The Endless Now: Jiddu Krishnamurti on Time and Death

     Man lives by time.  Inventing the future has been his favorite form of escape.  We think that changes in ourselves can come about in time, that order in ourselves can be built up little by little, added to day by day.  But time doesn't bring order or peace, so we must stop thinking in terms of gradualness.  This means that there is no tomorrow for us to be peaceful in.  We must be orderly on the instant.

     Time is a movement which man has divided into past, present and future, and as long as he divides it, he will always be in conflict.

     The first thing to understand is that we can look at time only with that freshness and innocency of mind which we have already been into.  We are confused about our many problems, and lost in that confusion.  Now, if one is lost in a wood, what is the first thing one does?  One stops, doesn't one?  One stops and looks around.  But the more we are confused and lost in life the more we chase around, searching, asking, demanding, begging.  So the first thing, if I may suggest it, is that you completely stop inwardly.

     Do you know what is?  Not by the watch, not chronological time, but psychological time?  It is the interval between idea and action.  An idea is for self-protection obviously; it is the idea of being secure.  Action is always immediate; it is not of the past or of the future; to act must always be in the present, but action is so dangerous, so uncertain, that we conform to an idea which we hope will give us a certain safety.

     Now we are asking can we put a stop to time? Can we live so completely that there is no tomorrow for thought to think about?  Time is sorrow.  So long as there is this interval of time which has been bred by thought, there must be sorrow, there must be continuity of fear.  So one asks oneself can this interval come to an end?

     Time is the interval between the observer and the observed.  That is, the observer, you, is afraid to meet this thing called death.  Now- have you found out for yourself whether there is a soul?  Or is it an idea that has been handed down to you? Is there something permanent, continuous, which is beyond thought?  If thought can think about it, it is within the field of thought, and therefore it cannot be permanent because there is nothing permanent within the field of thought.  To discover that nothing is permanent is of tremendous importance, for only then is the mind free, then you can look, and in that there is great joy.

     Thought breeds the fear of death and says 'let's postpone it, let's avoid it, keep it as far away as possible, let's not think about it'- but you do think about it.  We would rather cling to the known than face the unknown- the known being our house, our furniture, our family, our character, our work, our knowledge, our fame, our loneliness, our gods- that little thing that moves around incessantly within itself with its own pattern of embittered existence.  We think that living is always in the present, and that dying is something that awaits us at a distant time.  But we have never questioned whether this battle of everyday life is living at all.

     Death is extraordinarily like life when you know how to live.  You cannot live without dying.  You cannot live unless you die psychologically every minute.  This is not an intellectual paradox.  To live completely, wholly, every day as if it were a new loveliness, there must be dying to everything of yesterday, otherwise you live mechanically, and a mechanical mind can never know what love or freedom is.

     Most of us are frightened of dying because we don't know what it means to live.  We don't know how to live, therefore we don't know how to die.  As long as we are frightened of life, we shall be frightened of death.  The man who is not frightened of life is not frightened of being completely insecure for he understands that inwardly, psychologically, there is no security.  When there is no security there is endless movement, and then life and death are the same.  The man who lives without conflict, who lives with beauty and love, is not frightened of death because to love is to die.

     If you die to everything you know, then death is a purification, a rejuvenating process; then death brings innocence and it is only the innocent who are passionate, not the people who believe, or who want to find out what happens after death.  To find out what takes place after you die, you must die.  This isn't a joke.  You must die- not physically but psychologically, inwardly, die to the things you have cherished and to the things you are bitter about.

     To die is to have a mind completely empty of itself, empty of its daily longings, pleasures and agonies. Death is a renewal, a mutation, in which thought does not function at all because thought is old.  When there is death there is something totally new.  Freedom from the known is death, and then you are living.