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BR78DT1 - What is intelligent action?
Brockwood Park, UK - 20 October 1978
Discussion with Teachers 1



0:19 K: Won’t somebody start the ball rolling?
0:34 Doris Pratt: If nobody else wants to start, I do very badly, because you spoke last Sunday of a non-personal intelligence from which correct action would inevitably spring.
0:54 As a group here we are constantly taking very serious decisions.
1:01 We ask masters to leave, we ask them to come, we ask students to leave, we ask them to come.
1:10 And we are terribly exercised in our minds as to how to arrive at a great decision.
1:18 At present, the best we can do is to put opinions into the pool, and somehow, from that pool – we don’t normally take a full decision, it’s a sort of a bubble – Dorothy acts.
1:40 One feels the real urgency of being able to look at these problems with more clarity.
1:57 I could take an instance, if you want. A boy who came with his shoulder up like this, and we asked him to leave.
2:12 And he has written since, saying he doesn’t understand why. This is the best place he’s ever been, he likes the students, all the staff, he likes the food, he likes the place, and he says he likes the atmosphere.
2:33 And we have been forced to say, ‘I am sorry, but at present, you can’t come’.
2:45 How can we put ourselves in touch, individually, personally or jointly, with action which is really intelligent?
2:59 That is, reasonable and compassionate. That is the question I would like to ask you, sir.
3:08 K: What do the others say? I don’t want to pass the buck but I would like find out. John King: I feel the weight of responsibility, personally. We all meet together and we hope we arrive at the right decisions on these grave matters.
4:01 K: Is your question, if I may ask, what is the right, intelligent action with regard to not only students and staff and all the rest, which is not coloured by our own prejudice, by our own inclinations? Is that the question?
4:49 Not the choice of students or choice of staff and so on, but how to observe, how to act, whatever the circumstances be, it’s always intelligent.
5:18 DP: It’s more of a fact, that all we have to offer, at present, is opinion.
5:23 K: So, that’s what I'm asking. Are we acting on opinions or acting from the feeling of total responsibility?
5:41 DP: We act from opinion but we feel total responsibility. But we have nothing else to act from but opinion. But we do feel total responsibility.
5:53 K: I'm questioning whether the total responsibility will indicate the right action.
6:10 DP: It may but we don’t have it. I don’t have it.
6:15 K: Is that the question, is that the problem, that we do not have this sense of total responsibility?
6:25 DP: I wouldn’t like to say that.
6:27 K: Not you. I'm not asking you personally, but the rest of us.
6:31 DP: Well, I'm only one of the rest.
6:39 K: Is that the question? D

P: Yes. Mary Zimbalist: Is it true that we act only of opinion? Apart from opinions, which there may be many of, there are facts that we try to see as clearly as we can.
6:59 DP: Well, of course, all opinion is based on facts.
7:03 K: First of all, don’t you take all the facts in?
7:06 DP: Of course.
7:09 K: Won’t those very facts tell you what to do?
7:12 DP: No.
7:15 K: I mean, I am asking. We are all involved in this.
7:19 DP: There’s one fact. You have to have an example.
7:23 K: No, don’t take an example.
7:24 DP: Then we're not meeting our problem.
7:27 K: We will meet your problem later, when we have the feeling of total responsibility.
7:38 You are taking a problem and from that trying to find out what is the right action under all circumstances. I put it the other way round, which is, let’s find out what total action involves and from the understanding of that, take the particular.
8:02 Not the other way round. I don’t know if I'm making myself clear.
8:07 DP: Well, only you can do that. Only you can indicate that. Because we are all on the other side of the iron curtain.
8:17 K: I don’t follow what you have said.
8:20 JK: I think Doris is saying that only you can act intelligently and we can’t act intelligently.

K: I'm not talking about intelligence.
8:28 I'm leaving that for the moment. I want to find out, are you concluding or coming to the issue through a particular problem and from that deduce what the right action should be, or from finding out what total responsibility involves and in the understanding of that, the right action with regard to a particular child will come about.
9:11 That’s the way I would look at it. Not from the particular, but rather the comprehension of the whole and then the particular.
9:22 I may be wrong.
9:25 DP: You’re not wrong.

K: I may be impractical.
9:30 DP: No, you are not that, but you are isolated.
9:38 Yes, because we can talk about… You used the words ‘the whole’. Those very words, ‘the whole’, it doesn’t mean anything to us. If you talk about the whole, the life in the plants, the trees, the stars...
9:53 K: No, no, come off it. D

P: I'm not on anything, Krishnaji.
9:57 K: I'm not talking about the stars.
10:00 DP: You are talking about the whole which is just as much a mystery.
10:03 K: I am not talking of mystery, I am talking of the feeling – please, listen – I'm talking of the feeling of total responsibility.
10:18 Not the whole, the sky, the heavens.
10:20 DP: Well, if you are responsible you're responsible to or for – to whom and for what?

K: No.
10:28 Not to or for – I am not talking about... The feeling of responsibility, not towards whom or for.
10:43 Isn’t there a difference with that? D

P: I’m not sure. Scott Forbes: We can very easily think that we have this feeling of total responsibility and not really have it.
10:55 So, what is this feeling of total responsibility?
11:01 K: Look, sir, let’s forget the words ‘total responsibility’. If all of us here are going to choose a boy or a girl – all of us. How do we do it? What do we do?
11:14 Offer our particular opinions and judgments?
11:21 You may have one and I may be opposed to what you say, and so on. So, we are all acting, are we, on our particular prejudices, opinions, judgments. Is that it?
11:40 JK: But, Krishnaji, isn’t there a difference between when we do this – we have done it frequently – we offer our opinions or feelings about a particular student, but we recognise that those are limited.
11:55 I see the student in a particular way, he's not very bright or whatever, somebody else sees him a different way.
12:02 K: That’s what I am saying, sir.

JK: We don’t hold onto our opinions. That way, we come to a clear decision as to what to do with that student. Not always clear, but we try. D

P: We certainly try.
12:17 K: So, generally, knowing our prejudices, our opinions, we try to put those aside, all of us, and then act upon what is the outcome of that, act upon what comes up. Right? Is that it?
12:43 DP: It’s not quite it. We don’t put them aside, it’s all we’ve got.
12:51 But we do listen to the other contributions.
12:54 K: So, how do you decide?
12:57 DP: Usually, Dorothy takes it out of our hands or she gets a feeling and decides, then we're not sure if we're right or wrong.
13:15 Dorothy Simmons: The facts are pooled by each one of us and from the facts some indication of a right action comes about.
13:25 I don’t think it’s a sort of weighing and measuring like that, at all.
13:31 K: That seems to work out. Then what's the problem?
13:34 DS: We may make mistakes but I don’t think it’s a question of not having a sense of the wholeness.
13:40 K: So, there is no problem.

DS: I don’t feel so. I feel that that is what one’s having to meet and deal with.
13:50 DP: But it’s not finished.

DS: What isn’t finished, Doris?
13:54 DP: The boy writes another letter, after we've come to our decision, he says, ‘This is the best place I have ever been at.
14:02 The teachers and the students are the best and kindest, the food is the best I’ve ever had’ – these are the words he says – ‘and I like the atmosphere of the place, and in time, I could unfold’.

MZ: What is the problem in that?
14:22 DP: We’ve said he can’t come.

DS: That’s perfectly all right.
14:25 MZ: Why is it now a problem to us? We've done the best we could. The fact that he writes one letter or 25 letters...
14:34 DP: But the multiplication of ignorance doesn’t necessarily produce intelligence.
14:41 MZ: But you're assuming that this is a multiplication of ignorance.
14:44 DP: As far as I'm concerned, my opinion is ignorance.
14:47 DS: But for the boy to multiply his ignorance – by stating all these personal facts to do with him only, not taking in the whole background and the purpose of this place, is to repeat the fact that made us come to the decision that we came to.
15:09 Q: You only make mistakes if you don’t know all the facts. If you’ve investigated all the facts, you don’t make mistakes.
15:18 DP: We don’t know all the facts.

MZ: All the facts are not knowable.
15:25 We cannot know every single fact about every single human being.
15:29 DP: Am I then the only one that is unhappy about Martin?
15:32 JK: In my view, this boils down to the following situation...
15:37 DP: I can’t hear what you're saying.

JK: This boils down to the following, it seems that he's been misled, through a series of unfortunate incidents.
15:49 He has been deeply let down and the problem is, it seems to me, are we destroying him by our action?
15:58 Is the fact that we have made a mistake in the first place...?
16:03 DS: I would like to bring you up. There was no mistake made at all. He came to see, to investigate the situation. In writing, it was put to stay a week to investigate the situation.
16:20 He was never accepted in the school.

JK: In that case, I’m wrong.
16:25 DS: You certainly are.

JK: I was under the impression that process should have taken place last year.
16:34 DP: Not at all. We saw him for twenty minutes and we said it was inadequate, and we invited him to come again. Did he like to come on those terms? And he said, 'Yes', he would like to.
16:46 Q: Excuse me, Krishnaji, I was late. Was this meeting called to discuss this particular boy?
16:52 K: I don’t know. Ask Miss Pratt. She started with this problem.
16:57 SF: Possibly, Doris is calling attention to the difficulty in distinguishing between perceiving something clearly and just having an opinion about it. We might very well form an opinion, but then the problem seems to come when we mistake it for perception and then we hold on to it.
17:18 K: But after all, what you're doing appears to succeed. There may be little lapses here and there but, generally, it’s working.
17:29 SF: Yes.

K: What’s wrong?
17:31 SF:I don't think there's anything really wrong with the way we go about things, generally.
17:39 K: Why raise this problem if it's working?
17:42 SF: Apparently, at times there’s a difficulty, when there is an opinion and it’s thought to be clarity or it’s thought to be perception.
17:55 I don’t know anyone that doesn’t suffer from it. Being able to distinguish between clear perception and opinion is the problem Doris is addressing herself to.
18:31 K: Is that problem finished?
18:35 DP: No, not at all, I wouldn’t have thought.
18:38 K: But you have run this school, Brockwood, for the last nine years, sometimes failing with a boy, generally succeeding. Right?
18:48 DP: I don’t know about generally succeeding.
18:51 K: Wouldn’t you say?
18:53 DP: Well, this is the best school I’ve ever heard of but I don’t think we’re satisfied at all...
18:59 K: Please, I'm not talking about the best or worst school. Up to now, you have done this, each offering an opinion then withholding his opinion and discussing it, and eventually coming to a certain conclusion.
19:17 It seems to have worked out.

DS: Doris, is it that you feel that we as a school, in some particular instances, don’t give the attention, the help that we might give to a student because we have taken into account the purpose of this place and so we say, ‘No, this is not the right place for this person to come because of the intention of the school’, but we could have helped that person if we were to put aside for the moment the wholeness of this purpose and attend to this individual?
19:58 I think that perhaps many of us get caught up on that, that we lose the full intent, the whole intent of this place, on thinking we can help the particular.
20:16 Q: I’m sorry, I don’t think that’s the problem. I’m listening to Doris, I feel that the situation with Martin and everything around it is not what we we’re discussing. What we’re discussing is, as Doris was saying, this is probably one of the best schools one would want to ever be associated with – I dare to say that – but still one feels dissatisfied, one feels that what you are talking about isn’t really happening here.
20:53 K: What am I talking about?
20:57 DP: A non-personal attention.

K: No, no, no.
21:00 K: I am going to tell you, don’t you tell me.
21:03 DP: You are asking us, Krishnaji.

K: I am asking myself. What am I talking about, which is so very complicated?
21:12 DP: Forgive me, but you are dodging. You asked us and we must answer, and we answer from our memory and our memory says that you're talking about a non-personal intelligence, which is compassionate and reasonable.
21:27 K: Not only that, but how to come to it, also.
21:34 DP: That’s what we want.

K: No, you are taking the end.
21:39 DP: To go somewhere you’ve got to know where you are going.
21:45 K: That’s where we…
21:54 You want to know where you are going. Right? Miss Pratt wants to know where she is going.
22:02 K: Where are you going? Where is this school going?
22:09 Is that it?
22:15 DP: That doesn’t seem to quite voice my feelings. My feelings are, how are we jointly, together, individually and together, to have the feeling that we have dealt with something rightly and can let it go?
22:37 K: I don’t understand this. I didn’t hear the last… Something? I didn’t hear.
22:45 DP: How can we have the feeling, not only as individuals but as a body – we are here functioning as a body – how can we have the feeling that we have dealt with something rightly and can let it go?
23:14 Q: I feel that what Doris is really saying is that she is seeing, really seeing, that opinions divide the school, divide people, and she is asking, can we function without opinion?
23:31 Yes? D

P: Yes.
23:34 K: That’s up to you. If you see opinions interfere, you just say, ‘All right, I’ll keep my opinions in abeyance and let’s talk about it’.
23:46 Q: Thank you very much. Because when I first came here I was told I must give opinions and I said, ‘No, I won’t give any opinions because we'll be separated.
23:54 I'll have an opinion, someone else will have another opinion, and I refused.
24:01 K: I'm a bit lost.
24:03 MZ: Are we perhaps caught in the meaning of the word ‘opinion’, which has a mixed meaning in this sentence?
24:11 That is, we try to see, ascertain as many facts about whatever it is, whomever it is as we can. Now, that’s obviously limited, and if you say, ‘Any assessment of facts is an opinion’, what’s wrong with that?
24:34 We try to grasp as many relevant facts as we can, knowing that we never can have them all, but seem to try to find essential, relevant facts and then act.
24:46 Is that opinion?

K: May I put the question differently? Same question, perhaps. The question will be answered in a different way. May I?
25:02 What is the function of all of us?
25:10 What are we doing, as teachers and so on? What is the responsibility of an educator?
25:31 Would that answer... if we go into that, would that reveal the right action with regard to the choice of right students and staff and so on?
25:48 Would it, Mrs D, and others? I am just asking, I may be barking up a wrong tree, or the right tree.
26:11 As a teacher, if I was one of you, my concern would be, mainly, to bring about a different generation of people, totally different from the social pattern – the economic, political and all that – a totally different human being.
26:51 As a teacher, that would be my responsibility. According to that, I would choose the right material. Don’t misunderstand when I use the word ‘material’ – the right quality of students. From that point I would choose, whether they are capable or incapable, and so on.
27:19 You may say, ‘That’s impossible, you can’t do that.’ I am just asking.
27:29 MZ: Sir, that very assessment, judgment, whatever you call it, is apparently felt to be, by some here, as not a proper way of looking at it.
27:43 It’s such an incomplete process that we make that judgment, that assessment of whether the person…
27:52 K: I am not talking of judgment. Please, would you kindly listen? I am not talking of judgment. I’ll leave that out, for the moment.
28:02 MZ: How does one choose?

K: I am asking, what is my function as a teacher? What is my responsibility?
28:17 As I look at it, and I may be wrong, and you may disagree with it, you may say it’s nonsense, it cannot be done, etc.
28:25 My feeling is that we are here to prepare or bring about or educate a student who is a human being, who is totally different from the pattern of ordinary human beings.
28:49 DP: Yes, but you already have a feeling, a perception, an insight, an inkling of what a good, true, human being could be.
28:58 K: No, no, no. You have not understood what I said.
29:02 DP: If there’s a gardener...

K: I'm not talking about a gardener, I am talking about a teacher and a student.
29:12 What is my responsibility with regard to the student? And my responsibility is to see as a teacher, as an educator, that he is educated – whatever word you'd like to use – so that he is a totally different human being from the ordinary pattern.
29:36 That’s all my concern, as a teacher.
29:40 DP: That can’t be accurate. We are the teachers, we don’t have that perception of a human being.
29:49 K: No, no, let’s enquire into it. I am not saying you must have a perception of it and then work towards that. D

P: You can't have passionate feeling to do something you know not of.

K: I am not talking about that.
30:02 Sorry, Miss Pratt. I am saying, is it my responsibility, as a teacher to see that the student comes out of Brockwood as a totally different human being, who is no longer self-centred, etc.
30:28 We can describe what a different human being is, but is that my responsibility?
30:55 DP: Before I can do that, it’s my responsibility to see that I am a totally different...
31:01 K: No, no, no. Please, I want to stick to one thing. Forgive me. Do I feel as an educator – I'll repeat it, if you don't mind – that my function, my job, as a dedicated or responsible…
31:26 to see that a different human being is born out of Brockwood?
31:34 Q: Are there certain materials which are more conducive to that? Are certain materials, certain people more conducive to that?
31:45 K: Do you, as a teacher, feel that? I'm not asking material – we'll come to that later. You understand, sir, what I am saying?
32:06 No school in the world is concerned about that.
32:23 And we, the teachers, are the most important people in the world, the greatest profession – if you'd like to use that word ‘profession’ – because we are responsible for the future generation.
32:54 If I feel that strongly, as a teacher here, and I feel that is the greatest thing I have to do in my life, because I am a teacher, I have these students under me, with me.
33:29 Then, if I feel that, I say, ‘Now, what shall we do together to bring this about?’ Do we all feel that?
33:36 Or you may feel it and I may not feel it? Can we all feel this sense of the noblest – sorry to use these words, forgive me – it is the greatest thing we have, as a teacher?
34:10 Am I silencing everybody after this?
34:13 Q: I know my thinking hasn’t quite extended that far, to thinking about the next generation.
34:20 My interest has been primarily learning how, with the students and teaching them to stay with the fact and learning to observe.
34:32 K: No, I can stay with the fact...
34:36 Q: I’m saying that’s where my interest is, rather than creating the next generation.
34:43 Maybe it comes out of it.
34:48 DP: It isn’t the next generation…

Q: That’s what I’m saying.
34:57 K: No, you are misunderstanding. Perhaps I'm not making myself clear.
35:10 If we don’t accept the present state of society, its immorality, all the rest of it, if we don’t accept that, then, as an educator, rejecting all that, I naturally say, ‘By Jove, there must be a new group of people’.
35:41 Which isn’t an avoidance of fact – the fact is it’s a rotten society.
35:55 Wait, let me finish. That’s a fact. In dealing with that fact, I see, as an educator, that fact must be changed.
36:11 Q: It's also a fact that they bring some part of that rotten society...?
36:15 K: Wait, I’ll come to that, sir. I’ll come to all that.
36:28 Q: But would you agree that the growth of the new generation is an outcome of staying with the fact?
36:38 The new generation will come about by staying with the fact.
36:44 K: By not only staying with the fact but transcending, going beyond the fact.
36:52 DS: Creating another fact.

K: No.
36:56 DS: The fact you have found society corrupt implies another fact.
37:08 Stephen Smith: Implies another possibility.
37:10 DP: Yes, implies the possibility.
37:26 K: So, what are we saying to each other?
37:35 Q: We’re trying to find what our common interest is. and what is guiding us...

K: Is that what you're talking about?
37:47 DS: I think that’s what’s being called into question.
37:55 K: Then let’s find out the common interest. Do you feel as an educator, taking the facts, remaining with the facts, seeing the facts, the consequences and the implications of the fact, to go beyond it?
38:23 Do we see that, together? Not you see it and I don’t – together, do we see that?
38:37 JK: Isn’t that implied in us all being here?
38:42 K: I don’t know, I am asking. Because as you say, do we all have this outlook, this feeling, the reality of this? That’s what Erich is saying, if I understand it, rightly.
39:05 Do we all have the same fact in front of us, or we are all colouring the fact?
39:36 If you're all silent, how can we proceed with this thing?
39:40 Q: Generally speaking, thought and feeling are more powerful than this fact and displace it.
39:48 K: So, feeling and emotions, all the rest of it, are much stronger than facing this actual fact.
39:59 Is that it?

Q: Yes.
40:00 K: Why?
40:12 Q: Because for some reason or other, it seems more interesting to go down that road.
40:20 To go down the emotional road seems more interesting.
40:24 K: Is it? Is it? You see, we have taken these things for granted.
40:34 We say it’s much more interesting to be emotionally involved with the fact, rather than facing the fact itself.
40:44 But we don’t see the consequences of emotionally facing the fact.
40:54 And therefore, we say emotions are much stronger.
41:02 I don’t know if I'm making myself clear on this point.
41:16 Are we thinking emotionally, emotionally thinking, and therefore they assume a tremendous strength and dominance?
41:59 Come on, please.
42:04 JK: I don’t think about it at all, really. If you look at the fact of the world and come here…
42:14 If I thought about what I was doing here, I'd probably run into trouble trying to verbalise it.

K: No, sir, I'm asking, do you see the actual fact, of the extraordinary condition of the society?
42:32 You see it. There is no deception about it. There is no saying, ‘I like it, I don’t’ – it’s a frightful mess.
42:44 That’s a fact.
42:47 JK: I don’t have to think about that.

K: No, it’s a fact. Wait. You have thought about it and you realise it is dirty.
42:59 If you are an educator, you say, ‘I can’t allow my student to enter into that’.
43:10 ‘Allow’ in quotes.
43:17 I'm asking, do we feel that way? That’s all.
43:29 Q: I think the problem is in learning to...
43:37 see the emotion... – I don’t know how… To the extent that we haven’t seen the fact, we remain in these other roads which seem most interesting.
43:54 I think we haven’t seen the real nature of this emotional thinking, so we think it’s more interesting than staying with the fact.
44:04 K: What is there to think emotionally about murder, about terrorists, about wars?
44:11 Q: There’s all sorts of implications about this emotional thinking.
44:17 Q: Identification.
44:19 Q: There is inward control, there is outward control, there’s habits, and it’s all sort of the same movement as...
44:28 K: No, you're bringing something in which has for the moment no place in what we are talking about.
44:36 As a teacher at Brockwood, do I feel my responsibility is to bring about a different generation of people?
44:49 That’s all my question.
44:57 A different generation in the sense seeing the facts of the world, what is happening, religiously all the nonsense that goes on, and the terrible things that are happening.
45:17 As an educator I say, 'My responsibility is to see that the student in front of me doesn’t become like that'.
45:26 That’s all my question.
45:42 Do all of us feel this? That’s another question.
45:57 JK: It’s a curious thing, when I listen to that question, I don’t really know.

K: What do you mean you don’t know?
46:08 The fact is there right in front of our noses. Right?
46:11 JK: I can only tell from what my action…
46:15 K: No, I'm not talking about action. I see the fact, and I have got a son – I am the educator – and I don’t want him to enter into that area.
46:33 I have that strong feeling that he cannot be allowed to go into that – ‘allowed’ in quotes, and all the rest of it.
46:44 I'm asking, do we feel this, as educators?
46:51 There can’t be opinions about it.
46:59 The generation of the future, we can discuss – that’s a different matter.
47:19 What, sir? Everybody is silent, what am I to do?
47:25 Q: I'm a newcomer to Brockwood but I felt this before I came. It is a fact and I see it, and I have only one interest.
47:34 K: Do we all feel this thing together? That’s all.
47:39 Q: Nobody is talking...

K: Come on, sir. Put your oar in! Or somebody do it, I am not pushing you. Please, don’t think I am pressurising you.
47:56 Q: Again, as a newcomer, I don’t know whether you wish us to answer individually or...
48:04 K: I don’t know. It’s up to you.
48:15 You see, if I... Please.
48:18 Q: Certainly my concern here or wherever else I might be working, is to look at the world, and it’s obvious it’s not in a healthy state.
48:29 It seems so simple to me that, whether it’s the children here or children anywhere, I want them to live really healthy lives, and to find out what that means.

K: So, my responsibility then is to see that he doesn’t fit into that.
48:46 I am just asking, sir, before we go into details, into what we should do or not do, do we have this feeling?
49:06 DP: I can’t understand why everybody’s so dumb.
49:08 Q: Yes, I have this feeling.

K: Ask them.
49:13 DP: They won’t even say, ‘Yes, I do.’ Q: I have.
49:18 DP: They won’t even say, ‘Yes, please, sir, I feel it.’ SF: Well, I think that’s why most of us are here, Krishnaji.
49:29 K: Let’s articulate it, clearly. If that is our feeling, all of us, that we are here to see that these students, as many of them as possible, come out of this as a different human being. Right?
49:52 If that is our common interest, our common urge, passion, then we can discuss, go into detail, all the rest of it, what shall we do, what kind of student – you follow?
50:19 From that, our action will take its right course. If that is not clear, then we will wobble all over the place.
50:35 I may be labouring a point which you already have or which you already feel and therefore we can go on further, but I want to be quite sure this is so.
50:54 Don’t assure me but say, ‘Yes, it is so', and then let’s get on.
50:58 SF: I think it is so. But I would state it even slightly differently from what I perceive, that is that we see that we need to undergo the same change ourselves, so we don’t just feel that the students must be totally different but that we need to all do it, together.
51:24 K: No, no, Scott, if I have that feeling, the reality of that feeling, the fact of that feeling, then how shall I, as an educator, help the student and myself?
51:48 You follow? But I must have that feeling first. That’s all my point.
52:03 Q: Krishnaji, I feel I care for some of the students some of the time, but I don’t have that feeling.
52:08 K: Not the feeling for some.

Q: That’s what I’m saying.
52:12 K: No, sir, I'm not talking of the few or the many. I am asking, if this feeling exists then my relationship to the student is that both of us have to do something together.
52:30 Not that I'm telling you what the future generation is going to be.
52:39 Right? Everybody is so silent. What has happened?
52:49 DS: I think everybody is listening, Krishnaji.
52:53 K: All right, everybody's listening, then let’s go on.
53:03 What shall I do, how shall I teach the ordinary subjects, and beyond the ordinary subjects, academic and non-academic, in what way shall I deal with this?
53:44 Discuss with me. Do you want me to talk? Shall I go on talking or do you want to discuss this?
53:51 Q: Maybe we can dwell for a moment on what kind of students…
53:56 K: Ah, that is the danger. I haven’t come to the choice of students.
54:03 SF: Krishnaji, were you just implying that there is something common in our approach to academic and non-academic questions?
54:12 K: Yes.

SF: Can we talk about that?
54:14 K: That’s what I would like. Let’s discuss it, you see. If I'm the teacher, realising my intention, my dedication, my feeling, intense feeling that a new generation is my responsibility.
54:36 Not the mothers and fathers – they are finished. It’s my responsibility. I want them – I use the word ‘want’ as a quick way of talking, because we have a short time – I want them to have a first-class brain.
55:03 A brain that faces facts and doesn’t move away from facts. That’s the only kind of brain that is sharp, clear, young.
55:16 Now, how shall I bring that about? All right, sir? Am I proceeding all right? How shall I bring it about?
55:37 A brain that doesn’t escape into stupid religions and politics.
55:46 How shall I do that? I have to teach him subjects. Perhaps I can do it through subjects.
56:00 Is that possible?
56:03 DS: Wouldn’t that be one of the ways?
56:06 K: Is that possible? – I'm taking one by one. Is that possible? So that knowledge doesn’t cripple the clarity of the mind.
56:34 Information becomes dangerous, knowledge becomes dangerous, by itself, and when it is used by minds which belong to this mess, then they bring enormous calamity to man. Right?
57:11 Right? So, what shall I do? As an educator, how shall I help the student to have very good knowledge and not let that knowledge destroy the other field of existence?
57:35 Are we going together in this? What shall I do? How shall I do this?
57:47 DS: It will be done, by how do you it. By how you do anything.
57:51 K: Yes, I am asking, how shall I do it?
57:58 How will you do it? You're a teacher, how will you do this?
58:01 DS: Not how we do it – you have to act, you have to be in relationship with the facts...
58:10 K: No, Mrs D, I'm asking – he must have knowledge – but that very knowledge becomes destructive when it's used emotionally, egotistically, selfishly, narrowly.
58:29 Can I help him not to become ‘selfish’ – implying all that?
58:47 Well, sir?
58:58 Because knowledge selfishly used becomes power – right? – political, economic, social – power in all directions.
59:19 So, how shall I, as an educator, help him in both directions?
59:31 Come on, sir, you are a teacher.
59:36 Q: I think it’s a process of learning to see the selfishness.
59:41 K: So, will you? Will you discuss it with the student?
59:49 Q: That’s what I think is interesting.
59:51 K: Will you do it? Not 'interesting' and playing with words. Will you see that he acquires knowledge – mathematics, biology, physics, all the rest of it, and help him or educate him to be non-selfish?
1:00:20 We know now how to acquire knowledge.
1:00:27 We are very good at helping him to acquire knowledge. But we are not as good at helping the student to be non-selfish.
1:00:42 Is that possible? Or is the conditioning of a student and ourselves so terribly strong that there is always...
1:01:05 selfishness is always relative. You follow what I mean?
1:01:16 SS: Is that an absolute statement?
1:01:20 K: No, I'm asking, is it possible to educate the student to be totally non-selfish, or help him to be partially selfish?
1:01:36 Q: I'm wondering, your question has made me wonder whether in learning information, which is pretty straight, non-emotional, dry – they are pretty factual – in that sort of learning, does it help one to see one’s selfishness?
1:01:58 K: It might. That’s what I'm asking, whether you will, through the academic process of learning, in the very teaching of information, imparting information, can you also, at the same time, help him not to be selfish?
1:02:23 Or through the subject, help him not to be selfish, not to be self-centred, emotional and woolly.
1:02:37 Sorry!
1:02:42 Q: Can you help him if he doesn’t see the importance of it?
1:02:48 K: It’s my job, my responsibility, I've got to do it!
1:02:53 Q: But most of the kids are under so much pressure from their parents.
1:02:58 K: I know. So, that’s my responsibility, I have to find out a way of dealing with this.
1:03:06 He comes already self-centred, conditioned, whatever word you like, and I also come, dyed in the same wool, so, in teaching him knowledge, can I help him to be unselfish, and myself, the whole, together?
1:03:42 Is that possible, sir?
1:03:44 SS: Certain things come about in studying a subject which are helpful, such as the objective consideration of the workings of phenomena or the logic developed in mathematics or certain things that already begin to help him look at things…
1:04:02 K: So, mathematics, history...
1:04:06 SS: I think most of the academic disciplines help in that way.
1:04:11 K: But can we also, in teaching him all the subjects, help him also, through the subject to be unselfish, not self-centred?
1:04:24 You follow what I'm saying? Is my question clear?
1:04:28 SS: Yes, we do it to the extent that we remove goals from him, so, to some extent anyway, we don’t give marks for work, we don’t offer rewards.

K: Ah, I'm not talking marks, but the root of this business, the root of selfishness, from which opinions, judgments, the whole ‘me’ and ‘you’ begins.
1:05:02 ‘My opinion is better than yours’, and so on.
1:05:13 Q: But in a relationship, in a class with a student, sooner or later, the student begins to reveal himself and his selfish wants and concerns, and from that, one can begin to talk about what’s happening?
1:05:31 K: Sir, as a teacher, it’s your responsibility. Right? Tell me what you would do. What you will do, how you will instruct him in knowledge, which he will use unselfishly. We will put it differently.
1:06:01 Because this society is based on complete selfishness.
1:06:12 SS: Already by putting things like exams in a certain perspective, you are helping him to study the subject for the interest of it.
1:06:25 K But are you helping him to root out this poison?
1:06:31 SS: That is a help.

K: That’s a little help. So, wait, look at it. Are you adding little helps?
1:06:45 Q: I don’t think we can separate the academic side. I think this goes on in daily life, all the time.
1:06:54 K: All the time. So, in class, out of class – what does it all mean?
1:07:04 Q: The thing I'm worried about is that we form ideas of unselfishness.
1:07:09 K: Cut, use another word. I will use another word.

Q: No, the word is fine. I'm worried that in our relationships with the students, in our attempt to see the fact we instead put on more controls, we strive towards unselfishness.
1:07:32 K: So, you have to say, can you help the student, and help therefore help yourself, both together, to see the implications of control – the implication, consequences, and all the rest of it, which is the awakening of that intelligence, which will then…
1:07:56 do the right thing? You follow what I'm saying?
1:08:13 My question is, sir, is it at all possible – and it may not be possible – is it at all possible, in our education at Brockwood to help each other to wither away this thing, this self-centeredness?
1:09:07 Q: I remember one suggestion you gave with regard to a smoking problem, you said not to resist the smoking nor indulge in it, especially, but rather, to be aware of your hand as it went for the cigarette, things like that. Are there...?

K: You want me to talk like that?
1:09:33 Q: Well, yeah.

K: Oh, no! That means you are then not creative.
1:09:50 Then you are merely complying, adjusting yourself to a pattern.
1:09:59 SS: I think a demand has to be made, actually. A demand has to be made. We were talking about this on Saturday, with Dr Bohm, and it seems accurate to say the demand has to be made, because the student generally, and probably the staff member too, is unused to making an actual demand and sticking to it.
1:10:28 Q: That’s the point I was getting at. What is the demand?
1:10:35 K: I will tell you. There is a challenge.
1:10:38 Q: Usually you put a demand on yourself and it’s a control, and you try to live up to that control.
1:10:47 Q: So, what would you...?

K: Sir, look, there is a challenge.
1:10:55 The challenge is, can you educate your students to be totally unselfish?
1:11:06 I'm using the word ‘unselfish’. I can explain a great deal, in great detail, the implication of that word.
1:11:16 That’s the challenge.
1:11:18 DS: But if you haven’t seen that the world is the state it is through each of our selfishnesses.
1:11:26 If we haven’t seen that the world has come about into the state it is through selfishness, and you don’t burn with it, I think to start by explaining, pointing out the selfishness of a child, to a child, something will go wrong.
1:11:44 K: Obviously, obviously.

DS: We have to burn with it. But that’s your challenge.
1:11:52 DS: I’d say, do we see that? Do we see that? If we don't see it, we can’t do a goddamn thing.
1:11:59 K: Apparently, you all say, 'Yes, we see it'.
1:12:03 DS: But to play with ideas as to whether this and that, I think is side-stepping the issue.
1:12:16 Is it a challenge or are we creating the challenge? Do we see it as a challenge?

K: It is a challenge to an educator.
1:12:32 You are demanding the highest of yourself and of the student.
1:12:44 DS: And that built-in something enables you to know how to act.
1:12:50 K: Once you demand this, you’ll act according to that demand.
1:13:26 I'm asking you because you are sitting there. I don’t know this gentleman, he's new to me, so I'm tackling you. It might be X, that person sitting here. My question is this, sir, how are we, if I'm not capable of meeting this challenge, how will you help me to meet it?
1:13:56 Because you are a teacher, you are responsible.
1:13:58 SS: Are you a student, sir?
1:14:02 K: I am your student.
1:14:12 SS: It might depend on your age, a little bit.
1:14:17 K: Look, don’t slip out.
1:14:22 SS: If you are somewhat older, I would approach it more directly.
1:14:28 K: You have got the students there.

SS: I would talk about selfishness. But if you were young, I don’t think I would.
1:14:33 K: No, not young, ten or twelve. Poor people, leave them. I'm talking of your students who are capable of reasoning, looking, observing, thinking.
1:14:51 SS: I'd bring it into what I do in the classroom, in the sense of looking for the link between what is happening there and what is happening in him...
1:15:09 K: What do you teach, sir?

SS: French.
1:15:11 K: In acquiring the knowledge, that particular knowledge, how will you, in teaching French, help him to understand the whole nature of the self and its destructiveness, and so on? How will you combine both?
1:15:39 Practically.
1:15:51 What would you do? Come on, what will you do? Any teacher, what will you do? You are teaching physics, biology, whatever it is, or yoga.
1:16:19 I am teaching French. I am teaching French.
1:16:26 What shall I do?
1:16:30 SS: I hope this isn’t… In a sense, you’re trying to teach the unteachable, aren’t you?
1:16:36 K: No, no. I won’t accept that.
1:16:42 Q: You sometimes confuse the group, Krishnaji, by asking that question because everybody scratches his head and says, ‘I don’t know what I would do’ or, ‘What am I expected to answer?’ Whereas, as Dorothy says, if you are burning with that...
1:17:01 K: That’s all I'm saying, sir. If you have that feeling, you are doing it.
1:17:11 Q: I have that feeling – just a minute – and I will teach him French.
1:17:23 – I'm answering this out of my blood – how shall I do it?
1:17:32 I know. I would say, ‘For ten minutes, I'm not going to discuss French’.
1:17:42 Right? Just listen to me. Don’t copy what I'm saying, because it’s mine, not yours. Don’t become second-hand.
1:17:54 I’d say, ‘Look, sit down, I'm going to talk about the facts of the world’.
1:18:03 I would go into it, very clearly. I'd say, ‘I feel responsible for you not to enter into that’.
1:18:19 I would talk about that. Right? That would be my… right through, I would keep on at that.
1:18:30 SS: They might stop listening to you.
1:18:34 K: No, they won’t, because I'm putting it ten different ways, not just ram this down their throat – then they won’t listen.
1:18:49 I would have ten minutes of this thing – talk about it, I wouldn't talk about being unselfish.
1:19:00 I’d say, ‘The world is the result of this ugly thing that exists in all human beings’. I would tackle it differently.
1:19:16 What I'm trying to point out, sir, if I may gently, if it is a challenge to you, you have to invent, you have to be creative, work out what to do.
1:19:37 The very challenge, if it is vital, will make you respond.
1:19:50 When you see a beautiful… it’s a challenge and you respond. You don’t say, ‘Now, what shall I do?’ JK: Or, ‘Have I done the right thing?’ after it’s over.
1:20:04 K: Don’t take that silly example.
1:20:08 Q: If you’re occupied with that, it doesn’t come into it.
1:20:15 K: But I am saying something else, sir, which is, when we feel something very strongly and demand the greatest excellence out of oneself, something takes place. From that, you act.
1:20:36 Q: If we are feeling it strongly, we are communicating it nonverbally, even if we’re saying something else.
1:20:44 K: One must be very careful of the non-verbal state. Because you may think you are communicating non-verbally...
1:20:55 Q: I am not thinking.
1:20:57 K: Ah, no, sir. Forgive me, the non-thinking state is quite...
1:21:05 I won’t go into that for the moment, if you don’t mind. All that we are pointing out is that when there is this demand of excellence out of yourself, that very demand has its own action.
1:21:34 That’s all.
1:21:41 So, as an educator – I come back to that point – do we have this demand?
1:21:49 I'm not doubting, not saying, ‘You haven’t got it’, ‘We have got a little bit, three quarters, not completely’ – but this feeling.
1:21:59 Q: Also, would you not say that when there is this feeling here, it is constantly alive, constantly looking, exploring, so you don’t get to a level of what you consider excellent and say, ‘Stop, we will do this the rest of the time’.
1:22:17 K: But one must be careful of feeling, too. I won’t use the word ‘feeling’ because that’s another tricky word.
1:22:29 Is there a demand of excellence in us?
1:22:42 And, being an educator, the highest excellence?
1:23:26 You see, if he and I, or you and I – if he and I had the same demand, and feeling the same urgency of it, we two would talk it over, together.
1:23:51 It’s not personal. You understand, sir? Personal opinion, that’s all gone. You and I would say, ‘How shall we educate them in this?’ We’ll help each other. It becomes creative.
1:24:06 It becomes terribly alive.
1:24:14 Q: Krishnaji, what do you mean by excellence?
1:24:23 K: Excel.
1:24:27 Q: But usually that means to be better than someone else.
1:24:31 K: Excel. It is not better.
1:24:38 The better is the enemy of the good.
1:24:47 Q: You are talking about excellence without any opposite.
1:24:50 K: Excellence, sir. That is, excellent in my inquiry, excellent in my capacity to teach, excellent in transmitting what I want to say, excel in my responsibility.
1:25:44 If we all feel that, we are generating tremendous energy.
1:26:03 When I'm demanding the greatest of my energy...excellence, there is no need for control.
1:26:19 With this, we enter into a different field.
1:27:35 It’s nearly half past five.
1:28:31 Shall we stop? Yes?
1:29:20 K: Ladies generally get up, first.