2008.10.03 07:00 - Time flies

I, Quen, arrive late at the pavilion.

RL the phone came to life just before the weekend, bringing others collected concerns of this week to spend the weekend on my desk. Shocked that I had not watched the time and missed the start of my Play at Being slot, the concerns start to fade from my mind.

When I enter the pavilion it's quiet, there is nobody there. Other concerns come up. What if somebody came before me and left disappointed? What if somebody had very nice and inspiring thoughts but I missed this person.. There is not a sign of someone, only sounds of birds and trees. Then I see someone further on the sim, out of chat reach. But he or she seems not interested by what is going on in this pavilion. So I sit, try to calm down and think about PaB. And what has been said about time.

Time flies lately, it seems slowly speeding up every day an unnoticeable little bit to gradually complicate life more. When I was young, an hour was endless, you could play all day, you had all the time in the world. Waiting for nice things, birthdays, the first day of the opening of the municipal swimming pool… it took ages. But advancing to new levels in life, time speeded up. It is like a videogame, every level gets more complicated and time becomes more pressuring. Life like Tetris… Only what is the purpose of the game and what are all the rules? Need to work on 'skills', so the pressure of time is relatively less prominent. Most games you always loose in the end, you cannot play it forever, at some point you loose all your lifes and you get a score. And you try again. Though there are some adventure games which can be played till the end, if you try over and over. So you will discover everything it has to offer. I am not a gamer, I found that I don't really like it. But maybe I am…

What's is on your mind you come across everywhere.. (so if you have less on your mind things seem more peaceful?) Like the fascinating book I am reading. It seems too much a coincidence, the connection which can be made with PaB and earlier thoughts about how experiencing and interpreting works.

Still nobody at the pavilion. Everything is calm, Quen seems relaxed. Other people are in their own games. She decides to share one of the numerous chapters from the book. Maybe others would be interested. It's about experience.

Experience

The valley was in the shadow, and the setting sun touched the far-away mountain tops; their evening glow seemed to come from within. To the north of the long road, the mountains were bare and barren, exposed by the fire; to the south, the hills were green and heavy with bushes and trees. The road ran straight, dividing the long and graceful valley. The mountains on this particular evening seemed so close, so unreal, so light and tender. Heavy birds were circling effortlessly high in the heavens. Ground squirrels were lazily crossing the road, and there was the hum of a distant airplane. On both sides of the road were orange orchards, well ordered and well kept. After the hot day the smell of purple sage was very strong, and so was the smell of sunburnt earth and hay. The orange trees were dark, with their bright fruit. The quail were calling, and a road-runner disappeared into the bush. A long snake-lizard, disturbed by the dog, wriggled off into the dry weeds. The evening stillness was creeping over the land.

Experience is one thing, experiencing is another. Experience is a barrier to the state of experiencing. However pleasant or ugly the experience, it prevents the flowering of experiencing. Experience is already in the net of time, it is already in the past, it has become a memory which comes to the experience. The weight and the strength of experience shadow the present, and so experiencing becomes the experience. The mind is the experience, the known, and it can never be in the state of experiencing; for what it experiences is the continuation of experience. The mind only knows continuity, and it can never receive the new as long as its continuity exists. What is continuous can never be in a state of experiencing. Experience is not the means to experiencing, which is a state without experience. Experience must cease for experiencing to be.

The mind can invite only its own self-projection, the known. There cannot be the experiencing of the unknown until the mind ceases to experience. Thought is the expression of experience; thought is a response of memory; and as long as thinking intervenes, there can be no experiencing. There is no means, no method to put an end to experience; for the very means is a hindrance to experiencing. To know the end is to know continuity, and to have a means to the end is to sustain the known. The desire for achievement must fade away; it is this desire that creates the means and the end. Humility is essential for experiencing. But how eager is the mind to absorb the experiencing into experience! How swift it is to think about the new and thus make it of the old! So it establishes the experiencer and the experienced, which gives birth to the conflict of duality.

In the state of experiencing, there is neither the experiencer nor the experienced. The tree, the dog and the evening star are not to be experienced by the experiencer; they are the very movement of experiencing. There is no gap between the observer and the observed; there is no time, no spatial interval for thought to identify itself. Thought is utterly absent, but there is being. This state of being cannot be thought or meditated upon, it is not a thing to be achieved. The experiencer must cease to experience, and only then is there being. In the tranquility of its movement is the timeless.

from:
Commentaries on Living. First Series.
From the Notebooks of J. Krishnamurti
Edited by D. Rajagopal
Sixth Quest Book printing 1984 (1956, Krishnamurti Writings, Inc.)
ISBN 0-86359-0390-3
p. 31-32