K School – Adults Discussion, Malibu, California, 23 April 1975

*Identification: The* *23rd of April, 1975, Malibu, discussion on the educational centre* *at Ojai, between Krishnaji, Alan Kishbaugh, Asha and Mark Lee, Albion Patterson, Ruth Tettemer, Professor Rusch, Mary Zimbalist.*

Mark Lee: We had one more possible student.

K: One more? Two? (Laughs)

ML: Sir, one of my concerns to discuss with all of us and with you is the curriculum of the school. In the latest Bulletin of the Foundation there is your statement which covers the intent of the school and brings up all of the various concerns of the teachers and the Foundation. I wonder if we could go into some of the academic questions, not what is to be taught… (inaudible) …with the usual curriculum or subject matter, but how would we approach the relationship of the academic side of the student’s life to all the rest that the school is working for. And also seeing we are starting with younger children, children who are just beginning, already conditioned, but they are being conditioned further — how do we approach some of these learning environments where children learn the beginnings of psychological time, the analytical process, elements that seem to develop out of proportion later on when they are thrown into quite often a competitive educational environment?

Krishnamurti: Sir, there they are. Talk first. Professor, first begin.

Chuck Rusch: Traditionally, curriculum comes from two sources. One, the bank of knowledge that we have about the learning process in young children: at 2 they learn this, at 4 they are capable of learning that, and so on and so on. The second traditional source is what they are going to face in the outside world. They are going to face the university, they are going to face getting a job. So, we train them or we educate them to learn.

K: All right, sir. I understand.

CR: So we’re talking about something different, though.

K: Yes. We’re talking about something plus. That plus something else. Shall we begin right from the beginning, rather than bits?

(Pause)

Sir, I have been reading something about whales and elephants. Especially the whales, they have had complete security and safety. Nothing could attack them, destroy them. And man has come along and he is destroying them. I feel — just a discussion, I am not laying down — that given complete security in the deep sense of that word, we can create a mind that is extraordinarily stable, and I feel as we are going to start afresh, a totally new school, the sense of great security and vast inward protection is going to give the student an extraordinary capacity. I think this is… I think they will acknowledge this. I’ve been talking about this, as you know, in India for 40 years. Nobody paid any attention. First of all, can we give that security and a protective freedom in which the mind can function, not personally, not isolated, selfish and all the rest, but a mind that is, you know, full, rich and whole? I think if we could give those two elements: complete security and great protective freedom… You understand? We’ll discuss what those two involve, then curriculum, what to teach, how to teach. All that will come in relation to those two. I don’t know if you all agree — I mean, not ‘agree’ — if you see this. You see, then, where you teach matters more, I think, than the content of what you are teaching. Where do you teach?

Mary Zimbalist: How do you mean, where?

K: The place, the ambience, the environment, the atmosphere, the sense of, you know, seriousness, holiness. All that matters a great deal more than what you are teaching, the subject matter. Not that the subject matter doesn’t matter. It does matter but it takes a second place in relation to whole thing. I wonder if I’m… The security, protection, and where. Where, in the sense not the four walls or the garden, but the atmosphere. Can we do this?

(Pause)

John Lilly, you know who I mean, he’s been experimenting with dolphins and whales and all the rest of it; and they’ve got enormous brains — enormous — and apparently from what they say, including John Lilly and others, that they are capable of teaching man something which man doesn’t know. They are highly sensitive, learn very quickly because, I think, I mean, the way I look at it, because they are so completely secure. Nothing attacks them. You follow. Nothing. There is no danger to them. You follow what I’m saying? Is this so, first?

MZ: Are you saying that the size of their brain is in some way related to this?

K: Yes.

MZ: But the sharks have no enemies either, except each other.

K: Oh yes they have. Dolphins attack them, other animals. They are really… they are attackers, from what one reads. The dolphins, they eat, naturally, but they don’t attack. They are not…

MZ: Aggressive.

K: …aggressive. They are very docile, very affectionate. They are saying, sir, something very interesting. It may be that they are the — what do you call it? — the non-terrestrial beings. (Laughter)

CR: As I understand it, dolphins only attack sharks if they go after one of their own. Then they all come together to protect and go after the shark. Do you think that this atmosphere of security, the feeling of security…

K: No, security, protection and an atmosphere in which to learn.

ML: All of these create a different kind of a mind that…

K: Sir, if your child was completely secure, no fear, protected in the right sense, not, ‘Oh, darling, I’ll protect you’ — you follow? — but protected in the sense of giving him freedom and yet watching over him, I am sure that will create a different mind altogether.

I don’t know if I may be a little personal. Forgive me. When they found these two boys, oh, about, when was it, 1909, they saw to it from the instructions, etc., etc., masters and so on — you may not believe it but they believed in it — that they were protected. No crown prince was so protected as these two! Their food, their clothes — you follow? — watched over. When they travelled in a regular carriage, the central carriage, two people on either side. If there was an accident, they got the… and not him! And so on — I won’t go into it. And I am sure it makes a tremendous difference. Can we create this, because then the boy or the girl is not afraid? Because the element of fear doesn’t enter into it all; which is one of the factors of conditioning. Fear as reward and punishment, that doesn’t enter into it at all. Because he is protected, there is nothing to frighten him, nothing to punish him, nothing to reward him. I don’t know if… Can we produce that? I think that’s the first thing we ought to discuss. Sorry. And how do we set about doing it? If you think that’s right, if you think that is rational, sane — you follow? — not some romantic nonsense. If you see that is the right thing, the true thing, then how do we set about it? That means where you teach matters enormously, the atmosphere, the house, their rooms — you follow? — the space, everything.

ML: That all generates, creates that feeling of security. But what about the relationships between the people who are there?

K: No, we’ll come to that. Can we create that? And then from that you establish relationship with the students which is different. He is not afraid of you, therefore he has confidence, he has trust — all the rest of it follows. And he knows that you care much more than the parents, because your whole time is devoted to it. Right. If you think this is true, then how do we create this thing? How do you create the sense of stability, security? How do you create that? Come on, sirs.

Albion Patterson: We’re discussing the… (inaudible) …coming down, the teachers. Mark only needs two.

K: No, don’t bother with numbers.

AP: Yes. Now, it’s true that you want one of the two teachers to have some accreditation.

K: No, sir, I’m not talking about any of that. I’m talking, I’m asking you, Mr Patterson, as he is related, you know, responsible Foundation member and all the rest of it, how does he create this sense of complete security for the student?

AP: Without reference to the feeling that the teacher has?

K: We’re not yet concerned with the boy or with the teacher just now.

AP: Oh, I see.

K: Because there are no teachers here.

ML: We are the school.

K: Dr Rusch and Mark Lee. And perhaps… (inaudible) …by helping, but you’re responsible for it, Mark Lee. How will you create it?

(Pause)

ML: Sir, it seems there are several elements involved. One you mentioned, that is being available to the student all the time.

K: Ah, I’m not talking about the student at all. Sorry. I’m asking you how you will create the moment he steps into that area, into that house, that he knows, feels there is the sense of total security.

Erna Lilliefelt: We have to have it for oneself… (inaudible)

K: Don’t… (inaudible). How will you create this sense of…

CR: I’ve been in an environment that gave that feeling and it might be useful to look at places we’ve been that have that feeling about it. Like there are certain libraries that I’ve been in where they didn’t quite approach what you’re talking about, but there was a seriousness of purpose. You know, there was an implicit rule system about the behaviour that went on there. People, when they went in, you know, would act a certain way and they had no desire to do anything else. Of course, there are cathedrals that give a different sense, but similarly. I don’t know, maybe others of you have experienced environments like this.

MZ: I certainly have but what would you say brought that about? What was the quality or what was the thing that generated the quality? Can one say at all?

K: Not rules.

CR: No, I said the rules were implicit. I mean, you knew how to behave automatically but it’s not listed on the wall.

K: Yes. How was it brought about?

CR: Well, I would like to think that the architecture is part of it, and the setting, yet it’s hard to talk about it. I’ve got some images, but I don’t know…

MZ: One knows as an audience of it but not as a creator or producer of it. One knows the effect, but not how it is brought into being.

CR: Theatre has a lot of that too, the word ‘audience’ brought up that image.

MZ: Well the business of theatre people is to know how to create that and generate that, and that is a special skill, art if you want, but is there any…

CR: Well I can rattle off a lot of things but I’m not sure they’re relevant. That it should be quiet, that implies soft materials, I think it should be warm, I think there should be good light quality but not too bright. I think the spaces should be generous, you know, but I’m not sure of those things.

K: Sir, I’ve been in places like that, you know, good, but they haven’t got the quality of what should be a real home. We’ve discussed this. Come on, sirs, there are all of you here.

ML: Just the perfect place… it’s the people who are there. To say that the students are going to walk in the first day to an empty house that has this feeling, I don’t see how that could happen. It’s going to be the people who are populating this building, this school, the parents, the teachers, and so on, who will create this atmosphere.

K: Yes. You are there.

ML: I’m there.

K: Wait a minute. You are there. Perhaps three of you are there. What makes the student feel that he is secure? What is the thing he meets? I am a student. What is the thing I want to feel the moment I enter that door? You are there. You follow? We are outsiders for the moment. He and Ruth and the four of us, or five of us are out, and a student comes in. What is the thing he meets?

Q: (Inaudible)

K: You put on the mat ‘Welcome’ but that doesn’t…

MZ: Well, he obviously meets what Professor Rusch has just suggested, which is the appearance of the place. If it’s quiet, harmonious looking, if it’s beautiful, if it’s not in some way unpleasant to the child in appearance.

K: It would be all right, sir, if there was a marvellous tree in a green field and a few of us met there. The openness, the beauty of the tree, the sky, the fields. But it is not going to be quite like that. They are going to meet you. Two or ten, it doesn’t matter, they are going to meet you, in the house which you have carefully calculated to produce the effect — let’s call it that. But it is you. Later on, the beads. Later on the floor, the lights. The first impact is you.

MZ: I would think the first impact is what he physically sees. The child has never been there. He arrives.

K: Yes, that’s right.

MZ: He sees the place, then he sees the human beings.

K: Yes, that is what I am saying. Now, how will you meet him and make him feel that sense of — you follow? — that there is an umbrella?

CR: My sense is that you wholly attend to it. (Inaudible) …Asha was saying in terms of welcome. If you wholly attend to them in that moment.

K: That doesn’t quite satisfy me. I want to penetrate more deeply into it. What is it you are trying to do with the student? Not what the student is trying to do with you, but what is it you are doing?

CR: Communicating.

K: What is it you are actually doing with that boy or girl? Not only at the moment he enters; the whole ten year period, or fifteen year period; what is it you are trying to do? What is the Foundation, Ruth and Patterson and all of us, what is it they are trying to do, what is it you are trying to do? I exclude myself because I’m gone. You follow? If I was here permanently I would then work at it, but as I am gone, what is it you are all trying to do?

CR: Isn’t it to provide the opportunity for people to become free? For these children to become whole and free, and for us to become whole and free ourselves, become deconditioned.

K: That’s just it. That’s a later movement. Sir, I am questioning the whole thing. What is that child being shaped into? You understand, I’m using the word ‘shape’, not conditioning, not moulded, etc., etc. What is it that is being born, in contact with you?

AP: I know the one or two people who gave me that feeling when I was young in schools. They made me feel that everything was all right just as it was. They’re not full of worry. There was nothing I was supposed to do that I didn’t know about that I should know about. They weren’t in the process of being anything other than what they were. They were sort of full.

K: Would you say I was doing nothing? The student enters and I meet him. I’m doing nothing.

Q: It sounds pretty good! (Laughs) It sounds (inaudible) to me, because whenever you’re doing something, it’s… No, I think there has to be a kind of seriousness of ongoing activities.

K: Of course. I’m not bothered about that.

Q: And I think that the person that’s reading should convey this sense of doing nothing.

Ruth Tettemer: Must be open?

K: No, that’s a dangerous word.

RT: Okay. That’s the trouble.

ML: You mean, sir, meeting the child, not necessarily as the director or principal or whatever; not necessarily full of questions and things that you want to discuss or bring out, but just to meet the child as he is?

K: No. You on your part are doing nothing. Just play around with it a little bit. That flower in the air. The air is doing nothing to it. It’s doing something, but it doesn’t set about doing something.

ML: Wilfully.

K: Wilfully, consciously, unconsciously. The flower grows because the air is right, and there is proper… etc., etc. But if the air says, ‘I am doing something to that flower,’ then the flower is dead. Now, can we meet the child — I’m just investigating, the thing comes out, talking it over — can I meet the child with complete non-action? Which is the most appalling action! You understand? You understand, sir?

Q: (Laughs) Yes.

K: Would the child then feel, ‘By Jove, here is a man who doesn’t want me to do anything, this way, that way, the other way, don’t do.’

ML: The child would drop all his defences.

K: Watch it, sir. It’s happening. You follow? Here’s a man for the first time in his life who doesn’t ask him anything to do and not dDo. If the child is… If the child is … tThere”s danger in that. Y, do you follow, sir? You understand what I mean?

Q: Yes.

K: If you use that as the means of wiping away his troubles, then that is a total barrier. I don’t know if I’m… If it is a calculated, controlled, unconsciously desirous of producing a result, then it is gone.

Q: Right.

Q: Then there’s nothing.

K: Nothing.

Q: Because it’s doing something.

K: Sir, it’s a new school. Naturally I feel about this, you see? It’s a new school, new ground, a lovely place, and can this be brought about? Because, sir, in doing nothing, is the greatest stability. I did nothing to myself. You understand? ‘I must not be, I must be, or this should be’ — nothing. Which doesn’t mean I vegetate, doesn’t mean I degenerate. The other factor brings a degeneration, with all its conflict, all the rest of it. Can we do this? And the non-action, wouldn’t that produce a great sense of wholeness? I come into this room and there you are. You’re not blank. You’re wide open-eyed. Everything is alive in you. And you do nothing. Wouldn’t that produce a relationship with a boy who comes from an environment that’s always chasing him, pursuing him, threatening him, bullying him? Wouldn’t that make the student, the boy feel, ‘By Jove, here I am! Something totally new which I had not expected before, which I never had before.’ And therefore his whole activity is different. You follow? He doesn’t battle you. Is this right?

RT: It sounds right.

ML: Sir, I’ve seen some students who would take a while to feel these things.

K: Yes.

ML: They are so dull.

K: Yes, they are so dull, too heavy, by drugs, by society, but I’m talking for the moment about the teacher, the man who is in the house. Can that man in the house, the woman and the man in the house, have this sense of total non-action, which becomes the most positive action? I don’t know if you follow this. Shall we cancel going to Europe and Saanen and Brockwood and… (laughs) No, I can’t.

MZ: (Inaudible)

K: Oh, for God’s sake! (Inaudible) …Saanen. I know I could… (inaudible)

MZ: (Laughs) Cancel India next winter?

Q: (Inaudible)

K: We can do all this together, sir. Now, do I understand what it means, non-action? Does Mark Lee understand it? Therefore, sir, the house must be non-active also. I don’t know if I’m conveying.

CR. Yes. Yes, I know houses that are very active! (Laughs)

K: By Jove, I’m beginning to… You understand, sir?

CR: Yes. As I understand it…

K: I think that is architecture.

CR: Yes, yes.

Alan Kishbaugh: The architecture… (inaudible)

K: That is the architecture.

AK: Right.

MZ: I tend to look on buildings, or houses anyway, as organic, living things. (Laughs) I try not to personalise them, but they have special characters and personalities and atmospheres. At least most of them do to me. And I for one am very sensitive to it; others think it is nonsense.

K: The house therefore must be the right proportions, not impressive, not, ‘My God, how big it is or how small it is.’ It must be… I wonder if we can convey all this.

CR: I understand most… (inaudible) …and I don’t know if I can do either of them.

K: No, no. You can’t do anything.

CR: (Laughs) Right.

AK: We have to be careful not to form an action about inaction.

K: Yes.

MZ: Busy doing nothing!

AK: And we have characters.

K: Then we have… (laughs)

You see, that’s why everything, sir… the whales — I am going back to them — have this enormous brain. They just live to eat and to talk and to play around — you follow?

(Pause)

MZ: By that theory, the Koala bear should have an enormous brain.

K: They don’t, they are little things. No, because they are frightened, because they have predators. Somebody will eat them, snakes and this and that. Here there was nothing to destroy them.

Q: Right. (Inaudible)

(Pause in recording)

K: …other people’s racquets, other people’s bicycles, other people’s balls! No.

ML: We’re not talking about that kind of protection.

K: No, no. We are taking about protection and an action and a stability which is non-active. I don’t know if I’m conveying anything. There — I’m sorry to have brought that thing; I must finish that — there, there are instructions how to deal with those boys, from on high — if you believe in all that. I’m not being cynical or sceptical. They believed it. I’m not condemning them. They believed it and therefore they said these boys must be protected, they must have the right food, they must have the right clothes, they must see the right people, they must talk right — you follow? — everything was laid down.

MZ: They were what I would call very pushed around, pushed about.

K: Oh, very pushed about! They were told to read Ruskin, Ulysses, see the cathedrals, see the theatre, meet the important people who were not cynical, who were not this — you follow? — all that followed. But that was their way of doing it. I’m not saying we should. We can’t do it. But could we in that place create this atmosphere of total inaction? Therefore the boy is completely at home. Wouldn’t you feel at home if there was nobody telling you what to do, nobody pushing you around, no wife saying do this, don’t do that, nagging, pushing? Wouldn’t you? So why couldn’t the boys do that, feel at home, which is his security?

MZ: Doesn’t that imply having to choose the children with great care, because a child that isn’t sensitive would interpret that as a vacuum into which he will move?

K: Yes. I don’t want to go to the child or the parents yet. I’m only concerned whether we can create that.

MZ: I know, but…

(Telephone rings)

Q: (I’ll get it.)

K: (Inaudible)

(Pause)

K: I think, sir, if you are non-active become very sensitive, naturally. And therefore you see the boy as he is and you see the whole background and so you deal non-actively with him. You understand what I’m saying? No.

You see, if you are non-active, then I expose myself. I don’t mind. Because you are not going to criticise me. You’re not going to threaten me. You’re not going to punish me. I expose myself and so you see me. I don’t know if I… And it does create an atmosphere. You follow? It does create something potential. You see, no school, no college or university or family provides this — right, sir? — and therefore it’s like the wave in the sea. Nothing threatens the student. Nothing. No punishment. You follow, sir? That does something extraordinary. It must. You see the truth of this? The truth, not the verbal reality. If you really see it then it’s finished. Then we can go and say, look, how are we non-actively going to teach the students mathematics, or history or any subject? Well, sir? How would I teach you — sorry — non-actively, in that sense, mathematics?

History, sir — I learnt little, I was a little boy, no more than that — history is crime, murder, wars, heroes of those wars. Right? I teach you history to deny totally all that. That’s negation. I don’t know… No, sir, this has happened. Those are realities. And non-actively I teach him history so that he sees the truth of what man is, which is history, in his relationship to society, to property, to power, position, all that. I wonder if I am conveying anything.

ML: Not from any point of view, but rather taking the whole of man, let’s say the culture of man.

K: And the culture of man is this: wars, power, position, chicanery, dishonesty. And that’s our history. And the heroes of those histories are the most dishonourable people. Right? I mean, I am just… they may be lovely people but I don’t know. So in teaching I would bring out the negation of all that.

CR: Non-actively.

K: No, I’m doing it!

CR: Yes.

ML: By understanding what it is.

K: I would say look at — oh, any blasted… — Washington. He was the richest man at the end of it, one of the richest men. You follow, sir? I’d talk about all that, not trying to convince the student of anything. Non-actively. Because I see the whole thing as a reality of thought, which has no… You follow? I see it. Therefore I say it is nothing. I can read history and say it is nothing. I don’t know if I am… There’s the reality. All right. King Henry VIII existed, but it’s nothing.

AK: Because history as it’s taught in the schools today is connected to the social system. So you don’t learn that Washington was a wealthy man at the end of his tenure. You would learn that he is the father of your country, because history is used to manipulate, sure.

Q: From a point of view. To perpetuate it.

AK: So that you’ll come out of school and mesh nicely into the social system.

ML: Or if you’re Japanese or you’re…

K: It’s the same thing.

AK: Doesn’t matter.

K: They twist actuality to suit their own national vanity, and all the rest of it.

Q: It is edited history.

ML: The blacks have discovered that in this country. All of a sudden, they’re aware of it.

AK: Yes, but they’re doing their own editing. (Laughs)

ML: Right, but they’ve been edited out.

AK: That’s right. And the Indian too.

ML: Right.

K: And I’d teach mathematics non-actively. How would I do it?

ML: Well the root of all mathematics is order.

K: Order. So, I would talk about order.

ML: This also implies an interdisciplinary approach, where order that is found in math is related to science…

K: I’d go on, sir, we’ve got the whole field.

ML: Right.

K: And order is non-active and therefore it is orderly. The higher you go into mathematics, the more orderly the mind must be. And so on. Sir, I can invent a lot of ways of teaching, can’t you?

CR: It seems to me that’s got to be… at least as much experiencial as, you know… (inaudible) I mean, a lot of math and science and everything can just be taking place, and the child can be joining in. And then you are explaining to the child how the mathematics and the science are used. Particularly at that age level.

K: They learn very quickly.

ML: If it is first hand, rather than discussion or… (inaudible)

CR: Yes, right.

K: And also I’d help them to listen non-actively. There is tremendous possibility in this, sir. You’ve got it?

ML: And then to… (inaudible)

K: Begin with listening. To listen. To listen properly the school must begin with quietness.

Q: I don’t know…

K: Of course. If I am teaching mathematics, before I teach mathematics, I say sit still, be quiet. Think what you like but be quiet, sit still, because then only you can listen to what I am going to tell you. But if you come rushing in, pick up a book and I start, you don’t listen.

CR: It’s a sort of clearing process.

K: The quiet. If you want to look out of the window, look out. But look. You follow? Look and give your attention to what you are looking at. I don’t know if I… (Inaudible)

ML: You’ve got a whole life there.

K: We’ll create a school that has never existed before.

ML: The remarkable thing here is that we are doing this with the younger child, who is… After they get to high school age…

K: …it’s more difficult.

ML: Much more difficult.

CR: Yes.

ML: Prospects are just limitless.

K: Now, can you convey this to the teachers? They are important, not the children.

ML: Well they are the ones who are responsible.

K: They are. Can you convey this to the students? They will eat out of your hand. Absolutely. They will do anything you want. I would. Because but you are really caring. You follow, sir?

(Pause)

MZ: Dr Rusch, I am guessing but I feel the children in your school must be subject to something of this nature, and do you find they respond differently in your school because of a certain atmosphere, because of a certain attitude on the part of those who are teachers, because it’s a different relationship?

CR: Well, my school doesn’t come close to this yet.

MZ: No, but something very different seems to be going on, from what you wrote, and that the child does sense and respond to this very rapidly.

CR: Not very rapidly, but it takes about one to two months for most of the children coming to the school to kind of discover it.

K: And loosen themselves.

CR: And then they get the idea of the thing and they start flowing with it.

MZ: Yes.

CR: Now there are some children that never get it. Two types come in.

K: What do you do with those children?

CR: Some we stay with as long as a year and a half and others we just let go. (Pause in recording) CD : …come in later, you know, they just get in later. It’s very difficult. It takes a lot of patience because each one…

K: Yes.

MZ: Have you learnt now, in the experience you’ve had, to be able to sort of sense which children will be able to open up to this, or isn’t it that predictable?

CR: Well we’ve made a lot of misjudgements but I think we’re getting better at it. I don’t know if I can describe it.

K: Sir, how do you judge? You’ve got two or three other teachers.

CR: Yes.

K: Half a dozen of you. How do you judge?

CR: Mostly through feelings, but the procedure is we interview the child and keep on the parent. We show them… we tell them about the school and we show them slides of the school to give them a sense of the school. Then we talk to them about themselves and then we come to some sort of consensus based upon our feelings of what the child…

K: Now, how do you come to that consensus?

CR: It comes through knowing. (Laughs) I mean… and sometimes we’re wrong and sometimes we’re right.

K: Sir, here we are, half a dozen or a few of the teachers. I’m the student. How do you… each one of you is going to vote. We’ll take that quickly to get on with the subject. You’re going to vote. If three of you disagree, the rest of majority agree, then what do you do?

CR: It never comes out that way. I mean, because what we do is we just keep talking until we all agree, one way or the other.

K: So it must be unanimous?

CR: Yes.

K: Right. Then how do you bring about this unanimity? Through talking?

CR: Talking about our feelings.

K: Talking about the boy — and not in front of the boy; you say, ‘Please go outside and play,’ and between ourselves how do we do it? Talk about our feelings with regard to the boy?

CR: There’s two ways we do it. At the beginning of the year we do it that way and if the child comes in the middle of the year, we have him visit for three days.

K: But even then what is the process of your casting the vote or unanimity or disagreement, how do you produce it? By talking?

CR : Yes. Yes, we just say what we think about the child or feel about the child, whether we think he’ll fit in or not.

K: Sir, can you find another way?

CR: Sure. (Laughs) (Inaudible)

K: Because in talking about him, or I talk to you, I express my feelings, I may not be honest with myself. And because you are running the show I accept you, but inside there is a tension which will manifest itself later on, disliking the boy.

CR: Some reservations or…

K: Reservations, you know, all the rest of it — d istrust of you and look secretive away from you, and so on. Can this be avoided?

CR: Well we work pretty hard on — and we haven’t totally avoided it — we work pretty hard on keeping ourselves clear with each other. I mean, if we’ve got considerations and reservations about each other we share them, whether…

K: No, I’m attacking it…

CR: Right. Teachers, I mean.

K: Sir, there are four of us. He comes, the student. I know his father, his mother, good family, money or no money, poor, a certain class across the rails, not this side of the railroad, all that. I know him because I’ve read the report, I’ve talked to the parents, their language, their attitude, the way they sit, the way their house looks, their language, their pettiness, their meanness — you follow? — I know all that. Can I be free of all the prejudices which I have about that? You follow? Deliberately put aside my prejudices. You do that, she does that, we three, deliberately say, ‘I’m not going to let my prejudices interfere with this, my feelings, my respectability, my snobbishness, or egalitarian outlook,’ whatever it is — I deliberately put away all that and you do that and he does that. Then we are totally unanimous, there is no restriction, there is no secretiveness, there is no suspicion, there is no, ‘You are the boss, I am…’ — all that is wiped out.

CR: Right.

K: Then we three or we ten look at the boy quite differently. It is a total look, not your look and my look. I wonder, am I making…

CR: Yes. It’s non-active then.

K: Yes. It is the look of all of us who have no prejudice. Therefore non-active and so on and so on, and our judgment will invariably be right. I don’t know… That is real clairvoyance, sir. You understand?

CR: Right. (Inaudible)

K: Then the boy tells me everything, if we all agree. You follow? The parent who comes in a Cadillac or Rolls Royce and the man who drives up in a cycle, we look without the cycle, without the Cadillac. (Laughs) I talked about this at Rishi Valley for years… (inaudible).

(Pause)

Well, sir, where is your curriculum?

ML: Quite a bit of it is taken care of… (inaudible)

K: No, I was…

ML: No, sir, I think with understanding this, I have no curriculum to present at all, I have nothing to offer, in this sense. There are certain things which are commonly understood as regards the school, but working with the teachers — and this is why we want to get the teachers there several months ahead of that so that we can sit down and fundamentally discuss all of these things — we will produce, it doesn’t have to be on paper, it’s an understanding, we will produce the substance of the school, because there has to be something.

K: Of course.

ML: But it’s approaching. I mean, the history and maths are easier to discuss, but then you get into some of the more difficult ones: language, art, you know? Not science, b ut art — those that straddle the factual and the non-factual side. You know, teaching appreciation. You can teach form and order and proportion and symmetry but how do you teach good taste or how do you convey good taste?

K: I think, sir, good taste you can teach.

ML: You can teach it?

K: Of course. I come into this house and I see immediately there is — you follow? — because I’m sensitive. I want to learn. I go into a — I’m sorry, I’m not snobbish — into a lower middle-class… and I see there is no taste at all and I see how you are dressed, as a student — I see how you are dressed, whether it’s taste… You teach me. But you can’t teach me beauty. I think that’s where… I’m sorry if I used the snobbish word ‘lower middle-class’, I don’t mean that in that sense. You see, a great many Indians come to Europe. A great many. They don’t look, they don’t try to find out how the Englishman or the Frenchman or the Italian is living, what their customs are, what their culture is, what their background is — you follow? — how they eat, what they eat. They come, stay six months, go back, and they’re exactly the same as when they came. You know, you’ve seen this.

ML: Oh, yes. Right. They’re not aware, they’re not watching, they’re not learning from what they see. They travel around as Indians.

K: That’s right. Not as Indians, something dead!

ML: Well, I mean, they identify. I mean, anyone can do this; you could go from here to any country and do the same thing. Like staying in a Hilton hotel everywhere you go.

MZ: Yes, to a certain degree of the American tourist is exactly…

K: America too, it’s the same the world over.

MZ: They’re all looking for hamburgers all over the place and if it isn’t there…

ML: Yes.

K: I didn’t like to bring in America because… (inaudible)

ML: To see this, to find an art teacher who has this sense is something rare. They all want to throw pots, paint watercolour, all that. They feel that’s art. That all has to do with what they feel as creativity. They want the child to express themselves, you know, to be something.

Q: Or someone. Then they say, ‘I taught him.’

K: So, sir, unless you create a sensitivity, I won’t learn anything. Even mathematics I won’t learn; and much more difficult, like art, the beauty and all that, unless I am sensitive I just paint — you follow? — I just copy, I produce a ceramic. It looks a new kind of shape or a new colour but that’s… So how are you going to bring this sensitivity into a child?

Q: Sir, what happens in exposing students? You have done a lot of this, exposing students to, you know, museums or just anything, to where they have an opportunity to participate, taste things. Do they change, do they learn?

K: No, I am asking a different question: are they sensitive?

CR: In my experience in the children I…

K: Sir, we’re not cross-examining, I’m not telling you.

CR: My experience is that children are sensitive but it’s all covered over.

RT: Yes, it gets dull.

K: No…

CR : And that you just keep exposing them to a lot of things, then it comes out.

K: Yes. So you are saying, take them to museums, expose them to the best pictures, the best music, best of everything, expose them and that will bring out their sensitivity, or wipe away the crust.

CR: Something like that, only we don’t concentrate on museums.

K: No, no, I’m taking that as an example.

CR: You see, my model is that a child before he gets into school is very open and curious and sensitive, and he’s learning all the time, going around from flower to flower and bud to bud, and what I want to get them back to is that.

K: Yes, well, I’m asking now.

CR: And my experience of school is that as you take them around and you provide this non-active environment and this kind of support, with not making them wrong in any way, no judgments, you just take them around to a lot of places and then it begins to come back, this curiosity.

K: Sir, you know Kenneth Clark, who talks about, ‘Cupid, cupid’? I question — forgive me, you may be a great admirer — I question whether he’s sensitive.

CR: Okay.

K: He will shout you down.

CR: Yes.

K: Whether he’s really sensitive. Not to pictures, I don’t mean that, not to the Romantic art or Renaissance painting or this or that.

CR: That’s why I resisted the museum example because that’s not what we do.

K: No.

CR : I don’t feel that the point is to expose them to all the great works of art or…

K: No, no.

CR: That’s not what I think is sensitivity.

K: Or the best architecture and, you know, all that. So, how will you bring this about? If I haven’t got it, you can take me to all the museums in the world, I’ll be damn silly at the end of it.

CR: Yes.

K: How will you bring about this sensitivity in me? And you see the importance — you follow? — the necessity of being sensitive. Not to pictures; to everything.

CR: Yes, yes. Absolutely.

K: That’s why when Kenneth Clark talks about art, I say, ‘Wait, are you sensitive to the wave, to the bird?’ Probably he’s not. Probably he kills animals.

CR: A compartmentalised sensitivity.

K: He leads a very good life — drinks — you follow? — has a very good time.

CR: He’s paid for his sensitivity.

K: And then talks about art.

MZ: How do you know? How do you know how he lives?

K: He has written a recent book.

MZ: On how he lives?

K: Partly about his life.

MZ: Oh? (Laughs)

K: Or is it his wife, the originals of Schiaparelli, clothes. (Laughs) I won’t go into all this.

CR: I would say that…

K: How would you do it, sir?

CR: By living it.

K: No, wait, just a minute, sir. I come in as a student. I don’t know what you’re talking about, sensitivity. I’m sensitive when I put a pin in, or a new car, but I’m not sensitive to all this glory around or the hideous whatever it is. How will you awaken this?

CR: By continuously communicating to them my own sensitivity.

K: How?

CR: Pointing it out: ‘Oh, look at that bird, look at that animal, look at that, feel the sunshine, feel the breeze,’ things that they might be missing.

ML: I’m afraid of that.

CR: Afraid of it?

K: Sorry, forgive me, Kenneth Clark, I listened the other night — weren’t you there? — I listened to him and he was telling me what Bernard Berenson — you know, Berenson? — w hat he told him and what the other told him and he was telling me, ‘That picture is the most marvellous thing you have ever seen.’ And he was doing propaganda for that picture.

CR: Okay.

K: And I said, ‘To hell with this man, I can look at that picture!’

CR: Yes.

MZ: He was giving you a critic’s point of view and all the knowledge that goes with it. Why isn’t that relevant? Isn’t that interesting?

K: Because he’s not totally sensitive. He’s sensitive in one direction.

MZ: Well, who is totally sensitive?

K: Ah, I am concerned with the total sensitivity .

MZ: Maybe you.

K: I am concerned with the sensitivity to the whales, to the birds, to the poor people. I am sensitive all round. That’s what I want, not just a lop-sided sensitivity.

MZ: I understand for the students but…

K: Sir, I’m asking, how will you bring this enormous — you follow? — the depth of that word? I’m full of beans today, sorry! I’ve been drinking coffee! No. (Laughter) What will you do, sir? Non-actively. Kenneth Clark should be told about this!

CR: He’s taking a real beating today!

MZ: (Laughs) He’s taking a terrible beating!

K: He’s now, sir, he’s the most… You follow?

CR: Yes.

ML: But, sir, all experts in any particular field are like that.

K: I know, sir, I know.

MZ: He’s talking about Renoir, not about whales. You haven’t heard him on whales. (Laughter)

K: How would you do this? It’s one of your problems.

CR: I can see how he can be uneasy with it, if I’m making judgments. I don’t see any harm with telling the students how… (inaudible)

ML: I distrust that because of various…(inaudible) …that is interpreting the relationship between the bird and the tree, of that child, along your lines or my lines. In other words, not giving them the joy of discovery. But I think by how one is, that is the example. In other words, words aren’t necessary, or you don’t have to point it out but how you tend the flowers, how you look at a bird, how you treat animals, then the child sees it in real way — more real because what you say really doesn’t… (inaudible)

CR: Yes.

ML: I think that’s what you mean, except that what you said, I distrust.

CR: Yes. Okay.

ML: It doesn’t mean one can’t be verbal about things but it means that’s being active, that’s not being inactive, that’s transferring your values to the child in an insidious sort of way.

K: Sir, at Rajghat last year, the north school in India, I said the right kind of diet, the way we eat, fruit, salad and all that, the students, there were grown-up people and students, I went into it very carefully. Then after they invited me to lunch… (inaudible) …there they were…

(Pause in recording)

CR: Okay, then.

K: (Laughs) Sorry!

CR: In the end I don’t have to expect him to live the way I do.

K: No, no, you become my example.

CR: Whether I like it or not?

K: No.

ML: Then he depends on you to point things out, also. Then he could use you as a crutch.

CR: But I’m just living. What else is there to do? I mean, what’s wrong with… Okay, what else can I do?

K: I want to find out.

MZ: If you say, ‘Oh, see the hawk,’ or something, is that…

K: No, you tell me, you call me when I’m doing something and say, ‘Come and look at that hawk.’ I rush and look at that hawk, but that’s a different thing.

MZ: I have a barn owl and you come in and tell me about the barn owl. Y ou obviously like the barn owl.

K: Yes, I tell you about it. No…

MZ: That comes across to the others listening.

K: I wonder if by talking, example, you bring this sensitivity. I’ve talked a great deal in these schools. I said, ‘When you are walking don’t pick up the leaf and strip the leaves off the branch, you know, off the stem, pull it all out and leave the empty stem.’ You know, children. I said several times don’t do it. Nothing enters. So, what will you do? No example — just see this as a exploratory business, not agreeing or disagreeing — no example, no talking, because if you talk then you are creating a feeling that you are sensitive and I’m not, I must somehow — you follow? — come up to your level, etc., etc., all that follows. How will you do this?

(Pause)

Right, sir? Have you got an answer?

CR: I can’t give the answer sitting down, I have to be there.

K: No, how will you do it? I want to find out. May I go into it?

I would talk… I would go into the question of attention, what it means to attend. Forget sensitivity. What it means to look, what it means to hear. Then you will have it.

CR: Yes. Yes, perfect.

K: If you are teaching me something, I don’t want to be taught. Then our relationship is different. Example, talking, then we are at a different level, but if you go into the question of attention then you and I are both trying to find out.

ML: That covers all the possibilities at a school.

K: Because when Maria calls me, ‘Look at that hawk,’ or that owl or that something or other — you follow? — I really want to see, because to me attention is — you know all the rest of it; I talk a great deal about it — to me that is the clue, clue to non-action or whatever it is. So when they come into the class, ten boys, two boys, whatever, I say, ‘Sit quietly,’ and I’d say, ‘If you don’t want to sit quietly, look out of the window, but look, give your attention to that. Don’t say, “Oh, I mustn’t look, I must…” — you follow? If you want to talk to that boy next to you, talk.’ You follow, sir? I’m not going to prevent you from talking.

ML: Sir, you used to say these things year after year at Rishi Valley and inevitably after a talk students would go off to classes, and the students would question, ask questions and so on; they’d say, ‘Krishnaji says this and says that.’ And then we’d have a staff tea and then these things would come up again. But never did the question of attention or listening, wasn’t pursued further with the teachers. Not with you but I mean with the teachers whose responsibility it was.

K: No, of course not. They’re not interested.

ML: Well, unless they explore these things themselves, for themselves…

K: Of course they’re not.

ML: Then, I mean, any teacher, the teacher here, unless he explores this, to hear what you say on these subjects won’t mean anything.

K: So, sir, how do we put the house together? Because on Friday we’re going to meet them. (Laughs) Bearing all this in mind, non-action, you know all the rest of it, mathematics, history, art, everything, all that curriculum, what kind of room, place, house, roof, wall, the feeling of all that? Being in America and the architects being American, or if they were in Europe they would be European, you don’t want a European house or an American house, or a Japanese or (inaudible) or something. You want a house where all these things are involved in it: good taste, good depth — you follow, sir? — curtains that are very good, bricks that have got life in them. I don’t know, you can go on about all this.

CR: I would refer to the time where we approached the student who wanted to come into the school, and we all do it and we all drop all our prejudices and our good taste and everything else and then we come sort of clearly to something.

K: I understand, sir, but we have both to face the arguments day after tomorrow, and the Foundation has told them to go ahead, build, produce, we’ll get the money, design, so we must — you follow?

CR : I would say there’s got to be a series of meetings, that there’s got to be a kind of language that we’re working from that includes the architecture.

K: The architectural language.

CR: Yes, and we school ourselves in that and we start this process of talking through these things and then recording them so that they can be transmitted to the architect. We’re just feeding him information.

K: They will be here the day after tomorrow, we’ll talk to them, we’ll tell them what we want, we’ll go into all this. And the Foundation has said, ‘You two look after this,’ and we are gone at the end of this week, next Sunday, we’re gone. Right, sir? I would like to be there — you follow? — because I feel it is something new, and I want to — not ‘I want’ — help them to create the thing, the right place. If you and I hadn’t been there, they would put the road right round and the buildings would have been right in that meadow. How do we do this, sir? I feel — not ‘I feel’ — I mean, every brick matters. I don’t know, I feel that way. The beams, the handles, the hinges — you follow, sir?

CR: Well, that’s called supervision, it means being there.

MZ: It means also planning it all, going into, being aware of every detail about the place. I mean the concept, but all the way down the line to the…

K: So, you are saying, sir, are we saying this amongst ourselves, we’ll talk to them, we tell them everything that we feel, as much as we can — right, sir? — and then we say, ‘Go ahead, show us from what we want, what we feel, all of it. Draw something.’

MZ: Krishnaji, if I may interrupt, what we asked them to do, because you’re leaving Sunday, was to very informally, loosely, give the direction of their own thinking, t o propose what they’ve… they’ve obviously done some discussion, and then we will react and they will see, from what everybody says…

K: I know, but what I want to get at…

MZ: It is the first time all this has been discussed.

K: What I want to get at is, sir: we are gone. They will send us patterns, whatever it is called. Somebody here has to watch that. If you three say we’ll watch it, step by step, and we’ll tell you and you tell… or whatever it is, so that we are constantly in communication about the building. You see, a friend of ours, Senora Scaravelli was building a house in Switzerland, Sannen, Gstaad, and she said to me, ‘Go ahead, amuse yourself with it,’ and we had an architect. I spent, I don’t know, several months with him. He took me to all the houses he had built and he showed me the floors, the tiles, the bathroom fittings, this, that and the other, and I had great fun with it, but unfortunately it never came to the reality of building because he stole the money. (Laughter) We all thought he was such an honest man! So, the poor lady never built a house. She advanced him a great deal a money. With that money he bought an acre of land…

MZ: No, no, he was a builder, wasn’t he? He wasn’t an architect.

K: The builder…

ML: Well, we’re safe because we don’t have any money! (Laughter)

K: Nor do we, so we’re both safe! (Laughter) You see, the Lilliefelts must have the ultimate voice. You follow? They must because they have the money. Right, sir, you agree?

RT: What did you say about the Lilliefelts? I was not listening at that moment, I’m sorry.

K: You were not paying attention.

RT: Yes, that’s right, I wasn’t.

K: I’m saying the decision, whatever you all decide, must go through the Lilliefelts, Mrs Lilliefelt, she will communicate to us and it must… protocol.

MZ: Yes, because otherwise we’ll all be… the proliferation of letters and notions and instructions.

Q: Well, I would think that anything we did we’d all be together on anyway.

Q: B ut I think what Charles says is that if we’re going to require people working with the architect, supervising him…

K: You’re going to be here, you people are going to be here.

Q: …and when we start building on site…

MZ: Yes, but we must be careful there aren’t one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine clients, all…

ML: We must know what we want.

MZ: Y es, we must confer amongst ourselves and speak with one voice, otherwise it will be like the, what was it, the tower…

Q: Since we’re on this and we’re going to have a meeting with the architects on Friday, I’d like to bring up something now that we might talk about. I’m concerned about the groves when we’re not there. I’m concerned about the properties. It will be dry in another two months. There are people who picnic there…

K: Oh!

Q: We must at some point do something, I don’t know what that means but we must talk about that.

K: Preventing all that.

Q: Preventing fire on the ground, in the whole property.

MZ: We talked about it, Monday, yes.

ML: Well one of the things that has to be done is that it all has to ploughed or mowed, all of that high grass, because if you leave it up, it’ll be a great fire risk.

MZ: But the horses do that, Mark, don’t they?

ML: Well in the grove, the horses are not allowed in the grove.

MZ: No, not in the grove, no, no.

ML: No. The rest…

MZ: In the grove, we must mow there.

ML: It’s lower, though, on those other areas, the grass rarely gets beyond a couple of inches.

Q: No, but there are people who picnic down there, that’s the problem.

MZ: They mustn’t picnic. We must find a way to stop them.

CR: Well, I can’t imagine they’d picnic… (inaudible)

ML: Oh, they will in the evening, late afternoon.

Q: Oh, no.

Q: Yes, some people came there, you know, because of the talks, so now they know about this area. Maybe not many people did and we can’t sue them if they go on, we must take whatever precautions we can.

ML : Well, it has to be posted.

MZ: A poster, we can legally post it.

Q: I don’t think we can keep anybody out if they want to get in.

CR: I don’t think that that’s possible unless we wanted to put a permanent person there, which would be absurd. So maybe we’re going to have to post signs and maybe mow or do what we can to minimise the bother, and I don’t know if there’s anything else we can do.

Q: Well we could also have periodic checks on the weekend.

MZ: Yes.

ML : Those of us who are there could drive over and check.

Q: The problem will be most likely more on the weekends than any other day.

MZ: Well, we must post it because you have great difficulty enforcing no trespassing unless you have it posted.

Q: Yes, well we have…

K: Could we say no trespassing?

MZ: Yes.

K: No Picnics, no hunting.

MZ: Here people want to try to get the beach and unless you post it you can’t put a person off your land.

Q: I think we also need to have, if we put such a sign up, I think we need to have ‘High Fire Hazard’, because many people don’t understand that.

RT: Yes, I think that’s very right.

MZ: Yes.

Q: And there will be people who will, pardon the word, police themselves i f they know that it’s indeed a fire hazard, because they don’t want to see it burn down either.

RT: No, they wouldn’t be thinking of that, when they…

Q: That’s right, they wouldn’t know why you wanted them not trespassing.

MZ: And I think if we put the word ‘please’ in it, it helps.

Q: But we have a lot of fence that’s exposed. We have from Tico Road down along by the grand house…

K: Besant Road and all that.

ML : But they will most likely congregate where they can park and we can post it at those places and the other areas that are quite accessible.

Q: That’s true. I mean, we’re targeting…

RT: Well there’s an entrance from Tico Road, isn’t there?

Q: There is.

RT: Yes, so there it has to be posted, even though they can’t get in there.

K: Sir, when we went first time with Mrs Lilliefelt and Mr Lilliefelt, we took four of us, there were a couple of girls and other boys sitting on the ground just singing, you know, talking, and Mrs Lilliefelt went up and said, ‘Don’t you see that sign, “No Trespassing Please”?’ and they got up and went off. And this is going on all the time because that Happy Valley School, you know, that rented place, they use all of that — dogs bark, take a walk. I saw this happening. And from the Tico Road, people coming over there with their dogs, because it’s a marvellous place for dogs.

MZ: There was wedding party one day, remember?

Q: Yes, but it’s been open for years.

ML: We’ve been discussing all along the inevitability of a fence, what would it be like to put a fence up before we proceed with the building?

RT: Well, it really doesn’t keep anybody out.

Q: What kind of a fence?

MZ: What kind of fence? That’s the trouble. The effective fence is a…

K: High voltage fence!

MZ: They don’t work on humans too well.

Q: We might get enlightenment!

Q: And we don’t a cyclone fence. Are we talking about a wall or, you know?

Q: We’ll have to have something eventually because of the dog problem on Lomita and Tico. I’ve been talking to the people, the dog problem is apparently terrible. Every evening they run in packs up and down the road and up across the main site.

Q: That’s true but there isn’t anybody there now. When there’s somebody there now that may stop.

K: They’ll chase them off.

Q: Fencing is extraordinarily expensive.

MZ: Terribly expensive.

Q: And I don’t think we want, you know, we have to give a lot of consideration to a fence. We don’t want a fence that looks like it’s a compound.

K: (Laughs) Where the loonies are kept!

RT: I think we have to try the other first.

MZ: Yes.

Q: I think we’ve got to appropriate some money to have some signs done or whatever and do it. It shouldn’t be that expensive.

MZ: Nice posts and rail red won’t keep anybody out.

RT: (Inaudible) …because their owners won’t exercise them, so they turn them out at night which is when the dog picker-uppers are not there.

Q: How do we handle the dogs? I mean, there was mowing done in the grove.

Q: It’s been done in the past.

MZ: (Shall I switch it off?)

K: (Finish it.)

MZ: (This is more or less the end of this discussion.)

**–** **END –**