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The Invention of Time
"Thought is time"
(The Core of the Teaching, 1980)
“The present is not of time”
(The Impossible Question: Chapter 4, 'Fragmentation' - July 23, 1970, p.46)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The very essence of the talks is about time
It is clear what is meant by the above statements, is it not? The past, modified by the present, becomes the future, and all this is entirely based on memories stored in the brain. This past always impinges on and distorts the fact of the present and is always anticipating the future. Yet life must be lived only in the present, and the present is not of time. This may be difficult to understand, yet it must be comprehended for life to be understood. The thinking process itself cannot stay in the present.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The book title The Ending of Time, in the extended discussions with David Bohm (Wikipedia article), in 1980, is about the ending of psychological time, not about ending chronological time, which of course is impossible. Which means we need to understand the complete nature and workings of psychological time. (See transcripts of the 13 Chapters)
Obviously there is such a thing as chronological time, there is yesterday, today, and tomorrow. However, as was shown by Einstein in the theory of relativity, even physical time is not an absolute; it depends upon the speed at which you are travelling. So time itself is malleable.
The very declaration in 1929: “Truth is a pathless land” is about time. A path implies a time period to travel on it, which is obviously chronological but also psychological. That is, a path implies a psychological progression, a gradual and incremental approach which happens over both clock and mental time. A path also implies a destination which can be arrived at. Yet truth is nothing to be gained and has no goal or arrival point. Truth is in the present - it cannot be reached through a journey of progression, of continuity.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There is a fundamental statement underlying all this concerning the very nature of the present. The present has no beginning and no ending; it has no cause and effect. The present is timeless, and - this is the crucial point - has no relationship whatsoever to the past. There is also no future in the psychological present. When the future comes, it is always the now, the new present. Yet thought regards the now as merely a means to the future, a stepping stone to achievement. Thought has set up psychological time as a crutch of security.
Thought thus never comes into actual contact with the present. Thought cannot, in fact, fully face the present.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“To every challenge there must obviously be a new response because today the problem is entirely different from what it was yesterday.
Any problem is always new; it is undergoing transformation all the time.
Each challenge demands a new response, and there can be no new response if the mind is not free. …”
(JKTI: Collected Works: Vol IX, 'Any problem is always new')
The problem is always new - one wonders whether this is really understood? Do we not in fact consider that the very opposite is true: that the problem is in fact old, is the same as it was yesterday, and will be the same tomorrow? Is this because the past has such a relentless grip on the mind, so that we are unable to see the problem anew?
The challenge of life is always immediate, always in the present. When the response to that challenge involves time as the past the response is inadequate. The response to life’s challenge must be completely in the now, be instant and be whole. All man’s mental problems occur because of the time interval introduced by thought. This time does not exist, it is a complete illusion created by the brain:
“We have a very convenient, luxurious theory that there is time to progress, to arrive,
to achieve, to come near truth; that is a fallacious idea, it is an illusion completely - time is an illusion in that sense.”
(Book of Life Daily Meditations: 'A mind without anchorage or haven' - October 19, 2007}
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The self can only exist in time...
Here it is in a nutshell. Thought is of the past, it is of memory and from this it projects to an imagined future - it is a continuum, a psychological continuity, a movement. When thought is entirely in the present then it is only practical, logical thought, essential for day to day living but only that - this thought has not identified itself with a center in the mind, the self::
“If it is one’s whole outlook that, psychologically, there is no time at all, then is there a me who is violent?
The me is put together through time. The me as violence, is time.
But if there is no time at all as me, then there is nothing, there is no violence.”
(The Transformation of Man: pp. 194-5)
"The mind can understand the present only if it does not compare, judge; the desire
to alter or condemn the present without understanding it gives continuance to the past."
(Book of Lfe Daily Meditations: 'Live the four seasons in a day' - November 2, 2007)
The entire structure of the mind is involved with a movement in becoming, which is the corrupting energy of desire. Hence the deep inner craving for money, for fame, for power, for success. There is “what is,” which is the fact of the present, and there is what should be - or what may be - hence the drive to succeed or self-fulfil. This movement to what should be brings in time. You can see this if you observe the process of your mind, can you not? The mind is simply never just in the now. Yet all of life is the now.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fear is time
“Fear is the movement of thought - thought as measure. Fear is time. Thought is the response of memory, knowledge, experience; it is limited,;
it is a movement in time. If there is no time there is no fear. I am living now but I am afraid I might die - I might in the future. There is a time interval produced by thought. But if there is no time interval at all, there is no fear. So, in the same way: is the root of sorrow time? - time being the movement of thought. ...” (The Transformation of Man: page 187)
You can see this issue of time very clearly if your life is under immediate threat. At the instant of extreme physical danger you act. This action is not from thought, there is simply no time to think. It is the response of an intrinsic intelligence of the organism which exists for the body's protection, for its own survival. There is the rush of adrenalin, the normal physiological response (the so-called "flight or fight"), but at that instant of immediate danger there is no fear and there is no time. It is only when thought comes in later, after the fact, that fear comes in.
All psychological knowledge is time
“Understanding myself is not a matter of time; I can understand myself at this very moment.”
(The First and Last Freedom: Chapter 1)
“Truth or understanding comes in a flash, and that flash has no continuity; it is not within the field of time.”
(Book of Life Daily Meditations: 'Truth comes in a flash' - October 6, 2007)
Knowledge is not the answer to life’s problems, even, as it turns out, technological problems (though that is another discussion). If it were then humanity would have solved all its problems long go, for it has accumulated a vast body of knowledge over time. Knowledge is also limited, as is science itself; one cannot have complete knowledge of anything in the present. Knowledge is the burden of the past, preventing the problem from being seen anew, is it not?
Acquired knowledge is a different thing altogether. Technologically, it is essential for everyday living. An example is driving a car, which only has to be learned once. You don’t need to relearn it every time you get behind a wheel. This is essential stored practical knowledge, as in learning a language - implicit knowledge that doesn't require the thinking process to operate.
Acquired knowledge also applies in the psychological realm. Once you have ‘seen’ something, whatever it is, such as the division of thought into the me and the not-me, then you don’t have to relearn it. You don’t have to re-think it later on, it becomes implicit. This knowledge is automatically there in the present but because it has been learnt it is not of the thought process and so doesn’t intrude on the understanding of the present.
Perception is now or never (there is, however, no never, as there is nothing fixed or permanent in life). This is the whole point of awareness, it is not accumulated knowledge as thought:
“The perception of the truth of anything is immediate - not in time. Can the mind break through instantly, on the very questioning?
Can the mind see the barrier of the word, understand the significance of the word in a flash and be in that state when the mind
is no longer caught in time? You must have experienced this; only it is a very rare thing for most of us. ...”
(Book of Life Daily Meditations: 'Perception of truth is immediate' - May 20th, 2007)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The self is desire & achievement; both involve time
“So what is important is not desire, but the fact that we give it continuity"
(On God: page 135)
This is the essence of time. Continuity is the carryover of something from the past to the present, and then from the present to the future, thus a permanent identification is established. Identification is the self; continuity is the self. If there were no continuity then you would wake up in the morning with a fresh mind, not burdened by all the past memories that make up the centre, the self image with all its desires. Then you would face life actually as it is, from moment to moment - and the talks are saying that life then would be something altogether different, not something imaginable by the mind.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The talks are truly vast, their scope and subtlety all-encompassing. They cover the entire gamut of the depths and cunning of thought and its creation, the self. The essential theme that runs through them from the very beginning is the key issue of time. And this whole issue of time has to be understood for the talks to be intellectually comprehensible.
Everything man needs to live properly is in the present. The past is not required and has no relevance to one’s actions in the present. This is the crucial point; but there are many who struggle with the statement that the past is not needed in order to live. The central problem here is that all our conditioning says otherwise; our actions are based entirely on past experience which we think is essential to live properly. We say we cannot live without time, without the knowledge of the past and the expectation of a psychological tomorrow. We cannot live without memories of experiences in the past. It is the ending of this psychological tomorrow where the great difficulty lies. Most of us can banish past remembrances, to one degree or another. But to live without any hope at all, to live without any future, is another thing again.
To live without the idea of psychological evolution challenges the very structure of our being. Yet, you will not fully understand the talks until you comprehend this whole issue of psychological time.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Significant quotation:
(Book of Life Daily Meditations: 'Inward Revolution' - September 26, 2007)
“What is true can only be found from moment to moment, it is not a continuity, but the mind which wants to discover it, being itself the product of time, can only function in the field of time; therefore it is incapable of finding what is true.
To know the mind, the mind must know itself, for there is no "I" apart from the mind. There are no qualities separate from the mind, just as the qualities of the diamond are not separate from the diamond itself. To understand the mind you cannot interpret it according to somebody else's idea, but you must observe how your own total mind works. When you know the whole process of it - how it reasons, its desires, motives, ambitions, pursuits, its envy, greed and fear, then the mind can go beyond itself, and when it does there is the discovery of something totally new."
Summation: Time & Psychotherapy Time is the root cause of all negativity, despair and self-destruction. Negativity is the feeling/thought that things in life should not be what is, but should be something else, something better. The more these thoughts become a mindset, the more they are reinforced. When there is identification with these patterns (ie, 'I am in despair,' 'my life is not worthwhile,' 'I am depressed,' etc) they become dangerous, setting up reinforcing, self-destructive behaviors. These recurring thought patterns are the root cause of all depression, drug-dependency, alcoholism, anxiety, obsessions, insomnia, neuroticism and mental illness. The stronger the patterns the greater the mental disorder, the greater the acts of self-destruction. The patterns are the self, trying to escape from itself. The greater the escapes, the greater the dysfunction.
The whole structure of Freudian psychiatry is based on a false premise. The approach is to dredge up early childhood traumatic memories, on the basis that exposing them will resolve them. To the contrary, these memories are often actually reinforced in the mind through exposure/recognition, hence becoming more negative and this is a principal reason patients can spend decades in fruitless psychiatric sessions. The point is to understand the root cause of negativity itself, and this can only be done in the present. Through the present one understands and resolves the past. (see My Life in Therapy, by Daphne Merkin, The New York Times Magazine, August 4, 2010.)
Of course, a primary escape from negativity and depression has always been drugs; now psilocybin (from mushrooms) has come back into vogue, as a treatment for both cancer and negativity. Because these hallucinogens appear to have long-lasting effects, they will become yet another endless escape from self-understanding - (see Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again, by John Tierney, Science Desk, The New York Times, April 11, 2010).
All identification with one's thought processes, operating from day to day, merely strengthens this self. (There is only thought, by the way, it is not 'my' thought.) It is the fictional self (the source of all conflict) that compares what is with what should be, which brings in psychological time. This comparison is the root cause of all despair, negativity and frustration, for the self that attempts to change itself into what it should be is not a separate and real entity; it cannot thus act on thought so it always fails in all its endeavours. The mind is thus inherently split between thinking and the false separate thinker.
Awareness breaks these thought patterns. Yet, psychology attempts to break these patterns and replace them with (so-called) 'positive' ones. Positive thoughts are also ultimately self-centered, so this therapy, in the long run, does not work - although it may superficially alter certain behaviors day to day. The whole tradition of psychology (and cognitive behavior therapy) in fact rests on self-esteem, boosting up the self-image, not an understanding of the self and its myriad escape mechanisms. End the self of course (which is thought as time) and all negativity and self-destructive behavior immediately comes to an end.
The whole content of consciousness, which is thought and feeling, is caught in time. Thought is the past, projecting through the present to the future. From thought arises fear - there is no fear in the present, only fear of the anticipated future. Pleasure derives from past experiences, from past memories, from past reminiscences. All living, then, is derived from the past, instead of it being in the active present.
The mind is wholly trapped in time. In the remembered past and the anticipated future. Only when all time ceases is there peace and freedom. It is strange but true: time is the enemy of man.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Thought is time"
(The Core of the Teaching, 1980)
“The present is not of time”
(The Impossible Question: Chapter 4, 'Fragmentation' - July 23, 1970, p.46)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The very essence of the talks is about time
It is clear what is meant by the above statements, is it not? The past, modified by the present, becomes the future, and all this is entirely based on memories stored in the brain. This past always impinges on and distorts the fact of the present and is always anticipating the future. Yet life must be lived only in the present, and the present is not of time. This may be difficult to understand, yet it must be comprehended for life to be understood. The thinking process itself cannot stay in the present.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The book title The Ending of Time, in the extended discussions with David Bohm (Wikipedia article), in 1980, is about the ending of psychological time, not about ending chronological time, which of course is impossible. Which means we need to understand the complete nature and workings of psychological time. (See transcripts of the 13 Chapters)
Obviously there is such a thing as chronological time, there is yesterday, today, and tomorrow. However, as was shown by Einstein in the theory of relativity, even physical time is not an absolute; it depends upon the speed at which you are travelling. So time itself is malleable.
The very declaration in 1929: “Truth is a pathless land” is about time. A path implies a time period to travel on it, which is obviously chronological but also psychological. That is, a path implies a psychological progression, a gradual and incremental approach which happens over both clock and mental time. A path also implies a destination which can be arrived at. Yet truth is nothing to be gained and has no goal or arrival point. Truth is in the present - it cannot be reached through a journey of progression, of continuity.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There is a fundamental statement underlying all this concerning the very nature of the present. The present has no beginning and no ending; it has no cause and effect. The present is timeless, and - this is the crucial point - has no relationship whatsoever to the past. There is also no future in the psychological present. When the future comes, it is always the now, the new present. Yet thought regards the now as merely a means to the future, a stepping stone to achievement. Thought has set up psychological time as a crutch of security.
Thought thus never comes into actual contact with the present. Thought cannot, in fact, fully face the present.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“To every challenge there must obviously be a new response because today the problem is entirely different from what it was yesterday.
Any problem is always new; it is undergoing transformation all the time.
Each challenge demands a new response, and there can be no new response if the mind is not free. …”
(JKTI: Collected Works: Vol IX, 'Any problem is always new')
The problem is always new - one wonders whether this is really understood? Do we not in fact consider that the very opposite is true: that the problem is in fact old, is the same as it was yesterday, and will be the same tomorrow? Is this because the past has such a relentless grip on the mind, so that we are unable to see the problem anew?
The challenge of life is always immediate, always in the present. When the response to that challenge involves time as the past the response is inadequate. The response to life’s challenge must be completely in the now, be instant and be whole. All man’s mental problems occur because of the time interval introduced by thought. This time does not exist, it is a complete illusion created by the brain:
“We have a very convenient, luxurious theory that there is time to progress, to arrive,
to achieve, to come near truth; that is a fallacious idea, it is an illusion completely - time is an illusion in that sense.”
(Book of Life Daily Meditations: 'A mind without anchorage or haven' - October 19, 2007}
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The self can only exist in time...
Here it is in a nutshell. Thought is of the past, it is of memory and from this it projects to an imagined future - it is a continuum, a psychological continuity, a movement. When thought is entirely in the present then it is only practical, logical thought, essential for day to day living but only that - this thought has not identified itself with a center in the mind, the self::
“If it is one’s whole outlook that, psychologically, there is no time at all, then is there a me who is violent?
The me is put together through time. The me as violence, is time.
But if there is no time at all as me, then there is nothing, there is no violence.”
(The Transformation of Man: pp. 194-5)
"The mind can understand the present only if it does not compare, judge; the desire
to alter or condemn the present without understanding it gives continuance to the past."
(Book of Lfe Daily Meditations: 'Live the four seasons in a day' - November 2, 2007)
The entire structure of the mind is involved with a movement in becoming, which is the corrupting energy of desire. Hence the deep inner craving for money, for fame, for power, for success. There is “what is,” which is the fact of the present, and there is what should be - or what may be - hence the drive to succeed or self-fulfil. This movement to what should be brings in time. You can see this if you observe the process of your mind, can you not? The mind is simply never just in the now. Yet all of life is the now.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fear is time
“Fear is the movement of thought - thought as measure. Fear is time. Thought is the response of memory, knowledge, experience; it is limited,;
it is a movement in time. If there is no time there is no fear. I am living now but I am afraid I might die - I might in the future. There is a time interval produced by thought. But if there is no time interval at all, there is no fear. So, in the same way: is the root of sorrow time? - time being the movement of thought. ...” (The Transformation of Man: page 187)
You can see this issue of time very clearly if your life is under immediate threat. At the instant of extreme physical danger you act. This action is not from thought, there is simply no time to think. It is the response of an intrinsic intelligence of the organism which exists for the body's protection, for its own survival. There is the rush of adrenalin, the normal physiological response (the so-called "flight or fight"), but at that instant of immediate danger there is no fear and there is no time. It is only when thought comes in later, after the fact, that fear comes in.
All psychological knowledge is time
“Understanding myself is not a matter of time; I can understand myself at this very moment.”
(The First and Last Freedom: Chapter 1)
“Truth or understanding comes in a flash, and that flash has no continuity; it is not within the field of time.”
(Book of Life Daily Meditations: 'Truth comes in a flash' - October 6, 2007)
Knowledge is not the answer to life’s problems, even, as it turns out, technological problems (though that is another discussion). If it were then humanity would have solved all its problems long go, for it has accumulated a vast body of knowledge over time. Knowledge is also limited, as is science itself; one cannot have complete knowledge of anything in the present. Knowledge is the burden of the past, preventing the problem from being seen anew, is it not?
Acquired knowledge is a different thing altogether. Technologically, it is essential for everyday living. An example is driving a car, which only has to be learned once. You don’t need to relearn it every time you get behind a wheel. This is essential stored practical knowledge, as in learning a language - implicit knowledge that doesn't require the thinking process to operate.
Acquired knowledge also applies in the psychological realm. Once you have ‘seen’ something, whatever it is, such as the division of thought into the me and the not-me, then you don’t have to relearn it. You don’t have to re-think it later on, it becomes implicit. This knowledge is automatically there in the present but because it has been learnt it is not of the thought process and so doesn’t intrude on the understanding of the present.
Perception is now or never (there is, however, no never, as there is nothing fixed or permanent in life). This is the whole point of awareness, it is not accumulated knowledge as thought:
“The perception of the truth of anything is immediate - not in time. Can the mind break through instantly, on the very questioning?
Can the mind see the barrier of the word, understand the significance of the word in a flash and be in that state when the mind
is no longer caught in time? You must have experienced this; only it is a very rare thing for most of us. ...”
(Book of Life Daily Meditations: 'Perception of truth is immediate' - May 20th, 2007)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The self is desire & achievement; both involve time
“So what is important is not desire, but the fact that we give it continuity"
(On God: page 135)
This is the essence of time. Continuity is the carryover of something from the past to the present, and then from the present to the future, thus a permanent identification is established. Identification is the self; continuity is the self. If there were no continuity then you would wake up in the morning with a fresh mind, not burdened by all the past memories that make up the centre, the self image with all its desires. Then you would face life actually as it is, from moment to moment - and the talks are saying that life then would be something altogether different, not something imaginable by the mind.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The talks are truly vast, their scope and subtlety all-encompassing. They cover the entire gamut of the depths and cunning of thought and its creation, the self. The essential theme that runs through them from the very beginning is the key issue of time. And this whole issue of time has to be understood for the talks to be intellectually comprehensible.
Everything man needs to live properly is in the present. The past is not required and has no relevance to one’s actions in the present. This is the crucial point; but there are many who struggle with the statement that the past is not needed in order to live. The central problem here is that all our conditioning says otherwise; our actions are based entirely on past experience which we think is essential to live properly. We say we cannot live without time, without the knowledge of the past and the expectation of a psychological tomorrow. We cannot live without memories of experiences in the past. It is the ending of this psychological tomorrow where the great difficulty lies. Most of us can banish past remembrances, to one degree or another. But to live without any hope at all, to live without any future, is another thing again.
To live without the idea of psychological evolution challenges the very structure of our being. Yet, you will not fully understand the talks until you comprehend this whole issue of psychological time.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Significant quotation:
(Book of Life Daily Meditations: 'Inward Revolution' - September 26, 2007)
“What is true can only be found from moment to moment, it is not a continuity, but the mind which wants to discover it, being itself the product of time, can only function in the field of time; therefore it is incapable of finding what is true.
To know the mind, the mind must know itself, for there is no "I" apart from the mind. There are no qualities separate from the mind, just as the qualities of the diamond are not separate from the diamond itself. To understand the mind you cannot interpret it according to somebody else's idea, but you must observe how your own total mind works. When you know the whole process of it - how it reasons, its desires, motives, ambitions, pursuits, its envy, greed and fear, then the mind can go beyond itself, and when it does there is the discovery of something totally new."
Summation: Time & Psychotherapy Time is the root cause of all negativity, despair and self-destruction. Negativity is the feeling/thought that things in life should not be what is, but should be something else, something better. The more these thoughts become a mindset, the more they are reinforced. When there is identification with these patterns (ie, 'I am in despair,' 'my life is not worthwhile,' 'I am depressed,' etc) they become dangerous, setting up reinforcing, self-destructive behaviors. These recurring thought patterns are the root cause of all depression, drug-dependency, alcoholism, anxiety, obsessions, insomnia, neuroticism and mental illness. The stronger the patterns the greater the mental disorder, the greater the acts of self-destruction. The patterns are the self, trying to escape from itself. The greater the escapes, the greater the dysfunction.
The whole structure of Freudian psychiatry is based on a false premise. The approach is to dredge up early childhood traumatic memories, on the basis that exposing them will resolve them. To the contrary, these memories are often actually reinforced in the mind through exposure/recognition, hence becoming more negative and this is a principal reason patients can spend decades in fruitless psychiatric sessions. The point is to understand the root cause of negativity itself, and this can only be done in the present. Through the present one understands and resolves the past. (see My Life in Therapy, by Daphne Merkin, The New York Times Magazine, August 4, 2010.)
Of course, a primary escape from negativity and depression has always been drugs; now psilocybin (from mushrooms) has come back into vogue, as a treatment for both cancer and negativity. Because these hallucinogens appear to have long-lasting effects, they will become yet another endless escape from self-understanding - (see Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again, by John Tierney, Science Desk, The New York Times, April 11, 2010).
All identification with one's thought processes, operating from day to day, merely strengthens this self. (There is only thought, by the way, it is not 'my' thought.) It is the fictional self (the source of all conflict) that compares what is with what should be, which brings in psychological time. This comparison is the root cause of all despair, negativity and frustration, for the self that attempts to change itself into what it should be is not a separate and real entity; it cannot thus act on thought so it always fails in all its endeavours. The mind is thus inherently split between thinking and the false separate thinker.
Awareness breaks these thought patterns. Yet, psychology attempts to break these patterns and replace them with (so-called) 'positive' ones. Positive thoughts are also ultimately self-centered, so this therapy, in the long run, does not work - although it may superficially alter certain behaviors day to day. The whole tradition of psychology (and cognitive behavior therapy) in fact rests on self-esteem, boosting up the self-image, not an understanding of the self and its myriad escape mechanisms. End the self of course (which is thought as time) and all negativity and self-destructive behavior immediately comes to an end.
The whole content of consciousness, which is thought and feeling, is caught in time. Thought is the past, projecting through the present to the future. From thought arises fear - there is no fear in the present, only fear of the anticipated future. Pleasure derives from past experiences, from past memories, from past reminiscences. All living, then, is derived from the past, instead of it being in the active present.
The mind is wholly trapped in time. In the remembered past and the anticipated future. Only when all time ceases is there peace and freedom. It is strange but true: time is the enemy of man.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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“There is only the present, the beauty of the present, the richness of the present.”
(Jayakar Biography: Chapter 27, 'The Observer is the Observed' - page 315)
(Jayakar Biography: Chapter 27, 'The Observer is the Observed' - page 315)
The total abandonment of the seeming evolution of the mind - that is, of gradual self-improvement, of progressive self-fulfillment, of more profound thoughts - is one of the most difficult things to both fully understand and accept in oneself, is it not?
Becoming self-fulfilled is pleasurable; all thought seeks pleasure in one form or another. But if there is no progress
towards self-fulfillment, if we give up all pursuit of pleasure, which is the process of time,
what is left in life?
Becoming self-fulfilled is pleasurable; all thought seeks pleasure in one form or another. But if there is no progress
towards self-fulfillment, if we give up all pursuit of pleasure, which is the process of time,
what is left in life?
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(Site exploring the living of a life entirely in the present;
Page last updated August 27, 2010)
Page last updated August 27, 2010)
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Site best viewed through Internet Explorer;
there are some page display issues with Chrome & Firefox
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Copyright © 2007-2010 Daniel Marks | beyondthemind.net. All Rights Reserved.
This website went online on November 22, 2007 and is being continually developed.
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(Photo courtesy beachhunter.net)
A Mind Beyond Time:
"You are just a thought"
These two videos of the spiritual teacher Jeff Foster (lifewithoutacentre.com) discuss the ending of the separate me, where the notion of a separate existence falls entirely away, so that you live in perpetual oneness with everything, without seeking or wanting anything. This is a life of action, not stagnation, but action arising from a mind that is not in internal conflict with what is.
It is a mind that is no longer seeking... anything. It is a mind free of biases, choice and self-centeredness. It is a mind living entirely in the present, where what is happening in the moment, where what exists in the moment, is literally all that there is.
But it is not 'ordinary' in the sense we use that word - because it is new, it is something that has not been seen before. Words are not enough.
So because of this newness, there is no longer any suffering, any despair, any hopes dashed, any sense of non-fulfillment, any depression. There is only the now. No future.
It is a mind beyond all time.
This is a 'reality' that is us and is all around us at all times but we simply cannot see it, as long as we have a center. This is because of the desire of the mind always for something more.
But what is left when the self - the center - falls away cannot be described with our current duality. It can't be explained with the words/concepts that are the very basis of the existing conceptual framework of the self-based mind.
The parallels here that exist with the very basis of what is in the talks covering over 60 years... are quite extraordinary.
"You are just a thought"
These two videos of the spiritual teacher Jeff Foster (lifewithoutacentre.com) discuss the ending of the separate me, where the notion of a separate existence falls entirely away, so that you live in perpetual oneness with everything, without seeking or wanting anything. This is a life of action, not stagnation, but action arising from a mind that is not in internal conflict with what is.
It is a mind that is no longer seeking... anything. It is a mind free of biases, choice and self-centeredness. It is a mind living entirely in the present, where what is happening in the moment, where what exists in the moment, is literally all that there is.
But it is not 'ordinary' in the sense we use that word - because it is new, it is something that has not been seen before. Words are not enough.
So because of this newness, there is no longer any suffering, any despair, any hopes dashed, any sense of non-fulfillment, any depression. There is only the now. No future.
It is a mind beyond all time.
This is a 'reality' that is us and is all around us at all times but we simply cannot see it, as long as we have a center. This is because of the desire of the mind always for something more.
But what is left when the self - the center - falls away cannot be described with our current duality. It can't be explained with the words/concepts that are the very basis of the existing conceptual framework of the self-based mind.
The parallels here that exist with the very basis of what is in the talks covering over 60 years... are quite extraordinary.
(53 min interview by Iain McNay - Life Without A Centre - available
on Conscious.tv - see this site's Enlightenment Page)
on Conscious.tv - see this site's Enlightenment Page)
“Therefore one has to find out whether there is an end to thought, an end to time, not philosophize over it and discuss it, but find out.”
(Krishnamurti Foundation Trust: Bulletin 42, 1982)
The ending of time means the end of the me, the end of all future fulfillment, which is why we abstractly discuss living in the present but never do it..
(Krishnamurti Foundation Trust: Bulletin 42, 1982)
The ending of time means the end of the me, the end of all future fulfillment, which is why we abstractly discuss living in the present but never do it..