Highest Knowledge: All At Once

 

 

Now Patanjali asks the timeless question, the perennial question: What is Time?

Patanjali comes to this at the very end of "Vibhuti Pada" because to know time is the greatest miracle. To know what time is, is to know what life is. To know what time is, is to know what truth is. Before we enter into the sutras, many things have to be understood; they will become an introduction to the sutras.

Ordinarily what we call time is not real time. It is 'chronological' time. So remember that time can be divided, classified, in three ways. One is 'chronological', another is 'psychological', and the third is 'real'.

The chronological time is clock time. It is utilitarian; it is not real. It is just a belief agreed upon by the society. We have agreed to divide the day into twenty-four hours. It is very arbitrary that the earth moves in one complete circle on its axis in twenty-four hours; we have decided to divide it into twenty-four. Then we have decided to divide each hour into sixty minutes. There is no intrinsic necessity to divide it that way. Some other civilization may divide it in a different way.

We can divide the hour into a hundred minutes and nobody is going to prevent us. Then each minute we have divided into sixty seconds. That too is arbitrary, just utilitarian. It is clock time. It is needed; otherwise society will fall apart.

Something as a common standard is a necessity - just like money, currency money. A hundred rupee note, a ten-dollar bill, or anything else is just a common belief the society has agreed to use. But it has nothing to do with existence. If man disappears from the earth, the pound sterling, the dollar, rupees will all disappear immediately. The earth will be without money immediately without man. Rocks will be there, flowers will still flower, the spring will come and birds will sing, and in the fall old leaves will fall; but there will be no money. Even if there are piles of money on the roads, it will not be money at all, because to call it money a man is needed, to respect it as money a man is needed.

The government goes on promising, on each note the promise is written: The Finance Governor promises to pay you ten rupees worth of gold if you produce this note at the bank. It is just a promise. When there is nobody to promise, the currency disappears.

When man is not there on the earth, clocks may go on chiming time, but it will not be time at all. Nobody will bother, nobody will look at them. Clock time will stop immediately if man is not there; so it is man-created, a social by-product.

The higher a society moves - and when I say "higher" I mean the more complex it becomes - the more and more it becomes obsessed with chronological time. A primitive man has no use for a watch. If you present him a watch, he will be simply puzzled, for what? What is he going to do with it? A civilized man cannot live without a watch. It is almost impossible to live in-a civilized society without a watch because the whole society runs according to the clock, even sometimes to ridiculous states.

I will tell you one anecdote.

There came a loud knock at the door just as the doctor had settled down for sleep. He got up and asked the man at the door, "What is it!"

"I have been bitten by a dog," said the man.

"Well, don't you know that my hours of consultation are between twelve and three?"

"Yes," groaned the patient, "but the dog did not know and he bit me at twenty to four. So what am I supposed to do?"

Dogs don't believe in clocks, and things can go to ridiculous ends.

Once you think in terms of the clock, you forget that this is just utilitarian. It is not real time.

At another doctor's office:

The sign behind the desk at the reception portion of the hospital said: Emergency Casualty Registrations. A man staggered in, bruised and muddy. He was plastered with blood bandages, limping on both legs, clutching his arm to stem the flow of blood. He crawled to the desk and groaned, "Doctor, doctor."

The receptionist asked, "Have you an appointment, sir?"

Thus can happen here in this ashram too; it can happen at Sheela's desk. Once the chronological time is taken too seriously, then one forgets everything else. The whole West is obsessed with time too much. Everything has to be done on time.

One of my friends was travelling in England with one of his English friends, and he was telling me that everything has become so routine that in England you hear expressions like "teatime," "dinnertime," "lunchtime." What do they mean? How can time decide the time for lunch, unless you are feeling hungry? When you say "lunchtime," it means "hunger time" - now be hungry! And if you are not, then something is wrong with you. Teatime means now be ready for tea. If you are not feeling, then something is wrong with you; you have to take it. By and by people have forgotten their real hunger, their real thirst. Everything is taken on time. The clock decides. Clock has become the dominator; it dominates. This is a very unreal world, dominated by the clock.

Now there are educationists, psychologists who go on telling the mothers to give the child milk at certain times, after each three hours. The child is crying, the child is hungry; the mother looks at the clock. It is not time yet. The child is hungry; that is not anything to be worried about. The clock has to be looked at. Because when the child is hungry, the child is not to be believed, but the doctor. Now it is none of the doctor's business to interfere. But once you become obsessed with the unreal, many unreal things enter into your life.

I have heard:

An Irishman fell from a ladder and lay apparently unconscious on the ground. A crowd gathered around him and a doctor was called, who said at once that the poor man was dead. Pat opened his eyes and promptly denied the charge.

"Shh! Pat," said one of the bystanders. "Don't be talking nonsense. Surely the doctor knows best."

Even if you are alive and the doctor says you are dead, you have to behave like a dead man - because of course the expert knows and he knows the best.

With the chronological time, the world of the expert has come into existence, because you have lost your roots into reality. For everything you have to ask somebody. People come to me and they say, "Osho, tell us how we are feeling." How you are feeling you have to know. But I understand. The touch, the contact, the connectedness with reality is lost. Even how you are feeling you have to go to ask somebody who knows. You have to rely on somebody else. This is unfortunate, but it has happened in slow steps and humanity has not been aware.

Chronological time is not being used now. It is no longer a means; it has almost become an end. Remember, it is false time. It has nothing to do with reality.

Deep down, just underneath it, is another time which is not real, but more real than the chronological time; that is psychological time. There is a biological clock within you. More than men, women are alert to it. They will also not be alert very long because they are trying in every way to imitate men. Still their body functions as an inner clock. After each twenty-eight days, the menstruation comes. The body functions like an inner clock, a-biological clock.

If you watch, then you will see the hunger comes at a certain time every day. If you are well and healthy, then needs fall into a certain pattern, and that pattern is repeated. It is only broken when you are not well; otherwise the body moves on smoothly, runs in a smooth pattern. And if you are aware of that pattern, you will be more alive than the man who lives by the clock. You are closer to reality.

The chronological time is fixed, it has to be fixed, because it is a social necessity; but the psychological time is fluid, it is not so solid, because each person has his own psychology, his own mind. Have you watched? When you are happy, time goes fast. Your clock will not go fast; the clock has nothing to do with you. It moves at its own pace - in sixty seconds it moves one minute, in sixty minutes it moves one hour. It will continue; whether you are happy or unhappy doesn't matter.

If you are unhappy your mind will be in a different time; if you are happy your mind will be in a different time. If suddenly your beloved comes, unexpectedly knocks at the door, time will almost stop. Hours will pass - you may not be doing anything, just holding hands and sitting and looking at the moon - hours will pass, and it will look as if only minutes have passed. Time goes very, very fast when you are happy. When you are unhappy - somebody has died, somebody you loved, death has happened - then time goes very, very, very slowly.

Just the other night Meera came. Her husband died a few months before. She had come to see me after the death, and I had told her don't be worried, the wound will heal. It will take a little time, almost three months. But those three months were just an average because it will depend on the person. Now she came last night again and she said, "Now five months have passed and the pain is still there. Of course it is less, but it is still there, it has not gone; and you had said that within three months it will go."

I know. Sometimes it will take one year, sometimes it will take six months, sometimes it may not even take three months, three days will do. It is not chronological; it is psychological. It depends on you, on the relationship, what type of relationship existed between you and your husband.

And I know the relationship was not good. That's why the wound will heal and it will take a long time. This will look paradoxical, but this is how it is. If you have loved a man and he dies, you will feel sad, but you will recover - soon. There will be no wound. You loved the man; nothing is incomplete. But between Meera and her husband the relationship was not good; for years they were almost separate. She wanted to love but could not love. She wanted to be with him but could not be. Now the husband is gone, and all her hope to be with him is gone with him.

She hankered, she desired, she wanted, and it couldn't happen. Now the man is gone; now there is no possibility. Now her aloneness is sealed, now there is no way to love this man. He was alive, she could not love, there were problems between them; now the man is gone, so there is no possibility. Now this wound is going to heal very slowly - very, very slowly. And even when it is healed there will remain a certain sadness around it forever. Anything incomplete is very difficult to drop.

Complete things ripen and fall on their own accord. When a fruit is ripe it falls. Of course the tree feels for a few seconds something is missing, and then it forgets. Finished, because ripe fruits have to fall. Everybody has to die.

You loved while the man was alive - and you loved tremendously and totally. You are almost fulfilled; you cannot ask for more. As it was, it was already too much. You are grateful that God gave you that much time. He could have taken the man a little earlier, but he gave you enough time, and you loved and you loved. In love even a single moment becomes eternity. You are so happy time stops. A small life becomes very, very intimate.

But that has not happened, so I can understand Meera's misery. But she has to face it and understand it. It is not only a question of the death of the husband. That is not such a big problem. Husbands die, wives die; that is not a big problem, that is natural. The problem is that love could not happen. It remained a dream, a desire, and now it is going to remain unfulfilled. You cannot find that man again, so that chapter cannot be completed. This incompletion will function as a wound. That's why it has taken a longer time. It will take a little longer still.

Psychological time is your inner time; and we live in the chronological time altogether, the Greenwich time - it is not personal. Psychological time is personal, and each has his own. If you are happy, your sense of time slows down. If you are unhappy time lengthens. If you are deep in meditation time stops. In fact in the East we have been measuring states of mind through time. If time stops completely, then the state is of bliss. If time slows down very much, then the state of misery.

In Christianity it is said that hell is eternal. Bertrand Russell has written a book, WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN, in which he gives many arguments why he is not a Christian. One of the arguments is this, "I cannot believe that hell can be eternal because whatsoever the sins, they are limited. You cannot do unlimited sins. So for limited sins unlimited punishment - it is unjust." The argument is simple. Nobody can argue against Bertrand Russell; he is saying a simple fact. He himself says, "If I am punished for all the sins that I have committed in my whole life, then not more than four years' imprisonment. And even if those sins are included that I have not committed but only thought, then at the most eight years, or a little margin more, ten years. But infinite, eternal hell?" Then God seems to be too revengeful, does not look divine, does not look godly, looks like a very horrible, devilish force.

Because you loved a woman who was not your wife, now you will suffer - eternally. This is too much. You have not committed such a great sin. It is human to fall in love, and when one falls in love it is difficult to decide whether or not to fall in love with a woman who is not anybody else's wife. Hmm ?... love is almost blind. It possesses you.

Yes, Bertrand Russell seems to be right, his argument seems to be valid; but I say the argument is not valid. He has missed the whole point. And no Christian theologian has answered him on that point yet. They cannot answer because they have also forgotten. They go on talking about theories, but they have forgotten realities.

When Jesus says hell is eternal, he means psychological time, not chronological time. Yes, if he means chronological time, then it is absolutely absurd, to throw a man in eternal hell. He means psychological time, He means that one moment in hell would look like eternity. It would slow down so much because you would be in such anguish and pain that even a single moment would look like eternity. You would feel it was not going to end anytime, it was not going to end. You would feel it was contining, continuing, continuing.

It does not say anything about time; it says something about your feeling when you are in deep pain, anguish. And of course hell is the ultimate in pain. And Jesus is perfectly right, Bertrand Russell wrong, but Bertrand Russell misunderstood it because Jesus has not said exactly "psychological" time. He says "eternity" because in those days the language was understood. There was no need to make such qualifications.

The psychological time is personal. You have yours, your wife has hers, your son his; and all are different. That is one of the causes of conflict in the world. You are honking; and the wife says from the window, "I am coming," and she goes on standing before the mirror and you go on honking that "It is time and we will miss the train," and she gets angry, and you get angry. What is happening? Every husband is annoyed when he is sitting in the driver's seat and honking the horn and the wife is still getting ready, still getting ready. She is still choosing the sari, the dress. Now trains don't bother about which dress you are wearing. They leave on time. The husband is puzzled too much, what is going on. Two different psychological times are in conflict.

Man has moved to chronological time; the woman still lives in the psychological time. As far as I see, women use wristwatches, but they are ornamental. I don't see that they really use them, particularly not in India. I have come across a few women who don't know how to tell time, and they have wristwatches, beautiful gold watches - they can afford them.

The child lives in a totally different world. The child has his own psychological time, completely unhurried, almost in a dream. He cannot understand you, you cannot understand him. You are far apart; there is no way to bridge. When an old man is talking to a child, he is talking from another planet, it never reaches the child. The child cannot sec why there is so much hurry, for what?

Psychological time is absolutely personal. That's why chronological time has become important; otherwise where to meet, how to function, how to be efficient? If everybody comes to the office at his own feeling, then it is impossible to run the office. If everybody comes to the station at his own time, then trains can never leave. Something arbitrary has to be fixed.

The chronological time is history, and the psychological time is myth. That is the difference between history and myth. In the West, history is written, in the East, myth. If you ask when Krishna was born, the exact date, no answer will be coming from anywhere. And it is easy for historians to prove that if you cannot prove on what date, at what time chronologically, Krishna was born, at what place - if you cannot show the space and time when the event of Krishna's birth happened - then it is doubtful whether Krishna was ever born or not.

The East has never bothered. The East simply laughs at the whole absurdity of it. What has chronological time to do with Krishna's birth? We don't have any record. Or we have many records, contradictory, contradicting each other. But, see, I was born on eleventh December. If it can be proved that I was not born on eleventh December, will it be enough proof that I was never born?

In the East nobody remembers his own birthday. Just the other day Vivek was worried about her father's birthday. Maybe it is the twenty-seventh, or some other date, and she is worried that if she writes and asks, then they will feel offended. And I told her I don't know my mother's birthday, my father's birthday, and I don't even know if they know it or not. But that cannot prove that they have never existed or they are not there. The East has written myth. Myth is totally different; it is with psychological time.

The chronological time moves linearly, in a line. That's why in the West they say there is nothing new under the sun - but history never repeats itself. Time moves in a line, so how can history repeat in a line? Each event seems to be unique. In the East we say history is a wheel. It does not move linearly; the movement is circular. And in the East we say there is nothing new under the sun and history continuously repeats itself. It is all repetition, so why be worried about when Krishna was born?

In the East we say that in each age Krishna is born again and again and again. It is a wheel. In each period between creation and destruction, Krishna is born again and again. His form may differ, his name may differ, but he is born again and again; so why bother? Just describe who he is and don't be worried too much about nonessential details. So it may be the figure of Krishna may not belong to any Krishna in particular. It may be just a synthesis of all the Krishnas. That's how it is.

If you ask, "Is Buddha's statue true to his image?" - it is not. Yet it is true because a Buddha has to be like that. It is not a question whether this Buddha - Gautam Siddharth, son of Shuddhodhan, born in Kapilvastu on a particular date - was like this statue. No, it is not a point. But all the Buddhas always are synthesized in this statue. They represent. This statue is just a statue of BuddhaHOOD, not of any Buddha in particular. All Buddhas are included in it.

Now this is difficult for the West. You cannot make any difference between Buddha and Mahavir except for a small symbol just down near their feet; otherwise you cannot make much difference. Jainas have twenty-four teerthankeras, twenty-four great Masters, but you cannot make any distinction. Go to a Jaina temple and just look; they all look alike. It is not possible the twenty-four persons were all alike. Impossible. Two persons are never alike, but those statues don't represent the outward. They represent the inner experience. Yes, two persons cannot be alike, but two experiences can be alike.

When you fall in love and somebody else falls in love, the love is alike. When you meditate, somebody else meditates, the meditation is alike. When you become enlightened and somebody else becomes enlightened, enlightenment is alike. These twenty-four statues of Jaina Masters are not of twenty-four persons but of one state reflected in twenty-four personalities. They are all representative.

If you see Jaina teerthankeras, you will see very long ears, almost touching their shoulders. Now Jainas say that all teerthankeras have very long ears. And there are foolish people who think as if Mahavir really had such long ears.

I was invited by a Jaina, Acharya Tulsi, to one of his conferences. He has very long ears, so one of his disciples came to me and he said, "See, Acharya Tulsiji Maharaj, how long his ears are. That is symbolic of being a great Master. Soon, in one of his lives, he is going to become a teerthankera." Just by coincidence, or by synchronicity, a donkey passed by, so I told that disciple, "Look at Acharya Donkeyji Maharaj. He is already a teerthankera!" The disciple has been angry since then; he has never come to me.

Long ears are just symbolic that these people were capable of hearing, that's all. They were capable of hearing the sound, the soundless sound, the sound of one hand clapping.

They were capable of hearing the truth. These statues are just symbolic, not that they are actually representative of some real person. The misinterpretation is foolish, but that's how it goes on. Myth is symbolic.