According to Osho, your reaction comes from conditioning that equates emptiness with lack. Western mind sees only riktata—the negative absence—so encountering ‘nobody’ (ego gone) feels spooky. But true shunyata is simultaneously empty and full: when the mind’s furniture is removed, pure spaciousness remains, like a hollow bamboo through which existence plays its music. This paradox—he is and is not—makes emptiness fearsome yet awesome, because it reveals living fullness from nothing.
It felt scary because you learned emptiness means ‘nothing,’ but it’s actually open space that lets life’s music flow—so it’s also amazing.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, for a few moments the other morning, while watching you, I saw that nobody was there. I saw the emptiness, the hollow bamboo. Why did I find this spooky and awesome when you have been speaking of the beauty of emptiness for years?
It is just because from your very childhood you have been told that the goal is not emptiness, but fullness. Emptiness symbolizes the beggar's bowl. In the West particularly, the word `emptiness' never achieved any positive meaning. In the East the case is different. We have two words for emptiness. One -- which will translate the English word `emptiness' -- is riktata. It simply means absence of something. And the other is shunyata for which, in the Western languages, there is no equivalent because that kind of experience has not happened in the West. Shunyata is emptiness from one side, and fullness from another side. For example, this room is full of people now, furniture, things. We can empty it -- all the people can leave the room, all the furniture can be removed -- and then somebody can come and see and can say, "The room is empty." He…
And that is where people become awakened: awakened to the truth of existence, awakened to the truth of their own being. That's where one becomes a Buddha. The Buddha simply means the one who is no more asleep, who is no more dreaming, who is fully awake. [A sannyasin, leaving, says: I'm still afraid of the emptiness, Osho. I fill it with food and drinks.] Simply accept it. It is nothing wrong -- it is the door to the ultimate. But the door has to be empty otherwise how will you enter? You cannot enter through a wall From far away the door looks empty and dark, and you are unnecessarily frightened. Come closer to it, accept it Emptiness is not emptiness but the beginning of fullness, but you have to take a plunge into it, and you can take the plunge only when you accept.
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…
Do you know who I am?
Emptiness has the nature of bliss, has the nature of existence, has the nature of consciousness. Not that consciousness fills it: it is not like a lamp burning in a room so the light is filling the room. You can put the lamp off and the light goes; you cannot put off consciousness. It is the very nature of that inner emptiness -- it is not that it is filling it. You cannot destroy it. How can you destroy emptiness? You can destroy everything in the world; you cannot destroy emptiness. That's why you cannot be murdered, you cannot be killed. There is no possibility, because you are not. The sword can kill the wheel, but the hub? -- the hub will remain intact. It cannot be destroyed; it was not there in the first place. Is-ness is the nature of the inner emptiness; consciousness is the nature of the…
Sitting near you I increasingly feel deep silence and what seems to be emptiness, but there is no bliss in it. I tend to regard this as an indication that something is wrong, especially at darshan where so many people are so blissful. I don't seem to have any idea whether I am on the right track or not. Sometimes I think I am becoming more meditative and other times I think I am totally off beam and lost. Please comment.
Remember the Eastern meaning. When Buddha says "God is not" he is not an atheist. He is simply saying that the nature of God is nothingness. He is not denying God at an; he is not agreeing with Epicurus or with the Charvakas. When he says "God is not" you have to remember, you have to be constantly aware that his "not" is not your "not"; his "not" does not say that God does not exist. His "not" simply says that God exists as nothingness. Hence we cannot say God is, because that will make your gestalt change to the positive. Either you can say God is nothingness or you can say God is not. And of course saying God is nothingness will not come closer to the truth. "God is not" comes very close, so close that one step more and you will disappear into nothingness. But that nothingness…