According to Osho, time has two faces: outer clock time and inner psychological time. The essence of time is the inner flow created by passion, desire and craving; happiness contracts it, suffering expands it. In meditation, when desire ends and bliss beyond joy and sorrow dawns, inner time drops to zero—timelessness—while the outer clock keeps ticking. Living here-now dissolves tomorrow’s projections.
Time is mostly a feeling your wanting creates inside; when you stop craving and rest in the present, that inner time disappears even though the clock still runs.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
You ask: “Are lust, anger, greed, and attachment merely shadows of time?”
Only desire is the shadow of time. You can call desire the shadow of time or time the shadow of desire. It is more accurate to say that time is the shadow of desire. If desire drops, time drops. If time drops, desire too drops. But your effort has to be to let desire drop—because at the very root is desire, the wanting: something is needed! As I am, I am not content; I must become something else! There is the seed of desire. What I have is not enough; I must get more! The world as it is will not do; it should be otherwise, in accord with my dreams. My mind is not delighted. If there is even a trace of discontent, desire has arisen. In the expanding of that desire, time also arises. It is better to say desire and time are two sides of the same…
Please Osho, what is time?
TIME has two meanings. One is chronological time, the clock's time. I cannot say much about it. You have to ask a physicist; only he can say something about it. That is not my dimension of work. If you ask the physicists, Albert Einstein and others, they will say time is the fourth dimension of space. But that does not make much sense, the mystery remains. The mystery remains as mysterious as it was before Albert Einstein. Saint Augustine is reported to have said, "I know what time is if nobody asks me; if somebody asks me then I don't know." Time is a mysterious quality. Everybody lives in it, everybody feels it, everybody knows it, and yet it is inexplicable. The physicist has come to a certain understanding -- that it is the fourth dimension of space -- but that too does not demystify it. In fact it becomes…
To become one with time is to become one with the divine. Becoming one with time means the capacity to accept change: whatsoever happens, the knack of consenting. Whatever occurs, a complete oneness with it—no inner resistance. Whatever time brings, total accord: if illness, illness; if old age, old age; if death begins to come, death. No resistance anywhere within. Only then will you know what time is. But we are all fighting. We try to step aside from time. We cannot; yet our effort is that. I have heard: people caught Mulla Nasruddin outside his house and asked, “What are you doing here?” He was sitting under a tree, lost in thought. They said, “Your wife has fallen into the swift river. The current is strong; the rains are on. Soon she will reach the sea. Run!
Being beyond the limits of time he is the master of masters. He is known as aum.
REPEAT AND MEDITATE ON AUM. REPEATING AND MEDITATING ON AUM BRINGS ABOUT THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ALL OBSTACLES AND AN AWAKENING OF A NEW CONSCIOUSNESS. Remember this -- desire and need -- these two words. Desire is of the mind; need is of the body. Desire and need, then you are a clock with hands. Only need, no desire, then you are a clock without hands, and when need also drops, you have gone beyond time. This is eternity; beyond time is eternity. For example: if I don't look at the watch -- and I have to look continuously the whole day -- if I don't look at the watch, I don't know what is the time. Even if I have seen it five minutes before, again I have to look because I don't know exactly, because now -- no time inside -- only the body is ticking. Consciousness has no…
Osho, could you say something about what is going on in Delhi?
I’ll tell a little story. When Lanka’s former ruler Ravana was on his deathbed, Rama sent Lakshman to learn statecraft from him—saying, “Son, we may have won, but we have no experience of running the administration here; go and ask him how to run things.” Lakshman went there and said to Ravana, “You are dying now—tell us how to govern here.” Ravana said, “Half the politics I handled, half Kumbhakarna did. Had you gotten in touch with Kumbhakarna as well?” Lakshman said, “Yes—he said: eat to your heart’s content and then sprawl on the sofa with your eyes closed. This is the best method.” “Tell me,” Ravana asked, “are you going to unleash dictatorship, or will you run things by democracy? Which method will be suitable?” “What will go down well with the people?” “Nothing,” said Ravana. “When you impose dictatorship, the people will yearn for democracy; and when you…