Chapter 1: What does Papaji mean by emptiness?
When I use the word emptiness, it is the best word I can use for my experience. Nothing ever existed. You can call it empty. There is no other word available to my knowledge. During the time or experience of emptiness, I do not see anything. I am very happy. Whenever I sit, I go back to that space that is beyond time. To express that moment I use the word emptiness.
But there is neither nothingness nor somethingness. Inside I am very conscious, but I cannot describe that consciousness by any name. Therefore I use the name emptiness. You could say empty of name and form, but it is even empty of emptiness itself, let alone name and form. I can't describe it, I have no language to describe it. There is no concept of time. No light. No darkness.
Only consciousness is there.
Chapter 2: How does emptiness relate to consciousness?
And this consciousness cannot be grasped by any imagination. It is just vast emptiness. What is unthought, unseen, unimaginable. This I call emptiness. Take off from the emptiness itself. Emptiness is a concept. Freedom is a concept. Enlightenment is a concept. They have brought you from other concepts such as I am suffering, I am bound, So you have to accept concepts of freedom and emptiness.
But I advise you to take off from there, from freedom, from enlightenment, from any concept of whatever it is. what we speak about anybody can reasonably understand but if it is understood with the mind it becomes a trap understanding and not understanding are all in the scheme of ignorance just a realm of the mind This is not learning. This emptiness, this reality is your birthright.
You cannot study to be what you already are. You do not need to understand in order to breathe. You can only lose what you have gained. When you have an empty pocket, what can you lose?
Chapter 3: What is the significance of freedom in relation to emptiness?
Then you need not have any fear. You can't lose emptiness. Nobody can pick an empty pocket So empty your pocket. This is called freedom. Whatever is stored in your pocket, empty it. Then there is no fear. You can walk freely. The Sanskrit word for meditation, jnana, means to empty the mind. When the mind is empty, when there is no concept in the mind, this is meditation.
all empty mind with no thought whatsoever. When we meditate, we watch the function of the mind so that it doesn't cling to any object. When there are no thoughts left, the den is empty and this emptiness is your nature. You will be very happy to settle down there. When you walk and talk now, you will function from this emptiness
But if you lose this, the ego arises from somewhere and then you become egocentric and don't recognize who you are. Just this thought, I am so-and-so or something, is quite enough to fall back again into this. Emptiness is not heavy. If you experience it as heavy, it cannot be true emptiness.
Chapter 4: How can one experience true meditation according to Papaji?
Who is thinking? Where does this I live that thinks? For you, I is also a thought. Trace it back to its source and discover from where it arises. The thought must stop.
First, no object, no doing, no I.
This is why I do not give you a practice. If you practice meditation for one hour or two hours for a 10 day retreat or a one month retreat, then what about the rest of the year? It must be 60 seconds each minute, 60 minutes of each hour. 24 hours a day. That is true silence. That is true meditation. True meditation never stops. This is why there is nothing to do. No practice.
Simply be who you already are. I am giving you nothing and taking away nothing, only pointing to that which you already are. Don't leave here thinking, I think I experienced emptiness. First remove the activity or doing, which is thinking and experiencing.
Chapter 5: What does it mean to let the mind go during meditation?
Then remove the I. Then we can begin. Then there is room for interesting discussion. From this place, Report your reality. When you give rise to a thought and don't cling to it, what happens? It returns to emptiness and so is no thought. Only clinging creates unfulfilled desires. See what is happening. It's enough that you have attention and you are aware all the time.
Even when you say, I was not aware, you were aware that you were not aware. When the idea of control comes, the mind resists. Don't control the mind. Let it go anywhere it likes. Let it run anywhere in this moment. And what happens? It relaxes. Why? There is no tension, no fighting. So this is the opposite method, letting the mind go where it likes.
Chapter 6: How does Papaji describe the concept of enlightenment?
All of meditation is to control the mind, And this is letting the mind go. What difference does it make? There is nothing to attain or do. To become something, to expect something, you have to do something. To remain I am, you don't have to do anything. I am is the ocean and the waves are the cosmos, the universe, all happenings and you can enjoy You are always in the source.
How can you leave the source? Its fullness is emptiness. This is the only thing that is important. Nothing else. Only this. You have nothing to fear. So why don't you identify yourself as space itself? You are already that. If there is fear, it is like the wave rejecting the ocean. and trying to run away from it. It has to merge into its own substratum, into its own essence.
It's only the separate name and form that have to go
Chapter 7: What is the relationship between desire and the mind?
to be recognized as the ocean itself. So when the idea of space arises, identify yourself as that ocean, as space itself. When you know how to follow all thoughts and questions back to their source, they disappear. You don't need to ask anything of anyone. You don't need to ask anything anywhere. So stay there That is your permanent, eternal abode, where nothing can touch you.
And this home which I mention is your own self. It is eternity, where there are no demands, and no needs, and no wants, and therefore no desires. Desire is only in the mind if something is absent. You desire that thing and you run out of the house after it. But your true home is perfect. complete by itself. It is complete fullness, full of everything. You say, I am not an enlightened person.
Where did you get this thought? Did you not go to the past? Who is not enlightened? The past or the present? It is the past.
Chapter 8: How can one realize their true self beyond concepts?
Therefore, you made an effort to go to the past to get this concept of unenlightenment, of ignorance. So don't make any effort to go to the past and let us see what happens Don't make any effort to go to the past or to conceive of a future. Who are you when there is no past or future? In that split moment,
You are enlightened.
Now where will you go if you split this instant? Try to become ignorant. Out of this instant of light, go into darkness. It's not possible. So stay as you are. No effort is needed. You have to go somewhere to become something else. When you know it is stupid to become something, this is enlightenment. For this you do not need any effort at all.
When you aspire to freedom, the whole cosmos is with you. Keeping free of any thought is the best way to help the world. When the world is crying for peace,