What Is Emptiness? Is It The Same As A Blank State of Mind?

What is emptiness? From readings of Rupert's book, Nancy seeks meaning in Rupert’s reference that pure knowing is empty. She describes her own meditative feelings of quiet stability paired with emptiness and wonders if this is the emptiness Rupert is referring to.
Rupert explains the meaning of emptiness, and the difference, if any, with a void state, no mind or blank state of mind. He expands on this with a meditation on Space and how it might describe itself. While others may perceive Space as empty or full, Space itself would simply say, I AM.
Similarly, Rupert invites Nancy to discover her own awareness by taking one step back from her sense of emptiness and asking herself, "what is it that knows or is aware of this blank state of mind?" He encourages all of us to go from emptiness back to our true nature-awareness, Rupert says, awareness is present both during the blank state of mind (emptiness) and also during a fullness of experience. Awareness is the substance of both.
01:40 Space, Emptiness, and Awareness
03:29 What Does the Universe Think of Itself?
04:35 Awareness Is Before Emptiness
05:20 The Awareness State of Mind Is I AM
07:08 A Blank State of Mind Is a Screen Saver
08:48 From Objects to Emptiness to Your True Nature
10:20 Awareness Is Always Present
This clip was taken from Rupert's Mercy Center retreat in October, 2021
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RS21134k

[@strangecore4]

Rupert, your eloquence as a teacher has increased dramatically. You’ve always been better than most at parsing the subliminal contexts we bring to understanding our experience… but this is a whole new level of insight. “Emptiness in relation to objects” vs pure awareness is brilliant. Thank you and keep going. We love you.

[@mena2138]

this guy is rly logical, its amazing for me how his mind see so clearly.

[@eugenei7170]

As Adyashanti said "Empty means empty of self, full of reality, full of Divine, but empty of self"

[@leeburkai9830]

Pure spaciousness is alive, simultaneously radiating all life into existence. Over time, calmly abiding in emptiness reveals this.

[@william5159]

Helpful and brilliant. An extremely, dare I say… common… experience and conundrum/question. Wonderfully uplifting and helpful answer. A ‘topic’ worth focusing on and teaching always. Grace, thank you.

[@kathleencassel368]

God bless you Rupert

[@vijairahaman100]

It is the screen saver and not the screen. Thank you for putting it this way. Makes intellectual sense. I can work with this and do as instructed and go that extra step. Thank you again, Sir.

[@baharam98]

These talks, come as light/insight and make one go beyond the words. Thank you Rupert.

[@mansuralimirani4186]

Very good thank you thank you so much

[@aadifernweh2911]

I am

[@mahtabmawla2885]

my dear sir, you just saved me/us climbing Mount Sinai to get the Ultimate Realization! How can i ever thank you enough?! 🙏

[@surendranaik8823]

Thank you very much for your videos It is wonderful how you simplify the Vedic teachings with such ease and clarity dispelling the mystery veiling them making this knowledge accessible to everyone demystifying ‘enlightenment’ I am filled with gratitude 🙏

[@nsbd90now]

I like how he takes so many of the classic terms such as "empty" and is able to point to when they used contingently, or as a convenience, or as a concession to the requirements of speech.

[@jorgetfreitas3167]

Understanding always walks on the path of the void that will always lead to the origin of all forms, the ever present void of the infinine. Thank you Rupert for showing the understanding behind the apparent shapes.

[@martugharzia]

Only love and gratitude for Rupert❤

[@agnieszkag.5170]

Once I have been meditating awareness, behaind my body experience and the other teacher told me that awareness is not behaind the body. Then I began to meditate my body by going into it, this meditation supposed to slow my mind activity, but it caused blank state of mind from time to time. And again I am coming back to the teaching that, stillness of the body is not right meditation...to practice awareness behaind my body mind.

[@egle5084]

Thank you 🙏❤️

[@johannboeing-messing979]

Thank you

[@Mountain_Dhamma]

Emptiness is full awareness of what’s not there-ie. the perceptions of past, future, or any judgement about the present, along with the disturbances that depend on those mental formations. Emptiness is awareness when it doesn’t create anything that’s outside this constant unfolding

[@kathrynphillips3710]

the light of pure knowing- awareness the always present prescence of life 🙏

[@DavidKolbSantosh]

If the emptiness says "I am" then it is not empty, because that self referential statement/feeling/intuition is content. It is a reflection in the mirror. It is awareness reflecting on its self. "I-am" (the bare feeling of being, prior to any further identification) is a moment of self-reflexivity. The mirror must have no reflection on it to be empty. Am-ness is the reflected "face" of the "I" (the Self) on its own reflexive nature.

[@nbenda]

probably the "I am" comes "later" when mind is active. So, the emptiness would just be. The question I would have is similar to the woman, that asked, how can she make this step back from the blankness, it feels too "volitive" . Doesn't it just happen without will, sort of slipping into?

[@aedadlan5134]

Existence is Absolute. Emptiness IS. “I am” is Absolute. God IS.

[@vladn6031]

@@nbenda Emptiness is not something as a state that one can slip into. It's an insight into the nature of object.

[@DavidKolbSantosh]

@@aedadlan5134 I-Am is not Absolute it is a relationship...it is the self relating or referencing itself. It is the beginning of dualism.

[@DavidKolbSantosh]

@@vladn6031 That is the Buddhist concept of emptiness, but that is not what Rupert is saying.

[@The-Other-Guy]

More volume please.

[@blablblaaaaaaaaa]

What we can really do pratically as a person is only total surrender and realize that you don't exist as a separate being but only as one indivisible reality,aware of itself,yes so there is even nothing to surrender in reality but we have to do it as concession because of the current state of the mind .

[@abhishek24506]

Audio is low please improve

[@annicamc]

Hallelujah!

[@henkhooghuis1680]

cannot we say as well I am alone before everything appears?

[@ravenwild5184]

Excellent description!!!

[@riccardo357]

is it a description of the infinite God being that we are?

[@sirbarringtonwomblembe4098]

An hour after a Chinese meal usually does it for me!

[@lonlep1831]

I get the message, but not the analogy. “the screen saver” , what is it? Imo it is a program/script to prevent burning the screen.... . 🙏🦋🌷🦋🙏

[@davidalbro2009]

Yes, but in this analogy the screen saver is the emptiness experienced in meditation. Just as the screen saver is often a blank screen after all the images and applications, the emptiness experienced in meditation is the awareness of blankness after thoughts and experiences.

[@my3rs307]

Is emptiness of mind nirvana?

[@shelleysmith6667]

So awareness is the screen. Meaning it is the manifestor of both ourself and our world even tho to us we are all separate humans living in a separate-from-us world? And... It(our awareness) is also asking to be recognized during our mind-body experience to take over this life of ours...using the body and the mind as needed, and dropping the personality/character/ego that is part of the physical manifestation. Awareness wants to be the experiencer and decision maker while our body exists and we are meditating to make way for this fullness to happen? We will also feel fearless, peace, joy as more of our awareness becomes dominant?

[@Alex722]

You are already this awareness you describe. Your awareness, already dictates your life and is in control, your ego falsely believes it has control. You are NOT the ego, although it’s still part of you. The awareness IS you. Awareness, attention is prior to thought. Speaking/writing/reading is thought, so don’t depend on talking or reading in order to see the truth. You are already the truth that you seek. Teachings and stuff are pointers and are helpful but are not the truth itself and can never be.

[@shelleysmith6667]

@@Alex722 so I just accept my life and all my decisions as perfectly directed by my higher self for whatever experiences I ordered up pre-birth? Peace is in acceptance?

[@Alex722]

@@shelleysmith6667 I don’t know about the pre birth and directed stuff etc…. Accepting all your past decisions, wrong, right, good, bad it’s really simpler than what you said. First of all the past is done and doesn’t change. It’s good to recognise where we were wrong in our decisions, assumptions, attitude etc… but it’s unecessary to condemn our self just because we didn’t know any better back then. Also to acknowledge our own wrong doing or thinking, brings clarity and it’s a great opportunity to grow and not repeat same mistakes. So now with more clarity you can think better, decide better and act better. Yes peace is in accepting. Accepting doesn’t necessarily mean we like a situation but we acknowledge it’s current truth and don’t make a whole psychological drama out of it. Then we make whatever decisions we need to make. P.s condemning (one self or others, luck etc) or complaining is exactly the opposite of accepting things and it’s destructive.

[@shelleysmith6667]

@@Alex722 thank you! Very helpful😊

[@grahamtrave1709]

Trying replicate an experience again is just like a dog chasing it’s tail ..once it has caught it’s tail when will it let go and the experience ends. I admire Rupert but sometimes he gets so wrapped up in his explanations he loses his thread. When he was asked questions like this Ramesh Balsekar would say “ who wants to know “ he points to an ego that thinks it is a doer. What am I supposed to do to get this experience which will move me along an imaginary path to enlightenment. As soon as the experience of no thoughts is supposedly encountered it is formed by a thought … I am without thought ..l which f course is just another thought. And the seeking continues.

[@davidalbro2009]

I think perhaps we believe that all awareness is thought because that is what we have partially experienced in physical reality and have been led to believe. In my understanding of teachings, you can have awareness without thought. Thought is the product of the mind. Awareness is a perception of something because awareness is that something. One doesn't need the machinations of a mind in order to perceive something.

[@ajnestler2304]

Yes I am is aware of the screen saver

[@MsCankersore]

Then how does one reach this transparent screen if the screen saver is just emptiness which is what I thought was the whole point of this and I figured I had this down.

[@davidalbro2009]

In the video he says to take it one more step back and ask "what is perceiving the emptiness?"

[@willieluncheonette5843]

"For centuries emptiness has been condemned. "Emptiness is beautiful. "And the foolish people have been telling you. "The empty mind is the devil's workshop." The empty mind is God's workshop! The occupied mind is the devil's workshop. "But one has to be truly empty. Just being lazy does not mean that you are empty; not doing anything does not mean that you are empty. Thousands of thoughts are clamoring inside. You may be lazy on the outside, but inside much work is going on. Many walls are being created, new prisons are being prepared, so that when you get fed up with the old you can enter into the new. Old chains may break any time so you are creating new chains in case the old chains break; then you will feel very empty. "Once in a while it happens naturally - because it is your very nature to be free. So once in a while, in spite of you... seeing a sunset, suddenly you forget all your desires. You forget all lust, all hankering for pleasure. The sunset is so beautiful so overwhelming, that you forget the past and the future; only the present remains. You are so one with the moment, there is no observer and no observed. The observer becomes the observed. You are not separate from the sunset. "You are bridged; in such a communion you come into a clearing, and because of the clearing you feel joyous . But again you are back into the black hole for the simple reason that coming out into the clearing you need courage to remain in the empty sky. "That's what I call sannyas. "This courage I call sannyas - not escaping but coming into the clearing, seeing the sky unclouded, listening to the songs of the birds without distorting. And then again and again you are becoming more and more attuned with the emptiness and the joy of being empty. Slowly slowly, you see that emptiness is not just emptiness; it is fullness, but a fullness of which you have never been aware, a fullness of which you have never tasted. "So in the beginning it looks empty; in the end it is full, totally full, overflowingly full. It is full of peace, it is full of silence, it is full of light."

[@ItApproaches]

Space is a lack of anything. There's only space if it's empty, if there's stuff there then it's not space. Outter space is empty but there's still junk around in the empty. Space is a spot with nothing, space is between junk.

[@Htrac]

I don't understand this at all. All these metaphors, but it makes less sense afterwards. I don't think it can be rationalised.

[@outisnemo8443]

Your lack of understanding does not mean a lack of sense. Much of what he says makes perfect sense, and the subject matter definitely can be rationalized; everything can be rationalized. He is however wrong on certain things, but that doesn't mean it's not possible to rationalize what's going on correctly.

[@Htrac]

@@outisnemo8443 Go ahead and explain what you understood from this video then.

[@golgipogo]

He seems to be quite popular. He seems mostly a philosopher to me, which is fine.

[@deni0404]

Empty Fullness 🤗

[@gireeshneroth7127]

Unmind.

[@Rockwabbit]

Empty in the emotion of no emotion. And that is the trap. Perception without action. Looking for a feeling attached to image of emptiness created by thought. These videos are misleading and dangerous. The word is never the thing.

[@ItApproaches]

Remove the screen, and your documents no longer exist. They were only there because of the screen.

[@helmutwalch9867]

What you are is being 🥰 without doing. Before you think of something 🪄