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Life is a well of deep waters. One can come to it with small buckets and draw only a little water, or one can come with large vessels, drawing plentiful waters that will nourish and sustain. While one is young is the time to investigate, to experiment with everything. The school should help its young people to discover their vocations and responsibilities, and not merely cram their minds with facts and technical knowledge; it should be the soil in which they can grow without fear, happily and integrally.
To educate a child is to help him to understand freedom and integration. To have freedom there must be order, which virtue alone can give; and integration can take place only when there is great simplicity. From innumerable complexities we must grow to simplicity; we must become simple in our inward life and in our outward needs.
Education is at present concerned with outward efficiency, and it utterly disregards, or deliberately perverts, the inward nature of man; it develops only one part of him and leaves the rest to drag along as best it can. Our inner confusion, antagonism and fear ever overcome the outer structure of society, however nobly conceived and cunningly built. When there is not the right kind of education we destroy one another, and physical security for every individual is denied. To educate the student rightly is to help him to understand the total process of himself; for it is only when there is integration of the mind and heart in everyday action that there can be intelligence and inward transformation.
While offering information and technical training, education should above all encourage an integrated outlook on life; it should help the student to recognize and break down in himself all social distinctions and prejudices, and discourage the acquisitive pursuit of power and domination. It should encourage the right kind of self-observation and the experiencing of life as a whole, which is not to give significance to the part, to the "me" and the "mine", but to help the mind to go above and beyond itself to discover the real.
Freedom comes into being only through self-knowledge in one's daily occupations, that is, in one�s relationship with people, with things, with ideas and with nature. If the educator is helping the student to be integrated, there can be no fanatical or unreasonable emphasis on any particular phase of life. It is the understanding of the total process of existence that brings integration. When there is self-knowledge, the power of creating illusions ceases, and only then is it possible for reality or God, to be.
Human beings must be integrated if they are to come out of any crisis, and especially the present world crisis, without being broken; therefore, to parents and teachers who are really interested in education, the main problem is how to develop an integrated individual. To do this, the educator himself must obviously be integrated; so the right kind of education is of the highest importance, not only for the young, but also for the older generation if they are willing to learn and are not too set in their ways. What we are in ourselves is much more important than the additional question of what to teach the child, and if we love our children we will see to it that they have the right kind of educators.
Teaching should not become a specialist's profession. When it does, as is so often the case, love fades away; and love is essential to the process of integration. To be integrated there must be freedom from fear. Fearlessness brings independence without ruthlessness, without contempt for another, and this is the most essential factor in life. Without love we cannot work out our many conflicting increases confusion and leads to self-destruction.
The integrated human being will come to technique through experiencing, for the creative impulse makes its own technique - and that is the greatest art. When a child has the creative impulse to paint, he paints, he does not bother about technique. Likewise people who are experiencing, and therefore teaching, are the only real teachers, and they too will create their own technique.
This sounds very simple, but it is really a deep revolution. If we think about it we can see the extraordinary effect it will have on society. At present most of us are washed out at the age of forty-five or fifty by slavery to routine; through compliance, through fear and acceptance, we are finished, though we struggle on in a society that has very little meaning except for those who dominate it and are secure. If the teacher sees this and is himself really experiencing, then whatever his temperament and capacities may be, his teaching will not be a matter of routine but will become an instrument of help.
To understand a child we have to watch him at play, study him in his different moods; we cannot project upon him our own prejudices, hopes and fears, or mould him to fit the pattern of our desires. If we are constantly judging the child according to our personal likes and dislikes, we are bound to create barriers and hindrances in our relationship with him and in his relationships with the world. Unfortunately, most of us desire to shape the child in a way that is gratifying to our own vanities and idiosyncrasies; we find varying degrees of comfort and satisfaction in exclusive ownership and domination.
Surely, this process is not relationship, but mere imposition, and it is therefore essential to understand the difficult and complex desire to dominate. It takes many subtle forms; and in its self-righteous aspect, it is very obstinate. The desire to "serve" with the unconscious longing to dominate is difficult to understand. Can there be love where there is possessiveness? Can we be in communion with those whom we seek to control? To dominate is to use another for self-gratification, and where there is the use of another there is no love.
When there is love there is consideration, not only for the children but for every human being. Unless we are deeply touched by the problem, we will never find the right way of education. Mere technical training inevitably makes for ruthlessness, and to educate our children we must be sensitive to the whole movement of life. What we think, what we do, what we say matters infinitely, because it creates the environment, and the environment either helps or hinders the child.
Obviously, then, those of us who are deeply interested in this problem will have to begin to understand ourselves and thereby help to transform society; we will make it our direct responsibility to bring about a new approach to education. If we love our children, will we not find a way of putting an end to war? But if we are merely using the word "love" without substance, then the whole complex problem of human misery will remain. The way out of this problem lies through ourselves. We must begin to understand our relationship with our fellow men, with nature, with ideas and with things, for without that understanding there is no hope, there is no way out of conflict and suffering.
The bringing up of a child requires intelligent observation and care. Experts and their knowledge can never replace the parents's love, but most parents corrupt that love by their own fears and ambitions, which condition and distort the outlook of the child. So few of us are concerned with love, but we are vastly taken up with the appearance of love.
The present educational and social structure does not help the individual towards freedom and integration; and if the parents are at all in earnest and desire that the child shall grow to his fullest integral capacity, they must begin to alter the influence of the home and set about creating schools with the right kind of educators.
The influence of the home and that of the school must not be in any way contradictory, so both parents and teachers must re-educate themselves. The contradiction which so often exists between the private life of the individual and his life as a member of the group creates an endless battle within himself and in his relationships.
This conflict is encouraged and sustained through the wrong kind of education, and both governments and organized religions add to the confusion by their contradictory doctrines. The child is divided within himself from the very start, which results in personal and social disasters.
If those of us who love our children and see the urgency of this problem will set our minds and hearts to it, then, however few we may be, through right education and an intelligent home environment, we can help to bring about integrated human beings; but if, like so many others, we fill our hearts with the cunning things of the mind, then we shall continue to see our children destroyed in wars, in famines, and by their own psychological conflicts.
Right education comes with the transformation of ourselves. We must re-educate ourselves not to kill one another for any cause, however righteous, for any ideology, however promising it may appear to be for the future happiness of the world. We must learn to be compassionate, to be content with little, and to seek the Supreme, for only then can there be the true salvation of mankind.
Every profession has its discipline, every action has its direction and every thought has its end. This is the cycle in which the human mind is caught. Being a slave to the known, the mind is always trying to expand its knowledge, its action within that field, its thought seeking its own end. In all schools, discipline is regarded as a framework for the mind and its action, and in recent years there has been revolt against any form of control, restraint or moderation. This has led to every form of permissiveness, immodesty and the pursuit of pleasure at any cost. Nobody has any respect for anyone. It appears they have lost all form of personal dignity and deep integrity. Billions are spent on drugs, on destroying their own bodies and minds. This all-permissiveness has become respectable and accepted as the norm of life.
To cultivate a good mind, a mind that is capable of perceiving the whole of life as one unit unbroken, and so a good mind, it is necessary that in all our schools a certain kind of discipline must exist. We must together understand the hated and perhaps despised words `discipline' and `rules'.
To learn, you need to have attention, to learn there must be hearing not only with the ear, but an inward grasp of what is being said. To learn it is necessary to observe. When you hear or read these statements you have to pay an attention which is not compelled, not be under any pressure or expectation of reward or punishment. Discipline means to learn not to conform. If you want to be a good carpenter you must learn the proper tools to use with different kinds of wood and learn from a master carpenter. If you wish to be a good doctor you must study for many years, learn all the facts of the body and its many ways, cures, and so on. Every profession demands that you learn as much about it as you possibly can. This learning is to accumulate knowledge about it and act as skilfully as you can. Learning is the nature of discipline. Learning why one should be punctual to meals, the proper time for rest and so on, is learning about order in life. In a disorderly world where there is much confusion politically, socially, and even in religion, our schools must be centres of order and the education of intelligence. A school is a sacred place where all are learning about the complexity of life and its simplicity.
So learning demands application and order. Discipline is never conformity, so don't be afraid of the word and rebel against it. Words have become very important in our life. The word god has become extraordinarily important to most people; or the word nation, or the name of a politician and so on.
The word is the image of the politician; the image of god is built by thousands of years of thought and fear. We live with images created by the mind or by a skilful hand. To learn about these images, which one has accepted or self-created, demands self-awareness.
Education is not only learning about academic subjects but to educate oneself
I have been sent many questions. I propose to answer as many of them as possible this evening. All these questions have been re-formed, but the substance has been kept. There are some questions which have been repeated and we thought it would be better to re-form them and we have about 15 or 16 questions here. But, before I answer them, I would like to say something. Throughout the world it is becoming more and more important that the educator needs education. It is not a question of educating the children at all, but the educator needs it much more than the pupil. Because, after all the pupil is merely like a tender plant that needs guiding, helping: But, if the helper is himself incapable, narrow, bigoted, nationalistic and all the rest of it, naturally, his product will be what he is. So, the importance is not so much the technique of what to teach, which is of secondary importance, but what is of primary importance it seems to me, is the intelligence of the educator. You know throughout the world education has failed because it has produced two colossal and most destructive wars in history and since it has failed, merely to substitute one system for another seems to me utterly futile, whereas if there is a possibility of changing the thought, the feelings, the attitude of the teacher, then perhaps there can be a new culture, a new civilization. Because this civilization certainly is going to be destroyed completely. It is obvious. This coming war will probably settle the Western civilization as we know it. Perhaps, we shall also be profoundly affected by it in this country also. But, out of all this chaos and misery and confusion and strife, surely the function of the teacher, whether he is merely government employee or a religious is teacher or a teacher of mere information, is responsible, is colossal, extraordinarily great and those who merely fatten on education as a means of livelihood seems to me to have no place in modern structure of society, if he is to create a new order. So, our problem is not so much the child, the boy or the girl, but the teacher, the educator, who needs much more education than the pupil. And to educate the educator is much more difficult than to educate the child, because the educator is already set, fixed. He merely functions in a routine, because he is really not concerned in the thought process, in the cultivation of intelligence. He is merely imparting information and a man who merely imparts information when the whole world is crashing about his years, surely he is not an educator. Do you mean to say, it is a means of livelihood? And such a means of livelihood, of exploiting the children for his own good seems to me so utterly empty of the word education. So, in answering all these questions the principal point is the educator and not the child. You can give the right environment, necessary tools, and all the rest of it. But, what is important is to find what all this existence means. Why are we educating, why are we living, why are we striving, why are there wars, why is there communal strife between man and man? Without studying it and without bringing our intelligence into operation, which is the function of a real teacher? The teacher who does not demand anything for himself, who does not use teaching as a means of acquiring position, power, authority: a teacher who is really teaching, not for profit, not along a certain line, a teacher who is giving, growing and cultivating intelligence, because he himself is cultivating intelligence in himself. Such a teacher surely has the primary place in civilization. Because, after all, all great civilizations have been found on the teachers, not on engineers, not on technicians. They are absolutely necessary, but those who kept the moral, the ethical intelligence has the primary importance and they can have a moral integrity, a freedom from power, position, authority, only when they don't ask anything for themselves, when they are beyond and above society and not in the control of governments, when they are free from the compulsion of social action, which is always an action according to a pattern. So, surely, a teacher must be beyond the limits of society and its demands, so as to be able to create a new culture, a new civilization, a new structure, but we merely concern with the technique of how to educate a boy or a girl, It seems to me so utterly futile, without the intelligence of the teacher, and now mostly in the world we are concerned with learning a technique and imparting that technique to a child, the thing, and not with the cultivation of intelligence, which will help him to deal with in life. So, in answering any of these questions, I hope you will bear with me if I don't go into any particular detail, but deal primarily with, not technique, but with the right approach to the problem.
What part can education play in the present world crisis?
First of all, to understand what part education can play in the world crisis, we must understand how the present crisis has come into being. Without understanding that, merely to build on the same values, on the same grounds, on the same foundation, will bring about further wars, further disasters. So, we must first investigate how the present crisis has come into being. And, in understanding what are the causes, you will inevitably understand what kind of education to bring about. Obviously, the present crisis is the result of wrong values, of wrong values with regard to man's relationship to property, to people and to ideas, which is property, which has become nationalistic, economic frontiers, expansion of sensate value and therefore the predominance of those values, which necessarily creates this poison of nationalism, sovereign separate governments and the patriotic spirit, which excludes cooperation between man and man for the benefit of man and his relationship with people, which creates society. And, if his relationship is wrong, inevitably the structure of society is bound to collapse and is relationship to ideas, which has become the justification of an ideology, whether of the left or of the right, whether the means employed is right or wrong, in order to achieve an end. Obviously, all these are the causes of the present disaster, mutual distrust, lack of goodwill, the justification of achieving an end through wrong means and justifying the wrong means for the right end, the sacrificing of the present for a future ideal: all these are obviously the cause of the present disaster. Of course, it will take an awfully long time to go into these in detail. But, one can see at a glance how this chaos, this degradation, has come into being. Surely, obviously, these are based on wrong values and the dependence on authority, on leaders. Surely, leaders and authority are the deteriorating factors in a culture. The moment you depend on another, there is no self-confidence, and where there is no self-confidence, self-dependence, obviously there must be brought about a conformity, and eventually leading to totalitarian states of dictatorships, whether it is in the small school or big universities. So, realising all these things, realising what are the causes of war, of this present catastrophe, the present moral and social crises, when one sees what the results are, naturally the causes are perceived. Surely, then the function of education is to create new values, not merely implant them in the mind of the pupil, which merely conditions the pupil, and not gives them intelligence. But, when the educator himself has not seen the causes of this present catastrophe, how can he implant, how can he give intelligence, how can he prevent the future civilization, the future generation from not following the same steps leading ultimately to further catastrophe. So, is it not important for the educator not merely to implant certain ideals, which is merely information, but to give all his thoughts, all his care, all his affection, the right environment, the right atmosphere, so that when the child or the boy grows up into maturity, he is capable of dealing with any problem, any human problem, that confronts him. So, the present crisis and education are intimately related, realising the world crisis is the outcome of wrong education. Which all the educators, at least in Europe and in America, are seeing. They want to transform and they can only transform it in emphasising the educator, in educating the educator and not merely creating a new pattern, a new system of action.
Have ideals any place in education?
Certainly not. Ideals and the idealist in education prevent the comprehension of the present. This is an enormous problem and we are going, trying to deal with it say in 5 or 10 minutes, a problem upon which our whole structure is based., viz., that we have ideals and on those ideals we educate. Now, are ideals necessary for education? Don't ideals actually prevent right education, which is the understanding of the child as he is and not what he should be. If I want to understand a child, I must not have an ideal of what he should be. To understand him, I must study him as he is. But, to put him into a framework of an ideal is to merely force him to a certain pattern, whether it suits him or not; and the result is he is always in contradiction to the ideal or he so conforms himself to the ideal that he ceases to be a human being, he merely acts as an automaton without intelligence. So, is not an ideal an actual hindrance to the understanding of the child? If you, as a parent, really want to understand the child, do you look at the child through the screen of an ideal? Or do you merely study him, because you have love in your heart? You watch him, you observe him, you watch his moods, his idiosyncrasies. Because there is love, you study him. It is only when you have no love, you have an ideal. You watch yourselves, what is yours, and you will notice this. When there is no love, you have this enormous examples and ideals, through which you are forcing, compelling the child. But, when you have love, you study him, you observe him and give him freedom to be what he is and guide help, not to the ideal, to the pattern of a certain action but to bring him up himself what he is. In which question there arises the problem: If he is a so-called bad boy, if I may use that word to define quickly and strongly a certain point and you want to change him into not being bad, surely you don't have to have an ideal. If a boy is a liar, you don't have to have the ideal of truth. You study why he is telling a lie. For various reasons. Because, probably he is frightened and we need not go into the various reasons of his lying. But, obviously when he is telling a lie, to make him to conform to a pattern of truth, which is your ideal, obviously does not help him to free himself from the causes of lying. You have to study him, you have to observe and because it takes such a long time to observe, needs patience, needs care, needs love and because we have not got it, we force him into a pattern of action, which we call an ideal. Obviously, an ideal is a very cheap escape. The ideal school, the ideal teacher who is practising the ideals is obviously incapable of dealing with the child. You don't have to accept automatically what I am saying or deny it. Just observe. After all, the function of education is obviously to turn out an integrated individual, an integrated individual who deals when he comes across life intelligently, wholly not partially, not as a technician, nor as an idealist. And, there cannot be an integrated individual if he is merely pursuing a pattern of action. Which is idealistic. Obviously, sirs and ladies, when you observe that the teachers who become idealists, who are pursuing a pattern of action, the so-called ideal, they are pretty useless. They are incapable, they have hard hearts and dry minds. Because it demands a much greater observation, great affection, to study, to observe the child, the boy, rather than force him into pattern of action, of an ideal and I think mere examples which is another form of an ideal is also a deterrent to intelligence. Probably, what I am saying is contrary to all that you believe. You have to think over it, because this is not a matter of denial or acceptance. One has to go into it very, very carefully. I am not being dogmatic; only as I have to answer so many questions, I have to be very brief and concise, but the implications of an ideal are obvious, that where there is an ideal which the teacher is pursuing, then he is incapable of understanding the child. To him the ideal is far more important than the child, the present. He has a certain end in view which he thinks is the right and he is forcing the child to conform to that ideal. Surely, that is not education. Is it? That is like turning out motor cars. You have the pattern and you put the child through the mould, with the result we create human beings who are merely technicians, who have no relationship to humanity, to another, but are out for themselves, for their gaining: politically, socially or in the family and it is one of the calamities of modern education that the so-called ideals, which are the end in view, have prevented, have brought about this present catastrophe, whether it is an ideology of the extreme left or of the right, when it has become a pattern of action, which is another form of an ideal. Obviously, it is much easier to follow than to observe, than to care, then to love the children and humanity.
Is education in creativeness possible, or is creativeness purely accidental and therefore nothing can be done to facilitate its emergence?
The question is, put differently, by learning a technique, will you be creative, i.e., by practice, by learning a technique, say the practice of piano, violin, by learning the technique of painting, will you be a painter, will you be a musician, will you be an artist? Does creativeness come into being through technique or is creativeness independent of technique? You may learn all there is to know about painting, learn it, go to a school and learn about the depth of colour, the technique of how to hold the brush and all the rest of it, will that make you a creative painter? But, if you are creative, then anything that you do will have its own technique. I had been once to a great artist in Paris, of the first order, first rank. He did not learn a technique. He was a great artist. He began with it. He wanted to say something and he said it in clay and then marvelled. Most of us learn the technique, but have very little to say. So we neglect, we overlook the capacity to find out for ourselves, but we have all the instruments of discovery without finding it for ourselves. So, the problem is how to be creative, which brings its own technique. After all, when you want to write a poem, what happens. You write it; and if you have a technique so much the better. But, if you have no technique, it does not matter. You write it. And the delight is in writing. After all, when you write a love letter, you are not bothered about the technique, you write it with all your being. But, when there is no love in your heart, you search out a technique, how to put words together. Sirs, you love. But, you miss the point. We think we will be able to live happily, creatively by learning a technique and it is the technique that is destroying creativeness, which does not mean that you must not have a technique. After all, when you want to write a poem beautifully, you must know the metre, the rhythm and all the rest of it. But, if you want to write it for yourself and not publish it, then it does not matter. You write. It is only when you want to communicate to another, proper technique is necessary, the right technique, so that there will be no misunderstanding. But, surely, to be creative is quite a different problem and that demands an extraordinary investigation into oneself. It is not a question of gift. Talent is not creativeness. One can be creative without having a talent. So, what do we mean by creativeness? Surely, a state of being in which conflict has completely ceased, a state of being in which there is no problem, a state of being in which there is no contradiction. Contradiction, problem, conflict, are the outcome of the emphasis on the me, the my, achieving my success, my family my country. When that is absent, then thought itself ceases and there is a state of being in which creativeness can take place, i.e., put it differently, when the mind ceases to create there is creation. And the mind creates as long as it has a problem, as long as it is the originator of problems and a mind that is chained to a problem through various causes, one of the causes being your belief or greed and so on, as long as it is tethered to the creation of its own problem therefore, it can never be free and therefore only in that freedom from its own problems and creations, can there be creation. Sir, to go into it fully and really deeply, one has to go into the whole problem of consciousness and I say that everyone of us can be creative in the right sense of the word, not merely producing poems and statues or creating children. Surely, to be creative means to be in that state in which truth can come into being and truth can only come into being when there is complete cessation of the thought process when the mind is utterly still, not compelled, not forced into a certain action or pattern of action, when the mind is still because it is no longer any problem or because it has understood all the problems as they arise, when the mind becomes absolutely still, not compelled, then in that state truth can come into being. That state is creation and creation is not for the few or the talent of the few or the gift of the few, but that state can be discovered by each one who gives his mind and heart to search out the problem.
Is not the imparting of sex experience necessary part of education? Is it not the only rational solution to the troubles of adolescence?
Sir, to understand sex demands intelligence, not the ideal of something or other and it is an extremely difficult subject, like every other human problem and the educator if he himself has not understood it, that problem, how can he educate somebody else? If he is himself in the net, in the turmoil, in the extraordinary complex problem of sex, himself caught in it, how can he teach another? And why is it a problem to him, because himself obviously is uncreative. Sex merely then becomes a tool of pleasure, an experience which gives momentary joy, momentary absence of his own self; therefore it becomes a problem, whereas to be free from it, one has to investigate the various hindrances that are preventing his being creative. Obviously, one of the factors is imitation, social compulsion, to be something in society, following of an ideal is obviously a form of compulsion, a form of imitation; Therefore, there is no creative thinking. After all, when you are really, creatively thinking, have feeling strongly, sex plays very little importance. It is only when you are not alert to the whole significance of existence, to the movement of birds, to the trees, to smiles, to the whole movement, to the joy of living, whether you are rich or poor, then sex becomes a problem. And also there are other things involved in this question. Which is: can the experience be imparted to an adolescent child, because he is powerless. He wants to know what it is all about. And again, it depends on the teacher or the mother or the parents. Generally, they are so ashamed of it themselves. They are so shy; so absurd the whole thing is. They are such dirty minds. You should watch yourself sirs, how you look at people, how you look at men and women. And you think you are capable of telling people, adolescent people, what it is all about. And there is the other problem which is: when our whole emphasis is laid on sensate value, i.e., values of the senses, then radio, cinema, magazines, sensations, play an important part. Pick up any magazine or newspaper; all the advertisements are attracting you, creating sensation. On the one side, you encourage all these, encourage sensation, sex, sensuality; on the other side, you say: you must not. You must become holy, keep an ideal of celibacy. It is all non-sense. You create in the mind contradiction and in contradiction, you are incapable of understanding anything. But, whereas if you deal with the problem directly, which is an obvious biological thing, without all the imputations, all the traditions, ugliness behind it, then you can be helpful by your own understanding of it. That creation is not mere sexual act, but creation is far more significant, profound; and there can only be creation, as I explained in the previous question, when the mind is not consumed with its own gratification. Sirs, when one loves, love is chaste and when there is no love, sex becomes a problem and it becomes an ugly habit. So, our difficulty in all these questions is that we ourselves, the educators, have become so dull, so weary. Life has been too much with us. We want to be comforted, we want to be loved. So, in ourselves being insufficient, ourselves being poor, how can we, who are the educators, give right education. It is, obviously, the problem is first as I said, the teacher, the educator, and not merely be concerned with the education of the pupil. Sir, our own hearts and minds must be cleansed, to be really capable of educating others. You may say: this is a very goody, goody stuff, without any practical information; but if the instrument that is teaching is itself crooked, how can it impart right information, right knowledge, right wisdom, right under standing?
Is not State education a calamity? If it is, how to raise the funds required?
Obviously, State education is a calamity, which the governments won't agree. They don't want people who think, they want people as automatons. Because, then they can be told what to do. So, our education is, specially in the hands of governments, becoming more and more a means of what to think and not how to think. Because, if you are to think independently from the system, you would be a danger. Therefore, it is a function of the government not to make you think, but merely the acceptors, who accept what is told. So, obviously, as you examine throughout the world, every government is stepping into education. Education and food are the only means of controlling man now. And what do governments care as long as you are perfect machines to turn out merchandise and bullets whether it is the government of the left or of the right. There are few private schools in England and other places. But, they are all being watched carefully, investigated, controlled, because government does not want free institutions, because they may turn out a couple of pacifists, people who think contrary to the regime, to the system. So, right education is obviously a danger to government. And it is the function of government to see that right education is not imparted. There are about 80,000 pacifists in England. Are they not a danger to government if they increase? Therefore, control them from childhood. Don't let them think in terms of non-war, non-country, non-systems or a different ideology. Therefore, governments, supervision and therefore the control of education through the Educational Minister. Sir, this is what is happening in the world, whether you like it or not; which means you, who are the citizens, who are responsible for government, you don't want freedom. You don't want a new state of being, a new culture, a new structure of society. If you have something new, it may be revolutionary, may be destructive of what is. Therefore, you say: well, please let there be a government who will control education. Because you want things as they are. You want a little modification here and there, but you don't want a revolution in thought and the moment there is revolution in thought, government steps in, puts you in prison or liquidates you quickly behind doors. You are forgotten. Because, sir, the more and more a country is organized, more and more there is authority and external compulsion, because man himself has no inward regard, inward light, understanding. Then, he merely becomes a tool of the authority, whether it is totalitarian or so-called democratic. Because, both the totalitarian and the so-called democratic in moments of crisis, forget their democracy and make men conform to a pattern of action. Now, the second part of the question is. how to raise funds for a school which is not controlled by the government? Sir, surely that is not the problem. Is it? The moment you have funds, you are ruined. Look at all the schools that start in the most idealistic way. Look at the headmasters. They go fat on it. But, if you start a little school round the corner of your street, as I know several schools that have been started that way and are still working. Because they are prepared for it. But, they have got the enthusiasm, the feeling, for it. One of our difficulties is: we want to transform the whole of mankind day after tomorrow, or affect the masses as you call it. Who are the masses? You and I. The poor humanity: you and I. And if you and I really felt, really thought about these problems, not just superficially for an afternoon to while away your time. Then, you and I would see that a right school is started anywhere, round the corner or in your own house, because then you are interested in your children and the children about you. Then, money will come, sir. Don't bother about money. Money is the least important thing. Leave it, money to the idealists, who want to start an ideal school. But, if you and I, becoming aware of the whole problem of human existence, what it means, why we live, why we suffer, why we go through all these tortures, and we want to understand it and help the child to understand, then we will start a school without funds, without beating drums and collecting lakhs. Because, the moment you have money, what happens? Don't you know it? What happens, sir? You have your own private ends. You have to watch over it; who is using it, whether you or your secretary or the committee. And all the rubbish, idiotic stuff begins. If you have little and real clarity of thought and feeling behind it, then you will create a school. But, in creating the school, obviously you will be opposed by the government or the interference of government. And do you think governments are going to stand it, if you teach your children not to be nationalistic, not to salute the flag, because nationalism is a factor which brings war about, if you teach them not to be communal and the various other things, help them to understand this whole problem of existence? Do you think your society would for a minute, stand it if you really turn out revolutionaries, not more revolution in the sense of killing, but real revolutionaries in thought and feeling? So, sirs, as parents and teachers, you are responsible, whether you merely comply to the dictates of government and therefore merely learn a technique, which merely gives you certain capacity to earn money and not be concerned with right living and right livelihood and if you are merely concerned with carrying on the present social structure, as it is; then obviously, you will have to follow the government. But, if you see that governments inevitably are built on violence and the product of violence and through wrong means a right and cannot possibly be achieved and if you are interested in really educating your children, obviously you will start a school just round the corner, in your backyard, in your little room. Because, sirs, I don't think many of us realise to what an abyss, to what a degradation, we have come. If there is a third war, that will be the end of things. You may escape: but your problem will be the fourth world war. Because, we have not solved this problem of man's antagonism to man. And you can only solve it through right means which is right education, not through an ideal of non-war, but understanding the causes of war, which is our attitude towards life, our attitude towards our fellow-beings. Without a change of heart, without having goodwill, mere organisations are not going to bring about peace, which is shown over and over again, the League of Nations and the UNO. And to rely on governments, outward organisations, to transform each one of us is to look in vain. What we have to do to transform ourselves is to become aware of our own actions, thoughts and feelings in everyday life. So, don't bother about raising funds. But, now you won't he bothered. You won't he bothered now, for a few minutes, when you are pressed into a corner, as at this meeting. Afterwards you will slip back to your daily routine and you will go back to your teachings and professions, because you have got to earn money. So, there will be very few who will be serious. And it is those of you that are serious that will bring about a revolution in thought. Sir, revolution in thought must begin first, not revolution in blood. If there is right revolution in thought, there will be no blood. But, if there is no right thinking, true thinking, there is going to be blood, more and more of it, nothing but blood. Because the wrong means is not going to produce the right end. Because the end is in the means.
What have you to say about military drill in education?
So, it all depends on what you want the human being to be. If you want him to be a marvellous, efficient cannon-fodder, then military drill is marvellous. If you want to regiment him, if you want to regiment his mind, his feelings, discipline him, then military drill is a very good way to do it. If you want to make him irresponsible to society, then military operations, military drill, conditioning him in a certain way, is very good instrument. It all depends on what you want your sons and daughters to be. Surely, if you want him to live, sir, military drill is the wrong way to proceed. But, if you like death, then military drill is excellent. And as modern civilization is seeking death, then military, with its generals, soldiers, lawyers and all the rest of it, is very good. Then, you will have death, sure death. But, if you want peace, if you want right relationship between man and man, whether he is a Christian, Hindu or Mussalman or Buddhist, all these labels being hindrances to right relationship, then military education is an absolute hindrance. Sir, it is surely the function of a general to prepare for war. It is the function of a soldier to maintain war and if life is meant to be a constant battle between yourself and your neighbour, then please have more generals. Then, let us all become soldiers, which is what is happening. Conscription has been thought in England for generations. It has been fighting conscription for generations, centuries, while the rest of Europe was being conscripted. And now she has given in. From that I mean England. She is a part of the whole world structure. It is an indication of what is happening. In this country, because it is so huge, conscription is not possible immediately: but it will come when you are all thoroughly organized. Then war, more wars, more blood-shed, more misery. Is that what we are living for, constant battle within ourselves and with others? Surely, sir, to discover truth, reality, the bliss of the unknowable, there must be freedom, freedom from strife, freedom from the strife between yourself and in yourself. After all, when a man is not in strife within himself, then he is not outwardly in strife. The inward strife when projected outward becomes the world chaos. After all, war is a spectacular result of our everyday living and without the alteration of that daily existence, merely the multiplication of soldiers, drills and saluting of flags and all the rubbish that goes with it inevitably is going to prolong destruction, misery, chaos. I was told by anthropologists that 2,000 or 3,000 years ago, a politician made a statement and said 'he hoped this would be the last war'. And we are still at it. I think we want arms. We want all the fun of the military instruments, the decorations, the uniforms, the salutes, the drinks, the murder. Because our life everyday life is that. We are destroying others through our greed, through our exploitation. The richer you get the more exploiting you are. We like all this. You want also to be the rich. So, as long as those three professions, the soldier, the police, and the lawyer, take dominance in society, that society is bound to be doomed and that is what is happening in India as well as the world over. These three professions are becoming stronger and stronger. I don't think you know what is going on about you and in yourself. What catastrophes we are preparing. All that we want to do is to live a day as rapidly and as stupidly and as disintegratingly as possible and we leave for the governments and for the politicians, for the cunning people to direct our lives. So, it all depends on what you want life to be. If life is meant to be a series of conflicts, then military expression is inevitable. If life is meant to be lived happily, with thought, with care, with affection, then military, then the soldier, the police, the lawyer is a hindrance. But, the lawyer, the police and the military are not going to give up their professions, no more than you are going to give up your exploiting ways, whether psychologically or outwardly. So, sir, it is very important to find out for yourself what is the purpose of living, not learning it from somebody else, but to discover it for yourself, which is by becoming aware of your daily actions, of your daily feelings and thoughts. When you so become aware, it will reveal the true purpose.
What is the place of art in education?
I don't quite know what you mean by art. Do you mean by hanging pictures in your school room or do you mean helping the child to draw a picture, according to a pattern because you have learnt a little technique or do you mean by teaching the child to be sensitive not to you as the teacher, to what you say, but to be sensitive to life, sensitive to the miseries, to the confusions, to the sorrows, or do you want merely to instruct him how to paint or do you want him to be under the influence of beauty, not of any particular picture or of any statue, but beauty, Sir in modern civilization, beauty, apparently is on the skin, how you dress, how you paint your face, you comb your hair, how you walk. We are discussing art, whether beauty is surface, or is it a matter of loving. When it is a matter of love, whether it is surface or inward, whether it is outward or understanding the inward process of thought. And, as our society structure is constructed, we are more concerned with the outward expression, the looks, with the sari; It does not matter what you are within, but present a respectable appearance, put on rouge, lip-stick. It does not matter what you are inside. So, we are more concerned with the technique rather than living, and more expression rather than love. Therefore, we use ourselves as a means of covering up our inner ugliness, our inward confusion. We listen to music to escape from our own sorrow. In other words, we become the spectators and not the players. To be a painter, you must know yourself and to know yourself is extremely difficult; but to learn a technique of painting is comparatively easy. So, when we talk about art in education, I don't know exactly what you mean. Obviously, you mean the outward superficial environmental results and influences. They have their place but obviously when the outer is emphasised, the inner beauty, the inner confusion, the inner understanding, is denied and without inward beauty, how can there be the outward expression of it? And to cultivate inward beauty, you must first be aware of the inward confusion, the inward ugliness, because beauty does not come into being by itself. You must understand both the ugly and the confused and the sensitive and it is only when there is order out of confusion there is beauty.
Whom would you call a perfect teacher?
Obviously, not the teacher who has an ideal, obviously not the teacher who is making profit out of teaching or who has built up an organisation, obviously not the teacher who is the instrument of the politician, obviously not the man who is bound to a belief, to a country; but a perfect teacher is one surely who does not ask anything for himself, who is not caught up in politics, in power, in position. He does not ask anything for himself, because inwardly he is rich. His wisdom does not lie in books; his wisdom lies in experiencing and experiencing is not possible if he is seeking an end. Experiencing is not possible to him for whom the result is far more important than the means; to him who wants to show that he has turned out so many pupils who have passed brilliant exams: how many pupils have come out of it first class, M.As., B.As., or whatever it is. Obviously, as most of us want a result, we don't care what means are employed and therefore we can never be perfect teachers. Surely, sir, a teacher who is perfect must be beyond and above the control of society. He must teach and not be told what to teach, which means, he must have no position in society. He must have no authority in society, because the moment he has authority, he is part of society; and society is always disintegrating and a teacher who is part of a society can never be the perfect teacher. He must be out of it, which means, he cannot ask anything for himself; which means, society must be so enlightened that it must support him in his needs. But, we don't want such enlightened society, nor such teachers. If we had such teachers, then the present society would be in danger. Religion is not organized belief. Religion is the search of truth, which is of no country, which is of no organized religion, and which does not lie in any temple, church, or mosque and without the search of truth, no society can exist and if it exists it is bound to bring about disaster. Surely, the teacher is not merely the giver of information, but the teacher is one who points the way to wisdom and the pointer to wisdom is not the guru. Truth is far more important than the teacher. Therefore you, who are the seeker of truth, have to be both the pupil and the teacher. In other words, you have to become the perfect teacher to create a new society and to create a new teacher, to bring a new teacher into being, you have to understand yourself. Wisdom begins with self-knowledge and without self-knowledge, more information leads to destruction. Without self-knowledge, aeroplane becomes the most destructive instrument in life; but with self-knowledge, it is a means of human help. So, a teacher is obviously one who is not within the clutches of society, who does not play power politics or seek position or authority. In himself he has discovered that which is eternal and therefore he is capable of imparting that knowledge which will help another to discover his own means to enlightenment.
What is the place of discipline in education?
I should say, none. Just a minute. I will explain it further. What is the purpose of discipline? What do you mean by discipline? You, being the teacher, when you discipline, what happens? You are forcing, compelling, compulsion, however nice, however kind, you are compelling, which means conformity, which means imitation, which means fear. And, without discipline, you will say, how can a large school be run? It cannot. Therefore, large schools cease to be educational institutions. It is a profitable institution, for the boss or for the government, for the head-master or the owner or for the State. Sir, if you love your child, do you discipline it? Do you compel it? Do you force him to a habit into a pattern of thought? You watch him, don't you? You try to understand him, you try to discover what are the motives, the urges, the drives, that are behind him or her and by understanding him, you bring about the right environment, the amount of right sleep, the right food, the amount of right play. All that is implied, when you love a child; but we don't love children. Because we have no love in our own hearts. We just breed children. And naturally, when you have many of them, you must discipline them and discipline becomes an easy way out of the difficulty. After all, discipline means resistance. You create resistance against that which you are disciplining against. Do you think resistance will bring about understanding, thought, affection? Discipline can only build walls about you. Disciplines are always exclusive whereas understanding is inclusive. Understanding comes when you investigate, when you enquire, when you search out, which means, care, consideration, thought, affection. Therefore, in a school, a large school, such things are not possible. Only in a small school. But, small schools are not profitable to the private owners or to government, but since you, who are the owners of government, since you are not interested, since you are not really interested in your children, what does it matter? If you really love your children, not just as a means of toys, as playthings to amuse you for a little while and a nuisance after it; if you have loved your children, would you have allowed all these things to go on? Wouldn't you want to know what they ate, where they slept, what they did all along? Whether they are beaten, whether they are crushed, whether they are destroyed? which means an enquiry, consideration of another, whether it is your child or another's. But, we have no consideration, neither for your children, for your wife or husband. So, how can you have consideration for the effects of discipline? So, sirs, the matter lies in your hands, not in the hands of governments and systems. If all of us really care, really, truly care for children, we would have a new society tomorrow; but we really do not care. We have no times. We have time for Puja, we have time for earning money, we have time for clubs, we have time for amusements, but no time for thought or the care for the child. I am not being rhetoric. This is a fact, and we don't want to face the fact. Because, to face the fact means, you have to give up all those amusements or distractions and do you mean to say you are going to give them up? Certainly not. So, you throw them into the schools, and the teacher no more cares for the child than you. Why should they? He is there for his job, for his money and so it goes on; and we come for an evening to discuss education. It is really a marvellous world we have got. It is such a phoney, superficial world, so ugly behind, if you look behind the curtain and we are decorating the curtain and hoping that everything will be right behind the curtain. Sir, I don't think you realise how serious things are? Neither the educator nor the parents. It is obvious; the catastrophe that is going on in this country. You don't want to strip it all bare and begin again, anew. You want to do patchwork reform and that is why all these questions arise. Sir, you have to start anew. There can be no patchwork reform. Because the building is crumbling, the walls are giving way, there is fire destroying. You must leave the building and start anew in a different place, with different values, with different foundations. But, the man who is making profit out of education, either the State or the individual, will go on. Because he does not see the destruction, the deterioration, the degradation. But, those who really see the whole catastrophe, not just in a few spots, the world over, have to strip themselves of everything and start anew. I don't mean stripping the outward knowledge, the technical knowledge. I know it can never be stripped, but strip themselves inwardly, see themselves as they are, their ugliness, their brutality, their ruthlessness, their deceptions, their dishonesty, their utter lack of love, and start it all anew and become honest, clear, simple, direct. Surely, then only, there is a possibility of a new world and a new order. Peace does not come through patchwork reform. Peace does not come through mere adjustment of things as they are. Peace comes only when we understand what is, beyond the superficial. Peace can only come into being when the wave of destruction is stopped, which is the wave of our own action. Sir, how can we have love. Not through the pursuit of the ideal of love, but when there is no hatred, when there is no greed, when there is consideration, when there is generosity. But a man who is occupied with exploitation, with greed, with envy, can never know love, and when there is love, systems become of very little importance. When there is love, there is care, there is consideration, not only of the children, but of every human being.
Many of us must have considered the problem of disintegration. Almost everything that we touch soon disintegrates. There is no creative, worthwhile action which soon does not end in complexities, worries, miseries, and confusion. It must have occurred to many of us why this should be so, and why at different levels of our human existence there is a darkened withering away and deterioration. We must have noticed this and found some kind of answer. We accept it as inevitable and find some worthwhile or merely verbal explanation, and we are satisfied because whatever we do, we want some explanation, some satisfactory words that will soothe our active mind. So we will soon get lost in the jungle of explanations.
We are going to discuss this evening the question of "education." It seems to me that one of the major factors of deterioration everywhere is the so-called education. We are going into that presently as succinctly as possible. But before I go into that very complex problem, I think it is very necessary that you and I should not merely either accept or refute anything I am going to suggest. Perhaps it may be new or it may be very old, but the mere rejection or acceptance of it without really understanding the whole complex problem is utterly valueless. So, may I suggest that while you are listening, you do not say, "That is impossible," "It is not practical," "It is not worthwhile," "All that we know already." All that indicates merely, does it not, a very sluggish mind, a mind that does not want to penetrate and understand the problem. And our minds are dull, especially at the end of the day after doing some worthless action of a routine, stupid life; we come here generally for entertainment, for something to listen to or talk about afterwards. At this meeting, I suggest that we consider this problem of education and examine it together - but not that I am stating the problem and you are looking at it.
What do we mean by education? Why do we want to be educated? Why do you send your children to be educated? Is it the mere acquisition of some technical knowledge which will give you a certain capacity, with which to lead your life so that you can apply that technique and get a profitable job? Is that what we mean by education, to pass certain examinations and then to become a clerk, and from a clerk to climb up the ladder of managerial efficiency? Or, do we educate our children or educate ourselves in order to understand the whole complex problem of living? With what intention actually do we send our children to be educated or do we get educated ourselves? Obviously, taking it factually as things are, you get educated in order to get a job and with that you are satisfied; and that is all you are concerned with - to be able to earn a livelihood by some means. So you go to a college or to a university, you soon marry and you have to earn a livelihood, and before you know where you are, you are a grandfather for the rest of your life. That is what most of us are doing with education; that is the fact. With that, most of us are satisfied.
But is that education? Is that an integrating process in which there can be a comprehension of the whole, total process of life? That is, do you want to educate your children to understand the whole of life, and not merely a segment of life like the physical, emotional, mental, psychological, or spiritual; to have not the compartmental, divided outlook but a whole, total, integrated outlook on life in which, of course, there is the earning capacity? Now, which is it that we want - not theoretically but actually? What is our necessity? According to that, you will have universities, schools, examinations or no examinations. But to merely talk narrowly about linguistic divisions seems to me utterly infantile. What we will have to do as mature human beings - if there are such entities existing - is to go into this problem. Do you want your children to be educated to be glorified clerks, bureaucrats, leading utterly miserable, useless, futile lives, functioning as machines in a system? Or, do you want integrated human beings who are intelligent, capable, fearless? We will find out, probably, what we mean by "intelligence." The mere acquisition of knowledge is not intelligence, and it does not make an intelligent human being. You may have all the technique, but that does not necessarily mean that you are an intelligent, integrated human being.
So, what is this thing that brings about integration in life, that makes a human being intelligent? That is what we want; at least, that is what we intend to find out in our education, if we are at all intelligent and interested in education. That is what we are attempting to do, are we not? Does this subject interest you, sirs? You seem rather hesitant. Or do you want to discuss about the soul? Sirs, education is really one of our major problems, if not the most important problem in life because as I said, everything is deteriorating around us and in us. We are not creative human beings. We are merely technicians. And if we are creating a new world, a new culture, surely there must be a revolution in our outlook on life, and not merely the acceptance of things as they are or the changing of things as they are.
Now, is it possible through education, the right kind of education, to bring about this integrated human being - that is, a human being who is thinking in terms of the whole, and not merely of the part; who is thinking as a total entity, as a total process, and not indulging in divided, broken up, fractional thinking? Is it possible for a human being to be intelligent - that is, to be without fear - through education so that the mind is capable of thinking freely, not thinking in terms of a Hindu or a Muslim or a Christian or a Communist? You can think freely only when your mind is unconditioned - that is, not conditioned as a Catholic or a Communist and so on - so that you are capable of looking at all the influences of life which are constantly conditioning you; so that you are capable of examining, observing, and freeing yourself from these conditions and influences; so that you are an intelligent human being without fear.
Our problem is how to bring about, through education, a human being who is creative, who is capable, who possesses that intelligence which is not burdened and which is not shaped in any particular direction but is total, who is not belonging to any particular society, caste, or religion so that through that education and with that intelligence, he arrives at maturity and therefore is capable of making his life, not merely as a technician but as a human being.
Now, that is our problem, is it not? Because we see what is happening in the world and especially here in this industrially backward country, we are trying to catch up industrially with the rest of the world; we think it will take ourselves and our children to catch up with the rest of the world. So, we are concerned with that, and not with the whole, total problem of living in which there is suffering, pain, death, the problem of sex, the whole problem of thinking, to live happily and creatively; we brush all that aside and are only concerned with special capacities. But we have to create a different human being, so obviously, our whole educational system must undergo a revolution, which means, really, there must be the education of the educator. That is, the educator must himself obviously be free or attempt to be free from all those qualities which are destructive in him, which are narrowing him down.
We must create a different human being who is creative. That is important, is it not? And it is not possible to do this in a class where there are a hundred children or thirty or forty children and only one teacher - which means, really, every teacher must have very few children, which means again, the expense involved. So, seeing the complexities, the parents want to get their children educated somehow so that they may serve for the rest of their life in some office. But if you, as parents, really love your children - which I really question - if you are really concerned with your children, if you are really interested in their education, obviously you must understand this problem of "what is education." It must present itself to you, must it not?
As things are at present, and with this educational system and the so-called passing of examinations, is it possible to bring about an integrated human being, a human being who understands life or who is struggling to understand life - life being earning a livelihood, marriage, and all the problems of relationship, love, kindliness? This is only possible where there is no ambition. Because, an ambitious man is not an intelligent man, he is a ruthless man; he may be ambitious spiritually, but he is equally ruthless. Is it possible to have a human being without ambition? Can there be the right education which will produce such a human being - which means, really, a spiritual human being? I rather hesitate to use the word because you will immediately translate it in terms of some religious pursuit, some superstition. But if you are really concerned with education, is not that our problem?
Your immediate reaction to that is: What is the method? You want to know what the method is, how this can be brought about. Now, is there a method? Do please listen to this; don't brush it aside. Is there a method - a system - for the educator which will bring about that state of integration in a human being? Or, is there no method at all? Our educator must be much concerned, very watchful, very alert with each individual. As each individual is a living entity, the educator has to observe him, study him, and encourage in him that extraordinary quality of intelligence which will help him to become free, intelligent, and fearless. Can there be a method to do that? Does not method imply immediately conditioning a student to a particular pattern which you, as educator, think is important? You think you are helping him to grow into an intelligent human being by inflicting on him a pattern which you already have of what an intelligent human being should be. And you call that education, and feel as though you have created a marvelous world, a world in which you are all kind, happy, creative.
We have not created a beautiful world, but perhaps, if we know how to help the child to grow intelligently, he might create a different world in which there will be no war, no antagonism between man and man. If you are interested in this, is it not the obvious responsibility of each grown-up individual to see that this kind of education does come about - which means, really, the educator can have only a very few students with him; there may be no examinations, but there will be the observation of each student and his capacities. This means, really, that there will be no so-called mass education, that is, educating thousands in two or three classes. That is not education.
So if you are interested in this, you will create a right kind of educator and help the child to be free to create a new world. It is not a one man job; it is the responsibility of the educator, of the parent, and of the student. It is not just the teacher alone that is responsible for creating a human being, intelligent and fearless, because the teacher may attempt it, but when the child goes back home, the people there will begin to corrupt him; they will begin to influence him; his grandmother will begin to condition his mind. So it is a constant struggle. And unless you as parents cooperate with the teacher and produce the right kind of education, obviously there is going to be greater and greater deterioration. That is what intelligent human beings are concerned with - how to approach this problem. But, most of you say you do not want to think of these problems at all; you want to be told what to do, to follow certain systems and put other things aside. All that you are concerned with is the begetting of children and passing them on to teachers.
But if you were really concerned with the right type of education, surely, it is your responsibility as grown-up people to see that through education there is right livelihood, not any old livelihood. Right livelihood implies, obviously, not joining the army, not becoming a policeman, not becoming a lawyer. Obviously, those three professions are out if you are really concerned with the right kind of education. I know, sirs, you laugh at it because it is a joke to you, it is an amazing thing; but if you really take it seriously, you would not laugh. The world is destroying itself; more and more means of vast destruction of human beings are there; those who laugh are not really concerned with the shadow of death which is constantly accompanying man. Obviously, one of the deteriorating factors for man is the wrong kind of education as we have at present.
To create an intelligent human being, there must be a complete revolution in our thinking. An intelligent human being means a fearless human being who is not bound by tradition, which does not mean he is immoral. You have to help your child to be free to find out, to create a new society - not a society according to some pattern such as Marx, Catholic, or capitalist. That requires a great deal of thought, concern, and love - not mere discussions about love. If we really loved our children, we would see that there would be right education.
Question: Even after the end of the British rule, there is no radical change in the system of our education. The stress as well as the demand is for specialization - technical and professional training. How best can education become the means to the realization of true freedom?
Krishnamurti: Sir, what do we mean by true freedom? Political freedom? Or is it freedom to think what you like? Can you think what you like? And does thinking bring about freedom? Is not all thinking conditioned thinking? So, what do we mean by true freedom?
So far as we know, education is conditioned thinking, is it not? All that we are concerned with is to acquire a job or use that knowledge for self-satisfaction, for self-aggrandizement, to get on in the world. Is it not important to see what we mean by true freedom? Perhaps if we understand that, then the training in some technique for professional specialization may have its value. But merely to cultivate technical capacity without understanding what is true freedom leads to destruction, to greater wars; and that is actually what is happening in the world now. So let us find out what we mean by true freedom.
Obviously the first necessity for freedom is that there should be no fear - not only the fear imposed by society, but also the psychological fear of insecurity. You may have a very good job and you may be climbing up the ladder of success, but if there is ambition, if there is the struggle to be somebody, does that not entail fear? And does that not imply that he who is very successful is not truly free? So fear imposed by tradition, by the so-called responsibility of the edicts of society, or your own fear of death, of insecurity, of disease - all this prevents the true freedom of being, does it not?
So freedom is not possible if there is any form of outward or inward compulsion. Compulsion comes into being when there is the urge to conform to the pattern of society or to the pattern which you have created for yourself as being good or not good. The pattern is created by thought which is the outcome of the past, of your tradition, of your education, of your whole experience based on the past. So, as long as there is any form of compulsion - governmental, religious, or your own pattern which you have created for yourself through your desire to fulfill, to become great - there will be no true freedom. It is not an easy thing to do nor an easy thing to understand what we mean by true freedom. But we can see that as long as there is fear in any form, we cannot know what true freedom is. Individually or collectively, if there is fear, compulsion, there can be no freedom. We may speculate about true freedom, but the actual freedom is different from the speculative ideas about freedom.
So, as long as the mind is seeking any form of security - and that is what most of us want - as long as the mind is seeking permanency in any form, there can be no freedom. As long as individually or collectively we seek security, there must be war, which is an obvious fact, and that is what is happening in the world today. So there can be true freedom only when the mind understands this whole process of the desire for security, for permanency. After all, that is what you want in your gods, in your gurus. In your social relationships, your governments, you want security, so you invest your God with the ultimate security, which is above you; you clothe that image with the idea that you as an entity are such a transient being, and that there, at least, you have permanency. So you begin with the desire to be religiously permanent; and all your political, religious, and social activities, whatever they are, are based on that desire for permanency - to be certain, to perpetuate yourselves through the family or through the nation or through an idea, through your son. How can such a mind which is seeking constantly - consciously or unconsciously - permanency, security, how can such a mind ever have freedom?
We really do not seek true freedom. We seek something different from freedom, we seek better conditions, a better state. We do not want freedom; we want better, superior, nobler conditions, and that we call education. Can this education produce peace in the world? Certainly, not. On the contrary, it is going to produce greater wars and misery. As long as you are a Hindu, Muslim, or God knows what else, you are going to create strife for yourself, for your neighbor, and nation. Do we realize this? Look at what is happening in India! I do not have to tell you because you already know it.
Instead of being integrated human beings, you are thinking separatively; your activities are fractioned, broken up, disintegrated - you're Maharashtra, you're Gujarat, you're Andhra, you're Tamil - you are all fighting; that is the result of this so-called freedom and so-called education. You say that you have unity religiously, but actually you are fighting, destroying each other, because you do not see the whole process of living, because you are only concerned with tomorrow or to have better jobs. You will go out after listening and do exactly the same thing. You will be a Maharashtrian forgetting the rest of the world. As long as you are thinking in those terms, you are going to have wars, miseries, destruction. You will never be safe, neither you nor your children, though you want to be safe, and therefore you are thinking in this narrow, regional way. As long as you have these ways, you have got to have wars.
Your present way of living indicates that you really do not want to have freedom; what you want is merely a better way of living, more safety, more contentment, to be assured of a job, to be assured of your position - religiously, politically. Such people cannot create a new world. They are not religious people. They are not intelligent people. They are thinking in terms of immediate results like all politicians. And you know that as long as you leave the world to politicians, you are going to have destruction, wars, misery. Sirs, please don't smile. It is your responsibility, not your leaders' responsibility; it is your own individual responsibility.
Freedom is something entirely different. Freedom comes into being; it cannot be sought after. It comes into being when there is no fear, when there is love in your heart. You cannot have love and think in terms of a Hindu, a Christian, a Muslim, a Parsee, or God knows what else. Freedom comes into being only when the mind is no longer seeking security for itself, either in tradition or in knowledge. A mind that is crippled with knowledge or burdened with knowledge is not a free mind. The mind is only free when it is capable of meeting life at every moment, meeting the reality which every incident, which every thought, which every experience reveals, and that revelation is not possible when the mind is crippled by the past.
It is the responsibility of the educator to create a new human being, to bring about a different human being, fearless, self-reliant, who will create his own society - a society totally unlike ours because ours is based on fear, envy, ambition, corruption. True freedom can only come when intelligence comes into being - that is, the understanding of the whole, total process of existence.
Question: Modern life has become abjectly dependent on highly trained persons; what are your views on university education? How can we prevent the misuse of higher technical knowledge?
Krishnamurti: Sir, surely it all depends on for what you are being educated. If you are merely being educated to a particular specialized job through university education in which there is no consideration of the total process of existence - which is love, concern for your neighbor, the problem of what is truth, death, envy, the whole problem of life - if you are only concerned with the acquisition of a particular type of knowledge, and not with the problem of life, then obviously you are creating a world of confusion, of darkness, of misery; and then you ask how that can be prevented.
Now, how are you going to prevent it, sirs? How are you and I going to prevent it? Sirs, is it not your responsibility? Or do you say, "It is our karma, we do what we can to live, but life is too much for us," and leave it at that? Do you not feel this is your responsibility? As parents, do you not feel that the darkness is closing in, deterioration is setting in fast in every human being? Do you not feel that we have ceased to be really creative? Merely painting pictures or being trained to paint them or writing a poem occasionally is not what I mean by creativity. Creativity is something entirely different, and it comes into being when there is no concern or fear of oneself clothed in the form of virtue, or concern for oneself socially, economically, politically. When that concern, that fear ceases, there is creativity.
The understanding of the whole process of thought which builds the 'I', the 'me', and the dissolution of that - is not that true education? And if it is, should not universities help towards that end and at the same time give students the right opportunity to cultivate capacities? But now, we are concerned with the cultivation of capacities, gifts, tendencies to become more and more efficient, and we deny the whole of life which is much deeper, truer, more complex. So it is your responsibility, is it not? Sirs, the individual problem is the world problem. Your problem is the problem of the world. Those problems are not separate from your daily problems. How you live, how you think, what you do will create the world or destroy the world. We do not realize this. We do not see this responsibility, and so we say, "Technical knowledge is bringing about the destruction of man; how can that be prevented?" I will give you the explanation, the manner of doing it, and you will listen and go away, and carry on as usual. So explanations no longer matter; descriptions of theories have no value any more; what is of importance now is that you, as an individual, understand and become responsible for your actions. You are responsible. You and others can, with equal enthusiasm and interest, create a new world. You are to think of the problem anew, not create a new pattern - communist or another religious form.
Real revolution does not come merely at the superficial level, at the economic level. Real revolution lies in our hearts and minds, and it can only come when we understand the whole total process of our being from day to day, in every relationship. And then only is there a possibility of preventing technical knowledge being used for the destruction of man.
Question: Educationists all over the world are troubled by the question of moral education. How can education evoke the deeper core of human decency and goodness in oneself and in others?
Krishnamurti: The good is not the "respectable." The respectable man can never know what is good. Most of us are respectable, and therefore we do not know what it is to be good. Moral education can only come, not with the cultivation of respectability, but with the awakening of love. But we do not know what love is. Is love something to be cultivated? Can you learn it in colleges, in schools, from teachers, from technicians, from the following of your gurus? Is devotion love? And if it is, can the man who is respectable, who is devoted, know love? Do you know what I mean by respectability? Respectability is when the mind is cultivating, when the mind is becoming virtuous. The respectable man is the man who is struggling consciously not to be envious, the man who is following tradition, he who says, "What will people say?" Respectability will obviously never know what truth is, what good is, because the respectable man is only concerned with himself.
It is love which brings morality. Without love there is no morality. You may be a great man, a moral man; you may be very good; you may not be envious; you may have no ambition, but if you have no love, you are not moral, you are not good, fundamentally, deeply, profoundly. You may have all the outer trimmings of goodness, but if you have no love in the heart, there can be no moral, ethical being. Is love something to be taught in a school? Please follow all this. What is it that prevents us from loving? If you can be taught in the school and in the house to love, how simple it would be, would it not? Many books are written on it. You learn them and you repeat them, and you know all the symptoms of love without having love.
Can love be taught? Please, sirs, this is really an important question; please do follow it. If love cannot be taught, what are the things that are preventing love? The things of the mind, the thoughts, the jealousy, the anguish, the ideas, the pursuits, their suppressions, the motives of the mind - these may be the things that prevent love. And as we have cultivated the mind for several centuries, it may be that the mind is preventing us from loving. So perhaps the things that you are teaching your children and the things that you are learning through universities and colleges may be the things which are at the root of the destruction of love because you are only developing one side - the intellectual side, the so-called technical side - and that is becoming more and more important in an industrial world; other things become less and less valuable; they fade away. If love can be taught in school through books, shown on the screen in cinemas, then it would be possible to cultivate morality. If morality is a thing of tradition, then it is quite simple; then you condition the student to be moral, to be a communist, to be a socialist, to think along a particular line and say that that line is the good line, the true line; any deviation from it is immoral, ending up in concentration camps.
Is morality something to be taught - which means, can the mind be conditioned to be moral? Or is morality something that springs spontaneously, joyously, creatively? This is only possible when there is love. That love cannot exist when you cultivate your mind, which is the very center of the 'me', the 'I', the thing that is uppermost in most of us day in and day out - the 'me' that is so important, the 'I' that is everlastingly trying to fulfill, trying to be something. And as long as that 'I' exists, do what you will, all your morality has no meaning; it is merely conformity to a pattern based on security, for your being something some day, so that you can live without any fear. Such a state is not a moral state; it is merely an imitation. The more a society is imitative, following tradition, the more deteriorating it is. It is important to see this, to find out for oneself how the self, the 'me' is perpetuating itself, how the 'me' is everlastingly thinking about virtue and trying to become virtuous and establishing laws of morality for itself and for others. So the good man who is following the pattern of good is the respectable man, and the respectable man is not the man who knows what love is. Only the man who knows what love is, is the moral man.
I have said that there is an art in listening, and perhaps I can go a little more into it, because I think it is important to listen rightly. We generally hear what we want to hear and exclude everything that is disturbing. To any expression of a disturbing idea we turn a deaf ear, and especially in matters that are profound, religious, that have significance in life, we are apt to listen very superficially. If we hear at all, it is merely the words, not the content of the words, because most of us do not want to be disturbed. Most of us want to carry on in our old ways because to alter, to bring about a change, means disturbance: disturbance in our daily life, disturbance in our family, disturbance between wife and husband, between ourselves and society. As most of us are disinclined to be disturbed, we prefer to follow the easy way of existence; and whether it leads to misery, to turmoil and conflict, is apparently of very little importance. All that we want is an easy life - not too much trouble, not too much disturbance, not too much thinking; and so, when we listen, we are not really hearing anything. Most of us are afraid to hear deeply, but it is only when we hear deeply, when the sounds penetrate deeply, that there is a possibility of a fundamental, radical change. Such change is not possible if you listen superficially, and if I may suggest, at least for this evening, please try to listen without any resistance, without any prejudice - just listen. Do not make tremendous effort to understand, because understanding does not come through effort, understanding does not come through striving. Understanding comes swiftly, unknowingly, when the effort is passive; only when the maker of effort is silent does the wave of understanding come. So, if I may suggest, listen as you would listen to the water that is flowing by. You are not imagining, you are not making an effort to listen, you are just listening. Then the sound conveys its own meaning, and that understanding is far deeper, far greater, and more lasting than the mere understanding of words that comes through intellectual effort. The understanding of words which is called intellectual comprehension is utterly empty. You say, "I understand intellectually, but I cannot put it into practice," which means, really, that you do not understand. When you understand, you understand the content; there is no intellectual understanding. Intellectual understanding is merely a verbal understanding. Hearing the words is not the understanding of their content. The word is not the thing. The word is not understanding. Understanding comes when the mind has ceased to make an effort, which means, when it does not put up a resistance, when it is not prejudiced but listens freely and fully. And, if I may suggest, that is what we should try to do this evening, because then there is in listening a great delight - like listening to a poem, to a song, or seeing the movement of a tree. Then that very observation, listening, gives a tremendous significance to existence.
Religion, surely, is the uncovering of reality. Religion is not belief. Religion is not the search for truth. The search for truth is merely the fulfillment of belief. Religion is the understanding of the thinker; for what the thinker is, that he creates. Without understanding the process of the thinker and the thought, merely to be caught in a dogma is surely not the uncovering of the beauty of life, of existence, of truth. If you seek truth, then you already know truth. If you go out seeking something, the implication is that you have lost it, which means you already know what it is. What you do know is belief, and belief is not truth. No amount of belief, no amount of tradition, none of the religious ceremonies in which there are so many preconceptions of truth, lead to religion. Nor is religion the belief, the God of the irreligious, of the believer who does not believe.
Religion, surely, is allowing truth to come into being, whatever that truth is - not the truth that you want, for then it is merely the gratification of a particular desire which you call belief. So, it is necessary to have a mind that is capable of receiving whatever the truth is, and such a mind is possible only when you listen passively. Passive awareness comes into being when there is no effort, no suppression or sublimation, because after all, to receive, there must be a mind that is not burdened with opinion or busy with its own chatter. Out of an opinion or a belief the mind can project an idea or an image of God; but it is a projection of itself, of its own chatter, of its own fabrication, and therefore it is not real. The real cannot be projected or invited, but can come into being only when the mind, the thinker, understands himself. Without understanding the thought and the thinker, there is no possibility of receiving truth, because the maker of effort is the thought, which is the thinker. Without thought, there is no thinker; and the thinker, seeking further security, takes refuge in an idea which he calls God, religion. But that is not religion, that is merely an extension of his own egotism, a projection of himself. It is a projected righteousness, a projected respectability, and this respectability cannot receive that which is truth. Most of us are very respectable in the political, economic, or religious sense. We want to be something, here or in another world. The desire for existence in another world, in a different form, is still self-projection; it is still the worship of oneself, and such a projection is surely not religion. Religion is something much wider, much deeper than the projections of the self, and after all, your belief is a projection. Your ideals are self-projections, whether national or religious, and the following of such projections is obviously the gratification of the self and therefore the enclosing of the mind within a belief; therefore, it is not real. Reality comes into being only when the mind is still, not made still. Therefore, there must be no disciplining of the mind to be still. When you discipline yourself, it is merely a projected desire to be in a particular state. Such a state is not the state of passivity. Religion is the understanding of the thinker and the thought, which means the understanding of action in relationship. The understanding of action in conduct is religion, not the worship of some idea, however gratifying, however traditional, whoever has said it. Religion is understanding the beauty, the depth, the extensive significance of action in relationship. Because, after all, life is relationship; to be is to be related - otherwise you have no existence. You cannot live in isolation. You are related to your friends, to your family, to those with whom you work. Even though you withdraw to a mountain, you are related to the man who brings food; you are related to an idea which you have projected. Existence implies being, which is relationship, and if we do not understand that relationship, there is no understanding of reality. But because relationship is painful, disturbing, constantly changing in its demands, we escape from it to what we call God, which we think is the pursuit of reality. The pursuer cannot pursue the real. He can only pursue his own ideal, which is self-projected. So, our relationship and the understanding of it is true religion and nothing else is, because in that relationship is contained the whole significance of existence. In relationship, whether with people, with nature, with the trees, with the stars, with ideas, with the state - in that relationship is the whole uncovering of the thinker and the thought, which is man, which is mind. The self comes into being through the focus of conflict; the focusing of conflict gives self-consciousness to the mind. Otherwise there is no self, and though you may place that self on a high level, it is still the self of gratification.
So, the man who would receive reality - not seek reality - who would hear the voice of the eternal, whatever that eternal is, must understand relationship; because in relationship there is conflict, and it is that conflict which prevents the real. That is, in conflict there is the fixing of selfconsciousness, which seeks to eschew, to escape conflict; but only when the mind understands conflict is it capable of receiving the real. So, without understanding relationship, the pursuit of the real is the pursuit of an escape, is it not? Why not face it? Without understanding the actual, how can you go beyond? You may close your eyes, you may run away to shrines and worship empty images; but the worship, the devotion, the puja, the giving of flowers, the sacrifices, the ideals, beliefs - all that has no meaning without understanding the conflict in relationship. So, the understanding of conflict in relationship is of primary importance and nothing else, for in that conflict you discover the whole process of the mind. Without knowing yourself as you are, not as you are technically supposed to be - God enclosed in matter, or whatever the theory is - but actually, in the conflict of daily existence, economic, social, and ideological - without understanding that conflict, how can you go beyond and find something? The search for the beyond is merely an escape from what is, and if you want to escape, then religion or God is as good an escape as drink. Don't object to this putting drink and God on the same level. All escapes are on the same level, whether you escape through drink, through puja, or whatever it be.
So, the understanding of conflict in relationship is of primary importance and nothing else, because out of that conflict we create the world in which we live every day - the misery, the poverty, the ugliness of existence. Relationship is response to the movement of life. That is, life is a constant challenge, and when the response is inadequate, there is conflict; but to respond immediately, truly, adequately to the challenge, brings about a completeness. In that response which is adequate to the challenge there is the cessation of conflict, and therefore it is important to understand oneself, not in abstraction, but in actuality, in everyday existence. What you are in daily life is of the highest importance; not what you think about or what you have ideas about, but how you behave to your wife, to your husband, to your children, to your employees. Because, from what you are, you create the world. Conduct is not an ideal conduct. There is no ideal conduct. Conduct is what you are from moment to moment, how you behave from moment to moment. The ideal is an escape from what you are. How can you go far when you do not know what is near you, when you are not aware of your wife? Surely, you must begin near to go far, but nevertheless, your eyes are fixed on the horizon, which you call religion, and you have all the paraphernalia of belief to help you to escape.
So, what is important is not how to escape because any escape is as good as another - the religious escapes and the worldly escapes are all the same - and escapes do not solve our problem. Our problem is conflict, not only the conflict between individuals, but the world conflict. We see what is happening in the world - the increasing conflict of war, of destruction, of misery. That you cannot stop; all you can do is to alter your relationship with the world, not the world of Europe or America, but the world of your wife, your husband, your work, your home. There you can bring change, and that change moves in wider and wider circles, but without this fundamental change there can be no peace of mind. You may sit in a corner or read something to put yourself to sleep, which most people call meditation, but that is not the uncovering, the receiving of the real. What most of us want is a satisfying escape; we do not want to face our conflicts because they are too painful. They are painful only because we never look to see what they are all about; we seek something which we call God but never look into the cause of conflict. But if we understand the conflict of everyday existence, then we can go further, because therein lies the whole significance of life. A mind that is in conflict is a destructive mind, a wasteful mind, and those in conflict can never understand; but conflict is not stilled by any sanctions, beliefs, or disciplines, because the conflict itself has to be understood. Our problem is in relationship, which is life, and religion is the understanding of that life, which brings about a state in which the mind is quiet. Such a mind is capable of receiving the real. That, after all, is religion - not your sacred threads, your pujas, your repetition of words, phrases, and ceremonies. Surely, all that is not religion. Those are divisions, but a mind that is understanding relationship has no division. The belief that life is one is merely an idea and, therefore, has no value; but for a man who is understanding relationship, there is no "outsider" or "insider," there is neither the foreigner nor the one who is near. Relationship is the process of understanding oneself, and to understand oneself from moment to moment in daily life is self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is not a religion, an ultimate end. There is no such thing as an ultimate end. There is such a thing for the man who wants to escape, but the understanding of relationship, in which there is ever-unfolding self-knowledge, is immeasurable.
So, self-knowledge is not the knowledge of the self placed at some high level; it is from moment to moment in daily conduct, which is action, which is relationship; and without that self-knowledge there is no right thinking. You have no basis for right thinking if you do not know what you are. You cannot know yourself in abstraction, in ideology. You can know yourself only in relationship in your daily life. Don't you know that you are in conflict? And what is the good of going away from it, of avoiding it, like a man who has a poison in his system which he does not reject and who is therefore slowly dying? So, self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom, and without that self-knowledge you cannot go far; and to seek the absolute, God, truth, or what you will, is merely the search after a self-projected gratification. Therefore, you must begin near and search every word that you speak, search every gesture, the way you talk, the way you act, the way you eat - be aware of everything without condemnation; then in that awareness you will know what actually is and the transformation of what is - which is the beginning of liberation. Liberation is not an end. Liberation is from moment to moment in the understanding of what is - when the mind is free, not made free. It is only a free mind that can discover, not a mind molded by a belief or shaped according to a hypothesis. Such a mind cannot discover. There can be no freedom if there is conflict, for conflict is the fixing of the self in relationship.
Many questions have been sent in, and naturally it is impossible to answer them all. We have therefore chosen some which seem to be representative, and if your question is not answered, don't feel that it has been overlooked. After all, all problems are related, and if I can understand one problem in its entirety, then I can understand all the related problems. So, listen to these questions as you would listen to the talk, because questions are a challenge, and only in responding to them adequately do we find the problems resolved. They are a challenge to you as well as to me, and therefore, let us think them out together and respond fully.
Question: What is right education? As teachers and as parents, we are confused.
Now, how are we going to find the truth of this matter? Merely forcing the mind into a system, a pattern, is obviously not education. So, to discover what is right education, we must find out what we mean by "education." Surely, education is not to learn the purpose of life, but to understand the meaning, the significance, the process of existence; because if you say life has a purpose, then the purpose is self-projected. Surely, to find out what is right education, you have first to inquire into the whole significance of life, of living. What is present education? Learning to earn a few rupees, acquiring a trade, becoming an engineer, a sociologist, learning how to butcher people, or how to read a poem. If you say education is to make a person efficient, which means to give him technical knowledge, then you must understand the whole significance of efficiency. What happens when a person becomes more and more efficient? He becomes more and more ruthless. Don't laugh. What are you doing in your daily life? What is happening, now in the world? Education means the development of a particular technique, which is efficiency, which means industrialization, the capacity to work faster and produce more and more, all of which ultimately leads to war. You see this happening every day. Education as it is leads to war, and what is the point of education? To destroy or be destroyed. So, obviously, the present system of education is utterly futile. Therefore, what is important is to educate the educator. These are not clever statements to be listened to and laughed off. Because, without educating the teacher, what can he teach the child except the exploiting principles on which he himself has been brought up? Most of you have read many books. Where are you? You have money or can earn it, you have your pleasures and ceremonies - and you are in conflict; and what is the point of education, of learning to earn a few rupees, when your whole existence leads to misery and war? So, right education, surely, must begin with the educator, the parent, the teacher; and inquiry into right education means inquiry into life, into existence, does it not? What is the point of your being educated as a lawyer if you are only going to increase conflict and maintain litigation? But there is money in that, and you thrive on it. So, if you want to bring about right education, you must obviously understand the meaning, the significance, of existence. It is not only to earn money, to have leisure, but to be able to think directly, truly - not "consistently," because to think consistently is merely to conform to a pattern. A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person; he merely repeats certain phrases and thinks in a groove. To find out what is right education, there must be the understanding of existence, which means the understanding of yourself, because you cannot understand existence abstractly. You cannot understand yourself by theorizing as to what education should be. Surely, right education begins with the right understanding of the educator. Look at what is happening in the world. Governments are taking control of education - naturally, because all governments are preparing for war. Your pet government, as well as the foreign government, must inevitably prepare for war. A sovereign government must have an army, a navy, an air force; and to make the citizens efficient for war, to prepare them to perform their duties thoroughly, efficiently, ruthlessly, the central government must control them. Therefore, they educate them as they manufacture mechanical instruments, to be ruthlessly efficient. If that is the purpose and end of education - to destroy or be destroyed - then it must be ruthless, and I am not at all sure that that is not what you want. Because, you are still educating your children in the same old fashion. Right education begins with the understanding of the educator, the teacher, which means that he must be free of established patterns of thought. Education is not merely imparting information, knowing how to read, gathering and correlating facts; but it is seeing the whole significance of education, of government, of the world situation, of the totalitarian spirit which is becoming more and more dominant throughout the world. Being confused, you create the educator who is also confused, and through so-called education you give power to destroy the foreign government. Therefore, before you ask what right education is, you must understand yourself, and you will see that it does not take a long time to understand yourself if you are interested to find out. Sir, without understanding yourself as the educator, how can you bring about a new kind of education? Therefore, we come back to the eternal point - which is yourself - and you want to avoid that point; you want to shift the responsibility onto the teacher, onto the government. The government is what you are, the world is what you are; and without understanding yourself, how can there be right education?
Question: What do you mean by living from moment to moment?
A thing that continues can never be new. Just think it out and you will see - it is not a complicated problem. Surely, if I can complete each day and not carry over my worries, my tribulations, to the next, then I can meet tomorrow afresh. Meeting the challenge afresh is creation, and there can be no creation without ending. That is, you meet the new with the old; therefore, there must be an ending of the old to meet the new. There must be an ending every minute, so that every minute is a new one. That is not a poetical imagination or indulgence. If you try, you will find out what happens. But, you see, we want to continue. We want to have continuation from moment to moment, from day to day, because we think without continuation we cannot exist.
Now, that which is capable of continuing, can that renew itself? Can that be new? Surely, there can be a new thing only when there is an ending. Your thought is continuous. Thought is the result of the past, thought is founded upon the past; it is a continuance of the past, which in conjunction with the present creates, modifies, the future. But the past, through the present to the future, is still a continuity. There is no break. It is only when there is a break that you can see something new. Merely to continue the past, modified by the present, is not to perceive the new. Therefore, thought cannot perceive the new. Thought must end for the new to be. But, you see what we are doing. We are using the present as a passage from the past to the future. Are we not doing that? To us, the present is not important. Thought, which is the present action, which is the present relationship, we do not think is important. We think what is important is the outcome, the result of thought, which is the future or the past. Have you not noticed how the old look to the past, and also how the young sometimes look to the past or to the future? They are occupied with themselves in the past or in the future but never give their full attention to the present. So, we use the present as a passage way to something else, and therefore there is no consideration, no observation of the present; and to observe the present, the past must end. Surely, to see what is, you cannot look through the past to the present. If I want to understand you, I must look at you directly, I must not bring up my past prejudices and through those prejudices look at you. Then I am only looking at my prejudices. I can look at you only when the prejudices are not; therefore, there must be an end to prejudices.
So, to understand what is, which is action, which is relationship at every moment, there must be a freshness; therefore, there must be an ending of the past, and this is not a theory. Experiment with it, and you will see that this ending is not as difficult as you think. While you are listening, try it, and you will see how easily and completely you can end thought and so discover. That is, when you are not induced, when you are interested in something vitally, profoundly, you are looking at it anew. The very interest drives away the past. You are only concerned to observe what is and to allow what is to tell its story. When you see the truth of this, your mind is emptied from moment to moment. Therefore, the mind is discovering everything anew, and that is why knowledge can never be new. It is only wisdom that is new. Knowledge can be taught in a school, but wisdom cannot be taught. A school of wisdom is nonsense. Wisdom is the discovery and the understanding of what is from moment to moment, and how can you be taught to observe what is? If you are taught, it is knowledge, then knowledge intervenes between you and the fact. Therefore, knowledge is a barrier to the new, and a mind full of knowledge cannot understand what is. You are learned, are you not? And is your mind new? Or is it filled up with memorized facts? And a mind which becomes more and more a mere accumulation of facts - how can such a mind see anything new? To see what is new, there must be an emptiness of past knowledge. Only in the discovery of what is from moment to moment is there the freedom which wisdom brings. Therefore, wisdom is something new, not repetitive, not something which you learn out of a school book or from Shankara, the Bhagavad-Gita, or Christ.
So, knowledge which is continued is a barrier to understanding the new. If in listening you bring in your previous knowledge, how can you understand? First you must listen. Sir, an engineer has knowledge of stresses and strains, but if he comes to build a bridge, he must first study the location and the soil. He must look at it independently of the structure which he is going to build, which means he must regard it anew, not merely copy from a book. But there is a danger in similes, so use it lightly. What is important is that there be a renewal in which there can be creation, that creative impulse, that sense of constant rebirth, and that can come into being only when there is death every minute. Such a mind can receive that which is truth. Truth is not something absolute, final, far away. It is to be discovered from moment to moment, and you cannot discover it in a state of continuity. There can be no freedom in continuity. After all, continuity is memory, and how can memory be new? How can memory, which is experience, which is the past, understand the present? Only when the past is wholly understood and the mind is empty is it capable of seeing the present in all its significance. But most of our minds are not empty. They are filled with knowledge, and such a mind is not a thinking mind. It is only a repetitive mind, a gramophone changing the records according to circumstances. Such a mind is incapable of discovering the new. There is the new only in ending, but you are afraid of that. You are afraid of ending, and all your talk, your accumulation of facts, is merely a safeguard, an escape from that. Therefore, you are seeking continuity, but continuity is never new; in it there can be no renewal, no emptiness in which you can receive. So, the mind can renew itself only when it is empty, not when it is filled with your worries from day to day, and when the mind has come to an end, there is a creation which is timeless.
Question: The more I listen to you, the more I feel the truth of the ancient teachings of Christ, Shankara, the Bhagavad-Gita, and Theosophy. Have you really not read any of them?
I will first answer the second part of the question and then take up the first part. "Have you really not read any of them?" No, sir, I have not read any of them. What is wrong with that? Are you surprised? Are you shocked? And why should you read them? Why do you want to read others' books when there is the book of yourself? Why do you want to read the Bible or Shankara? Surely, because you want confirmation, you want to conform. That is why most people read - to be confirmed in what they believe or what they express, to be sure, to be safe, to be certain. Can you discover anything in certainty? Obviously not. A man who is certain psychologically can never discover. So, why do you read? You may read for mere amusement or to accumulate facts; or you read to acquire what you call wisdom, and you think you have understood everything because you can quote Shankara; you think by quoting Shankara you have got the full significance of life. The man who quotes is a thoughtless man because he is merely repeating what somebody has said. Sirs, if you had no book, no Bhagavad-Gita, no Shankara, what would you do? You would have to take the journey by yourself into the unknown, you would have to venture out alone. When you discover something, what you discover is yours; then you need no book. I have not read the Bhagavad-Gita nor any of the religious, psychological, or philosophical books, but I have discovered something, and that discovery can come only in freedom, not through repetition. That discovery is far greater than the experience of another, because discovery is not repetition, not copy.
Then, the first part of the question. Sir, why do you compare? What is the process of comparison? Why do you say, "What you say is like Shankara"? Whether it is or is not is unimportant. Truth can never be the same; it is ever new. If it is the same, it is not truth because truth is living from moment to moment; it cannot be today what it was yesterday. But why do you want to compare? Don't you compare in order to feel safe, in order to feel that you do not have to think, since what I say is what Shankara said? You have read Shankara, and you think you have understood; so you compare and relax, which is all very quick and effortless. In fact, you have not understood, and that is why you compare. When you compare, there is no understanding. To understand, you must look directly at the thing that is presented to you, and a mind that compares is a sluggish, wasteful mind; it is a mind that lives in security, that is enclosed in gratification. Such a mind cannot possibly understand truth. Truth is a living thing, not static, and a thing that is living is incomparable; it cannot be compared with the past or with the future. Truth is incomparable from moment to moment, and for a mind that tries to compare it, weigh it, judge it, there is no truth. For such a mind there is only propaganda, repetition; and repetition is a lie, it is not truth. You repeat because you are not experiencing, and a man who is experiencing never repeats, because truth is not repeatable. You cannot repeat truth, but your conclusion, your judgment about it can be repeated. Therefore, a mind that compares, that says, "What you are saying is exactly what Shankara said" - such a mind merely wants to continue and so is enervated, dead.
Sir, there is no song in your heart if you merely repeat a song and therefore follow the singer. What is important is not whether I have read sacred books, or whether what I say is comparable to Shankara, the Bhagavad-Gita, or Christ, but what is important is why you repeat, why you compare. Understand why you compare, then you will be understanding yourself. The understanding of yourself is far more important than your understanding of Shankara, because you are far more important than Shankara or any ideology. It is only through you that you discover truth. You are the discoverer of truth, not Shankara, not the Bhagavad-Gita, which has no meaning - it is only a means of hypnotizing yourself, like reading the newspaper. So, a mind that is capable of receiving truth is a mind that does not compare, for truth is incomparable. To receive truth the mind must be alone, and it is not alone when it is influenced by Shankara or Buddha. Therefore all influence, all conditioning must cease. Only in that state when all knowledge has ceased is there an ending and therefore the aloneness of truth.
Question: What exactly do you mean by meditation? Is it a process or a state?

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