Krishnamurti Subtitles home


BR81DT4 - Leisure
Brockwood Park, UK - 19 June 1981
Discussion with Teachers 4



0:19 Krishnamurti: I am sure Mrs Simmons has been talking to you about what she and I were talking about a few days ago. From what I have been able to gather from her conversation with me, and also generally with our discussion here, it seems that we have not enough leisure. We are overworked and we have not enough time to go into matters for which we came here. That is right, isn't it? Am I stating it right?
1:14 Many: Yes.
1:17 K: We apparently have come here – I use the word 'apparently' without any derogatory sense – apparently you have come here really to understand the so-called teachings, and we haven't time enough or leisure enough to go into those because we are much too occupied with our academic and general occupation. If that is so, and I believe it is, what shall we do, so that you have more leisure, you can go into all this, what we have been talking about, at length, deeply, and to have this leisure, what shall we all do together? Don't let us postpone this thing, let's settle it. Not wait until next year or the year after and so on. So we must come to some definite arrangement. So what shall we do?
2:36 Giselle Balleys: Could we see a little better what we mean by leisure? Because for some people, I don't know if it means having time in your room or having time...
2:47 K: Leisure to do what we want to do. Which is, some studying the teachings, some would like to go out for a walk, look at trees, look at birds, something or other. We must have leisure – I certainly have leisure, I must have leisure. I couldn't otherwise – you follow? I don't know if you all agree that we must have leisure. Not what we will do with the leisure – that comes next, if you are interested in that. What do you all say? Let's talk about this, please.
3:35 Shakuntala Narayan: I don't think it should be too difficult to reorganise so that we have more leisure. It is a question of readjusting and finding a good part of the day where one has the time to, as you say, go for a walk.
4:02 K: How do we set about this? That we definitely have time to ourselves. Don't call it leisure or anything – time to ourselves.
4:17 SN: I don't think it should be too difficult.
4:18 K: I don't know. We have talked about it, last year. We talked about it the year before.
4:26 Scott Forbes: Krishnaji, Don't we begin by looking at what we give our time to now?
4:32 K: All right, if you want to go into all that, do it.
4:34 SF: Well, I am wondering. You said, how do we set about looking at this? That is how I would set about looking at it: at what I now give my time to.
4:50 K: What do you say, sirs? Please.
4:53 Wendy Agnew: It seems to me that we do have some time but we have a general tendency of filling up gaps. I think that as soon as we have any time we somehow seem to fill it up. We have a period called 'rest period' but in fact we fill it with everything we don't seem to be able to fit into the day. So it seems to go quite deep into why we feel we have to fill everything up with doing and action.
5:23 Dorothy Simmons: Could we set about it by saying that we take longer to do things, that we are not governed by a time limit of examinations, say, and perhaps we could take a longer pace for that, which would give some space to teaching staff. I think that is really what they are saying: the pace is too much on doing.
5:51 K: Does it mean a different kind of organisation of the whole school?
5:58 DS: I don't think so. I wouldn't have said that was the difficulty. It means changing it, creating a different sort of balance, and I think in the other departments which are not teaching, then possibly we must get more help.
6:18 K: That is what I want to find out in our discussion. Is it that we need more help, more teachers, more outside help? What is it?
6:36 DS: The garden, say, has done a survey of how their time and money is spent. And what it reveals – I haven't gone into it in detail yet – but it is beginning to reveal something of this nature, that maybe there might be another way of doing it which is better. Instead of our all coming here and working in some specific sphere and saying we are here really because of you, the teachings, if you like, that we need to do something in that direction. But perhaps it would be better to get outside labour, the same as we get somebody to paint the house – it might be a better way of doing it. It is being investigated.
7:29 K: Then what shall we do? We are all here now. Can't we all agree and settle this thing? Not postpone it, postpone it, as we have been doing.
7:43 WA: I still think it is not just structural though, because I still think that we have a tendency to fill time up. Even if we have time, there seems to be some momentum that makes us fill it up, too. I think it is two things. I think it is two factors.
7:58 SN: We can watch that, I think. One can watch this tendency and we can say then, this is the time set for this and we are not going to fill it up. If we need a class to be fitted in that time we say we would rather drop the class than put it in that time which is supposed to be time on our own. I don't think it should be difficult. If we get our priorities right we will say let's not have a class at that time, let's do away with the class.
8:32 K: That is why I asked, is it a matter of organisation?
8:37 K: Or more people? S

N: Yes, it is to do with both.
8:41 K: So that all of us have time to ourselves to think, to meditate, do whatever inwardly we want to do. Apparently, we haven't time for that.
8:52 Q: Krishnaji, I can't help feeling that applies to a very small minority of us. I think it is only a very small minority who have such high-pressured timetables as that.
9:04 K: Is that so?
9:09 Q: Yes, possibly.

K: I wish you would talk.
9:15 SF: Well, Krishnaji, in the past we have also said that one of the things which demands a tremendous amount of time are some students, especially students who are immature or students who have problems. And they have tremendous demands which we are not even able to meet. But that is also something that we would think about changing if we were trying to give all of us more leisure.
9:44 K: That is what I am asking. Is it matter of organisation or more people or distribution of work? Please, let's talk about it and settle it.
10:02 SN: I think it is partly all of those.
10:05 K: So what shall we do?
10:08 SN: I think the simplest thing would be for Dorothy to go into it with a few people and see who is overworked.
10:20 K: Is that it? A small committee settles this?
10:22 SN: Well, not a committee. If somebody is overworked, she can go into it. If the gardener is overworked, she could probably meet the gardener and see how we can reorganise the garden so that there is more time for the people in the garden.
10:40 SF: But isn't it a matter for all of us?
10:42 Harsh Tanka: Are you saying that it is only a problem for a few people and therefore we shouldn't be talking about it here at all?
10:48 K: You don't think it is a general problem?
10:50 HT: That is what Shakuntala or some people seem to be saying, that it is not a general problem.
10:55 SN: No, I am not saying that. I am saying it is a fact that some people are more overworked than others. I think that is a fact.
11:02 Mary Zimbalist: What about Dorothy's leisure?
11:04 K: Look, would you say, do you need more leisure, you?
11:10 SN: I don't think I need more leisure. I feel that if I want more leisure...
11:18 K: No, that is not the point. Have you leisure enough to go into all this, the so-called teachings, to think about it, look at it and live differently? You know, all that. Have you time for that?
11:35 SN: Well, I would say I have more time than some other people.
11:39 K: No, don't compare yourself with others. I am asking you, if you don't mind my asking you, do you need more leisure to yourself? That is what we have been saying. That is what I am asking. Don't pass it around.
11:58 SN: I am not passing it around, but I see that actually I am not quite as overworked as some other people.
12:07 K: Do you need more leisure?
12:10 DS: Krishnaji, I think 'leisure' is a little bit of a misleading word.
12:13 K: All right, let's not use that word.
12:15 K: Do you need more time?

DS: More space. More space to go at a quieter pace.
12:21 K: Yes, more space, more time to go into yourself, study, look around?
12:29 SN: I feel I have time.
12:32 K: So you say, I have enough time for that.
12:35 SN: Yes. But I don't think that is so with everybody – that is with me.
12:41 K: I am asking you, don't bother about others.
12:45 Q: Could we take the case of the people who are here during the holidays and they don't have to fill their time with anything. In my own experience, it doesn't offer any more of an opportunity to go into these questions even though we have 24 hours a day of freedom – if we want it – of leisure. There seems to be another factor involved, more of how we dissipate the energy we have in the living of the day.
13:20 Stephen Smith: Isn't that because in the holidays people are resting from the term, really? They don't do anything of that kind because they feel they need a rest from the term.
13:37 Q: Well, I am in a slightly different position to a teacher in that my day isn't programmed for me. To a large extent I could take an hour off or two hours off. Nobody would notice if I took a day off – I don't suppose – now and again. But I don't think it is the answer. To me, the question is, where is the energy that should be there?
14:08 K: Does that mean we haven't got enough energy to go into other matters and we spend most of our energy in teaching?
14:19 Q: I think it goes mostly in conflict.
14:21 K: I am just asking, sir.
14:31 Christina West: I would like to move away from looking at it as enough time to go into the teachings. I feel on the estate, one is working unintelligently because we have taken on too much for too few people, so one is not living intelligently and also not drawing attention to that together and finding a solution for it. Exhaustion and pressure and so on make it difficult to live in a good way and work together.
15:05 K: If I may ask, have you enough time to yourself?
15:08 CW: No.
15:15 Q: I find I don't have enough time but I see that I create it, and yet the things that I find myself wanting to do and doing I see as necessary, so I make the time, and then someone will come up and want to speak to me and then I will see them, because that is important at the moment.
15:38 K: So you have enough time to yourself to go into something.
15:43 Q: Well, I don't.
15:44 K: That is all I am asking. So, you don't. You don't.
15:49 SN: No, I didn't say, I don't.
15:50 K: I am sorry, you said, I have. Please, let's talk about this.
16:01 Brian Jenkins: Krishnaji, I feel that one aspect of this is our relationship with the students. I feel that there is a division between the staff and students here. In that the staff work hard from morning till night, most of them, and the students, for many of them – I have spoken to three students today and they all say it is something of a holiday camp, it is a nice holiday here. Many of them feel this.

K: I know, sir. I see that.
16:33 BJ: And I feel in some way we have not found the right way to involve them, to make them feel that this is their community, that the garden, the maintenance, all these things, and their studies are all important and important for them to work at. You see, some boys have been doing some work here, outside.
17:00 K: Sir, that is a different – if you don't mind my pointing out, that is a different matter.
17:05 BJ: But I think in a way it isn't a different matter because if they helped the staff to work more then there would be a much better relationship between the staff and the students.
17:15 K: So you would have more time.
17:17 BJ: Yes, and the staff would have more time.
17:18 K: If all the students join in with what you are doing, and also study, you would have more time to yourself, more space.
17:28 BJ: I think so.
17:31 K: What do you say, sir?
17:33 HT: I doubt it. I doubt whether that would make much difference. We would just have to spend more time organising, telling them what to do.
17:46 SF: A lot of the things I do, a student couldn't do. And I can't begin to meet the demands that the students make on me for time – wanting to talk, wanting to discuss. I can't begin to meet that.
18:02 K: Sir, could we say, generally, all of us need more space, more time?
18:10 SF: I would say so, yes.
18:14 K: You would say.
18:15 SF: I would definitely say it for myself and for most people, I feel.
18:19 K: Now, how do we get that? Let's apply our minds – settle it. Not carry on the year after year, at the end of five years say, sorry, I am exhausted, I am gone. I came here for one purpose and I am now just a wheel in this machinery.
18:39 Q: Could I suggest something? I think some people are very busy, but it is more or less they have created it for themselves. They don't want to give up their busyness, apparently – I don't know how to put it. If they are given the choice, they want to continue like that.
19:09 K: So, are you suggesting, this occupation all day long is an escape?
19:15 Q: With some, maybe, perhaps.

K: Not some.
19:19 Q: Just a moment. Could I ask something? Suppose I came to a school and I came and said, look, I know there is a lot of work here to be done, and many people are busy and I am going to give my share, but I can't give as much as probably needs to be done. I will give what I can, and I need time. Which means maybe some afternoons off or whatever. What would the school say to it, if somebody wanted to do that?
19:53 K: If I came along and said, look, I can't teach, I want to help in any way I can, would you give me a lot of work to do so that at the end of the day I have no time, no space for myself? That is the point we are discussing, aren't we?
20:12 Raman Patel: But this happens in the end. This is what happens, really.
20:18 K: What?

RP: That a person comes and he starts to help in one area and he starts to help in another area, and at the end of the day one hasn't got much time.
20:26 K: So, what shall we do? Apparently, we more or less have agreed that we need more space. Right? Except her. She says, I don't need it.
20:41 Q: And except me.

K: And you.
20:44 DS: I think possibly Shaku has already looked at what she could drop. I think possibly you did drop some classes, didn't you?
20:54 SN: Well, it is not classes. I used to do more in the kitchen and I decided, no, I can't do it. I can't do classes and kitchen, so I dropped some things. I feel one can make leisure, but it means giving up something. I feel each one of us can take leisure if we are willing to drop something.
21:16 K: But if you drop it who will fill that space?
21:21 SN: Well, I see that by dropping it I am not putting anybody to inconvenience.
21:28 K: But you are bound to. S

N: No, I didn't. Not necessarily. I was giving some of my free time to the kitchen and I realised that it was making me tired.
21:40 K: Is that the problem? Is that the solution? That each of us drop something?
21:48 HT: It would only work if the things we were doing were unnecessary, but if it is necessary work then someone else has to take it on.
21:56 K: I know. That is just what I am saying.
22:01 DS: Matthew came with a suggestion of a way of giving more space to a teacher, say – and if it applies there, it applies to the other situation too – re-arranging the teaching periods and that you don't give so many alternatives. Say, if a class overlaps another class, you say, no, we won't have that little difference, we will put that as one class together. And I think he was suggesting that was quite possible and it seemed to me very intelligent.
22:40 Q: There are lot of practical things we can do. Matthew and I have been thinking of things, which we are developing. But what we have got to get clear about here is, are we discussing a practical problem or a psychological problem first? There are many practical things which I think we can do if we have really got the energy to make clear that we have the leisure we need. But is that our only problem, or is it first...
22:59 DS: But the practical problems affect the psychological problems.
23:03 Q: Right, but where would you have us start?
23:06 DS: Well, we seem to be starting on the practical level.
23:10 SS: We always do start on the practical level, that is the trouble. We always do start on the practical level, that is the trouble. We don't start at the psychological level. Wendy's mentioned a kind of compulsion, this compulsion to fill time, compulsion to be doing something, compulsion to be always in some way occupied. I don't think that will be much changed by a structure, really. I am sceptical.
23:34 SN: Yes, that is what I feel too, the point has been made – I think there is a tendency to create work, work as an escape, and I feel we have got to look at that. I am not saying everybody does it.
23:53 K: So you would rather be occupied from morning till night.
23:56 SN: No, I wouldn't, but I am saying that I don't want to be occupied and I would not be. I will make it clear that I want time, and if I want it I think I can make it.
24:08 K: As he pointed out, somebody has to fill the vacuum which you have...
24:16 SF: You see, I don't think that is always the case.
24:18 K: We are not meeting on this point.
24:22 SF: It is not as if you stop going out to weed because you want to make time and the weeds are going to stop growing. You can't just drop weeding, for instance. There are many things that you just can't stop doing and those are the places generally where the demands are very high.
24:42 K: What is it that we are talking about, all of us now?
24:46 SF: Well, I think that we disagree as to the source of why we are so busy.
24:53 K: No, I am not talking of why you are so busy. Do we want time, space for ourselves?
25:02 SF: Well, some people say yes and other people say no. Some people say, if you really wanted it, you could take it.
25:08 K: No. I would suggest for all of us we must have space and time.
25:17 SF: Yes.
25:19 K: It is healthy, normal, psychologically, not to be occupied from morning till night about something or other. Right?
25:30 DS: Yes, absolutely right.
25:33 K: Inwardly I need time, space. Not to be always surrounded by people, always concerned about kitchen, gardening, teaching – the sense of quietness and I want to look into things, etc. Do we want that? That is all I am asking, sir.
25:56 DS: That is what we are saying – we do want it.
25:57 HT: It is very clear that we want that.
26:01 K: Then if we want it what shall we do, next step, to have that?
26:07 BJ: Well, Krishnaji, you mentioned earlier increasing the number of people here. I don't know whether that would help. In fact, I think if anything that would make things worse.
26:15 K: I am just asking. I am questioning it. Do we need more people? Does the garden need more people? Do we need more people in the kitchen? I am asking. I am not saying it is necessary.
26:28 BJ: Nor am I. I don't know the answer.
26:32 RP: If you ask about the kitchen situation, we need more people.
26:39 K: So, what shall we do?
26:44 SN: I think Dorothy's suggestion was a good one, that we bring some outside help.
26:50 K: Yes, that is what we discussed yesterday.
26:52 SN: That is a very good suggestion.
26:54 K: We discussed yesterday in our talk, walk, whether we shouldn't hire a helper. Right?
27:04 DS: Yes, but we also said the difficulty of doing that, of getting appropriate people, and also I felt that it should be put to the staff, that is, to make a very different approach. You see, so far it has been our school, if you like, our concern to care for it and move it. And the moment you bring in somebody just as a job then something very different is beginning to happen, and so I said that the only time it had been so far successful was when Malcolm was here as a young boy. All the other helps we have had in the garden proved to be unsatisfactory. They stayed a month, they stayed two months and then they went, because they hadn't the concern of this place, it was just a job, you couldn't leave them over the holiday period. And also, whether you can get them at all. We waited for months on end, if you remember, to get the people we did get.
28:16 Q: And then, in that we are a community, they have relationships with the students. In a sense we have to take them.
28:22 DS: And they smoke and they drink and they meet the students down at the pubs, and a few other things happened. It brings in other difficulties.
28:30 K: I see all the objections, I know all the objections. Then what do we propose?
28:36 SF: It sounds like the alternative is to have more people who are coming here because they are interested to be here and working in the place, so enlarging the adult community here.
28:49 Q: Although, just to go back to the previous one, it has worked when there has been females involved. For example, Sue and Sybil, people like that are doing an excellent job, as far as I can see, and a good relationship with all of us. So it seems to be more a problem – if there is a shortage in the kitchen perhaps we may be fortunate enough to find more people like Sue and Sybil.
29:11 SF: But if it is on the gardening and maintenance side, we were trying to get more help, then probably the local housewives wouldn't be so appropriate.
29:24 Q: No.

Q: But the other thing is that Sue and Sibyl do cost us quite a lot of money.
29:28 Q: Yes, but we weren't referring to cost at this stage. We were just saying whether we could get the people.
29:33 K: Yes. We will go into the cost. Wait a minute. What do we do? We talk, but what shall we do?
29:42 CW: Well, it depends. It seems to depend on your priorities. If you feel it is important for the people living here to look after the estate, for instance, you may have to somehow make the work on the estate more simple. And that will be possible with a little reorganisation, I think. If you decide to take on, for instance, more adult members of the community to do the same amount of work as there is now, you get a bigger community and that might be not a good idea. It depends what your priorities are, what is important to us.
30:28 DS: Well, at the moment our ratio of staff to students is 2 to 1.
30:34 K: Beg your pardon?

DS: The ratio of staff to students is 2 to 1.
30:39 K: 2 to 1.
30:41 BJ: Two students to one staff?

DS: Yes.
30:44 Q: In relationship to anybody working outside it is a staggeringly light load, although it isn't psychologically in here. But 2 to 1 is extraordinary. It doesn't happen anywhere else really, does it?
31:00 K: What do you say, sir?
31:10 SS: As a community, I don't think much of the idea of employing people in general. I think the idea of employing people is not terribly good.
31:18 K: Why?
31:23 SS: Except for one or two like Sybil, like Sue who are good, but as a general matter of policy I don't think it is particularly good because it creates an employer-employee situation and you are just in a quite different kind of relationship.
31:39 K: But you have an employer-employee situation when you want to mend the roof.
31:44 DS: They come and go.
31:46 SF: It is not nearly the same thing, Krishnaji. If I could speak, for instance, just of the case of Jonas coming here to work in the video: I really had more work than I could do. Although one can hire in electronic technicians, no one that I could have hired in could have done what he has done, because he is here at the odd times, he is here doing a lot of work when it is needed to be done, even if it is a Saturday or a Sunday. And there is a certain amount of care for the quality that no amount of hired help could substitute for care.
32:24 K: So what shall we do?
32:29 SF: I would say that we have to, even though the student–staff ratio might be 2 to 1, I would say that we are talking about a living community here and we shouldn't compare it with other schools and we should bring in more adults.
32:43 K: No, what shall we do?

SF: Bring in more adults.
32:46 WA: But then that gets so that we have got so many people here we are all going to fall over each other.
32:51 SF: Well, it is an idea. I am just proposing it.
32:54 WA: We don't have the accommodation, apart from anything else.
32:57 SF: But we have two new cottages down there. We have got room for eight more people.
33:00 DS: But you haven't, because the Wheely Down cottage is going.
33:05 SF: Ah.
33:06 MZ: When you say the ratio is 2 to 1, do other schools, when they give such a ratio, count everybody?
33:13 DS: No.
33:15 MZ: They count teachers to students.
33:19 SF: And other schools don't grow their own vegetables, other schools don't try and maintain beautiful grounds.
33:24 MZ: Well, if they do they don't count it in the ratio.

SF: Exactly.
33:27 DS: Yes, but we are counting it in the ratio because we are saying we want a whole education, and so we are going from what we eat and how we grow it – we are doing the whole thing, and I think that is a very important...
33:38 MZ: I understand, but I think to say that other schools have a different ratio isn't a fair comparison.
33:44 DS: No, and I say it because it is so frequently said to us and I feel I have to explain it. And it is high, it is high on a sort of work level, although I am very proud of it, actually. I think it is very good and I would like more because obviously we need more.
34:03 SF: Could I just, to put this into perspective, another idea: Old Bill who used to work here, I used to speak with him about the way this place was run and operated during its heyday, and just the people on the grounds for the park and the vegetable garden, there were 14 full-time gardeners.

K: I know.
34:25 SF: All right? The people working inside the house just to keep it neat and clean and obviously do laundry and things like that, and the cooks, there were 36 of them.
34:34 MZ: In the house?

SF: In the house, with all the doing the laundry and the pastry cooks and the game cooks. So there were 50 people just to maintain this place. So we say that there is 30 of us, we are teaching 60 students, we are maintaining the full place, we are trying to build, we are trying to do everything, and somehow that is too many.
34:52 K: So you have come to the same thing, which means we need more people.
34:57 SF: It sounds like it.
35:00 Q: But if we were just trying to solve this practically, I think what one would do is each group of people responsible for each particular area of the school would get clear themselves what they feel they can do, and then between themselves how much more help they need in that area, if any, and then they bring all that to the whole group and make a decision as to how many more people are needed. I think the estate is quite different, for instance, from the teaching. The academic teaching I think we can reorganise in some ways. They are different problems. Each person makes their own feeling about what they can contribute and then we put that together and see what is still left over.
35:33 K: Yes, that is what we are trying to ask.
35:37 DS: Well, that is what we are frequently doing, also. That is what we do – we have maintenance meetings, we have garden meetings to do those very things, Krishnaji. But also the question of cash comes into it too. To have another member of staff means about 5000 pounds we have got to find over the year.
35:56 K: So what shall we do at the end of all this?
35:58 DS: Well, I think we do need more staff and I think we do need re-looking at everything again. And I think in the garden, in the maintenance particularly, we ought re-look at it, go into it and see if we are doing it in the best way possible. Again, in the teaching I think we can do the same thing and possibly get one or two more staff, but I don't think we can get dozens of staff more. But I think one or two staff might relieve the situation somewhat. Also it might relieve the student relationship of parents and all the troubled children if you had more adults around, because the wear and tear, after you have done a day's work, of dealing with all their problems and difficulties, is very time consuming.
36:54 SS: I think it was part of what we were talking about last autumn, was that we would try and sort of edge out that problem area. I would personally like to come back to that because I think that is, so far as consumption of energy goes that is a terrific area of consumption. Even if you are not doing it, you are aware of the problem and you are trying to find some way of breaking in on it, trying to talk to this one, move that one a little bit. It is an area of tremendous concern, at least it is with me. It doesn't mean that I am doing it well – I may not even be doing it at all in certain areas – but I am certainly aware of it and I am trying to break in on it somehow, and I am aware of the difficulty and it is very draining.
37:35 SS: I am not complaining about it, but it is there. When we said before that we would take less young students, less problem students, that would deal with that to an extent.
37:49 Q: But I thought something had become rather clear, and that is that if we take older students – we drop the younger students, we take the 16, 17 year olds – they are going to have their psychological problems as well – they are new to this approach and it is just going to be exactly the same. I don't really think it is going to make any difference.
38:08 SF: I thought we had said that it was not the age so much as the maturity. Someone might be 18. We have had older students here who have had problems and they have been tremendous consumers of time and energy because of their problems. So it is not a question of age, it is a question of maturity and responsibility and their overall ability to carry themselves and help with the place.
38:36 Q: In a sense, we have been doing that all along. We have always been looking very carefully which students we should take and which students we don't want to take.
38:43 SF: Well, perhaps we need to succeed a little more then, we need to be doing it better.
38:55 K: So, what? At the end of 50 minutes, what?
39:03 RP: I think it is always a question of finance in the end.
39:06 Q: No.
39:07 RP: To a certain extent.

DS: To a certain extent, but I don't think finances really order it, govern it.
39:15 RP: Earlier we raised that up – if we have 40 students here we are more selective to the majority, we have got the difficulty of filling 40,000 pounds.
39:26 DS: That is so. That is another problem, actually. It does mean there is less selection before you come here because not sufficient number have applied of the older age group. But there are other ways of earning money, also. We might do it quite another way, which we did suggest at one time but that seems to have disappeared somewhere or other.
39:54 MZ: What was that?
39:55 DS: Well, by having weekend sort of people coming here – adults. And you see, that way you might have more adults who were helping in the whole running of the place. It might be possible that way.
40:18 BJ: In a sense we have begun that by having quite a large number of guest helpers, we have had guest helpers here who have been doing that kind of thing.
40:27 DS: In a way, yes, that is so.
40:30 SS: No, but this would be different because it would also help to run the place financially as well. I mean, people would pay to come here.
40:38 DS: But as it is turning out, Stephen, those younger people who want to come have to be paid. We have to pay them rather than they pay us.
40:51 SS: Well, I know someone who ran courses for several months and he said, well, it is a condition of coming that you pay. So, you find a job, you save up and then you come. I don't see anything wrong with making a demand like that, rather than saying, come along and we will pay you. People can make money and then come – and it is possible. I don't see what is wrong with making a demand like that, really.
41:22 Ingrid Porter: I have got a feeling, I am not sure, I may be quite wrong, but I can't get this niggling suspicion out of my mind that we are trying to look for solution before we have really looked at the cause of the problem. Wendy pointed out something and Shaku said she has seen that she was doing too much and she has dropped it, and it seems that we are going one step too fast.
41:58 Q: To me, it sounds funny because if you consider this the most important thing in life and then we say, we don't have time for it, we have to do something else. If you really see the importance of this, the most important thing in our lives, why say, we have to have another hour in the day? Shouldn't it be so natural that we take the time we really want?
42:20 IP: Or say, it is difficult, which is what I mean by looking into the problem. For myself, to do my job perfectly I could do it the whole day and do nothing else but I am not here just for my job, I am here for other things as well, and also to do with the students, and be free to talk to people. So I take time from my job to do that, and somehow or other I can always catch up with my job. But the time that I take off from the job and spend on doing the other things I want to do, that does fill all the time, that doesn't leave any space. And yet I feel there should be and I am probably not doing it right.
43:14 K: May I put a tentative question? You can smother it, or rather, enquire into it. Dr Bohm and I have a discussion. It is taped and goes all over the world. I am just wondering if you can't do that with me, instead of Bohm. Not that he shouldn't ought to do it – if all of you can't do it with me. You understand my question? That means you must be capable of discussing with me. You have studied what I am talking about. To study all that, go into all that, you must have time, space. Right? Will you discuss with me? You have been here ten years.
44:17 SN: Well, I may not have the capacity that Dr Bohm has.
44:21 K: That is an easy escape.
44:24 SN: No, it isn't, it is a fact.
44:26 K: No, the intention to discuss, to say, look, what you mean by this? You are wrong, you are right – to have a dialogue. It is not capacity, it is a question of inquiry, digging. Will you do it with me? And if you don't, why don't you? Is it lack of leisure, lack of time, lack of space? Please answer this question.
45:04 DS: In a way, Krishnaji, don't you think that staff here are really attempting to live that, not in discussion but in action during the day?
45:15 K: Oh, maybe. I say I want to discuss with you.
45:17 DS: Yes.
45:19 K: You may be perfect in action. I don't know because I am a visitor. I say come and discuss with me, have a discussion.
45:29 DS: Well, they are discussing it, they are doing it.
45:31 K: I want a discussion. I want a dialogue.
45:35 DS: To talk about it rather than do it.

K: No.
45:39 Q: In addition.
45:41 K: Do it. But I want a dialogue.
45:44 DS: Yes, but they are, they have already. You said, are you prepared to do it – she is doing it. What I am trying to say is, you said, are you prepared to do that? She is in a way, and each one is doing that.

K: I am not sure.
45:59 DS: And you are saying take it further, as Mary said.
46:03 K: I would like to have a good discussion with him, as I have with Bohm or with some pundit, some scholar that comes here.
46:15 SN: I think quite a bit of that is happening. I think people do discuss.
46:21 K: Do you do it with me, I am talking about? You are twisting what I am saying.
46:26 SN: No, we are not twisting, we are trying to answer you.
46:29 K: No, you are not answering me. I said, will you have a dialogue with me?
46:36 SF: Krishnaji, what do you think prevents our having a dialogue with you?
46:39 K: I don't know, I am asking you. Are you nervous of me, frightened of me, or I am impatient, or you say, for God's sake, that man talks about the same old stuff, I am not interested.
46:52 SN: Sir, I can tell you why I am nervous. I feel that I don't have the capacity that someone like Dr Bohm has.
47:07 K: Why do you reduce it to capacity?
47:10 SN: Well, it is.

K: Is it?
47:12 SM: It is a talent or a gift.
47:14 K: Don't stick to it, please. Is it capacity?
47:18 SS: Is it not rather that one hasn't found one's own approach to it?
47:22 K: No, sir. You have been here for ten years, five years, and why don't you have a dialogue with me? Either – I am not saying it does – either you are not interested or you have not gone into it deeply enough or you are nervous. You follow? I say to you, I say to Harsha, come and talk to me. You came here for the teachings so let's talk about it, not the doing of it. I want a dialogue, I want to see how far he has gone or how far I have gone. I want to have an exchange of not only words – the feeling, the intensity, all that.
48:16 SF: Krishnaji, when I feel I can't or I don't want to talk, it is because I haven't gone into these things deeply enough. I feel after the first few minutes we have plumbed the depth of all I have seen, and that is it, there is no more for me. It is very difficult for me to talk after that on some subject, or I might just lack courage.
48:37 K: So what shall we do about it. I am coming to the point. We want leisure. We want time and space. I won't use the word 'leisure', forgive me if I slip that word in. We want time and space. We came here for the teachings. Right? That is what you said. And apart from the action of those teachings, I say let's sit down and have a good dialogue about this. Will you do it?
49:19 Q: Krishnaji, I would like to do that.
49:24 K: All right, do it.
49:26 Q: Speaking personally, I would very much like to do it.
49:29 K: Not now, because we are here for a different purpose.
49:30 Q: Right. That is the trouble – we don't have the time with you to do that on a personal...
49:34 K: You see, I have asked you. You haven't asked me.
49:40 MZ: Sir, are you talking about having a one-to-one...
49:43 K: No, not one-to-one. As a group, as a few people, who say, look, what do you mean by this? What do you mean by meditation? What do you mean by this or that?
49:53 RP: Isn't the difficulty partly because it is a big group, sometimes it is difficult?
49:57 MZ: Would it – I am not saying it would – but would it be helpful if, say, we are all present and on one day, four or six, two, or any number you want, are the ones who are going to talk to you and the rest of us are going to listen, and it is up to those people to speak, to carry on the dialogue. Would that be helpful?
50:20 K: I am proposing this. You don't propose it.
50:23 SF: Are you suggesting then that we are not really interested in this?
50:27 K: I don't know. I am not saying you are not interested.
50:29 SF: Well, you seem to be suggesting that the reason we don't speak...
50:32 K: I am asking you, sir. I talked to those students for the last four or five times. They said, please, next time – when is next? We want you to talk to us. They keep at it.
50:45 MZ: How many of the group speak up? Roughly how many?
50:49 K: I should think half of them. They all shake their head. When I say, do you want this to go on, all of them shook their head, more or less. So I am not criticising, I am not saying you are not studying, etc. Is that the central core of this too, this feeling that we haven't time to go into this? Let's leave that for the moment. We will come back to it. Ojai school, they have got up to a certain age. They were very upset when Brockwood said we won't take any children, students below 18, 17, whatever it was. The parents said, and the school teachers there at Ojai said, what shall we do? If they don't take our children, Brockwood won't take them, what shall we do? And they proposed to start a junior – what is it?
52:10 MZ: A secondary school.

K: A senior school or whatever it is called. And they are going to go into it, two people are going to study what is implied in a senior school. And they need to start it, three to four million dollars. You understand? Am I conveying something?
52:37 MZ: Not to start it, but to...

K: Just to start building. In America everything costs – building, and those buildings have to be according to some rules, and so on. Three to four million dollars. Right? So I was talking to Mrs Simmons the other day, if it is not possible here – please, we are discussing, so please – if we shouldn't take lower age. Right? This is what we were talking about.
53:30 DS: We have taken one from Wolf Lake who was 14, because we felt she was a mature person.
53:37 K: Yes, I know. Wolf Lake is closed.
53:40 DS: Yes, I know, but we have taken one, Krishnaji. And I what I feel is that if, say, Mark Lee puts forward a 14 year old whom he thinks has a mature approach, we would say, yes, come and find out.
53:57 K: So you don't rule out...
53:59 DS: Not rule out, but we go very hesitantly.
54:02 K: Carefully, that is right, as you would do with any other students.
54:07 DS: Yes, and that they have sent us some very good students.
54:10 K: You go tentatively, very carefully, etc., with every student.

DS: Yes.
54:16 K: So if my son, who is 14 or 13, you would do exactly the same thing.
54:23 Q: Yes.
54:25 DS: From Ojai?
54:28 Q: From anywhere.
54:30 DS: Well, yes, we might do, but it is not what we said we were going to do. But seeing that that has disturbed Ojai, I think we ought to listen to that.
54:39 K: Please, listen to that too, and also I am living in Winchester or somewhere near here and I have got a son. I would like you to look at him as you look at other students, only he is 14. Would you do that? S

N: Yes.
54:57 Q: I thought we discussed it in the last staff meeting and the impression I got – maybe some people dissent – but the impression I got was the general feeling of the meeting was that we would be willing to take 14 year olds.
55:10 K: That is right. You agreed to that?
55:11 Many: Yes.
55:14 HT: As long as they have sufficient maturity.
55:23 SF: It would mean perhaps that for a 14 year old to participate here with enough maturity would make him quite an extraordinary 14 year old. Whereas an 18 year old here, he would not have to be quite so extraordinary because he would have the maturity by virtue of his years.
55:40 K: May I, in a riposte to that, may I ask, are these students mature enough too?
55:48 SF: Many of them, no.
55:52 Q: And some of those are in the older age group.
55:57 K: Yes, I am asking. I know they are much older. Are they mature?
56:04 SF: Many of them, no.
56:05 K: No. So, I am just asking, according to what he says, the gentleman says that generally there is agreement amongst you all that you will take 14 if they are so-called 'mature', in quotes, fairly capable of thinking. Like these students here, are they capable of thinking?
56:35 SF: Many of them, yes. Some of them, no. The ones who are incapable of thinking are the ones who consume most of our energy.
56:52 K: So you would agree to that?
56:56 SS: Well, I would like to make a proviso, that they should be exceptional 14 year olds, as Scott has pointed out, not run-of-the-mill 14 year olds.
57:07 K: Why do you say they must be exceptional?
57:09 SS: Well, because we have run-of-the-mill 14 year olds and we have had them for years and that is part of the difficulty that we are trying to deal with, is that we have had people who have been for three years and they are still 15 or 16, or they were here from the age of 14 to 16 and it just creates havoc.
57:35 K: They are not mature.
57:37 SS: They may have a certain interest but they are not mature.
57:40 BJ: Maybe then, Steve, we should ask them to leave.
57:43 SS: But we don't ask them to leave, that is the whole point.
57:45 DS: We should look at that and see if we can find a way of having a sort of testing time, if you like, to go into it, to see this, and to act more quickly than we have done. You see, if we let it go on till the end of a year then it is extremely difficult to just say, go back home.
58:07 K: Oh no, you can't.

DS: You can't do that.
58:09 DS: But if you say, look, you must have some maturity to come here, whether you are 18 or whether you are 14. And to all them I would say that, if by your behaviour and your response to this whole place you are not doing that, then at the end of a term or halfway through a term – certainly the beginning term – we should go into that and we should act on it. I think that is where we have made our mistake.
58:38 SS: But a young person doesn't see it that way, the young people don't see it that way, they are seeing it as being kicked out. They don't see it as being a matter of maturity, they are being kicked out, that is all.
58:49 K: I know. So, may I ask, can we do choosing the students in a different way?
59:01 SS: I am suggesting, I am putting forward that we should be very selective – we are selective, generally – I think we should be highly selective for people in that age group – 14 to 16.
59:16 K: We start – is this what you are saying? – we start from 14 up, highly selective.
59:24 SS: Highly selective.
59:26 K: Is that it?
59:27 HT: And all the way through.
59:32 HT: We should be highly selective with everyone who comes here.
59:34 K: That is what I am asking.
59:37 DS: That is what we think we are being, but we are not.
59:41 BJ: If we were highly selective then we would have no students.
59:44 DS: That is true also, Brian.
59:47 SS: That is why I am saying don't be highly selective for all of them.
59:50 Q: But then you have to bear in mind that the older ones have an influence on the school, much more so than the younger ones. I am not sure we shouldn't be more highly selective with the older ones.
1:00:03 Jane Hoare: Can I ask a question which has always worried me? This term 'highly selective' – how do we know: what, who is touched, when, how? In their later life sometimes they come back and they have been very touched – we may not see it here. How can we be selective? How can we say that we would rather have a certain type of plant and not another type of plant? I have have never understood that.
1:00:35 SS: Well, because for the moment we are trying to look at ways in which we can create time and space among ourselves.
1:00:44 JH: I understand.
1:00:46 SS: Now, if you take every plant that grows and say, this plant here, we will work on it, we will water it, we will give it everything, we will put it under glass, we will do everything we can with it, that plant may produce something. But in terms of what it takes – it is a rather pragmatic way of looking at it – but in terms of what it takes, in terms of energy, time, everything, it is questionable whether one should do it.
1:01:16 SS: When you are looking at the question of the fact that the adults feel that they don't have enough time.
1:01:20 JH: Well, how can do we select what we do with our time? It is the same thing, question.
1:01:25 SS: It is not a question of what you do with your time. It is a question of eliminating some of the more problematical things that one gets involved in day by day. It is not a question of making some superior to others. I mean, it is a fairly pragmatic matter. I see it pragmatically, anyway.
1:01:48 Q: But one of suggestions is that the gardener is in just as much disorder as the plant.
1:01:56 SS: Well, that is a different question, David. If the gardener has more leisure – at least we seem to be implying – if the gardener has more leisure he will be able to see where his disorder lies.
1:02:12 SS: At the moment he doesn't. J

H: Well, do we see clearly in time, or doesn't clear seeing happen very different?
1:02:23 DS: I think we have to see that we are not really a hospital and we are not starting with already with too-damaged people. Because other people are better equipped to deal with that, with damaged and hurt people. And we are saying we want healthy people who are able to face adult situations, and they are very difficult to come by, Krishnaji. There are not a large number of people who come here in that category.
1:02:57 K: I agree. If Ojai says, we have got six or seven boys who we think are really very, very good – would you accept them?
1:03:09 DS: Having explained all this, I would say yes.
1:03:12 K: You would examine them, and say, we can accept six people.
1:03:16 DS: Yes. And I would like to put a proviso that we would like to go into it and see if what they say is so.
1:03:23 K: Yes, of course.
1:03:25 MZ: You would still make the same individual decision that you would make about any student. If this is a decision on the part of the school, I would like to be able to tell Ojai because at the moment they are turning themselves inside out to try and answer how they have further classes for six students who will graduate from the school this June. And they are trying to use the living room at Arya Vihara or some place to go on educating them because there is no building as yet. So it would help them enormously if they could be told that they are eligible for consideration at Brockwood, if you all decide.
1:04:12 WA: We might not accept them, Mary.
1:04:14 MZ: You might accept them on an individual basis, but I mean that they would be considered just as they would have been considered two years ago.
1:04:23 SF: Krishnaji, I think there is a problem in this, and it is a human difficulty that Jane has just begun to point out, I think, or pointed out in a way, which is: when someone is here and we have this person and we say we are going to look, and after a term we are going to say yes to one person and to another person we say, really you don't have the maturity or the interest. But that is an extraordinarily difficult thing to do.
1:04:54 K: Of course.
1:04:55 SF: And our tendency is to say – and it always has been – our tendency is to say, well, we think that there is something down there way deep and that we can contact it, or, there is some slow improvement. That is a term that we often hear, that person has improved, and yet the improvement seems to be something quite minor in their behaviour, and does not necessarily indicate any deep change in their involvement. So, how can we deal with this very difficult task of saying yes to somebody, or the very difficult task to saying no to somebody?
1:05:31 K: I understand.
1:05:34 DS: But I think that is what we have got to do.
1:05:37 SF: That is what we have to do and yet I feel we don't know how to do it.
1:05:40 DS: Well, I think we must try and find out how to do it. And I think that over the years it is become clearer that we are really sort of hospitalising this place, making it into a remedial place.
1:05:55 SF: A hospital.

K: Yes, I quite agree.
1:05:57 DS: And I think we have got to say, look, we must keep our priorities in order. We are really not concerned with that. That is what I think we have got to be clear about. And the humanising thing is a very difficult one, and also because you feel that you are damaging a child still further by rejecting them.
1:06:20 K: I know.

SF: You feel like a brute.
1:06:23 DS: But somehow we have got to find out if it is possible to do that, or whether we are right to do that.
1:06:31 K: I understand. How do you now choose?
1:06:33 DS: How do we now choose?
1:06:38 SF: Well, to a certain extent, Krishnaji, it is by guess and by golly...
1:06:42 K: Just tell me. I send my daughter. How do you choose?
1:06:48 SF: We meet and we spend a little bit of time, but it is not adequate. You don't actually get to know a person until they have been here for a while. Because someone can be very charming and very nice and look very good. And especially if it is done by correspondence, it is an extraordinarily difficult task.
1:07:03 K: So what will you do?
1:07:04 SF: What I am saying is that you have no real basis for seeing anything until the person has been here for a while, and that is where the problem is – it is not choosing initially, it is after the person has been here and you see that oh, this person is going to be difficult.
1:07:19 K: Sir, how would you choose? Let's go into it for a few minutes. Look at it.
1:07:26 SF: The initial choice or afterwards?
1:07:30 K: Not afterwards. What is your quality of mind that chooses? On what do you base your choice?
1:07:48 SF: Well, one tries to discern in the other person an interest.
1:07:54 K: No, I am asking you, what is your approach to this problem? How do you look? I come here as a student or a teacher, a gardener, whatever it is. How do you approach me? How do you look at me? What is your measurement? I am using that for the time being. How do you measure me? Capacity?

SF: No.
1:08:29 K: Wait, I am asking you, please, I am asking all of you. Capacity? Because I can type, I can garden, I can write, do something, so do you judge me according to capacity?
1:08:43 SF: In a way, Krishnaji, if I could say, it depends on what you mean by capacity. If you mean a person's ability to garden or their ability to read very quickly – no. But in terms of their ability to look at these teachings and go into it...
1:09:01 K: No, look, don't take the poor chap of 14 looking at those teachings – he wouldn't understand it. Or even all those mature students that you have – they don't know what it is.
1:09:12 SF: But, Krishnaji, even a 14 year old has an ability to look at what he is doing.
1:09:18 K: When you talk to them.

SF: And many of them are very good.
1:09:21 K: You are missing my point, I am not talking about the student. How do you approach it?
1:09:29 SF: I am trying to answer, I am trying to say that my approach is to try and discern in the other person whether they have that interest and whether they have that ability to look at things seriously.
1:09:41 BJ: I am afraid that very often when we look at the student or the teacher, what we are looking for is our own prejudice.
1:09:50 K: I don't know how you do this.
1:09:52 BJ: We are looking in terms of our own values and judgements, and I think it is quite hard to see that we are doing that.
1:10:01 K: No, you are not meeting my point. Or perhaps I am not expressing it clearly. I am in a position to choose or to reject, keep this and put that away. How do I do it? What is my feeling? Not only I look at him, first of all how he dresses, how he looks, how he walks, how he talks, physical appearance, physical behaviour, and I also look at him – how he looks at you, how he smiles with you. And do I meet him with my prejudice or without my prejudice? And so on – I am looking at myself more than him, before I begin to choose or to accept or not to accept. I am much more concerned how I look at that boy or girl. Am I sensitive enough? I am not saying you are not. Am I sensitive enough to feel his capacities, his state of mind, the whole being of that person? I am only suggesting this. So, let's go back. So, you more or less agree, we can write to Mark Lee and people there and say, look, we are willing to, if you send fairly – fairly – mature, not too mischievous, not too destructive, we are willing to take them.
1:12:27 MZ: Krishnaji, I think in that we are not willing to take Mark or the Oak Grove School's evaluation, as such. We will take the application and then decide.
1:12:41 K: Of course, that is all understood.
1:12:43 MZ: There is quite a big difference there.
1:12:50 K: Do we agree to that, all of us.
1:12:51 Many: Yes.
1:12:54 K: Then what next? I would like to ask, will you have a dialogue with me?
1:13:04 JH: Can I go back? It seems that you say one lives second by second by second. It seems that part of what you are saying is to live as fully as one can second by second by second.
1:13:29 K: No, I am not saying that.
1:13:31 JH: All right, then I have misunderstood that. Because I definitely am in a muddle about that, because it seems that whenever one is deciding between one student and another, there is comparison then.
1:13:50 K: I am not talking of students, if you don't mind my insisting. If you said, look, don't talk about it, it is all right. I am asking you, will you have, all of you, a serious dialogue with me.
1:14:10 GB: I think that is what we all want.
1:14:12 K: No, attendez, madame. Will you? Which means what – that you must know what I have talked, how far you have gone into it, how far you are willing to go into it, not only verbally but in action, the whole lot of it. Will you?
1:14:40 SS: Yes.

K: Why didn't you ask me to do it? Sorry, I am not putting you on the spot.
1:14:48 SS: No, I am answering for myself. A kind of fear probably.
1:14:52 K: Why? I won't destroy you.
1:14:54 SS: I don't know. Because you are the great man.
1:14:56 K: Oh no, cut it out, all that stuff. I am not a great man. Skip all that.
1:15:02 SS: I know, but unfortunately one doesn't skip it, in a sense.
1:15:09 K: Why should I discuss with outsiders? You understand what I mean?

SS: I know.
1:15:18 K: They come here. They want to have a discussion with me. And you tape it, you video, whatever you do, and I was saying to myself this morning – why?
1:15:30 SF: Krishnaji, I feel also that if we begin talk with you there is something so deep and fundamental about who we are which is challenged, and this is a source of tremendous fear for us.
1:15:45 K: Sir, will you do it with me, that is all I am asking. Don't find excuses.
1:15:50 SF: Yes, I will, but you are asking why it doesn't happen. That is why I feel it doesn't happen.
1:15:53 K: Why?
1:15:55 SF: I feel it is because the very foundation of who we are, that we have spent so much time building, is called into question.

K: No, I am not talking of that. You are supposed to be here for the teachings, right? You came here for that, and apparently we don't talk about that. We talk about arrangements, garden – all the things, but not that. You may be doing it in life, I don't know.
1:16:25 BJ: Well, Krishnaji, I think the fact is that, it is not only that we are caught up in our work, but there is a great deal of work to do. I mean, there were some years ago I remember when a number of us went to Tannegg and talked with you, and I think it is a pity really we didn't continue that because then we had leisure and then we could talk about it.
1:16:46 K: So you need time and space now.
1:16:50 BJ: Well, yes, but we also need to be stretched. I think it is a very good thing that we all work hard, and then when we go to Saanen we have that time and leisure.
1:17:00 K: Yes, just listen to what I am saying. To discuss with me, to have a dialogue with me, you must be able to meet me, question me, doubt me, which means you must have gone into it.
1:17:15 Q: Yes.
1:17:17 K: If I say to you, have you meditated? Do you know what meditation means? You must have done something about it.
1:17:28 Q: Yes, well I have.
1:17:30 K: No, I am asking, I am not saying you have or not. But apparently we don't do that here. You may be doing it in your room or when you meet students and so on, but you never do it with me. You understand what I am saying, sir? Why don't you?
1:18:08 MZ: Here is the moment to discuss, right now, and here is the topic. Here is the moment to discuss and here is the topic to discuss.
1:18:22 SF: Well, Krishnaji, I began by saying I think that it questions things that we don't want to question...
1:18:27 K: No, I am not talking of questioning.
1:18:30 SF: All right, but in a sense, Krishnaji, you asked why we don't initiate, why we don't discuss with you,
1:18:38 SF: and I tried to, and you say no.

Q: Yes.

MZ: You reject it.
1:18:41 SF: And you say no, and then move on to something else.
1:18:43 K: No, I won't.
1:18:45 SF: So my attempt to discuss that is...
1:18:46 K: Wait a minute, go slowly. Let's go into this step by step. But if you jump ahead I say, that is not it, like some of the students.
1:19:04 SF: Well, I think that we are there, Krishnaji. I think that we have been listening to you for a long time and in a sense I think that we understand what I have said and I think that going step by step, I think that we are there. We understand that fear and we know that fear, and we all feel it perhaps.
1:19:20 K: So perhaps, either I am wrong – just a minute – or you have gone into it, not step by step, – as an idea, a conclusion, a thing which you have perceived and captured that. I don't know if I am conveying it.
1:19:42 SF: What you are saying is that the way I have gone into this is perhaps not adequate in order to carry on a discussion.
1:19:48 K: Perhaps. I don't say that. Perhaps. When Rahula, that Buddhist priest came here I mean, why should they come and why don't we do it here? That is my point. We are as good as – you follow? – we can apply our minds, create something ourselves.
1:20:26 BJ: But I think also, Krishnaji, we are a little shy to impose.
1:20:29 K: Oh no, sir. I am also shy, please.
1:20:33 BJ: Yes, but we don't want to deny other people having contact with you also.
1:20:37 K: Of course, they are coming anyhow.
1:20:40 BJ: Yes, but it is also to be understood that you shouldn't have talks every day and so on. You need to have rest.

K: Sir, I don't mind.
1:20:50 BJ: Well, other people say differently.
1:20:56 MZ: You see, we can't even discuss right now. I mean, this is a perfect example.
1:21:01 SF: Can we come back to what you were saying before, about perhaps we jump ahead, we don't go step by step? How do we then go about doing that? Because we apparently don't know how to do it even when we are by ourselves.
1:21:21 K: Sir, I don't know, now it is nearly time to stop. It is twenty past six or twenty-five past six. What time is it? S

N: It is twenty-one past.
1:21:42 K: Do you want to, like Bohm – he telephoned – or others, say I want to touch your mind, I want to see how you look at this, why do you say that. Bohm is concerned – if I am right, I may be wrong – he says, I want to touch your mind that goes very far, he tells me, if I have understood rightly, I may be wrong. And we discuss. It may be verbal, that is not my business. Say, for instance, we talked a great detail about attachment. He may be attached – it is up to him. I am not talking about Dr Bohm – about X. Will you do that with me?
1:22:59 BJ: I think most of us would like to do that with you.
1:23:01 K: Not 'like to' – want to do it, put your blood into it. I am not saying you don't, but are you doing it? You understand when I say I am questioning, I don't say you do or don't. So don't be defensive or offensive. I am inquiring. Right, sir? I don't measure. If Scott says to me, measure me, go in to understand me, look into me, I will. But otherwise I won't. I won't read private letters, and the people ask me to read private letters. So, I am just asking – I may be wrong, or if you say, we are doing it, it is all right – why don't we, instead of outsiders – not instead – outsiders can come and also discuss with the person – why don't we all discuss with me?
1:24:32 Q: We would like to do that.
1:24:45 Q: Can we do that now for a few minutes?
1:24:48 K: For a few minutes? Do it.
1:24:54 Q: When you talk to us you want a response which you don't get, it seems to me. And then when we give you our response, it isn't at the level which you are trying to work with and then you say no, and then we shut up and then we get silenced.
1:25:13 K: No, sir, don't reduce it to that. Just a minute. Now, we have got ten minutes. What do you want to talk with me about?
1:25:21 Q: About this moment which happens here when everybody is silent. You are asking something and people say, is it this, or maybe, perhaps or but, and you just don't want that. You want something and people sort of shut up.
1:25:36 K: Are you saying I shut them up, more politely?
1:25:42 Q: I am not sure I am saying that. You are asking for some response, a complete response...
1:25:50 K: Sir, let's have a discussion now, just about that.
1:25:55 Q: Well, when I am in that position and I don't say anything, it is because I know I would start saying something like, maybe, perhaps, or but, and that is obviously inadequate...
1:26:09 K: All right, let's take something. Do you feel – I have said this – that any form of attachment to belief or a conclusion atrophies the mind? Right?

Q: Yes.
1:26:35 K: Now, let's discuss that, have a dialogue about it. Any form of belief, conclusion, a faith, an experience. You follow?
1:26:52 Q: And any plan as to how one would get to somewhere.
1:26:58 K: Yes, that is further. Now, will you discuss with me.
1:27:03 WA: Krishnaji, though I might say yes, I agree with that, but I still have conclusions, beliefs and everything else.
1:27:09 K: Which means what? You are just playing with words.
1:27:13 WA: Not necessarily. I can see it very clearly in other people, but it doesn't seem to penetrate into something.
1:27:19 K: No, in discussing you may penetrate it. In having a dialogue you are saying, look, I can't go so deeply. I am still attached to my conclusion. Then I say, why? Let's talk about it. Why? Fear? Do you find security in that conclusion? We can go into it together. But when you say, I can't go any further, you have stopped yourself. Right, sir?
1:28:04 Q: Right. If I say something to you that isn't true it will become obvious as we go on.
1:28:09 K: No, I am just taking this thing. I am saying, let us have a dialogue now for ten minutes about this particular thing.
1:28:18 Q: About belief.
1:28:20 K: Which is, most of us have some kind of conclusion, conscious or unconscious, to which we cling – conclusion, belief and so on – which actually brings lack of nourishment to the brain. I have talked this matter with Bohm, who is supposed to be a scientist and all that, he said he totally agrees to that: that any form of intellectual or emotional attachment does not feed the mind fully, doesn't give the brain full nourishment. So, you tell me that, I hear that and I say, am I attached to any conclusion? I want to know, I discuss with you. Point it out. Show me.
1:29:24 Q: In terms of religious belief, no, but in terms of emotional approach to the world, yes.
1:29:29 K: No, any form. In my dialogue with you I am going to discover whether I am attached or not. You follow what I mean?

Q: Right.
1:29:45 SS: If I am not attached, what is left?
1:29:49 K: Wait, we are going to find out.
1:29:51 SS: But one is attached.
1:29:55 K: Then is that attachment – I don't want to go into it personally, if you don't mind – is that attachment not making the brain dull?
1:30:10 SS: It doesn't seem that way.
1:30:13 K: Now, I will show it to you how it does.
1:30:16 SS: Well, one may have, say, an aesthetic attachment. An aesthetic attachment – I like painting or I like music.
1:30:24 K: Ah, music – all right.
1:30:26 SS: I feel that that nourishes me, in a sense.
1:30:28 K: Yes, I like to look at a tree. That is not an attachment.
1:30:35 SF: Attachment to a conclusion or something like that
1:30:38 SF: is much more what we do.

K: I am talking of conclusions.
1:30:40 SS: What is a conclusion in this sense?
1:30:45 MZ: There are certain assumptions. We are certain about certain things and we depend on these as being certainties too, in our thinking in our daily life. Now, attachment would be an extra dimension which I am somehow dependent on that, which is perhaps psychological or emotional. But we all have an innumerable number of certainties, factual certainties, without which we could not get through the day, mentally or otherwise.
1:31:19 K: Where is the distinction between them? Where do you draw the line?

MZ: Yes.
1:31:25 K: That is fairly simple, isn't it?
1:31:27 MZ: I wonder. I mean, Dr Bohm talks to you and he has a certain discipline of physics and all the science that he knows. He talks out of that. Those things are perhaps always being looked at, but still one can call them certainties.
1:31:48 K: Don't let's discuss Dr Bohm.
1:31:50 MZ: Well, this is just to take an example.
1:31:53 K: There was a priest here the other day. He is still a priest. He discusses with you about liberation, etc., but he is still attached.
1:32:08 MZ: But that is belief. I am talking about something else.
1:32:11 K: I am sticking to belief. Wait, no, don't brush that aside.
1:32:16 MZ: No.

K: I started with that.
1:32:20 MZ: You said attachment, sir.
1:32:21 K: Attachment to a belief, to a conclusion.
1:32:27 MZ: Conclusion would be different.
1:32:31 BJ: But Krishnaji, Brian over there said earlier he didn't have any religious beliefs, and I think most of us are in that boat. So our beliefs are more subtle.
1:32:44 K: No, you may not have a religious belief but you might have other beliefs – belief, I didn't say religious. I didn't say a particular belief. I say all belief. You understand?
1:33:08 Q: I am not sure if I do, that bit.
1:33:11 K: Now, I hear that statement, you make that statement to me and I say, I want to understand the meaning of that first, the verbal significance of it. I say, what do you mean by that? Belief. I believe in God – that may be religious – I believe in progress, I believe in war – it doesn't matter. We all have of certain beliefs, and I say that very belief brings about a dullness, a lack of nourishment, it atrophies the brain.
1:33:55 WA: But in fact, Krishnaji, sometimes belief brings about your energy, actually. Very often belief can bring about quite a lot of energy.
1:34:03 K: Of course it does. Look at the Pope.
1:34:09 WA: But you say then it dulls the mind, and yet it seems to do the two things.
1:34:13 K: No, it does, because it is a partial activity, it is not a total activity.
1:34:22 WA: Can we go into that because I am not sure...
1:34:26 K: Don't defend. We are examining. I may be wrong.
1:34:34 SF: Krishnaji, in order to understand how belief or conclusion atrophies the mind, do we have to see all of them or need we follow only one?
1:34:44 K: Find out. Let's discuss it.
1:34:46 SF: Well, could we take just one and look at just one and see how that atrophies the brain?
1:34:51 K: Take one.
1:34:52 Q: Could we take beliefs about what we are and how much we can understand?
1:34:55 K: Yes, take your belief. Good. Go on, go into it with me. Don't let me pull it out. Go into it.
1:35:06 Q: It seems we so easily believe that we can't understand fundamental things like this ourselves, that we give up and say, we can't, and then start thinking about it or asking questions.
1:35:16 K: Why? I ask you why. Why do you depend on another? It comes to that. Why? And the man upon whom you depend says, be free. Right? You have to be a light yourself, no authority. Go on, move with me.
1:35:49 Q: And for 30 years, everything that one has approached, fundamental ones, always been told one has to approach through somebody or other. It may not have been said in words but the whole atmosphere in which I have been caught up in is that, and that still has a hold.
1:36:03 K: The whole world is based on that. The professors, the elite, the specialists.
1:36:09 Q: Right. And if one had seen through that one wouldn't perhaps maybe come in here to sit down to...
1:36:15 K: Let's move from there. Have you such a belief?
1:36:22 Q: No.

K: You don't have to answer me. I will take myself – have I such a belief? Do I look to somebody to push me along?
1:36:33 SS: One may come here with that belief.
1:36:38 DS: To refer to the teachings is a sort of belief.

K: What? To refer to what you are doing as the teachings implies a certain belief.
1:36:49 K: I don't quite follow this.
1:36:52 Q: People may use what you say.
1:36:53 SS: Well, there is a body of what has been said by...
1:36:56 K: X.

SS: Yes.
1:36:58 SS: There is a body of what he has said on record, so a person may refer to that.
1:37:07 SF: I think a person might be interested in going into the teachings in a way that is not actually looking at things for themselves. In other words, they might be using the teachings as the authority...
1:37:21 K: You see how you have gone off, if I may point out.

SF: Yes.
1:37:29 K: I am stating it, definitely. I may be wrong, but I state it. Which is that any form of belief, conclusion, concepts to which the mind clings, brain clings, atrophies the brain. I say that. Let's tear it to pieces – I may be wrong. I am willing to say – I am sorry, I am wrong. I don't defend it.
1:38:16 Q: Krishnaji, you say, I may be wrong, but the way you state it, the emphasis with which you state it, gives me an impression that you don't feel you are wrong. There is a certainty from which you speak.
1:38:32 K: I know I am not wrong.
1:38:39 Q: I know you are not wrong too, so let's go on.
1:38:45 Q: I would like to discuss with you this state of mind from which you speak. When you say, I may be wrong – no, you are not saying that.
1:38:55 K: I am saying that in order to invite you to have a dialogue.
1:39:00 Q: No, I understand. Now, you speak from a certainty. No, please, because it is essential to the dialogue. When I say, 'I may be wrong' – I may be wrong. And that is the whole source of confusion, in that is the source of incompleteness. There is something which does not operate through certainty and I am not able to understand why I accept that there is certainty in you.
1:39:40 DS: What is the difference between certainty and conclusion?
1:39:51 K: There is a vast difference. He is using the word 'certainty' – I have not used it.
1:39:56 DS: But you said, I am certain.
1:40:00 K: It is clear to me.
1:40:03 Q: Dorothy, let's not quibble over the word, if you don't mind. There is something when you say, it is so. It is an absolute statement.

K: Yes.
1:40:13 Q: And here we are discussing, talking, arguing, finding out, and remaining again and again not in that absolute position.
1:40:24 DS: But isn't an absolute statement a conclusion?
1:40:27 SN: No, it isn't. I think there is a difference between clarity and... – I think we are using the wrong word – there is a difference between clarity and certainty and conclusion – certainty and conclusion are quite different from clarity.
1:40:41 Q: Can I try to put it like this? I see that trying to believe on anybody else is useless and that one has to be completely clear oneself, and that is not just an idea. The clarity of that is there but it leads to an action which I am afraid to take and so it doesn't operate. I can recognise the truth of what you are saying because I can recognise it in me as you speak, but then something happens and it doesn't actually...
1:41:08 K: Just stop. Just stop a minute there. You recognise what I said as to be true. Right?

Q: Yes.
1:41:19 K: Why? How do you recognise it? Go slowly, step by step. How do you say, by Jove, how true that is? What makes you say that?
1:41:33 Q: It is as if you are describing something in me at the same time as you are speaking about it yourself. It just is so.
1:41:40 K: Tell me a little more. Tell me a little more about it.
1:41:46 Q: It is as if it is something I have always known to be true as well, and always been running away from.
1:41:52 K: No, you are not meeting my question. You say to me, when I make that statement, immediately say, by Jove, it is true. Then what happens after you have stated it? Go step by step.
1:42:11 Q: I start thinking about it a little bit and it all gets complicated.
1:42:16 SN: The mind seems to make an idea of it. At the moment that you say it, it seems as though the mind isn't functioning.
1:42:26 K: Answer me a little bit slowly, if you don't mind. I am not correcting, I am not putting you out. Answer me a little slowly. I make a statement, X makes a statement, and you say, by Jove, how true that is! Is that perception related to life or related to some kind of sensitive apprehension of this? Apprehension – apprehend – I am using that word in that sense. You understand what I am saying?
1:43:04 SF: Krishnaji, are you saying that those two things are different? You said, does this perception relate to life or does it relate to some apprehension?
1:43:14 K: I am saying both. Say for instance, when you make a statement to me of that kind, I listen to it very carefully. I mean, I listen to you and I say, by Jove, how true it is. You understand? How true it is. That perception of the truth has wiped away my attachment. You understand what I am saying?
1:43:55 SF: No.
1:43:57 K: You make that statement and I listen to it, because I am here to listen to you. So I listen to you and I say, good God, what a marvellous thing, that is true. And then what happens? I don't beat around and say, why is it true? Is it logical? That statement being true, it is logical.
1:44:34 SF: But, Krishnaji, then you went on with that. You said – and I would agree, that I hear a statement...
1:44:41 K: No, I haven't finished.
1:44:42 SF: Exactly – because it is the end part that is troublesome.
1:44:44 K: I haven't finished. I am coming to it. I listen to it and I see the truth of it. I don't see it – I comprehend the truth of it – and it is gone, attachment is gone.
1:45:02 SF: Now, that last part is the difficult one.
1:45:05 K: Of course. I am going to help you. Let's discuss it. I will show it to you.
1:45:09 SF: All right. Now, what is wrong, Krishnaji...
1:45:11 K: No, see what you are saying. I am saying one thing and you are saying something else. I say to you, 'Jesus unto you' – sorry. To me, the very listening to something that is true has cleaned the slate.
1:45:47 IP: But it doesn't, Krishnaji. It doesn't clean the slate.
1:45:50 K: No. Let's discuss that. Why? Let's go step by step, don't defend it. You follow? Then there is no arguing. So, why?
1:46:05 CW: Possibly we have an idea of what truth is...
1:46:09 K: No, I am asking. Don't say 'we have an idea' – you.
1:46:14 CW: There is certain sensation in me.
1:46:16 K: No.
1:46:18 SF: Sir, can we just go back? I am sorry, but here I could follow you and I feel up to a certain point, a certain statement is made. One sees that it is true, one sees the truth of it, the accuracy of it, it makes eminent sense, it makes more sense than anything but there is nothing that thinks life might be a little bit different afterwards. Maybe some of the beliefs one throws away.
1:46:49 K: May I ask something? I may be wrong, I am just asking. You hear the statement, you say, it is true, by Jove! Has that truth wiped the state clean?
1:47:03 SF: No.

K: No, wait. How do you know? When you say no, how do you know? Careful. Step by step. Step by step. Why do you say no?
1:47:25 SF: I look at some statement, the way that it was just made, about belief atrophying the brain.
1:47:30 K: You see, you are going off.
1:47:32 SF: Well, I am trying to say why I said no.
1:47:34 K: You see, I am stopping you from going off to something else. Forgive me. I asked you a question, which is, I hear the statement and I tell you – seriously, I have done this all my life – something occurs to me and it has cleaned the whole plate. Just a minute – I know. Now, why doesn't it happen with you, with us? What is preventing it?
1:48:16 MZ: Is it that what you see at that instant and the way we see it at that instant? When you say that, my brain says, yes, that is so, and then the next thing it does, it sees the action of that and how it is true. I see that belief or conclusion is the ending of examination, the not seeing, it is closing the mind. All these things rush in to make a picture. In actual, what goes on in the brain...
1:48:54 K: My mind doesn't do that.
1:48:57 MZ: I know. That is why I want to know what happens in you.
1:49:00 K: He makes that statement, my mind receives it and sees the truth of it and that is the end of it.
1:49:08 MZ: But what have you seen in that moment? What have you seen?
1:49:13 K: I see the truth of that statement.
1:49:15 MZ: What is that?
1:49:17 K: Not see it with my eyes. I see the depth and meaning, the beauty of such a statement, it is finished.
1:49:27 SF: When your brain sees that, it is finished. When my brain sees it, it is not.
1:49:36 K: Stop, let's find out. You see, you have already questioned. Find out, look into it. Don't verbalise it, don't intellectualise the reason for or against. Look into it.
1:49:53 SN: It seems that you are saying that when your brain receives it or when your mind receives it, it is not receiving what it is receiving as words, and I think that is the problem with us, we are receiving it as words.
1:50:10 K: Is that what is the problem? Careful, is that the problem – words?
1:50:16 SN: Yes, I think the problem is that thought may be in suspension for a moment, but it is always there.
1:50:26 K: Which means what? You are not listening.
1:50:30 SS: Well, one may be transported by the word for a time.
1:50:34 SN: Yes.
1:50:36 SS: An hour or even a day.

K: With me it is finished.
1:50:39 SS: Ah, well this is the difference.
1:50:41 K: Now I am going to show it. You see, you are all resisting. You don't say, now, let's find out. You say, it is different with us, and you stop. Actually look, go into it. Let's go into it very carefully, why with one person it is so clear, wiped out, with the other person it is not. Why? Enquire into it – why?
1:51:15 RP: The feeling I get is because I am anchored somewhere which is very comfortable.
1:51:18 K: No, don't give a...
1:51:20 SF: Well, give us a little help inquiring into this because I can't do it. You have left this question with us for the last five minutes and I can't move one inch.
1:51:30 K: I will, I will presently go into it. That is, you see it and it is finished, and I see it, I hear it and I say yes, it is true. Then what happens with me? I begin to analyse it.
1:51:57 SS: It becomes an idea.
1:51:59 K: It becomes an idea, or I say, it was so true then, why haven't I got it now? I go through all the mentation. You know, mentation, that is intellectually analysing, tearing it to pieces. He says to me, see the truth and don't move. The truth of what you have said is going to operate, not my conclusions, my analysis, my this and that. If what you say is true that is going to operate.
1:52:51 BJ: Krishnaji, when you say, don't move, I want to understand precisely what you mean because the mind moves.
1:52:58 K: No, move in the sense talk about it, rationalise it, examine it, tear it to pieces, have I got it, have I not got it, is it so, and so on – that is what I mean. Whereas if you make a statement to me and I see the truth of it, I don't move. It is going to work itself out. Because the perception of that truth has nothing to do with you or with me, it is truth. I don't know if you see that. Like in chemistry, you mix two elements and it is so. You don't discuss it. You don't say, I can't do it, I am stuck.
1:53:54 WA: But you can observe something. In chemistry, you can observe it happening in front of your eyes, and somehow that doesn't seem to be the same.
1:54:02 K: Either you are not listening, would that be right?
1:54:12 WA: Well, I suppose listening to me means...
1:54:14 K: Ah, which means you are not listening.
1:54:20 WA: Then I think, well, how am I going to listen?
1:54:26 K: Are you listening? I am questioning. I am not saying you are not. We are examining. This is a dialogue. Are you listening?
1:54:37 WA: I try to.
1:54:39 K: Then you do not listen, if you try.
1:54:50 MZ: Krishnaji, listening is without any thought.
1:54:53 K: Of course. I am listening to what you have to say.
1:54:55 MZ: That is what is so hard for us.
1:54:58 K: I am listening to Mr Nicholson when he says to me, any form of belief, attachment to anything destroys the brain, or some words. I see the truth of it immediately. I don't say, what is it, what does it mean, how does it affect me, am I carrying it out, what is the action between perception and action? I don't. I just say, all right. By Jove, how beautiful that is. Hold it, as you would hold a precious jewel, hold it. Are you doing it? That is a dialogue. Are you doing it?
1:55:58 Q: That is perhaps our problem. We think perhaps by thinking the matter over... Perhaps that is in a way the essence of the problem: when you hear something...
1:56:08 K: That is all. You don't have to think it over.
1:56:12 Q: Ah, but aren't we afraid of losing it? There is something that seems to come in, perhaps it is just with me, that is afraid of losing that. So you think, well, in this circumstance how does it work out? In this circumstance how does it act? So you build up this whole picture. But the picture we build up is in the fear of losing that.
1:56:29 K: Yes, which means what? By doing all that you have lost it.
1:56:34 Q: Yes. And it is almost a sensation that you can feel.
1:56:39 K: So don't do it. You see, don't do it. And when you say that to me, don't do it, I don't do it, because what you say is important. You follow what I mean? I want to see. Were you going to say something? Sorry. This is the first time we have had a dialogue, for ten minutes. Right? Now, may I move from there a little bit? Can you listen to the boy or the girl that comes here when you are choosing? You understand my question? Your mind is not in a state of decision – this or that – but you are listening to the quality of his mind. Right? Can you do it? That perception, that sensitivity of listening may, immediately, you may know. It is seven o'clock. We had better stop – two hours.