“I long to live
In nothingness-nectar,
Where my Transcendence-Goal
Is eagerly expecting
My eager arrival.”
– Sri Chinmoy
For most of us, the concept of ‘nothingness’ is anathema: something to be avoided at all cost. We devote our time, effort and aspiration towards filling our existence with activity, with possessions, sensations, distractions, pastimes and entertainments, with family and friends, with work, commitments and entanglements, with plans, desires and beliefs. We are always busy and occupied, because we choose to be so.
By enveloping ourselves with ‘things’ – material, emotional and mental phenomena – we create and inhabit a universe of ‘things’, in which we objectify ourselves as the central ‘thing’. Thus self-deluded, ‘thing-ified’, we drift away from happiness…
…for we are not things: we are the soul. Things are merely the superficial or outward appearance, not the underlying reality and as such, can never give us lasting satisfaction. We spend our life running away from nothingness which ironically, holds the answers to all our questions, the resolution of all problems, the cure of all ills.
‘Nothingness’ can only be attained by fearlessly stripping away the surface of ‘things’, listening for the silence behind the sounds, diving into the depths below the waves, embracing the stillness inside the chaos, becoming the infinite within the finite.
Only in nothingness – “no-thing-ness”, the absence in our consciousness of the superficial, ephemeral and unreal – do we find our soul, our true self. Nothingness holds the fullness of satisfaction, the bliss of perfection, the oneness of completion, our source and our goal. Hence Sri Chinmoy’s beautiful, powerful poetic term: “Nothingness-nectar”.
‘Nothingness-nectar’ does not come easily. It must be yearned for above all else – intensely, eagerly and wholeheartedly – as the richest treasure, the deepest love, the highest reward, the sole focus and goal of our aspiration and our meditation.