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BR77DSS2.1 - What is the common factor amongst all of us?
Brockwood Park, UK - 24 September 1977
Discussion with Staff and Students 2.1



0:22 Krishnamurti: I find it rather difficult to talk about what I want to say, because most of you come from different countries with a different background, with different kinds of parents, with a society which encourages you to be permissive, to do what you want to do, and other Asiatic societies which rather restrain – you obey the parents and so on.
1:05 I believe there are about 15 nationalities here.
1:13 You can imagine, each one of you is totally different, thinking different things, wanting different things.
1:27 If you come from America you more or less do what you want to do, rather permissive, sexual, and if you come from Europe or England it is more restrained, more controlled, but the same urges, the same demands exist.
1:54 And if you come from Asiatic countries, India, Indonesia, or Far East, there you are bound to a great deal of tradition.
2:09 You more or less do what your parents tell you to do. You marry the girl that the parents have chosen, and so on. So here we are, 15 nationalities, each with a different character, each a different nationality, a different outlook.
2:30 So, I think if we can find out what is the common factor amongst us all then we can talk over together.
2:38 Don't you think? Would you agree to that? Common factor. What do you think is the common factor amongst all of us?
2:55 The older, the staff, you and I, all of us together, what is the common factor?
3:10 Questioner: Well, Brockwood is.
3:12 K: We will find out. Let me talk a little bit. Afterwards, you can bombard me with lot of questions, you can bully me into all kinds of things.
3:22 What do you think is the common factor? If you observe carefully, knowing your background, knowing your parents, their life, and the friends that you have left behind, and their attitude, their activities, their demands and so on, what do you think is the basic factor in this group of people, there are about 80 of us here, more perhaps, what do you think is the common thing amongst all of us?
4:10 Think about it, let's look at it. I go every year to India for three months, three months in California, two months in Switzerland, and many months here.
4:25 So, I travel a great deal and see hundreds of people, talk to a great many people.
4:33 So, it is the same whether you are young, old, the generation gap, as far as I am concerned, doesn't exist – as far as I am concerned.
4:45 I don't treat you as something quite different, uneducated or this or that – we are human beings.
4:56 So, what do you think is common to all of us here?
5:07 And I think it is very important to find that out, because that may be the binding character of society, of a group of people, of a community.
5:22 If you have been to any community or commune, either in America or here or in India, you will find that they come together for a common purpose, for a common idea, for a common demand.
5:45 So, here we are, about eighty or a hundred of us, what is it we all want, basically?
5:55 If you really go into it, look at yourself, what is it you want?
6:05 Society demands, as it is now, that you earn a livelihood.
6:15 If your parents are well-to-do and rich then you are a lucky person, but most of us aren't so lucky, so we have to earn a livelihood.
6:29 And if you earn a livelihood, you work at it for the rest of your life, go to the office year after year, month after month, day after day, sweat it out and earn some money and die, leaving your family.
6:49 That is one of the common factors, isn't it? Death. Right? Work. Death. So, I think most of you are here in order to cultivate the intellectual capacity, skill, through so-called education, to go out into the world and earn a livelihood – that is a common factor.
7:28 Whether you like it or not, whether the job is paying very well or doesn't pay very well, you have to work, work, work.
7:45 That is the set-up of the society in which we live. Perhaps in about 100 years or so a totally different thing might occur.
7:57 So the common factor amongst all of us is we have to work to earn a livelihood, marry, children, house, and all the worry and the quarrels and the nightmare of it all.
8:14 That is the common factor. Right? If you are lucky, you marry somebody who is rich with servants and there you are.
8:29 But there are very few of us in that position. So, that is one of the common, basic factors of all human beings, whether they live in America, here, Europe, Russia, China or in India – work.
8:50 And some of you are here, most of you are here in order to cultivate not only the intellectual skill, capacity to earn a livelihood, but also for some other reason.
9:10 So we are concerned with the common factor that you have an academic career, if you want it, have a good capacity to learn – mathematics, history, whatever you want, and A level or O level and go through that mill, get a job, and the whole business of it.
9:39 Or some of you may not want to pass examinations at all.
9:47 You may want to do something which you really like. That work may not give you money, much money, but that is what you want to do, you really would love to do.
10:05 So, there are one or two possibilities in that direction, which is, pass an examination, get a job and a career, and work for the rest of your life – or you come here, not only to have certain skills, intellectually, but also, you may want to do something which you really love to do for the rest of your life.
10:39 Love to do, not compelled to do, or persuaded to do, or what society tells you to do, but something you deeply, profoundly love to do.
10:55 So, you have to find out while you are here, if I may suggest, that either you pass A level and O level examinations and so on, or you are trying to find out what you really love to do for the rest of your life.
11:16 And perhaps that is much more difficult, demanding much more capacity, much more inquiry to find out what you really love to do for the rest of your life.
11:31 Then you become an extraordinarily free human being. It may give you very little money but you are satisfied with it because this is what you want to do.
11:46 That is one of the common factors of why we are here. The other is much more complex.
12:00 Which is, what is the common factor of most human beings, including ourselves?
12:14 Is it not pleasure?
12:26 Please don't accept anything I say. You may accept what others say, but I am telling you don't accept a thing that I say, but investigate, look into it, find out if what I say is either false or true.
12:43 Find out, exercise your brain, your capacity to investigate.
12:51 So, what I am saying, please don't accept it as the final authority or anything of that kind.
12:59 But what I am trying to point out is that most humans beings have to work and when you love to do what you want to do then you may become a gardener, a cook, it doesn't matter what.
13:19 That is what you want to do, and that gives you tremendous freedom and happiness.
13:27 I am not advocating this or that, I am just pointing it out to you. The other common factor for all human beings throughout the world, and here especially, when we are especially young – unless you are all old, are you? No, I hope not – is pleasure, the search and the demand and the pursuit of pleasure.
13:57 Right? Would you say that?
14:05 Whether the pursuit of pleasure is in the direction of so-called religious life, or business life, or artistic life, or sexual life, pleasure becomes a great part of our life.
14:27 I want to be beautiful and it gives me great pleasure to be beautiful.
14:34 Not I – I am saying the girls, or even the boys may want to be very beautiful, why not?
14:43 That is not sissy.
14:51 So, if pleasure is the common factor amongst all of us, what happens if each one pursues his own particular form of pleasure?
15:10 In a community of this kind, when each one secretly or openly pursues his own particular desire, whether it be sexual – I don't know – getting pleasure with a companionship and so on – what happens when each one of us pursues a secret or open pleasure?
15:47 I might like to drink beer. I don't, but I might like to. And it gives me great pleasure, and you like to drink whisky or Coca-Cola, or something else.
16:06 So each one – watch, I want to tell you something, find out whether I am telling you something that is truthful or something which I imagine, and therefore not truthful.
16:24 What happens if each one of us secretly or openly pursues his own particular form of pleasure?
16:39 I like to write poems – if I do – and that gives me tremendous pleasure.
16:47 What happens? You might like to play the guitar, piano, or tease somebody, bully somebody.
17:08 What takes place with each one of us? What does pleasure do to each one of us? Find out. This is very important because this is your life. And this is one of the reasons that you are here, not only to acquire academic capacity but also to investigate much deeper levels of ourselves, deeper states of consciousness and so on – I won't go into all that for the moment.
17:51 So, we are here to do both: to prepare, to acquire capacity to live in a society that demands that you become an engineer or chemist and so on, so that you earn a livelihood – and also here, if you don't want to do it then you must find out what you really love to do.
18:25 It might give you very little money – that is your life, your being, this is what you really, deeply love.
18:34 Love is different from pleasure.
18:42 So, each one of us pursuing his own particular pleasure, what happens to that being?
18:50 You understand my question?
18:58 Have you noticed something odd about pleasure?
19:09 Pleasure, in pursuing your own particular form of pleasure, doesn't it isolate you?
19:36 Do you find it isolates you? You are separate. You isolate – you know what it is to isolate?
19:52 To separate yourself from others, completely, in that pursuit of the pleasure which you want.
20:00 Haven't you noticed that?
20:08 Are we all thinking together or you have gone to sleep? It is fairly early in the morning so you can't go to sleep yet.
20:19 Have you noticed that? If you are angry, that anger is an isolating factor, isn't it?
20:43 Have you noticed it? So, when you are isolated through pleasure, what is then relationship?
20:57 You understand what I am trying to convey? Because I may seek sexual pleasure – pleasure – and I am pursuing that pleasure, imagination, curiosity, etc., I am pursuing it, and I am totally indifferent to everything else around me, because that is the thing that gives me great excitement, pleasure.
21:37 I don't think many of you know what sorrow is, grief. Fortunately, I hope you don't. But if you see people in great sorrow then you will see how terribly alone they are, terribly lonely, terribly unrelated to everything around them.
22:05 Haven't you noticed that, too?
22:13 And when you are afraid, really frightened, nobody can help you when you are really frightened, isn't that also a factor of isolation?
22:24 You are following all this?
22:32 So, all these factors, like pleasure – I am not saying you shouldn't have pleasure, I am saying look at it, investigate it.
22:46 Before you plunge into pleasure of any kind, look at it very, very carefully – that is if you want to be fairly intelligent.
22:57 Because here at Brockwood, what we are trying to do – the staff, all of us together – is not only to cultivate the capacity to earn a livelihood but also to bring about or awaken a great sense of intelligence.
23:22 If there is that great intelligence then occupation, livelihood becomes a very small affair.
23:34 So, what we are trying to do here at Brockwood, if I may point out, is to help you to look at the world, see what it is, and your place in it or you have no place in it, you want to do something entirely different from all that – to see both.
24:09 And so the awakening of that intelligence will help to bring about the activity that will not bring conflict in your life.
24:26 So, we are saying pleasure, fear, great sorrow is an isolating factor in life.
24:41 So, if you are pursuing pleasure, know that you are isolating yourself. It is a fact, it is not my invention.
25:00 And when you are sexually inclined and want pleasure through that, then what is your relationship with the person with whom you have that intimate relationship?
25:10 Have you any relationship at all? Or merely you are deriving tremendous pleasure.
25:22 So you are isolating yourself. And that is what is happening in the world nationalistically, the Arab and Jew, the American and the European, the Chinese and the Russians, the Hindu and the Muslim – they are isolating themselves and so they are everlastingly in conflict with each other.
25:48 Are you aware of all this? Don't you know what is happening in the world? I am sure you do. Some people take great pleasure in violence. The terrorists – and they are multiplying all over the world – the terrorists have an idea of what society should be and that idea gives them a great sense of action, great sense of doing something for the future which will be something extraordinary.
26:28 Out of that, it is a great delight to them, too.
26:39 So, what is happening is, if you observe yourself, and if you care to observe yourself, and you must because that is part of the awakening of this intelligence, not only to learn from books and all the rest of it but also to learn about yourself, which is much more difficult.
27:05 To learn why, in the pursuit of pleasure, you are isolating yourself.
27:15 Most of you are frightened, aren't you? Haven't you fears, or not at all?
27:29 Haven't you fears?
27:32 Q: We have got them. I think we have got them.
27:38 K: If you noticed it in yourself, don't you find when there is great fear, you are so concerned, you are not related to anything else?
27:56 So these isolating factors put together is the self, the me'.
28:08 I must have my pleasure, I am frightened, and I am anxious, uncertain – all these elements or tendencies build up the structure called the me'.
28:38 Doesn't it? Please look at it. And so, the me' is the central factor of isolation.
28:56 The me identified as a Jew, identified as an Arab, identified as a Christian, as a Catholic, as a communist, as God knows what else.
29:13 So, here at Brockwood, what we are trying to do is: is it at all possible – just look at it – to eliminate the self so that you have true relationship with others?
29:41 This may be very, very difficult, because when one sees what the world is, how divided the world is – in India, China, America, Russia and so on, divided nationalistically, religiously, sectarian, belief – all these divisions are brought about through the isolating factor of me.
30:21 I am a Christian, I am a Buddhist, I am a Communist, I believe in Marx and Lenin, I don't believe in Mao – or I do believe in Mao and not in Marx.
30:41 I am an American, my way of life is the best, and the others can go to hell.
30:48 Or rather, if I like, I will try to convert them to my way of life, which is what is happening in the world.
31:00 So, this division is going on all the time and so there is never peace, there is always violence, nobody is happy, completely happy, they are occasionally happy.
31:19 So, seeing all that, we say here at Brockwood, let's find out a way of living which isn't emphasising or cultivating the self, the me that is so isolated, the me that is the isolating factor.
31:41 When you see that, out of that comes an extraordinary quality of intelligence.
31:48 And that is what we are trying to cultivate.
31:58 If I may ask, do you want to go into this and be intelligent?
32:07 Forgive me if I ask you a question of that kind.
32:14 Or you all think, we are already terribly intelligent.
32:25 Or – may I ask another question? – or do you all live so superficially, you know, right on top, nothing deep, inwardly?
32:52 So, here at Brockwood our intention is to help each other – I mean help each other – the staff and you, and me and you, help each other to awaken this intelligence in observing the activities of the me, the self, and also, at the same time, academically be excellent – the two, if that is possible.
33:32 And that is the function of this educational centre, full stop. Now, let's go on. You ask me questions.
33:48 How long are we allowed to talk here? Not 'allowed'. We have lunch at one, so we had better stop at quarter to one.
34:09 So we will all be on time there. So, avanti.
34:21 Q: You mentioned that friendship, companionship can be an isolating factor. You mentioned that companionship can be an isolating factor.
34:31 K: Yes, if you depend on that.
34:34 Q: Could we talk about friendship a little bit more?
34:40 K: Just a minute, I can talk about friendship and companionship.
34:51 If I am attached to my companion, isn't that an isolating factor?
34:58 I am just asking, I am not saying it is or it is not – find out. I like you and I want to be with you all the time, I want to go out for a walk with you, all the time.
35:18 And slowly I begin to develop attachment to you, and where there is attachment of that kind, isn't there fear, isn't there anxiety?
35:36 No? You all look so vague.
35:45 Q: Where does fear come in? I don't quite see where fear comes in.
35:49 K: Fear? You might want to walk with another person but I don't want you to walk with anybody but me, because I depend on it.
36:05 And when you walk with them I become jealous, anxious, angry, frightened what will happen to me if I have nobody to depend on.
36:17 No? So, look at it, find out, how to be friendly with another without being attached.
36:37 That becomes intelligent, doesn't it? A way of living in which there is friendship without attachment.
36:52 Because if there is attachment then all the trouble begins.
36:59 They get married, and the husband depends on the wife or the wife depends on the husband, sexually, all the rest of it, and the wife one day says, I want to look at somebody else, or the man says, I saw somebody most extraordinary at lunch this afternoon, and the wife becomes jealous.
37:23 Don't you know all this? Of course, this is part of your life.
37:32 Please find out, can one have friendship, real friendship, affection, care, love, without attachment?
37:54 Because if you are attached you are never free, but if you are friendly you are always free.
38:07 If I am attached to this house, to Brockwood, what happens?
38:19 Go on, investigate it. If I am attached to this place, what is going to happen?
38:27 Q: You don't want to leave.
38:34 K: I don't want anything to spoil it, it is mine, don't disturb it.
38:43 But the moment you are friendly here with everybody it is quite a different way of living.
38:52 Please follow it up – can you do this when you get married or when you have a girl or a boy? Can you do this? Sexually, etc., can you be very friendly, which means care, affection, love, with a total lack of attachment?
39:23 That is part of your education, isn't it? No? Bien? So, you are cultivating intelligence in finding out how to live a life, not only here but throughout life, how to live a life in which you are completely friendly, without any sense of attachment.
39:57 If you are attached, then why are you attached? Why are you dependent on somebody? Because either you are frightened to be alone – right? Are you following all this? Either you are frightened to be alone, lonely, or you want comfort, security in somebody, you begin to depend on them.
40:35 So gradually out of this sense of insufficiency in oneself, you begin to depend, and the whole misery begins, conflict between man and woman.
41:00 So, to find out a way of living in which there is total absence of attachment and at the same time affection and care, etc., that is the beginning of the awakening of this intelligence.
41:20 Got it? You understand even verbally? Now, if you understand it verbally, then do it. Don't say, it is too difficult. You are much too young to say it is too difficult. Nothing is difficult. If you want to do something, you do it. And you do it because you see the truth of it. You see the truth that where there is attachment there is fear, there is anxiety, there is jealousy, there is anger, hatred, all the rest of it.
42:02 If I depend on you, I can't leave you alone. I must protect you because I am depending on you. I am frightened, I bully you, etc.
42:30 You see, another thing, if I may go on – I must stop at quarter to one.
42:37 Two minutes more – you know how to listen?
42:45 Do you want to find out how to listen? Listen to somebody. I am talking to you. I want you to listen to something. I really want you to listen to something. How do you listen? What makes you listen?
43:10 Nobody is compelling you to listen to me. At least, I am not. Nobody says, 'You must listen to K.' I am saying, find out a way of listening, because when you are going to learn history, mathematics and chemistry, etc., the professor or the teacher, the educator is telling you something, giving you information. Find out how to listen to that information.
43:54 It may be boring, it may be this or that, but to listen.
44:02 Now, have you, after 45 minutes this morning, have you listened at all?
44:11 Have you? Which means what, that you agree with me?
44:27 Or you listened to what the speaker has said, you listened through the ears and so on, and by listening you have found out for yourself, haven't you?
44:44 No? I haven't told you a thing, but you have found out for yourself.
44:59 So can you, through listening to the birds, to the wind, to what your teacher is saying and so on, see for yourself what is the truth, the actual?
45:19 That is part of this awakening of intelligence. Not that you imagine what he is saying, go off into some dream, but actually listen.
45:35 You know, it is great fun, if you do it. Well, I had better stop now.
45:54 I believe we are going to meet, the students and I together, don't we, as we did last year?
46:01 Shall we do that?

Q: Yes.
46:05 K: Hey! Does that mean you are frightened of all the staff?
46:17 No answer. All right. We are supposed to meet next Tuesday but I am not going to be here, so we will meet Tuesday, next week, after.
46:34 And I believe Tuesdays and Thursdays and Sundays. Right. Is that finished?