Three
What prevents the mind from
having immense space?
I think we were going to talk about death, weren’t we? Before we go into that
rather complex subject, we ought to consider what time is. And in relation to
time we should also examine what space is, because they are interrelated. No
problem, however complex it is, is isolated. Every problem is related to another
problem. In taking one problem and understanding it completely and going to the
very end of it with reason, logic, sanity, objectivity, we will be able to solve all
the other problems.
When one considers what is happening here and in the world, all the
confusion, the deterioration, the corruption, the division, the great suffering, it
behooves all of us to change, to bring about a different world, to create a totally
different social structure, not only here but in the world, because we are part of
the world, we are not separate from the world. Seeing the utter chaos, the great
confusion and misery, it seems to me that we must not take politics by itself or
the economic situation of a particular culture, or science by itself, but take the
whole movement of life, whether it is in the laboratory, in the field of economics,
or in the so-called religious field. It should all be taken as a whole. It is our
problem not to fragment it, not to divide it, but to take the whole movement of
life as a unit and deal with it. In this movement of life there is time, space, love,
and death. We are apt to separate death from life and life from love, and take love
as something apart from time, but to understand what death is, we must also
understand time and love.
That is what we are going to do this evening. We are going to share together,
and we mean together, because this is our problem, this is the human problem,
and we must together examine, understand, communicate, talk it over, share it.
This means that you must be equally intense, passionate to try to find out and not
depend on the speaker. To consider this problem, which is very complex,
requires all our attention and, naturally, our passion, because without passion you
cannot possibly understand anything. As we said when we last met here, passion
comes out of the flame of sorrow, and without understanding the meaning, the
depth of sorrow, you will not have the energy, the vitality, the passion, to
investigate and find out for yourself what love is and what death is.
So we are going first to consider what time is. There is time by the watch. Is
there any other time at all? Time involves process, gradual becoming, changing
what is into what should be. The whole traditional approach to change involves
time, doesn’t it? I am this and I must change to that or become that, and that
involves time, gradualness. But is there such a thing as psychological becoming,