Nothingness

Question: But how are we to disbelieve all these hard facts that come into our experience? How are we to feel and know that these things that we actually see and feel are really nothing?

Answer: When will we know and understand with certainty that all this is nothing, you ask? We will know and realize that all this is nothing when we attain to that State

For purposes of illustration, consider: in this your current awake state, would you ever get any adequate idea of what sound sleep is through any amount of verbal explanation? Not at all! We could never understand except by ourselves experiencing it. For in that state of sound sleep, nothing exists: no wife, no family, no children_ no money, no profession, no work, no body, no mind—absolutely nothing. I say this and declare it on oath, that this state I am referring to is nothing other than the sound sleep state. This is a fact, pure and simple. With the slightest awakening from sound sleep—which is from the immersion in pure Nothingness—khalas—all is finished. For that sound sleep state of Nothingness vanishes the moment you wake. Similarly, though in dream we feel hunger, eat and drink, and engage in other activities, when we are awake we come to know that all this happened in dream. In just the same way, if we knew this “Nothingness” in the awake state (instead of in sound sleep), we would know Everything. Yet it is precisely this very thing—the conscious experience of sound sleep—that is so hard to know and realize.

The heavens, earths, minds, bodies all disappear,
vanish completely, when Self is realized and only one
thing, Infinite Eternal Existence, remains. This
experience is the Living Freedom—Jivanmukthi—
that is the goal of Vedanta.

On this point Hafez says: “Jagno khyal karoj nahi, pachhi bhale sanv tamne ganda ya veda kahe to bi harkat nahi.” That is: “This world and its people are all intermingled with each other. Do not at all think about the world: what harm is there even if the world and its people call you mad?”

– “Meher Baba’s Tiffin lectures”, p254
21-September-1926; Meherabad

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