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Sir, in your bathroom you have a bottle marked "poison", and you know it is poison; you are very careful of that bottle, even in the dark. You are always watching out for it. You don't say, "How am I to keep away, how am I to be watchful of that bottle?". |
You know it is poison, so you are tremendously attentive to it. Time is a poison; it creates disorder. If this is a fact to you, then you can proceed into the understanding of how to be free of fear immediately. |
But if you are still holding time as a means of freeing yourself, there is no communication between you and me. You see, there is something much more; there may be a totally different kind of time altogether. We only know two times, physical and psychological, and we are caught in time. |
Physical time plays an important part in the psyche, and the psyche has an important influence on the physical. We are caught in this battle, in this influence. One must accept physical time in order to catch the bus or the train; but if one rejects psychological time completely, then one may come to a time that is something quite different, a time which is not related to either. |
I wish you would come on with me into that time! Then time is not disorder; it is tremendous order. Sir, in psychological time I see that my mind has projected forward a future that doesn't exist. |
That creates disorder, because I respond to something that does not exist. Quite. However, this occurs on two. |
levels, the conscious and the unconscious, and it is very hard to penetrate into the unconscious. Sir, we give tremendous importance, it seems to me, to the unconscious. Freud and company have given us an extraordinary thing, and weighted us down with this terrible thing; but I don't think it's important at all. |
It is such a trivial affair, and the conscious mind is also a very trivial affair. Why do we give such significance to the unconscious, and why don't we give significance to the conscious mind? Is it because we don't see that thought itself is insignificant? |
Is there not a better use of time, which will dissolve fear? Look, sir. You are in sorrow. |
I am not wishing you to be in sorrow. Will tomorrow help you to get rid of it? Tomorrow it may be gone,. |
and often it is. It may or it may not be gone. Generally it is not. |
The idea that it may be gone is just an idea. It is not a fact. Man has lived with sorrow, or deified sorrow. |
The Christians have worshipped sorrow. In India and in the East they explain it away, for they have the doctrine of karma. Explaining sorrow away or deifying it is a form of escape. |
One can also escape through drink or through drugs. You are asking if there is a right usage of time. Obviously there is. |
I think that my use of time in the past has been faulty, because I have used time stupidly. What is right usage of time? Apart from physical time, time by the watch, what does time mean? |
Time means a change. Time does mean a change. I am in sorrow. |
I need time, either tomorrow or the next moment, to change that whole. Does that take place? When one is hungry, when there is a real demand, does one say, "Well, I'll wait until tomorrow" ? |
Yes, but there are many other illustrations that shaw it would work. For example, I feel a desire. If I don't do anything about it, it passes away and I am not bothered by having to fight the thing. |
Quite. Discuss it, sir; go on. As an illustration, the passage of time results in desires being eliminated, because they become painful. |
Look at what you are saying. You are saying that time, which is part of pleasure, can be used to get rid of non-pleasure. So time gives you pleasure. |
That's all we want. Is not the dream state a state of the mind in which there is no psychological or physical time? Dreams are something entirely different. |
I think dreams are a waste of time, a waste of energy. Why does one dream? It is fairly obvious, isn't it? |
One is so terribly occupied all day long, the conscious mind caught up in its quarrels and in all the other activities of one's waking hours. When one goes to sleep the conscious mind is somewhat less active, and the so-called unconscious projects all its intimations as dreams. We don't have to glorify dreams, for then we get the interpreters of dreams and all the rest of it. |
(Laughter). If one is awake all day, watching everything, watching the way one walks, talks, dresses and thinks, watching one's relationship to people and to nature, giving attention to all that is hidden below, then the so-called unconscious comes up, and one does not have to dream at all. Can you point out why time, per se, can never solve sorrow. |
I've been showing this. Look, sir. I lose my son. |
I investigate what is happening in my mind. I see that I am bereft of something upon which I relied. I have lost a companion, I have lost a son in whom I have invested not only money but also hopes, fears and longings. |
I cannot immortalize myself in him. I wallow in self-pity and regrets. Now, that has taken time. |
It has taken a day or a year; whatever it is, it has taken time. While I have been taking time, other influences, other strains have come into being. It is not just one continual discovery. |
There are other things interfering. But the cause never brings about the right effect. When there is a cause and an effect, there is a time interval. |
In that time interval there are all kinds of strains; therefore the effect is changed, and what was effect becomes the cause of a new series of changes. There is never a precise cause and a precise effect. So mere investigation of the cause which has produced my sorrow is a waste of time. |
If that is clear, is it a verbal clarity or a factual clarity? In the particular illustrations which you give, it is obviously a factual clarity. So you are no longer depending on time. |
I say to myself that if I were aware over a period of time, then.... You cannot be aware through a period of time. Then it becomes mechanical. Sir, look. |
I come into the room, and I see the colours of the various dresses, the door, the windows, the disproportionate shape of the room, the light and all that. I see it immediately and I am aware of my reactions to all of it. I am aware of how those reactions arise and I am aware of my conditioning, whether it be classical, Victorian or something else. |
Yes, you are aware, but I am not. If you proceed that way, you will discover, won't you? But if you come into the room, look around and try to discover your reactions, your conditioning, it takes time. |
And when you have taken time, there are other factors involved in it, not just one thing, and that is a waste of time. Now is it a fact that you are no longer using time as a means of being aware, of being rid of fear, or of sorrow? Doesn't time only come in when one starts thinking of oneself? |
No, please, that is not the question. You are introducing something else. All right, I'll say yes, of course. |
Then what are you going to do about it? Again investigate how to get rid of that thought which thinks about itself? If it is a fact, not an idea, not a word, not an intellectual concept or a theory, but something that is real, as it must be to some who are here, then we can proceed. |
There is no time at all through which I am going to be rid of something, and I know there is fear. I am afraid of public opinion, death, darkness or my grandmother. I am also aware that I am in sorrow. |
I have to meet it without time. That means I have to meet it with all the energy I have. I have the energy now, you understand. |
I did not have it before, because I used time as a means of escape. It brought disorder, because the fact is sorrow, and I introduced other factors which had no value at all. The other factors were mere escapes from the one fact. |
When I really reject time as an idea, a concept, or as something which I use in order to get rid of fear, then I have the energy to meet this thing, and all this requires enormous energy. I am afraid, but I am not looking any more to time as a means of dissolving that fear. I have to meet it. |
Now, how do I meet it? All escapes, explanations, causes, all the ways to get over restraint, suppression, control - all those have gone. They all imply time and a waste of energy. |
Then how do I meet it? If all escape is gone, surely the fear itself is gone. Don't come to that. |
Because if you go into it, you will see something else taking place. But if I don't know how to. do that, then.... Then it means you have not ridded yourself of the concept of time at all. |
The concept of time as thought is pleasure; you want and you continue that pleasure in different forms, and therefore you are not rid of time. You have to meet it directly. To meet it directly, you have to know, you have to understand the structure and the nature of pleasure. |
Because pleasure is what we want. The emphasis is on pleasure. That's what we are looking for; that's what we want. |
We want pleasure; we want the continuation of pleasure, not the understanding of sorrow, not the understanding of fear or time. We use time as a means of continuing pleasure and avoiding sorrow; that's all we are concerned with. One has an experience of a lovely sunset, a beautiful tree, a scene, a beautiful face; one gets a tremendous pleasure, and one wants that to be repeated. |
The repetition is time, not the instant of pleasure. It is a very difficult point, because if one feels fear or sorrow, then the mind is pulled away from it by all these influences; and you reject them, then.... No, no! When you reject time, you reject it because it is a fact. |
You are never pulled towards its effect, because you know its effect. It is only when your pleasure comes in looking at that precipice that you are pulled towards it. Is rejecting this concept of time a return to pleasure? |
No, quite the contrary; time is the invention of thought as pleasure. No, I don't mean thought; I mean as an experience. You have to understand pleasure. |
Let's go into it. What do we want? Really, what do all of us want? |
We want to be happy. Happiness is pleasure, a continuation of pleasure, a repetition of something which is sex, an image, an experience, an idea, anything that gives pleasure. You want freedom. |
No, sir! (Laughter). I mean freedom from unhappiness. |
If one thinks of happiness, one automatically thinks of unhappiness. Freedom, not freedom from just freedom. Just freedom. |
If you are free from something, are you free? No. Please. |
We have so little time left. I am not impatient, or anything of that kind, but you are missing so much by just going back and back. Carry on without the interruptions, sir. |
Sir, it's no good my carrying on, because, after all, we want to communicate with each other. Verbal communication is no communication at all. There is communication when we are dealing with facts, which is real communication. |
When you hate me, you are in communion; when I love you, we are in communion; but if you are indifferent, and I am something else, we have no communion. So, look at it, sirs. As we said in the beginning, time breeds disorder. |
You can see what is happening in the world. There is starvation in India and other parts of Asia, unemployment in many places, and other terrible things including war going on in Asia. Science could feed man, clothe and shelter him, but cannot, because of the poison of nationalism, because of politicians and their ideas, their concepts. |
They say, "Belong to this party, that party", and the whole of the East starves. They say, "Well, we must go through nationalism, through our particular party", and in the meantime people starve. So we can see that time does breed disorder, not only politically, but inwardly. |
I see that. I see for myself as a fact that time breeds disorder, and that man must live in order. Otherwise we create illusions, we live in despair. |
I see that as a fact, and time no longer exists for a man who sees it. I am not a nationalist and belong to no party. I am not a Catholic, a protestant or a Hindu. |
I have the energy to meet the fact, which is fear, because I have understood pleasure. But most of us want just one pleasure. If it is not sexual pleasure, it is some other form of pleasure. |
One gets fed up with different kinds of pleasure as one grows older, and then eventually seeks God (Laughter), or something else. One has to understand this extraordinary drive of pleasure; and when one understands it, one also understands the nature of time which gives it duration as thought. It is all so simple, sirs simple if you really see the truth of the nature of time. |
If you do, then what takes place? You are no longer shaped by time or pleasure as a principle. You can look at the fact, not in terms of pleasure and pain, and therefore of time. |
Then what happens? When you meet a fact completely, as a whole, you meet the fact with peace, which is not pleasure. Peace is affection, isn't it? |
Don't agree, please; just examine the statement. Peace never has pleasure in it. That's the most beautiful thing about peace. |
And when time has been rejected, then you have energy to meet the fact. This means that the mind has undergone a revolution and therefore is meeting something in a totally different dimension. If one has only known pleasure, and the continuation of pleasure as time, as thought, one has only known the conflict which is disorder. |
One tries to escape from it, to mesmerize oneself with all kinds of activities, but that's the only thing one knows. One sees that and rejects it completely. Then the mind is not swayed by pleasure. |
It has a tremendous energy which is peaceful; it has no conflict, and it can meet fear. How do we meet fear? That's what I want to know. |
We generally meet fear by trying to escape from it; therefore we never do actually meet it. We escape it through verbalization, through innumerable networks which man has made. We know all God, drink, sex, amusement, literature, painting, art - anything but the fact. |
When we stop all that, the mind becomes extraordinarily alert and very quiet. It cannot be quiet when it is always, everlastingly, seeking different ways of pleasure. Please don't misunderstand. |
There is nothing wrong with pleasure. To look at something beautiful is a lovely thing. But to get the right pleasure from it, one must not insist that it continue - that is where disorder comes in. |
When you have rejected time, not as a reaction, but because you realize that it creates disorder based on the principle of pleasure, then you have the energy to meet the fact. Then there is no distortion. The pleasure which creates illusion and distortion has come to an end; therefore the fact can be met. |
One of the most difficult things to understand is the whole principle or structure of pleasure. When you are highly sensitive, your whole being is sensitive, your body, your nerves, your eyes, your ears - everything about you is sensitive. The mere seeing of something very beautiful, or very ugly, is a moment of pleasure, but it should have no continuity. |
The moment it has continuity, one becomes insensitive; and being insensitive, there is disorder. What takes place when one rejects time, when one rejects pleasure and its continuity, is that the mind is completely still, the brain is completely still; and this stillness, this quietness, this intensity, is the outcome of the fact which one has seen; and therefore there is no effort involved in it at all. There is effort when there is pleasure. |
If one has really grasped this, the mind has stepped out of the rut of the time-pleasure principle, and therefore is no longer looking to time as a means of evolution, of getting rid of something or of achieving. When there is the death of someone, the mind meets that challenge, that incident, without any movement. This does not mean a lack of sympathy; it does not mean cruelty. |
Death is an immense thing, too vast to be understood by a puny little mind. You can only meet something immense when the mind is quiet. April , Shall we continue with what we were talking about the other day time? |
We were saying that time, apart from physical time by the watch, creates disorder; and to be sane, factual, unemotional and unsentimental, one has to understand the whole structure of time. We went into that somewhat; and I think perhaps this evening we can approach it from a different angle. Conflict in any form is the illusion of time; and we are all in conflict, different kinds of conflict at different levels of our being. |
We accept the conflict of life as inevitable, and we adjust ourselves to that conflict. One can see that conflict in any form distorts and perverts thought; and therefore thought becomes the breeder of illusion, which is time. We are not talking about something. |
We are not talking about an idea. It is not like looking at a picture someone else has painted and saying, "I like it", or "I don't like it", wondering who has painted it, if it has any monetary value, and so on and on and on. We are not doing that. |
We are not looking at a verbal picture. We are actually living the thing that is being said; and the thing that is being said is not foreign, it is not something strange. That's why it is very important, I think, to listen attentively, not only to the speaker, but to everything in life, listen without any distortion, listen without time. |
Then perhaps we will find out for ourselves whether it is at all possible to live in this world earning a livelihood, having a family, living a life of continuous movement in relationship - without effort, and therefore without time. Time also implies space. We only know space from a centre which is the observer; and therefore our space always has a limit, a boundary, a frontier. |
Actually, not as a theory, we only know the space within a house because of the four walls of the house. Within ourselves, when we look at ourselves and consider what space is, there is always a centre from which we are looking; and therefore space is limited, and its limitation is bred by the observer. In the modern world, where the amount of physical space available is becoming less and less, if one has to have space, one must go to the moon or to the other planets. |
Space without the centre, space without the boundary, is freedom; and that freedom is not possible when there is time which creates the illusion of the observer who limits space by his thought. The observer divides himself from the thing which he has observed, and therefore there is a space between the thing observed and the observer, which is still of time. It is very interesting, if you go into it for yourself, to find out what space is, whether you can have space, not only outwardly, but inwardly, without going crazy. |
It is only in space that there is no influence, no pressure, no civilized entity as the observer, the centre, who discriminates, who exercises will to achieve or not to achieve. So in understanding time, not physical time, we have also to understand this question of space - whether there is space without the observer and the thing observed. Since the observer and the thing observed are separate, there is conflict; and to understand conflict and to be, and so to be free of conflict, neither the observer nor the observed must exist. |
We know space because of the four I walls of the house which enclose the space, and because of the chair which creates space around itself. We also know space as distance in time. We know space because we exist as human beings, with all our turmoil, conflicts, miseries and sorrow; and we also know space from the struggle, the conflict, the drive to achieve, from the centre to that which is projected by thought as the end. |
That centre becomes the experiencer, the observer, and from that centre one knows space, but one doesn't know space without that centre. Therefore, without discovering that space without the centre, one is always a slave to time, and hence the constant strain, the conflict of the duality of the observer and the observed. The observer, which is the "me", the thought, the centre, creates a space around himself either to ward off, to push away, to resist; or through identification, to establish another centre. |
The experiencer and the observer cannot exist without creating another centre. He may reject his centre, because his centre is the result of time and experience and knowledge. Unless he completely understands and rejects it, he is not free of that centre, and invariably creates another outside of himself as an ideal, as a Utopia, as a symbol, as God, as what you will, and proceeds to identify himself with that. |
He still creates sPace as time, and requires time to achieve. One has to understand the question of time and space, if one would understand this matter of a life without effort, which is really quite extraordinary, demanding great sensitivity and great attention. It is not just saying, "How can I live without effort in the modern world? |
", just brushing it off, or trying to make living without effort into an ideal and living according to that, because it then becomes an effort. An action which is really spontaneous, and` not instinctive, not impetuous, is not limited by time. If the mind is crowded and has no space, one cannot look, one cannot really observe. |
To observe totally demands a looking, a seeing, a hearing in which distance is not and therefore space is not - space created by the centre. If I would see you and you would see me, your mind cannot be crowded with problems, with every kind of question and doubt and misery, for then there is no space in which to look. Most of us don't want space, because space means fear. |
Is it possible to live in this world, not escaping from it, but without experiencing? Because the moment there is experiencing, there is the experiencer, who prevents space from being. This is not as crazy as it sounds. |
It is only in space that anything new can take place. As long as one is experiencing everything, and therefore translating the new in terms of the old, which is experience, the space created by the experiencer is always limited, because it is in the field of time. I have accumulated a great deal of information, knowledge and experience. |
That experience has created a space around itself, and therefore has limited space. In that limited space I live with my identification with all the things which I have experienced, with all my memories, with the past. How can I be free of it? |
How can I so completely reject it, that the very rejection is an explosion? When we ask "How? ", the "how" is disorder, because it is of time. |
The fact is that each human being who is really not an individual at all, is held in time, as the experiencer projecting his own space around himself. That centre is the observer, and whatever he looks at is still the observed, and therefore there is no relationship between the observer and the observed, that is, no real communion. Communion exists only when the centre is not; and that takes place when, if I may use the word without distorting it, there is love. |
And love is not of time, it is not a remembrance, it is not of the past. As a human being who has lived a life of experience, accumulating knowledge, whose centre creates the space of time and its bondage, how is it possible for me to cease and therefore for space to exist? You see, death must be something extraordinary; yet nobody wants to know what it is. |
Nobody wants to find out the enormous significance of something one doesn't know. I know there is death, and I see others going by, going to their graves; I see myself becoming old, losing my capacity, not only physical capacity but emotional and mental capacity as well, with a lessening of sensitivity, and a quickening of deterioration. Anything I experience as the unknown, which is death, is still in the field of time if I experience it. |
But to find out what death is, not only must there be the end of fear, which is fairly obvious, but also one has to really understand this complex thing called time, and the space which one cannot experience as an observer, an experiencer. After all, we know nothing about peace; we don't know what peace is. We talk about it and the politicians everlastingly play with the word. |
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