Time....

When we are talking about time, we do not mean chronological time, time by the watch. That time exists, must exist. If you want to catch a bus, if you want to get to a train or meet an appointment tomorrow, you must have chronological time. But is there a tomorrow, psychologically, which is the time of the mind? Is there psychologically tomorrow, actually? Or is the tomorrow created by thought because thought sees the impossibility of change, directly, immediately, and invents this process of gradualness? I see for myself, as a human being, that it is terribly important to bring about a radical revolution in my way of life, thinking, feeling, and in my actions, and I say to myself, "I'll take time over it; I'll be different tomorrow, or in a month's time." That is the time we are talking about: the psychological structure of time, of tomorrow, or the future, and in that time we live. Time is the past, the present, and the future, not by the watch. I was, yesterday; yesterday operates through today and creates the future. That's a fairly simple thing. I had an experience a year ago that left an imprint on my mind, and the present I translate according to that experience, knowledge, tradition, conditioning, and I create the tomorrow. I'm caught in this circle. This is what we call living; this is what we call time. Thought, which you, is with all its memories, conditioning, ideas, hopes, despair, the utter loneliness of existence - all that is this time.... And to understand a timeless state, when time has come to a stop, one must inquire whether the mind can be free totally of all experience, which is of time.
Time is thought, and thought is the process of memory that creates time as yesterday, today and tomorrow, as a thing that we use as a means of achievement, as a way of life. Time to us is extraordinarily important, life after life, one life leading to another life that is modified, that continues. Surely, time is the very nature of thought, thought is time. And as long as time exists as a means to something, the mind cannot go beyond itself - the quality of going beyond itself belongs to the new mind which is free of time. Time is a factor in fear. By time, I don't mean the chronological time, by the watch - second, minute, hour, day, year, but time as a psychological, inward process. It is that fact that brings about fear. Time is fear; as time is thought, it does breed fear; it is time that creates frustration, conflicts, because the immediate perception of the fact, the seeing of the fact is timeless....So, to understand fear, one must be aware of time - time as distance, space; me which thought creates as yesterday, today and tomorrow, using the memory of yesterday to adjust itself to the present and so to condition the future. So, for most of us fear is an extraordinary reality; and a mind that is entangled with fear, with the complexity of fear, can never be free; it can never understand the totality of fear, without understanding the intricacies of time. They go together.
So time means moving from what is to "what should be." I am afraid, but one day I shall be free of fear; therefore, time is necessary to be free of fear - at least, that is what we think. To change from what is to "what should be" involves time. Now, time implies effort in that interval between what is and "what should be." I don't like fear, and I am going to make an effort to understand, to analyze, to dissect it, or I am going to discover the cause of it, or I am going to escape totally from it. All this implies effort - and effort is what we are used to. We are always in conflict between what is and "what should be." The "what I should be" is an idea, and the idea is fictitious, it is not 'what I am', which is the fact; and the 'what I am' can be changed only when I understand the disorder that time creates. So, it is possible for me to be rid of fear totally, completely, on the instant? If I allow fear to continue, I will create disorder all the time; therefore, one sees that time is an element of disorder, not a means to be ultimately free of fear. So there is no gradual process of getting rid of fear, just as there is no gradual process of getting rid of the poison of nationalism. If you have nationalism and you say that eventually there will be the brotherhood of man, in the interval there are wars, there are hatreds, there is misery, there is all this appalling division between man and man; therefore, time is creating disorder.

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.
Truth or understanding comes in a flash, and that flash has no continuity; it is not within the field of time. Do see this for yourself. Understanding is fresh, instantaneous; it is not the continuity of something that has been. What has been cannot bring you understanding. As long as one is seeking a continuity - wanting permanency in relationship, in love, longing to find peace everlasting, and all the rest of it - one is pursuing something which is within the field of time and therefore does not belong to the timeless.