Emptiness means: this whole world outside, the objective world, is utterly empty. Think of it as empty. Contemplation it as empty and you will be surprised -- the moment you start getting into this idea of the emptiness of the whole world, many things will start changing of their own accord. You will not be greedy -- who can be greedy when things are empty? You will not be ambitious -- how can you be ambitious when things are empty? If you know that the president's chair is just empty, who bothers? Because you give it too much substance, you make it too real, you become ambitious. When you know money is empty, who bothers? One can use it, but there is no question of worrying about it.
Start thinking that all this world that surrounds you is empty... forms and forms, like dreams.
Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples, "Walking on the street, remember that you are in a dream, and the people that are passing you are just dream phenomena. The shops are dreams." And meditating on this for three months it starts happening. A GREAT explosion happens: suddenly everything becomes empty. Shops are there, people are walking, people are purchasing and the people who are passing you by are there. Nothing has changed on the surface, but suddenly you see just empty forms.
You go to a movie house and you know perfectly well that on the screen there is nothing but empty forms, but you are befooled by those empty forms. Sitting in a movie house you pass through all kinds of emotions. Some tragedy is happening and you start crying. Maybe that's why a movie house has to be kept in darkness, otherwise it would look so stupid and silly. If somebody -- your wife, your friend sitting by your side -- comes to know that you are crying, they will laugh. They will say, "What are you doing? There is just an empty screen, nothing else, and a projected film, just a game of white and black" -- or maybe it is technicolor -- "but it is all shadows." But one can become so involved in the shadows that the shadows start looking substantial.
Just the other way round is the device of the Buddha. Buddha says: These people who are looking so substantial to you, just think that they are a dream, empty. And one day you will be surprised: the whole world has become a white screen and only shadows are passing. And when only shadows are passing you will find a great detachment arising in you. You will be aloof, far away. Then nothing matters.
-Osho, “The Secret of Secrets, Vol 2, #11“