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Main Index
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don't find yourself in it, you simply miss the other. When you are alone, you are not alone, because you are not there. Only that desire to be with others is there -- that is what loneliness is. Always remember the distinction between aloneness and loneliness. Aloneness is a peak of experience. Loneliness is a valley. Aloneness has light in it, a flame. Loneliness is dark and damp. Loneliness is when you desire others; aloneness is when you enjoy yourself.
Whenever Jesus would move into the multitudes, into the crowd, and particularly when he came to his own town, he would tell his disciples to go to the other shore of the lake, and he would move into total aloneness. Not even disciples were allowed to be with him. This was a constant practice with him, he knew the art. Whenever you go into the crowd you are infected by it. You need a higher altitude to purify yourself, you need to be alone so that you can become fresh again. You need to be alone with yourself, so that you become together again, so that you again become centered, rooted. Whenever you move with others, they push you off centre.
AND... HE WENT UP INTO A MOUNTAIN APART TO PRAY: AND WHEN THE EVENING WAS COME, HE WAS THERE ALONE.
Nothing is said about his prayer, what he did there, just the word 'pray'. There is no prayer mentioned. To be in a prayerful mood is enough. When you say something it is not prayer. Before God or before existence, you need simply to be vulnerable -- that is prayer. You are not to say something. On the contrary, you have to listen -- what does existence want to say to you? So whenever you go to pray, don't start saying something. God already knows what you are going to say. It is foolish, it is ridiculous. And what can you say, what do you have to say? It will be all nonsense. It will all be nothing but desires, demands, and deep down, complaints. And a prayer with complaints is no prayer, a prayer with deep gratitude is prayer. There is no need to say anything, you can just be silent. A prayer is not talking, it is listening.
Hence nothing is said about what Jesus did in his aloneness. It simply says 'apart to pray'. He went apart, he became alone.
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