K School – Adults Discussion 4, Brockwood Park, 19 June 1981

Krishnamurti: I’m sure Mrs Simmons has been talking to you about what a few days ago she and I were talking about. From what I have been able to gather from her conversation with me, and also generally with our discussion here, it seems that we have not enough leisure. We are overworked and we have not enough time to go into matters for which we came here. That’s right, isn’t it? Am I stating it right?

Dorothy Simmons: Yes, absolutely.

K: We apparently have come here — I use the word ‘apparently’ without any derogatory sense — apparently you have come here really to understand the so-called teachings, and we haven’t time enough or leisure enough to go into those because we are much too occupied with our academic and general occupation. If that is so, and I believe it is, what shall we do, so that you have more leisure, you can go into all this, what we have been talking about, at length, deeply, and to have this leisure what shall we all do together? Don’t let us postpone this thing; let’s settle it. Not waiting until next year or the year after and so on. So we must come to some definite arrangement. So what shall we do?

Giselle Balleys: Could we see a little better what we mean by leisure? Because for some people, I don’t know if it means having time in your room or having time…

K: No, leisure. Leisure to do what we want to do. Which is, some of the people studying the teachings, say, maybe like to go out for a walk, look at trees, look at birds, something or other. We must have leisure. I certainly have leisure. I must have leisure. I couldn’t… Otherwise — you follow? I don’t know what you’re… if you all agree that we must have leisure. Not what we will do with the leisure — that comes next, if you are interested in that. What do we say? What do you all say, sir? Let’s talk about this, please.

Shakuntala Narayan: I don’t think it should be too difficult to reorganise so that we have more leisure, you know. It’s a question of readjusting and finding, you know, a good part of the day where, you know, one has the time to, as you say, go for a walk and…

K: I’m just asking you. Do you want… How do we set about this? That we have definitely time to ourselves. Don’t call it leisure or anything — time to ourselves.

SN: I don’t think it should be too difficult.

K: I don’t know. This has been… we have talked about it last year. We talked about it the year before.

Scott Forbes: Krishnaji, don’t we begin by looking at what we give our time to now?

K: No. All right, if you want to go into all that, do it.

SF: Well, I’m wondering. You said, ‘How do we set about by looking at this?’ That’s how I would set about looking at it: at what I now give my time to.

K: What do you say, sirs? Please.

Wendy Agnew: It seems to me that we do have some time but we have a general tendency of filling up gaps. I think that as soon as we have any time we somehow seem to fill it up. We have a period called Rest Period but in fact we fill it with everything we don’t seem to be able to fit into the day. So it seems to go quite deep into why we feel we have to fill everything up with doing and action.

DS: Could we set about it by saying that we take longer to do things, that we’re not governed by a time limit of examinations, say, and perhaps we could take a longer pace for that, which would give some space to teaching staff. I think that’s really what they’re saying: the pace is too much on doing.

K: Yes. Does it mean a different kind of organisation of the whole school?

DS: I don’t think so. I wouldn’t have said that was a difficulty. It means changing it, creating a different sort of balance, and I think in the other departments which are not teaching, then possibly we must get more help.

K: That’s what I want to find out in our discussion. Is it that we need more help, more teachers, more outside help? What is it? Please, let’s…

DS: It is possible that we… the garden, say, has done a survey of how their time and money is spent. And what it reveals — I haven’t gone into it in detail yet — but it’s beginning to reveal something of this nature: that maybe there might be another of doing it which is better. Instead of our all coming here and working in some specific sphere and saying we’re here really because of you, the teachings, if you like, that we need to do something in that direction, but perhaps it would be better to get outside labour, the same as we get somebody to paint the house. It might be a better way of doing it. Perhaps we’ve… It’s being investigated.

K: Then what shall we do? We are all here now. Can’t we all agree and settle this thing? Not postpone it, postpone it, as we have been doing.

WA: I still think it’s not just structural though, because I still think that we have a tendency to fill time up. Even if we have time there seems to be some momentum that makes us fill it up, too. I think it’s two things. I think it’s two factors.

SN: We can watch that, I think. One can watch this tendency and, you know, we can say then this is the time set for this and we’re not going to fill it up. If we need a class to be fitted in that time we say we’d rather drop the class than put it in that time which is supposed to be time on our own. I don’t think it should be difficult. I mean, if we get our priorities right we’ll say let’s not have a class at that time, let’s do away with the class.

K: That’s why I asked, is it a matter of organisation?

SN: Yes, I think it is a matter of…

K: Or more people?

SN: Yes, it is to do with both.

K: So that all of us have time to ourselves to think, to meditate, do whatever inwardly we want to do. Apparently, we haven’t time for that.

Q: Krishnaji, I can’t help feeling that applies to a very small minority of us. I think it is only a very small minority who have such high-pressured timetables as that.

K: Is that so?

Q: Yes, possibly.

K: I wish you would talk.

SF: Well, Krishnaji, in the past we have also said that one of the things which demands a tremendous amount of time are some students, especially students who are immature or students who have problems. And they have tremendous demands which we’re not even able to meet. But that’s also something that we would think about changing if we were trying to give all of us more leisure.

K: That’s what I am asking, sir. Is it matter of organisation or more people or distribution of work? Please, let’s talk about it and settle it.

SN: I think it’s partly all of those.

K: So what shall we do?

SN: I think the simplest thing would be for Dorothy to go into it with a few people and…

K: Is that it?

SN: …you know, see who is over-worked.

K: Is that it? A small committee settles this?

SN: Well, not a committee. If somebody is over-worked, she can go into it. If the gardener is over-worked she could probably meet the gardener and see how, you know, we can reorganise the garden so that there is more time for the people in the garden.

SF: But isn’t it a matter for all of us?

Harsh Tanka: Are you saying that it is only a problem for a few people and therefore we shouldn’t be talking about it here at all?

K: You don’t think it is a general problem?

HT: That’s what Shakuntala or some people seem to be saying, that it’s not a general problem.

SN: No, I’m not saying that. I’m saying it is a fact that some people are more over-worked than others. I think that’s a fact.

Mary Zimbalist: What about Dorothy’s leisure?

K: Now, look, would you say, do you need more leisure, you?

SN: I don’t think I need more leisure. I don’t think I really need… I feel that if I want more leisure…

K: No, that’s not the point. Have you more… have you leisure enough to go into all this, the so-called teachings, to think about it, look at it and live differently? You know, all that. Have you time for that?

SN: Well, I would say I have more time than some other people.

K: No, that’s not… don’t compare yourself with others. I am asking you, if you don’t mind my asking you, do you need more leisure to yourself? That’s what we have been saying. Right? That’s what I’m asking. Don’t pass it around.

SN: Well, I’m not passing it around, but I see that actually I’m not quite as over-worked as some other people.

K: Do you need more leisure? Would you kindly…

SN: I don’t think I…

DS: Krishnaji, I think ‘leisure’ is a little bit of a misleading word.

K: All right, let’s not use that word. Do you need more time…

DS: Or space. More space to go at a quieter pace.

K: Yes, more space, more time to go into your self-study, look around? You know, not just…

SN: I feel I have time.

K: So you’re not… you say, ‘I have enough time for that.’

SN: Yes.

K: Now, please, let’s…

SN: But I don’t think that’s so with everybody. I mean, that’s with me.

K: I am asking you. Don’t bother about others.

Q: Sir, could we take the case of the people who are here during the holidays and they don’t have to fill their time with anything. In my own experience, it doesn’t offer any more of an opportunity to go into these questions even though we have 24 hours a day of freedom, if we want it, of leisure. There seems to be another factor involved, more of how we dissipate the energy we have in the living of the day.

Stephen Smith: Isn’t that because in the holidays people are resting from the term, really? You know, they don’t do anything of that kind because they feel they need a rest from the term.

Q: Well, I’m in a slightly different position to a teacher in that my day isn’t programmed for me. To a large extent I could take an hour off or two hours off. Nobody would notice if I took a day off, I don’t suppose, now and again. But I don’t think it’s the answer. To me, the question is: where is the energy that should be there? It’s being used up.

K: Does that mean we haven’t got enough energy to go into other matters and we spend most of our energy in teaching?

Q: I think it goes mostly in conflict.

K: I’m just asking, sir. I wish you would…

Christina West: Well, it would seem that, for instance, on the estate one is not… I would like to move away from looking at it as ‘enough time to go into the teachings’. I feel on the estate one is working unintelligently because we have taken on too much for too few people, so one is not living intelligently and also not drawing attention to that together and finding a solution for it, so that one is not able to… you know, exhaustion and pressure and so on make it difficult to live in a good way and work together.

K: If I may ask, have you enough time to yourself?

CW: No.

K: No.

Q: I find I don’t have enough time but I see that I create it and yet the things that I find myself wanting to do and doing I see as necessary, so I make the time, and then someone will come up and want to speak to me and then I’ll see them, because that is important at the moment.

K: So you have enough time to yourself to go into something.

Q: Well, I don’t.

K: You don’t. That’s all I’m asking. So, you don’t. You don’t.

SN: No, I didn’t say, ‘I don’t.’

K: I’m sorry, you said, ‘I have.’ Please, let’s talk about this. If you’re…

Brian Jenkins: You see, Krishnaji, I feel that one aspect of this is our relationship with the students.

K: No…

BJ: If I may just… I feel that there is a division between the staff and students here.

K: Of course.

BJ: In that the staff work hard from morning till night, most of them, and the students, for many of them — I have spoken to three students today and they all say it’s something of a holiday camp, it’s a nice holiday here.

K: I know, sir.

BJ: Many of them feel this.

K: I know, sir. I see that.

BJ: And I feel in some way we have not found the right way to involve them, to make them feel that this is their community, that the garden, the maintenance, all these things and their studies, are all important and important for them to work at. You see, some boys have been doing some work here, outside.

K: Sir, that is a different — if you don’t mind my pointing out, that’s a different matter. I am asking…

BJ: But I think in a way it isn’t a different matter because if they helped the staff to work more then there’d be a much better relationship between the staff and the students.

K: So they would have… you would have more time.

BJ: Yes, and the staff would have more time.

K: If all the students join in what you’re doing, and also studying, you would have more time to yourself, more space.

BJ: I think so.

K: Is that what… What do you say, sir?

HT: I doubt it. I doubt whether that would make much difference. We’d just have to spend more time organising.

K: Telling them.

HT: Telling them what to do.

K: What to do.

SF: And a lot of the things I do, a student couldn’t do. And I can’t begin to meet the demands that the students make on me for time — wanting to talk, wanting to discuss. I can’t begin to meet that.

K: Sir, could we say, generally, all of us need more space, more time?

SF: I would say so, yes. Yes, yes.

K: You would say.

SF: I would definitely say it for myself, and for most people, I feel.

K: Now, how do we get that? Let’s, sir, apply our minds, settle it, not carry on, the year after, at the end of five years say, ‘Sorry, I’m exhausted, I’m gone. I came here for one purpose and I’m now just a wheel in this machinery.’

Q: Could I suggest something? I think some people are very busy, fairly busy, but it’s more or less they have created it for themselves. They don’t want to give up their busyness. Apparently, they don’t want to give up the things — I don’t know how to put it.

K: Are you…

Q: If they are given the choice, they want to continue like that.

K: So are you suggesting this occupation all day long is an escape?

Q: With some, maybe, perhaps.

K: Not some. I mean…

Q: Just a moment. Could I ask something? Suppose I came to a school and I came and said, ‘Look, I know there’s a lot of work here to be done, and many people are busy and I am going to give my share, but I can’t give as much as probably needs to be done. I’ll give what I can, and I need time.’ Which means maybe some afternoons off or whatever. What would the school say to it, if somebody wanted to do that?

K: If I came along and said, ‘Look, I can’t teach, I want to help in any way I can,’ would you give me a lot of work to do, so that at the end of the day I have no time, no space for myself? That is the point we are discussing, aren’t we?

Raman Patel: Well, this happens in the end. This is what happens, really.

K: What?

RP: That a person comes and he starts to help in one area and he starts to help in another area, and at the end of the day one hasn’t got much time.

K: So, what shall we do? Apparently, we more or less have agreed that we need more space. Right? Except her. She says, ‘I don’t need it.’

Q: And except me.

K: And you.

DS: I think possibly Shaku has already looked at what she could drop. I think possibly you did drop some classes, didn’t you?

SN: Well, it’s not classes. I used to do more in the kitchen and I decided, ‘No, I can’t do it. I can’t do classes and kitchen.’

DS: And maybe that’s what we’ve all got to do.

SN: So I dropped some things. I feel one can make leisure, but it means giving up something. I feel each one of us can take leisure if we are willing to drop something.

K: But if you drop it who will fill that space?

BJ: What happens… (inaudible)

SN: Well, I see that by dropping it I’m not putting anybody to inconvenience.

K: But you are bound to.

SN: No, I didn’t.

Q: Not necessarily.

SN: Not necessarily. I mean, I was giving some of my free time to the kitchen and I realised that it was making me tired.

K: Is that the problem? Is that the solution? That each of us drop something?

HT: It would only work if the things we were doing were unnecessary, but if it’s necessary work then someone else has to take it on.

K: I know. That’s just what I’m saying.

SN: Yes, but then…

HT: The question is…

DS: Matthew came with a suggestion of a way of giving more space to a teacher, say — and if it applies there it applies to the situation too — of re-arranging the teaching periods and that you don’t give so many alternatives. And if a class, say, overlaps another class you say, ‘No, we won’t have that little difference, we will put that as one class together.’ And I think he was suggesting that was quite possible and it seemed to me very intelligent.

Q: There are lot of practical things we can do. Matthew and I have been thinking of half a dozen which we’re sort of developing. But what we’ve got to get clear about here is, are we discussing a practical problem or a psychological problem first? There are many practical things which I think we can do if we’ve really got the energy to make clear that we have the leisure we need. But is that our only problem, or is it first…

DS: But the practical problems affect the psychological problems.

Q: Right, but where would you have us start? I am trying to start.

DS: Well, we seem to be starting on the practical level.

Q: Is that the area we want to work?

SS: We always do start on the practical level — that’s the trouble. We don’t start at the psychological level.

K: That’s what I’m coming to.

SS: Wendy’s mentioned a kind of compulsion, this compulsion to fill time, compulsion to be doing something, compulsion to be always in some way occupied. I don’t think that will be much changed by a structure, really. I’m sceptical.

SN: Yes, that’s what I feel too. I mean, the point has been made that, I think there is a tendency to create work, you know, work as an escape, and I think we’ve got to look at that. I’m not saying everybody does it, but…

K: So you’d rather be occupied from morning till night.

SN: No, I wouldn’t.

K: No.

SN: But I am saying that I don’t want to be occupied and I would not be. I’ll make it clear that I want time, and if I want it I think I can make it.

K: As he pointed out, somebody has to fill the vacuum which you have…

SF: You see, I don’t think that is always the case.

K: We are not meeting on this point.

SF: I mean, it’s not as if you stop going out to weed because you want to make time and the weeds are going to start growing. You know, can’t just drop weeding, for instance.

K: Sir, what is the problem?

SF: There are many things that you just can’t stop doing and those are the places generally where the demands are very high.

K: What is the… what is it that we are talking about, all of us now?

SF: Well, I think that we disagree as to the source of why we are so busy.

K: No. No, I am not talking of why you are so busy. Do we want time, space for ourselves?

SF: Well, some people say yes and other people say no. Some people say, ‘If you really wanted it, you could take it.’

K: No, no. No. No. I would suggest for all of us we must have space and time.

SF: Yes.

K: It’s healthy, normal, psychologically, not to be occupied from morning till night about something or other. Right?

DS: Yes, absolutely right.

K: Now, you see, I’m talking… inwardly I need time, space. Not to be always surrounded by people, always concerned about kitchen, gardening, teaching — the sense of, you know, quietness and I want to look into things, and all the rest of it. Do we want that? That’s all I’m asking, sir.

DS: That’s what we are saying. We do want it.

HT: It’s very clear that we want it, sir.

K: Then if we want it what shall we do, next step, to have that?

Q: Well, Krishnaji, you mentioned earlier increasing the number of people here. I don’t know whether that would help. In fact, I think if anything that would make things worse.

K: I am just asking, sir. I am not saying… I question it. Do we need more people? Does the garden need more people? Do we need more people in the kitchens? I am asking. I am not saying it is necessary.

Q: Nor am I. I don’t know the answer.

K: Please.

RP: Yes, if you ask about the kitchen situation, we need more people.

K: So, what shall we do?

SN: I think Dorothy’s suggestion was a good one, that we bring some outside help.

K: Yes, that’s what we discussed yesterday.

SN: I think that’s a very good suggestion.

K: We discussed yesterday in our talk, walk, whether we shouldn’t hire a helper. Right?

DS: Yes, but we also said the difficulty of doing that, of getting appropriate people, and also I felt that it should be put to the staff, that is, to make a very different approach.

K: Yes, yes.

DS: You see, so far it has been our school, if you like, our concern to care for it and move it. And the moment you bring in somebody just as a job then something very different is beginning to happen, and so I said that the only time it had been so far successful was when Malcolm was here as a young boy. All the other helps we’ve had in the garden proved to be unsatisfactory. They stayed a month, they stayed two months and then they went, because they hadn’t the concern of this space. It was just a job. You couldn’t leave them over the holiday period. And so that was a very… And also, whether you can get them at all. We waited for months on end, if you remember, to get the people we did get.

Q: And then we are a community, they have relationships with the students. In a sense we have to take them.

DS: That’s right. And they smoke and they drink and they meet the students down at the pubs, and a few other things happened. It brings in other difficulties.

K: So what do you propose? Now I see all the objections. I know all the objections. Then what do we propose?

SF: Well, it sounds like the alternative is to have more people who are coming here because they are interested to be here and working in the place, so enlarging the adult community here.

Q: Although, just to go back to the previous one, it has worked when there’s been females involved. For example, Sue and Sybil, people like that are doing an excellent job, as far as I can see, and a good relationship with all of us. So it seems to be more a problem that if there’s a shortage in the kitchen perhaps we may be fortunate enough to find more people like Sue and Sybil.

SF: If it’s like on the gardening and maintenance side, we were trying to get more help, then probably, you know, the local housewives wouldn’t be so appropriate.

Q: No.

Q: But the other thing is that Sue and Sibyl do cost us quite a lot of money.

Q: Yes, but we weren’t referring to cost at this stage. We were just saying whether we could get the people.

K: Yes. We’ll go into the cost. Wait a minute. Do we need… What do we do? We talk, but what shall we do?

CW: Well, it depends. It seems to depend on your priorities. If you feel it is important for the people living here to look after the estate, for instance, you may have to somehow make the work on the estate more simple. And that will be possible with a little reorganisation, I think. If you decide to take on, for instance, more adult members of the community to do the same amount of work as there is now, you get a bigger community and that might be not a good idea. It depends what your priorities are, what is important to us.

DS: Well, at the moment our ratio of staff to students is 2 to 1.

K: 2 to 1. (Laughs)

BJ: Two students to one staff?

DS: Yes.

K: Good God!

Q: In relationship to anybody working outside it’s a staggeringly light load, although it isn’t psychologically in here. But 2 to 1 is extraordinary. It doesn’t happen anywhere else really, does it?

K: What do you say, sir?

SS: Well, as a community I don’t think much of the idea of employing people, in general. I think the idea of employing people is not terribly good.

K: Why?

SS: Because it puts… except for one or two like Sybil, like Sue who are good, but as a general matter of policy I don’t think it is particularly good because it creates an employer-employee situation and you are just in a quite different kind of relationship.

K: But you have an employer-employee situation when you want to mend the roof.

DS: They come and go.

SF: It’s not nearly the same thing, Krishnaji. If I could speak, for instance, just of the case of Jonas coming here to work in the video. All right? Now, I really had more work that I could do. Although one can hire in electronic technicians, no one that I could have hired in could have done what he’s done, because he’s here at the odd times, he’s here doing a lot of work when it’s needed to be done, even if it’s a Saturday or a Sunday. And there is a certain amount of care for the quality that no amount of hired help could substitute for care.

K: So what shall we do?

SF: Well, it looks like from my… I would say that we have to, even though the student staff ratio might be 2 to 1, I would say that we are talking about a living community here and we shouldn’t compare it with other schools and we should bring in more adults.

K: No, what shall we do?

SF: Bring in more adults.

WA: But then that gets so that we’ve got so many people here we’re all going to fall over each other.

SF: Well, it’s an idea. I’m just proposing it.

WA: We don’t have the accommodation, apart from anything else.

SF: But we have two new cottages down there. We’ve got room for eight more people.

DS: But you haven’t, because the Wheely Down cottage is going.

SF: Ah.

MZ: When you say the ratio is 2 to 1, do other schools when they give such a ratio count everybody?

Many: No.

Q: They count teachers to students.

SF: And also other schools don’t grow their own vegetables, other schools don’t try and maintain beautiful grounds, other schools don’t…

MZ: Well if they do they don’t count it in the ratio.

SF: Exactly.

DS: Yes, but we are counting it in the ratio because we’re saying we want a whole education, and so we’re going from what we eat and how we grow it — we’re doing the whole thing, and I think that is a very important…

SF: Yes.

MZ: I understand, but I mean I think to say that other schools have a different ratio isn’t a fair comparison.

DS: No, and I say it because it is so frequently said to us and I feel I have to explain it. And it is high. It is high on a sort of work level, although I am very proud of it, actually. I think it is very good and I would like more because obviously we need more.

SF: Could I just put this into perspective, another idea? Old Bill who used to work here, I used to speak with him about the way this place was run and operated during its heyday, and just the people on the grounds for the park and the vegetable garden, there were fourteen full time gardeners.

K: I know.

SF: All right. The people working inside the house just to keep it neat and clean and obviously do laundry and things like that, and the cooks, there were 36 of them.

MZ: In the house?

SF: In the house, with all the doing the laundry and the pastry cooks and the game cooks. (Laughter) So there were fifty people just to maintain this place. So we say that there’s thirty of us, we’re teaching sixty students, we’re maintaining the full place, we’re trying to build, we’re trying to do everything, and somehow that’s too many.

K: So you have come to the same thing, which means we need more people.

Q: Yes.

SF: It sounds like it.

Q: But if we were just trying to solve this practically, I think what one would do is each group of people responsible for each particular area of the school would get clear themselves what they feel they can do and then between themselves how much more help they need in that area, if any, and then they bring all that to the whole group and make a decision as to how many more people are needed. I think the estate is quite different, for instance, from the teaching. The academic teaching I think we can reorganise in some ways.

K: Yes, sir, that’s what we’re all asking.

Q: There are different problems. Each person makes their own feeling about what they can contribute and then we put that together and see what’s still left over.

K: Yes, that’s what we’re trying to ask.

DS: Well, that’s what we are frequently doing, also. You see, that’s what we do — we have maintenance meetings, we have garden meetings to do those very things, Krishnaji.

K: Yes.

DS: But also the question of cash comes into it too. To have another member of staff means about five thousand pounds we’ve got to find over the year.

K: (Laughs) So what shall we do at the end of all this?

DS: Well, I think we do need more staff and I think we do need re-looking at everything again. And I think in the garden, in the maintenance particularly, we ought re-look at it and go into it and see if we are doing it in the best way possible. Again, in the teaching I think we can do the same thing and possibly get one or two more staff, but I don’t think we can get dozens of staff anymore. But I think one or two staff might relieve the situation somewhat. Also it might relieve the student relationship of parents and all the trouble children if you had more adults around, because the wear and tear, after you’ve done a day’s work, of dealing with all their problems and difficulties, is very time-consuming.

SS: Well, I think it was part of what we were talking about last autumn, was that we would try and sort of edge out that problem area. I would personally like to come back to that because I think that’s, so far as consumption of energy goes that is a terrific area of consumption. Even if you are not doing it, you are aware of the problem and you are trying to find some way of breaking in on it, trying to talk to this one, move that one a little bit. I mean, it’s an area of tremendous concern, at least it is with me. It doesn’t mean that I’m doing it well — I may not even be doing it at all in certain areas — but I’m certainly aware of it and I’m trying to break in on it somehow, and I’m aware of the difficulty and it’s very draining.

Q: But are you saying that…

SS: I’m not complaining about it, but it’s there. Well, when we said before that we would take less young students, less problem students, that would deal with that to an extent.

Q: But I thought something had become rather clear, and that is that if we take older students — we drop the younger students, we take the 16, 17 year olds — they’re going to have their psychological problems as well and it’s just going to be — they’re new to this approach and it’s just going to be exactly the same. I don’t really think it’s going to make any difference.

SF: I thought we had said that it was not the age so much as the maturity, and it was the… Someone might be 18. We’ve had older students here who’ve had problems and they have been tremendous consumers of time and energy because of their problems. So it’s not a question of age, it’s a question of maturity and responsibility and their overall ability to carry themselves and help with the place.

Q: In a sense, we’ve been doing that all along. We have always been looking very carefully which students we should take and which students we don’t want to take.

SF: Well, perhaps we need to succeed a little more then, we need to be doing it better.

K: So, what? At the end of fifty minutes — what? — thirty minutes to an hour.

RP: At the end of it, I think it’s always a question of finance in the end.

Q: No.

RP: To a certain extent.

DS: To a certain extent, but I don’t think finances really order, govern it.

RP: Like earlier we raised that if we have forty students here we are more selective to the majority, we have got the difficulty of filling forty thousand pounds. I mean, I just think in relation to what Scott just…

DS: That is so. That’s another problem, actually. It does mean there’s less selection before you come here because not sufficient number have applied of the older age group. But there are other ways of earning money, also. We might do it quite another way, which we did suggest at one time but that seems to have disappeared somewhere or other.

MZ: What was that?

DS: Well, by having weekend sort of people coming here.

Q: Adults.

DS: Adults. And you see, that way you might have more adults who were helping in the whole running of the place. It might be possible that way.

BJ: Well, in a sense we have begun that by having quite a large number of guest helpers. We’ve had guest helpers here who’ve been doing that kind of thing.

DS: In a way, yes, that is so.

SS: No, but this would be different because it would also help to run the place financially as well. I mean people would pay to come here.

DS: But as it’s turning out, Stephen, those younger people who want to come have to be paid. We have to pay them rather than they pay us.

SS: Well, I know someone who ran courses, you know, for several months and he said, ‘Well, it’s a condition of coming that you pay.’ So you find a job and save up and then you come, you know? I don’t see anything wrong with making a demand like that, rather than saying, ‘Come along and we’ll pay you,’ you know? People can make money and then come. And it’s possible. I don’t see what’s wrong with making a demand like that, really.

Q: I visited a…

Ingrid Porter: Sorry. I’ve got a feeling — I’m not sure, I may be quite wrong, but I can’t get this niggling suspicion out of my mind that we are trying to look for solution before we’ve really looked at the cause of the problem. I mean, Wendy pointed out something and Shaku said that she’s seen that she was doing too much and she has dropped it, and it seems that we’re going one step too fast.

Q: To me, it sounds funny because if you consider this the most important thing in life and then we say, ‘We don’t have time for it, we have to do something else.’ If you really see the importance of this, the most important thing in our lives, why say, ‘We have to have another hour in the day’? Shouldn’t it be so natural that we take the time we really want?

IP: Or say, ‘It’s difficult,’ which is what I mean by looking into the problem for myself. To do my job perfectly I could do it the whole day and do nothing else. But I’m not here just for my job, I’m here for other things as well, and also to have to deal with the students and be free to talk to people. So I take time from my job to do that and somehow or other I can always catch up with my job. But the time that I take off from the job and spend on doing the other things I want to do, that does fill all the time, that doesn’t leave any space. And yet I feel there should be and I’m probably not doing it right.

K: May I put a tentative question? (Laughs)

Q: Yes.

K: You can sponge it, or rather, inquire. Dr Bohm and I have a discussion. It’s taped and goes all over the world. I’m just wondering if you can’t do that with me instead of Bohm. Not that he shouldn’t ought to do it — if all of you can’t do it with me. You understand my question?

Q: Yes.

K: That means you must be capable of discussing with me. You have studied what I am talking about. To study all that, go into all that, you must have time, space. Right? Will you discuss with me? You have been here ten years.

SN: Well, I may not have the capacity that Dr Bohm has.

K: Ah, that’s an easy escape, saying that.

SN: No, it isn’t, it’s a fact.

K: No, the intention to discuss, to say, ‘Look, what you mean by this? You’re wrong. You’re right’ — you follow? — to have a dialogue. It’s not capacity, it’s a question of inquiry, digging. Right? Will you do it with me? And if you don’t, why don’t you? Is it lack of leisure, lack of time, lack of space? Please answer this question.

DS: In a way, Krishnaji, don’t you think that staff here are really attempting to live that, not in discussion but in action during the day?

K: Oh, maybe, maybe. I say I want to discuss with you.

DS: Yes.

K: You may be perfect in action. I don’t know because I’m a visitor. I say come and discuss with me, have a discussion.

DS: Well, I mean, they are discussing it, they are doing it.

K: I want a discussion. I want a dialogue.

DS: To talk about it rather than do it.

K: No.

Q: In addition.

K: Do it. But I want a dialogue.

DS: Yes, but I mean they are. They have already. You said, ‘Are you prepared to do it?’ She is doing it. What I’m trying to say is, you said ‘Are you prepared to do that?’ to Shaku.

K: Yes.

DS: She is in a way, and each one is doing that.

K: I’m not sure.

DS: And you’re saying take it further, as Mary said.

K: I want… I would like to have a good discussion with him, as I have with Bohm or with some pundit, some scholar that comes here.

SN: I think quite a bit of that is happening. I think people do discuss.

K: Do you do it with me, I am talking about? You are twisting what I am saying.

SN: No, we are not twisting, we are trying to answer you.

K: No, you are not answering me. I said, will you have a dialogue with me?

SF: Krishnaji, what do you think prevents our having a dialogue with you?

K: I don’t know. I am asking you, sir. Are you nervous of me, frightened of me, or I’m impatient, or you say, ‘For God’s sake, that man talks about the same old stuff. I’m not interested’?

SN: Sir, I can tell you why I’m nervous. I feel that I don’t have the capacity that, you know, someone like Dr Bohm has. I definitely feel that…

K: I did not… Look, what I said… Why do you reduce it to capacity?

SN: Well, it is.

K: Is it? Is it?

SM: It’s a talent or a gift.

K: Don’t stick to it, please. Is it capacity?

SS: Is it not rather that one hasn’t found one’s own approach to it?

K: No, sir. You have been for ten years, five years — right? — and why don’t you have a dialogue with me? Either — I am not saying it does — either you are not interested or you have not gone into it deeply enough or you are nervous. You follow? There is no… I say to you, I say to Harsha, ‘Come and talk to me.’ You came here for the teachings so let’s talk about it. Not the doing of it. I am not… I want a dialogue, I want to see how far he has gone or how far I have gone. I want to have an exchange of not only words, the feeling, the intensity, all that.

SF: Krishnaji, when I feel I can’t or I don’t want to talk, it’s because I haven’t gone into these things deeply enough. I feel after the first few minutes we’ve plumbed the depth of all I’ve seen, and that’s it, there’s no more for me. You know, it’s very difficult for me to talk after that on some subject, or I might just lack courage.

K: So what shall we do about it, sir? I am coming to the point. We want leisure. We want time and space. I won’t use the word ‘leisure’; forgive me if I slipped that word in. We want time and space. We came here for the teachings. Right? That’s what you said. And apart from action of those teachings I say, ‘Let’s sit down and have a good dialogue about this.’ Will you do it?

Q: Krishnaji? I would like to do that.

K: All right, do it.

Q: Speaking personally, I would very much like to do it.

K: Not now, not now, because we’re here for a different purpose.

Q: Right. That’s the trouble. We don’t have the time with you to do that on a personal…

K: You see, I have asked you. You haven’t asked me.

MZ: Sir, are you talking about having a one-to-one…

K: No, not one-to-one. Look, as a group, as a few people, say, ‘Look, what do you mean by this? What do you mean by meditation? What do you mean by this or that?’

RP: Isn’t it partly the difficulty that because it’s a big group, sometimes it’s difficult?

MZ: Would it — I am not saying it would, but it would be helpful if, say, we are all present and on one day, four or six or two, or any number you want, are the ones who are going to talk to you and the rest of us are going to listen, and it’s up to those people to speak, to carry on the dialogue. Would that be helpful?

K: I am just… you see, I am proposing this. You don’t propose it.

SF: Are you suggesting then, sir, that we’re not really interested in this?

K: I don’t know. I’m not saying you are not interested.

SF: Well, you seem to be suggesting that the reason we don’t speak…

K: I am asking you, sir. I talked to those students for the last four or five times. They said, ‘Please, next time — when is next? We want you to talk to us.’ They keep at it.

MZ: How many of the group speak up? Roughly how many?

K: I should think half of them. They all shake their head. When I say, ‘Do you want this to go on,’ all of them shook their head, more or less. So I’m just… I’m not criticising, I’m not saying you are not studying, all the rest of it. Is that the central core of this too, this feeling that we haven’t time to go into this?

Look, let’s leave that for the moment. We’ll come back to it.

Ojai school, they have got up to the age of… a certain age. They were very upset when Brockwood said we won’t take any children, students below 18, 17, whatever it was. The parents said, and the school teachers there at Ojai said, ‘What shall we do? If they don’t take our children, Brockwood won’t take them, what shall we do?’ And it was proposed that we… they proposed start a junior — what is it?

MZ: A secondary school.

K: A senior school or whatever it’s called. And they are going to go into it, two people are going to study what is implied in a senior school. And we need… they need to start it, three to four million dollars. You understand? I am conveying something?

MZ: Not to start it, sir, but to…

K: Just to start building. In America everything costs — building, and those buildings have to be according to some rules, and so on. Three to four million dollars. Right? So I was talking to Mrs Simmons the other day, if it is not possible here — I am just, please, don’t… we are discussing, so please — if we shouldn’t take lower age. Right? This is what we were talking about.

DS: Well, we have taken one from Wolf Lake who was 14, because we felt she was a mature person.

K: Yes, I know. Wolf Lake is closed.

DS: Yes, I know, but we have taken one, Krishnaji. And I what I feel is that if, say, Mark Lee puts forward a 14 year old whom he thinks has a mature approach, we would say, ‘Yes, come and find out.’

K: So it is not… you don’t rule out…

DS: Not rule out, but we go very hesitantly.

K: Carefully, that’s right, as you would do with any other students.

DS: Yes.

BJ: Yes.

DS: And that they have sent us some very good students.

K: You go tentatively, very carefully, etc., etc., with every student.

DS: Yes.

K: So if my son who is 14 — or 13, 14 — you would do exactly the same thing.

Q: Yes.

DS: From Ojai?

K: No.

Q: From anywhere.

DS: Well, yes, we might do, but it’s not what we said we were going to do. But seeing that that has disturbed Ojai, I think we ought to listen to that.

K: Please, listen to that too, and also I am living in Winchester or somewhere near here and I’ve got a son. I would like you to look at him as you look at other students, only he is 14. Would you do that?

Q: Yes.

Q: I thought we discussed it in the last staff meeting and the impression I got — I mean, maybe some people dissent — but the impression I got was the general feeling of the meeting was that we would be willing to take 14 year olds, as long as they were…

K: That’s right. You agree to that?

Many: Yes.

HT: As long as they had sufficient maturity.

K: Right. As the rest… look, all of them.

SF: It would mean perhaps that for a 14 year old to participate here with enough maturity would make him quite an extraordinary 14 year old. Whereas an 18 year old here he would not have to be quite so extraordinary because he would have the maturity by virtue of his years.

K: May I, in a riposte to that, may I ask, are these students mature enough too?

SF: Many of them, no.

K: So, what?

Q: And some of those are in the older age group.

K: Yes, I’m asking. I know they are much older. Are they mature?

SF: Many of them, no.

K: No. So I am just asking, sir. According to what he says, that gentleman says, is that generally there is agreement amongst you all that you will take 14 if they are so-called ‘mature’ — in quotes — fairly capable of thinking. Like these students here, are they capable of thinking?

SF: Many of them, yes. Some of them, no.

K: Yes.

SF: The ones who are incapable of thinking are the ones who consume most of our energy.

K: So you would agree to that? Then…

SS: Well, I’d like to make a proviso that they should be exceptional 14 year olds, as Scott has pointed out, not run-of-the-mill 14 year olds.

K: Why do you say they must be exceptional?

SS: Well, because we have run-of-the-mill 14 year olds and we’ve had them for years and that is part of the difficulty that we’re trying to deal with, is that we’ve had people who, you know, have been for three years and they’re still 15 or 16, or they were here from the age of 14 to 16 and, you know, it just creates havoc.

K: They not mature.

SS: They’re not mature. They may have a certain interest but, you know, they’re not mature.

Q: Maybe then Steve we should ask them to leave.

DS: Exactly.

SS: But we don’t ask them to leave, that’s the whole point.

DS: We should look at that and see if we can find a way of having a sort of testing time, if you like, to go into it to see this, and to act more quickly than we have done. You see, if we let it go on till the end of a year then it is extremely difficult to just say, ‘Go back home.’

K: Oh no, you can’t do that.

DS: You can’t do that.

K: No.

DS: But if you say, ‘Look, you must have some maturity to come here, whether you’re 18 or whether you’re 14.’ And to all them I would say that if you can’t… if by your behaviour and your response to this whole place you are not doing that, then at the end of a term or halfway through a term — certainly the beginning term — we should go into that and we should act on it. I think that is where we’ve made our mistake.

K: So…

SS: But a young people doesn’t see it that way, they see it as being kicked out.

K: I know, I know — kicked out and all the reactions to it.

SS: They don’t see it has been a matter of maturity, they’re being kicked out, that’s all.

K: I know. So you see, may I ask, is it… can we do choosing the students in a different way? Is that…

SS: I’m suggesting, I’m putting forward that we should be very… we are selective, generally, we are selective — I think we should be highly selective for people in that age group, 14 to 16.

K: We start — is this what you’re saying? — we start from 14 to whatever up, highly selective…

SS: Highly selective.

K: Is that it?

HT: And all the way through.

RP: I think this question… (inaudible)

SS: (Inaudible)

HT: We should be highly selective with everyone who comes here.

SN: Yes.

K: That’s what I’m asking.

DS: That’s what we think we’re being, but we’re not. (Laughter)

BJ: Well, if we were highly selectively then we would have no students.

DS: That is true also, Brian. (Laughter)

SS: That’s why I’m saying don’t be highly selective for all of them. (Laughter)

Q: No, but then you have to bear in mind that the older ones have an influence on the school, much more so than the younger ones. I’m not sure we shouldn’t be more highly selective with the older ones.

Jane Hoare: Can I ask a question which has always worried me? This term ‘highly selective’ — how do we know who’s touched when, how? In their later life sometimes they come back and they’ve been very touched. We may not see it here. I mean, how can we be selective? How can we say that we would rather have a certain type of plant and not another type of plant? I mean, I have never have understood that.

SS: Well, because for the moment we’re trying to look at ways in which we can create time and space among ourselves.

JH: I understand.

SS: All right? Now if you take every plant, you know, that grows and say, ‘Well, this plant here, you know, we’ll work on it, you know, we’ll water it, we’ll give it everything, we’ll put it under glass, we’ll do everything we can with it,’ that plant may produce something. But in terms of what it takes — I mean, it’s a rather, you know, pragmatic way of looking at it — but in terms of what it takes, in terms of energy, time, everything, it’s questionable whether one should do it.

JH: Yes, but…

SS: When you’re looking at the question of the fact that the adults feel they don’t have enough time.

JH: Well, how can do we select what we do with our time? It’s the same thing, question.

SS: It’s not a question of what you do with your time. It’s a question of eliminating some of the more problematical things that one gets involved in day by day. It’s not a question of making some superior to others. (Laughter) I mean, it’s a fairly pragmatic matter. I see it pragmatically, anyway.

Q: But one of suggestions is that the gardener is in just as much disorder as the plant.

SS: Well, that’s a different question, David. I mean, the fact that the gardener’s…

Q: No.

JH: I brought this up…

SS: No, it isn’t. If the gardener has more leisure — at least we seem to be implying — if the gardener has more leisure he will be able to see where his disorder lies. At the moment he doesn’t.

JH: Well, do we see clearly in time, or doesn’t clear seeing happen very different?

DS: Well, I think we have to see that we’re not really a hospital and we’re not starting with already with too-damaged people.

Q: Yes.

DS: Because other people are better equipped to deal with that, with damaged and hurt people.

K: If Ojai says…

DS: And we’re saying we want healthy people who are able to face adult situations, and they’re very difficult to come by, Krishnaji.

K: Yes.

DS: There are not a large number of people who come here in that category.

K: I agree. Would you… if Ojai says, ‘We have got six or seven boys who we think are really very, very good,’ would you accept them?

DS: If, having explained all this, I would say yes.

K: You would examine them.

DS: Yes.

K: And say, ‘We can accept six people.’

DS: Yes. And I would like to put a proviso that we would like to go into it and see if what they say is so.

K: Yes, of course, of course.

MZ: You would still make the same individual decision that you would make about any student. If this is a decision on the part of the school, I would like to be able to tell Ojai, because at the moment they are turning themselves inside out to try and answer how they have further classes for six students who will graduate from the school this June. And they are trying to use the living room at Arya Vihara or some place to go on educating them because there’s no building as yet. So it would help them enormously if they could be told that they are eligible for consideration in Brockwood, if you all decide.

WA: We might not accept them, Mary, and then…

MZ: You might accept them on an individual basis, but I mean that they would be considered just as they would have been considered two years ago.

WA: Yes, that’s…

SF: Krishnaji, there is I think a problem in this, and it’s a human difficulty that Jane has just begun to point out, I think, or pointed out in a way — which is, when someone is here and we have this person and we say we’re going to look, and after a term we are going to say yes to one person and to another person we say, ‘Really you don’t have the maturity or the interest.’ But, you see, that is an extraordinarily difficult thing to do.

K: Of course.

SF: And our tendency is to say — and it always has been — our tendency is to say, ‘Well, we think that there is something down there way deep and that we can contact it,’ or, ‘There is some slow improvement.’ That’s a term that we often hear, ‘That person has improved,’ and yet the improvement seems to be something quite minor in their behaviour and does not necessarily indicate any deep change in their involvement. So how can we deal with this very difficult task of saying yes to somebody… or the very difficult task to saying no to somebody?

K: I understand.

DS: But I think that’s what we have got to do.

SF: That’s what we have to do and yet I feel we don’t know how to do it.

DS: Well, I think we must try and find out how to do it. And I think that over the years it’s become clearer that we are really sort of hospitalising this place, making it into a remedial place.

SF: A hospital.

K: Yes, I quite agree.

DS: And I think we have got to say, ‘Look, we must keep our priorities in order. We are really not concerned with that.’ That’s what I think we have got to be clear about. And the humanising thing is a very difficult one, and also because you feel that you are damaging a child still further by rejecting them.

K: I know, I know.

SF: You feel like a brute. It’s…

DS: But somehow we have got to find out if it is possible to do that, or whether we are right to do that.

K: I understand. How do you now choose?

DS: How do we now choose? How do we choose?

SF: Well, to a certain extent, Krishnaji, it’s by guess and by golly for the first… for the initial…

K: No, sir, just tell me. Tell me how do you… I send my daughter. How do you choose?

SF: Well, we meet and we spend a little bit of time.

K: Yes.

SF: But it’s not adequate. You see, you don’t actually get to know a person until they’ve been here for a while. Because someone can be very charming and very nice and look very good. And especially if it’s done by correspondence, it’s an extraordinarily difficult task.

K: So what will you do?

SF: Well, what I’m saying is that you have no real basis for seeing anything until the person has been here for a while, and that’s when the problem is. It’s not choosing initially, it’s after the person has been here and you see that oh, this person is going to be difficult.

K: Sir, wait, how would you choose? Let’s go into it for a few minutes. No, look at it, look at it.

SF: The initial choice or afterwards?

K: Not afterwards. What is your quality of mind that chooses? On what do you base your choice?

SF: Well, one tries to discern in the other person an interest.

K: No, I’m asking you, what is your approach to this problem? How do you look? I come here as a student or a teacher, a gardener, whatever it is. How do you approach me? How do you look at me? What is your measurement? I’m using that for the time being. How do you measure me? Capacity?

SF: No.

K: Wait, I’m asking you, please, I’m asking all of you. Capacity? Because I can type, I can garden, I can write, do something, so do you judge me according to capacity?

SF: In a way, Krishnaji, if I could say, it depends on what you mean by capacity. If you mean a person’s ability to garden or their ability to read very quickly — no. But in terms of their ability to look at these teachings and go into it…

K: No, look, look, don’t take the poor chap of 14 looking at those teachings — he wouldn’t understand it. Or even all those mature students that you have — they don’t know what it is.

SF: But, Krishnaji, even a 14 year old has an ability to look at what he is doing.

K: When you talk to them.

SF: And many of them are very good.

K: You’re missing my point, sir. I’m not talking about the student. How do you approach it? What is your…

SF: Well, I’m trying to answer, I’m trying to say that my approach is to try and discern in the other person whether they’d have that interest and whether they have that ability to look at things seriously.

Q: I’m afraid that very often when we look at the student or the teacher, it’s our own… what we are looking for is our own prejudice.

K: I don’t know how you do this

Q: And we’re looking in terms of our own values and judgements, and I think it’s quite hard to see that we’re doing that and to see…

K: No, I’m just… you’re not meeting my point. Or perhaps I am not expressing it clearly. I’m in a position to choose or to reject, keep this and put away that. How do I do it? What is my feeling? Not only I look at him first of all how he dresses, how he looks, how he walks, how he talks — right? — physical appearance, physical behaviour, and I also look at him how he looks at you — right? — how he smiles at people. And do I meet him with my prejudices or without my prejudices? And so on. I am looking at myself more than him, before I begin to choose or to accept or not to accept. I am much more concerned how I look at that boy or girl. Am I sensitive enough? I’m not saying you are not. Am I sensitive enough to feel his capacities, his state of mind, you know, the whole being of that person? I’m only suggesting this.

So, let’s go back. So you have more or less agreed we can write to Mark Lee and people there and say, ‘Look, we are willing to… if you send fairly — fairly — mature, fairly serious, not too mischievous, not too destructive’ — right? — ‘we are willing to take them.’

MZ: Well, Krishnaji, I think in that we’re not willing to take Mark or the Oak Grove School’s evaluation, as such.

K: Of course. You must…

MZ: We will take the application and then decide.

K: Of course, that’s all understood, that’s all understood.

MZ: There’s quite a big difference there.

K: Do we agree to that, all of us.

Many: Yes.

Q: Exactly.

K: Then what next? I would like to ask, will you discuss with me, have a dialogue with me?

JH: Can I go back? If there’s… it seems that you say one lives second by second by second. It seems that part of what you’re saying is to live as fully as one can second by second by second.

K: No, no, I’m not saying that.

JH: All right, then I’ve misunderstood that. Because I definitely am in a muddle about that, because it seems that whenever one is deciding between one student and another…

K: I am not, please, I am not talking…

JH: …there is comparison then.

K: I am not talking of students, if you don’t mind my insisting. If you said, ‘Look, don’t talk about it,’ it’s all right. I am asking you if you’ll have, all of you, a serious dialogue with me.

GB: I think that is what we all want.

K: No, no, attendez, attendez, attendez, madame. Will you? Which means what? That you must know what I have talked — right? — how far you have gone into it, how far you are willing to go into it, not only verbally but in action, the whole lot of it. Will you? Will you?

SS: Yes.

K: Why didn’t you ask me to do it?

SS: I don’t know. Kind of fear.

K: (Laughs) Sorry, I’m not putting you on the spot.

SS: No, I’m answering for myself. A kind of fear probably.

K: Why? I won’t destroy you.

SS: I don’t know. Because you’re the great man.

K: Oh no, cut it out, all that stuff.

SS: I know but it’s…

K: I am not a great man, sir. Skip all that.

SS: I know, but unfortunately, you know, one doesn’t skip it, in a sense.

K: No, I… Why should I discuss with outsiders? You understand what I mean?

SS: I know.

K: They come here. They want to have a discussion with me. And you tape it, you video or whatever you do, and I was saying to myself this morning, why?

SF: Krishnaji, I feel also that if we begin talk with you there is something so deep and fundamental about who we are which is challenged, and this is a source of tremendous fear for us.

K: Sir, will you do it with me? That’s all I’m asking. Don’t find excuses.

SF: Yes, I will, but you’re asking why it doesn’t happen. That’s why I feel it doesn’t happen.

K: But why?

SF: I feel it’s because the very foundation of who we are, that we’ve spent so much time building, is called into question.

K: No, no, I am not talking of that. You are supposed to be here for the teachings. Right? You came to look at that, and apparently we don’t talk about that. We talk about arrangements, garden — you follow? — all the things, but not that. You may be doing it in life, I don’t know.

Q: Well, Krishnaji, I think the fact is that it is not only that we are caught up in our work, but there is a great deal of work to do. I mean, there were some years ago I remember when a number of us went to Tannegg and talked with you, and I think it’s a pity really we didn’t continue that because then we had leisure and then we could talk about it.

K: So you need time and space now.

Q: Well, yes, but we also need to be stretched. I think it’s a very good thing that we all work hard, and then when we go to Saanen we have that time and leisure.

K: Yes, sir, old boy, just listen to what I’m saying. To discuss with me, to have a dialogue with me, you must be able to meet me, question me, doubt me, which means you must have gone into it.

Q: Yes.

K: If I say to you, ‘Have you meditated? Do you know what meditation means?’ You must have done something about it.

Q: Yes. Yes, well I have.

K: No, I’m asking, I’m not saying you have or not. But apparently we don’t do that here. You may be doing it in your room or when you meet students and so on, but you never do it with me. You understand what I’m saying, sir?

Q: Yes.

K: Why don’t you?

MZ: Here’s the moment to discuss, right now and here is the topic. Here is the moment to discuss and here is the topic to discuss.

SF: Well, Krishnaji, I began by saying I think that it questions things that we don’t want to question, but you say that’s…

K: No, I am not talking of questioning.

SF: All right, but in a sense, Krishnaji, you asked why we don’t initiate, why we don’t discuss with you, and I tried to, and you say no.

Q: Yes.

MZ: You rejected it.

SF: And you say no, and then move on to something else.

K: No, no, I won’t.

SF: So my attempt to discuss that is… (inaudible)

K: Wait a minute, sir, wait a minute, go slowly. Let’s go into this step by step. But if you jump ahead I say, ‘That’s not it,’ like some of the students.

SF: Well, I think that we’re there, Krishnaji. I think that we’ve been listening to you for a long time and in a sense I think that we understand what I’ve said and I think that going step by step, I think that we are there. We understand that fear and we know that fear, and we all feel it perhaps.

K: So perhaps, either I’m wrong — just a minute — or you have gone into it, not step by step, as an idea, a conclusion, a thing which you have perceived and captured that. I don’t know if I am conveying it.

SF: What you’re saying is that the way I have gone into this is perhaps not adequate in order to carry on a discussion.

K: Perhaps. Perhaps. I don’t say that. Perhaps.

I mean, when Rahula, you know that Buddhist priest came here. I mean, why should they come and why don’t we do it here? That’s my point.

MZ: Yes.

K: We are as good as — you follow? — we can apply our minds, create something ourselves.

Q: But I think also, Krishnaji, we’re a little shy to impose…

K: Oh no, sir. I am also shy, please.

Q: Yes, but we don’t want to deny other people having contact with you also.

K: Of course, they’re coming anyhow.

Q: Yes, but I mean it is also to be understood that you shouldn’t have talks every day and so on. You need to have rest.

K: Sir, I don’t mind.

Q: Well, other people say differently.

K: No, wait, leave me. You see, don’t…

SF: Well, Krishnaji, can we try…

K: Either I tell you I can’t do it…

MZ: Maybe we can discuss right now. I mean, this is a perfect example.

SF: Can we come back to what you were saying before, about perhaps we jump ahead, we don’t go step by step? Now, how do we then go about doing that? Because we apparently don’t know how to do it even when we are by ourselves.

K: Sir, I don’t know now, it’s nearly time to stop. It’s twenty past six or — what time is it? — twenty-five past six. What time is it?

SN: It’s twenty past, twenty-one past.

K: Do you want to, like Bohm — he telephoned me — or others, say, ‘I want to touch your mind. I want to see how you look at this. Why do you say that?’ Right? Bohm is concerned — if I am right; I may be wrong — he says, ‘I want to touch your mind that goes very far,’ he tells me — if I have understood rightly; I may be wrong — and we discuss. It may be verbal, it may be… That’s not my business. Say, for instance, we talked a great detail about attachment. He may be attached — it’s up to him. I’m not talking about Dr Bohm. About X. Will you do that with me?

BJ: I think most of us would like to do that with you.

K: Not ‘like to’ — want to do it, put your blood into it. I’m not saying you don’t, but are you doing it? You understand, sir, when I say, ‘I’m questioning’? I don’t say you do or don’t. I’m not, so don’t be defensive or offensive. I’m inquiring. Right, sir? I don’t measure. If Scott says to me, ‘Measure me, go in to understand me, look into me,’ I will. But otherwise I won’t. I won’t read private letters, and the people ask me to read private letters. So, I’m just asking — I may be wrong or if you say, ‘We are doing it,’ it’s all right — why don’t we, instead of outsiders — not instead — outsiders can come and also discuss with the person — why don’t we all discuss with me?

Q: We’ll have to do that.

Q: Can we do that now? Can we do that now for a few minutes?

K: For a few minutes? Do it.

Q: When you talk to us you want a response which you don’t get, it seems to me. And then when we give you our response it isn’t at the level which you’re trying to work with and then you say no, and then we shut up and then we get silenced.

K: No. No, sir, don’t reduce it to that. Just a minute. Now we’ve got ten minutes. Right? What do you want to talk with me about?

Q: About this moment which happens here when everybody is silent, you are asking something and people say, ‘Well, is it this?’ or ‘maybe’, ‘perhaps’ or ‘but’, and you just don’t want that. You want something and people sort of shut up.

K: Are you saying I don’t… are you saying I shut them up, more politely?

Q: I’m not sure I’m saying that. You’re asking for some response, a complete response and…

K: I’m not. Sir, let’s have a discussion now.

Q: Right.

K: Just about that.

Q: Well, when I am in that position and I don’t say anything, it’s because I know I’d start saying something like, ‘maybe’, ‘perhaps’ or ‘but’ and that’s obviously inadequate and so there’s…

K: Ah. I want you… All right, let’s take something. Right. Do you feel — I have said this — that any form of attachment to belief or a conclusion atrophies the mind?

Q: Yes.

K: Right? Right?

Q: Yes.

K: Now, let’s discuss that, have a dialogue about it. Any form of belief, conclusion, a faith, an experience. You follow?

Q: And any plan as to how one would get to somewhere.

K: Yes. Yes, that’s further. Now, will you discuss with me.

WA: Krishnaji, though, I might say, ‘Yes, I agree with that,’ but I still have conclusions, beliefs and everything else.

K: Which means what? You’re just playing with words.

WA: Not necessarily. I can see it very clearly in other people, but it doesn’t seem to penetrate into something.

K: No, in discussing you may penetrate it. In having a dialogue you’re saying, ‘Look, I can’t go so deeply. I am still attached to my conclusion.’ Then I say, ‘Why? Let’s talk about it. Why? Fear. Do you find security in that conclusion?’ You follow? We can go into it together. But when you say, ‘I can’t go any further,’ you have stopped yourself. Right, sir?

Q: Right. If I say something to you that isn’t true it’ll become obvious as we go on.

K: No, I am just taking this thing. I am saying, let us have a dialogue now for ten minutes about this particular thing.

Q: About belief.

K: Which is, most of us have some kind of conclusion, conscious or unconscious, to which we cling — conclusion, belief and so on — which actually brings lack of nourishment to the brain. I have talked this matter with Bohm, who is supposed to be a scientist and all that, he said he totally agrees to that: that any form of intellectual or emotional attachment does not feed the mind fully, doesn’t give the brain full nourishment. Right?

Q: Yes.

K: So, I said — you tell me that. I hear that and I say, ‘Now, am I attached to any conclusion?’ I want to know. You follow? I discuss with you, point it out. Show me.

Q: In terms of religious belief, no, but in terms of emotional approach to the world, yes.

K: No, any form.

Q: Yes, so there’s something there which…

K: In my dialogue with you I am going to discover whether I am attached or not. You follow what I mean?

Q: Right.

SS: If I am not attached, what is left?

K: Wait, we are going to find out.

SS: But one is attached. One is attached.

K: Then is that attachment — I don’t want to go into it personally, if you don’t mind — is that attachment not making the brain dull?

SS: It doesn’t seem that way.

K: Now, I’ll show it to you how it does.

SS: Well, one may have, say, an aesthetic attachment. An aesthetic attachment. I like painting or I like music.

K: Ah, that’s — music — all right.

SS: I feel that that nourishes me, in a sense.

K: He says, ‘I like to look at a tree.’

SS: Well, a tree’s a natural…

K: That’s not an attachment.

SS: No, but…

SF: Attachment to a conclusion though or something like that is much more…

K: I am talking of conclusions.

MZ: What is attachment?

SS: Well, what is a conclusion in this sense?

K: Now, look…

MZ: A certainty. There are certain assumptions. We are certain about certain things and we depend on these as being certainties too, in our thinking in our daily life. Now attachment, it would seem to me, would be an extra dimension which I am somehow dependent on that, which is perhaps psychological or emotional. But we all have an innumerable number of certainties, factual certainties, without which we could not get through the day, mentally or otherwise. Now where is it…

K: Where is the distinction between them?

MZ: Yes.

K: Where do you draw the line?

MZ: Yes.

K: That’s fairly simple, isn’t it?

MZ: I wonder. I mean, Dr Bohm talks to you and he has a certain discipline of physics and all the science that he knows. He talks out of that. Those things are perhaps always being looked at, but still one can call them certainties.

K: Don’t let’s discuss Dr Bohm, let’s take… there was a man here…

MZ: Well, this is just to take an example.

K: There was a priest here the other day. He’s still a priest. He discusses with you about liberation etc., etc., etc., but he is still attached.

MZ: But that’s belief. I’m talking about something else.

K: I am sticking to belief. I’m not coming, if you don’t… Wait, no, don’t brush that aside.

MZ: No.

K: I started with that. Please, stick to… You see, this…

MZ: You said attachment, sir.

K: Attachment to a belief, to a conclusion.

SF: Sir…

K: Wait, wait, therefore…

MZ: Conclusion would be different.

SF: To me.

Q: But Krishnaji, Brian said earlier that… Brian over there said earlier he didn’t have any religious beliefs.

K: No, but…

Q: And I think most of us are in that boat. So our beliefs are more subtle.

K: No, you may not have a religious belief but you might have other beliefs. Belief. I didn’t say religious. Right?

Q: Right.

K: I didn’t say a particular belief. I say all belief. You understand?

Q: I’m not sure if I do, that bit.

K: Now, if you… Look, I hear that statement — you make that statement to me and I say, ‘Now, I want to understand the meaning of that first, the verbal significance of it.’ I say, ‘What do you mean by that?’ Belief. I believe in God — that may be religious — I believe in progress, I believe in war — it doesn’t matter. We all have of certain beliefs. Right? And I say that very belief brings about a dullness, a lack of nourishment, it atrophies the brain.

WA: But in fact, Krishnaji, sometimes belief brings about your energy, actually. Very often belief can bring about quite a lot of energy.

K: Of course it does.

WA: I don’t think one…

K: Of course it does. Look at all the… the Pope.

WA: But you say then it dulls the mind, you see, and yet it seems to do the two things.

K: No, it does, because it is a partial activity, it’s not a total activity.

WA: Well, can we go into that because I’m not sure that… Sorry.

K: Don’t defend. You see that? Please don’t. We are examining. I may be wrong.

SF: Krishnaji, in order to understand how belief or conclusion atrophies the mind do we have to see all of them or need we follow only one?

K: No, find out, find out. Let’s discuss it.

SF: Well, could we take just one and look at just one and see how that atrophies the brain?

K: Take one.

Q: Could we take beliefs about what we are and how much we can understand?

K: Yes, take your belief. Good. Go on, sir, go into it with me.

Q: Because it seems we so easily…

K: Don’t let me pull it out. Go into it.

Q: It seems we so easily believe that we can’t understand fundamental things like this ourselves, that we give up and say, ‘We can’t,’ and then start thinking about it or asking questions.

K: Why? I asked you why. Why do you depend on another? You follow? It comes to that. Right? Why? And the man upon whom you depend says, ‘Be free.’ Right? ‘You have to be a light yourself, no authority.’ You follow? Go on, sir, move with me.

Q: And for thirty years everything that one has approached, fundamental ones, always been told one has to approach through somebody or other. It may not have been said in words but the whole atmosphere in which I’ve been caught up in is that.

K: Of course it is, the whole…

Q: And that still has a hold.

K: I mean, the whole world is based on that.

Q: Right.

K: The professors, the elite, the specialists.

Q: Right. And if one had seen through that one wouldn’t perhaps may be coming here to sit down to…

K: Now move from that, sir. Move from that. Let’s move from that. Have you such a belief? I’m not, please…

Q: No, no.

K: You don’t have to answer me, but have I — I’ll take myself — have I such a belief? Do I look to somebody to push me along?

SS: One may come here with that belief.

DS: To refer to the teachings is a sort of belief.

Q: Yes.

DS: To refer to what you are doing as the teachings implies a certain belief.

K: I don’t quite follow this.

Q: People may use what you say.

SS: Well, there is a body of what been said by…

K: …X.

SS: Yes, right. There is a body of what he has said on record.

K: I don’t quite follow.

SS: So a person may refer to that.

SF: I think a person might be interested in going into the teachings in a way that is not actually looking at things for themselves. In other words they might be using the teachings as the authority or the teachings as the…

K: No, you see how you have gone off, if I may point out?

SF: Yes.

K: I am saying, I say it, I am stating it definitely. I may be wrong, but I state it. Which is that any form of belief, conclusion, concepts to which the mind clings, brain clings, brings about… atrophies the brain. I say that.

Q: Any feeling that someone else can say that better than you.

K: No, let’s talk, let’s tear it to pieces. I may be wrong. I am willing to say, ‘I’m sorry. I’m wrong.’ I don’t defend it.

Q: Krishnaji, you say, ‘I may be wrong,’ but the way you state it, the emphasis with which you state it, gives me an impression that you don’t feel you are wrong. There is a certainty from which you speak.

K: Oh, I know I’m not wrong. (Laughter)

Q: So…

Q: I know you’re not wrong too, so let’s go on. (Laughter)

Q: I would like to discuss with you this state of mind from which you speak. When you say, ‘I may be wrong,’ no, you are not saying that, it is a…

K: I am saying that in order to invite you…

Q: Quite.

K: …to have a dialogue.

Q: No, I understand. Now, you speak from a certainty.

K: Oh, that’s…

Q: No, please, because it is essential to the dialogue. When I say, ‘I may be wrong,’ I may be wrong. (Laughter) And in that is the whole source of confusion, in that is the source of incompleteness. There is something which does not operate to certainty and I am not able to understand why I accept that there is certainty in you. When you say…

DS: What is the difference between certainty and conclusion?

Q: (Inaudible)

K: Ah, there is a vast difference. He’s using the word ‘certainty’ — I have not used it.

DS: But you said, ‘I am certain.’

K: It is clear to me.

Q: Dorothy, let’s not quibble over the word, if you don’t mind — certain or… There is something when you say, ‘It is so.’

K: Yes.

Q: It’s an absolute statement.

K: Yes.

Q: And here we are discussing, talking, arguing, finding out, and remaining again and again not in that absolute position.

DS: But isn’t an absolute statement a conclusion?

SN: No, it isn’t.

SS: Not necessarily.

SN: I think there’s a difference between clarity and — I think we are using the wrong word — there is a difference between clarity and certainty and conclusion. Certainty and conclusion are quite different from clarity.

Q: Can I try to put it like this? I see that trying to believe on anybody else is useless and that one has to be completely clear oneself. Now that’s not just an idea. The clarity of that is there but it leads to an action which I’m afraid to take and so it doesn’t operate. I can recognise the truth of what you’re saying because I can recognise it in me as you speak, but then something happens and it doesn’t actually…

K: Just stop. Just stop a minute there. You recognise what I said as to be true. Right?

Q: Yes.

K: Why? How do you recognise it? Go slowly, step by step. How do you say, ‘By Jove, how true that is’? What makes you say that?

Q: It’s as if you are describing something in me at the same time as you are speaking about it yourself. It just is so.

K: Tell me a little more. Tell me a little more. Tell me a little more about it.

Q: It’s as if it’s something I’ve always known to be true as well, and always been running away from. It’s not as if it’s something…

K: No, you’re not meeting my question. You say to me when I make that statement, immediately say, ‘By Jove, it is true.’ Right?

Q: Right.

K: Then what happens after you have stated it? Go step by step.

Q: I start thinking about it a little bit and it all gets complicated.

SN: Well, the mind seems to make an idea of it. At the moment that you say it, it seems as though the mind isn’t functioning.

K: No, no, answer me a little bit slowly, if you don’t mind. I am not correcting, I am not shutting you out. Answer me a little slowly. I make a statement, express a statement, and you say, ‘By Jove, how true that is!’ Is that perception related to life or related to some kind of sensitive apprehension of this? Apprehension — apprehend — I am using that word in that sense. You understand what I’m saying, sir?

SF: Krishnaji, are you saying that those two things are different? You said, ‘Does this perception relate to life or does it relate to some apprehension?’

K: Now I’m saying both, I am saying both. You see, say for instance, when you make a statement to me of that kind, I listen to it very carefully. I mean, I listen to you and I say, ‘By Jove, how true it is.’ You understand? How true it is. That perception of the truth has wiped away my attachment. You understand what I’m saying?

SF: Not…

K: Stay…

SF: No. (Laughs)

K: I am taking… you make that statement and I listen to it, because I am here to listen to you. So I listen to you and I say, ‘Good God, what a marvellous thing, that is true.’ And then what happens? I don’t beat around and say, ‘Why is it true? Is it logical?’ That statement being true, it is logical.

SF: But, Krishnaji, then you went on with that. You said — and I would agree, that I hear a statement…

K: No, no, I haven’t finished, I haven’t finished.

SF: Exactly — because it’s the end part that is troublesome.

K: I haven’t finished. I am coming to it. I listen to it and I see the truth of it. I don’t see it — I perceive it, I comprehend the truth of it — and it’s gone, attachment is gone.

SF: Now that last part is the difficult one. (Laughter)

K: Of course. I’m going to help you. Let’s discuss it. I’ll show it to you.

SF: All right. Now what is wrong, Krishnaji…

K: No, don’t… You see… No, see what you are saying. I am saying one thing and you are saying something else. I say to you, ‘Jesus unto you,’ (laughs) sorry. I say to you… No, sorry, I can’t… (Laughter)

To me, the very listening to something that is true has cleaned the slate.

IP: But it doesn’t, Krishnaji. It doesn’t clean the slate, so…

K: No. Let’s discuss that. Why? Let’s go step by step, not… don’t defend it. You follow? Then there is no arguing. So why?

CW: Possibly we have an idea of what truth is, and so… (inaudible)

K: No, I am asking. Don’t say ‘we have an idea’ — you, you.

CW: Well, there is certain sensation in me.

K: No.

SF: Sir, can we just go back? I’m sorry, but here I could follow you and I feel up to a certain point, you say… a certain statement is made. One sees that it’s true, one sees the truth of it, the accuracy of it, it makes eminent sense, it makes more sense than anything…

K: But…

SF: …but there is nothing that thinks life might be a little bit different afterwards. Maybe some of the beliefs one throws away.

K: May I ask something? I may be wrong; I’m just asking. You hear the statement, you say, ‘It is true, by Jove!’ Has that truth wiped the state clean?

SF: No.

K: No, wait. How do you know? When you say no, how do you know? Careful. Step by step. I am not going to… Step by step. Why do you say no?

SF: I look at some statement, the way that it was just made, about belief atrophying the brain.

K: Do you see, you are going off.

SF: Well, I’m trying to say why I said no.

K: You see, I am stopping you from going off to something else. Forgive me. I asked you a question, which is, I hear the statement and I tell you — seriously, I have done this all my life — something occurs to me and it’s cleaned the whole plate. Just a minute. I know. Now why doesn’t it happen with you, with us? What is preventing it?

MZ: Is it that what you see at that instant and the way we see it at that instant? When you say that, my brain says, ‘Yes, that’s so,’ and then the next thing it does, it sees the action of that and how it is true. I see that belief or conclusion is the ending of examination, and not seeing, it’s the closing the mind. All these things rush in to make a picture. In actual, what goes on in the brain… (inaudible)

K: My mind doesn’t do that. My mind doesn’t do that.

MZ: I know. That’s why I want to know what happens in you.

K: He makes that statement. My mind receives it and sees the truth of it and that’s the end of it.

MZ: But what have you seen in that moment? What have you seen?

K: I see the truth of that statement.

MZ: What is that?

K: Not see it with my eyes.

MZ: No.

K: I see the depth, the meaning, the beauty of such a statement, so it is finished.

SF: Krishnaji, when your brain sees that, it’s finished. When my brain sees it, it’s not.

K: No, stop…

SF: Is it something fundamentally…

K: Find out. You see, you have already questioned. Find out. Find out, look into it. Don’t verbalise it. Don’t intellectualise the reason for or against. Look into it.

SN: Sir, it seems that you’re saying that when your brain receives it or when your mind receives it, it’s not receiving what it’s receiving as words.

K: Of course.

SN: And I think that’s the problem with us. We are receiving it as words.

K: Ah, is that what is the problem? Careful, careful. Is that the problem — words?

SN: Yes, I think, you know, the problem is that thought may be in suspension for a moment, you know, but it’s always there.

K: Which means what? Which means what? You’re not listening.

SS: Well, Krishnaji, one may be transported by the word for a time.

SN: Yes.

SS: An hour or even a day.

K: With me it’s finished.

SS: Ah, well this is the difference.

K: Now I am going to show it. You see, you’re all resisting. You’re all… You don’t say, ‘Now, let’s find out.’ You say, ‘It’s different with us,’ and you stop. Actually look, go into it. Let’s go into it very carefully why with one person it is so clear, wiped out, with the other person it’s not. Why? You are not… You follow? Inquire into it — why?

RP: The feeling I get is because I am anchored somewhere which is very comfortable.

K: No, no, don’t give a…

SF: Well, sir, give us a little help inquiring into this.

K: I will, I will.

SF: Because I can’t do it. You have left this question with us for the last five minutes and I can’t move one inch.

K: I will. I will presently go into it. That is, you’ll see it and it’s finished and I see, I hear it and I say, ‘Yes, it is true.’ Right? Then what happens with me? I begin to analyse it.

SS: It becomes an idea.

K: It becomes an idea, or I say, ‘It’s so true then, why haven’t I got it now?’ I go through all the mentation. You know, mentation, that is intellectually analysing, tearing it to pieces. I don’t… He says to me, ‘See the truth and don’t move.’ Right? The truth of what you have said is going to operate, not my conclusions, my analysis, my this and that. If what you say is true that is going to operate.

BJ: Krishnaji, when you say, ‘Don’t move,’ I want to understand precisely what you mean because the mind moves.

K: No, sir. Move in the sense talk about it, rationalise it, examine it, tear it to pieces, ‘Have I got it?’ ‘Have I not got it?’ ‘Is it so?’ and so on. That’s what I mean. Whereas if you make a statement to me and I see the truth of it, I don’t move. It is going to work itself out. Because the perception of that truth has nothing to do with you or with me; it is truth. I don’t know if you see that. I mean, like in chemistry you mix two elements it is so. You don’t discuss it. You don’t say, ‘I can’t do it, I am stuck.’

WA: But you can observe something. In chemistry you can observe it happening in front of your eyes, and somehow it doesn’t seem to be the same.

K: Either you’re not listening — right? — would that be right?

WA: Well, I suppose listening to me means…

K: Ah, which means you’re not listening.

WA: Then I think, ‘Well, how am I going to listen?’ I don’t know, I tend to…

K: Are you listening? I’m questioning. I’m not saying you’re not. We’re examining. This is a dialogue. Are you listening?

Q: I try to.

K: Ah, then you do not listen, if you try. Right?

MZ: Krishnaji, listening is without any thought.

K: Of course. I am listening to what you have to say.

MZ: That’s what’s so hard for us.

K: I am listening to Mr Nicholson when he says to me, ‘Any form of belief, attachment to anything destroys the brain,’ or some words. I see the truth of it immediately. I don’t say, ‘What is it? What does it mean? How does it affect me? Am I carrying it out? What is the action between perception and action?’ I don’t. I just say, ‘All right. By Jove, how beautiful that is.’ Right? Hold it; as you would hold a precious jewel, hold it. Are you doing it? That’s a dialogue. Now, are you doing it?

Q: That’s perhaps our problem. We think perhaps by thinking the matter over… Perhaps that’s in a way the essence of the problem: when you hear something…

K: That’s all. That’s all. You don’t have to think it over.

Q: Ah, but aren’t we afraid of losing it? There is something that seems to come in, perhaps it’s just with me, that’s afraid of losing that. So you think, ‘Well, in this circumstance how does it work out? In this circumstance how does it act?’ So you build this whole picture. But the picture we built up is in the fear of losing that.

K: Yes, which means what? By doing all that you have lost it.

Q: Yes. And it’s almost a sensation that you can feel.

K: So don’t do it. You see, they say, ‘Don’t do it.’ And when you say that to me, ‘Don’t do it,’ I don’t do it, because what you say is important. You follow what I mean? I want to see.

Were you are going to say something? Sorry.

This is the first time we have had a dialogue, for ten minutes. Right?

(Pause)

Now, may I move from there a little bit? Can you listen to the boy or the girl that comes here when you’re choosing? You understand my question? Your mind is not in a state of decision — this or that — but you’re listening to the quality of his mind. Right? Can you do it? That perception, that sensitivity of listening may immediately, you know… you may know.

It’s seven o’clock. We’d better stop — two hours.

Now, do you want a dialogue with me?

Many: Yes.

K: You see, I am asking. Why don’t you ask me?

You fix the time, I’ll be there.

SF: Tomorrow at five?

K: What is tomorrow?

Q: Saturday.

K: Right. But you prepare. (Laughter) I am not being emphatic, please. Ah, I’m emphatic but it’s not rudeness, it’s not impolite, it’s not personal or anything.

(Pause)

You see how we have gone very far? Right? I don’t know if you see this. Right? Right, sir? You are doubtful.

SS: No, I’m not doubtful.

K: Good.

(Long pause)

Shall we get up?