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BR79DSS2.1 - Freedom and responsibility
Brockwood Park, UK - 30 September 1979
Discussion with Staff and Students 2.1



0:18 Krishnamurti: I am afraid I don’t know some of you, and some of you I know, old students here from former days.
0:30 So, what shall we talk about?
0:41 I think it will be worthwhile if we could talk over together what Brockwood is, not what should be, but what Brockwood is.
0:59 You see the difference? ‘What should be’ and ‘what is’. This is going to be your home for the next year, two years, three years, and so on.
1:19 Home generally means where you are at home, free to enjoy yourself, you feel there safe – at least you think you do – where your parents guard you, see that you have proper clothes, food, exercise, enough sleep, and they kind of feel responsible for you – the parents at home – that you don’t go too wild, that you are more or less restrained, guarded, and so one feels one is at home, rather secure.
2:40 I wonder if you feel the same here, because this is going to be your home for a long time, except for your holidays.
3:05 Freedom, one must have, requires responsibility – right? – it isn’t that you can do what you like at any time you like, because I don’t think anyone can do that anymore.
3:30 Though one wants to do what one likes, what one desires, what one’s urges are, I don’t think many people, or very, very, very few, have that privilege or rather that narrow attitude towards life.
3:56 Am I speaking all right? We are communicating with each other? Are you sure? So, you are here for many, many months, and freedom is the natural demand or the urge of every person, young or old – to be free.
4:31 And I think we ought to, if I may, talk over together what it implies.
4:39 What is the significance of being free?
4:49 May we go into it? Does it mean to satisfy your own particular demands, irrespective of others?
5:10 Right? Does it mean that your reactions, your urges, must have their fulfilment?
5:28 Right? You are following all this?
5:35 Does it mean that you can come to meals late, go to classes when you like, or when you want to play, and so on?
5:54 Does it mean that you are free to do what you want to do?
6:06 Or, freedom necessarily and I think always, goes with responsibility, to be responsible.
6:27 Not only to yourself responsible but also, living in a small community like this, to be responsible to each other.
6:44 Are you following all this? Does it mean anything, what I am talking about?
6:54 We will go into it. Responsibility implies, doesn’t it, that you are responsible for your actions, responsible for what you are thinking, responsible for your feelings, your reactions.
7:25 Right? And also it means, living in a small community, that you have to take into consideration the other people’s feelings also, the other people’s activities, opinions, judgments.
7:48 So responsibility implies an interaction between people, and each one being responsible for their action, for their feeling.
8:02 Say for example, you are responsible to keep your room tidy. Right?
8:10 If you have a plant in your room, a flower, to keep it watered; to see that you have a good bath, clean, and all that.
8:22 You are responsible for that.
8:29 And if you are irresponsible and somebody tells you, Look, please consider that you go to bed early, have a clean bath, exercise, study, and you might say this is going against freedom. Right?
8:50 Because you want to do something and somebody else comes along and tells you to do something else, and you feel that your freedom is being restrained, curtailed.
9:03 Is that so? When we are living together in a house, each one is responsible not only for what’s going on inside the house, the cleanliness of the house, the gardens, and so on, so on, but also living in the house with so many people we have to take into consideration the other people’s feelings, their opinions, their values. Right?
9:47 Otherwise we will clash with each other, we will get angry with each other, we’ll oppose each other.
9:59 Whereas if we feel responsible – you understand? – the feeling of responsibility, not responsible for something, but the quality of the feeling.
10:15 Am I conveying this? I am responsible to come to the talk punctually at a certain time, because I wouldn’t like to keep you waiting – it’s impolite, discourteous, and it indicates indifference on my part.
10:47 So, responsibility implies great consideration for others as well as to one’s own ideas, opinions, judgments.
11:01 Right? Responsible.
11:08 And when there is that quality of responsibility then with that freedom then we can work together.
11:23 Is this somewhat clear?
11:31 If you and I were living in this house, two people in a small house, we are responsible to see that the house…
11:41 in the house everything is kept in order, there is cleanliness, the dishes are washed, and so on, so on, so on. Right?
11:56 But we are living together here, not two people but about one hundred people, and that demands great responsibility – right? – that we are all together.
12:17 Though some of us are a little older, or great deal older, though some of us are educators and some of us are students, we are together in this. You understand?
12:42 And to be together and feel the responsibility of being together, which implies freedom, so that we can examine our reactions, our responses, our antagonisms, our desire to form groups.
13:04 I can see it from my window that it is already being formed. You are new and so already group formation is taking place. Right? See what… when that happens, what’s going to take place?
13:25 Each small group is going to segregate itself. Right? One or two friends, they like each other and so on, and the other couple of friends, so gradually being together disappears.
13:46 And a person who is really responsible cannot have this sense of group formation because he is responsible for the whole.
14:00 Have you understood this?
14:07 So it isn’t, ‘You are my friend and I am going with you and nobody else’, or, ‘I am jealous if I see somebody who…’ and so on, so on, so on.
14:23 So freedom implies great responsibility.
14:31 Not to do exactly what you like but to understand the importance of doing things together.
14:43 I don’t know you have noticed this. Politically – are you interested in all this? – politically, if you have observed, probably you will in your current study of the events of the day, there are groups – Conservative, Liberal, Labour, separate, and countries are separated, ideas are separate, belief is separate.
15:25 I don’t know if you have heard last night, the Pope in Ireland.
15:32 Immense crowd, a million and half people. Catholic – you understand? – the Protestants, the communists.
15:48 So the world is being divided, or divided by each one of us who want their own separate, isolating life.
16:06 You understand all this? Are you following all this or you are bored? Right.
16:17 So, if you have noticed, too, when you are in isolation, there is no security. Right?
16:31 When England says, ‘British first’, or Italy first, that is the separative, divisive, isolating processes going on.
16:47 So, one group wants to be isolated and secure, another group wants to be isolated and secure. They can’t.
17:01 It must lead to war, to insecurity, to separate economic structure, social, and so on.
17:09 So where there is division there must always be conflict. Right?
17:16 I hope you see this. And this exclusive, isolating process denies responsibility.
17:33 Right? I may be responsible for my family, for my children, but I am irresponsible to what’s going on outside.
17:49 But that irresponsibility outside is going to affect my life, my children. Right? You see all this? Good. So, living in a small community like this, for a number of months, all of us with different backgrounds – from the Far East, Middle East, and from the West – different backgrounds, different opinions, different cultures, different habits, and coming here we observe, one observes, they are all conditioned by their countries, by their culture.
18:42 So, we are all coming together conditioned – right? – brainwashed, if I may use that word, by our own family, by our own society, by the culture in which we live, by our friends, by our parents, by our neighbours.
19:07 So each one comes here – that’s what you are all… you are from the East where tradition is very strong.
19:21 It is tremendously strong in India, in Asia, very, very strong, and as you come West it gets less and less and less and less, and just go towards America there is hardly any tradition – everybody does what he likes.
19:44 Right? ‘Do the thing for yourself’. Are you following all this? So here we have come from different parts of the world, with different attitudes, with different demands, some coming from the East, controlled, weighed down by their tradition – coming here they feel they are free, they can do what they like.
20:24 Right? Will that give, bring about a feeling of being together and responsible?
20:36 And some coming from the West, from America, Europe and so on, there they have been conditioned to permissiveness to do what they want.
20:52 ‘Who are you tell me?’ If you urge too much I run away, I leave home and wander around the world.
21:04 I don’t know how, but you do. So, these two currents are meeting here. You understand all this? They are very strong currents.
21:25 And can those who come from the East and the West understand this is a place where we are trying to create a new kind of generation.
21:43 Right? Are you understanding this? Go slowly. That is, we are neither East nor West, but human beings young and old, coming together to understand the whole nature of living.
22:06 Living implies not only studying subjects and career, marriage, having jobs, and so on and so on, but also to understand the psychological nature of oneself.
22:26 Right? Are you following all this?
22:38 Say for example, living in the West, including Europe and America, you are used to, perhaps some of you, are used to smoking.
22:59 Am I treading on delicate ground? And here you come with the habit of smoking, and you have formed the habit because other people also do it – it is more convenient because you are part of that group and the group smokes, and if you don’t smoke, you feel isolated and so on, and you begin to smoke.
23:32 You get the habit of it and in spite of what the doctors have said – it is bad for your health, for your heart, for your mind, for your brain, everything, it is bad, it is not healthy.
23:46 Governments have warned that it is not healthy by putting it on the packet that it is not healthy, and yet you go on.
23:55 And you come here and we all agree that here we are trying to do something totally different.
24:02 Don’t smoke – use your intelligence, because it is bad for you, we’ll go into it together – don’t do it. Right?
24:16 It is bad for you physically. It affects your brain.
24:24 Because here we are not only trying, or rather doing, to have a first-class physical body.
24:34 You understand? First-class. Which means also, a first-class mind. So the mind that thinks clearly, not always thinking about oneself, the mind that is capable of objective examination.
24:58 You understand? So we say, we all agree, don’t smoke, it’s bad for you. Right?
25:11 But you have got into the habit of it, and what will you do? You understand the problem? Now, who is responsible for this?
25:29 Are you following my question? Can you answer my question? I smoke – I don’t, but suppose I smoke – I have formed a habit, and it is very difficult for me to give it up.
25:46 And you all agree, in a place like this your concern is to have a very good physical, emotional, affectionate, and good mind, and you point it out to me that it’s very unhealthy.
26:10 What will you do with me? Go on, sir. You understand my question? Right? What will you do with me? If you were the head of this place or if you are some of the staff, what is your responsibility?
26:31 Throw me out? Give me a warning?
26:43 What is your responsibility, as a group, as a single human being, when you realise that smoking is unhealthy and you yourself don’t smoke, what will you do with me who smokes, who is part of…
27:02 who is a student? What will you do? What’s your action?
27:12 I see you all are very quiet. And the same thing, suppose I drink, as a student. I hope you don’t, for your own sake. Or take drugs. Do you? Again silence. What is the responsibility of… what’s your responsibility if you are the head of the place or a group of some of the staff?
27:51 What will you do with me?
28:02 Either you will point it out to me very carefully, give me the explanation, the reason, and awaken my own intelligence.
28:16 I would say, ‘Then I may give it up’, but I am rather stuck on it.
28:25 I’m rather a slave to it. So you have warned me two, three times. At the end of a certain time you say, ‘For God’s sake’. You understand what I am saying? What will you do? It is not only a collective responsibility, but also responsibility of the one who smokes and of each one of us. Isn’t it?
28:57 Because we are all living in the same house. If you, say for instance, insisted on eating meat here and we all say, ‘Don’t eat meat’, it is going to be rather difficult, for you as well as for us.
29:16 So, can we all come together, see the importance of having a first-class body, very healthy body – proper exercise, proper food, proper sleep, and so on, which implies no smoking, no drinking, no drugs. Right?
29:49 Will you all do it? If you don’t do it and someone comes along and says, Please, I have explained to you half a dozen times how unhealthy drinking, smoking, drugs are, and you keep on doing it, what is one to do?
30:22 If you were the head of this place and one of the staff, what will you do? Just give up?
30:33 Throw up your hands and say, ‘Oh for God’s sake! It is not my business, let somebody else deal with this’?
30:43 Come on, sirs, think it out. You are going to face all this. Perhaps there is nobody here who is smoking anymore – I hope not. But if there is someone, what will you do?
31:04 If you make an exception – say, Well, it is all right, I will make an exception, go ahead quietly, smoke around the corner.
31:12 Don’t let anybody know. That leads to a great many difficulties, doesn’t it?
31:22 If you allow me to smoke and not the others, what happens?
31:34 By making an exception I am encouraging the others to join me.
31:44 Do you see all this? Good. So, I am leaving next month, or the end of the October, so it is your job.
32:01 I know what I would do here if I am responsible completely, in the sense I am using that word. I would know what I would do.
32:14 I would talk, I would explain a great deal, at great length, with great affection, consideration. I would say, ‘Look, at the end of so and so, if it doesn’t stop – out’.
32:29 It is not unkind. It is not exclusive. It is not that we are more holy than you.
32:42 We consider any form of smoking, drinking, drugs, is destructive not only of the brain, of the mind, of the heart, physical heart, it affects your lungs, so please don’t do it.
33:01 Right? So, freedom is not to do what you like, but freedom implies a great deal of responsibility, infinite responsibility.
33:24 Are you going to undertake this, feeling responsible for the whole group?
33:52 You know, responsibility also implies great care, great affection, feeling ‘No, please don’t do certain things’.
34:04 You understand? A great feeling for not only one’s own sensitive feelings, but feelings for others – affection.
34:30 Then there is a problem here, too. There are some very young people here – 13. I mean, 14, 15?
34:42 Right? Questioner: 13 to 20.

K: 13 to 20. Look at them.
35:00 13 to 20. Now, are the 20, the people who are 20, are they going to corrupt the 13?
35:18 Go on, sir, answer this question. By their habits. Those who are 20 they say, ‘Well, we are grown up, we can do what we like – sex, drink, smoke’, and so on.
35:41 And will those who are 20 influence the 13, 15?
35:48 Come on, face it.
35:58 Aren’t you who are 20 responsible for the 13, 15, if you are all together in the house?
36:14 If I am 20 – thank God I am not; I will be 85 next year – if I am 20 and I have got rather ugly habits like smoking, drinking and all the rest of it, and rather inclined to sex, you know all that business, and have I had experience about all that, how am I, being responsible for the whole how am I going to live with the 13, 15, who are still curious, who want to know, and they are trying to…
37:07 you are trying to influence them, consciously or unconsciously, and they are going to follow you. Right?
37:18 What is your responsibility?
37:25 Are you going to, the 13 and the 15, tow the same line as you?
37:40 So, are you going to gradually, without knowing it, consciously or unconsciously, corrupt the 15 and 13?
37:54 And will the 13 and 15 allow it? You understand my question? Will you allow it? Those who are 13 and 15, will you allow yourself to go the same – what?– destructive way as the 20s do?
38:23 Go on, sir, go into it. Or will all of us together understand – all together – that we are responsible for each other, and therefore that responsibility implies care, affection, consideration.
38:45 And if there are certain habits which are unhealthy, to put them aside.
38:54 Will you?
39:06 We’ll see what happens.
39:17 You know, you are here apparently to study some subjects, pass some examinations. Right?
39:30 Thank God I haven’t got to. I went to school, too, in England and they tried to push me through university and college.
39:44 I failed at every one examination. Then they sent me to France, Sorbonne – there too I made a cropper. Raté tout!
40:04 So, you are here to study – study, gather information about various subjects – mathematics, history, biology, physics, and so on.
40:21 That is going to be the major part of your life here.
40:31 Right? Are you following this? That’s going to be a major part.
40:47 And one pays very little attention to the psychological structure of yourself. Right?
40:55 Do you understand this? To the study of yourself. You study the heavens, the earth and the things of the earth, the ocean and the things of the ocean, history, what people have done and what a mess they have made of the world.
41:24 You spend a great deal of time on that and very little time in the study of yourself, which is the mankind – right? – what you are, why you are like that, what makes you act that way, what makes you think in a different way?
41:44 You understand? What you are.
41:52 That is, to know oneself. Right?
41:59 You spend very little time on that. Is it possible in a place like this to study both? You understand?
42:10 To have information about the external world and also to study oneself, and both these streams going together all the time.
42:26 Will you do that? I am asking.
42:33 Because you may be extraordinarily clever and gather a great deal of information, pass examinations and get a good job and all the rest of it, and inwardly you might be just like a child, immature, unbalanced, and therefore for the rest of your life you are unhappy.
43:01 Haven’t you noticed all this? Unhappy, quarrelsome, dissatisfied, getting bitter, all the rest of it.
43:12 So, is it possible in a place like this, to study oneself, to know oneself very, very deeply, and also to know history, geography, and all the rest of it?
43:29 Because then you are a mature human being. You understand? It doesn’t mean if you don’t know mathematics that you are not mature, or physics, but the inquiry, the mind that is capable of inquiring – you understand? – mind that is capable of grasping things instantly, immediately, that hasn’t got to be told ten times, so that your mind becomes extraordinarily alert.
44:21 You see, that’s why it is important to grow, mature very slowly.
44:29 You understand?
44:36 I wonder if you understand this. You know, when one is young one wants all the experience that one can have – drink, smoke, drugs, sex, everything, all the experiences.
45:04 And generally you do. You are following all this? So your mind, instead of flowering slowly, understanding, deepening, having a very good, solid quality of mind, is already losing its quality – you follow? – when you grow up too quickly.
45:32 I wonder if you understand this. Do you understand this? Not verbally but actually see it, how important it is not to have all the experience of the world at once.
45:53 Because you want experiences. You want to say, ‘Well, what does it feel like, smoking? I am going to try. What does it feel like, drinking, having drugs, having sex?’ So you plunge into all that and it affects your body, your mind, your whole being, which demands that you understand, grow, mature, like a beautiful, harmonious human being.
46:28 I wonder if you follow all this.
46:35 So will you all do it? Now, a few of you may do it, may want to do this – say, ‘Look, sex I will postpone. Wait, wait, wait, cool it’.
46:55 Because also here we say, ‘Please, among the students, no sex’.
47:03 May I talk about it?
47:10 Because they say, Look, we are here not only to study but to understand ourselves and don’t plunge into these experiences immediately.
47:24 Cool it. Piano.
47:32 But all your friends and your blood, your glands, they say, ‘Sex, let’s have it’.
47:42 So you see, when you are quite young, the experiences which come later, when you have it now, you are already – you understand?
47:53 It is like a flower that suddenly blooms and dies. I wonder if you understand all this. Vous avez compris? Bien.
48:07 Q: Sir, I can see that there is an analogy, but…
48:10 K: I agree, I agree. That analogy is bad. I withdraw.
48:23 So you see, what is important is, since some of us come from permissive society where one does what one likes – and you see the result of it.
48:44 You know, in America 500,000 people, boys and girls, run away from their home. You understand this?
49:01 Run away to New York or to the big cities. There they lead the most miserable, unhappy, dreadful lives.
49:20 And here we are saying, ‘Look, please become, first, intelligent’. You understand?
49:30 That is, understand, examine, go slow, don’t rush.
49:42 Don’t say, ‘I must have sex’.
49:51 In India, for example, tradition is so strong that the student is frightened, held back – you understand? – from sex, from drink, from smoking.
50:11 But in big cities that is going. But go to small healthy places, villages and little towns, there tradition is immensely strong.
50:23 They are kept down. In the West there is no tradition about it. You do what you like, including sex. At the age of 13, 15 you have already had sex.
50:44 So all of you come here from different parts of the world and we say to you, Please, for your own sake observe, find out, examine your own feelings.
51:04 Don’t rush into things. Don’t rush into sex, don’t rush into drinking, because all this affects your mind while you are young.
51:23 It is not that I and somebody else are mid-Victorian, old fashioned, and brush us aside, ‘Oh, you know nothing about it, you are not modern’.
51:38 That’s all… that’s an anodyne, an escape. It doesn’t answer the question. I am not Victorian or any tradition. I say, Look, let us go into it, let’s find out how to live properly, how to live with an extraordinarily healthy, good mind.
52:09 That is what this place is for, so that you have a first-class mind.
52:20 Not when you leave you are still stupid; a mind that is capable of thinking objectively, sanely, healthily, not only thinking about yourself all the time – that is not a good mind, that’s a rather narrow little mind.
52:44 And to have immense sense of affection, love. Love, which means care, attention, responsibility.
53:02 Now, will you do all this, or you just hear so many words, forget it and carry on?
53:18 You see, I am going… Is it so that students and I meet on Tuesdays?
53:31 Is that so? Do you want that?

Q: Yes.
53:40 K: Then we can browbeat each other. Shall we do that? We did it last term. Students and the speaker, which is myself, we sat down on the ground, not on a platform, thank God, and we talked about everything.
54:06 Shall we do that? Don’t do anything that you don’t want to do, but find out why you don’t want to do it.
54:16 You understand? Because we are understanding each other, growing healthily.
54:33 Don’t say, ‘If the staff has sex, why shouldn’t we?’ Right?
54:43 Because the staff can do certain things you can’t do. The staff can teach you mathematics; you can’t teach mathematics.
54:55 They are a certain age and we are not. So, don’t – sir, another thing which is important – don’t live with comparison all the time – you understand? – comparing yourself with somebody.
55:15 The moment you compare yourself with somebody you are destroying yourself – you understand? – you are belittling yourself, you are diminishing your own understanding.
55:36 This is very difficult, because when one is young you are always comparing and it is difficult not to compare and be oneself.
55:51 ‘Be oneself’ doesn’t mean you can do what you like – be oneself, to understand what you are.
55:59 If I compare myself with you because you are more bright, more intelligent, more this and that, more beautiful, then what happens to me?
56:11 You understand? Have you understood this? What happens to me if I compare myself with you? You are more important than me – right? – and I become a shadow of you.
56:34 And most of us are shadows of others. You understand this? We are second-hand people because we are always imitating, conforming, comparing, and saying, ‘Oh, I must be better than that’.
56:55 I won’t go into all that; that is a very complex subject. So, we have talked for an hour.
57:09 So, at the end of it, if I may ask, what have you got out of it?
57:16 Not words, not ideas, but what is the substance that you have gathered, eaten, assimilated, digested and said, ‘Yes, it is like that’?
57:46 You know, you study for a number of years mathematics. At the end of it you have an examination to test what you have learnt.
57:59 This is not like that. You don’t have to pass. You are not passing an exam. I am just asking you. Food is put in front of you and you eat it, because you are hungry.
58:21 And here, some kind of intellectual, moral, psychological food is put in front of you.
58:30 Have you eaten it? Or you just look at it and say, ‘Very good. It’s rather nice, but I can’t do it. I am not hungry. It doesn’t suit me’.
58:45 Which is it that you are doing?
58:54 Do you want the food more tasty, more examples or more clarity, explain everything in detail?
59:10 See the danger of explanations. I will explain any amount, but see the danger of it. The danger lies, that in explanations you think you understand.
59:31 What you have understood is the explanation, not the fact.
59:39 You have understood this? So, the fact is food – food for your body, for your mind, for your heart has been put in front of you.
59:57 Have you eaten it? Or you are just reading the menu of it?
1:00:10 But the menu doesn’t satisfy the hungry man.
1:00:17 It’s like a man standing outside the restaurant and looking in. He is hungry, he has no money, so he keeps on being hungry and looking at the restaurant’s menu.
1:00:30 Are you going to do that?
1:00:37 Not only the student but the rest of us.
1:00:46 We are so crippled in our outlook, in our capacity to think clearly, because we put ourselves first.
1:01:00 You understand? When I say to myself, ‘I am more important than anything else’, I become incapable of looking out.
1:01:22 So, you know, a preacher, a teacher once got onto the platform.
1:01:33 He was just going to begin to talk to his disciples. You are not my disciples. And he was just going to talk when a bird came and sat on the windowsill and began to sing.
1:01:51 And it was such a beautiful song, the preacher, the teacher stopped talking and the disciples listened.
1:02:00 So, at the end of the… And presently the bird flies away, and so the teacher, the preacher says, ‘The sermon is over’. You have understood?
1:02:14 That’s over.