The Ending of Time- Where Philosophy and Physics Meet

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`Has humanity taken a wrong turn which has brought about endless division, conflict, and destruction?' This is one of the fundamental questions posed in this series of dialogues between J. Krishnamurti and Dr. David Bohm-men from the vastly different backgrounds of philosophy and physics. They debate profound existential questions such as insight, illusion, death, transcendence, self-realization, the temporal, and the spiritual. Though man can change radically, they say, transformation requires going from one's narrow and particular interests towards the general, and ultimately moving deeper into that purity of compassion, love, and intelligence that originates beyond thought, time, and even emptiness. This revised and enlarged edition includes a new introduction and a previously published conversation, 'The Future of Humanity'.

These dialogues between Jiddu Krishnamurti and the theoretical physicist David Bohm started by addressing the origin of human conflict. Both men agreed in attributing this to the separative and time-bound nature of the self and the way that it conditions us to rely wrongly on thought, which is based on inevitably limited past experience. The possibility of insight that will end this flawed mental-ity was discussed in depth. The focus then shifted to an inquiry into the significance of death, and to a discussion probing the "ground" of being and the place of consciousness in the universe. The final dialogues reviewed the profound linkage that Krishnamurti and Bohm saw between these ultimate questions and everyday life, and what we can do about the barriers that stand in the way.

The backgrounds of the two men could hardly be more different. Born in India, Jiddu Krishnamurti was chosen by the Theosophical Society at the age of thirteen to be a "vehicle" for the World Teacher, a role which he firmly renounced at the age of thirty-four. Without any formal education, he then travelled the world giving talks and interviews until the age of ninety. Rejecting any kind of professional title for himself, and even any kind of formal description of his talks, he spoke to his audiences "as a friend" and disclaimed any authority, viii Introduction urging listeners to test the truth of his words in their daily lives. Meditation and its insights were for Krishnamurti the way of life.

Born in the United States, David Bohm, one of the outstanding theoretical physicists of the twentieth century, graduated from Pennsylvania State College and obtained at the age of twenty-six his Ph.D. in physics at the University of California, Berkeley, under the direction of Robert Oppenheimer. He then taught at Princeton, working closely with Einstein. Because of blacklisting, at the time of the McCarthy era, for alleged pro-communist sympathies, he was forced to leave the United States and took up a post at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil. He completed his career as professor of theoretical physics at Birk- beck College, University of London. He was a prolific author of works on physics and was engaged in path-breaking research until his death.

This book has been prepared from dialogues that took place between Jiddu Krishnamurti and Professor David Bohm in America and in England between April and September 1980. On certain occasions other people were present, and their occasional contri-butions to the discussions, unless otherwise stated, are attributed to "Questioner" rather than to individuals by name.

In March 2013 a striking map appeared on the world's TV screens of the state of the universe 380,000 years after the Big Bang. Public interest at this "infant" image flared but quite quickly subsided, perhaps because after decades of human exploration of space, we now take these findings for granted. The Hubble Space Telescope has for years been sending back astonishing, often beautiful portraits of distant galaxies, showing massive convulsions of energy billions of light-years away.

Now that these extraordinary vistas are being revealed to us, it is perhaps not surprising that a number of philosophers and scientists have taken up the ultimate issue of the place of human consciousness in the universe. What we can see and learn from the cosmos clearly raises challenging and daunting questions. Long ago Blaise Pascal, the French scientist and religious writer, found infinite space "frightening," and in our time the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins assures us that the universe "doesn't care" about human preferences-an issue that Jiddu Krishnamurti and the physicist David Bohm discussed in The Ending of Time. The vast spans of time and distance of the universe also seem to make almost footling any deep probing of it by minds on a small "third rock from the sun."

**Contents and Sample Pages**