K School Discussion 9, Brockwood Park, 17 June 1973

*Identification: This is a discussion with Mr J. Krishnamurti, students and staff, at Brockwood Park, on June the 7th, 1973.*

Krishnamurti: What shall we talk over together this morning?

Questioner: Could we talk about co-operation?

K: Shall we talk about that? Do you want to talk about that? You’re not very keen, are you? He wants to talk about co-operation. Do you want to talk about it, have a discussion about it, a dialogue, or would you like to talk about something else? Perhaps we can come… introduce that. We were talking — since you won’t talk, I have to talk, but I am going to force you to talk. Though authority and compulsion are not advocated here, I am going to make you talk!

Q: As we have discussed about many topics, could we discuss such that we see the relatedness of all this?

K: The relation of…

Q: Of all of this.

K: Yes, that’s what I was going to talk over.

Do you remember we were talking the other day about mediocrity, sanity and what those words meant according to the dictionary, and whether we are, collectively as a community, living in this place in a rather close relationship with each other, whether we are mediocre, whether we are sane bodily? That means healthy mentally, emotionally, psychologically totally – are we sane, balanced, healthy? And that word also means holy — h-o-l-y. All that is implied in that word sane, whole. Are we educating each other to be mediocre, educating each other to be slightly insane, slightly off-balance? The world is quite insane, unhealthy, corrupt, and are we bringing about that same imbalance, insanity and corruption in our education here? This is a very serious question, and to find out the truth of it, not an idea of it, not what we think we should be in terms of sanity, but actually discover for ourselves if we are educating each other to be really sane, not mediocre.

Tungki was saying, is it possible to look at the whole, the whole of existence, the whole of life? Life including governments, politics, business, money, science, sex, the divisions of various nations with their sovereign governments, rulers, political parties, and so on, so on. Those are all corruption. The word ‘corrupt’ means to break up. And the world is broken up. I don’t know if you have not noticed how each country is concerned about itself, to protect itself economically, socially and so on, with the army, navy, air force – each country. And no country in the world, with the increase of population, can be self-sufficient — we depend on each other. But politics and our own instincts keep us separate. I do not know if you have noticed all this. You must have. That is the world, a terrible world, a corrupt, insane world, where money is the greatest importance, and pleasure.

This is not a Sunday morning sermon. Do you remember that story of a great teacher? Every morning he used to give — did I tell you that? Oh, too bad! (Laughter) I’ll repeat it anyhow; there are some others who haven’t heard. Every morning he used to give a sermon or a talk to his disciples, and one morning he gets up on the rostrum and begins to talk — just about to talk — and a bird comes and sits on the windowsill and begins to sing. Lovely. It was a clear beautiful morning, cool, fresh, full of sunshine, light and deep shadows, and the bird sings and then presently stops. So the teacher or the master or the prophet says, ‘The morning sermon is over,’ and goes off.

So this is not that kind of sermon, b ecause, you see, I am seriously concerned, personally, where there are several schools in India, here, one school here in England, and probably there will be another in California, and I am concerned that we shouldn’t spend our life bringing about young people to be thoroughly mediocre, thoroughly middle-class — I mean, in England ‘middle-class’ has some snobbish meaning, I don’t mean that way — and unbalanced, not completely sane, and therefore not being completely sane it is very easy to fit into an insane world. So I am asking if we are helping each other to be slightly off-balance, so that we marvellously slip into the rotten world. Now, how do we educate each other to be really, completely, you know, deeply sane, healthy, holy and not mediocre? Come on, sir, let’s discuss it. Don’t sit there and let me talk. What will you do?

Do you see what the world is you are going to be educated for? You are going to be married, jobs, money, responsibility of having a house, mortgage, paying instalments, God knows what else, for the rest of your life — pleasure, no freedom, working, working, working in an office, factory, or labour for forty years, commuting back and forth. The other day, you know, when I was coming down with Mrs Zimbalist from London, or going up to London, we saw those poor chaps carrying their eternal attaché cases, exhausted, perspiring, sweating, smelling of beer, day after day, day after day, month after month, and a fortnight or three weeks’ holiday and back again. You understand all this? Do you? Are you going to be like that? Married to a man who goes off to the office every day, comes back annoyed, smelly, dirty, insulted, and he wants to escape from all that tyranny and goes to the pubs, gets slightly tipsy, comes home and sleeps with you or with her, and spends his whole life that way. It’s monstrous. Don’t you see this? And so what will you do? React and say, ‘No, I am going off, I won’t join this gang, I’ll do something else’? What will you do? You have to earn a livelihood, so what will you do? Live on charity as I do? I am used to it, I like it. I have lived that way since I was a boy of 9. So this is really a very serious and tremendous question.

And also we were saying the other day that thought, as Dr Bohm pointed out, is a word… thought in Eskimo language means from the outside. The outside. See what has happened: the outside has conditioned our mind, which has become the ‘me’, and I think when I seek something I am independent. It’s really the imposition from the outside giving me the feeling that I am original, but I’m not. And I say then, ‘I must express myself, I must be myself, I must identify myself, I must fulfil myself’ — all from the outside. I wonder if you realise all this. And that’s the very essence of mediocrity.

So seeing all this, that is, the whole — lots more involved in it but we won’t go on describing it — and without understanding this whole problem, we want to express our particular self. You understand what I am talking about? Am I making myself clear? Oh Lord, you go all don’t talk. You do talk at table! (Laughs) I have seen you, each one of you talking, shouting, playing. This is also fun to talk about these things.

Q: It seems that you bring a certain picture to many of us which is staggering to look at for the time being.

K: Look at it. Can you look at it? And what is your place in that? What is Tungki’s place in this whole pattern of existence?

Q: Well, many of us will have a daily job, a job in which we have to go to work every day.

K: Yes.

Q: Many people will get married and have children.

K: Yes.

Q: Those are things that are going to happen to us.

K: Unfortunately, I suppose so, or fortunately.

Q: But, well, in order to…

K: Divorce, fight, wrangle, battle – don’t talk about it.

Q: But the point is, need they have all of that?

K: Yes, yes, I understand all that. So what is going to… what is your place, as a human being — do please listen to what I am telling you — what is your place, as a human being, supposed to be educated, in this whole world? Where you’ve got to earn a livelihood, where you may or may not marry, when you marry you have the responsibility of children, house, mortgage, and being tied, trapped in that for the rest of your life, you work, work, work, or your husband goes to work, or you go to work.

Q: Perhaps you are hoping that somebody will look after you.

K: That means you must be capable of something, not just, well, wander down the street and say, ‘Please look after me’ — nobody is going to do it. Don’t be depressed by it — you understand? — don’t feel as though, ‘My God, what am I going to do?’ — just first look at it, be familiar with it, know all the tricks they are playing on each other. The politicians will never bring the world together. On the contrary. There may be no war but there is economic war going on. If you are a first-class scientist you are a slave to the government. You follow all these things? And all governments are corrupt, more or less. Some more, some less, but they’re all corrupt. So, I look at all this, not depressed, not say, ‘My God, what am I going to do with all this? How am I going to face this? I haven’t the capacity’ — but you will have the capacity when you know how to look. You’ll have tremendous capacity. And what is your place in it? If you see the whole then you can ask that question, but if you merely say to yourself, ‘What am I going to do?’ without seeing the whole, then you are caught, then there is no answer to that. I wonder if you understand this. Do you understand what I am talking about? Am I explaining?

Q: Shouldn’t we discuss seeing the whole?

K: Look, sir, the whole: the world, corrupt governments, the parties, they don’t say, ‘Well, let’s be concerned with human beings, not who leads them, which party – let’s be concerned with the welfare of man.’ No politician is going to do that. Computers may come in — that’s a different matter. So it’s a world problem, not English, German or France — that is the whole problem. That’s one side. Religion is disintegrating. Christianity is going to pieces, so is every religion in the world. It was based on belief, authority, superstition, tradition, repetition, rituals, which have no meaning. They have a meaning only when you get terribly frightened and rush to your church to pray for…

Do you know, there is a very — I will tell you this rather amusing thing – there is a very famous temple in South India, near Rishi Valley, and people go by the thousand. And I know a very big official in Europe, an Indian, oh, he’s one of the top dogs, highly educated, holding a very, very important place — an Indian — whenever he goes to India he trots off to that temple. You understand? You understand what I’m saying? Because he wants to be quite safe.

So religions are going to pieces. Relationships between human beings are disintegrating. So man is seeking pleasure. He says, ‘To hell with all this, I just want to amuse myself, I want to have fun, I want to have more sex, more cars, more this and more that’ — the pleasure principle. And when you go to the factory, farm, labour or an office you become mechanical — you follow? — read the same paper — you see them in the trains every morning going off with their Times or Telegraph or Guardian in front of them, never looking out of the window; go to the office, sweat there, get insulted and bored and ambitious – you know, all that – come back home, reading the paper — they are becoming mechanical. You understand? They are mechanical. And being mechanical they want to escape – take drugs, take women, men, whatever it is, drink, escape – anything to get away from the monotony of all this.

Are you listening to all this? So that is the world as a whole, and you, you’re part of that world, you are of that world. And education is to extricate you out of this monstrous world. So it’s a tremendously responsible job to be here, not only for the teacher, the educator, for each of us. So what shall we do?

Q: Surely the first thing is for us to really come out and discuss these things.

K: We are… I am doing it, sir, I am doing it every day — every Sunday or Tuesday, I am doing it.

Q: But I think people are a little frightened to discuss it because perhaps the things they really care about will be threatened.

K: Are you frightened of…

Q: If I want my fast car then if I say that’s what I want then perhaps somebody will question that.

K: I must be questioned. Look, I get letters questioning me all the time. I have been challenged from my childhood. I must be questioned.

Q: But, sir, there is something which bothers me always when these things are discussed, that we live in a highly mechanised and industrial society and if some of us do opt out of it, it’s because there are people who go to the office and work in those conditions.

K: Of course, of course.

Q: We couldn’t opt out of it without those people fulfilling this mechanised, miserable existence.

K: No, I am… How to live in this world without belonging to it? That is it. How to live in this insanity and yet be sane?

Q: Are you saying, Krishnaji, that the man who goes to the office and leads this apparently awful existence could do all those things outwardly but could be a different sort of human being? In other words, that it isn’t necessarily… (inaudible)

K: No, of course not – that I pointed out. This system, wherever it is, this system is making the mind mechanical.

Q: But does it have to make the mind mechanical?

K: It is happening.

Q: All young people are faced with growing up. They see they may have to do certain jobs that entail that, but could they bring another response to that?

K: I am trying to… I think we are not meeting each other. My problem, my question is: how to live in this insane world sanely? Though I may have to go to the office, earn a livelihood, there must be a different heart, different mind. And is this different mind, different heart happening here in this place, taking place here, or we are just treading the mill and being thrown out into this monstrous world?

Q: There’s no need any more to have a nine-to-five, seven day a week job because of automation, and what is happening is that, because we haven’t attended to our other side of us…

K: Of course.

Q: …the extra time that this age is giving us for the first time ever…

K: You see that there.

Q: Yes, but we are saying we want leisure and we don’t know how to use leisure.

K: It’s… That’s what I’m…

Q: Yes, but there is nothing wrong, surely, in earning a livelihood.

K: But I never said that! I never said it is wrong to earn a livelihood.

Q: I mean, if we each took our responsibility for a certain proportion in this age we could all live in a deeper, richer way, and have some leisure in order to go into other things.

K: Mrs D, look, you see in that cloisters being built, they earn so much and that’s good enough for them, and they want to have more time to themselves, leisure. And they say, what will they do with their leisure, go off to the pub, drink, run off to the seaside with a girl? You follow? Is that a sane way of living?

Q: No, but you can earn a livelihood and be sane. It’s up to us.

K: I am not saying it’s insane to earn a livelihood. I have made that perfectly clear. One has to earn a livelihood. I earn my livelihood by going and talking all over the blasted places — whether they like it or not. (Laughs) I have been doing it for fifty years and what I am doing I love to do. Not because I get some kick out of it, not because I address eight thousand people or ten people — what I am doing is really what I think is right, is true, is the way of living for me. Not imposed by somebody on me. And that’s my way of earning a livelihood.

Q: But please forgive me, sir, I don’t mean to…

K: Not me. Please, I am…

Q: I just want to say that you are able to do that because there are people who fly the aeroplanes.

K: Of course, of course, I know all that. Of course. Without them I couldn’t.

Q: That’s part of this insane… At the moment — I mean, we haven’t got this ideal change — at the moment you are able to do it because there are people who go and do these insane things.

K: No, but even if…

Q: They must make a profit so they build aeroplanes.

K: Mrs Bohm, even if there are no aeroplanes I would remain in one place, in the village I was born, and I would still be doing the same thing there. That’s good enough.

Q: I understand that. I am just using, if you’ll forgive me…

K: No, please, we are discussing.

Q: Yes, but this is the thing that in this highly mechanised society, where profit is the motive, this is the way things are.

K: No, no, other people do the dirty work and I do the clean work. It comes to that.

Q: Well, some of us are lucky to do the clean work.

K: It comes to that.

Q: But apart from earning a living we have to begin to realise that to live sanely and yet earn a living in this world there has to be an inner revolution.

K: No, I have said that hundred million times. I am just putting the same question differently. How am I to live in this world which is insane, sanely? Which doesn’t mean I am not going to earn a livelihood. Which doesn’t mean I am not going to marry. Which doesn’t mean I am not going to take responsibilities. To do that, to live in this insane world sanely, there must be a revolution in me. I must reject the damn world, and a revolution in me so that I become sane and I will operate sanely in this insane world. That’s my whole point.

Q: Because I’ve been brought up insanely I have to question everything.

K: Therefore that’s what education is. You have been sent here or you came here contaminated by an insane world. Don’t fool yourself – you have been conditioned by the insane world, shaped by past generations, including your parents. And you come here and you have to undergo a tremendous change. And that change, does it take place? Or we’re just saying, ‘Well, we are doing little patches of good work here and there and let’s carry on day after day,’ and by the time you’re two years or four years, off you go with a little patchwork? Right? You understand English all right. Yes. What do you say to all this? Don’t let the older people talk all the time, what do you people say?

Q: There seems to be a conflict between what we want to do, what we desire to do and what seems necessary.

K: What is it you desire to do? Can you rely — listen to my question — you desire to do something, can you rely on that desire? I want to be a — what? — something or other, engineer, because I see it brings great a deal of money or this or that, and can I rely on that desire? Can I rely on my instincts which have been so twisted? Can I rely on my thoughts? What have I to rely on? So education is to create an intelligence that is not mere instinct, desire, some potty little demands – an intelligence that will function in this world. My Lord.

Is our education at Brockwood helping you to be intelligent? You know what I mean by that word: to be very sensitive — not to your own desires, to your own demands, but to be sensitive to the world, to what is going on in the world. And education surely is not merely to give you knowledge, but also to give you the capacity to look at the world so that… objectively see what is happening: the wars, the destruction, the violence, the brutality, and find out how you are to live differently. That is the function of education, not merely passing exams, getting a degree, being qualified in certain ways — to help you to face the world in a totally different, intelligent way, knowing you have to earn a livelihood, knowing all the responsibilities, all the miseries of it all – how to face it. My question is: is this being done here? The educator getting educated as well as the student. Come on, sir, discuss with me, please. Let’s talk it over. Come on, Tungki, you are always ready with a problem – come on, out with it.

Q: Relating what you said and what is happening…

K: It is not what I said – I am pointing out what is happening. It isn’t my conclusion, my particular point of view, but I am just pointing out what is happening.

Q: No, I mean the question whether it is happening.

K: You are questioning if that is happening — is that it?

Q: Yes. Your question, also my question.

Q: He means whether the education is happening here.

K: Ah, if the education is happening here — is that it? Or is what I am describing actually taking place in the world?

Q: No, more whether this education is happening.

K: Whether — you are asking, Tungki — you are asking whether such education is taking place here at Brockwood to help you to become so intelligent, so aware, and so that you can meet this insanity. And I say that is education. And I ask further: is that… are you being so educated here? Right? If not, why isn’t that education taking place? Whose fault?

Q: I think there’s another question that’s in the air for me. We have to answer your question, yes, but before…

K: What is my question to which you have an answer? You say you have an answer to my question.

Q: No, we must answer it.

K: I have been asking you.

Q: But before that you have to see what makes this education possible, what grounds are laid for this education to be possible? Because it seems that when we came…

K: Now, look, look, sir, why are you being educated?

Q: I really don’t know.

K: So therefore you have to find out what education means, mustn’t you? That’s what we’re doing. What is education? Giving you information, knowledge, about geography, history and all the rest of it, a good academic training? That has to be, hasn’t it? Is that all? There are thousands and millions of people being turned out in the universities and the colleges.

Q: They give you the tools to live with, but they don’t…

K: Therefore what does that… They give you the tool to live with — right? — but what are the hands that are going to use it? The same hands that have produced this world, wars, you know, all the rest of it?

Q: The hands of the past.

K: Yes. Which means — the tools are there — if there is no inner, psychological revolution you will use those tools in the same old way and keep the rottenness going. Right? That’s all my problem, my question.

(Pause)

If it does not take place here then the next question: why doesn’t it? And if it does, is it actually affecting the mind, or is it still an idea – you follow? — and not an actuality, a thing that you have got to… You’ve got to have the three meals a day – somebody’s taking the trouble. That is an actuality – somebody has to cook. It’s not an idea that you have to cook – you have to be in the kitchen. So I’m asking you, is this kind of education of which we are talking about taking place here? And if it is, let us find out how to vitalise, you know, give life to it. If it isn’t, let’s find out why it isn’t.

Q: It seems that — not looking at the whole of the school – it is happening in corners of it, but it doesn’t seem to be happening at the whole school.

K: Why not? Why not? Come on, sir, discuss it. Why not? Why isn’t it happening? It may be happening as you say with a few individuals — right? — here and there in corners — why isn’t it happening with all of us? We are two…

Q: Expressing it in metaphor form, it’s difficult in straight words.

K: Put it any way you like, old boy.

Q: I feel it’s like a seed which wants to germinate but the top soil is too heavy.

K: A seed that wants to germinate. Have you seen a grass growing through cement?

Q: Well, this is a weak seed, you see. (Laughter)

Q: It’s true. I think what Tungki is saying is that… (inaudible) …something that obviously hasn’t… — it might have been tried many years ago or something but it’s being tried here and it’s very new.

K: Has that seed taken place? Put it any way you like.

Q: But do we realise we are mediocre and do we want to get out of it? That’s the point.

K: I have been talking about this mediocrity…

Q: Yes, but do we individually realise it?

K: I am asking you, do you realise? I am not using that word in any derogatory sense or insulting sense or pejorative sense, I am using that word ‘mediocre’ as it is described in dictionary according to fact: the middle. Now, are you middle-class? And you are bound to be middle-class if you merely pursue your little activity instead of seeing the whole, the whole world, and your particular little place in the whole. Not the other way round. I wonder if you see that. People don’t see the whole and they are pursuing their little desires, their little pleasures, their little vanities and their little brutalities. But if they saw the whole and understood their place in it, their relationship to the whole will be totally different. That’s all my point. You have understood?

Q: Are you asking then, are we seeing the whole of the school?

K: Yes, that — the whole world.

Q: But right now the school.

K: The school. You living at Brockwood as a student, in relationship with your teachers, fellow students, in a small community, do you see the whole of the world, what is going on in the world? That is the first thing, to see it objectively, not emotionally, not with a prejudice, not with a bias, just to look at it. You understand? How the governments will not solve this problem. No politician is interested in this.

Q: Not the way they are going.

K: Of course not. They want to more or less maintain the status quo, a little alteration here and there. They don’t want the unity of man. They want the unity of England. You follow? But even there they have different political parties — they don’t say, ‘Look, let’s all join together, find out, for God’s sake what is necessary, best for man.’ You follow? They won’t do that.

Q: But you’re not saying that it’s not possible.

K: (Laughs) They’re not doing it.

Q: Are we?

K: Wait, because we are observing — we are first looking at the world. Religions, as I pointed out, are disintegrating, morality is going, everybody wants the fulfilment of their own particular desire and pleasure. So, see the whole thing, and when you see the whole thing what is your desire in relation to the whole? I wonder if you… You understand? If you don’t see the whole and merely pursue your particular instinct or tendency or desire, that is the essence of mediocrity. That’s what’s happening in the world. Phew!

(Pause)

You see, in the old days serious people said, ‘We’ll have nothing to do with the world, we will become monks’ — the really serious ones — ‘we’ll become monks, preachers. We’ll live without property, without marriage, without position in society. We are teachers, we are monks, we’ll go around the country or the village and they will feed us. We’ll teach them morality, we’ll teach them to be good, not to hate each other and so on.’ You understand? That used to happen. We can’t do that anymore. In India you can still do it. You can go from the north to the south and east and west, begging, put on a certain robe and they will feed you, clothe you, because that is part of the tradition of India. And even that is beginning to fade because there are so many charlatans, so many holy phonies.

So we have got to earn a livelihood, we have got to live a life in this world, a life that is intelligent, sane, not mechanical. That is the point. And education is to help us to be sane, non-mechanical and be intelligent. My God, I’m getting sore repeating this.

(Pause)

Now how do we, you and I, not the whole lot of us, you and I as separate human beings, discuss this thing and find out how to… find out what we actually are first and see if that can be totally changed? You understand my question? So first, Brazil, first look at yourself, don’t dodge it, don’t say, ‘How terrible, how ugly.’ Just observe whether you have got all the tendencies of insanity which has produced this ugly world. And if you observe your own particular quinks and, you know, all the rest of it, find out how to change it. Let’s talk about it. And that is relationship, that is friendship, that is affection, that is love, to talk about, say, ‘Look, I am greedy, I feel terribly silly. Now, can that be changed radically?’ That’s part of our education.

Q: Now, when I’m insecure I become mediocre.

K: Of course. Wait, are you… That’s a theory! Don’t theorise about it. Are you seeking security in somebody, in a profession, in some quality or in an idea? Are you seeking security, Tungki?

Q: One needs security.

K: You see? First see. You see how you defend it? First find out if you are seeking security. Don’t say, ‘One needs it.’ Then we will see whether it is needed or not, but first see if you are seeking security. Of course you are!

Q: Yes.

K: Now, wait, wait. Have you understood the meaning of that word and the implications of that word ‘depending’? Depending on money, depending on people, depending on ideas — all outside – you understand? — as I pointed out earlier. Depending on some belief or on your own image you have about yourself, that you are a great man, that you have this, you know, all this tommyrot that goes on. So you have to understand what the implications of that word are and whether you are caught in those things. Not ‘I must not have security’, or must have security. Then if you see you depend on somebody for your security then you begin to question, then you begin to learn. You begin to learn what is implied in dependency, in attachment, in security. Fear is involved. Pleasure is involved. And when the security goes you feel lost, you feel lonely. And when you feel lonely, you escape, run off to drink, women, whatever you do — so all that is… — or act neurotically — because you haven’t really solved this problem. So find out, learn the meaning and the significance and the implications of that word in actuality, not in theory. Learn. That’s part of our education.

I depend on Mrs D or Mrs Zimbalist. What is implied on that? I depend on them for my security, for my safety, for my money, for my pleasure, etc., etc., etc., therefore if they do something I get frightened. You follow? You understand, Tungki? I get nervous, I get irritated, I get angry, I get jealous, I get frustrated, and then I rush off to somebody else and put my claws into them again. And the same problem goes on all the time. So I say to myself, ‘Let me first understand what it means.’ Not, ‘I must not have security’ or, ‘I must have security.’ I must have money, I must have food, clothes and shelter – but those are normal things. But in getting money, you know, the whole cycle begins. So I have to know, learn about the whole thing. Not after I have committed myself – then it’s too late. I commit myself by getting hooked-up, married to somebody and then I’m caught and then I’m dependent. You follow? Then the battle begins: wanting to be free, caught, responsibility, mortgage.

Q: That means marriage in any sense: marriage to the school, marriage to an idea.

K: It’s anything – I said that, sir — anything on which you depend.

Q: It seems…

K: So one.. I’m just… Learn. We went into the question of learning. Not accumulating mere knowledge, but learning. Here is a problem: Tungki says, ‘I must have security.’ I said before you say ‘you must’, find out what it means, learn about it.

Q: Well, I depend on food and clothes.

K: Obviously, sir. In a cold climate, you depend, yes.

Q: Also maybe shelter, a house.

K: Yes, yes, go on.

Q: To have that I need to have money.

K: Yes, earn a job, earn a livelihood. Right.

Q: I would do gardening.

K: Do whatever you can. So what happens?

Q: In either earning this money or doing this gardening, I depend on… I have to have a grant or have a…

K: You depend on society, you depend on your patron, you depend on your employer. Right? Go on, Tungki – you depend on your employer.

Q: Yes.

K: He chases you around, he is brutal, he says… (inaudible) etc., etc. And you put up with it because you depend for shelter, clothes, food. And that’s what’s happening right round the world. I’m not saying…

Q: Isn’t it…

K: Please, look at it first, learn. Look at it first as you would look at a map. So you say, ‘I have to earn a livelihood.’ Right? I know in earning a livelihood I am dependent on society as it exists. Right? It demands eight hours or six hours, whatever it is, a day, for five or six days, and if I don’t earn a livelihood I have nothing. You follow? So I depend on it. Now, that’s one thing. Wait, keep to that. A nd also I depend inwardly on my wife or on the priest or on somebody — you follow? – a counsellor. Depend – you understand, Tungki? Come on, old boy!

Q: Yes, but knowing that, I don’t marry.

K: You’re not learning! Don’t say you don’t marry, see…

Q: If you do see the dependency and the trouble which it creates, more by that…

K: Tungki, don’t come to any decision now. Don’t say, ‘I will not marry.’ See what the problem is first, old boy. I know the… Now look, Tungki, let’s go through it.

I need food, clothes and shelter – those are the primary needs — and to have that I depend on society as it is. Whether it is the Mao society or Russian society or capitalist, I depend on the society as it is. Right? I say, ‘All right, I know that. I am going to look in other directions. I have seen that.’ I say, ‘I need security emotionally.’ Right? That means dependence on somebody: my wife, friend, neighbour, doesn’t matter who – somebody. Right? And when I depend on somebody, fear exists always. I am learning. I am not saying what to do yet. Right? I depend on you – you’re my brother, my wife, my husband – I depend on you, and the moment you look at somebody, you go away, I am lost, I am frightened, I am angry, I am bitter, I do neurotic things. So I see, ‘Right, so dependence on people leads to that.’ And I say, ‘Do I depend on ideas, beliefs?’ — that there is God, no God — you follow? – belief. ‘We must have universal brotherhood,’ that God exists, that we must work for Jesus – whatever it is. You follow? That’s another dependence. And you come along and say, ‘What rubbish all this is. You are living in a world of illusion to depend on ideas.’ So you get shaken and you say, ‘My God, what am I to do?’ So instead of learning about it you join some other cult. Right? You are seeing all this? Right.

So you discover that in yourself you are insufficient — you understand, Tungki? — and therefore you’re depending. So then you seek sufficiency in yourself. You say, ‘I am all right. I have found God. What I believe is true. My experience is the real thing.’ You follow how it has… Have you understood? So you say, ‘What is there that is so completely secure that it’s never disturbed?’ You understand what I’m talking, Tungki? I have led you — you follow? Oh, come on, sir!

Q: I don’t see the relationship between the dependency on the first thing that you were talking about and the second thing.

K: I don’t… My darling, sir, I am not separating. I see what the implications of security mean. I am looking at the map of security. It shows me… it shows, when I observe, that I depend on food, clothes and shelter, by working in a society that’s corrupt. I see that. I have learnt, I have seen it. And I see depending on people, what it does. I am looking at the map. I am not saying this should not be or that should not be. I look at the map. The map says, ‘Look, this road leads to that: fear, pleasure, anger, fulfilment, frustration, neuroticism.’ And it also says, ‘Look at the world of ideas.’ If you depend on ideas they are the most flimsiest forms of security. They are like nothing, on words, which have become real, and that becomes the image, and you live on an image. And that map says, ‘Be self-sufficient.’ The map still says that. I am still with the map. And I say, ‘Self-sufficient – so I’ll depend on myself, I must have confidence in myself.’ In yourself — what is yourself? You are the result of all this. So you say… So you are left. You see, the map has shown you all these things. So you say now — I am asking – ‘Where is there complete security?’ You must have it! Including a job, all the rest of it, complete security. Where will you find it? So you say…

Q: Nowhere.

Q: You’ll find it where there is no fear.

K: You haven’t understood what I am saying.

Look, put a map of this in front of you – you understand? – a real map, as you have in geography, a map, and look at it all: physical security, emotional security, intellectual security — you understand? — and security in your own thoughts, in your own feelings, in your own self-confidence. So you say, ‘How flimsy all these are except that one: physical fact.’ So you say, ‘Now, mind, brain must have complete security to function efficiently.’ Right? Even in a child, a baby, it must have security, otherwise it goes to pieces. So looking at it all, and seeing the flimsiness, the invalidity, the lack of reality behind it — you follow? — you say, where is there security then? In learning about this which brings intelligence. So in intelligence there is complete security. I wonder if you get what I’m… Have you understood it? No.

Q: Yes, but this…

K: Look, Tungki, darling Tungki, just look. You haven’t learned to look first. You have learned to look through your particular image. That image has given you the feeling of security. So first learn to look at the map. Put aside your image of what you think is security, that you must have security – you will – but put aside all that and just look what are the implications of wanting security. When you find there is no security in anything that you have sought after – there is no security in death, (laughs) there is no security in living — you follow? – you see all that, and then you say, ‘Now the very seeing of the fact that there is no security in the things that one had sought security, is intelligence.’ And that intelligence gives you complete security. Right? So learning is the beginning of security. Not saying, ‘I must have security.’ Learning, the learning, the act of learning is intelligence, and in learning there is tremendous security. Phew! And here are you learning? Learning about… Learning, the act of learning. And I said: what is learning? We went into that. You follow?

Q: So that means thinking that one must, for security, one must be mostly — I’ll just give the background — in a family one must manage to earn a living, you must learn a certain knowledge to have this basic necessity required. It’s an idea.

K: Yes, Tungki, that’s quite right what you’ve said just now. Your family tradition, your family says, ‘For God’s sake, you must have physical security. You must have a job, you must have knowledge, so you must have a technique, you must specialise, you must be this, you must be that, in order to have physical security.’ Right?

Q: It’s an idea.

K: No! I need money. It’s not an idea. Everything else is idea. I don’t know if you see this, how marvellous this is. The physical continuity in security is the real thing — everything else has no reality. And to see that is intelligence. And in that intelligence there’s completest of security. I can live anywhere — in the Mao world or in the Russian world or in the capitalist world.

What time is it?

Q: Twenty past twelve.

K: Twenty past. Do you want to go on with this? An hour of haranguing, bullying you, driving you, pushing you?

Do you remember we talked also the other day: meditation is to observe. That’s the beginning of meditation. You cannot observe this map if you have the slightest distortion in your mind, if your mind is distorted by prejudice, by fear. So, to look at it is to look without this prejudice. So learn in meditation what it is to be free of a prejudice. You follow? That’s part of meditation, not just sitting cross-legged and putting your head up and, God knows, we’re going some phoney place. So it makes you tremendously responsible, not only for yourself and your relationship but for everything else: the garden, the trees, the people around you and — you follow, Tungki? — everything becomes tremendously important. You see, to be serious is to also have fun. You can’t be serious without fun.

(Pause)

I think that’s enough, don’t you, this morning? Right? Is that enough bullying? I am asking you, that’s enough… bullying is enough for this morning?

(Pause)

We talked the other day about yoga, didn’t we? I showed you some breathing exercises. Don’t sit like that when you go out and sit on the lawn or somewhere behind a tree and meditate that way. It’s meant to be breathing. Don’t make everything into some kind of ridiculous stuff. You know, you must do it all with fun. Enjoy things. You follow?

Q: There are certain things like learning, I don’t think it’s possible to discuss.

K: Oh, yes, it is. What do you mean?

Q: You can do it, but one cannot discuss a description or something.

K: No, no. Look, Tungki, learning first of all is fun. You learn, see new things. To see new things is great fun, it’s great discovery. It gives you tremendous energy if you discover it for yourself. Not he discovers it and tells me about it, then it’s second-hand, but if I am learning it’s active, it’s fun to see something totally new, like discovering a new insect, a new animal, a new species – everything – to discover how my mind is working, to see all the nuances, the subtleties, the cunning, to learn about, it is fun.

Q: So then somebody comes along and says…

K: ‘…You’re cuckoo!’

Q: …what you are doing is not productive.

K: I say, ‘Now wait just a minute. What do you mean by productive? What is productive?’ That means he has an idea what production is. What is his idea? Produce more tea tables?

Q: Well, this person would say helping with the community.

K: All right: ‘How will you help the community? Will you help us? Come and join us. Help us in building something in the garden. Help us. Don’t talk about productivity.’ Generally ‘productivity’ means give more capacity to the machinery to produce more, so that I can have… you know, buy, buy, buy – consumer society. That is what’s generally called productivity.

Is that enough for this morning? Yes? Right?

Q: Yes.

K: Yes. Good!

**–** **END –**