K School – Adults Discussion 4, Rishi Valley, 24 January 1965

K: What shall we talk about this morning? May I set the ball rolling, and perhaps we can discuss afterwards?

As most of the religions — I am… we are using that word *religion* in the usual, orthodox sense of that word — have more or less failed, and, as it seems to me, it is only the religious mind that can act as a whole in relation to all the different activities of life, I wonder how, in a school of this kind, we can bring about that religious spirit; not the religious spirit of superstition, rituals, dogmas, beliefs, going to temples, churches — you know, all that stuff — but the quality of mind that can act as a whole. Though it may have to function in a fragmentary way, its action will be total; and that’s what I consider to be a religious mind — and, of course, much more to it but that’s good enough to begin with. I wonder how we can introduce that kind of way of living in the school. Perhaps it’s rather vague, what I’m saying.

As we were saying the other day, we function in departments — as a scientist, as an artist, as a bureaucrat, as an engineer, as a philosopher, as an artist, engineer and so on, so on, so on — and such fragmentary activity does breed the worship of status rather than function and it does breed antagonism, competition and various forms of envy, hatred and so on. Is it possible in a school of this kind to approach life as a whole — in the true religious sense of that word, I mean — and if that is worthwhile, how is that to be brought about? How is that state of mind to come by?

I do not know if any of you do any kind of meditation. Again, not… if you do any serious meditation, is it merely the pursuit of a particular vision, a symbol, or merely a repetition of words and so on? All those… if you know anything about… if you have done any meditation, one sees fairly simply and intelligently that form of meditation is really self-hypnosis and that doesn’t lead anywhere. Will meditation bring about this total action from the… — I don’t know if you know all the… — total action from silence?

(Pause)

Probably I’m talking complete Greek.

(Pause)

All right, sir, let’s put it round the other way. Pleasure is one thing and love is another. One can cultivate pleasure: refine it, indulge in it, polish it, give it a great significance; pleasure in so many ways: the refinement of manner, refinement of dress, refinement of thought, conduct; a certain pleasure of rectitude; the pleasure of knowledge. And there are the various sensory pleasures: sex, the delicacy of taste, good taste in clothes, in… and so on, so on. One can cultivate pleasure, but pleasure is not love, and obviously love cannot be cultivated, any more than one can cultivate humility.

Now, if one has no love, one may have pleasure, but pleasure is time-binding; in that there is sorrow, in that there is pain, in that there is every kind of conflict. And how is one, in a school of this kind, how is one to help each other and also help the student to see the nature of pleasure and perhaps come upon that thing that’s called love? I don’t know if I’m…

(Pause)

Because without love there can’t be co-operation — love being affection — there can’t be co-operation; there can’t be real, deep communion with another or… another person, with trees, with nature, with beauty, with the sky, with the rocks, with the animals. And without that thing, career, status, ambition, every form of pleasurable indulgence becomes the norm; the norm, that is, the pattern. One sees that in the world; that’s fairly obvious; one hasn’t got to go… one hasn’t to analyse it too widely or too deeply; it’s fairly clear.

Now, how is one to have this thing called love — if I am using that word and it is rather shy-making, please forgive — how is one to come to it? Because without it, life has no perfume, no vitality, no depth, no beauty; how is one to do it? How would you, who are responsible for children, for students here, how would you set about it? If the two things are clear: the nature of pleasure and all the implications in it — not that it is right or wrong — and also to perceive if one has the feeling of what love is, how is one to help the student to come away from the one to the other without conflict, without… you know, all the rest of it? I don’t know if I’m conveying anything. Am I?

Narayan: Sir, you said the pleasure of rectitude, refinement of knowledge, we make use of that in a school, in a good school; any good school made use of those things, it is direction of love, or…

K: No. Obviously not.

N: …is it something unrelated to this?

K: No… Or rather, if one has the other, then the pleasure of rectitude or knowledge has its own place and doesn’t become all-important. I don’t know… Because the pleasure of rectitude and the pleasure of knowledge are incomplete in themselves. They are not… they are insufficient.

N: I want to say something else. When you say pleasure of rectitude, I don’t think that it is mere pleasure in that sense. There is in rectitude and refinement of knowledge an aspect which is not merely pleasure.

K: All right, sir, have it. Then what?

N: Is that in the direction of love?

(Pause)

K: Do you think it is?

N: Because much of education is concerned with that all the time; much time is spent on that.

K: All right…

N: If it is not…

K: It should be, of course; it must be. But which do you give importance to, emphasis to: rectitude, knowledge — *rectitude* being morality and, you know, accepted norm of morality — which would you give importance to? As a human being and therefore as a teacher, as a relationship and so on, so on, which would you give importance to?

N: My answer is a little qualified, sir. In terms of quality… in terms of quality, I would certainly give only importance to the feeling or the love or the affection part of it.

K: What do you mean…?

N: But in terms of quantity…

K: What do you mean *quality*? What do you mean *quantity* and *quality*?

N: Yes. If, in imparting knowledge or if in conduct which has the quality of rectitude, not as a norm, but because there is something else in it.

K: No, but don’t you see — if I may say — if there… when there is affection, love, then there is… everything is…

N: Yes.

K: …everything is over. In itself it is rectitude; in itself it’ll creates its own way of knowing. Without the other, rectitude and, knowing…, knowledge have, has no meanin. So I know all the… wknew all the differences, -the nture of recitude, – what ilie tts in not rectitude.

N: It is not rectitude.

K: Therefore how will you come from that to this? And most of us are in that position. I don’t know… Most of us have knowledge; most of us are fairly decent in our behaviour; most of us maintain a certain relationship; most of us have not too much antagonism, too much hatred — they may have a little greed and envy and, you know, all the rest of it — but that doesn’t get you the other. Mediocrity in this is not the beauty of the other. I don’t know if…. Ah? Am I am conveying anything?

Q: Most of them have a real love of something or other; don’t you work from whatever there is?

K: Ah… No, no; no. I’m not talking of the children; leave the children alone for the moment. I’m talking of you as a human being in relationship with the world which is the student and all the rest of it.

Balasundaram: Shall we go back to what you started with? I think it is the same thing in a different way. You started saying that, you know, most of us act in a fragmentary manner…

K: That’s right, sir.

B: How is one to move from that fragmentary… (inaudible)?

K: That’s what I… To a total thing. Quite.

B: (Inaudible)

K: Moral… quite.

B: There is a very great difficulty in that. We also discussed several things. You said it’s not through withdrawal — that means, like a *sanyasi…* (inaudible)

K: No, obviously; obviously.

B: You can’t.

K: Obviously.

B: But in working, in living in a group, in moving with other people, what really seems to take place is further fragmentation, not any gathering.

K: You are saying, sir…

B: So what is… what I’m… the fragmentation itself is… every process of thought is a fragmentation.

K: Yes…

B: When I say… it’s an enormous thing.

K: It is.

B: If I say, ‘My friend,’ ‘not my friend,’ or anything, whatever I say, any thought is a process of fragmentation. So how is one to move away from that? And when we say, ‘No fragmentation,’ it’s again another thought trying to bind the whole thing.

K: Of course.

B: So how is one to move away from this?

K: That’s what I’m asking.

B: Is it through living together and action…

K: Ah, ah…

B: …or is it…? It’s neither of the two, apparently.

K: Ah… Can’t be.

B: So how is one to do this?

K: That’s what I’m…

B: I feel unless we do this, the work here, education, whatever we may talk about will have very little meaning.

K: Quite; quite. So that’s what I’m…

B: I think that is the crux of the problem.

K: That’s why, Balasundaram, I’m trying to get at it differently. You see, most of us are persuaded through pleasure — right? — whether conscious or unconscious pleasure; and, if one observes, pleasure is always fragmentary — always. Right? That’s a great thing to discover — you follow? — not just agreement; it’s a great thing to discover the nature of pleasure and its fragmentary activities. Pleasure in itself is fragmentation, and yet that’s what most of us pursue; and being caught in that, we seek love as an intellectual concept and give it various… and write out various formulas to acquire it. Now, what is a mind which… — are you interested in all this? — what is a mind which is caught in the fragmentation of pleasure, which is our norm, which is our daily habit and so on, how is… what is it to do or not to do to come to the other? That is the same thing you are talking and we are all talking about.

Q: Yes.

K: Because if there is the other, there is no… it is all virtue, it’s all b eauty, it is all true; everything is there, in itself. But without that, mere refinement of pleasure — which most of us, at least, most thoughtful people, cultured people, people who are pretending to be religious are refining this pleasure; cutting it away, cutting it away, making it more and more delicate, more and more refined, more and more subtle, more and more fine and delicate, but from this they can’t get to that — obviously. Or is that not obvious?

Because this is a process and that’s not a process. This is a time-consuming affair — pleasure — and the other is not. I don’t know… In this there is effort, there is contradiction — you know? — all that is involved in it: striving… and the other is not. So what is a mind which is involved in pleasure and in the bondage of pleasure to do to come to the other? And they have… so far, religion has said, ‘Withdraw: monk, *sanyasi*, meditate, control; when you look at a woman, run from her; she’s a disease, she’s horror’ — you follow? — push, push, push away, run away. And… that’s obviously… does n’t get anywhere, because that’s mere suppression; it’s like a boil, poison that you have kept inside; it’ll burst. Right.

So realising all this, how will you move to the other without any conscious movement, because if you do, it’ll be a pleasurable movement, a pleasurable movement of reaction. Right? So how will you… what is a mind to do, the mind that has been trained for centuries to move from that to this?

(Pause)

It’s a problem — right? — how will you proceed?

(Pause)

Got it?

Q: Do you mean desire, sir, when you say pleasure?

K: Oh, all that’s involved in it. Ah, wait a minute; wait… What is desire, sir? What is desire?

Q: Wanting something; wanting… (inaudible)

K: Wait… Now, what? Wanting. How does that wanting arise? I want; I see that *kurta* or I see that house or I see something else and I want that. What is the process of that want? How did it come about? Oh, that’s fairly simple; we don’t have to analyse it too much: senses, perception, sensation, desire — desire is born. Right? Now, then what? The desire which is pleasurable, the desire which is non-pleasurable also.

Q: Sir, looking at the sky gives me pleasure. What is fragmentary about it?

K: Looking at… Yes, that’s… Isn’t it? Look what has happened? It gives you pleasure. Looking at a… — what? — a tree doesn’t give you pleasure.

Q: It also gives me pleasure.

K: All right; something doesn’t give you pleasure — right? — a dirty street, a dirty way of looking at life, a narrow way of looking at… doesn’t give you pleasure. Or desire is always pleasurable? You follow what I mean? Which is it? Is desire always pleasurable? Do we desire anything which is not pleasurable? Obviously not! I don’t desire to have the pain of the toothache which I had a month ago, but I do desire that pleasure which I had a month ago. So desire goes with pleasure. No? No?

Q: Yes.

K: And that desire which seeks pleasure or which is pleasure has different forms of contradictory pleasures. No?

Q: Sir, my question is this: I look at the sky, it gives me pleasure. I don’t see any contradiction in that.

K: No.

Q: I look at a tree, a bird, it gives me pleasure.

K: Pleasure. Then what happens? You want that pleasure to continue. No?

Q: Not necessarily.

K: Then it’s a momentary thing. I look at the sky and say, ‘What a marvellous sky’; it gives me a certain of sense of appreciation, etc., as pleasure and I forget it, do I? Or do I say to myself, ‘By Jove, I wish I could translate that pleasure in action’? No? Or, ‘I wish I could continue that pleasure.’ Or is it a momentary pleasure and gone? I’m not saying it is or it’s not; what happens with you? Wait; bring it… the sky is fairly simple. I have a pleasure in smoking — if I smoke — I have a pleasure in smoking; then what’s the difference between looking at the sky and having a pleasure smoking?

Q: The pleasure comes only from contact, doesn’t it?

K: No, no; no, no, I’m… Pleasure; I like smoking.

Q: But if you smoked on and on you wouldn’t like it.

K: Oh yes… they do; it becomes a habit. A nd then that habit creates various forms of difficulties, contradictions… — you know, all the business; we don’t have to go into that. Must we? It’s fairly simple, isn’t it? So he takes pleasure in looking at the sky, which has nothing to do with actual life — right? Actual life in the sense, suppose something gives you pleasure — what? — in actual life: hot food. Now, you have got used to that pleasure, haven’t you; you can’t eat food which has no sting in it. Right? So there is always a resistance to anything which is not that. Oh, this is all simple; I don’t… Ah? The tongue has got used to hot food, the taste of condiments and so on, so on, so on, and the organism also, the stomach ha s also got used to hot food and give it a bland food, you say, ‘It has no taste,’ the body rebels, the tongue… you know? (Laughs) So there is a contradiction there. Right? No? What is the difficulty, sir?

Go much farther, sir; if it’s not looking at the sky and taste… sex or any other pleasure; then it becomes… you know, the whole machinery of habit, repetition, the demand, thought thinking about that particular pleasure and giving it a continuity.

Q: Sir, I don’t see that pleasure with desire is constant.

K: Is…?

Q: I don’t see it that way…

K: What? What don’t you see?

Q: Constantly pleasure and desire in… To me, it’s only by contrast; it’s like…

K: All right, even by contrast. I had pleasure yesterday and today I haven’t got it and I would like to have it. What’s the…? What’s the difficulty? I don’t quite see this. Let’s move, otherwise we are stuck here. Either it’s clear or it’s not clear; if it’s not clear, let’s clear it up and move.

N: It’s obvious, sir; pleasure has in it also the element of staleness, boredom, repetition…

K: Boredom… I said so; repetition, all the rest of it comes.

N: Even the most refined pleasure has… knowledge also has got that.

K: So how is a mind which is used to pleasure, which is also a form of desire which thought has given to it a continuity — no? — and therefore time; and therefore the whole question of yesterday, today and tomorrow. I don’t know if you follow all this; I don’t have to go into all… And such a mind verbally comprehends a nature of love which is not time-binding, which is not a continuity as thought, as pleasure — thought as pleasure — which perhaps may be love; how is that to come to it? I don’t know if you… Can we get to there? You…?

You understand my problem, sir? Now, how is one to do it? Because I see without the other, pleasure becomes… It’s all right when one is a little young and… it gets terribly boring; you want change of pleasure every day — no? — and there is tremendous loneliness in pleasure. I… That’s a good idea? Yes sir! Got it? And look what takes place: t here is great loneliness in pleasure and, coming upon that loneliness, you escape, and escape through other forms of more subtle pleasures, whether religious or drink or various forms of neurotic thoughts and so on, so on, so on. How is one to…? Come on, sirs.

(Pause)

N: Sir, when you say a movement from here, is there first a freedom in… a freedom in this field, freedom from the pursuit of pleasure or freedom from…?

K: Ah! Ah! You see, any… — that’s the whole… — any deliberate action…

N: Not a deliberate action.

K: Wait; any… — first understand — any deliberate action with regard to pleasure is still pleasure. Right? No?

Q: Is he saying…

(Break in audio)

K: Look… Please; let’s look at it. Keep on pushing; you will come to it. You will see it in a minute; go on. Push it, sir; don’t stop… push.

N: Sir, in pleasure, there is, apart from the aspect of loneliness, tremendous loss of energy.

K: Of course…

N: In the pursuit of pleasure. No?

K: (Inaudible)

(Break in audio)

Achyut Patwardhan: …in this time process, one is in a cul-de-sac; so this time process is something which is like a cul-de-sac… (inaudible) It just doesn’t go anywhere.

K: Yes.

AP: Now, so I come to the point which is a cul-de-sac and you say, ‘Now, I want you to see the difference.’

K: Yes sir. Now, how do we proceed with this thing? The two…

(Break in audio)

…before and not after the faith, you know, (laughs) before the next act comes into being. Now, meditation is the cessation of all action unrelated between the two… unrelated to the two.

(Pause)

(Inaudible)

Right?

AP: Sir, is it the same as instead of the mind that learns…?

K: Ah… Forget what has been said, sir; forget altogether. I can’t… I have to start it all anew, otherwise I just repeat; I can’t do it; so just forget it. Here is, sir, something very simple; very, very simple. I have been doing something…

(Break in audio)

…there must be an action which is not that. Right? There must be. I don’t know…

(Break in audio)

…meditation has an extraordinary meaning — at least to me — in the sense, a complete abeyance of all action.

(Audio ends)

(From stenographer notes) When you say a movement away from this… that is again there.

K: I say, a man who is caught in this time-binding pleasure discovers loneliness behind it, and therefore continues and finds another form of pleasure. What has such a mind to do or not to do, to have this sense of love or affection?

Q: When you say pleasure, don’t you come to…

K: Do you, or is it just a theory?

Q: I feel that.

K: Then what you do?

Q: I think sometimes you to begin to get new things, not merely bits of understanding…

K: You cannot have small bits of humility.

Q: You get the best of it.

K: That is good enough. It is like cultivating humility…

Q: …

K: You can force pleasure by… you cannot force the other.

Q: You speak as if you expect…

K: Otherwise, it cannot be any other way. You cannot have little bits of it. If you have little bits of it, then it becomes pleasure, obviously.

Q: I don’t think you can…

K: Otherwise where are you? If you cannot do it at a full movement, a full wave, how will you do it?

Q: It comes in that way, it does not stay – it comes and goes.

K: If it comes and goes, it is there.

Q: No, I do not see, because you see the difference…

K: You see, we are trying to grapple, or put our teeth into the other from here. From the pleasurable feel, you are putting out tentacles to feel the other… but I think it has to do with it. When you take steps, then real co-operation, non-fragmentary activities come.

Q: …

K: Either you have analysed the whole structure and the nature of pleasure day by day, bit by bit, or seen all the different aspects of pleasure, the contradictory nature of pleasure, the continuity of pleasure by form, you cannot go on, unless – it will take time – or, you see the whole thing in a flash. Now, which do you do?

Q: That is the real thing, Sir, to see the thing in a flash.

K: That is what I am asking – which do you do? Do you see it through analysis, analysis in that large aspect, introspection…

Q: It does not get you anywhere.

K: Do you see the nature of pleasure, through analysis – you, not somebody else – or, you see it as a flash? Immediately you understand the whole of it… I do not think you can see the whole of it through argument, through logic, through analysis all the time-binding process which is involved in argument. I am using the word “argument” not in the deliberate sense – because we must get on with this, because we must translate into action, as a teacher in relation with the student. That is what I am going to get at.

In true argument, you don’t see the whole structure of nature. What do you say? Argument being through the intellect, through reason, through love, through words, through knowledge of putting statistics, and so on, you cannot get it, you don’t see the whole of it, because you are still functioning as a fragment trying to capture the whole of it.

Q: If we knew that we would be acting from this argument, this logical vision, out of love, then we would not have the problem. Obviously we don’t understand…

K: Therefore, what will you do, or what will you not do, when you see the whole nature of pleasure? We are not condemning it, we are not saying it is wrong. If you have the other, it is very simple…

Q: Because I can agree with you, because suddenly I am not getting anywhere.

K: Forget the teaching. You as a human being know the nature of pleasure – its contrariness, its vagaries, its jealousies, the whole nature of it. Now, a man is caught in that. How is he to move away from that? If he moves away from that as a reaction or a movement of pleasure, you cannot find the other obviously.

Q: Which do you ask, what you would do? I was going to try and answer it.

K: What do you do?

Q: …

K: How does it happen?

Q: I do not know, it is a great mystery to me.

K: We are going to find out, there is nothing mysterious. Can I quickly go on? Meditation is the interval between the two.

Q: Between the two?

K: Pleasure and the other – the other, I don’t know – this I do know, I know it through… etc. Now, meditation is the understanding of this whole thing, not fragmentarily. If you understand it fragmentarily, the understanding is still fragmentary. So meditation is the absence of any movement between pleasure and the other.

Q: You would say that action…

K: You know there is space between the two actions, is it not? You have done something, and you either continue in that repetition, or you are trying to find a new way of acting totally, not fragmentarily; so there in a gap, a space between the two and not after the… before the next act comes into being. Now, meditation is the cessation of all action unrelated to the two.

Q: Sir, is it the same as the state of mind that learns?

K: Forget it altogether.

Q: Otherwise I will repeat, which is the fragmentary way of doing it.

K: Here is something very, very simple. I have been doing something that becomes repetitive, continuous, boring, and so on, and there must be an action which is not that, there must be. I do not know that, and I am using the word “meditation”, because meditation has an extraordinary meaning at least to me, in the sense of complete abeyance of all actions – it is not that which is continuous, nor am I aware of or know or come upon that action, which is continuous. Aren’t you doing that? Watch it yourself. If you have watched pleasure non-fragmentarily, saying I must get rid of it, I must resist it – if you have seen the whole nature of pleasure and you don’t know what the other is, and the other is not a tentacle from the field of pleasure, it is not a feeling different from pleasure, then there is a sense of space in which yet no action has come into being. Is this too abstract?

Q: …vacuum.

K: You don’t create a vacuum. Then you go off your head. You become a neurotic.

Q: You have stopped between the two…

K: I am asking, do you know what it means? One action which is a continuity and an action which is not – you don’t know it – and to find out, there must be space in the mind, which is unrelated to both.

Q: Is not this very space a peculiarity to the by-product of seeing the nature of pleasure?

K: Full stop. That is all. Seeing the mature of the pleasure does not mean putting an end to the other. Stop there. Now wait. Then you proceed. Now, how will you translate this to a student? The very seeing of the nature of pleasure, which is fragmentary, pleasure is fragmentary — how will you translate that perception of pleasure in action, which is inaction, verbally or non-verbally, how will you do this? This has become most terribly complicated, has it?

Q: In the very seeing of the nature of the pleasure, the case is not fragmentary, and in such a case there is a space which is unrelated to this. There is a deeper tone to this – a deeper tone, not as an extension of a tentacle but a deeper tone which is self-propelling.

K: Look here, it is very, very simple. I use the word *bourgeois* – selfish or non-selfish. How will translate to the student a non-selfish action and help him to come upon it without the non-selfish action being reaction to selfishness? That is a reaction which is still of the same texture. How will you do this? Keep it very simple.

Q: It is very simple when one feels it.

K: How are you going to help the boy to feel it?

Q: When one feels it, the doing is not a matter of difficulty at all, but doing creates its own pattern.

K: You see these boys and girls think differently, get up and rush up. They do not care. How will you help them to be unselfish?… not to use the absurd sense of the word, how will you do this? Otherwise, you are going out to turn out a boy or a girl like any other school, who is career-minded, who is money… How will you make the student to act spontaneously unselfishly? Is not that one of your problems, or, your problem is only history, geography, how you teach?

Q: One thing is certain. This cannot be done through rigid discipline.

K: How will you do it? Tell me. If you don’t do it, the boy who leaves here is a failure, as far as I am concerned. He may become a greatest engineer, a greatest politician by mugging up, but you have not done your job.

Q: The very fact that I realise the nature of pleasure brings about a change in me.

K: Look, you have a son. He is selfish, and you know where that will lead to – career, politician, in the modern world, where each man is out for himself in the name of God. Now, how will you help the child to be innocent and unselfish? How will you do it?

Q: When I realise that…

K: Don’t go through that – you don’t realise that, obviously. If you say, “I will wait and do it”, he will be dead.

Q: We are in that state of fragmentary thought already.

K: Yes, sir. How will you do? Take your son…

Q: So apparently it is not a problem…

K: It is a problem. Then, how do you solve it? Will you say, ‘Wait, wait, don’t go out, remain here for the next ten years, and then I will tell you.’ You cannot turn off the tap of learning. It is a problem, and what do you do? You have no time. You cannot say, ‘Wait till I get understanding and then I will tackle.’ How will you do then?

Q: I feel only through love and affection.

K: You have not got it, have you?

Q: Theoretical.

K: Then throw it overboard. Put it out of the window, or put it down and flush it. So it is not a problem to you. The assertion that it is a problem is a theory, or one should have this problem. So it is not a problem, is it?

Q: It is a problem, sir.

K: It was a problem yesterday when you wanted to go to Bangalore to buy some books, and you went. You got a car and somehow you went, because it was an urgent problem, and you had yourself to do it. So it is not a problem.

Q: It is a problem.

K: You want to know when I have done it.

Q: I have tried three different things in the class about equipment for the studies of the children… If I explained that there is enough for everybody, they didn’t listen whatsoever. If you stop them and say there is no need to take everything, it does not work. And if you exaggerate no-one lets the other have anything…

K: Then what happens?

Q: Things get worse.

K: Therefore you curb them, and then it helps.

Q: I have not made any other experiment.

K: Instead of curbing everything… you have brought about a sense of guilt in the children. So, what do you do? Are you waiting for me to tell you? You cannot answer it?

Q: No.

K: Principal and the Vice-Principal, what do you say? That is a major problem, isn’t it, really? As much as teaching mathematics, it is a major problem. What do you do? How do you approach this thing? How do you solve any problem – going to Bangalore, Madras – what do you do? How did you go to Bangalore yesterday? You arranged it. You went into it – how to get a car… Can you do the same thing here? Here is a problem, what will you do?

Q: We watch and help at every stage.

K: How do you help them? When you have said, ‘We watch and help them,’ what is that done, that statement – have you helped them? Or, is that merely a statement? Have you done it?

Q: Constantly helping them…

K: No, sir, not helping them. Here is a problem. How do you solve it first? It is not an individual problem. It is a collective problem facing us all with regard to those children. It is a problem to me – not just theory ‘doing our best.’ You don’t say, ‘I am doing my best to go to Bangalore.’ You go at it. If you cannot get this car, you get that car, or you go by bus — you move. It is not you as a separate human being, it has to be done by all of us. It must be a problem for all of us, a problem of the same intensity, at the same time not a problem to you today and to me a problem weekly. It must be a problem for all of us at the same time, at the same level, with the same intensity. If it is not, then something is wrong with it. Take three or half a dozen of us – is it a problem of the same intensity at the same time? If it is, then what shall we do? What do we do actually? Factually what do we do?

Q: We try to get together.

K: That is all. First thing is to get together. You, or half a dozen of you, have to get together. Then how do you proceed? So that is a problem for you, as I am not by myself… I will work it completely.

Q: We take a specific problem…

K: No, no. That is the most dangerous thing to do. That is a fragmentary thing again, you are going back – solving a little example and then applying that example…

Q: I can only understand how to proceed… It is not solved then.

K: I do not want to have an example. Here is a question – how to help the student to be unselfish – and I feel that as one of the greatest, most important, things, and I feel that intensely – otherwise, the school has no meaning. As I am not by myself in the school with you…

Q: …

K: Will that make them unselfish? I am concerned with being unselfish, not sitting in front of the little boys, and so on — being unselfish. I do not see, if you don’t talk to the children… I am going to talk to them, I am going to hammer them – if that is a problem, what shall I do?

Q: … getting together…

K: I am not talking about action; you have already leaped into action, when you do not know what it is going to lead to. Most of the teachers are not interested in the actions. If they are interested, then we will see how are we going to tackle this. What do you say? Wait for somebody to tell you what to do? It must be a total action, not only in the class, not only in the theatre – it must be a complete, total feeling of it. I can get up a hundred times and pick up the plate, I can switch off the light. So, example is not going to do it, direction is not going to do it, discipline is not going to do it. Discipline, coercion, persuasion, example, talking a little bit, will not put it right. Then what will you do? Use your brain, what will you do?

Q: If by talking you can make them understand the problem…

K: That is not the way of discipline, and all that… So you will talk to them…

Q: Yes, sometimes by example, by describing the same action in other ways, so that they understand the other person’s position…

K: We cannot depend on their intelligence which will eliminate any selfish action.

Q: But I say if they can put themselves in our place…

K: We are concerned with awakening and intelligence, which will act unselfishly, at all times – little boys, big boys – how will you do it? How will you awaken their intelligence, so that it will be normal, natural, creative, so that they are unselfish all the time?

Q: May be I am not using the correct words or making myself clear…

K: Oh, no, that is not intelligence, getting…

Q: I know it requires a certain amount of intelligence…

K: It means this – “Must I go through drunkenness to know sobriety?”

Q: …

K: It comes to the same thing, my lady.

Q: … to see the other point of view.

K: Must I go through drunkenness, through sexuality… to know it?

Q: I am not saying that.

K: Then, what are you saying?

Q: You are not asking them to do these things…

K: Not through example – little boys sitting there…

Q: They have to start thinking about it by themselves…

K: … through their fragmentary minds – *”*I want to sit in front of that little boy, but he is going to do something completely selfish… It must be a total action of intelligence, which is the outcome of unselfishness.

Q: …

K: I want to awaken their intelligence, which is the outcome of unselfishness. How am I to do that? What do you mean by intelligence?

Q: Something more than intellectual.

K: I have understood that. Don’t waste time.

Q: Is it the very fragmentary approach concerned with the immediate… that prevents…

K: Carry on, we have gone through that. I am asking a question: Is it the awakening of intelligence, which is ahead of selfish action, and therefore I want to go and sit in front of the little children? It is ahead of the action, which I want them to have. How am I to do it? What do you mean by it? If I am not intelligent in that deep sense of the word, I will be going in front of that little boy or not – it has no meaning. So I must have that intelligence, which is acting to the directive, not example, not persuasion, this and that. What do we mean by intelligence? What is the state of the mind that is intelligent?

Q: Being alert.

K: You are not, Sirs, don’t begin to describe it; verbalize it, find out what is the state of the mind that is really intelligent.

Q: It leads life intelligently.

K: I am asking not for a definition, which we will come to presently. What is the state of the mind that is really actively intelligent – go and take a cup of coffee or whisky, or what?

Q: It is a very difficult question to answer verbally – I can only say in answer: an actively intelligent mind is not stuck.

K: I want more that that. I want much more than that.

Q: It is not physical action.

K: It is also directly calculative and therefore very selfish.

Would those grown-up boys, taller boys, sit in front of the little boys, if they were aware of, sensitive to, the whole situation – if not all of them, some of them can be the exception.

Surely, intelligence is sensitivity – sensitivity when you see a rock in the middle of the road, pick it up and throw it out – sensitivity not to make noise, not to shout, when you are eating. That is, a mind which is very sensitive is intelligent – sensitive to the bird, to the tree, to the clouds, to the words it uses, the way it walks, talks – sensitive NOT corrective. Now, how do you set about to cultivate sensitivity? We are coming nearer.

A boy who is used to eating lot of chillies at home, bad food and lack of nourishment, how do you help that boy to be sensitive so that he would naturally nourish a food without much chillies, with only a modicum of chillies? Take that as a very good example – how will you help him to be sensitive with regard to food? That is a very simple example – how do you help him? You talk to him, won’t you? You tell him all the boring facts about taking too much of chillies, go into it, explain it. Then he says, “Sir, I still like chillies.” Then you say, “You like it, but we are going to stop it.” Is that authoritarian? You go on, “How bad chillies are; it is for you to get used to any kind of food, which makes you a slave to palate and, therefore, insensitive.” My aim is to make the boy sensitive, sensitive to thinking.

Q: Why don’t you give him the opportunity to try non-chilly food?

K: I have not the time. Non-chilly food, he won’t try even if you give it to him…

Q: At the same time, we get the experience…

K: … And also I say chillies are diminished every day, like whisky – we diminish it every day.

Q: Yes, agree…

K: Do it. Then I will talk to him about – not shout – the difference. It is a thing all round, all the time, and so the boy becomes, “By

Jove, what is happening?” You understand?

Q: There is a difference between shouting and his eating hot food…

K: Shouting is all right. It is good to shout at the appropriate moment, when you are playing, when you are running, but not in the kitchen, not in the class – and a boy who does not shout, there is something wrong with him.

So if intelligence is sensitivity and being intelligent in that sense is to be unselfish – because I am stuck, I am waiting – can you do it – not sporadically, all round – games, teaching, eating, playing, where they sleep, how they sleep… You follow?

Q: Yes…

K: On whose part?

Q: It is an action, it is being used more and more and having its effect on everybody…

K: If it is a problem to you, then work on it like the devil. You don’t say it is illogical, this and that. You are at it. The way I feel about a school of this kind is, this is a new thing that is being given birth to.

You have given birth to something new, a new human being, and all have to work on it.

January 24, 1965.