Does it take time to get rid of the past? | J. Krishnamurti

Does it take time to get rid of the past, and so prevents one from living immediately? Right? That’s the question.

There is the whole cave hidden – the past, there, down there, like in a cellar where you keep your wine, if you have wine. And is it, to be free of it, does it take time? What is involved in taking time?

Which is what we are used to: ‘I’ll take time. I’ll. .

. Virtue is a thing to be acquired step by step, I’ll practice it, day after day, think about it, I’ll get rid of my hate gradually, my violence, slowly’ – that’s what we are used to, that is our conditioning. And so we say, ask ourselves, is it possible to throw away all the past gradually?

Which means time. That is, being violent – one of the conditionings of the past – being violent, I’ll gradually get rid of it. What does that mean?

Gradually, step by step. In the meantime, I am being also violent. The idea that doing some.

. . of getting rid of violence gradually is a form of hypocrisy.

Obviously. If I am violent, I can’t get rid of it gradually. I must end it immediately.

And can I end anything immediately, psychological things immediately? You cannot if you are. .

. if you accept the gradualness of freeing oneself from the past. What matters is not the gradualness but to see the fact as it is now, without any distortion.

If I am jealous, envious, to see it completely, what is involved in it, an observation which is total, not partial. The jealous – why? Why am I jealous?

Because I am lonely. The thing I depended upon left me and I am suddenly faced with my loneliness, with my emptiness, with my particular little isolation, and I am afraid of that. Therefore I depend on you, and if you turn away against me, if you turn away I am angry, jealous, annoyed.

And the fact is I am lonely, I need companionship, I need somebody not only to cook for me, to give me comfort, sexual pleasure and all the rest of it, but basically I am alone, lonely. And that’s why I am jealous. Can I understand this loneliness immediately?

I can understand it only if I observe it, not run away from it. Can observe it critically, with awakened intelligence look at it, not find excuses, try to fill it, try to find a new companion. And to look at it, there must be freedom to look.

And when there is freedom to look, I am free of jealousy. So the perception, the total observation, watchfulness of jealousy, and the freedom from it is not a matter of time but giving your complete attention to it, critical awareness without any choice, to observe instantly as it arises. Then there is freedom, not in the future, now, from that which we call jealousy.

And the same thing with the violence, anger, any particular habit, whether you smoke, drink, or sexual habits – dozen habits in which we live and cultivate them, hold on to them – to observe them very attentively, completely with your heart and mind, to be intelligently aware of the whole content of it. Then there is freedom from them. When once there is this awareness functioning, this attention, this watchfulness, then whatever arises – anger, jealousy, violence, brutality, a shade of double meaning, enmity – anything that can be observed instantly, completely.

And then in that there is freedom and the thing that is, was, ceases to be. So the past is not to be wiped away through time. Time is not the way to freedom.

Look, we have had how many wars? For the last five thousand years somebody has calculated fifteen thousand wars – killing, killing, killing, in the name of God, in the name of nations, in the name of peace, in the name of beauty – you know. And that is the past.

And can you get rid of all that killing, the tradition of killing, the conditioning of our nationalities, and so on and on and on, gradually? Is not this idea of gradualness a form of indolence, laziness? Or the incapacity to deal with the past instantly as it arises.

And to have that astonishing capacity to observe clearly everything as it arises demands attention when it is. . .

when you look. And when you give your mind and heart completely to the. .

. observe, the thing is not. The past ceases.

So time and thought does not end the past, for time and thought is the past.