You have become too habitual; the idea of the other has become very ingrained, it has become a mechanical habit, so when you miss it you feel you are empty, lonely, falling in an abyss. But if you allow and fall into the abyss, soon you will realize the abyss has disappeared, and with the abyss all the illusory attachments have disappeared. Then happens the greatest miracle – that you are simply happy for no reason at all.

Remember, when your happiness depends on others, your unhappiness also will depend on others. If you are happy because a woman loves you, you will become unhappy if she does not love you. If you are happy for any reason whatsoever, then any day the reason is not there, you will become unhappy. Your happiness will always be on the rocks, you will always remain in stormy weather. You will never be certain whether you are happy or unhappy, because each moment you will see the ground underneath can disappear – any moment it can disappear. You can never be certain. The woman was smiling just now, and then she has become angry. The husband was talking so beautifully and suddenly he has lost his temper.

Depending on others is depending – it is a bondage, it is a dependence, and one can never feel really blissful.

Blissfulness is possible only in total, unconditional freedom. That’s why in the East we call it moksha. Moksha means absolute freedom. To be with oneself is moksha because now you don’t depend. Your happiness simply is your own, you don’t borrow it from anybody. Nobody can take it away, not even death.

Remember, death only separates you from others, it never separates you from yourself. Death seems so frightening because it will snatch you away from others – the wife will not be any more with the husband, the mother will not be any more with the children. Death only separates you from others. It cannot separate you from yourself; there is no way to separate you from yourself.

Once you have learned how to be with yourself then death is meaningless, then death does not exist. You become deathless. Then death cannot take anything away from you. That which death can take away from you, you have surrendered on your own accord.

That’s what meditation is – to surrender the nonessential, that which death can take away from you. That which death is going to do, a meditator does on his own accord, voluntarily. Knowing it well – that this will be taken away – he surrenders it.

It is immensely beautiful to be alone. There is nothing to be compared with it. Its beauty is the ultimate beauty, its grandeur is the ultimate grandeur, its power is the ultimate power.

Come back home. And the way is: you will have to suffer loneliness first. Suffer it, go through it. You have to pay for the bliss that is going to be yours – you have to pay for it. This suffering of loneliness is just paying for it. You will be tremendously benefited.

The second question: