The Myth of Aloneness
I'm now going to tell you the myth of aloneness, the myth of the pinnacle, the myth of the solitary. This is a beautiful myth or truth that demonstrates the divine life; and this is the life that you are endeavouring to live, or that you are living, or you would not be listening to this tape. This myth describes what you have already encountered, to some degree or what you are going to encounter in the future-as you live the divine life more and more. As you become the divine life. Now, in all the societies of humankind on the planet, it has been a typical myth that the gods and goddesses live on the tops of the mountains. And man and woman are, in truth, where I come from, gods and goddesses; for those myths were talking about man and woman themselves, before they forgot themselves.
To live the divine life is to live in the state of aloneness-not loneliness, for aloneness is the very opposite of loneliness. To be alone is to be able to live on the top of the highest summit, that is, the pinnacle. And, if we demonstrate that, we could say on the highest peak, on your peak in the Himalayas, for instance, for it is a very common myth in India that each peak is occupied by a god or goddess.
But only one god or goddess, only one man or one woman can occupy any particular peak. That is why the divine life can be expressed as saying: 'I am alone and yet I survey everything, I am in the midst of everything. I am in the midst of my family, I am in the midst of all the people around me, I am in the midst of the world, but I have an overview of it all, for I am alone, I am alone on the pinnacle, in my solitariness, but not in isolation for isolation is a position of conflict, frustration, unhappiness, emotion, and that then degrades or devolves into loneliness.'
To be man or woman, the reality, the god that you are, you must be able to survive, in the midst of this existence, on your mountain top, on your summit, on the pinnacle that is uniquely yours. Now, one of the things that you'll notice in the divine life is the absence of experience is one of the first things that we encounter as we climb our own mountain to our own top, summit, pinnacle. The absence of experience is where you get no feedback: you start to find no satisfaction in being with your friends and doing the old things. And this is as you're climbing your mountain, you start to come out of the lovely warm forests down at the bottom of the peak, at the bottom of the mountain of yourself. Down there in the lush forests, where the streams are so beautiful, where the whole of existence is so beautiful and comforting, where all the people flock together and enjoy themselves and yet, in the night, cry and weep or have their problems; down there in the jungle, down there in this lush existence where everybody lives, down there you find yourself leaving that, you find yourself ascending this mountain of yourself.
And, as you go up, it seems rocky and you seem so alone and you look down and you see everybody else enjoying themselves, having picnics by the mountain streams. How glorious it is and you can't get down there, because, somehow or other, you are going up, you're climbing yourself, you get absence of experience, you start to long: 'If only I could have it as it was once, if only I could have back the joys that I once had." But you can't, because the divine life says: No. You must be the god, the god or goddess, the man or woman that you are, you must leave behind you all the children who have yet to climb the mountain of themselves.' They play their games down there and, if you look over your shoulder, down there you cannot be the god or goddess that you are.
And, as you climb up, the air gets rarer and rarer. You've got to breathe, you've got to adapt your whole lungs, your whole body, your whole self you've got to adapt to this rarefied air; and, of course, to begin with, it feels as though you can't breathe, you're being stifled: 'My God, how can I get out of this?"
Well, you can't get out of it, can you? And you keep climbing. And then you start to feel an embracement, a bracing feeling of vitality as you get the new air into you, you get the new consciousness, and you start to say: 'I love this, my aloneness, my solitariness, I'm starting to love it.' But I see I am. not isolated, for I must not isolate myself from the people, for that would not be worthy of the god or goddess that man or woman is.
And, finally, I get to the top of my mountain, finally, I have the most splendid, the most extraordinary view of the entire vista of existence. And I can breathe this rarefied air-I can actually breathe it, where no other human being can breathe; for I am now a being, not a human being. All the human beings I have left down below in the valleys, in the comfort of the warmth of each other, but I am now being. I have left my humanity, in the form of my suffering, my need to suffer, behind.
I am now at my summit. I am all alone. And yet, if I look out and don't look down, if I look out and around me at this splendid existence, this splendid, this beautiful earth, I will see another pinnacle across the way, another god, another goddess, another man or another woman just like myself, absolutely alone and yet being, as I am being, in my solitary wonder of consciousness, and I will smile within and know all is well for I am alone, and yet I am in splendid company.
Do you hear the myth of yourself? Do you hear what you are doing with your life? Do you hear how you are leaving everything behind you and yet not isolating yourself from it?
From Barry Long's Tambourine Mountain Talks - July 1989