You will not have any doubt that psychological time is a mental
disease if you look at its collective manifestations. They occur, for
example, in the form of ideologies such as communism, national
socialism or any nationalism, or rigid religious belief systems, which
operate under the implicit assumption that the highest good lies in
the future and that therefore the end justifies the means. The end is
an idea, a point in the mind-projected future, when salvation in
whatever form — happiness, fulfillment, equality, liberation, and so on
— will be attained. Not infrequently, the means of getting there are
the enslavement, torture, and murder of people in the present.
For example, it is estimated that as many as fifty million people were
murdered to further the cause of communism, to bring about a “better
world” in Russia, China, and other countries. 2 This is a chilling example of how belief in a future heaven creates a present hell. Can
there be any doubt that psychological time is a serious and dangerous
mental illness?
How does this mind pattern operate in your life? Are you always trying
to get somewhere other than where you are? Is most of your doing
just a means to an end? Is fulfillment always just around the corner or
confined to short-lived pleasures, such as sex, food, drink, drugs, or
thrills and excitement? Are you always focused on becoming,
achieving, and attaining, or alternatively chasing some new thrill or
pleasure? Do you believe that if you acquire more things you will
become more fulfilled, good enough, or psychologically complete? Are
you waiting for a man or woman to give meaning to your life?
In the normal, mind-identified or unenlightened state of
consciousness, the power and infinite creative potential that lie
concealed in the Now are completely obscured by psychological time.
Your life then loses its vibrancy, its freshness, its sense of wonder.
The old patterns of thought, emotion, behavior, reaction, and desire
are acted out in endless repeat performances, a script in your mind
that gives you an identity of sorts but distorts or covers up the reality
of the Now. The mind then creates an obsession with the future as an
escape from the unsatisfactory present.