sunshine. You are not concerned with the sunshine, but work away at lighting the
candle.
There are other things involved. There is the awakening of energy which has
so far been dissipated. To centralize energy, to gather the whole of it, attention is
involved, and also the complete elimination of time. Time and an attention which
is not forced, which is not concentration, which is not centred around a part, and
the gathering of energy—I think these are the fundamental things one has to
understand, because enlightenment must be and is the comprehension and
understanding of this vast life, the whole travail of living, dying, loving, and the
going beyond it.
The traditional masters would also agree that you have to have attention to go
beyond time. But they are the worshippers of the corner; they use time to go
beyond time.
P: How sir? I take a posture and direct my attention. How is time involved in
this?
K: Is attention the result of time?
P: No. You ask a question, and there is immediate attention. Is this attention the
product of time?
K: No, certainly not.
P: Your question and my attention being there—is there time involved in that? If
you would regard this as involving time, then the self-knowing process which is
going on continuously also involves time. My mind twenty years ago could not
have known its present quality; this state had no existence then.
K: Let us go slowly. We are trying to understand something which is out of time.
P: The tradition says: Prepare the body and the mind.
K: Through time you prepare the body and the mind to receive, to comprehend
and to be free of time. Can you do this through time?
P: The tradition also posits that through time you cannot go beyond time.
K: I question that through time you can perfect the instrument. Can you perfect
the instrument through time? Now, first of all, who is it that is perfecting the
instrument? Is it thought?
P: It would be invalid to say only thought. There are many other factors
involved.