4. Time according to Krishnamurti

In discussing self-knowledge, Krishnamurti pointed the importance of time. According to him there are two kinds of times. Firstly, the time of yesterday, today and tomorrow, the distance, the time one take between offices to house, time to learn a language, collecting a lot of words, memorizing them. Besides, learning a technique, learning a craft, learning a skill all implies time. These are called chronological time. Secondly, there is psychological time, the time that mind has invented. The mind that says, I will be the President, tomorrow I will be good, I will achieve, I will become successful, I will be more prosperous, I will attain perfection, I will become the Commissar, I will be this, I will be that etc. There, time is between the goal and the present state–a goal which one has set for oneself to achieve. So, in order to achieve one must struggle, one must drive, be ambitious, brutal and push everybody aside etc. These are all projections of the mind and what it wants to achieve. In doing so it creates psychological time. So, we have these two kinds of time–chronological time and psychological time.

However, Krishnamurti talks about psychological time. One want to be powerful, want to be rich, be famous, and drive towards that. To become famous takes time, because the image which one have created of fame is there in the distance and one must cover it through time, because one is not that image now, but will be in the future. Psychologically, that is one’s projection, the image which one has created of fame. It is one’s projection and image because one has compared other famous people and wants to be like them. And that implies struggle, competitiveness and ruthlessness. One wishes that and accordingly struggles to get it. One does not question why he/she have created that image. One does not question what is involved in arriving at that image.

Krishnamurti asserts,

‘So in this there is a great deal of conflict, pain, suffering, and brutality. And that is my conditioning, because people have told me from childhood that I must be this, I must pass my exams, I must be a great man, I must be a business man, a lawyer, a professor, whatever it is. So I have created that image and I have not found out why I have done so. If I see the absurdity of that image, if I see the futility, the pain, the agony, the anxiety, everything that is involved in it, I do not create the image, therefore I abolish…’^[1]

In further clarifying the significance of time, Krishnamurti talks about the relationship between thought and time. According to him, thought is movement in time. Thought is memory and remembrance of past things through time. The sense of time is built into the nature of human mind, since mind sustains itself in terms of time or past. It is the psychological becoming of the mind that creates the sense of time. Time, knowledge, memory and thought form a single unit. They are not separate but form a single movement. Thought as time always tries to achieve something, and in trying to become something, thought gives permanency to time. Tomorrow is the invention of thought in order to achieve its aspiration and ambitions and to achieve fulfilment.

Thought is bound by time.

‘Thought is time, the thought that has been and the thought that will be that which is an ideal. Thought is the product of time, and without the thinking process time is not. The mind is a matter of time,’^[2]

He further said that, thought or divided mind led away by thought is a great barrier to self-knowing. This thought has been identified with time–‘Psychological time’ by Krishnamurti. He is perhaps the lone thinker who has strongly pleaded for the ending of time and therefore thought, because the root of all human misery is thought or time. In time there is an interval between an idea and action. Krishnamurti asserted that action based on idea is not action at all. It is only an imitation and a repetition of the past. The conventional mind is in incapable of real or total action. To him, real action is action without an idea and an end in view. It is devoid of the sense of an actor. Man has several ideas of non-violence, greed, attachment etc. The interval between an idea and action is psychological time and this interval is thought. Therefore time is thought.

The existence of psychological time according to Krishnamurti is because of comparison and that includes dissatisfaction, feeling of inferiority, feeling that one must achieve, that one must be etc. For instance, when one says, ‘I am nobody,’ that word itself is a comparative word. Else one would not use that word. But one always compares oneself with others concerning various qualities and characteristic and behaves with others on the basis of that comparison. Comparison goes on unconsciously and without being aware of it. According to Krishnamurti, the habit of comparing is at the root of all conflict, disharmony, disorder and suffering.

In his own words,

‘Measuring ourselves all the time against something or someone is one of the primary causes of conflict…. This comparison has been taught from childhood. …When you do not compare at all, when there is no ideal, no opposite, no factor of duality, when you no longer struggle to be different from what you are. …your mind has ceased to create the opposite, and has become highly intelligent, highly sensitive, and capable of immense passion.’^[3]

So, psychological time exists when there is this comparative mind, the mind that measures psychologically. Psychological time exists only when there is comparison, when there is a distance to be covered between ‘what is’ and ‘what should be,’ which is the desire to become somebody or nobody, all that involves psychological time and the distance to be covered. So one says, is there tomorrow? Tomorrow having come into being, because one has had a moment of complete freedom, complete feeling of something and it has gone. One would like to keep it, to make it last. In order to make it last long one struggles to achieve those things again. But making it long last is a form of greed. All these are implied in psychological time. When one has some experience of joy, of pleasure or whatever it is, one should live it completely and do not demand that it should endure, because then one is caught in time.

So, Krishnamurti said that when one does not compare, then one is not becoming that is to become something. The whole of our cultural education is to become something or to be something. For instance, if one is a poor man, one wishes to be a rich man. If one is a rich man one is seeking more power. Religiously or socially one is always trying to become something new. In this wanting, desire to become something there is comparison. As long as one measures psychologically, there must be fear because there is always striving and one may not achieve. ‘Time is part of fear, isn’t it? I am afraid of the future–not of what might happen in the future but of the idea of the future, the idea of tomorrow. So there is psychological time and chronological time. We are not talking about chronological time, time by the watch. What we are talking about is, ‘I am all right now, but I am afraid of the future, of tomorrow.’ Let’s call that psychological time.’^[4]

So, psychological time creates fear. One feels a particular relationship very beautiful and would not want it to end. There is the idea that it might come to an end and afraid of it. Similarly, one has known security, certainty, and tomorrow is uncertain and afraid of that–that is psychological time. One has lived a life of quasi-security, but tomorrow is dreadfully uncertain and is frightened of it. That creates problem of how not to be afraid of it. The knowledge of yesterday, of many thousand yesterdays, has given to the brain a certain sense of security, knowledge, remembrance, and memories. In the past there has been security for the brain and tomorrow there may be no security at all, one might be killed.

If one thinks that one would become free from chaos, one would never be free, because the becoming is part of the chaos. If one say, ‘I will understand tomorrow,’ one is really postponing and inviting destruction. So, the problem is to put an end to the becoming process, and therefore put an end to time. As long as one thinks in terms of becoming, like ‘I will be good,’ ‘I will be noble,’ ‘I will be something tomorrow which I am not today,’ it implies the time process, and in the time process there is confusion. So, there is confusion because one is thinking in terms of becoming. Becoming is a process of time, being is free from time. Only in being, there can be transformation, not in becoming, because only in ending there is renewal, not in continuity. Continuity is becoming. When one ends something, there is a being, and it is only in being that there can be fundamental, radical transformation.

Transformation is not in the future. It can only be now from moment to moment. By transformation Krishnamurti means seeing the false as the false and the true as the true. Because when one see something very clearly as the truth that truths liberates. Similarly, when one see that something is false, that false things drop away. For instance, when one see that class distinction is false, as it creates conflict, misery and division between people, one see the truth of it and that very truth liberates. The very perception of that truth is transformation.

So, a mind which is desirous of future transformation as an ultimate end can never find truth, for truth is a thing that must come from moment to moment and must be discovered newly. There can be no discovery through accumulation because one could not discover a new thing if burdened with the old. To discover the new, one needs an extraordinarily alert mind, that is, a mind that is not seeking a result, a mind that is not becoming. A mind that is becoming can never know the full bliss of contentment, the contentment that comes when the mind sees the truth in ‘what is’ and the false in ‘what is’

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Sluijter, J. (2013). ‘The Ending of Psychological Time.’ Ojai: Krishnamurti Foundation of America, p.

[2]:

Krishnamurti, J. (2006). ‘Commentaries on Living.’ (Second Series), New Delhi: Penguin Books, p.107.

[3]:

Lutyens, M. (1969). ‘Freedom from the Known.’ New York: HarperCollins Publishers, p.64.

[4]:

Krishnamurti, J. (2000). ‘The Awakening of Intelligence.’ New Delhi: Penguin Books, p.431.