The Ending Of Time: Fifteen conversations with David Bohm, Ojai, USA, 1980

1. The roots of psychological conflict - 1 April 1980

Duration: 82 minutes

• Has humanity taken a wrong turn?

• What is the root of this tremendous inward conflict of humanity?

• When I am trying to become something it is a constant battle.

• Can the brain itself see that it is caught in time and as long as it is moving in

that direction conflict is eternal, endless?

• Can the mind realise, resolve a psychological problem immediately?

• Has mankind journeyed through millennia to come to this: that I am nothing

and therefore I am everything and all energy?

2. Cleansing the mind of the accumulation of time - 2 April 1980

Duration: 79 minutes

• Time is the enemy of man.

• Is there a beginning which is not enmeshed in time?

• We said nothingness is everything and so it is total energy. It is undiluted pure,

uncorrupted energy. Is there something beyond that?

• Has man ever been free from the ‘I’?

• That emptiness can only exist when there is death of the particular.

3. Why has man given supreme importance to thought? - 8 April 1980

Duration: 84 minutes

• Q: Is the ‘ground’ indifferent to mankind, as the physical universe appears to be?

• How does one find out if there is something more than the merely physical?

• Q: Why is it that theories are necessary and useful in organising facts about

matter outwardly, and yet inwardly, psychologically they are in the way, of no

use at all?

• Seeking security for myself, for my family, for my group, for my tribe, has

brought about division.

• Why has man given importance to thought as the supreme thing?

• If I accept I am irrational completely, I am rational.

4. Breaking the pattern of egocentric activity - 10 April 1980

Duration: 79 minutes

• What will make a human being change, deeply, fundamentally, radically?

• Will I, as a human being, give up my egocentric activity completely?

• The more knowledge I have acquired, as I have evolved, as I have grown, as I

have experienced, it has strengthened me, and I have been walking on that

path for millennia. Perhaps I may have to look at this problem totally differently

- which is not to walk on that path at all; discard all knowledge I have acquired.

• Explanations have been the boat on which to cross to the other shore. The man

on the other shore says there is no boat. Cross!

• What happens to me when I meet something that is completely solid,

immovable, absolutely true?

• Psychological knowledge has made us dull.

5. The ground of being, and the mind of man - 12 April 1980

Duration: 71 minutes

• Why has having ideas become so important?

• What is the difference between a religious mind and a philosophic mind?

• What is the human mind’s relationship to the ‘ground’?

• Why has man accumulated knowledge?

• When you love somebody there is no ‘me’, it is love. In the same way, when I say

I am humanity, it is so. It is not an idea, it is not a conclusion, it is part of me.

• There is only one thing and that is to discover that what I have done is useless,

ashes. You see, that doesn’t depress one. That is the beauty of it. It is like the

Phoenix, born out of ashes.

6. Can insight bring about a mutation of the brain cells? - 15 April 1980

Duration: 95 minutes

• Can insight change the brain cells?

• In the brain is there an activity which is not touched by consciousness?

• Insight is not dependent on the material process, which is thought.

• Where there is violence, peace cannot exist. Where there is peace, is there

violence?

• As insight is causeless, is not born out of cause, that insight has a definite effect

on that which has cause.

• The material process acts in ignorance, in darkness. This flash of insight

enlightens the whole field, which means ignorance, darkness has been

dispelled.

7. Death has very little meaning - 17 April 1980

Duration: 96 minutes

• Is there a totally different way of approaching the whole turmoil of life?

• As long as the centre is creating darkness, and thought is operating in that dark

ness, there must be disorder, there must be everything as society now is. To

move away from that you must have insight.

• Insight can only come about when there is a flash which abolishes not only the

darkness but the creator of darkness.

• Human beings have been acting according to one pattern, responding to

hatred by hatred and so on. There are those few, perhaps many, who did not.

Why has this division taken place?

• The man who is living in darkness can move away at any time to the other. That

is the point: at any time.

• What happens to a mind that has no conflict?

8. Can insight be awakened in another? - 19 April 1980 J. KRISHNAMURTI

Duration: 77 minutes

• What is the relationship to society of a man who has insight? What is his action

with regard to war and the whole world?

• Q: What is the significance of mankind in the universe, or in the ‘ground’?

• ‘Y’ is concerned with ‘Show me, prove it to me, what benefit it has, will I get

my future...’ And he is looking at ‘X’ with the eyes that are so accustomed to this

pettiness. He reduces that immensity to his pettiness and puts it in a temple,

and has therefore lost it completely. But there is something so immense that ‘X’

says, ‘Please do look at this,’ and ‘Y’ translates this into, ‘Show it to me, prove it

to me. Will I have a better life?’

• ‘X’ brings light. That’s all he can do.

• To divert the course of man’s destruction somebody must listen.

9. Senility and the brain cells - 1 June 1980

Duration: 90 minutes

• Is the human brain deteriorating?

• The human brain is not a particular brain, it doesn’t belong to me or to anyone

else, it is the human brain which has evolved for millions of years.

• Can the brain not only be aware of its own movement but can the brain itself

have enough energy to break all patterns and move out of it?

• Is psychological knowledge not in itself a factor of the shrinking of the brain?

• The ending of suffering comes about when the self, which is built up through

time, is no longer there.

• If there is an insight into the nature of time the very brain cells which are part

of time break down. The brain cells mutate, bring about a change in

themselves.

• Meditation is insight.

10. Cosmic order - 7 June 1980

Duration: 69 minutes

• Is there an order which is not man-made?

• Can the brain ever be free from the impositions, pressures, wounds, bruises, all

the trivialities of existence?

• Time is my whole existence. I take refuge in the past, which cannot be

changed. Why does the brain accept this way of living, and why doesn’t it break

it down?

• As long as I have my roots in the past there cannot be order.

• If the universe is not of time, can the mind which has been entangled in time,

unravel itself and so be the universe?

11. The liberation of insight - 14 September 1980

Duration: 73 minutes

• Can insight wipe away, banish or dissolve the whole movement of being tied,

attached, dependent and lonely?

• Is there an order which is not man-made?

• Measurement can exist only where there is disorder.

• We live in a man-made world, we are the result of man-made minds. Can the

mind uncondition itself so completely that it’s no longer man-made?

• What is the relationship between love and hatred?

12. The intelligence of love - 16 September 1980

Duration: 60 minutes

• Can the mind, brain, the whole psychological structure ever be free from all

conflict, from all shadow of disturbance?

• Thought is the outcome of psychological accumulation. That accumulation

gives a sense of continuity, which is time.

• Why do all human beings throughout the world have the urge to become?

• In accumulation man has sought psychological security, and that security with

its accumulation is the factor of human division.

• Perception without any motive, without any direction, perception of the wall

which has been brought into being by this movement of accumulation, the very

perception of that is intelligence and love.

13. The ending of psychological knowledge - 18 September 1980

Duration: 55 minutes

• Why are our minds always operating in a certain direction?

• What shall I do, as a human being, realising that knowledge is naturally,

inevitably forming a groove in which I live? How am I to break it down?

• Pure observation, which is actually listening, is that pure observation love?

• When I ask you to tell me what to do, I am back in the field of knowledge.

• We have tried everything – fasting, every kind of thing to get rid of the ‘me’

with all its knowledge, with all its illusions. One tries to identify with something

else, which is the same. A serious man has done all this and comes back to the

fundamental question: what will make this wall totally disappear?

14. The mind in the universe - 20 September 1980

Duration: 51 minutes

• Is thought a material process?

• Is it possible to have a mind that is really completely empty of all the things that

thought has put together?

• Only the insight into the nature of reaction ends psychological reaction.

• There is absolute stillness and in that stillness, or from that stillness, there is a

movement which is everlastingly new.

• Can the silent movement of order affect my daily life when I have deep inward

psychological order?

• Freedom is not a reaction.

• There is the universal mind, and the human mind can be of that when there is

freedom.

15. Can human problems be solved? - 27 September 1980

Duration: 70 minutes

• Why have human beings throughout the world not been able to resolve human,

daily problems of life? What are the things that prevent the solution of these

problems completely?

• When there is attention there is no centre from which I attend.

• A poor man wants to be rich and a rich man wants to be richer. It is a movement

of becoming, becoming, both outwardly and inwardly. Though it brings a great

deal of pain and sometimes pleasure, this sense of becoming, fulfilling,

achieving psychologically has made my life into all that it is.

• Is love something that is common to all of us?

• From the particular move to the general, from the general move away still

deeper, and there perhaps is this purity of that thing called compassion, love

and intelligence. But that means giving your mind and heart to this. Your whole

being must be involved in this.