VBT – Meditation 83.5
Simply Be Empty
The question will arise in us – In meditation, when the ‘I’ drops temporarily and an emptiness is created within, after it a frustration is felt when that emptiness is not filled by entry of the unknown. How can one learn to live with that emptiness?
Emptiness is the unknown. Don’t wait and don’t hope that something is going to fill the emptiness.
If you are waiting, hoping, desiring, you are not empty. If you are waiting that something, some unknown force, will descend upon you, you are not empty – this hope is there, this desire is there, this longing is there. So don’t desire for something to fill you. Simply be empty. Don’t even wait.
Emptiness is the unknown. When you are really empty the unknown has descended upon you. It is not that first you become empty and then the unknown enters. You are empty, and the unknown has entered. There is not a single moment’s gap. The emptiness and the unknown are one.
In the beginning it appears to you as emptiness; that is only appearance, because you have always been filled by the ego. Really, you are feeling the absence of the ego; that’s why you feel empty. First the ego disappears – but the feeling that the ego is no more creates the feeling of emptiness. Just the absence… something was there, and now it is not there. The ego has gone, but the absence of the ego is felt. First the ego will disappear, and then the absence of the ego will disappear. Only then will you be really empty. And to be really empty is to be really filled.
That inner space which is created by the absence of the ego is the divine. The divine is not to come from somewhere else; you are already that. Because you are filled with the ego you cannot realize it, you cannot see it, you cannot touch it. A filmy barrier of the ego prevents you.
When the ego has dropped, the barrier has dropped. The curtain is no more there. Nothing is to come; whatsoever is to come is already there. Remember this: that nothing new is going to come to you. Whatsoever is possible is already there, actual. So the question is not of achieving; the question is only of discovering. The treasure is there, just covered – you uncover it.
When he became a realized man, Buddha was asked so many times, ‘What have you gained? What have you achieved?’
Buddha is reported to have said, ‘I have not achieved anything. Rather, on the contrary, I have lost myself. And that which I have achieved was already there, so I cannot say I have achieved it. I was unaware of it. Now I have become aware. But I cannot say I have achieved it. Rather, on the contrary, now I wonder how it was possible that I didn’t know it before. And it was always there just by the corner – just a turning was needed.’
Divinity is not a future. Your divinity is the present. It is here and now. This very moment you are that – unaware, not looking in the right direction, or not tuned to it, that’s all.
A radio is there: the waves are passing right now, but if the radio is not tuned to a particular wave, the wave is unmanifest. You tune the radio and the wave becomes manifest. A tuning is needed.
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