What Is

[John Iverson]

Time

[Prabhaker]

@John Iverson

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. Clock time will stop immediately if man is not there; so it is man-created, a social by-product.

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.

Deep down from chronological, 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. 

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. 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.

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.

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. 

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. 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.

~ OSHO