According to Osho, the void is complete because it is not an achievement but your intrinsic nature. Worldly things can never be perfected through action; they’re always incomplete. Emptiness doesn’t need to be produced—only uncovered. Stop filling yourself, drop striving for perfection, and the already-present emptiness reveals itself, whole and irreducible.
You’re already whole as emptiness; when you stop trying to add or perfect anything, that wholeness becomes obvious.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
One friend has asked, "you say nothing is complete, then how can the void be complete?"
If you had to attain the perfection of the void, you would never have attained it. The void is complete -- it is, it is! You have just to stop filling yourself and you will suddenly realise that you are empty! There can be no completeness in this world of anything. Nothing is attained by man s actions. Once the Sultan in whose service Nasruddin was, was displeased with him. He told him, "You are a perfect dolt!" Mulla replied, "Do not flatter me. Nobody is perfect." However, if Emptiness too, had to be brought in, it would not be perfect. But the fact is, Emptiness is your nature. You have not to bring it about. It is. All you can do is to cover up what is, hide it, forget it. You cannot destroy it. You have not to attain the perfection of Emptiness. You have only to give…
A friend has asked: Osho, you said about a wayward son that one should let him pass through his experiences, and he will learn on his own. But even after experiencing, he still prefers the same thing—someone is asking about his wayward son—no matter how much suffering he has to endure, even if death itself should come, still he does the same. After stumbling again and again, he repeats it. What can be done? How to reform him?
You will not be able to reform him. If life cannot reform him, if even death cannot reform him, what will you be able to do? If what you say is true—that again and again, even after suffering, he does the same thing; even if death comes, he will still do the same thing, and he does not change—then take your hands off. You will not be able to reform him. You cannot be stronger than death. And one who does not learn from suffering—what will he learn from you? Do not call him a wayward son. You have found yourself a Jadabharata. Because those whom suffering does not reform, whom even death does not reform—these are great, arrived masters; they are in the ultimate state. Do not even try to reform such a one. And why are you so eager to reform another? It is enough to reform yourself.…
Osho, we are incomplete. However much we search outside or inside, how will the Whole ever be seen? How will we find the Whole?
It’s true. You are incomplete; all your seeking will remain incomplete. But non-seeking can be complete. Whatever you seek, you will be the seeker; it will be a search of your own hand, it will be like you. Whatever you make will carry your imprint. Whatever you construct, whatever you create, will be incomplete. If the maker is incomplete, how can the creation be complete? Quite right. Whatever you think will be incomplete. Whatever ideas you entertain will be fragmentary. Whatever conclusions you draw can never be whole and total. If you have faith, it will be incomplete; if you doubt, that too will be incomplete. You go into the world—half-and-half; you enter the temple—half-and-half. Because you are incomplete. That’s right. Then is there no way? God is complete and you are incomplete. And whatever you do will be incomplete—prayer incomplete, sadhana incomplete, samadhi incomplete. So how will you find…
This is the situation. We are in the middle — incomplete, half-done. The half-done mind longs to be filled, to be whole. Desire for perfection arises out of incompleteness. Remember, in completeness no desire for completeness can arise; it would be meaningless. Desire is always the opposite of what we are. We are poor, so we desire to be rich. We are ill, so we desire health. We are incomplete, so we desire wholeness. Desire is completely logical; in an incomplete mind the idea of becoming complete will naturally arise. Desire is logical — but its fulfillment will never happen. For the incomplete can never become complete — by any effort, by any practice, by any discipline or sadhana. Because all sadhanas, all practices, all efforts will arise from the incomplete. The stamp of incompleteness will remain upon them.
Osho, there was a question about perfection. In the morning you said you regard emptiness as the fundamental hallmark of perfection. Then Buddha too was the ultimate void. So can he not be called complete? And along with that, is emptiness itself not multidimensional?
A few points. First, Buddha arrived at emptiness—as I was just saying, Buddha arrived at emptiness. That was his achievement; he attained it. He became empty. The emptiness that is attained becomes one-dimensional. It acquires a direction. It becomes dependent on the attainer. Understand it this way. In fact, whatever I negate within myself, whatever I cut off and set aside, will be finished, removed from within me. A certain kind of emptiness will be available. But that emptiness will come as the absence of something. There is another emptiness that we do not bring about; it is born in the very awareness of our being. We are emptiness—we do not become empty. Emptiness is our nature. That is how we are. The day emptiness is our nature—no discipline, no practice, no attainment—on that day emptiness becomes multidimensional. We have not emptied out anything to become empty; we have simply…