Time implies distance. Time implies movement. Time implies changing ‘what is’ into ‘what should be’. Another factor of time is the essence of disorder. Look at it, observe it. That is, you want to change ‘what is’ into ‘what should be’. If you are violent, you want to change that into non-violence, requiring time. That is your idea of time – give me a few years or a few weeks and during that interval I will control my violence and arrive at non-violence. That has been the trick you have been playing for the last umpteen years. To change ‘what is’ into ‘what should be’ requires time. One of the factors of disorder is time. Moving away from ‘what is’ is a waste of energy. You don’t know how to deal with ‘what is’ – if you knew what to do with ‘what is’, you wouldn’t move away and time would not be necessary. If I know how to deal with violence, the ideal of non-violence has no meaning. Because I do not know how to deal with violence, I invent non-violence as an idea. Therefore I say I must have time. During the interval between violence and becoming non-violent there are other factors entering which distort, so there is never a state of non-violence. From Public Talk 1, Bombay (Mumbai), 8 January 1977 Read more |