David Godman wrote a biography of H.W.L. Poonja, known as Papaji, who was awakened by Ramana and himself became a spiritual teacher. The three-volume work is titled Nothing Ever Happened. 

From his own insightful experience, Papaji arrived at the conclusive perspective of ajata. Evidence of this appears in a 1982 letter Papaji wrote concerning a well-researched book he’d read about Guadapada, and Indian sage of advaita.

Guadapada (6th C. AD?) wrote about ajata-vada: a-jata, non-being or non-manifestation; vada, teaching. This can basically be summarized as “nothing ever existed (or happened).” As Ramana once put it: “no reality or absence of it.”

Godman prefaces Papaji’s letter:

He upheld the radical ajata position that nothing has ever been created. Papaji too maintains that this is the highest teaching and the highest truth, but he prefers to express it by saying, “Nothing has ever happened. Nothing has ever existed.”

Papaji writes that Guadapada quotes from some earlier Madhymika sages such as the Indian Buddhist monk Nagarjuna.

The main thing that Guadapada teaches in the Karika is the unreality of the world and its absolute non-origination (ajata). The former is advocated by Vijnanavadins and the latter is proved by Madhyamikas. Guadapada has fully utilized these lines of thought and has expressed his complete agreement with their views.

The doctrine that there is no external reality is common to both Guadapada and Vijnanavadins. The world, according to both, is a figment of the imagination. There is no difference between the world of waking nd the world of dreams. Both are enclosed within the body. Just as things imagined in the dream are ‘seen’ inside the body, the objects of the waking world also are inside the body for they are equally the product of imagination. Their appearance outside of us is but an illusion.

The external world is a vibration of the mind. The doctrine of non-origination (ajata) which Gaudapada advocates is essentially a Madhyamika view.

Nagarjuna’s Madhyamakakarika begins with the words, “There is neither suppression nor origination.” This doctrine is accepted by Gaudapada and he commends it to his followers….

Guadapada pays homage to Buddha in his works. He also agrees with the Madhyamika conclusion that ajata is the highest truth. All this is possible because the difference between Vedanta and Buddhism is very slight. Buddhism itself owes much to the Upanishads.

Ajata is the final culmination of what is known in Buddhism as wisdom, but little is said of it. As Papaji has said, “There is something more to be done after complete and final realization, but I don’t speak about it. I have never spoken about it, and I don’t find it mentioned in any books I have read, even the ones authored by ‘enlightened Masters.’” 

Summarizing his views, I will put together some statements Godman has recorded. Papaji:

You have never allowed yourself to experience the emptiness that is empty of all objects. Instead have the conviction, “I am in emptiness right now. Emptiness is my nature.” Nothing will be left — no gods and no universe. This is the same nothingness that must have preceded “the gods” and their “creations.”

Nothing has ever existed. This, ultimately, is the only truth. Whatever else you read in the scriptures comes from a different perspective, a relative perspective which assumes the reality of ideas such as birth, death, bondage, and so on.

I will tell you the bare truth: there is no birth, there is no death, there is no creator and there is no creation. This is now my conviction, my experience. What is seen does not exist. I know the truth that nothing has ever happened.

Nothing ever existed at all. No one exists, nothing exists. This is the truth. In reality, nothing has ever been created. Absolute non-manifestation is the only Truth. That place is my real home. It is where I always am. One can say this with authority only when one abides in that ultimate place where nothing has ever happened.

Godman says of “the essence of his most fundamental experience”: Papaji himself has the direct knowledge that he was never born and that he will never die. There is no future for him at all, because he has understood that time itself is unreal. When the body that every one has been calling Papaji finally stops functioning, nothing will happen to “him”. He will just remain as he is, the formless unmanifest.