What is time?

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…

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…

Osho, the stream of the timeless is what Lord Buddha called a muhurta for a fleeting instant, and you call the same thing the present. This too makes sense to me, and yet it remains beyond my understanding. But even from this little understanding the joy that arises fills me with gratitude. Osho, I come to your refuge.

All those who have known, all who have awakened, have said one thing with certainty: truth is outside the stream of time—timeless, beyond time. The world is within time—or say, whatever is within time is the world; whatever is outside time is liberation. You can gather a few glimpses of this in your own life now and then. Consider: when you are unhappy, time seems long. When pain becomes intense and your very life writhes in suffering, time grows lengthy. The clock’s pace remains the same; the clock does not see your pleasure and pain, it knows nothing of them. It moves at its own rhythm, yet an hour passes as if centuries are passing. Whoever has known sorrow has known the long stretch of time; time becomes longer and longer. A loved one is dying, and you sit by their cot through the night; the night becomes so long…

Question: BELOVED OSHO, AND AN ASTRONOMER SAID, MASTER, WHAT OF TIME? AND HE ANSWERED: YOU WOULD MEASURE TIME THE MEASURELESS AND THE IMMEASURABLE. YOU WOULD ADJUST YOUR CONDUCT AND EVEN DIRECT THE COURSE OF YOUR SPIRIT ACCORDING TO HOURS AND SEASONS. OF TIME YOU WOULD MAKE A STREAM UPON WHOSE BANK YOU WOULD SIT AND WATCH ITS FLOWING. YET THE TIMELESS IN YOU IS AWARE OF LIFE'S TIMELESSNESS, AND KNOWS THAT YESTERDAY IS BUT TODAY'S MEMORY AND TOMORROW IS TODAY'S DREAM. AND THAT THAT WHICH SINGS AND CONTEMPLATES IN YOU IS STILL DWELLING WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THAT FIRST MOMENT WHICH SCATTERED THE STARS INTO SPACE. WHO AMONG YOU DOES NOT FEEL THAT HIS POWER TO LOVE IS BOUNDLESS?

Performing samyama on the present moment, the moment gone, and the moment to come brings knowledge born of the awareness of the ultimate reality. From this comes the ability to distinguish between similar objects which cannot be identified by class, character, or place.

THE HIGHEST KNOWLEDGE BORN OF THE AWARENESS OF REALITY IS TRANSCENDENT, INCLUDES THE COGNITION OF ALL OBJECTS SIMULTANEOUSLY, PERTAINS TO ALL OBJECTS AND PROCESSES WHATSOEVER -- IN THE PAST, THE PRESENT, AND THE FUTURE AND TRANSCENDS THE WORLD PROCESS. The chronological time is fixed, it has to be fixed, because it is a social necessity; but the psychological time is fluid, it is not so solid, because each person has his own psychology, his Own mind. Have you watched? When you are happy, time goes fast. Your clock will not go fast; the clock has nothing to do with you. It moves at its own pace -- in sixty seconds it moves one minute, in sixty minutes it moves one hour. It will continue; whether you are happy or unhappy doesn't matter. If you are unhappy your mind will be in a different time; if you are happy your mind…