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Let's call it academic knowledge; that's one thing. Knowledge of how to live using that knowledge is another thing. Or is knowledge the whole thing?
And where does freedom, where does spontaneity come in this? There is academic knowledge; if I learn about myself and use that knowledge about myself there is no freedom in that. I don't know if I am conveying this?
Are you saying that one needs academic knowledge to learn about oneself? No. Must I go to a university to learn about myself?
But going to university doesn't prevent you knowing about yourself. So there is self-knowing and academic knowledge, which is always the past, adding to it, taking away from it, moulding it - all that. If I say "I know myself," it is the knowledge which I have acquired in observing myself.
That doesn't give me freedom - I am still caught in knowledge of myself. The idea I have about myself. Yes, Sir.
That is using the ways of scientific knowledge and applying it to self-knowledge; that is the problem. No. Suppose somebody has never been to university, he can learn about himself in his relationship to everybody.
But does he build on that, does he store that knowledge away? The moment he stores it, then that becomes an impediment, therefore he is never free. I wonder if I am making myself clear?
Are you saying that in learning about yourself there are two things. One is picking up little facts about yourself and storing them up and saying, "I do this and this." The other is a perception of that total process to a profound depth in which you suddenly see the whole thing and have then finished with it.
Which has nothing to do with the accumulation of knowledge about yourself. You mean you see to a degree that makes all the knowledge of the little pieces put together disappear, because you have seen them. You see the whole of yourself... ... and you therefore have freedom.
That's right. That is freedom. If I learn about myself and say, "I mustn't do this, I must do that" - you know all the petty little things that go on - that knowledge is going to completely cripple I daren't do anything freely, spontaneously.
Now I think we begin to see what the different kinds of knowledge are. So what is it we are trying to bring about in the student? We don't only teach book knowledge, that is understood.
Then what is the other? Are you trying to help the student to know himself little by little? - collect knowledge about himself through little actions?
Or are we trying to help him to have an insight into the whole of it? I think this is important. How is he to have a total insight into himself so that everything falls into place?
- all the little things - how to behave, how to have good relationships, everything falls into place. Now, how am I to convey this and help him to it? If one is indicating an action, a process in the present tense, it seems that one must be in that process oneself; one must be actively exploring it in oneself, otherwise it becomes just another fact that is added to all the others.
Just another series of ideas; I understand that. I am trying to teach mathematics and also I am telling the student to get up early, to go to bed at the right time, eat properly, wash, etc. And yet I want to help him to have an insight which will enable him to get up at the proper time and do all the other things easily.
Now there are three things I'm involved academic learning, telling him what to do, and at the same time I say to him, "Look, if you get the insight everything falls into place." I have all the three streams harmoniously running together. Now how am I to convey this?
How am I to help him? He has to see where they all fit. No, no.
Again you are fitting him into this. Then he will say, "All right, I'll fit into this." Look at the problem first.
Academic learning is one stream. The other is the details, such as, "Get up, don't do this, don't do that" - which you also have to do. And the third stream is to say, "Look, to be so supremely intelligent means you'll instinctively do the right thing in behaviour."
Let all three streams run together harmoniously. It's very difficult to... No, don t say it's difficult, don't say anything, but first see the thing. If you say it is very difficult, it is finished.
The third element is a concept. No, it is not a concept, it is not an idea - concept means an idea, a conclusion. I see the three the insight or the intelligence, the detailed behaviour, and academic learning; and I feel they are not moving together, they are not forming one harmonious river.
So I say to what am I to do, how am I to teach these three things so that they make a whole? When you listen to this you conclude, you say, "Yes, I accept that as an idea." I say it is not an idea.
Then it becomes difficult, then you say, "I don't know what to do." But if it is a reality, how am I to convey the reality of it to the student - not the idea. Personally I have never had a problem or a conflict about all this.
Now how am I as a teacher, living here in a rather intimate relationship with the students - intimate in the sense of daily contact - how am I to show this? I am asking you, how will you show this to the child? - but not as an idea.
If it is an idea, then it means you must practise it, you must battle with it, all that nonsense begins. Well, if it's meaningful to me, then it is meaningful. Is it meaningful to you?
It is very, very meaningful. In what way? When do you use the word 'meaningful'?
I feel these three elements are extremely important. Sorry, I refuse to say it is important. It is.
Now how do you convey it to the child? Surely the beauty of insight conveys itself - the sheer beauty of it. Sir, do you know what you are saying?
I won't listen, I am looking at that bird and you say, "See the beauty of this." Let the seed be born in him. How are you going to plant that seed?
You understand? Yes, I understand. But I also see that if you can only plant the seed, and if relationship is not a meeting of one balanced mind with another balanced mind, then nothing comes of it.
I agree. Now how do you propose this to happen? Take a boy, you help him, you give him everything he wants in the sense of good environment and good food, you tell him what to do, teach him academically and all the rest of it; then something happens and everything goes totally wrong for the rest of the boy's life.
He takes to drink, women or drugs, cheats, does the most appalling things possible - he is finished. I have seen this happen. If you plant a seed in the ground it may die, but the seed itself is the truth of the tree, of the plant.
Now, can this be done with us, with the children, with you and me? () It is something that can be done; by definition it can't be measured. () A child comes here perhaps from a very disturbed background for a very short time; we can only offer what we have.
If we are fairly balanced, if we are very serious about it, if there is a right relationship, he takes that away when he goes out into the world. You are saying, "If we are serious, if we are balanced" - but are we? I think that is one of the basic things we are questioning.
Am I, are you, are we basically serious and balanced? - serious enough to say, "Look", and convey it verbally and non-verbally? Sir, that is what I meant by beauty - the non-verbal conveying.
To convey non-verbally one must be astonishingly clear oneself, limpid, and have that real seriousness, all that we said just now. Am I, are you? Aren't we teaching and learning together?
Aren't we giving attention to every detail that happens during the day? So all the time you take the instance that presents itself. Because you feel so strongly about this the force is there and so you are dealing with every moment of the day.
And it's not a correction, that is insight, if you like. And it's also linked with knowledge. I understand that.
But I am trying to find out how I am to convey this thing? - the three streams moving together. You deal with the fact.
To take one someone asked, "Can I put the tent up?" And I said, "Don't put it near the road." She said, " Why not?
I'm a free person" - in other words, "You needn't tell me." So I told the person why. You go into it so that she understands the situation, which is factual; it includes the academic side and the intonation of the voice comes in too.
I know. So it's not dealing with separate things all the time. Will this be conveyed to the student?
It does sometimes and it doesn't at other times. You have to work at it and go into it again. So you are saying, one has to be at it all the time.
All the time. Not in the sense " You haven't done that." That's pigeonholing and petty and gives a wrong feeling, not insight.
It's as though you came into a room and said, "You don't do it that way." I see that. I'm not questioning it, I think it's all right - I don't mean that in a patronizing way.
The other side of it is, that if we only stay at that level and that becomes the element in which we are working in relating to the other, if that is so, then again it comes back to ourselves and our relationship - a balanced relationship between balanced people, if it is possible. If not, it is always a corrective measure and never a penetrating gesture, a penetrating relationship. Yes, Sir.
() Isn't that very action on a penetrating, deep level? () It depends whether it goes to that level and you can feel it. Perhaps I am talking too much about a specific example, because I know the situation and I know that child and I know my own relationship with that child on that level.
Perhaps I am questioning whether or not it ever has penetrated the surface. I don't always feel that is true in relationship with a young child. Do we have the right to select and it seems that there is a possibility of insight in one child, or that in another child there isn't that possibility.
Do we reject the child, or do we this is what this child needs and relate it to that? Take each child separately. That's it.
Sir, all you have said is right. Is there a different approach to this? What I mean is very difficult to put into words.
Can this seed be born without your doing anything about it? We are doing something about my relationship with the child, how I behave, what I do, how I am - sentimental or balanced - learning about myself and then helping the child - all that. We know that as probably the only way.
I am asking if there is another way at all, in which this thing takes place without us doing something about it - yet it takes place. Surely it must, in any real relationship... You are bringing in relationship... Is there a way for a person to have a deep understanding of the significance of his life? Is it possible to see... ... the whole thing instantly.
Of course there must be. How? Surely a relationship in any situation is only a secondary thing - the insight is by definition itself.
So if we are talking about education being basically self-understanding and awareness, then a community, an environment, a relationship can indicate something; but the individual must see, that must be the spring, it comes from inside, not from outside. I understand all that. I am trying to find out something else.
A student comes here, terribly conditioned, or the family is broken up - this and that. And as a teacher, I also come here conditioned. I am learning about myself, I am helping in our relationship, I am quiet and so on.
I am unconditioning myself and him in our relationship. We know that, we have discussed it, we have seen it. Now I am asking is there a way of doing something which will bring about the seed to be born naturally in the person?
What you are trying to say is there a way when a person can't say it for you? - yet you show me the way. Do you mean that?
Not quite. Sir, can we produce a miracle? That's the question.
Wait - you understand, Sir? Do we want to produce a miracle? Or do we just...
I think both are involved - a miracle is also necessary. Do you understand what I mean by miracle? I don't mean something like Lourdes.
Are you if the seed is there, just like the seed in the ground, and the conditions are right, then it will flower? I don't mean it that way. We know the child as well as the teacher comes here conditioned and has to learn to uncondition himself.
This unconditioning the academic side, behaviour in detail as well as seeing the totality, all of that running together. This is what I am trying to convey to the student and in that I am learning how to live that way. That takes too long.
So I say to myself, "A miracle must happen to change it instantly." May be both together are necessary - the miracle as well as the other. Can we produce both?
I think we can. And that's why, as you said just now, if we are balanced, serious - which means not sentimental, not verbal, not ideational but factual - if we are dealing with it in that way, the miracle comes. That's half the miracle, isn't it?
Yes, Sir. I think that is what is necessary here - a miracle in that sense. That can only happen if we are really tremendously serious and not anything but factual.
Can we convey to the student the factual? - never the ideal, never the 'what should be' - the sentiment involved in what 'should' be. I think then the miracle comes about.
If you tell me I am a fool and I see it as a fact - the miracle then takes place. We are all brought up on 'what should be,' on ideation, a sentimental way of living, and these boys and girls are also used to that; they face facts only for a little while and turn it into sentiment. Can we convey to them never to enter into that field at all?
It means that as a community we must put all this aside altogether, because otherwise our relationship is one of constant interpretation of another's behaviour, rather than actual awareness and deep understanding. Yes, absolutely. The other day we were talking about sanity and mediocrity, what those words mean.
We were asking whether living in this place as a community we are mediocre. And we also asked whether we are sane totally, that is bodily, mentally, emotionally. Are we balanced and healthy?
All that is implied in the words sane, whole. Are we educating each other to be mediocre, to be slightly insane, slightly off balance? The world is quite insane, unhealthy, corrupt.
Are we bringing about that same imbalance, insanity and corruption in our education here? This is a very serious question. Can we find out the truth of it?
- not what we think we should be in terms of sanity, but actually discover for ourselves if we are educating each other to be really sane and not mediocre. Many of us will have a job to which we have to go every day, many people will get married and have children - those are things that are going to happen. What is your place in this world as a human being who is supposed to be educated, who has got to earn a livelihood, where you may, or may not marry, have the responsibility of children, a house and mortgage and may be trapped in that for the rest of your life?
Perhaps we are hoping somebody will look after us. That means you must be capable of doing something. You can't just say, "Please look after me" - nobody is going to do it.
Don't be depressed by it. Just look at it, be familiar with it, know all the tricks people are playing on each other. The politicians will never bring the world together, on the contrary; there may be no actual war but there is an economic war going on.
If you are a scientist you are a slave to the government. All governments are more or less corrupt, some more, some less, but all are corrupt. So look at all this without getting depressed and saying, "What am I going to do, how am I going to face this, I haven't the capacity?"
You will have the capacity; when you know how to look you will have tremendous capacity. So what is your place in all this? If you see the whole, then you can ask that question, but if you merely say to yourself, "What am I going to do?
", without seeing the whole, then you are caught, then there is no answer to it. Surely the first thing is for us to discuss these things openly. But I think people are a little frightened to discuss freely.
Perhaps the thing they really care about will be threatened. Are you frightened? If I say what I want is a fast car, then perhaps somebody will question that.
It must be questioned. I get letters questioning me all the time; I have been challenged since my childhood. Sir, there is something which always bothers me when these things are discussed.
It is said we live in a highly mechanised industrial society and if some of us can opt out of it, it is because there are other people who do go to the office and work and become mechanical. Of course. We couldn't opt out of it without those people fulfilling their mechanised, miserable existence.
No. How to live in this world without belonging to it, that is the question. How to live in this insanity and yet be sane?
Are you saying that the man who goes to the office and leads an apparently mechanical life could do all that and yet be a different sort of human being? In other words, it isn't necessarily the system... This system, whatever it is, is making the mind mechanical.
But does it have to make the mind mechanical? It is happening. All young people are faced with growing up, they see they may have to take a job which entails that.
Can there be another response to it? My question how to live in this insane world sanely. Though I may have to go to an office and earn a livelihood, there must be a different heart, a different mind.
Is this different mind, this different heart happening here in this place? Or are we just treading the mill and getting thrown out into this monstrous world? () There is no need any more to have a nine-to-five, six day a week job because of automation.
What is happening is that this age is now giving us the extra time to attend to our other side. () But we were saying we want leisure and we don't know how to use leisure. () There is nothing wrong, surely, in earning a livelihood?
I never said it's wrong to earn a livelihood; one has to earn a livelihood. I earn my livelihood by talking to people in many places. I have been doing it for fifty years and I am doing what I love to do.
What I am doing is really what I think is right, is true; it is the way of living for me - not imposed on me by somebody - and that is my way of earning a livelihood. I just want to say that you are able to do that because there are people who fly the aeroplanes. Of course, I know without them I couldn't travel.
But if there were no aeroplanes I would remain in one place, in the village where I was born and I would still be doing the same thing there. Yes, but in this highly mechanised society, where profit is the motive, this is the way things are organized. No, other people do the dirty work and I do the clean work.
So one tries to do the clean work? It comes to that. But apart from earning a living, we have to begin to realize that to live sanely and yet earn a living in this world, there has to be an inner revolution.
I am putting the same question differently. How am I to live sanely in this world which is insane? It doesn't mean I am not going to earn a livelihood, that I am not going to marry, that I am not going to take responsibilities.
To live in this insane world sanely, I must reject that world and a revolution in me must come about so that I become sane and operate sanely. That's my whole point. Because I've been brought up insanely I have to question everything.
That's what education is. You have been sent here, or you came here, contaminated by an insane world. Don't fool yourself, you have been conditioned by that insane world, shaped by past generations - including your parents - and you come here and you have to uncondition yourself, you have to undergo a tremendous change.
Does that change take place? Or are we just "Well, we are doing a bit of good work here and there, day after day," and by the time you leave in two or four years' time, off you go with a little patchwork done? There seems to be a conflict between what we want to do, what we desire to do, and what is necessary.
What is it you desire to do? I want to be an engineer because I see it brings in a great deal of money, or this or that. Can I rely on that desire?
Can I rely on my instincts which have been so twisted? Can I rely on my thoughts? What have I to rely on?
So education is to create an intelligence which is not mere instinct or desire or some petty demand, but an intelligence that will function in this world. Is our education at Brockwood helping you to be intelligent? I mean by that to be very sensitive, not to your own desires, to your own demands, but to be sensitive to the world, to what is going on in the world.
Surely education is not merely to give you knowledge, but also to give you the capacity to look at the world objectively, to see what is happening - the wars, the destruction, the violence, the brutality. The function of education is to find out how to live differently, not merely to pass exams, to get a degree, become qualified in certain ways. It is to help you to face the world in a totally different, intelligent way, knowing you have to earn a livelihood, knowing all the responsibilities, the miseries of it all.
My question is this being done here? Is the educator getting educated as well as the student? Your question is also my question, I ask whether this education is happening here.
You are asking whether such education is taking place here at Brockwood to help you to become so intelligent, so aware that you can meet this insanity? If not, whose fault is it? What is the basis which makes this education possible?