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BR80DT2.7 - Do we want a school where leisure is used for a serious purpose?
Brockwood Park, UK - 4 October 1980
Discussion with Teachers 2.7



0:00 This is J. Krishnamurti’s seventh discussion with teachers at Brockwood Park, 1980.
0:09 Krishnamurti: If I may, I’d like to say, point out, or rather inform or tell you along what lines I have been thinking. I hope I’ll make it clear; if it is not we’ll talk about it. I am sure you also have been feeling, as I have been feeling, that we started Brockwood with the understanding that those who came here should give a great deal of their time and their energy to the understanding of the teachings. That was the intention, and still is the intention, from the day we started. But from what the other day I heard one of you say, that ‘I haven’t time to go into all this because I am much too busy’. From that, and other things, I think we have come to a point that there must be a change. This is the line along which we have been thinking; that those who are interested in the teachings should have much more time to be concerned with that. And to do that, to spend their time, their energy, into the investigation of themselves, into the whole intention of Brockwood, which is the understanding of the teachings, you should have much more time to go into this. For that purpose, I am rather hesitant because I am also feeling my way into it so please be patient with me: that we should, not immediately, perhaps within a year or two, not have boys and girls of fourteen, fifteen, but only have students from sixteen on. Or have students who have already taken their A-level or O-level and want to come here and stay here and to study further or not to study further. What do you think of it, am I putting it right, because Mrs Simmons, Mrs Zimbalist and I were talking about this yesterday and we haven’t had enough time to go into it fully. But this is the direction we are thinking. You understand? What do you say to that?
4:20 HT: Many of the staff feel, in a similar way, that too much of our time is used up.
4:32 K: What?
4:33 HT: Too much of our time is given over to getting students ready for examinations and all the necessary activity of a school.
4:45 K: So how do we, realising that, how do we change it, the whole structure of this present state? Do you understand what I am saying, sir? Do you understand what I am saying: that we haven’t enough time, and the energy, to go into the serious matters of life, which we discussed the other day, about images.
5:24 DS: It is really the feeling of being a school, although it will be a sort of school, that it isn’t what might be called a Grammar School from which we work around.
5:39 K: It may not even be called a school.
5:42 DS: Exactly.
5:44 K: Yes.
5:46 DS: It is necessary to deal with more adult people. What you are saying is not meant for children, it is meant for adults. And then in dealing with a school, as we have done, I think it is becoming clear that our energies are taken away to just do teaching of subjects more and finding out how to do it in the best possible way, and linking it all, but that is revealing itself as not being the right development for investigating, what we came here to do.
6:29 K: This is the line upon which we have been thinking. We haven’t gone into it, all the details, all the implications of it, the financial position. If there are less students how would you get the money to maintain this place? And also we are thinking that people who are really interested to come here, pay board and lodging and so on. So the financial problem may be solved fairly easily. But do we all of us agree to this?
7:20 Q: I’m not quite sure that I understand.
7:23 K: What?
7:24 Q: I am not quite sure about everything you are saying. Is part of the suggestion that there might be more people coming, who would just be here for three or four weeks rather than for a year?
7:44 DS: I think there would be, as far as it seems now, that there would be like people taking the Open University exams, say, the senior students who want to qualify, they could go on. It might reduce the school to say a third of its size. And at sixteen they should at least have had all their O-levels gotten, taken. Possibly even you could have younger students if they showed themselves to be seriously interested in learning and going in for this. But not that we are saying, look, listen to what we are saying, try and understand what we are saying and come towards this thing; but rather that they are hammering on the door and saying ‘Look, come on, let’s go into this’. It should not be made, trying to induce them to do this, but they should say, already have seen that this is something that they want to be doing.
8:56 HT: And those would be the students.
8:59 DS: Those would be the students. I would say that one-third of the school.
9:04 Q: Is it also part of the suggestion perhaps to get some income, to have more people here staying for a week or even two weeks at a time?
9:16 DS: Or even longer.
9:18 Q: Yes.
9:19 DS: You see, I think you could supplement the loss of income, which has to be met, because it takes a certain amount to run the place, by, when Krishnaji is here, having adult seminars to which people not only pay for their board and lodging but they pay for being here, for participating in what’s going on here. Those of us who are here are doing some teaching but less continuous teaching right the way through the day, so that you would have more time to go into all this. And also the students you have would be learning on their own; they would be discovering how to learn on their own. It would be more like, I would say, it would be more like a university than a Grammar School. And using the marvellous facilities, that are available, of the Open University. And that from the seminars we might find the serious people that have said they want to come and really do this and they can get included on this perhaps.
10:35 K: Those who have done it point out - we are investigating, you understand, so we have not come to any definite conclusion. It wouldn’t be right to come to any definite conclusion without all of us understanding it and going into it, seeing what the implications are. I have heard many people after the Gathering, not only this year, but previous years, they said ‘I wish it wasn’t a school, because that limits the place. That makes us feel it’s only for students and staff, teachers. So I wish you would open it up’. And we passed it off. Suppose I am one of the outsiders, I live in Brighton, I want to come here, I have a little money, I pay for my lodgings, I want to be here and participate, not in the work of education, education of the students, however small, but I want to join a group of people who are educating themselves. Not A-level and O-level, but educating themselves along a different line. Many people have said this. And I have been thinking about it a great deal, both in India it has arisen, this question. Many are not interested in the schools but they say we want to have a place where we can all meet, discuss with you, be with you, talk with you. That’s one side of the whole problem of Brockwood too. And the other side is if we don’t have - if we only have students, thirty or twenty or whatever number, from sixteen onwards taking Open University, we will have more time to go into other matters. That is the line along which I have been thinking about. It may mean a great deal of change here. You understand? And so on. What do you say to all this? Mrs Simmons has explained what I have tried to point out. What is your say in the matter?
13:47 SF: It seems like it would give all of us more of an opportunity to fulfil the original intention of this place, as you stated it.
14:02 K: But will you all use that leisure? You follow what I mean? Will I, if I am one of the staff, will I be serious enough, have the intelligence enough, have a good mind enough to say, look, I’ll go into it. All of you? You follow, sir? Will we do it? Or it will become another ashrama - you know what an ashrama is? Do you? That’s a Sanskrit word which means retreat. The Catholics have places of retreat. You must know something about it, I’m sure. So it originally, in India, it meant a place where people who have finished with the world came under a guru or a leader; people who wanted to be with good people. You understand? Am I explaining something? Am I explaining it? Who wanted to spend their time meditating, thinking, investigating, lead a religious, so-called religious life. That was originally, I believe, meant by the word ashrama. But now it has become a terrible word because these gurus exploit people - you know all the rest of it. But if we could use that word ‘ashrama’ in its original sense, perhaps it might be used. But one has to be very careful about it. That’s one side of the whole thing. And the other is, as Mrs Simmons has pointed out and also we talked about it, that she will take boys and girls from the age of sixteen who will go through the Open University, or boys and girls who have already taken A-level and O-level and want to be here. You follow, sir? And those who are not part of the - what do you call it - A-level and O-level and Open University, they will say we would like to come here seriously to study, to live, to go through all that. We could combine both, which means that all of us have some leisure, more leisure. What do you say to all this?
17:20 WA: I think the leisure aspect does seem very important because it seems at the moment that one is continuously pressurised to do a lot of academic work which takes up a lot of time.
17:40 K: So do you also think along these lines?
17:43 WA: Very much so.
17:45 K: Do you? Please, come together.
17:49 Q: I see how - it is quite easy to see how this would help the teachers to find their leisure; it is not quite so apparent to me how it would help the kitchen and the office and some of the other places which really have quite a heavy load.
18:05 Q: The teachers can work in the gardens and kitchen too!
18:11 DS: It will help the teachers, the academic staff, but he doesn’t see how it will help people working in the garden, in the kitchen, in the office. And I think the teachers will be able, and the people who come here, the visitors will be able to take part in that. And also there won’t be all the endless sort of adolescent troubles - there’s no end to it. And the better you do it, the more you may do.
18:42 K: If I come from Brighton, I not only want to discuss, study, you know, part of my work is to work in the garden, in the vegetable garden, or mowing the lawn or whatever, I’ll help in any direction.
18:59 DS: It’s an adult learning centre.
19:02 K: Of course, of course.
19:03 Q: It takes most of our energy –this adolescence. I could teach as many hours, I wouldn’t care, I would gladly do that. But all the other trivial things we have to deal with…
19:19 K: What do you say? I am going to ask, what do you think?
19:25 IP: Well, I feel very much that we haven’t had enough time to do what we’ve really come here for. I’ve been feeling this for a long time. And as you say, it has only just been voiced and we haven’t really thought it out yet, but I can see that it is a step in the right direction.
19:46 K: But do you - are you thinking along these lines?
19:49 IP: Yes.
19:50 K: Does it say something to you?
19:57 IP: Yes.
20:03 WA: I think it says something to everyone here. I think it has been a complaint that everyone has.
20:11 K: You all feel the same?
20:12 General: Yes.
20:13 DS: We have been for a long time.
20:14 K: Thank God!
20:17 Q: I’d like to just add something. I feel the same, I think, basically. Ever since I’ve been here it’s been obvious that people don’t have enough leisure to think straight.
20:34 K: Wait, sir. We’ll create the leisure.
20:37 Q: But can I add one or two things? I think what we are trying to do here, even now, is still tremendously worth doing even if we decide not to go on with it and do what we are now looking at, which may be the right thing, I still think that this attempt to deal with adolescence, if you like, is tremendously worth doing, if not by us at least by anyone who will do it. I am wondering where to send my daughter to school when she gets older, I would love there to be places like this around. And so if we decide to go on this way, to older people, I still think that if anyone can do something for younger people it’s still worth doing; maybe not here. But may be I’m confusing things. But if we give up what we are doing now OK, but it’s still worth doing somewhere.
21:34 DS: I don’t think we are giving it up. I think we are saying, look, an enormous amount of energy gets siphoned off with children, really.
21:45 Q: Yes, but what I’m saying…
21:47 DS: We would be educating ourselves so that you could educate your daughter. You see. A lot depends on your own home, the background. And also I think there are movements that we can still continue, say with the One Man, One Earth classes, those things, all that can still go on, which will have an impact eventually, I hope and think.
22:17 SN: What we are really saying is that we would cut down drastically on the number of students, so that we would only have students who really want to be here and were serious and with whom we had no problems, in a sense. Right now we have many students on whom we spend quite a lot of time and energy. So we are saying that we won’t have that.
22:48 K: Are you thinking along the same lines?
22:51 SN: Yes, I think it would…
22:52 K: Do you think that’s right?
22:53 SN: Yes, I think…
22:54 K: Be careful. Don’t be personal, not that you’re personal. I’m just saying this. We must find out if it’s the right thing to do. Not my convenience or your convenience or I have friends, children who are here, but is this the right direction which we should take?
23:20 SN: Well, I can see that from when the school first started we had about twenty students and we really had much more leisure then, even though we had problems, we also had much more leisure. And now I feel with sixty students our leisure is really almost gone. So I see it would improve that situation.
23:43 DP: But what would we do with our leisure? That’s going to be the all-important point.
23:49 SN: Yes.
23:50 K: That we can organise, we can go into all the details of what to do when this takes place. Don’t let’s discuss details now, or how this should be done, how many students, how many outsiders can come, and all that - we can go into that, the details, later on. But is this the right direction that we all want?
24:23 Q: It seems right.
24:33 Q: May I ask a question? I am a complete newcomer. A propos of what Brian Nicholson said, I understand that there are some younger students who write to the school because they are unhappy in the school that they are in, and also because this school in other ways provides something which no other schools do. If you are going to exclude young students from thirteen, fourteen, fifteen-year-olds, and so forth, aren’t you going to stop something which is rather important?
25:11 DS: You probably are by doing that. But I think from the actual doing of it what is becoming clear, or the actual action of doing it, that it’s taking the energy that should be given to something else, away. And I feel really that fourteen - I have felt so for many years now actually - that fourteen, really there are very few students who shouldn’t be being cared for by their parents and looked after, not be troubled or have to investigate all these life problems, living problems at that age. So they don’t see the point of it and they become troubled by it. I mean I had somebody say to me just yesterday ‘You know, what Krishnaji is saying is against my religion’! Because she’s a child.
26:11 JF: Dorothy, she is a seventeen year old girl.
26:15 DS: But she has got the mentality of a child that still needs protection.
26:18 JF: My point is, we seem to be assuming that taking on older students we are going to take on less problems but I don’t think that necessarily follows.
26:27 MZ: Part of our taking on any new students as we move into this, is that it should be less difficult with twenty girls, or thirty girls…
26:41 JF: The problem still remains, how do you select? We have always had this problem and it will remain.
26:53 K: Those are details, if you don’t mind. Sir, I am not trying to stop you from talking, sir.
27:00 JF: I really don’t feel it is a detail because it’s a detail which we haven’t coped with in the present situation. And if we can’t cope with it in the present situation how are we going to cope with it in a different situation?
27:17 K: No, no.
27:18 DS: It is very difficult to cope with. One, because it isn’t just one action, there are many actions to it. We have had to take sixty students to make sure the school is viable and there will be difficulties and dangers in this because the source of supply of money is not evident at the moment. But you have got to see you can’t have everything and although I think it is a pity that we can’t deal with fourteen-year-olds and we can’t deal with ten-year-olds, and we can’t deal with junior schools, I think you’ve got to say: is this moving in the direction that we really want to go into? And I think then you have to make the decision.
28:00 IP: Well, I feel, the way I look at it is, that it’s much more dangerous to deal with fourteen-year-olds in an incomplete way and an incorrect way than not dealing with them at all. If we haven’t got time to do what we set out to do, and I haven’t, then what am I doing for the fourteen-year-old?
28:22 K: And also, if I may ask, point out, are we flowering as human beings, in the deeper sense of the word? Have we time to go into all that? That’s the reason, one of the main reasons, Brockwood came into being.
28:38 IP: Right. What we are saying is that was the main reason but now it has been overtaken by looking after these children and their problems.
28:48 K: Yes. That’s right.
28:50 MZ: And I would like to say something I’ve felt for a long, long time, which is the examination of Krishnaji’s time and energy in relation to this teaching, and inevitably talking to young, immature students who for the most part don’t really understand what he’s talking about, certainly not in depth. Is that the right use of his present health and remaining life? Should he not be talking to more mature people?
29:27 WA: I think also if you are not involved in a school and you are interested in what’s being said, and there are a lot of people not only in England, in Europe too, who would really like to come and spend their holidays, two or three weeks, investigating, and find it really difficult to come into contact with other people who are also interested in the same way. And I think it is really difficult for people on their own, being separated from other people interested, to keep some sort of energy going. It is really important for them.
30:09 HT: Are you saying just age, because I feel that what we really need is to have serious people here. We could get, you know, the people you are talking about to come here for two or three weeks and instead of the problems of adolescence, there will be problems of ‘I haven’t got the right room’ or ‘I haven’t got the right coloured curtains’. We would have to be careful.
30:35 K: Sir, we can’t carry this out immediately, naturally; perhaps in a year or two. We should limit ourselves…
30:55 DS: I think it should be the fact that it has been talked about.
30:59 K: Talked about, that’s all.
31:01 DS: We are facing in that direction.
31:04 K: Yes, that’s all. And not go into details at present.
31:08 DS: Although I think that it should go through the school to the students because then I think it would help them, it would communicate with them in a different way. Instead of rules, and this and this and this, they would see that we, by our action, we really mean this to be a serious place.
31:35 MS: And of course, it’s a very important thing, numbers. Forty people can feel they are together and are a family. When you get to sixty you get splinter groups and working against one another. But if you can keep the whole community down to not more than forty then you will feel together, you feel all belonging.
32:01 K: Yes, sir. What I really wanted to point out or ask: are we all in the same direction, are we all thinking along these lines? To have more leisure and to utilise that leisure for the real purpose for which you are here. And second, so that we don’t have to spend all our energy about curtains and toilets and who sleeps with whom and all the rest of it. And the other is, as long as you call it a school, people shrink from it. They want to send their children here but they say, ‘Please, that’s all right for them, not for me’. I’ve heard this so much here.
33:08 MS: You could drop the word ‘educational’ from the title too.
33:10 K: Yes.
33:12 DS: Well, we have to be a bit careful - it doesn’t matter now, but I think we have to be careful because we are a charity. We get many things done.
33:28 K: I am just saying we must go very, very carefully, intelligently and not just rush into it. But I am still asking: are we thinking together about this matter?
33:46 BJ: Krishnaji, I personally have been thinking about this for some while. I think definitely we need more leisure. I think also we need to have older students. I wonder, bearing in mind what has been said about, what Brian said for example about, schools, whether we couldn’t also include thinking about having older students, young adults here who would be here for say some years and then they would go out and be teachers, perhaps in some of the Krishnamurti schools.
34:33 DS: That would be amongst, that’s part of it. And also people who come for a short time, people - when we first started it was very difficult, how did you get the staff? So I feel they want to go into this and then perhaps they might even start schools themselves.
34:57 K: No, I don’t say K schools. Suppose I come from - I am not interested in schools.
35:04 BJ: And also, Krishnaji…
35:05 K: Wait, sir. But I am interested in all that, and at the end of a certain time I say all right, I’ll go and write books, go out talking or do anything, don’t limit it to schools.
35:20 BJ: No, I am certainly not limiting it.
35:22 DS: There might be some people whose interest did go to schools.
35:23 K: Of course; schools, writing, anything.
35:26 DS: Meeting life.
35:28 MZ: We don’t dictate what they do with whatever they receive here.
35:40 BJ: Well this actually has been going on for some long time here. Visitors have come from places like Brighton and they have stayed here for a week, for three days, for two weeks. This has been going on.
35:53 K: Not so casually, much more serious, more - gone into it much more deliberately.
36:01 DS: And not from the point of view of schools, which is the contact now.
36:07 BJ: Yes.
36:08 K: What do you say, sir, Mr Black? You seem rather hesitant about it.
36:12 Q: Well, it seems to me that Brockwood school has done, is doing is so good, so valuable.
36:18 DS: Good.
36:19 K: I am not saying it is not. We are not saying it has not done good but those of us who are here haven’t got enough leisure, enough energy, to go into this much more deeply.
36:40 Q: Sir, I completely understand. I go along with what you are saying, with what you are proposing entirely, if that is confined to here. But it seems to me that it would be a pity if no such school as this existed at all because it really does provide something very valuable.
36:56 K: Then what shall we do, sir?
36:58 Q: Well, suppose for example that another school was started like this, to do all the hard business of educating adults, adolescents.
37:08 K: Where is the money? Where are the people? Do we want that? Does the present group say we will go to some other place and start a school?
37:25 DS: No, I don’t think they are saying that. But people who come here might go into that, or they might write, or they might, whatever they do.
37:35 K: I agree, I agree but is that what Mr Black is saying?
37:36 DS: That’s what he’s saying, I think, isn’t it?
37:37 Q: Not quite. It isn’t practical and I haven’t thought about it properly. I am sure that there are all kinds of practical problems.
37:42 K: He says that it would be a pity that this school goes completely.
37:44 DP: At least he says he is in favour of the proposal.
37:49 Q: Yes, I am in favour of the proposal if it were confined to here, but it would be a pity if a school like this didn’t exist elsewhere.
38:05 MZ: We are not saying there shouldn’t be other schools.
38:09 Q: Well, you are stopping everything here in favour of this new idea.
38:12 MZ: Well, not everything.
38:13 K: I don’t follow this argument.
38:18 DS: He’s, I think, saying that it’s a pity that this place as a school - because he is saying that if it becomes for adults only really rather than for children. Is that it? We are really saying yes, we do feel that but we’ve found through the experience of this that that really is mistaken if we pull it down to that.
38:58 Q: Well you have been doing it a long time. I haven’t, so I don’t know.
39:05 DS: I feel frustrated. I feel that I don’t want to spend my life doing what I’m doing, becoming a good administrator. And not only that but it’s moving in that direction and it’s moving in that direction to take away from the energy that is this place. And I see it for myself and I think I see it in nearly everybody here.
39:30 JF: I’m not really clear what sixteen to twenty-year-olds would do here.
39:41 DS: We would have to finish their education or they would have said ‘I am interested in really living this way.’ I mean one student has come to me and said ‘I want to be here in this place to investigate all this. I’m really not interested in exams, although I see that I have got to go and earn a livelihood’.
40:06 JF: That critical age of late teens, I mean, they might regret it not having obtained some qualifications.
40:13 DS: We are not saying that. We see the need too. And we are providing - we are even going further, we are saying instead of spending your time at an American university because you are a foreigner and you can’t get into any English university or universities overall with all their shortcomings, you can do it here, in the ambience of this place and get yourself a qualification too, if you need it in life.
40:41 JF: What is the minimum age for the Open University? Twenty-one?
40:45 Q: That’s under question for the moment.
40:46 DS: Yes. I was talking to someone from the Open University who said if we get a group of people who are really seriously wanting to do this they will meet our needs; which means they will probably drop the age limit.
41:01 K: What is disturbing you, sir?
41:08 (General discussion, inaudible.)
41:13 JF: I mean that age is A-level age, and it isn’t after all our strongest point, it’s our weakest point.
41:24 Q: Jim, I think, if I understand it, it takes enormous energy and time to get A-levels, not only for the teachers but for the students, and to go in the direction in order to earn a livelihood. We are saying you can go all over the world to do that. We are not proposing the best in that direction. If you want to come, you might be risking something.
41:54 JF: It’s a risk for the rest of their lives.
42:00 WA: On the other hand they might get something from here that is for the rest of their lives that is more than exams.
42:10 K: What is Mr Fowler trying to tell us? What are you trying to say, sir?
42:15 JF: Well, I think we are exposing teen-agers to a big temptation, to find a good, rational excuse for dropping out of their studies, which they might regret.
42:26 K: Oh, no, no. I think you have got the wrong end of the stick. We are not saying that. Is this what you are objecting to?
42:35 JF: Yes, I feel very strongly about it.
42:37 DP: There’s something much more they can learn.
42:40 JF: We’ve been trying for fifty years and we haven’t learnt it.
42:45 DP: Yes, but we know it is to be done and can be done.
42:49 JF: They could finish up spending three years here and not achieving this superior purpose and not having the inferior either.
42:59 BJ: But Jim, they can leave here having failed their A-levels and go somewhere else and take them. It’s not a problem in this country. There’s no age limit on A-levels, you can take A-levels when you are eighty.
43:18 DP: You say that for a student, but we are not offering a third of what we could offer by just keeping them to the academics.
43:32 JF: This extra leisure we have got, say from three o’clock till six o’clock in the afternoon, what are we going to do with these people?
43:41 K: Wait, wait, sir.
43:43 DS: We are not going to do anything with them; they are going to do something themselves. That is the whole point.
43:51 JF: But what are they going to do?
43:52 DS: They are going to investigate all these other things. We are going to talk together, we are going to meet as human beings in this place and go into it. We are going to live together. We are not going to have a school where we are going to say this is what we are doing.
44:07 JF: Well, think of it, try having a whole life time of discussions every day. I am sure as a teacher…
44:31 K: Then what do you propose, sir? What do you propose?
44:36 JF: What worries me, sir, is that I feel there has got to be some serious purpose at the technological level. If we don’t have that we are going to be exposed to a lot of drop-outs and neurotics who…
44:53 K: But we are going to be very careful about our choice. What are you objecting to, sir?
45:01 JF: What I am objecting to: how do we choose them?
45:04 K: That’s a detail.
45:05 JF: We’ve never sorted out this problem.
45:06 K: That’s a detail.
45:07 DP: Because here we are.
45:08 MZ: A young person today, we are more or less committed to keep them for, what - one, two, three terms or a year. If under these circumstances we say yes, you can come and the person wants to fritter their time away…
45:16 K: We pack them off!
45:17 MZ: Out.
45:18 Q: In a way I can see how Jim is raising a valid point in that, for instance, it (inaudible) sixty students and that has somehow warped how we look at students a little bit. If a student stands out where we have a different structure and we didn’t have enough people here to meet our financial costs, it might also work on our perceptions of who we bring in, just to bring in people to meet the costs.
45:44 MZ: We mustn’t let that happen.
45:49 Q: What is the difference between not letting it happen then and not letting it happen now?
45:53 MZ: Well, we’ll have to…
45:54 Q: We will still have the costs to meet in both cases.
45:57 MZ: But we have to think out a different approach as to how we meet the financial requirements in this place.
46:02 Q: If we could do that then that would help, that would be a very key thing.
46:08 MZ: That has to be gone into, all of it, think harder, because…
46:11 DS: You wouldn’t have to have the number of academic staff. The staff would be human beings who are living and working here and vice versa. And it’s a more whole way of looking at it too. It has dangers, I think that. I think there will be just as many difficulties attached to it.
46:41 K: I’m not sure.
46:42 DS: Well, I think that there could be a danger, the people who have got leisure and money….
46:49 K: Ah, that is why we said we would be very careful who comes here.
46:54 DS: We must.
46:55 K: Of course, that’s understood.
46:57 DS: But it is quite difficult, Krishnaji, because money, we have to pay the bills.
47:01 K: I understand all that. We’ll have to go very carefully into all this. I mean it’s not going to happen tomorrow.
47:11 DS: No. Except, that in that we are talking as we are, it has happened.
47:18 K: It has happened in the sense we are moving in that direction.
47:24 SN: I think if we agree basically, you know, about the direction it’s taking, then I think we can go very carefully into the details and work out the details.
47:39 K: That’s all I am saying. Details - if you first of all start with details we’ll never agree, we’ll just be talking everlastingly about details. But if we agree in principle that this is the right direction, and we all want this direction, then we can turn our minds to other things. But if you are uncertain about this, we must make it clear now, or another time. You know what I mean. Perhaps this is totally new, you have to think about it, you have to, you know, find out, all the rest of it.
48:22 JF: Presumably, we wouldn’t send students away, we’d let them grow out the school. Next year just take on fifteen-year-olds and the year after…
48:31 DS: I think we’d have to move quicker than that because I think that if we feel and agree that this is a real thing that we are talking about, then I think we should make it known to parents that this is - the direction is changing, that we find it necessary to change the direction.
48:51 DP: It seems our basic intention is to make ourselves better people. Ourselves better people.
49:02 K: I don’t think we are answering Mr Fowler’s questions. And Mr Fowler is not yielding either. Mr Fowler is not yielding, he is sticking to his point.
49:16 JF: Well, I think I’m yielding to the extent that I’m suggesting that we do a slow transition.
49:24 K: We said that. We said it’s not something to be done the day after tomorrow. It has to be done very carefully, very slowly, perhaps take a couple of years.
49:35 JF: Because I just felt if we did it next year, at fifteen, it would give us a chance to feel our way and see…
49:40 K: We are doing it now, we are feeling our way.
49:45 MZ: We might well get applications, we used to, from older students who have finished with what US call High School, don’t know what they want to do, and we’ve taken some in the past, but more or less they never really fitted in quite because the focus was on younger students. (?) is a good example, a boy comes back. And there are many who would like to come today. So that next year, if we were taking those students, we could add it that end instead of adding at the fourteen, fifteen-year-olds.
50:23 Q: I am sure if it was written up in the Bulletin and the word gets out and everything there will be people who respond.
50:33 K: No, but we must be careful how we spread this thing.
50:38 Q: Yes.
50:40 K: Otherwise the parents of these little children will say what are you all doing?
50:44 HT: Yes, we must be careful how to speak to the students, too.
50:52 K: Sir, as I said, it is a very tentative enquiring whether we are moving in the right direction, hesitating and examining. You can’t say, well, I’m going to tell the students immediately, you are not wanted here next year. That would be cruel. But do we all feel this is the right direction? I keep on asking this.
51:24 SF: I think we do, sir. I think we do.
51:28 K: Be quite sure, sir. Not ‘you think’.
51:31 HT: Are you asking us really, sir, whether it is the intention of all of us here in this room are really serious about doing this in our own lives.
51:48 K: That’s right. I am absolutely asking that. And if they are, and they see the necessity of having leisure - I am using that word ‘leisure’ in the right sense, to study, to enquire, to - you know, meditate, to go into this profoundly - if all of us see the necessity of that then we can work out the details, very carefully, slowly. We are not going to do anything for the next year so it will take time. We will go into it very, very carefully, all the financial side, you know, the whole thing. But we must be perfectly clear that we really, as we are going to have leisure, that we are really serious. That’s all I’m asking. To flower, to grow, you know. Look, sir, I’m eighty-five, I am going to die.
52:50 DS: Let’s go into that.
52:53 MZ: Also the question about what will they do.
52:57 K: Who?
52:58 MZ: The people that have schools. The officials in the school should answer that question, I feel. There’s a maturity that you are looking for to make this thing work is that people won’t have to be saying that at nine o’clock you do this and at three o’clock you do that. They must find their own depth of seriousness and investigation and not just be recipients of programmes.
53:25 K: So it has been all along…
53:27 DS: I think what Mary has just said is very important.
53:30 K: Of course.
53:32 MZ: And you will then know whether they belong or not. If they go and play tennis all day…
53:45 K: I am not being personal. But I want to say something, which is I am eighty-five. Probably I have another ten, fifteen years. I’m pretty well. But here, in India, in various schools, I feel it is important that somebody really understands what I am talking about, not intellectually but in depth and lives it and all the rest of it. Some people here and in India. You follow, sir? You understand what I am saying?
54:23 DP: Will you be able to give as much time to us? It’s very important..
54:33 K: Details we’ll work out very carefully. I won’t enter into details at present. But I want - not ‘I want’ - do we want a Brockwood like this, where people are very serious and using their leisure for serious purpose? And A-level and all that, some students will want to do that or some students who don’t want to do that at all, who want to stay here. I wouldn’t call them drop-outs. If a man or boy in Seattle says ‘I want to come here, I’m eighteen, twenty, I have decided I want to go into all this’, he should be here. He may find that he is not serious or may drop out after being here. That’s a different matter. But this is a place where the fountain is flowing. I don’t know if I’m using the words. And people come to drink the waters of this place. Not a Spa! Not Evian, Vichy or something like that. Do we feel this? It’s not probably a fair question because this may be totally new, or you have thought about it; I may be precipitating this. You may say ‘Please, I must have time to think over it, I must go into it, we’ll answer it a little later’. That’s perfectly right. But is this what we want to do here? You see this problem is going to arise when I go to India. It has arisen as a matter of fact because I have precipitated it. In these schools, Rishi Valley and Rajghat and other places, there are over three hundred and fifty students and in Benares, Rajghat, there are probably a thousand students, college and all the rest of it. We can’t deal with such a large group. So what shall we do? You follow, you understand? It’s a problem which we shall have to face and we’ll deal with it, but in those schools, with such an enormous number of students, you can’t deal with the same thing as we do it here. They are well-established, you can’t say well we’ll start again. It’s impossible. The government won’t allow it because these schools are very well-known and the President of India’s grandson or grand-nephews, great-grandmother is in the schools and therefore they would absolutely shut the whole thing - I mean throw us all out and put new people in it. So we can’t deal with those schools as they are. We’ll have to leave it, find good people to work at it. That’s the function of the Foundation of India. They are doing it, Narayan is there and others are working at it. But the problem exists there, you understand? I wonder if I’m making myself clear? Not a problem. The demand is there. And we’ll have to answer it, I’ve phoned them already, gone into it, we’ll have to - when I go to India next month we are going to go into it thoroughly. But before I go - it’s not I am important or anything - before we leave we have to come to some definite move. You understand what I am saying?
59:29 HT: It seems from what you are saying you seem to sense in us a reluctance to move.
59:35 K: A little bit; I feel a little bit slowly. What do you say, sir?
59:45 SS: Yes. I am personally a little bit slow about it because it is rather new to me although many times I’ve wondered what the place would be like without adolescents. And many times I’ve thought why don’t we just get rid of all these people! (laughter)
1:00:05 K: No, no, sir. What we are saying is very simple, isn’t it?
1:00:17 SS: Very simple, yes.
1:00:19 K: Now do you feel that it is the right movement, that it is the right way to go along?
1:00:35 SS: I am not sure.
1:00:36 K: All right. Good! Take time. Go into it. You understand, sir, what we said? A place where there are not only young people who are willing to come here, who may take A-level, university, I don’t know whatever it is called, but also other people who want to stay here, go into it, study. You follow? Take all that into consideration. And having leisure. Leisure which makes us grow, flower, understand, be human beings of a totally different kind so that they can be a centre - I won’t go into all that. You know what I mean.
1:01:46 DS: It’s the leisure to work. It’s the leisure to really work. You see I feel if we don’t listen or look at what has been told us, all of us as we are here, we will do exactly what Krishnaji has just said. We will be three hundred and seventy, absorbed in making a school, doing a school because we didn’t stop and really look at what was happening. I think it is very important we do that. That is part of the leisure of working at this. Instead of the focus being as a school, we are the focus. We are creating the - we are what will draw people here to say- look we want to work at this.
1:02:49 K: Quite right. You see at Rishi Valley and Rajghat, they have got about four hundred acres there, three hundred acres. Rishi Valley has four hundred acres. The school takes about two hundred acres or more or less. And Narayan and a few of us thought that as it was such a big place we should have a place there where older people can come to study. You follow? You understand what I’m saying? And somehow it’s not working out. Most people who come will be the retired people. You understand, sir? Who have worked till they are fifty-five, or sixty-five, exhausted and Rishi Valley is a beautiful place, they say, ‘Sorry, we’d love to come and settle down and we’ll talk about serious stuff’ and all the rest of it. Their brains are washed up, you know, so it is not working out. So we have to find a different way of doing the same thing. I don’t know if I’m making myself clear. So, are you thinking it out? Don’t take time! (laughter) Time is the worst enemy.
1:04:27 Q: When I came here it didn’t take time.
1:04:41 K: That’s just it. So don’t use time again. Now, tomorrow morning, do we meet the whole school and outsiders, or shall we go on with this?
1:05:25 HT: If we take time, as you said, I’m afraid that we might get into interminable discussions about this and that.
1:05:40 K: Oh, I think that is a horror.
1:05:48 MZ: Sir, I thought you were talking only to the students tomorrow, that’s the way I thought.
1:05:55 K: I don’t know, I’m just asking.
1:05:56 SN: Tuesday.
1:05:57 K: Tuesday?
1:05:58 MZ: Jean-Michel will be here on Tuesday.
1:05:59 K: When does that take place? When do they come?
1:06:02 MZ: One of them comes tomorrow and Jean-Michel comes on Monday morning.
1:06:08 K: So can we do it Monday afternoon. I can do the whole thing Monday. I’m only talking tomorrow. What do we do?
1:06:19 DS: You are only going to talk once more - is that what you are saying?
1:06:24 K: I don’t know. Look, I’ve got to go to the dentist on Thursday, which means Thursday off. That’s the 9th, or 10th or 11th. And after that I close shop! So we have got this period. And during that period Maroger and the Frenchman are coming for television and all the rest. So what shall we do tomorrow?
1:06:59 DS: Talking to the whole school. I feel that we could - I feel that people overall are coming towards it strongly, clearly. There are many details to work out but that’s not for now. That can come a little later. But I feel the school needs to meet the students as well, Krishnaji, tomorrow. Unless you feel not so.
1:07:37 K: I don’t know. I don’t know. I only talked to them last time, only two or three spoke, the rest were very quiet, probably shy.
1:07:51 DS: They were interested.
1:07:53 K: They are interested. They said so? I don’t know. I’m just saying. So what do you want me to do the next few days? Come on, you say.
1:08:02 SF: Sir, was there something more about this that you wanted to go into?
1:08:07 K: Not in detail. Because we can discuss details if we all feel this, then the details we’ll all agree. You follow? If this is not clear we will be fighting over details.
1:08:25 Q: You seem to be saying, Dorothy, that there’s no hesitancy in us.
1:08:32 DS: I don’t feel it. I feel there are particular areas.
1:08:35 Q: So, Krishnaji, can you say by this afternoon whether you want to talk about it again?
1:08:41 K: I am asking you, sir.
1:08:42 Q: No, no, do you think we are still too hesitant towards this? By asking for another meeting, if we really aren’t hesitant I don’t see what that purpose would be.
1:08:54 K: Personally, sir, I feel this is important. We have compromised and I think we should stop compromising. That’s all my point. I may be wrong. And I feel whenever we compromise things go wrong. I am pointing it out to you. You may object to all this. And I personally I don’t like to compromise about anything, except about my shoes and trousers. Inwardly I have never compromised. Right. If we all agree this is the right thing to do then something new will happen in here, in the brain. But if there is a kind of hesitation, friction and doubt and you know, then we’ll lose the vitality of it.
1:09:54 IP: If there is any hesitation in anyone now then I mean I don’t see how another meeting would make any difference. If we don’t speak up now that’s just carrying on with compromise.
1:10:15 K: Do you hear that, sir?
1:10:16 SS: I’m going to say this, really, which is - one of my reservations, which is: at the moment we have an excess of activity, that’s what we sense, we have an excess of activity.
1:10:36 K: Ah! All right, all right.
1:10:38 SS: We all have an excess of activity. But there is something about children, there’s something about adolescents which constantly makes you sit up and meet a very sharp challenge. Adolescence is a very sharp challenge both for the person who is going through it and for the person who is educating or attempting to educate them. There’s a quality of sharpness in that, which certainly keeps people awake. It may exhaust them. That’s the negative side of that. But it keeps them awake also. When you have a group of adults living together who are very nice people, they all get along with each other, at least in a certain way, nicely, civilised way, civilised way. And adolescence isn’t civilised really, it’s rather an animal stage, which is one of the interesting things about it! When you have this group of rather civilised people, fairly well educated, very nice, there’s a tendency I feel - I feel as if there’s a tendency to or there would be a tendency or there might be a tendency for the whole thing to go slack.
1:12:00 K: That depends on the people.
1:12:02 SS: Of course it depends on the people but I think it’s a danger.
1:12:04 K: Sir, I don’t want to be challenged.
1:12:10 SS: You don’t need to be challenged.
1:12:15 K: Put yourself in that position.
1:12:17 SS: What?
1:12:18 K: Put yourself in that position.
1:12:19 Q: I don’t think they do keep us awake. I think on the contrary they put us to sleep in a different way because we are dealing - we don’t have the depth really to deal with it, we are dealing with it on a somewhat superficial level. We just don’t have the depth to deal with it. Until we have a really profound ground that we are moving from, we really can’t do anything.
1:12:47 SS: But you see the profound ground is not in a change of the horses, so to speak. It is not in a change of the structure, nor is it in a change of purpose.
1:12:59 Q: I don’t think, we are not changing that. I mean that’s not what’s being attempted…
1:13:06 SS: You seem to be saying that this will - I am not against the proposal. I am not against the proposal if it’s what - I go with it very happily.
1:13:20 K: Ah! No, no.
1:13:23 SS: It’s not a personal objection. This is something that I’ve lived with, I’ve worked with for a number of years. So long as I’ve been a teacher, I’ve dealt with adolescents. So in a way I have rather a soft spot for adolescents actually. But with all their difficulties, problems, warts and all, you know.
1:13:44 K: Did you say warts? (laughter)
1:13:46 SS: So I’ll speak up for them too.
1:13:47 BJ: I think what you are saying, Steven, there’s a danger if we take older people this might become a rather self-cultured community concerned with personal salvation. And I think that is the great beauty of having adolescents, but there is always the work with them and I do agree with you, there is a very definite - not that they keep you awake but they question you.
1:14:25 SS: Yes, they do.
1:14:27 BJ: I think we still should have adolescents.
1:14:31 DS: You will have them.
1:14:34 MZ: And also isn’t there a greater - I don’t like the word ‘challenge’ - but there could be, in facing that we don’t become complacent and sink into a comfortable - the fact that the requirements that we are faced with if we have this leisure are enormous, much bigger than coping with adolescents, I would think. I haven’t had to cope with adolescents, so I’m guessing.
1:15:03 K: But you will have some adolescents.
1:15:05 DS: Yes, we will.
1:15:06 K: You are bound to have some.
1:15:08 DS: Yes. And I think it will be. I understand what Steven is saying and what Brian is saying, because I think we will have some but we won’t have those that we just spend endless time on answering a repetitive challenge.
1:15:24 BJ: And also I think one of the big traps here has been how in our deep concern for these children we have felt that we must offer a full education to them, a full academic education, exams and all, perhaps. And then, because we have had all of that, then we haven’t been able to give our energy and time to our own inner change and also the change of the young people.
1:16:00 SN: Steve, is your reservation that this might become a sort of ashram like any other place? Is that your reservation?
1:16:07 SS: It’s probably something else. I feel it may become rather bourgeois.
1:16:13 K: What?
1:16:16 SS: The place may become rather bourgeois.
1:16:23 K: Why? Ah, that depends on you.
1:16:28 SS: Of course. That’s what I am saying. I am not saying one shouldn’t go into it but…
1:16:40 K: Is it all bourgeois? Wait a minute, don’t answer. I am asking.
1:16:43 SS: I think one has to go into with one’s - it is in a sense because all the money comes from, you know, the support of…
1:16:50 K: No, no, I am not talking of that. I am talking, the sense of being occupied endlessly and not having leisure for something much more deeply. That’s all. That I’d call bourgeois.
1:17:08 SS: Yes. The other doesn’t guarantee, you see nothing is guaranteed. I think that’s all I’m saying, that nothing is guaranteed by this.
1:17:25 General talking inaudible.
1:17:26 SS: I’m not looking for a guarantee, I’m not asking for a guarantee. I’m saying there is no guarantee.
1:17:33 K: And that is normal. The totalitarians are spreading all over this world, this world of the bourgeois, they are essentially bourgeois, they are completely secure. I think we’d better stop, don’t you? Or do you want to say something?
1:18:13 DS: Did we decide how are you going to….
1:18:15 K: I don’t know, it’s for you to tell me.
1:18:17 WA: We have a school meeting tomorrow. A meeting with everyone tomorrow.
1:18:26 DS: You mean with Krishnaji?
1:18:28 (General discussion)
1:18:34 DS: I think, Krishnaji, that people are saying that they would like to meet with staff, students and guests tomorrow.
1:18:42 K: Tomorrow, alright.