K School – Adults Discussion 7, Brockwood Park, 4 October 1980

Krishnamurti: It’s all right. Won’t she sit there? You go and sit there, sir. Yes. Sir, we forgot to do you. Yes, put it behind you.

(Pause)

If I may, I’d like to say, point out, or rather inform or tell you along what lines I have been thinking. I hope I’ll make it clear. If it is not, we’ll talk about it.

I am sure you also have been feeling, as I have been feeling, that we started Brockwood with the understanding that those who came here should give a great deal of their time and their energy to the understanding of the teachings. That was the intention and still is the intention, from the day we started. But from what the other day I heard one of you say, ‘That I haven’t time to go into all this because I am much too busy.’ From that and other things, I think we have come to a point that there must be a change. This is the lines along which we have been thinking; that those who are interested in the teachings should have much more time to be concerned with that. And to do that, to spend their time, their energy, into the investigation of themselves, into the whole intention of Brockwood, which is the understanding of the teachings, you should have much more time to go into this. For that purpose — I am rather hesitant because I am also feeling my way into it so please be patient with me — right? Right? — that we should, not immediately, perhaps within a year or two, not have boys and girls of 14, 15, but only have students from 16 on. Or have students who have already taken A Level or O Level and want to come here and stay here and to study further or not to study further.

What do you think of it? Am I putting it right?

Dorothy Simmons: I think so, Krishnaji.

K: Because Mrs Simmons, Mrs Zimbalist and I were talking about this yesterday and we haven’t had enough time to go into it fully. But this is the direction we are thinking. You understand? What do you say to that?

Harsh Tanka: I think many of the staff have been feeling in a similar way, that too much of our time is used up. Too much of our time is given over to getting students ready for examinations and for all the necessary activity of a school.

K: So what do you… how do we, realising that, how do we change it, the whole structure of this present state? Do you understand what I am saying, sir? Do you understand what I am saying?

Q: Yes.

K: That we haven’t enough time and the energy to go into the serious matters of life — which we discussed the other day, about images.

DS: It really is that the feeling of it being a school, although it will be a sort of school, that it isn’t what might be called a Grammar School from which we work around.

K: Yes, it may not even be called a school.

DS: Exactly.

K: Yes.

DS: That it is necessary to deal with more adult people. What you are saying is not meant for children, it is meant for adults. And then in dealing with a school, as we have done, I think it is becoming clear that our energies are taken away to just do teaching of subjects more and finding out how to do it in the best possible way, and linking it all, but that is revealing itself as not being the right development for investigating what we came here to do.

K: This is the lines upon which we have been thinking. We haven’t gone into all the details, all the implications of it, the financial position. If there are less students how would you get the money to maintain this place? And also we are thinking that people who are really interested to come here pay board and lodging and so on. So, the financial problem may be solved fairly easily. But do we all of us agree to this?

Scott Forbes: I am not quite sure about everything you are saying. I might have misunderstood it. Is part of the suggestion that there might be more people coming who would just be here for three or four weeks rather than for a year? Is that part of it?

DS: I think there would be, as far as it has been thought out, that there would be like people taking the Open University exams, say the senior students who want to qualify, they could go on. It might reduce the school to say a third of its size. And at 16 they should at least have had all their O Levels gotten, taken. Possibly even you could have younger students if they show themselves to be seriously interested in learning and going into this, but not that we are saying, ‘Look, listen to what we are saying, try and understand what we are saying, and come towards this thing,’ but rather that they are hammering on the door and saying, ‘Look, come on, let’s go into this.’ That it should not be made… trying to induce them to do this, but they should say… already have seen that this is something that they want to be doing.

SF: So those would be the students that we have here.

DS: Those would be the students. I would see it as being one-third of the school.

SF: There is also part of the suggestion, perhaps to get some income, to have more people here, could be staying for a week, let’s say two weeks at a time.

DS: Or even longer.

SF: Yes.

DS: You see, I think you could supplement the loss of income, which has to be met, because it takes a certain amount to run the place, by, when Krishnaji is here, having adult seminars to which people not only pay for their board and lodgings but they pay for being here, for participating in what’s going on here. Those of us who are here are doing some teaching but less continuous teaching right the way through the day, so that you would have more time to go into all this. And also the students you have would be learning on their own. They would be discovering how to learn on their own. It would be more like… I would see it more like a university than a Grammar School. And using the marvellous facilities that are available of the Open University. And that from the seminars we might find the serious people that have said they want to come and really do this, and they can get included on this perhaps.

K: And also if I may point out we are investigating — you understand, sir? — we have not come to any definite conclusion. It wouldn’t be right to come to any definite conclusion without all of us understanding it and going into it, seeing what the implications are. I have heard many people after the gathering, not only this year, previous years, they said, ‘I wish it wasn’t a school, because that limits the place. That makes us feel it’s only for students and staff, teachers, so I wish you would open it up.’ And we passed it off.

Suppose I am one of the outsiders, I live in Brighton, I want to come here. I have enough, a little money, I’ll pay for my lodgings, I want to be here and participate, not in the work of education, education of the students, however small, but I want to join a group of people who are educating themselves. Not A Level and O Level, but educating themselves along a different line. Many people have said this. And I have been thinking about it a great deal, both in India it has arisen, this question — many are not interested in the schools but they say, ‘We want to have a place where we can all meet, discuss with you, be with you, talk with you.’ That’s one side of the whole problem of Brockwood, too. And the other side is, if we don’t have… if we only have students — thirty or twenty or whatever number, from 16 onwards taking Open University, we will have more time to go into other matters. That is the line along which I have been thinking about. It may mean a great deal of change here — you understand? — and so on. What do you say to all this, what Mrs Simmons has explained, what I have tried to point out? What is your say in the matter?

SF: It seems like it would give all of us more of an opportunity to fulfil the original intention of this place, as you stated it.

K: But will you? Or use that leisure… You follow what I mean? Will I, if I am one of the staff, will I be serious enough, have the intelligence enough, have a good mind enough to say, ‘Look, I’ll go into this with all of you?’ You follow, sir? Will we do it? Or it will become another ashrama. You know what an ashrama is? Do you? That’s a Sanskrit word which means ‘retreat’. The Catholics have places of retreat. You must know something about it, I’m sure. Originally, in India it meant a place where people who have finished with the world came under a guru or a leader; people who wanted to be with good people. You understand? Am I explaining something? Am I explaining it? Who wanted to spend their time meditating, thinking, investigating, lead a religious, so-called religious life. That was originally, I believe, meant by the word ‘ashrama’. But now it has become a terrible word because they have become… these gurus exploit people — you know all the rest of it. But if we could use that word ‘ashrama’ in its original sense, perhaps it might be used, but one has to be very careful about it. That’s one side of the whole thing. And the other is, as Mrs Simmons has pointed out, and also we talked about it, that we should take boys and girls from the age of 16 who will go through the Open University, or boys and girls who have already taken A Level and O Level and want to be here. You follow, sir? And those who are not part of the — what do you call it? — A Level and O Level and Open University, they’ll say, ‘We would like to come here seriously, to study, to live, to go through all that.’ We could combine both, which means that all of us have some leisure, more leisure. What do you say to all this?

Wendy Smith: I think it seems that… the leisure aspect does seem very important because it does seems that…

K: I beg your pardon?

WS: Having leisure does seem very important, because it seems at the moment that one is continuously pressurised to do a lot of academic work, which takes up a lot of time, and that one feels the pressure very strongly.

K: So do you also think along these lines?

WS: Very much so.

K: Do you? Please, some voices, come together.

SF: I see how it would… I mean, it is quite easy to see how this would help the teachers cut down their load. It is not quite so apparent to me how it would help the kitchen or the office or some of the other places which really have quite a heavy load.

Q: The teachers can work in the gardens and kitchen.

Shakuntala Narayan: Yes, everybody would have to share.

DS: He is saying, ‘This will help the teachers, the academic staff,’ but he doesn’t see how it will help people working in the garden, in the kitchen, in the office. And that is so, but teachers will be able to, and the people who come here to visit will be able to take part in that. And also there won’t be all these endless sort of adolescent troubles. There’s no end to it.

Q: Yes.

DS: And the better you do it, the more you may do.

K: I mean, if I come from Brighton, I not only want to discuss, study, and all that, I say, ‘Part of my work is to work in the garden. In the vegetable garden or mowing the lawn or whatever — I’ll help in any direction.’

DS: It’s an adult learning centre.

K: Of course, of course.

Q: That really seems to take most of our energy, this adolescence. For me, the teaching, I could teach as many hours and I wouldn’t care, I would gladly do that. But all the other trivial things we have to deal with, if that was dealt with…

K: Yes. What do you say? I am going to ask you, what do you think?

Ingrid Porter: Well, I feel very much that we haven’t had enough time to do what we’ve really come here for. I’ve been feeling this for a long time. And as you say, it has only just been voiced and we haven’t really thought it out yet, but I can see that it is a step in the right direction.

K: But do you… are you thinking along these lines?

IP: Yes, yes.

K: Does it say something to you?

IP: Yes.

SN: Yes.

WS: I think it says something to everyone here. I think it has been a complaint that everyone has been…

K: Oh, you all feel the same?

Group: Yes.

DS: It’s what they have been saying for a long time. (Inaudible)

K: Thank God! (Laughter)

Q: I’d like to just add something. I feel the same, I think, basically. Ever since I’ve been here it’s been obvious that people don’t have enough leisure to think straight. To put it simply.

K: Right, sir, we’ll create the leisure.

Q: But can I add one or two things? I think what we are trying to do here, even now, is still tremendously worth doing even if we decide not to go on with it and do what we are now looking at, which may be the right thing. I still think that this attempt to deal with adolescence, if you like, is tremendously worth doing, if not by us, at least by anyone who will do it. Wondering where to send my daughter to school when she gets older, I would love there to be places like this around. And so if we decide to go on this way, to older people, I still think that if anyone can do something for younger people it’s still worth doing. Maybe not here, but — maybe I’m confusing things — but if we give up what we are doing now, OK, but it’s still worth doing somewhere.

DS: I don’t think we are giving it up. I think we are saying, look, an enormous amount of energy gets siphoned off with children, really.

Q: Yes, but what I’m saying is that’s still in itself worth doing, maybe not by us.

DS: But we would be educating ourselves so that you could educate your daughter. You see, a lot depends on your own home, the background. And also I think there are movements that we can still continue, say with the One Man, One Earth classes, those things, all that can still go on, which will have an impact eventually, I hope and think.

SN: What we are really saying is that we would cut down drastically on the number of students so that we would only have students who really want to be here and who are serious and with whom we have no problems, in a sense.

DS: Yes.

SN: Right now we have many students on whom we waste quite a lot of time and energy.

DS: Spend.

SN: Spend — yes, sorry, spend. (Laughs) And so we won’t have that.

K: Are you thinking along the same lines?

SN: Yes, I think it would…

K: Do you think that’s right?

SN: Yes, I think…

K: No, be careful, don’t be personal. Not that you’re personal, I’m just saying this. We must find out if it’s the right thing to do. Not my convenience or your convenience, or I have friends whose children are here, but is this the right direction which we should take?

SN: Well, I can see from when the school first started we had about twenty students and we really had much more leisure then. Even though we had problems, we also had much more leisure. And now I see with sixty students, you know, our leisure is really almost gone. So I see that it would improve the situation.

Doris Pratt: But what would we do with our leisure? That’s going to be the all-important point.

SN: Yes, that’s another question.

DP: To me, I feel rather…

K: That we can organise, we can go into all the details of what to do when this takes place.

SN: Yes.

K: Don’t let’s discuss details now — right? — or how this should be done, how many, number of students, how many outsiders can come, and all that, we can go into that in detail later on. But is this the right direction that we all want?

Q: It seems right.

Q: Yes.

Q: May I ask a question? I am a complete newcomer. I really don’t know whether this is an opinion worth hearing, but apropos of what Brian Nicholson said, I understand that there are some younger students who write to the school because they are unhappy in the schools that they are in, and also because this school in other ways provides something which no other schools do. If you are going to exclude young students, from 13, 14 and 15 year olds, and so forth, aren’t you going to stop something which is rather important?

DS: You probably are by doing that, but I think from the actual doing of it what is becoming clear, or the actual action of doing it is revealing, that it’s taking the energy that should be given to something else, away.

Q: Yes, indeed, I understand.

DS: And I feel really that 14 — and I have felt so for many years now, actually — that 14, really there are very few students who shouldn’t be being cared for by their parents and looked after, not be troubled or have to investigate all these life problems, living problems, at that age. And so they don’t see the point of it and they become troubled by it. I mean, I had somebody say to me just yesterday, ‘You know, what Krishnaji is saying is against my religion’! Because she’s a child.

Jim Fowler: But Dorothy, she is a 17 year old girl.

DS: Even so, she has got the mentality of a child that still needs protection.

JF: I know, but my point is, we seem to be assuming that taking on older students, we are going to take on less problems, but I don’t see it necessarily follows.

Mary Zimbalist: I think part of the taking on any new students as we move into this, is that it should be someone who is suitable for this, because many 20 year olds or 30 year olds are… (inaudible) So it must be very selective.

JF: Well, yes, but the problem still remains: how do you select? We have always had this problem and it will remain with us, as far as I can see.

K: Those are details.

MZ: There are people already…

K: Those are details, if you don’t mind. Right? I am not trying to stop you from talking, sir.

JF: Sir, I really don’t feel it is a detail, because it’s a detail which we haven’t coped with in the present situation. And if we can’t cope with it in the present situation how are we going to cope with it in a different situation?

K: No, no. No, no, that’s…

DS: It is very difficult to cope with. One, because it isn’t just one action — there are many actions to it. We have had to take sixty students to make it financially sort of viable, and there will be difficulties and dangers in this because the source of supply of money is not evident at the moment. But you have got to… I think you have got to say… you can’t have everything, and although I think it is a pity that we can’t deal with 14 year olds and we can’t deal with 10 year olds and we can’t deal with junior schools, I think you’ve got to say: is this moving in the direction that we really want to go into? And I think then you have to make the decision.

IP: Well, I feel, the way I look at it is, it’s much more dangerous to deal with 14 year olds in an incomplete way and an incorrect way than not dealing with them at all. If you haven’t got time to do what we set out to do, and I haven’t, then what am I doing for the 14 year old?

K: And also, if I may ask, point out, are we flowering as human beings, in the deeper sense of the word? Have we time to go into all that? That’s the reason, one of the main reasons Brockwood came into being.

IP: Right. And what we are saying is, that was the main reason but now it has been overtaken by looking after these children and their problems.

K: Yes, that’s right.

MZ: And I would like to speak up for something I’ve felt for a long, long time, which is the examination of Krishnaji’s time and energy in relation to this teaching, and inevitably, talking to young, immature students who, for the most part, don’t really understand what he’s talking about, or certainly not the depth of it. Is that the right use of his present health and remaining life? Should he not be talking to more mature people who would get more from it?

WS: I think also that if you are not involved in a school and you are interested in what’s being said — and there are a lot of people, not only in England, in Europe too, who would really like to come and spend their holidays, maybe two or three weeks, investigating this, and find it really difficult to come into contact with other people who are also interested in the same way. And I think that it is really difficult for people on their own, being separated from other people interested in this, to keep some sort of energy going. I think it would be really important for them.

HT: Are you saying just age, because I feel that what we really need is to have serious people here. We could get, you know, the people that you are talking about to come here for two or three weeks and instead of the problems of adolescence we have the problems of, ‘I haven’t got the right room,’ ‘I haven’t got the right coloured curtain.’ I think that’s what we would have to be careful of.

K: Sir, we can’t carry this out immediately. Naturally. Perhaps a year or two. We should limit ourselves to…

DS: I think it should be the fact that it has been talked about.

K: Talked about, that’s all I…

DS: It will filter though, and we are facing in that direction.

K: Yes, that’s all. And not go into details at present.

DS: Although I think that it shouldn’t go through the school to the students. Because then I think it would help them, it would communicate with them in a different way.

Q: Yes… (inaudible)

DS: Instead of rules and this and this and this and this, they would see that we, by our action we really mean this to be a serious place.

Montague Simmons: And of course, it’s a very important thing, the numbers. Forty people can feel they are together and are a family. When you get to sixty you get splinter groups and working against one another. But if you can keep the whole community down to not more than forty then you will feel together, you feel all belonging.

K: Yes, sir.

What I really wanted to point out or ask: are we all in the same direction, are we all thinking along these lines? To have more leisure and to utilise that leisure for the real purpose for which we are here. And second, so that we don’t have to spend all our energy about curtains and toilets and who sleeps with whom and all the rest of it. And the other is, as long as you call it a school, people shrink from it. They want to send their children here but they say, ‘Please, that’s all right for them, not for me.’ I’ve heard this so much here.

MS: You could drop the word ‘educational’ from the title too.

K: Yes.

DS: We have to be a bit careful — it doesn’t matter now, but I think we have to be careful because as a charity we get many things done.

K: Of course. I am just saying we must go very, very carefully, intelligently, and not just rush into it.

DS: Yes.

K: But I am still asking: are we thinking together about this matter?

Brian Jenkins: Krishnaji, I personally have been thinking about this for some while. I think definitely we need more leisure. I think also we need to have older students. I wonder, bearing in mind what has been said about, what Brian said, for example, about schools, whether we couldn’t also include thinking about having older students, young adults here who would be here for, say, some years and then they would go out and be teachers, perhaps in some of the Krishnamurti schools.

DS: That would be… I mean, that’s part of it, really. And also people who come for a short time, people say — I mean, when we first started it was very difficult — ‘How did you dare to start?’ And I feel that they want to go into this, and then perhaps they might even start schools themselves.

K: No, why do you think in schools? Suppose I come from Brighton, I am not interested in schools.

BJ: That also, Krishnaji.

K: Wait, sir. But I am interested in, you know, all that, and at the end of a certain time I say, ‘All right. I go and write books, go around talking,’ or do anything. Don’t limit it to schools.

BJ: No, no, I am certainly not limiting it.

DS: But they might do that as well, mightn’t they? I mean, there might be some people whose interest did go to that.

K: Schools, writing, anything.

DS: Everything. Meeting life.

MZ: We don’t dictate what they do with whatever they receive here.

BJ: Well, this actually has been going on for some long time here. Visitors have come from places like Brighton and they have stayed here for a week, for three days, for two weeks. This has been going on.

K: It would be much more… not so casually, it would be much more serious, gone into it much more deliberately.

DS: And not from the point of view of a school, you see, which is the contact now.

BJ: Yes.

K: Do we, sir? Do we?

Q: Yes.

SF: Yes, sir.

MZ: Absolutely.

K: What do you say, sir, Mr Black? You seem rather hesitant about it.

Alasdair Black: Well, I am incredulous about it because it seems to me that what the school has done and is doing is so good, so valuable.

K: I am not saying it is not. We are not saying it has not done good. But those of us who are here haven’t got enough leisure, enough energy to go into this much more deeply.

AB: Sir, I completely understand and I go along with what you are saying, with what you are proposing entirely, if that is confined to here. But it seems to me that it would be a pity if no such school as this existed at all, because it really does provide something very valuable.

K: Then what shall we do, sir?

AB: Well, suppose for example that another school was started like this, to do all the sort of hard business of educating adults, of adolescents.

K: Where is the money? Where are the people?

AB: I don’t know.

DS: They might turn up, Krishnaji, but that’s a by-product.

K: No, let’s be clear. Do we want… does the present group say, ‘We will go to some other place and start a school’?

DS: No, I don’t think they are saying that. But people who come here might go into that, or they might write, or they might — whatever they do to affirm that.

K: I agree, I agree, but is that what Mr Black is saying?

DS: That’s what he’s saying, I think, isn’t it?

Q: No.

K: Not quite. Not quite.

AB: (Inaudible) It was a bit impractical and I hadn’t thought about it properly. I am sure that there are all kinds of practical difficulties.

K: He says it would be a pity that this school goes completely.

DP: But he said he is in favour of the proposal.

AB: Yes, I am in favour of the proposal if it were confined to here, but it would be a pity if a school like this didn’t exist elsewhere.

MZ: We are not saying there shouldn’t be other schools.

AB: Well, you are stopping everything here in favour of this new idea.

MZ: Well, not everything.

DS: Not stopping it.

K: I don’t follow this argument.

DS: He’s I think saying that it’s a pity that this place as a school — because he is saying that he thinks there is something… (inaudible) …that it becomes for adults only, really, rather than for children. Is that so?

AB: Is that better, is what I’m saying — yes.

DP: Well, the reason is clear.

DS: He is saying that, Krishnaji.

K: That’s what I understood.

DS: And we are really saying, yes, we do feel that, but we’ve found through the experience of this that that really is mistaken if we pinpoint it down to there.

AB: Well, you have been doing it a long time. I haven’t, so I don’t know.

DS: I feel frustrated. I feel that I don’t want to spend my life doing what I’m doing, becoming a good administrator. And not only that but it’s moving in that direction and it’s moving in that direction to take away from the energy that is this place. And I see it for myself and I think I see it in nearly everybody here.

Jim Fowler: I’m not really clear what 16 to 20 year olds would do here.

DS: They would have to finish their education, or they would have said, ‘I am interested in really living this way.’ I mean, one student has come to me and said, ‘I want to be here in this place to investigate all this. I’m really not interested in the exams, although I see that I must take it if I have got to go and earn a livelihood.’

JF: That critical age of late teens, I mean, they might regret it, not having obtained some qualifications.

DS: We are not saying that we won’t. We see the need too. And we are providing… we are even going further, we are saying, instead of going to spend your time at an American university because you are a foreigner and you can’t get into any English university, or universities overall, with all their shortcomings, you can do it here, in the ambience of this place and get yourself a qualification too, if you need it in life.

JF: What is the minimum age for the Open University?

HT: 21.

JF: Twenty-one?

Q: And that’s under question just at the moment.

DS: Yes. I was talking to somebody from the Open University who said if we get a group of people who are really seriously wanting to do this they will meet our needs; which means they would probably drop the age limit.

SF: But surely we could accommodate also students who are 16, 17 who are quite interested in the place. I don’t see any problem.

K: What is disturbing you, sir?

JF: Well, what’s concerning me in particular — I know Krishnaji said we shouldn’t discuss details but I think we’ve got to get… (inaudible) I mean, that age is A Level age and it isn’t, after all, our strongest point. It’s our weakest point, in fact.

Q: Jim, I think, if I understand it, it takes enormous energy and time and so on to get A Levels and to… not only for the teachers but for the students, and to go in the direction in order to earn a livelihood and so on. We are saying you can go all over the world to do that. We are not proposing the best in that direction. If you want to come, you might be risking something.

DS: Yes.

JF: Well, it’s a risk that they will see for the rest of their lives. (Inaudible)

DS: That’s exactly what we’re saying.

WS: On the other hand, they might get something from here that, you know, for the rest of their lives will do something more than exams.

K: What is Mr Fowler trying to tell us? What are you trying to say, sir?

JF: Well, I think we are exposing teenagers to a big temptation to find a good, rational excuse for dropping out of their studies, which they might regret later on in life.

K: Oh, no, no, no. No, no, I think you have got the wrong end of the stick. We are not saying that. Is this what you are objecting to?

JF: Yes, I feel very strongly about it.

DP: So we’re saying that for their happiness there’s something much more they can learn, much more important.

JF: Well, there’s a possibility, but we’ve been trying for fifty years and we haven’t learnt it.

DP: Yes, but we know it is to be done and can be done.

JF: They could finish up spending three years here and not achieving this superior purpose and not having the inferior either, finish with nothing.

BJ: But Jim, they can leave here having failed their A Levels and go somewhere else and take them. It’s not a problem in this country. I mean, there’s no age limit on A Levels, you can take A Levels when you are 80.

DP: You sound concerned for the student, but we are not offering a third of what we could offer them, by just keeping them to their academics.

JF: But, you see, I wonder what we would do.

DP: Ah, that’s a different question.

JF: This extra time, this extra leisure we have got, say from three o’clock till six o’clock in the afternoon, what are we going to do with these people?

K: Wait, wait, sir.

JF: Look at ourselves?

DS: We are not going to do anything with them. They are going to do something themselves.

MZ: That’s the point.

DS: That is the whole point.

JF: But what are they going to do?

DS: They are going to investigate all these other things. We are going to talk together, we are going to meet as human beings in this place and go into it. We are going to live together. We are not going to have a school where we are going to say, ‘This is what we are doing.’

JF: Well, I think it would be a bit trying having a whole lifetime of discussions every day of one’s life. Surely the teachings can be conveyed in the context of doing something serious.

K: Then what do you propose, sir? What do you propose? What do you propose, sir?

JF: What worries me, sir, is that I feel that there has got to be some serious purpose at the technological level. If we don’t have that we are going to be exposed to a lot of dropouts and neurotics who see this as… (inaudible)

K: But we will be very careful about our choice. What are you objecting to, sir?

JF: Well, this is what I am objecting to. How do we choose them?

K: That’s a detail.

JF: We’ve never… (inaudible) …doing this, never.

K: That’s a detail.

JF: We’ve never sorted out this problem.

DP: We have, because here we are.

MZ: Also when we get a young person today, we are more or less committed to keep them for — what? — one, two, three terms or a year. If under these circumstances we say, ‘Yes, you can come,’ and the person wants to fritter their time away…

K: We pack them off!

MZ: Out.

Q: In a way, I can see how Jim is raising a valid point in that, for instance, it does play into our reasoning when we are choosing students that we need sixty students, and that has certainly warped how we look at students, a little bit. If a circumstance came about where we had this different structure and we didn’t have enough people here to meet our financial costs, it might also warp our perceptions of who we bring in, just to bring in the people to meet the costs.

MZ: But we mustn’t let that happen.

SN: Yes.

Q: But what would be the difference between not letting it happen then and not letting it happen now?

MZ: Well, we’ll have to…

Q: You still have the costs to meet in both cases.

MZ: Yes, but we’ll have to think out a different approach to how we meet the financial requirements of this place.

Q: If we could do that then that would help. That would be a very key thing.

MZ: But that has to be gone into, and all of us think hard about that.

DS: You wouldn’t have to have the number of academic staff. The staff would be human beings who were living and working here, and vice versa. It’s a more whole way of looking at it too. It has dangers. I think that. And I think there will be just as many difficulties attached to it.

K: I’m not sure.

DS: Well, I think that there could be a danger, the people who have got leisure and money… (inaudible)

K: Ah, but as we said, we would be very careful who comes here.

Q: Yes.

DS: We must, indeed.

K: Of course, that’s understood.

DS: But it is quite difficult, Krishnaji, because… money, we have to pay the bills.

K: I understand all that. We’ll have to go very carefully into all this. I mean, this is not going to happen tomorrow.

DS: No. Except, that in that we are talking as we are, it is happening.

K: It is happening in the sense we are moving in that direction.

DS: Yes.

SN: I think if we agree basically about, you know, the direction it’s taking, then I think we can go very carefully into the details and work out the details.

K: That’s all I am saying. Details — if you first of all start with details we’ll never agree, we’ll just be talking everlastingly about details — ‘You should do this.’ But if we agree in principle that this is the right direction, and we all want this direction, then we can turn our minds to other things. But if you are uncertain about this, we must make it clear now or another time — you know what I mean. Perhaps this is totally new, you have to think about it, you have to, you know, find out, all the rest of it.

JF: Presumably, we wouldn’t send students away, we’d let them grow out the school. Next year just take on 15 year olds and the year after…

DS: No, I don’t think so. I think it would have to be quicker than that.

Q: Why?

DS: Because I think that if we see and agreed that this is a real thing that we are talking about, then I think we should make it known to parents that this is… the direction is changing, that we find it necessary to change the direction.

JF: But two years would be too quick, surely.

DP: You see Jim, our basic intention is to make ourselves better people. Ourselves to better people.

K: I don’t think we are answering Mr Fowler’s questions. And Mr Fowler is not yielding either. Mr Fowler is not yielding, he is sticking to his point.

JF: Well, I think I’m yielding to the extent that I’m suggesting that we do a slow transition.

K: We said that, sir. We said it’s not something to be done the day after tomorrow. It has to be done very carefully, very slowly, perhaps take a couple of years.

JF: Because I just felt if we did it next year, up to 15, then it would give us a chance to feel our way and see…

K: We are doing it now, we are feeling our way.

MZ: We might well get applications from, as we used to, from older students who have finished with what in the US is called High School, don’t know what they want to do, and we’ve taken some in the past, but more or less they never really fitted in quite because the focus was on younger students. Frode, for instance, is a good example. A boy comes back, fits in. There may be many who would like to come today if they knew about it. So that next year, if we were taking those students, we could add it that end instead of adding at the 14, 15 year old.

Q: I am sure if it goes out, if it was written up in the Bulletin and the word gets out and everything there will be… people will respond.

K: No, but we must be careful how we spread this thing.

Q: Yes.

K: Awfully, otherwise the parents of these little children will say, ‘What are you all doing?’

HT: We must be careful how to speak to the students, too.

K: Sir, as I said, it is a very tentative enquiring whether we are moving in the right direction, hesitating, examining. You can’t say, ‘Well, I’m going to tell the students immediately you are not wanted this year or next year.’ I mean, that would be cruel. But do we all feel this is the right direction? I keep on asking this.

SF: I think we do, sir. I think we do.

K: Be quite sure, sir. Not ‘you think’.

HT: Are you asking us really, sir, whether it is the intention, whether all of us here in this room are really serious about doing this in our own lives.

K: That’s right. I am absolutely asking that. And if they are, and they see the necessity of having leisure — I am using that word ‘leisure’ in the right sense, to study, to inquire, you know, to meditate, to go into this profoundly — if all of us see the necessity of that then we can work out the details very carefully, slowly. We are not going to do anything for the next year, so it will take time. We will go into it very, very carefully, all the financial side, you know, the whole thing. But we must be perfectly clear that we really, as we are going to have leisure, that we are really serious. That’s all I’m asking. To flower, to grow, you know. Look, sir, I’m 85, I am going to die.

DS: (Inaudible)

MZ: Also the question about what will they do.

K: Who?

MZ: The people in the school. The people in the school should answer that question, I feel. The maturity that you are looking for to make this thing work is that people won’t have to be saying, ‘At nine o’clock you do this and at three o’clock you do that.’ They must find their own depth of seriousness and investigation and not just be recipients of a programme.

K: Sir, it has been…

DS: That I think is very important. I think what Mary just said is…

K: Of course.

MZ: And you will then know whether they belong or not. If they go and play tennis all day, they don’t, but that will be the…

K: I am not being personal but I want to say something, which is, I am 85. Probably, I have another ten, fifteen years. I’m very well. But here, in India, in various schools, I feel it is important that somebody really understands what I am talking about, not intellectually but in depth and lives it and all the rest of it. Some people here and in India. You follow, sir? You understand what I am saying?

Q: Yes.

DP: Will you be able to give as much time to us?

K: Details we will work out very carefully.

DP: It’s rather important.

K: I won’t enter into details at present. But I want — not ‘I want’ — do we want a Brockwood like this, where people are very serious and using their leisure for serious purpose? And A Level, O Level and all that, some students will want to do that, or some students who don’t want to do that at all, who want to stay here. I wouldn’t call them dropouts. If a man or boy in Seattle says, ‘I want to come here. I’m 18, 20. I have decided I want to go into all this,’ he should be here. He may find that he is not serious or may drop out after being here. That’s a different matter. But this is a place where the fountain is flowing. I don’t know if I’m using the words. And people come to drink the waters of this place. Not a spa! Not Evian, Vichy or something like that. Do we feel this? It’s not probably a fair question because this may be totally new, or you have thought about it. I may be precipitating this. You may say, ‘Please, I must have time to think over it, I must go into it, we’ll answer it a little later.’ That’s perfectly right. But is this what we want to do here?

You see, this problem is going to arise when I go to India. It has arisen, as a matter of fact, because I have precipitated it. In these schools, Rishi Valley and Rajghat and other places, there are over three hundred and fifty students, and in Benares, Rajghat, there are probably a thousand students — college and all the rest of it. I mean, we can’t deal with such a large group. So what shall we do? You follow? You understand? It’s a problem which you have to face and we’ll deal with it. But if those schools with such an enormous number of students, you can’t deal the same thing as we do it here. They are well established, you can’t say, ‘Well we’ll start again.’ It’s impossible. The government won’t allow it because these schools are very well known, the President of India’s grandson or grand-nephews, great-grandmother or somebody is in the schools and therefore they would absolutely shut the whole… I mean, throw us all out and put new people in it. So we can’t deal with those schools as they are. We’ll have to leave it, find good people to work at it. That’s the function of the Foundation of India. They are doing it. Narayan is there and others are working at it. But the problem exists there — you understand? I wonder if I’m making myself clear.

Group: Yes.

K: Not a problem — the demand is there and we’ll have to answer it. We have already gone into it. When I go to India next month we are going to go into it thoroughly. But before I go — it’s not ‘I am important’ or anything — before we leave we have to come to some definite move. You understand what I am saying?

Group: Yes.

HT: Sir, you seem, from what you are saying, you seem to sense in us a reluctance to move.

K: A little bit. I feel a little bit slow. (Laughs) What do you say, sir?

Stephen Smith: Yes, I am a little bit slow, I must admit. I am personally a little bit slow about it, because it is rather new to me, although many times I’ve wondered what the place would be like without adolescents. And many times I’ve thought: why don’t we just get rid of all these people? (Laughter) I don’t know, something makes me hesitate about it.

K: No, no, sir. What we are saying is very simple, isn’t it?

SS: Very simple, yes.

K: Now, do you feel that it is the right movement, that it is the right way to go along?

SS: I am not sure.

K: All right. Good. Take time, go into it. You understand, sir, what we said? A place where there are not only young people who are willing to come here, who may take A Level, whatever, university — I don’t know, whatever it is called — but also other people who want to stay here, go into it, study. You follow? Take all that into consideration. And having leisure. You follow, sir? Leisure which makes us grow, flower, understand, be human beings, a totally different kind of being, so that it can be a centre — I won’t go into all that, you know what I’m talking.

DS: Really it’s the leisure to work. It’s the leisure to really work, investigate. You see, I feel if we don’t listen or look at what has been told us, all of us, as we are here, we will do exactly what Krishnaji has just said. We will be three hundred and seventy, absorbed in making a school, doing a school, because we didn’t stop and really look at what was happening. And I think it is very important we do that. That is part of the leisure of working at this. And instead of the focus being as a school, we are the focus, we are creating the… we are what will draw people here to say, ‘Look, we want to work at this.’

K: Quite right. Quite so. You see, at Rishi Valley and Rajghat, they have got about four hundred acres there, or three hundred acres. Rishi Valley has four hundred acres. The school takes about two hundred acres, or more or less. And Narayan and a few of us thought that as it is such a big place we should have a place there where older people can come, study. You follow? You understand what I’m saying?

Q: Yes.

K: But somehow it’s not working out. Those people who come will be the retired people — you understand, sir? — who have worked till they are 55 or 65, exhausted, and Rishi Valley is a beautiful place, they say, ‘Sorry, we’d love to come and settle down there and we’ll talk about serious stuff,’ and all the rest of it. Their brains are washed up. You know. So it is not working out. So we’ll have to find a different way of doing the same thing. I don’t know if I’m making myself clear.

(Pause)

Sir, are you thinking it out? Don’t take time. (Laughter) Time is the worst enemy.

SS: No, when I came here it didn’t take time.

K: That’s just it. So don’t use time again. (Laughs)

(Pause)

Now, tomorrow morning, do we meet the whole school and outsiders, or shall we go on with this?

HT: If we take time, as you said, I’m afraid that we might get into interminable discussions about this and that.

K: Oh no, that is a horror.

MZ: Sir, I thought you were talking only to the students tomorrow. That’s the way it was originally set up.

K: I don’t know, I’m just asking.

SN: Tomorrow’s Sunday.

DS: Tuesday?

SN: Tuesday is students.

K: Tuesday.

SN: Tuesday is with the students.

MZ: You have Jean-Michel and his video on Tuesday.

K: When does that take place?

MZ: Monday and Tuesday.

K: When do they come?

MZ: One of them comes tomorrow and Jean-Michel comes on Monday morning.

K: So can we do it Monday afternoon? I can do the whole thing with him Monday.

MZ: Well, Krishnaji, I don’t know. He took two meetings last time.

K: I’m only talking tomorrow. (Laughs) What do we do?

DS: You are only going to talk once more, is that what you are saying?

K: I don’t know, I’m just asking. Look, I’ve got to go to the dentist on Thursday, which means Thursday off. That’s the 9th. And after that, on 10th or 11th, I close shop. So you have got this period, and during that period, Maroger and the Frenchmen are coming for television and all the rest. So I don’t know. So you have these days. What shall I do tomorrow?

DS: My feeling is towards talking to the whole school.

Q: Yes, I think so.

DS: I feel that we could… I feel that people overall are coming towards it strongly, clearly. There are many details to work out but that’s not for now — that can come a little later. But I feel the school…

K: I mean, all of you.

DS: …meaning the students as well, Krishnaji, tomorrow.

K: I don’t know.

DS: Unless you feel not so.

K: I don’t know. I don’t know. I only talked to them last time. Only two or three spoke, the rest were very quiet, probably shy.

DS: They listened very much.

K: They are interested. They said so? I don’t know. I’m just saying. So what do you want me to do the next few days? Come on, you say.

SF: Sir, was there something more about this that you wanted to go into?

K: Not in detail, because we can discuss details when the thing is… If we all feel this then the details we’ll all agree. You follow? If this is not clear we will be fighting over details.

Q: You seem to be saying, Dorothy, that you feel there’s no hesitancy within us, really.

DS: I don’t feel it. I feel there are particular areas which were difficult.

Q: So, Krishnaji, are you seeming to say, by asking whether you want to talk with us again, are you…

K: I don’t know. I am asking you, sir.

Q: No, no, no, but do you think we are still too hesitant towards this? By asking for another meeting, you see, if we really aren’t hesitant I don’t see what the purpose of it would be.

K: Personally, sir, I feel this is important. We have compromised — right? — and I think we should stop compromising.

Group: Yes.

K: That’s all my point. I may be wrong. And I feel whenever we compromise things go wrong. I am pointing it out to you. You may object to all this. And personally, I don’t like to compromise about anything — except about my shoes and trousers. (Laughter) Inwardly I have never compromised. But if we all agree this is the right thing to do then something new will happen in here. But if there is a kind of hesitation, friction and doubt and, you know, then we’ll lose the vitality of it.

IP: But if there is any hesitation in anyone now, I mean it should be said now.

K: That’s what I’m asking.

IP: I don’t see how another meeting would make any difference. If we don’t speak up now that’s just carrying on with compromise.

K: (Laughs) Do you hear that, sir? (Laughter)

SS: I’m going to say this, really, which is — one of my reservations, which is, at the moment we have an excess of activity, that’s what we’re saying — we have an excess of activity.

K: Ah! All right, all right.

SS: We have an excess of activity. But there is something about children, there’s something about adolescents which constantly makes you sit up and meet a very sharp challenge. Adolescence is a very sharp challenge both for the person who is going through it and for the person who is educating or attempting to educate them. There’s a quality of sharpness in that, which certainly keeps people awake. It may exhaust them, and that’s the negative side of that, but it keeps them awake also. When you have a group of adults living together, who are all very nice people, they all get along with each other, at least in a certain way, nicely, civilised way, in a civilised way, and adolescence isn’t civilised really, it’s rather an animal stage, which is one of the interesting things about it — when you have this group of rather civilised people, fairly well educated, very nice, there’s a tendency… I feel there’s a tendency to… or there would be a tendency or there might be a tendency for the whole thing to go slack.

K: That depends on the people, on you.

SS: Of course it depends on the people but I think it’s a danger.

DS: We have got Krishnaji here.

SS: Yes. (Laughter)

K: Sir, I don’t want to be challenged.

SS: No, you don’t need to be challenged, sir, but most…

K: Put yourself in that position.

Q: I don’t think they do keep us awake, Stephen. I think on the contrary they put us to sleep in a different way because we are dealing this… that we don’t have the depth really to deal with, so we are dealing with it on a somewhat superficial level. We just don’t have the depth to deal with it. Until we have a really profound ground that we are moving from, we really can’t do anything.

SS: But you see the profound ground is not in a change of the horses, so to speak. The profound ground is not in a change of horses.

Q: It’s not a change of horses.

SS: It’s not in a changes of structure, nor is it in a change of persons.

Q: I don’t think… we are not changing that. I mean, that’s not what’s being attempted, to find that profound that way.

SS: You seem to be saying that this will — I am not against the proposal. May I say, I am not against the proposal if it’s what… I go along with it very happily.

K: Ah!

SS: No, I’m not against it. I’m not against it. It’s not a personal objection.

K: No, no, no, no.

SS: It’s not a personal objection. This is something that I’ve lived with, I’ve worked with for a number of years. As long as I’ve been a teacher, I’ve dealt with adolescents. So in a way I have rather a soft spot for adolescents, actually. But with all their difficulties, problems, warts and all, you know…

K: Did you say warts? (Laughter)

SS: So I’ll speak up for them too. I’ve lost the train of it now.

BJ: I think what you are saying, Steve, that there’s a danger that if we take older people this might become a rather self-conscious community, concerned with personal salvation. And I think that was the great beauty of having adolescents. But there is always the work with them and I do agree with you, there is a very definite… It’s not that they keep you awake but they question you.

SS: Yes, they do.

BJ: I think we still should have adolescents.

DS: You will have them though. We’ll have them.

BJ: That’s it. I think we should still have them.

MZ: And also isn’t there a greater — I don’t like the word ‘challenge’ but to say it quickly — in facing… that we don’t become complacent and sink into a sort of comfortable… The requirements that are faced with us if we have this leisure are enormous, much bigger than coping with adolescents, I would think. I thank God I don’t cope with adolescents, so I’m guessing.

K: But you will have some adolescents.

DS: Yes, we will.

K: You are bound to have some.

DS: Yes. And I think it will be there. I understand what Stephen is saying and what Brian is saying, but I think we will have them. But we won’t have those that we just spend endless time on, answering a repetitive challenge.

BJ: And also I think that one of the big traps here has been, out of our deep concern for these children we have felt that we must offer a full education to them, a full academic education, exams and all, perhaps. And then because we have had all of that, then we haven’t been able to give our energy and time to our own inner change and also the change of the young people.

SN: Steve, is your reservation that this might become a sort of ashram like any other place? Is that your reservation?

SS: There’s something else. There’s always something else. I feel it may become rather, shall I say, bourgeois, static. The place may become rather bourgeois.

K: Ah, that depends on you.

SS: Of course. That’s what I am saying. I am not saying one shouldn’t go into it but I…

K: Is it not bourgeois now?

Q: Yes, it is.

SS: I don’t think so. I don’t think so.

K: Wait, wait, don’t… I wish I hadn’t asked. I am asking him.

SS: I think one has to go into with one’s… It is in a sense, because all the money comes from, you know, from the support…

K: No, no, I am not talking of that. I am talking, the sense of being occupied endlessly and not having leisure for something much more deeply. That’s all. That I’d call bourgeois.

SS: Yes. Yes. Yes, I agree but the other won’t make it… you know, the other one doesn’t guarantee. You see, nothing is guaranteed. I think that’s all I’m saying, that nothing is guaranteed by this.

DS: It isn’t.

Q: No.

MZ: We are not looking for a guarantee.

HT: Are you asking for a guarantee?

SS: I’m not looking for a guarantee, I’m not asking for a guarantee.

K: I understand, sir.

SS: I’m saying there is no guarantee.

K: And that is a non-bourgeois attitude. The totalitarians are spitting this word out, bourgeois, and they are essentially bourgeois; they are completely secure.

We’d better stop — don’t you? Or do you want to say something?

DS: Did we decide how are you going to…

K: I don’t know, it’s for you to tell me.

WS: Do we have a school meeting tomorrow? Do we have a meeting with everyone tomorrow?

DS: Yes.

MS: We have an ordinary school meeting.

DS: You mean with Krishnaji?

Q: Yes.

DS: The staff — what about the guests?

Q: It is the last Sunday.

K: What is that?

DS: I think, Krishnaji, that people are saying that they would like to meet with staff, students and guests tomorrow.

K: Tomorrow — all right, settled. Salut.