Self-Inquiry with John Duncan, September 7, 2025

The group sat outside overlooking the ocean on a breezy but sunny day. There were nine of us and we began with a period of silence after which we read a passage from The Book of Life that was titled ‘Time is a Poison’. The title suggests that if we were to see that time creates disorder then, just as we can see poison in a bottle and have nothing to do with it, this understanding would liberate us from the tyranny of time immediately. 

It was suggested that both physical and psychological time are limited and, while we have to live in physical time, it too creates its own reality, and with both we are caught in time. Krishnamurti’s writing invited us to enter into a new time with him, a time that is not related to either physical or psychological time; a time that is not disorder but instead a time that has order as its foundation.

The group was intrigued by the invitation to enter that new time with him, and what that meant in terms of a new kind of time. Was he referring to the timeless? While familiar with the fact that psychological time is a ‘poison’, it was new to hear that physical time, which has some necessity in our day to day lives, such as catching a bus or train, was also not a part of this new time.

We observed the wind moving through the trees, the sunlight on our faces, and the ocean in the distance and the quietness of that beauty seemed to say as much or more about that new dimension of time as any words could muster.

 

• John Duncan