The Greatest Achievement

 

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The Greatest Achievement

To be alone is the greatest achievement. One feels always a need for the other. There is a tremendous need for the other because something is lacking within ourselves. We have holes in our being; we stuff those holes with the presence of others. The others somehow make us complete, otherwise we are incomplete.

Without the others we don’t know who we are, we lose our identity. The others become a mirror and we can see our faces in it. Without the others we are suddenly thrown to ourselves. Great discomfort, inconvenience arises, because we don’t know who we are. When we are alone, we are in very strange company, very embarrassing company. We don’t know with whom we are.

With the others, things are clear, defined. We know the name, we know the form, we know the man or the woman — Hindu, Christian, Jew, Indian, American, Australian - there are some ways to define the others. How does one define oneself?

Deep down there is an abyss… undefinable. There is an abyss… emptiness. We start merging into that. It creates fear. We become frightened; we want to rush towards the other. The others help you to hang out, the others help us to remain out. When there is nobody, we are simply left with our emptiness.

Nobody wants to be alone. The greatest fear in the world is to be left alone. People do a thousand and one things just not to be left alone. We imitate our neighbours so we are just like them and we are not left alone. We lose our individuality, we lose our uniqueness, we just become imitators, because if we are not imitators, we will be left alone.

To be alone is really the greatest miracle. That means now we don’t belong to any church, we don’t belong to any organisation, we don’t belong to any theology, we don’t belong to any ideology — socialist, communist, fascist, Hindu, Christian, Jain, Buddhist - we don’t belong, we simply are. And we have learnt how to love our indefinable, ineffable reality. We have come to know how to be with ourselves.

Our need for the others has disappeared. We don’t have any loopholes, we don’t have any holes, we are not missing anything, we don’t have any flaws - we are simply happy being ourself. You don’t need anything; our bliss is unconditional. Yes, it is the greatest miracle in the world – the greatest achievement!