Highest knowledge: all at once

What is time? Now Patanjali asks the timeless question, the perennial question and he comes to it 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 - it 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:

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 from it, just underneath it, is another time which is not real, but more real than the chronological time; that is psychological time. There is a clock, 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 dock. 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 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.

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. Now trains don't bother about which sari you arc 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 sec, 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 of lice. 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.

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.

Let me tell you a few anecdotes.

An inoffensive-looking man was busy talking to an old friend of his and completely forgot the time. Suddenly he looked at his watch and said, "Oh, dear, it is three o'clock, and I have an appointment with my psychiatrist at three and it will take at least fifteen minutes to get there."

His friend said, "Now take it easy. You will only be a few minutes late."

"You don't know him. If I am not there on time he will start without me."

There is a danger of taking the dream to be the real. There is a danger of believing in your imagination too much. You can become so obsessed with your inner fantasy, dream world, that you can live in a fog. But even with the dangers it is very important to understand it and to pass through it. But remember, it is a bridge to be passed. When you have passed it, you will come across real time.

Chronological time corresponds to the body, psychological time to the mind, real time to your being. Chronological time is the extroverted mind, psychological time is the introverted mind, and real time is no-mind.

But one has to pass through the psychological. That territory has to be passed, fully alert.

You should not make your abode there. It is a bridge to be passed; you should not make your abode there. If you make your abode there you become mad. That's what has happened to many people who are in madhouses. They have forgotten chronological time, they have not reached real time, and they have started living on the bridge, the psychological time. That's why their reality has become personal and private. A madman lives in a private world, and the man you call sane lives in a public world. The public world is with people, the private world is just confined to yourself; but the real world is neither public nor private. It is universal, it is beyond both. And one has to go beyond both.

A man had a reputation as a road hog. He was lying in a hospital bed after an accident.

The doctor asked the nurse, "How is he this morning?"

She said, "Oh, he keeps putting his right hand out."

"Ah," said the doctor, "he is turning the corner."

A road hog, an automobile addict, even in his sleep goes on driving fast. Whatsoever you do in your dream reflects your desire, your goals, what you would like to have.

The primitive societies live in the psychological time. The East has lived in the psychological time; the West lives in the chronological time. If you move farther into the primitive societies hidden behind the hills and the forests, deep, you will see they live absolutely in psychological time. There are a few primitive societies in which dream is more important than reality, and the first thing a child has to do before breakfast is to relate his dream to his elders. The first thing is psychoanalysis. The dream has to be related to the elders before breakfast, and they all gather together and they analyze the dream. And then they tell the child to do something, because the dream is symbolic and it shows that something is needed to be done.

For example, a child dreams that he has been fighting with a friend, and in the morning he tells the dream to his elders. They will interpret it, and they will send the child with gifts and sweets and toys to the other's house, to the other child, to give him presents, and to tell him his dream. Because he has committed a crime.

In the West you cannot conceive of it. What have you done? You have not done anything, you have simply dreamt, but that particular primitive society says that you dreamt it because you wanted to do something like that, otherwise why? It must be a desire, hidden, repressed. As far as mind is concerned, you have committed it. Go and tell the child so no subtle anger goes on surrounding you. Tell the whole thing and ask his forgiveness and present these gifts to him.

Real gifts for a dream fight... but a miracle has happened to that society. By and by as the child grows, he stops dreaming. Dreams disappear. A grown-up man is one, according to that primitive society, who does not dream. This seems to be beautiful. Of course that society will not be appreciated by psychoanalysts because their whole profession will be gone.

The young girl went to see her psychiatrist and he asked her what she had dreamt on the previous night. She told him that she had not had any dreams at all that night, whereupon he got very angry and said, "Look, if you don't do your homework how can I help you?"

Dreaming is homework; and a psychoanalyst lives off your dreams. He goes on analyzing them. But this is something absurd. You cannot analyze your own dreams; how can somebody else do it? Because psychological time is personal, nobody can understand more than you yourself. Your dreams, how can somebody else understand them? His interpretations are going to be falsifications. His interpretations are going to be his interpretations. When a Freud analyzes your dream, his interpretation will be different.

When Jung analyzes the same dream, his interpretation is different. When Adler analyzes the same dream, his interpretation is different. So what has to be thought about it? You have dreamt one dream and three great psychoanalysts interpret it in three different ways.

Freud reduces everything to sex. Whatsoever you dream makes no difference. He will find a way and reduce it to sex. It seems he was obsessed with sex. He was a great pioneer, he has opened a great door, but he was phobic and he was afraid of sex; and he was afraid of other things also. He was so phobic that he could not cross the road; that was one of his great fears. Now you cannot think of Buddha being afraid? of crossing a road. This man himself is ill. He was so afraid of talking with people, that's why he created psychoanalysis. In psychoanalysis the psychoanalyst sits behind a screen and the patient lies down on a couch and goes on talking and the psychoanalyst simply listens - no communication. He was afraid to communicate. In personal encounters, person to person, he was always awkward. Now his whole mind has entered into his interpretation.

That's natural, that's how it should be.

Jung brings everything to religion, everything. Whatsoever you dream he will interpret in such a way that it becomes a religious dream. The same dream becomes sexual with Freud; with Jung it becomes religious. With Adler it becomes politics. Everything is ambition, and everybody is suffering with an inferiority complex, and everybody is trying to gain more power - "will to power." And now there are a thousand and one psychoanalysts all over the world, of different denominations. The denominations are as many as in Christianity. So many schools, and every psychoanalyst starts his own school.

And nobody is bothered with the patient, that it is his dream.

The problems of the psychoanalysts enter into their analysis, interpretation. This is not a way to help. In fact it is going to make things more complicated. A better society will teach you how to analyze your own dreams, how to psychoanalyze your own dreams.

Nobody can be more certain than you because nobody can be closer, only you.

The beautiful young lady went to see a psychiatrist. The doctor looked at her for a few seconds and then said, "Come over here, please." He then promptly put his arms around her and kissed her. As he finally released her, he commented casually, "That takes care of my problem. Now what is yours?"

They have their problems. They have their minds, obsessions.

In the East there has never existed anything like a psychoanalyst. Not that we were not aware of the psychological world. We were aware more deeply than any society has ever been aware, but we created a totally different type of person to help. We call that person the guru, the Master. What is the difference between a guru and a psychoanalyst? The difference is that the psychoanalyst still has his problems, unsolved, and the guru has no problems. When you don't have any problems, then your vision is clear. Then you can put yourself in the other's situation. When you don't have any problems, any obsessions, any complexes, nothing - you are completely clean of the mind, the mind has disappeared and you have attained to no-mind - then, then you can see. Then you will not interpret in a personal way. Your interpretation will be universal, will become existential.

And the third is real time, existential. The real time is no time at all, because the real time is eternity. Let me explain it to you.

The chronological time is arbitrary. In the West Zeno proved it long before. In the East Nagarjuna proved it so deeply that he has never been refuted. In fact Zeno and Nagarjuna, two persons, have remained irrefutable. Nobody can refute them; their arguments are so deep and absolute. Zeno and Nagarjuna say that the whole concept of time, chronological time, is absurd. Let me tell you a few things about these two persons and their analysis of chronological time.

They achieved the highest peak of time analysis. Nobody has ever been able to surpass them or improve upon them. They say, "What is time?" You say, "It is a process. One moment moves into the past, disappears; another moment moves from the future into the present; remains there on the threshold for a time; then again moves into the past, disappears." This is the time process. You have only one moment at one time, never two moments together. Past, future, and just between the two, the threshold, the present.

Now Nagarjuna and Zeno say, "Where does the moment come from? Is the future already eXistent? If it is not existent, then how can the moment come out of the nonexistential?"

Now they create trouble. They say, "Where does the present moment move to in the past?

Does it still remain accumulated in the past?" If you say it still remains in the past, then it has not become past yet. If you say it was there in the future and just now it has been revealed to us, it has always been there in the future; then, Nagarjuna and Zeno say, then you cannot call it the future; it has always been present. If the future is, then the future is not; because the future means that which is not yet. If the past is, then the past is not; because the past means that which has gone out of existence.

So whatsoever alternative you choose.... If you say the future is not and suddenly out of the blue the present moment appears, they both laugh. They say, "You are talking nonsense. How out of nonexistence can existence come? And how can the existential move into nonexistence again?" They say, "If there is nonexistence on both sides, then just in the middle, how can existence be? It must also be nonexistential. You got deceived."

Then they say, "You take time as a process? You say one moment is joined with another?" Nagarjuna and Zeno ask you, "There are two moments; how are they related?

Is there a third moment between the two which relates them?" Again they create a difficulty because, to relate, a link is needed. To relate two things, to relate the past with the present and the present with the future, links are needed. Then where do those links exist? What are those links? They can only be of time. So between one moment and another there is another moment to join these two. So instead of two there are three, but again they will have to be joined. Infinite regress arises.

Look at my two fingers. These two are needed to be joined; they become three fingers.

Now there are two holes instead of one, two blanks. They have to be joined; they become five. Now there are more gaps to be joined, and so on, so forth.

The chronological time, Nagarjuna and Zeno say, is utilitarian. It is not substantial. The real time is not a process, because, Nagarjuna says, if time itself is a process, then it will need another time. For example, you walk. You need time. You have come to me, to this Chuang Tzu Auditorium from your home. It took fifteen minutes for you to come here. If there is no time, how will you come here, because walking needs time? Walking is a process; you need time. All processes need time. Now Nagarjuna says, "If you say time itself is a process, it will need another time, a supertime. And that too is a process. Then a super-supertime...." Again infinite regress arises. Then you cannot solve it.

No, time - real time - is not a process. It is a simultaneity. Future, past, present are not three separate things; so there is no need to join them. It is eternal now, it is eternity. It is not that time is passing by, by your side. Where will it go? It will need another medium to pass through, and where will it go and from where will it come? It is there; or rather it is here. Time is. It is not a process.

Because we cannot see the total time - our eyes are confined, limited; we are looking out of small slits - that's why it seems you can see only one moment at a time. It is your limitation, not a division of time. Because you cannot see the whole time as it is - because you are not whole yet - that's why.

Now the sutras.

If you bring your samadhi consciousness to the process of time - to the moment which is, to the moment that is gone, to the moment that is to come - if you bring your samadhi, suddenly, the knowledge of ultimate reality, because the moment you look with samadhi the distinction between present, future, and past disappears. They dissolve. The distinction is false. Suddenly you become aware of eternity. Then time is a simultaneity.

Nothing is passing, nothing is coming in; everything is, simply is.

This isness is known as God; this isness is the idea of God.

"Performing samyama on the present moment, the moment gone, and the moment to come brings knowledge born of the awareness of the ultimate reality." If you can see time through the eyes of satori, samadhi, time disappears.

But this is the last miracle; after it there is only kaivalya, liberation. When time disappears, everything disappears because the whole world of desire, ambition, motivation is there because of the wrong conception of time. Time is created; time as process - past, present, future - is created by desiring. This is one of the greatest insights of the Eastern sages: that time, the process, is really a projection of desire. Because you desire something, you create future. And because you cling, you create past. Because you cannot leave that which is no longer before you, and you want to cling to it, you create memory. And because that which has not come yet, you expect it in your own way, you create future. Future and past are mental states, not part of time. Time is eternal. It is not divided. It is one, whole.

"KSHANA-TAT-KRAMAYOH SAMYAMAD VIVEKAJAM GYANAM." One who has come to know what the moment and the process of time is becomes aware of the ultimate; becoming aware of time, one becomes aware of the ultimate. Why? Because the ultimate exists as real time.

You live in the chronological; then you live in the newspaper world. Then you live in the world of the politicians, mad, ambitious people. Or if you live in the psychological time, you live in the world of the mad, the insane, or the world of fantasy, dream, poetry.

A new doctor was looking around the asylum. He came across one inmate and said to him, "Who are you?"

The man drew himself up to his full height and said, "I, sir, am Napoleon."

The doctor said, "Really? Who told you that?"

The patient said, "God told me, who else?"

A little man Lying in the next bed looked up and said, "I didn't."

Go to the madhouses; it is worth visiting. Just see people. They are living in a fantasy world. They have completely moved out of the collective world and they have not entered the universal world. They are hanging in between; they are in the limbo.

The psychiatrist was surprised to see his young woman patient standing outside his office looking very perplexed. It was not half an hour since he had been treating her. He said, "What is the matter?"

She said, "Oh, dear, I don't know whether I am coming or going.

The doctor said, "Exactly, that is why you have come to see me."

"Oh," she said, "who are you then?"

"I am your lousy psychiatrist."

A world of limbo arises. If you lose contact with the chronological world and you don't become connected with the world of the universal, the ultimate, suddenly you don't know whether you are coming in or going out. Everything becomes doubtful, everything becomes suspicious. You cannot trust yourself, you cannot trust your eyes, you cannot trust anybody. You are closed in, caved in. You become a windowless being, a monad.

This is what hell is. You cannot move out of yourself; you are crippled. Remember, a meditator passes consciously through the world of the madman - consciously. And it is good to pass consciously because if you don't pass consciously there is every possibility you will become an unconscious victim of it. It is better to go through it alert, aware, rather than being forced into it. If life forces you into it, then you will not be able to come out of it. It will be very, very difficult.

And the psychoanalyst can only help to bring you back to the chronological world. That's the difference between a Master and a psychoanalyst. The psychoanalyst brings the man who has got lost in the psychological back to the chronological - through shock treatment, electric shock, insulin shock - because if you are shocked very much, suddenly your dream is broken. You become a little alert; you move back to the chronological world.

The Master, if you are lost in the psychological, takes you further back in, takes you to the universal. You will never become part of the chronological world, but you will become part of the universal time.

FROM THIS COMES THE ABILITY TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN SIMILAR OBJECTS WHICH CANNOT BE IDENTIFIED BY CLASS, CHARACTER, OR PLACE.

Once you know the ultimate, a totally different kind of knowing arises in you. Right now you know things only from the outside. Somebody comes, you look at the clothes, and you think, "Yes, she is a woman," or "a mall." You look at the tree and you recognize it - "It is a pine tree" - because you know the description. You see a mall and you know that he is a doctor because of his stethoscope. But these are outer indications of things. He may not be a doctor; he may be just a pretender. And the pine tree may not be a pine tree; it may just look like a pine tree. And the woman may not be a woman; she may be just acting. She may be a man; she may be a he. You cannot be absolutely certain about it, because you know only from the outside.

When time disappears and eternity surrounds you, when time is no longer a process but a pool of energy, eternal now, then you become capable of entering into things and of knowing without any definitions from the outside.

That's what happens between a Master and a disciple. He need not ask you, really. He can see from your very being. He can stand in you - not only in your shoes but in your being.

He can fit exactly in your innermost vacuum. He can be you, and look from there.

... And transcends the process world, and transcends the world of all processes.

Through the eye we can see only a part of reality. Because of that part, life looks like a process. Just for example, you are sitting under a tree and the road is empty, and then suddenly a man appears on the road from the left side; he goa on the right side; after walking a little distance he disappears again. Somebody is sitting in the tree. Long before the man appeared to you, he appeared to the man who is in the tree. When the man disappears to you, he does not disappear for the man who is sitting in the tree; but after a time the man disappears for him also. But somebody is in a helicopter. Now his vision goes farther; the man continues to walk - long before you became aware that he was on the road and long after he disappeared for you.

What is happening? Exactly this is the case with things. The higher you rise, the closer you reach the sahasrar - you are climbing the tree of life. Sahasrar is the ultimate point to look from. There is no more height than that. From sahasrar you see things: everything goes on and on and on. Nothing stops, nothing disappears.

It is very difficult; it is as difficult as the physicists' explanation of the ultimate electron, quanta, that it is both a wave and a particle, both a dot and a line.

You are flying in an aeroplane, over the Ganges, and the Ganges is flowing. If I ask you, "Is the Ganges a process? Is the Ganges flowing, or is it that the Ganges IS?" what will you say? You will say, "Both." You will say, "The Ganges is," because you can see it from one end to the other simultaneously. You can see the Ganges in the Himalayas, you can see the Ganges on the plains, you can see the Ganges falling into the ocean, simultaneously - past, present, future have disappeared. The whole Ganges is available to you from a certain altitude. It is, and yet you know it is flowing. It is both being and becoming; it is both wave and particle, dot and line; is and still a process.

It is paradoxical, it looks paradoxical, because we don't know how things appear from that height.

This sutra says, "The highest knowledge born of the awareness of reality is transcendent...." It transcends all dualities, polarities of is and process, of static and dynamic, of wave and particle, of life and death, of past and future - all dualities, all polarities. It is transcendent. "TARAKAM SARVAVISHAYAM" - it transcends all the objects of knowledge.

"... includes the cognition of all objects simultaneously...." And for this consciousness is used the word "omniscient." Everything exists for it simultaneously. Very difficult to understand, almost impossible to comprehend. It means for a man of ultimate understanding, if he looks at you, he will see you while you were in your mother's womb - simultaneously - and you are being born - simultaneously - and you are growing and you have become a child and you have become a young man and you are marrying a woman and you have fallen in love and your children are born and you have become old and you are dying and people are going in a funeral procession - all simultaneously. The whole will appear in total.

Difficult to comprehend, because how is it possible? A child is being born. How can he die right this moment? He is either a child or young or old, either in the womb or in the coffin, either in the cradle or in the grave. But that is our division because we cannot see totally.

A certain scientist in Soviet Russia has photographed buds with such a sensitive photographic instrument, films, that nobody has tried before; and the picture has come of the flower. The bud has been photographed, but in the picture the flower has come. It is still a bud. What has happened? Because the bud is also a flower, simultaneously. You cannot see it because you see only in parts. First you see it as a bud; then a few petals open, then a few more, then a few more; then the whole flower opens. But with a very sensitive camera, Kirlian photography has given a tremendous insight into reality. You can photograph a bud, and the photograph comes of a flower. Because when the bud is there, deep down, surrounding the bud, the energy flower has already opened. The visible petals will follow, but the energy field has already flowered. It is there. And later on, when the real flower had flowered, they were surprised to see that the photograph was absolutely exact. They could compare the real flower later on.

Some day or other it will be possible to photograph a seed, and one photograph will not come but many - of the seed, of the sprout, of the buds, of the flowers, of the tree, and the falling of the tree, and the disappearing of the tree.

" TARAKAM... SARVATHAVISHAYAM AKRAMAM...." Ordinarily we see everything in a gradual process, in karma, in a gradual process - a child becoming young, a young man becoming old - slowly, as if a film is being projected very slowly on the screen. That's how we see it. But the ultimate knowledge is total and absolute. In a single moment everything is revealed.

Ordinarily we move with a small torch in a dark night. When the torch shows us one tree, other trees are hidden in darkness. When the torch moves to other trees, the first tree has moved into darkness. You can see only a little patch of the path. But that ultimate knowledge is like lightning: suddenly you see the whole forest, in a single vision.

These are all just symbolic. Hmm?... don't extend and don't stretch these symbols too much. They are just to give you subtle indications of what happens. In fact it cannot be said.

Now, chronological time is politics, history, economics, money, things, intellect, the market, Wall Street. Psychological time is dream, myth, poetry, love, art, intuition, painting, dance, drama. Real time is existence, science and religion.

Science is trying to penetrate the existence through the objective approach; and religion tries to penetrate the same reality through the subjective approach; and yoga is the synthesis of both.

The word "science" is beautiful; it means "the capacity to see." It exactly means what the Indian word darshan means. The word darshan should not be translated as "philosophy"; it can be translated more accurately as "science" - the capacity to see.

Science is trying to penetrate the ultimate through the objective, from the outside.

Religion is trying to penetrate the same ultimate through the subjective. And yoga is the highest synthesis; yoga is both, science and religion together.

Yoga is the suprascience and suprareligion. Yoga is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian - it is suprareligious. And of course it is a suprascience because it is the science of man - it is the science of the scientist himself. It touches the ultimate. That's why I call it the alpha and the omega, UNIO MYSTICA, the ultimate synthesis.