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One should be happy, one should feel blessed, if instead of words silence starts coming to you. These are the gaps, the intervals. So don’t be worried about the words that are not coming which used to come. Something else tremendously valuable is coming to you. You have not yet recognized it.

Pure space is coming to you. Empty space is coming to you. Nothingness is coming to you, and God appears only out of this nothingness. Only out of this nothingness is truth encountered. Forget about the words. Just wait. Look at the blank page – a blank page has much more on it than any written page can ever have.

There is a Sufi book, The Book of the Books. It is completely empty. Nothing is written in it. If you purchase it, you will feel cheated. But that book really is the book of the books. If you read it, you will read the ultimate in it. It is indicative. It is simply a gesture: become as empty as that book.

So when the blank page is before you, don’t even draw pictures because that will keep you occupied and you will miss the great nothingness that is coming closer to you. The mind gets afraid, and in fear the mind starts doing anything just to keep itself occupied.

Make it a meditation. Keep the blank page before you and watch, and become as blank as the page. Let two blanknesses meet, and in that encounter you will be lost and something of the beyond will penetrate you. You will never be the same again because you will taste something which is deathless. You will taste something of the formless – of the unknown, of the inexpressible, of the eternally elusive.

The mind goes on growing words. Those words occupy you. They fill you and they don’t give any space for something else to enter you. The words block you. Then your flow is not spontaneous, not natural. Then there are too many rocks around you. Words exist like rocks around you.

If it is happening, then much is happening: rocks are no longer there, and the flow is getting in tune with the divine. Only nothingness can be in tune with the divine. So please don’t even draw pictures because that is again a trick of the mind. Your mind is unable to bring up words; something else will do – drawing pictures will do. Just look at the blank page. Even better is to sit facing the wall and look at the blank wall.

That’s what Bodhidharma did for nine years. He became enlightened by just facing a wall. That was his mantra and meditation. That was all that he did. It is not doing at all. He did nothing; he simply sat facing the wall. Just think! If you sit facing a wall for nine years, you will become as blank as the wall. By and by thoughts will not come; they will not chase you. By and by they will find some other host. You are too indifferent toward them.

Blankness is tremendously valuable, but we have always been trained to be full of words. So when this starts happening, one becomes a little scared. You start feeling that nothing is happening. Yes, in a totally different sense, nothing is happening because nothing is the greatest happening there is. Use this great opportunity that has come to you. It is what meditation is all about: to be empty.

But in the West – and for the modern mind wherever it is, in the West or in the East – somehow a deep association has been conditioned that emptiness is something negative. Not only that, but there is a condemnation in being empty. People think that to be empty is to become a workshop for the Devil. It is not so.

To be full of words is to be a workshop for the Devil. To be empty is to become a workshop for God – because God can only function when you are not. When you are so absent that you are not in any way an interference, that you don’t come between God and you, that you are not a disturbance in any way, you are so silent that you are not – immediately God starts functioning in you. The moment you stop functioning, God starts functioning.

So don’t be afraid. Love this empty space. It is not negative. It is the most positive thing in the world, the most absolutely positive thing in the world because out of nothingness everything arises, and into nothingness everything disappears again. This whole universe arises out of nothingness and disappears into nothingness again. Nothingness is the source and the seed, the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega.

Remember this, so whenever you are coming close to nothingness, feel happy and dance and celebrate so that it can become more and more available to you. The more you welcome it, the more of it will be coming to you. Welcome it, feel delighted – you have been blessed.