When you stop holding onto anything inside, you become like open space that includes everything—so true emptiness feels like being whole.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Questioner. I have a question in regard to wholeness. You say that emptiness is the basic characteristic of wholeness. Buddha had attained to absolute emptiness. Should he not be called whole? And why is emptiness not multidimensional in itself?
In the meantime the Master went his own way. He bathed himself in the morning, dug holes in the garden and watered the plants, ate his meals and went to bed at night. In two days' time the visitor was annoyed and again he said, "I am here to learn meditation. I have nothing to do with what you do from morning to night." The Master smiled and said, "I don't teach doing, I teach being. If you see me digging holes, then know it is how meditation digs. When you see me eating, then know it is how meditation eats. I don't do meditation, I am meditation itself." Now the visitor became worried and said, "It seems I came to a madman. I was always told that meditation is doing, I had never heard someone can be meditation itself." To this the Master simply said, "It is difficult to…
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…
Beloved Osho, for years I have contemplated what seems to me to be the basic message for well-being: love yourself. When I was a therapist, all day hearing, "I hate myself; I feel sorry for myself; I am proud of myself; I want to destroy myself," I started wondering -- who is this self? I love when you say there is no self. That seems so freeing. Could you please say more?
The whole therapeutic movement has gone wrong on that point: Love thyself. Socrates used to say, "Know thyself." And there have been masters, particularly Sufis, who say, "Be thyself." But there is only one person in the whole history of man, Gautam Buddha, who said, "There is no self. You are an emptiness, utter silence, a non-being." His message was much opposed by all the traditions, because they all depended in some way or other on the idea of the self. There may have been differences on other points, but on one point they were all totally in agreement -- and that was the existence of the self. Even people like George Gurdjieff, who used to talk about a very novel idea -- that you are not born with a self, you have to earn it: "Deserve thyself" -- finally, he also ends up with the self. Gautam Buddha does…
Beloved Osho, when I close my eyes, I feel such an enormous presence, such a vast isness, such a beatitude. But it is a fullness, not an emptiness. Could you please say something about the difference between this fullness, and the emptiness or nothingness which you are speaking of?
These ideas appeal to the ego. The ego would like to have all the stars, if not inside the chest then at least hanging on the coat outside the chest. "Enormous light"... the ego is very willing. To cut the very roots, Buddha says the experience is as if you were to blow out a candle. There was a small flame on the candle giving a small light -- even that is gone, and you are surrounded with absolute darkness, abysmal darkness. People used to come to ask him, "If you go on teaching such things, nobody is going to follow you. Who wants darkness, enormous darkness? You are crazy. You say that the ultimate experience is ultimate death. People want eternal life, and you are talking about ultimate death." But he was a very consistent man, and you can see that for forty-two years he hammered on the genius…
Question: Second question: Osho, becoming empty—that is, attaining supreme bliss—is no goal for me. Who am I? My previous births? Where do I go after death? From where do people come, where do they go? What is all this? I have been wandering for fourteen years. When I was fifteen, a monk told a story in his talk. Its impact carried me away. Then from one monk to another—whomever I heard of, I went to. I kept vows, I kept meditating. I tried to know myself. Then another question began to arise: Who is going to know whom? Who wants to see whom? Who will search for whom? Nothing makes sense. The breath goes on. The heart beats. And nothing else! Then a notion formed that no one knows the mystery of this life! All useless. All lies. All talk; nothing.