to understand completeness. To understand aloneness is to understand God. You are the alone flying upwards to the Alone. God is alone and only that which is of the same kind can understand and communicate.

God has many forms, many manifestations, many hypostases - but still always One; still always one and undivided. The universe is also one - One Verse - One Song - One Dance. The universe is alone - there is no other like it

To be alone is to be one and to be one is to have no need, no division, no frustration - you are the number zero and God is the number One. One plus Zero is still One. As zero - can you find your beginning, can you find your end?

In the Temple of Solomon, within the Holy of Holies, only one could enter. There was no room for two. That room is in your inmost parts. You are the Holy of Holies.

In your Oneness you will find the Teacher - you are never taught, you teach yourself.
In your Oneness you will find the Physician - "Physician, Heal Thyself!"
In your Oneness you will find the Friend - "A friend that sticks closer than a brother"
In your Oneness you will find the Beloved - "I am my beloved, and my beloved is mine"

In your Oneness you will find the One, for there is none besides thee.

The Darkening Shroud

"... the soul's seeing is [thwarted] by the passions and by the darkening that Matter brings to it, by its [descent] into Matter, by its very attention no longer to Essence but to Process - whose principle or source is, again, Matter, the Kind so evil as to saturate with its own [corruption] even that which is not in it but merely looks towards it. For, wholly without part in Good, the negation of Good, unmingled Lack, this Matter-Kind makes over to its own likeness whatsover comes in touch with it."

- Plotinus (Enneads I,8 - words in brackets redacted; emphasis mine)

The soul, our soul, should be able to see. Yet it sees not, feels not and is instead mesmerized by the colors and senses of a world of matter, which instead of the light we think it is, really is a world of darkness. Instead of the pure essence of God (Good) emanating through us we wear a "darkening" shroud that shields our eyes, deafens our ears, numbs our souls, and makes us forget who we are and from whence we come.

Christians have long spoken of a "fall of Man" from which all sin and evil have proceeded. Buddhists wisely see that the problem is not a matter of blame or past action, but of the very nature of existence itself.

Plotinus sees the problem perfectly - the Creation IS the Fall! There is no distinction between the two "events", they are identical. To be created is to descend into the privation of matter and to struggle with its darkening shroud.

There is no blame, no judgement, no wrath, and no sin - there is the perfect Essence of the One God and there is process; there is BEING and there is becoming being. Yet between the essence of being and the process of becoming, there is no conflict for process is privation of essence, a fall into nothingness.

God does not exist. God is, God be, but God does not exist. To exist is to be limited by the merciless and cruel vicissitudes of process. God transcends even existence. Essence is not existence and existense has no essence. Look closely enough at the rock and it is nothing but colliding electrons, perhaps even waves of energy. The greatest of software is really just a series of yes and no.

To exist is to be in process - to live and to die; to be healthy and to be sick; to be loved and to be rejected; to have peace and to have war. One day this, the other day that. Constant, merciless change is what process is all about.

Existence is insatiable desire. Solomon speaks "the eye never has its full of seeing nor the ear its full of hearing." Process never says "enough" - it is always trying to become something, never just being. Process is always trying to get richer, live longer, become more knowledgable, become more powerful, become more saintly, become more popular - but for what it knows not and cares not for there is no end to it, just process. Process is its own goal. All this leads inevitably to a lost life of addiction and frustration.

Do not confuse "existence" with essence - they are different! One can exist but have no essence and essence need not exist. Before you existed, you were and long after you die still will you be! In existence there is time, there is evolution, there is dichotomy, there is insatiable desire, and there is conflict - no true peace or joy is possible.

Your center, your source - your very essence - immersed in its descent into matter - has forgotten because, as Plotinus says "this Matter-Kind makes over to its own likeness whatsover comes in touch with it." You are still there - but do you realize it? Has the world of senses mesmerized you and caused you to forget the essence of God - not up there and over here - but inside your very center for the Kingdom of God is within.

Seek not to climb the highest mountain nor dive down to the deepest depth. The only thing necessary is to turn to the light. When the light switch is set to "on", the darkness has dissipated - not gradually, but in an instant. Essence can never be destroyed because only that which exists dies.