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 knew 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?"

If so, 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 someone in eternal hell. He means psychological time. He means that one moment in hell will look like eternity. It will slow down so much because you will be in such anguish and pain that even a single moment will look like eternity. You will feel it is not going to end anytime, it is not going to end at all.

You will feel it continues & continues & continues...

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 what clothes 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 see 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 the 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.

It is said Ram was born in Ayodhya. Now ayodhya is a state of inner peace; it has nothing to do with the town named Ayodhya. The town is named as a representative of the inner state of ayodhya, a very peaceful, silent, blissful state. Of course Ram has to be born out of that.

That is the meaning of Jesus' birth - out of a virgin soul. Not that actually he was born of a virgin Mary, no; but out of virginity, out of pureness, innocence, uncorrupted purity of being he was born. That was his real womb.

These are symbolic, these are mythological. They are not chronological.

Historians go on collecting rubbish, unnecessary details. You just look in any history book. You will be surprised. Why are there so many people doing such foolish work?

Dates and dates and dates and names and names and names, and they go on and on. And thousands of people waste their whole lives, and they call it research. Then there are journalists, editors, newspaper people; they are chronological. They just go on looking for unnecessary details in the world, for news.

The truth is never news, because it is always there. It does not happen; it has already happened. Untruth is news.

Somebody asked George Bernard Shaw, "What is news?" He said, "When a dog bites a man it is not news, but when a man bites a dog it is news." Because news has to be something new. A dog biting a man is not news because it is not new. It has always been so and it will always be so. But when a man bites a dog, certainly it is news.

You will not find more futile and superficial people than journalists. They have a knack for finding out useless things. Journalists are impotent politicians. Politicians make news; journalists collect news. Journalists are like shadows to politicians. That's why newspapers are full of politicians; from this end to that, from the beginning to the end, just politics, politics, politics. A journalist is one who has failed in making news; now he collects it. His relationship to the politician is exactly the same as the relationship of a critic to the poet: one who has failed to become a poet, he becomes a critic.

I have heard about a famous actor.

In a certain film he needed a horse, and a horse owner brought his horse. It was an ordinary horse, but the owner started praising the horse very highly, and he said, "This is no ordinary horse. Don't go by the form; look at his spirit. He is a very great horse, and he has worked in so many movies that you can almost call him an actor." Exactly at that moment, the horse broke wind, long and loud.

The actor said, "I can see. He is not only an actor; he is a critic also."

The journalist, the critic, the historian, the politician, they all hang with the chronological time, with the very periphery of life, the most futile and useless effort that goes on in the world - and has become so important. We have made it so important because we have forgotten that the clock is not life.

The psychological time is dream time. Myth, poetry, love, art, painting, dancing, music, intuition, they all belong to psychological time. You have to move towards psychological time. The chronological time is for the extrovert mind. The psychological time is for the introvert, one who has started moving towards his inner soul.

There are dangers in psychological time also. That's why those who are obsessed with the chronological are against the psychological. There are dangers. There is a danger you may get trapped in it. Then you will become almost insane because you will be out of touch with the world, with people, with the society.