#15 PART.II.thought — 'Ending time’ in practice

The Goal in Architecture PART.II.2.0 Psychological time.

Psychological time is the term that Krishnamurthi uses to express thought we expect will use mental process that takes time. Time is perceived in the natural world in many ways that are obvious. Guiding myself as I walk or drive, or writing a substack, designing or building an environment — our activity requires guidance that forms in our awareness and that forms our awareness. But we can differentiate two components. Constructing what is designed and writing what has been ideated, and reading what is written do require time. The pen must travel as we carefully arrange the letters and numbers in sequence; I cannot type all the letters at once, nor can all the words on a page be read at once. But knowing what to build or what to write, for example, does not necessarily require time. The mind's activity gets con–fused with the time taken to realize the needs that come to mind. This leads to issues that are concealed. Krishnamurti points out that we may not realize that we may end the time our mind takes and how it is limiting our capacity. This challenges some concepts that may seem inevitable to most of us.

Psychological time is then an artifact of ego based thought’s creation. In order to stop psychological time, ideas of how to do it come up. As soon as there is a process or steps of any kind, structures of time and increment are again brought “inward” into the self. “Every method implies time”, Krishnamurti asserts,¹ so that the only way to stop time within our being is to stop thinking (with) it, just like we let certain thoughts go by ignoring them. Mentated time can vanish, as it has no grounds other than the thought of it, reflecting ideas about time. I am developing this as a contribution to architectural practice. This is also part of spiritual practice.

The two discussants consider psychological time as a general condition of Being where the brain is not just each brain strictly in terms of each person. Although we are quite different in our individual identities within the oneness of our one brain, with the one mind, they consider the human brain is one that we all use that is developing or evolving according to its implementation. This is core to human unity in its natural form within conscious life.

The sense of separateness that comes through individuality itself is a form of interiorized interval includes time.

Krishnamurthi: Is time the factor? Time — as ‘I need knowledge in order to do this or that’? The same principle applied inwardly? Is time the factor?

Dr. David Bohm: I can’t see that time by itself can be the only factor.

K: ... Time. Becoming — which implies time.

DB: ... time applied outwardly doesn’t cause any trouble.

K: ... — but we are discussing the idea of time, inwardly.

DB: So we have to see why time is so destructive inwardly.

K: Because I am trying to become something.

DB: Yes but most people would say this is only natural. ... what is wrong with becoming?

K: ... when I am trying to become something, it is a constant battle.

DB: ... It is not a battle if I try to improve my position outwardly.

K: Outwardly, no. ... applied inwardly it brings about a contradiction. ... between ‘what is’ and becoming ‘what should be’.

DB: Why is it a contradiction inwardly and not outwardly?

K: Inwardly it builds up a centre, doesn’t it? An egoistic centre.

DB: ... we are trying to force ourselves. When we are a certain thing that we want to be, we also want to be something else, ... and therefore we want two different things at the same time.

K: ... the origin of all this misery, confusion, conflict, struggle — what is the beginning of it? ... I’ ...?²

When identity forms an ‘I’, the greater realm of life and the universe are sliced up. According to Krishnamurthi, the strife, bigotry, hate and imbalances of every kind among humankind, are based on interiorized or psychological time. Also technology. This is an ongoing matrix of internal conflict in each of us as we maintain a number of separate images divided by time internally, supporting divisions and barriers as ideas about things. Knowing beauty and happiness is filtered through our inward measure.

All of us have to deal with it. ‘I’ tends to define our individual awareness; a certain realm of the accepted, the known and the ‘right’ and its wrong. ‘I’ and is formed in each of us originally, helping us to develop knowledge bringing each of us along to move the ignorance–knowledge relationship. Applied inwardly in the psyche ‘what is’ and ‘what is not’ and what ‘I’ am and what ‘I’ am not. It is a way to proceed positively in ways that we all know. It also forms barriers, limits and veils that arise as if they are original. These divisions are commonly pushed around by learning, teaching, in training a sense of learning, improvement or overcoming. This is one way of describing what is called ‘duality’. Krishnamurthi is pointing to what we do in our own minds every day in a normative process of living. Overcoming such divisions can never happen as what ‘I’ no longer wishes to be, according to Krishnamurthi.

Krishnamurti points out that overcoming or ‘learning’ as process is actually the maintenance of an issue. The internal multiplicity maintains itself in psychological time — the mode itself drives it on as (fictive) ground, whatever the issue. Thought time then maintains the conditions for ignorance. It cannot end within itself. Learning, and change is then a condition of development that is, limited within another superordinate stage that remains unchanged. We are addressing the need to escape that condition that includes all measure as increments, where such means only return us to the need. The field of ignorance can be adapted, but it is not removed. Seeking wellbeing through exclusively material means brings relief and peace, yet it is also never a success.

Dr. David Bohm: The brain has evolved so it has time within it. ... It has become part of its very structure. ... However, the mind operates without time, although the brain is not able to do so. ... I see that the brain, having a structure of time is not able to respond properly to mind.

Krishnamurthi: Has the brain the capacity to see in what it is doing now — being caught in time — that in that process there is no end to conflict? That means, is there a part of the brain which is not of time? ... That would mean — ... there is a part of the brain that is free of time.

DB: Not a part, but rather that the brain is mainly dominated by time, although that doesn’t necessarily mean it couldn’t shift.

K: Yes, that is, can the brain, dominated by time, not be subservient to it?

DB: ... In that moment it comes out of time. It is dominated only when you give it time. Thought which takes time is dominated, but anything fast enough is not dominated.³'

Mental condition' can be substituted for "the brain". We are dependent on our mental condition and its capacity to create projects. We use enormous resources to create faster systems, such as AI today, thinking that it well augment that capacity and save human energy. Yet, the ancient assertion is that time is not required to know something. We can be infinitely fast, which a computer can never achieve. This capacity and the kind of architects we are and may be, and the way our world serves us and how we serve the world, and how we might restore balance or allow nature to restore balance are all in question.

Changing the presencing of time inwardly is meaningful to how we work and the way we engage the environment. Ending time and ending inner conflict will change how we dwell.

We are going into areas seemingly far from architecture to do. We are understanding Krishnamurthi and Dr. David Bohm’s point in a form that serves architectural practice: That thought itself is a form of being that is chosen according to the context of anyone (individual identity) — an architect. I want to remind you, the reader, that this is a way to discuss how to serve and be served by spiritual practice.

How are the practice of architectural presencing and the architectural profession tied up in how we think and conflicts related to thought and psychological time? The available condition of timelessness, barrierlessness and silence, which all of us may feel or know in our hearts, is always “fast enough” to remain undominated and immutable, a condition that is in everyone always. It always ‘flies’ on and is not effected. A ‘structural’ relationship of architectural practice with spirituality becomes available. This is not a consideration of right or wrong, not moralizing; we need to know the necessity for epic conflict in the field where knowledge and ignorance exchange territory, and the functional role of doing that.

Providing for architecture supports the intent to reveal this. Aspiration in dwelling, which we call presencing architecture, is this in our intentional environments. It implies the goal beyond, which is concealed by mind dominated by time. When something is built, be it a basic shelter, or an urban complex like New York's World Trade Centre, and any intended environment in the ‘world’ with purpose of some sort, we are active mentally within Nature, and within the universe. I consider this not just as the house we can buy, but that the house is designed as area with low maintenance, and with either low cost or expressing our wealth. We seek release from imbalance in our lives, but we hardly address how building and the environment influences our being beyond such measurable attributes.

Architecture is ‘the ending of time’ as the mind releases capacity into dwelling as aspiration. Preparation of intentional environments and building process is thought, but architecture does not define time is a necessity like removing ignorance does. Architecture is what we are in its presencing; it is immediate.

The discussion between Krishnamurthi and Dr. David Bohm keys us into the way in which the difference between thought (building) process and what presences as architecture and to form a way of working professionally that allows for ending time. While humankind denies itself access to architecture (aspiration) via its current means to plan and construct architecture, even this is still in the service of our aspiration.

Aspiration’s origin as Goal, whether I can conceive of it or not, is immeasurable and tends to infinity. I am always on the life-path either aware of this, or in the matrix of grokking it  — toward the goal in aspiration that eventually happens in any case. The ending of psychological time — which implies a big shift in thought and in technology — is borne within the intent to prepare environments to presence architecture, and it is native to it.

1. Krishnamurthi, Bohm, The Ending of Time. 1985. p.22.

2. Krishnamurthi, Bohm, The Ending of Time. 1985. p.11.

3. Krishnamurthi, Bohm, The Ending of Time. 1985. p.20.