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BR81S4 - You are humanity
Brockwood Park, UK - 14 September 1981
Seminar 4



0:21 Krishnamurti: Where shall we start?
0:30 Questioner: With your permission, sir, I’d like to make a statement and I’m hoping I’ll understand what we have discussed so far. It seems to me that there is no question about the structure and function of education. What we have questioned is the content of education. If that is correct, we can proceed with some questions that I have.
1:06 K: I would like to question the whole word ‘education’. Why should we be educated?
1:20 Q: The idea is that we have to prepare our youngsters to face the world. They’re not fully mature.
1:31 K: Face the world. In facing the world, does it help to be educated? Perhaps that in question now, whether you can get a proper job. After all, one is educated to get a job, to have a profession, a career, a skill. I’d like to question that.
2:26 Q: But whether it’s in preparation for the job, they still have to live.
2:33 K: We have to live, but can I be educated to live? Educated properly, or whatever term you like to use. To me, the whole thing somehow seems so utterly wrong.
2:54 Q: The word is a bit tricky, the word ‘education’. In French, for instance, we have two words, we have ‘education’, which is more the moral side, and we have ‘instruction’. Which is all the knowledge. In English, both meanings seem to be in the same word. That makes things a bit difficult.
3:17 K: To be instructed about mathematics, about engineering and so on. That is necessary, is it? Is that necessary?

Q: In the modern world it is.
3:43 Q: It’s necessary to get a job but it’s not certain that one needs a job in order to survive well in the world.
3:50 K: In order to have a career, you have to be instructed. We take that for granted. Right?
4:02 Q: Let’s say it’s necessary but perhaps, not sufficient.
4:05 K: We take that for granted, that we need to be instructed to be a mathematician, a scientist, a surgeon, a technician, and that will help us to face life, to face the world. On that basis, we move. Is that it? Are you quite sure?

Q: No, I don’t think it helps us to face the world. It provides a certain knowledge through which you might get a job but it doesn’t help you to face the world, surely.
4:51 K: After all, I need to have a career to face the world.
4:56 Q: Could we use the word ‘function’?
5:00 K: Yes, all right, call it a function. I need to have a function to have a career. So, I have to be instructed, to be a carpenter, to be a surgeon, to be a politician.
5:18 Q: To be a teacher.

K: What kind of teacher? Who instructs me to become an engineer?
5:34 Q: Another engineer.
5:37 K: Yes, another one of them already existing in the world, then you train me to become an engineer. Will that help me to face the world?
5:56 Q: No.
5:59 Q: Education seems to make one person appear cleverer than another.
6:10 K: Can we put the question the other way round? What will help one to face the world?
6:19 Q: It seems that no pattern of instruction will help you because every situation you tend to meet tends to be different.
6:26 K: No, what will help one to face the world?
6:29 Q: Well, surely having a skill, having some work that one can do? It’s not the total answer but it certainly helps you face the world.
6:38 Q: It helps your self-confidence.
6:44 Q: I wouldn’t say it helps you face the world, it helps you survive. It helps you to get a job and survive.
6:51 K: Will that help me to survive? Just look at it. I’m questioning the whole thing, so help me to question it. Don’t try to answer it, yet.

Q: Well, it depends because now we have a surplus of graduates, and it’s becoming more and more difficult...
7:09 K: So, you say education is to prepare or instruct one, to prepare to survive. Is that it? Survive.
7:27 Q: That’s part of it.

K: No, not part of it – that is the whole reason of education: to survive.
7:34 Q: Only that?
7:35 Q: No, that’s not all of it, really.
7:38 K: Now, go on, sir, help me out.
7:39 Q: There’s a certain image perhaps, of what a human being should be. When we talk about somebody as being well-educated, we mean he has a reasonable amount of knowledge, he’s somewhat cultured, he can appreciate art, poetry, music and other things, and he may have a certain dignity. There’s a certain image of what a well-educated person is.
8:04 K: A well-informed person.

Q: Quite well-informed.
8:08 K: Aesthetically, morally, literally – all that you call a cultured human being.
8:18 Q: But there’s also the concept of service, of putting something back into the world. One aspect of education must be the idea of putting people in a position to put back into the world, as well as take from it.
8:37 Q: Surely, it’s also to have an agile mind? It’s not just the inclination, it’s to practise various facilities so that one can apply one’s mind.
8:52 K: Will all this help me to be intelligent? Then we can discuss what do we mean by that word ‘intelligence’. If you can cultivate that intelligence in me, as a student – suppose I’m your student – you cultivate that intelligence. Can you cultivate that intelligence through engineering, through some kind of technical job? Sir, you say education will help me to survive. Is that what is happening in the world?
9:44 Q: One problem is that we equate intelligence with knowledge.
9:50 K: I’m sorry I brought in that word. Let’s leave that word for the moment.
9:54 Q: I think that is a problem because education is in the knowledge realm.
10:00 K: Is intelligence knowledge?
10:05 Q: It’s generally considered to be related to knowledge or knowledge is part of it.

K: I question it.
10:15 Q: Well, then we’re giving a new definition to intelligence.
10:17 K: I want to explore it a little bit. I want to question whether intelligence comes with knowledge.
10:29 Q: Sir, generally when people say, ‘He’s an intelligent boy’, they really mean he’s a clever boy, he’s top of his class. That’s the general definition.
10:42 Q: I don’t think so.
10:44 Q: In the traditional school they say, ‘He’s a very intelligent boy’, but generally they mean he’s got top marks in mathematics and English.
10:54 Q: Yes, they are judging from the results of a capacity. But intelligence is a capacity.
11:00 Q: That only means he’s a good competitor.
11:03 Q: Actually Krishnaji is questioning whether intelligence is cleverness. That’s what Krishnaji’s question is.
11:12 Q: It may be similar but intelligence seems to be sort of innate skill that many people would say you are born with and if you don’t possess it when you’re born, you probably never will.
11:25 K: Sir, the computer is very intelligent.
11:29 Q: But it’s very ignorant at the same time, isn’t it?
11:31 Q: It’s a machine.

K: Let’s look at it, sir. You program the computer as cleverly as possible. It learns through mistakes which it has made. So, it’s learning all the time, correcting itself. Just a minute. Kindly let me finish. So, that’s what we are doing. I make a mistake, correct, and then learn from that mistake and act from what I have learnt. And so I keep learning, if we at all learn in that sense. A computer can do this far better.
12:22 Q: No, I don’t think so.
12:24 K: He will tell you – he’s a computer expert.
12:26 Q: The computer only has the capacity to remember. It can learn, if you regard learning as the ability to remember mistakes. But it doesn’t learn in the sense that humans learn.
12:40 K: How do humans learn?
12:44 Q: I think humans learn by the ability to apply their experience.
12:50 K: That’s what it is doing.

Q: In a very limited sense though.
12:54 K: It can learn from playing chess with a chess master. It allows the master to win four times, the fifth time, it beats the master, and nobody can beat it after that.
13:13 Q: Yes, because it remembers that making a mistake loses the game.
13:19 K: We are doing exactly the same.
13:25 Q: Much of what we call intelligent behaviour in ourselves is nothing of the kind. It’s just to do with thought. The computer can do it much better.
13:32 K: Of course. That’s what I’m saying.
13:36 Q: If there is something that can be called intelligence, it has to be thought out much more carefully these easy statements about what we can do intelligently.
13:45 K: That’s what I want to discuss. First of all, you help me by educating in mathematics or whatever, and you say, ‘That will help you to survive’. And I question that. You follow what I mean? I question, I doubt whether this kind of education is really helping human beings to survive.
14:15 Q: If the computer can only repeat and if we teach students to repeat…
14:24 K: It is not repeating, sir, it’s learning.
14:27 Q: There’s no creation in computers.

K: It is learning.
14:31 Q: It can be made to learn in the sense that Krishnaji is describing. It’s a question of how you set it up.
14:40 Q: Yes, how do you set it up? That’s the key word.
14:43 K: You first set it up.
14:45 Q: You have to create it to be able to do that, to perform. But surely the question that Krishnaji is asking about survival – if we accept a world as being like say the traffic system then to go into that traffic system you need to be educated otherwise you’re liable to die because you’re ignorant of it. Human beings can change the total system, in that sense. So there is some education which is necessary for survival but surely our objective is to look beyond that limited survival.
15:35 K: Sir, I would like to stick to my point for a while, if you don’t mind. Is the present education helping us to survive? That’s all my point.
15:46 Q: If one looks at the world today and the state that it’s in, it’s obviously not helping us to survive.
15:56 K: We are not surviving. Millions are dying.
15:59 Q: But millions are surviving. Is it black or white? After all, it is not the answer to survival or anything else, but surely it is necessary to some degree that we haven’t established. Surely intelligence or survival is not furthered by ignorance, is it?
16:18 K: Are the educated people surviving?
16:22 Q: Yes.
16:23 Q: Krishnaji, it depends on what you mean by surviving.
16:26 K: I don’t know. She used the word ‘survive’.
16:30 Q: Clearly, one use of that word. If we don’t learn to walk and to talk we probably will wither in life. We need that to just live. On the other hand, you could say that the life we do live is no life at all. In which case you’d say that we’re just kind of existing. But we seem to be using the word ‘surviving’ in two different ways.
16:58 Q: But I’m just using it in a very simple way that the present education is educating people to survive in the sense that the object is that you finish your degree or whatever and then you get a job which gives you food, clothing and shelter. I’m not saying that that’s enough. That’s not enough. Food, clothing and shelter is not enough. It may give you food, clothing and shelter because we’ve found that there’s so much unemployment that even after you do get a degree, you may still be unemployed. In a country like India, you might have a PhD and you might look for a job for three or four years and still not get it.
17:42 Q: But would you be better off without the degree, without the education?
17:48 Q: Well, it’s difficult to say.

Q: Is it? Is it difficult to say?
17:52 Q: It is a point that our culture is producing food, shelter, etc., in such a way that it is also producing destruction. Our businesses and agriculture are leading to war, in a way. So, we educate to survive in our culture but our culture is leading to a kind of death or suicide.
18:20 Q: Sorry, I don’t think we are getting educated at all because being a teacher at the university, we just give knowledge, and I myself and the students do not know how to deal with daily life. That is the problem, I think. We are not getting educated in how to deal with daily problems – with anger, with fear, competition, etc. I don’t know how to deal with those problems. And the point is that I am taking that knowledge that I learn to attack the problem of daily life. So, what am I going to do?
19:16 Q: When we think in terms of humanity it’s obvious that education does not prepare us to survive. On the contrary, it’s getting worse and worse. Now some people ask the computers to help this situation. So, I think it’s a fact that, for the whole humanity, education is not preparation for survival. Perhaps for some individuals, but not for the whole of humanity.
19:50 Q: Can’t we say that education is extremely imperfect, especially in today’s world? But surely, ignorance isn’t the answer to that.
20:10 Q: The alternative isn’t ignorance necessarily – there are other ways of educating people. There are many world movements seeking to change the way we educate, perhaps seeking to return to an earlier period of education.
20:27 Q: Even if you’re a farmer, you need to have some education to know now to grow food, unless you want to just live in a place where you pick the leaves. There is some basic necessity of needing to know in order to survive, to provide for living, for care for children, to clothe them.
20:54 Q: But the point surely is that there are skills which are relatively easily taught, so there tends to be an emphasis on teaching skills in education.
21:03 Q: We’re not talking necessarily about our current education. Surely, we’re talking about the basic necessity of survival. That part of the education which is necessary to survival.
21:15 K: Could we discuss or have a dialogue about what do we mean by survival?
21:26 Q: It’s answering the necessity of life. If you have children, how do you clothe them and feed them? How do you give them shelter?

K: Why do you marry? Why do you have children?
21:42 Q: Are you talking about the quality of life?
21:46 K: No, what do we mean by survival? Let’s discuss that a little bit.
21:52 Q: Continuance of the race.
21:54 Q: Physical survival, simply adapting to our environment and using our skills to help us adapt, this is not the only form of survival. There is psychological survival, being able to survive mentally.
22:08 Q: That means nothing if there is no physical survival.
22:11 Q: Yes, I accept that.
22:13 Q: So, let’s deal with the first thing first and get that right.
22:17 Q: But that’s very simple. It’s the psychological survival that seems to be much more difficult.
22:22 K: Sir, there are millions of people who are not educated, haven’t been to any school, don’t know how to write or read, but they survive. There are those people who are highly educated, in the modern sense of the word, they survive, but under great difficulties – unemployment and so on. What do you mean by survival?
23:07 Q: I think that the great poor who survive statistically, there is enough survival to maintain them. But the greater survival is some more directed survival where you can survive towards something.
23:30 K: There is the threat of war – right? – the threat of the bomb. These things are making survival almost impossible. So, what do we mean by getting educated to survive?
23:50 Q: I think it has to do with the quality of life. One part of survival in modern times especially in the industrial societies where there are these basic programmes of government, no-one really starves.
24:06 K: Sir, what are you saying? Millions are starving in India, in Africa, in Asia.
24:18 Q: When we talk about the survival we seem to be thinking in terms of individualistic survival.
24:25 K: Not only individual – human survival, sir, is being denied.
24:35 Q: I don’t see what is wrong with education now. The trouble seems to begin when we attach status to the education. That’s what is denying the survival of the human race.
24:52 Q: If we assume physical survival and forget about the quality of life, survival seems to be the ability to remain sane.
25:05 K: Wait a minute, sir. ‘Ability to remain sane’. Are we sane?
25:13 Q: Within certain limits, I think most of us are.
25:16 Q: We’re talking about education. We must be sane.
25:26 Q: Are you trying to say now that while we remain unchanged, whatever we know and teach in schools, we will use wrongly?
25:34 K: Of course, of course.

Q: And cause more harm than good.
25:37 K: That’s what’s happening. So, I want to question this whole idea of being educated to survive. We need the basic necessities of life. Even that is being denied, except perhaps for those of you who have fairly good jobs, fairly affluent, but millions of people are starving.
26:13 Q: Isn’t the most important thing in education to live in harmony?
26:22 K: That’s only a part, surely, isn’t it? Educated to live in harmony with each other – that has not been possible for a million years. Q. Someone told me, ‘You are your brother’s keeper’. If you have survived, make sure that the disadvantaged also survive.
26:50 K: This is just a lovely theory.

Q: No, you can practise it.
26:57 K: Why should I practise it? You start with a theory and I must practise it.
27:02 Q: No, I practise it.
27:09 Q: Your point is that current educational concepts are leading to the fact that we will not survive.
27:18 K: Yes, sir. That’s what is happening.
27:29 Q: Can we start with that obvious fact, that our education is not doing the job and we’re not surviving?
27:47 K: Sir, we’ve acquired tremendous information and knowledge about almost everything. Right? I think that is granted. One can accept that. After a million years, we have acquired a great deal of knowledge, and that knowledge has not helped us to survive. We may survive, partially, but we don’t seem to be able to survive. The threat of war, overpopulation, terrorism – you follow? – everything is indicating that we’re not surviving. Could we say that?

Q: Yes.
28:38 K: A few may survive. All of us who are here, because we have a fair amount of leisure, we’re surviving. Right? Would you grant that?
28:55 Q: Millions and millions, billions of people are surviving these days.
29:01 K: All right, surviving, but there is always this threat of not being able to survive.
29:09 Q: There is that threat, yes, constantly, increasingly.
29:12 K: Constantly. So, has knowledge helped us to survive?
29:22 Q: It has helped us to survive up to this point, and brought us to...
29:27 K: All right, it has helped us to survive up to this point – which I even question. But we’ll take that for granted – helped us to survive up to now. The future seems incredibly dangerous. And knowledge has produced this. Probably, we may not survive. Knowledge has led us up to that. So, what value has knowledge, if it doesn’t help us to survive?
30:06 Q: It has increased the probability very greatly of non-survival.
30:10 K: Yes, that’s what I’m saying. If I have a son, he might be blown to smithereens, evaporated completely. So, is there a different approach to all this, so that we all survive happily? Is there a different approach? That I’d like to discuss. Please, won’t you contribute to that?
31:16 Q: Are you suggesting educating without collecting knowledge?
31:24 K: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Because what we have done is experience, knowledge, memory, thought, action. From that action, learn more or correct what you have learnt. In that cycle we are caught. Which is a computer who is doing it, which is the same – experience, knowledge, memory, thought, action. From that action, we learn more. This has been the pattern which we have followed from time measureless. Would you agree to that?

Q: Yes, I accept that.
32:21 K: Wait, wait, wait. If you accept that, then adding more or taking away is not going to help in this cycle. So, there must be a way away from this. Or understand this and that may lead to something totally different.
32:55 Q: Is it possible that as the computer is taking over our function that we may have more time to look at that?
33:11 K: I know how to read and write – perhaps in Italian, French and English. I personally do. And I haven’t read all the books in the world, I don’t want to read them. I haven’t tremendous knowledge about electricity or about engineering or mathematics. I haven’t a great deal of knowledge about any technical job. But I can apply knowledge in helping others to build a house, or milk a cow – I’ve done that – look after chickens. So, why should I read? No, I mustn’t go into that. I can survive. I have survived. I’ve been to school and failed every examination. At the end of six years, the people who were in charge said, ‘That’s enough’. They pushed me out of all the colleges and left me alone. No, this is not a joke. This is what actually happened. I have survived for 86 years. And I say to myself, why should I have this enormous burden of so-called knowledge?
35:12 Q: So, we are back again to what we discussed yesterday, that thought is creating all this and that thought must somehow realise itself in action in order to stop what it’s doing.
35:38 K: We’re trying to find another direction which doesn’t deny knowledge at a certain level, but denies knowledge as a means of relationship, of proper relationship with other human beings. I’m questioning that. Not that I mustn’t have an engineering capacity – that’s not my problem. If I am fairly intelligent, I will survive somehow or another – as an engineer, a cook, a gardener, something or other, I will survive. That’s not my problem. My problem is – the problem which is confronting all of us, is that we are using psychological knowledge as a means of survival, which I think is really dangerous. I know I mustn’t kill. It has been taught long before Christianity, don’t kill, love your neighbour as you love yourself and so on. It has been said a thousand, million times, pre-Christianity, and we are still killing. What’s the point of all this? You’re not meeting me.
38:02 Q: I think we are totally baffled at seeing another direction.
38:24 Q: Could we go into this relationship about thought, about the way knowledge interferes with that relationship? Let’s go into that, carefully, so that we can be more clear.
38:38 K: I feel knowledge in relationship, psychological knowledge is a tremendous danger.
38:51 Q: What do you mean by psychological knowledge?
38:59 K: Knowledge of knowing oneself. Just a minute, don’t jump on me yet. You all look like that at me. Knowledge based on memory. Memory in relationship, which is knowledge. The image I have created about my wife and my husband. That’s knowledge. The image of myself psychologically as a Hindu, that’s a danger because it separates me from the Christian, who thinks he’s better. It’s the same problem, psychological knowledge bringing sorrow, pain. That’s what I mean by psychological knowledge.
40:07 Q: I see. You’re distinguishing this from technical knowledge. The danger is psychological knowledge, and technical knowledge is not such a danger.
40:16 K: No. Just a minute. Technical knowledge I’ve acquired by study. Perhaps I’m moving with the same mentality into the psychological world where I have to learn, where I have to be educated, where I have to acquire knowledge about relationship. That very knowledge prevents relationship. I can go into it if you like. That knowledge is sorrow, is fear, which is destructive.
41:17 Q: Why? Why is it destructive? And why is it sorrow and fear? I can see that some of it would involve sorrow and fear.
41:29 K: Would you say thought is fear?
41:34 Q: I never have said it and I don’t know if I would say it now.
41:38 K: I’m saying it – all right. I’m saying thought is fear. Thought being time. Time and thought together have put fear into me, have created fear – fear of the past, fear of the present, fear of the future, which is time, and which is the movement of thought. That’s fear. Thought and time have created fear in me, which is my knowledge of what happened yesterday, the pain of yesterday, modified, to the future. All that is a process of psychological knowledge, which brings about the fear, sorrow, pain, grief and so on. On one side, you cultivate technological knowledge, on the other side, you’re also cultivating knowledge. So, we are always living in this field of knowledge. And knowledge can never be complete – that you’ll agree to – so I’m always living partly in darkness, partly in light, which is called knowledge, darkness is called ignorance, so there is this constant struggle going on. So, is psychological knowledge necessary at all?
43:45 Q: Sir, do you think that’s a jump though? Because I’m not clear why knowledge should interfere. Why should the knowledge we use in education interfere?
44:03 K: All right, let’s go into it. I’ve a job now as a carpenter, a plumber or a surgeon. And there are better surgeons, better carpenters, better plumbers. So, I’m always frightened. Right? I’m always jealous, competitive because I want to be better than that person, who is a better carpenter, and I might lose my job, become unemployed. So, there is fear. I have a job. Thought projects the idea I might not have it, I might lose my job, thought says, ‘You must be a better carpenter’. So, there is this competition, the fact I might lose the job – all that is fear created by thought, because I might not have that job tomorrow. It’s simple enough.
45:28 Q: I accept that we have accumulated psychological knowledge which threatens the survival of humanity. The question therefore is, how do we get rid of it?
45:43 K: There is no getting rid of anything. If I may point out, most respectfully, there is only the observation of it, the perception of it. Not the investigation of it, not the analysis of it, just the observation of the fact that I am full of psychological knowledge. As we said yesterday, I am all memory. Either it is a fact or some illusion which the speaker is stating. If it is a fact, then I can’t change it. I who am total memory, can’t change the fact that I’m memory. I don’t know if you understand what I’m saying.
46:55 Q: Do you mean that in relationship there is no experience? We usually think that we get experience in relationship. You seem to say that in relationship there is no experience, only in the technological field.
47:24 K: Sir, when you say ‘experience’ what do you mean by that word? I’m not quibbling about words. What do you mean by ‘experience’. Sexual experience? Experience of companionship? Experience of two people living together, adjusting? Possessing each other? Having in that possession pleasure? All that you call living, which you would say is experience. Is it? Is that what you mean by it?

Q: Yes.
48:16 K: Why do we need experience? Please, this is a serious question. Don’t brush it off.
48:32 Q: In the psychological realm, you’re asking about?
48:35 K: Yes. Even physical experience. What do you mean by it? Why do we need experience? Sir, I would like to go into this a little bit, if I may. May I? Q. Not to put ourselves in danger.
48:57 K: Not to put oneself in danger. Does that mean you must have experience of danger? I want to question the whole thing. Would you listen for a minute? For me, I am the world and the world is me. My consciousness is the consciousness of the world, because human beings suffer through the world, fear, anxiety and so on. So, one’s consciousness is similar to all mankind. I am not an individual at all. I start on that. You may say, ‘You’re a damn silly fool’ – all right. It may be folly, an illusion, but I can discuss it logically, sanely, and show it is so. Then, that consciousness has experienced everything. Right? I know you won’t like all this. Please, go into it, don’t smile it away or make snide remarks about it, just look at it.
50:20 Q: We can take this, more or less, because we’ve had experience, but when you’re talking to a young person...
50:28 K: We’re all grown-up.
50:30 Q: But we’re talking about education.
50:32 K: I’ll come to that in a minute. Let me finish what I want to say. There is this consciousness, which is not mine, the contents have been put there by thought fear, anxiety, loneliness, belief in God, Jesus, Krishna, a dozen things. All that is in that consciousness. Right? It is so. My becoming a Christian and then from Christianity to go to Hinduism is all in that field. The experience is to move from one corner of that field to the other. I wonder if I’m making myself clear. From one conclusion to another conclusion, but in the same area, carefully barb-wired. So, any experience is already there.
51:56 Q: You mean potentially there?
52:01 K: No, it is there, not ‘potentially’.
52:03 Q: But it’s not available to the individual.
52:08 K: Ah, there is no individuality. You’re all thinking in terms of the individual. I am not.
52:17 Q: So, all the experience we have individually would be repetition.
52:30 K: Look, madame, take the simple example that we follow somebody. A guru, a priest, a saint, a saviour, a Krishna in India – we always follow somebody. This following has been the pattern of that consciousness. Right? Of course. So, my going to a guru is already there. You understand what I’m saying? So, I don’t go to a guru, it is finished. I’ve moved away from the pattern of that field. If I crave experience, I’m still in that field.
53:35 Q: If you don’t go to a guru, where do you go?
53:42 K: Sir, I don’t go anywhere. No, please, this is very serious. I’m not joking about this, because we’re always moving within the field of knowledge. The knowledge is consciousness. Right?
54:14 Q: You’re saying all our consciousness is knowledge?
54:18 K: Of course.

Q: Yes.
54:21 K: And any action within that field is furthering knowledge or taking away knowledge. It’s still moving in that area. There is no freedom in that area. So, why should I go to any guru? Or why should I follow anybody? Because we have done all that for a million years.
54:58 Q: Also, why should we accumulate any knowledge in order to get out of that field.

K: Exactly. You have stated it. Stick to it, simply. Knowledge may be inside one’s brain or in the brain of humanity. It’s not my brain, this, it’s the brain evolved through time, through experience, through knowledge, through memory, through action – it’s the brain of humanity. It’s not my brain. I think this is so, genetically, as well as actually. This brain has evolved through time. And memory may be in that brain or outside – that’s not important. The whole field of consciousness is knowledge. And as long as thought is moving, it must be in that field, because thought is knowledge.
56:37 Q: Just to clarify, do you think all knowledge is directed towards potential action?
56:48 K: Not necessarily.
56:50 Q: But most knowledge is practical or directed towards action or has implications for action.

K: Yes. After all, knowledge is necessary at one level, in order to survive, to be skilful in action.
57:09 Q: But do you think there is a kind of knowledge not related to action?
57:14 K: It’s still knowledge.
57:21 Q: Even if I follow intellectually what you’re saying, I don’t see it. Why do I not see it? Is it that I lack intensity or energy to see it, or what is it?
57:36 K: Or we are so ridden by habit. You understand?
57:47 Q: I think we all think in terms of individual. That’s what prevents it.
58:01 Q: It’s a question of being related, of the relation to the whole.
58:09 K: No. What relation? When I recognise, perceive or see the fact – for myself – I see the fact that I am all humanity, relationship is humanity. I’m not saying my relationship to him. My relationship is to all human beings.
58:41 Q: Is this something different from knowledge?
58:45 Q: Is it something different from knowledge, to see this relationship?
58:54 K: No, sir. I don’t want to stump you, sorry. Let’s move for a minute. What I’m saying may be totally false. I don’t believe it is, but you may think it is.
59:17 Q: It may be incorrect but I feel, as this point was raised, that there’s a feeling that there’s some kind of pure knowledge, not knowledge related to action or skill or anything – there’s some kind of pure knowledge.
59:34 K: I understand. What do you mean by that?
59:47 Q: Is awareness knowledge?
59:51 K: Awareness is not knowledge.
59:54 Q: There are different words like ‘insight’ and ‘understanding’ which we might regard as a form of knowledge but are probably not.
1:00:04 K: Attention has no knowledge. You attend. I want to go into something different. Dr Sheldrake is asking and you are asking – is there pure knowledge? Right? Knowledge of what?
1:00:29 Q: Maybe even of the nature of things. I’m not sure, but I’m trying to look at the difficulty that we’re having going beyond this point of knowledge. One of the difficulties may be some notion of pure knowledge. The idea of pure knowledge has been around for a long time.
1:00:52 Q: Is the question, can truth be known?
1:00:57 Q: Yes.
1:00:58 K: Is that what you’re asking?

Q: That’s related to it, yes.
1:01:02 K: Can truth be known? Is that what you’re asking?
1:01:06 Q: I think so.
1:01:13 K: What do you mean by that?

Q: I have a feeling for it.
1:01:21 K: Known means experienced.
1:01:24 Q: It’s part of you, in some sense.
1:01:29 K: Experience, known, felt, gathered.
1:01:38 Q: Or even disclosed, revealed.

K: Disclosed. Disclosed to whom? In the problem of experience, there are several factors. There must be the experiencer – right? – there must be recognition of that experience. Of course.

Q: Yes.
1:02:27 K: Recognition means memory, which means you’ve already known. Are you objecting to any of this?
1:02:43 Q: Krishnaji, are you pointing out that perception breaks the pattern, perception is nothing to do with knowledge?
1:02:52 K: I may say it but it may not be broken down. I feel experience is something that’s already finished, over, it’s gone, and we want experience of truth. That is the real thing. Right? And it cannot be experienced because then there must be the experiencer, recognition that is the truth, there must be the fact... – all kinds of things are involved. You are bringing to truth something you have accumulated through thought. Somebody is saying truth has no path, it cannot be experienced. If anybody says, ‘I’m illumined’, you ought to give him a kick. It’s nonsense. There is no experiencer to experience illumination.
1:04:17 Q: You’re also saying that there’s no experiencing of anything new.
1:04:22 K: No, of course not. What you are experiencing is the old, in a different form, a different style, in a different mould, in a different pattern.
1:04:35 Q: You also seem to be implying, because the consciousness of mankind is immersed in knowledge that this truth has nothing to do with that consciousness.
1:04:46 K: Of course, not.
1:04:50 Q: Which leaves us very little relation to it at all.
1:04:54 K: Our difficulty is we all think we are separate, individual souls, individual atmans, to use a Sanskrit word, individual accumulated tendency, all that, heredity, genetics – we’re all separate little cells fighting, fighting, fighting, having our own pleasures, sorrows – all within ourselves. I question that, that’s all. Sir, the real problem is, if I can go a little further, is it possible to be free from knowledge? And why should one be free from knowledge? There are two problems. Are you interested in it?
1:06:03 Q: By being free from knowledge, do you mean keeping knowledge in its proper place without it intruding?
1:06:14 K: Perhaps, it may mean both. May – we’ll inquire into it. Because I may be a first-class engineer. There must be freedom from that, in order to find something new. Even in the engineering field, if I’m merely repeating what I’ve known...
1:06:46 Q: There’s no room.

K: I can’t build a new bridge, the San Francisco Golden Bridge or in New York, those marvellous bridges. Though I have the technological knowledge of a particular subject, there must be a certain freedom from it to discover something new.
1:07:19 Q: It’s obvious.
1:07:21 K: If it is obvious, I also must be free from this accumulated knowledge, psychological knowledge, which is me. Knowledge is me. Knowledge is memory, which is me. There must be a freedom from that, to find something else.
1:07:51 Q: This psychological knowledge is a hindrance when we carry out our jobs.
1:07:59 K: I don’t quite follow.
1:08:01 Q: The accumulated psychological knowledge seems to be a hindrance in the care with which we carry out our jobs.
1:08:12 K: Yes, but either we do it or it becomes a terrible theory. It’s so useless to have theories about all these matters.
1:08:22 Q: Sir, you’re saying we must be free of the consciousness of mankind. Is that correct?
1:08:28 K: Not ‘we must be free’.
1:08:30 Q: There must be freedom.

K: Yes.
1:08:39 Q: I think that needs some explanation, sir.
1:08:45 K: Sir, if one realises – just a minute, let me finish – that I am actually the rest of humanity, which means I’ve experienced everything on earth. My consciousness, the consciousness of humanity, has experienced every guru, every experience, every so-called illumination – it’s all within there. And when I say, ‘I must have more’, I’m still... I don’t know if you follow all this.
1:09:32 Q: It’s very difficult.
1:09:40 Q: Sir, I think that one can understand that, to a certain extent, but then to say that there must be freedom from that entire consciousness and the experience that’s gathered through the millennias, that’s very difficult to grasp.

K: Oh, no. Sir, just a minute. I am a Hindu. I’ve been brought up as a Brahmin. I don’t like that religion but I like Christianity, for various personal and psychological reasons. So, I go over there. But it is the same thing.
1:10:30 Q: There’s been no movement at all.

K: There is no difference, one worships one image, another worships another image. That realisation that there is no difference, frees me from both. Frees me from both in the sense, under whatever name, thought has created the image and thought is not sacred therefore, the images are not sacred. Full-stop. What? No, my mind is seeking something sacred, suppose, and this is not sacred, this or that. Letting this go and joining Islam, it’s the same thing. So, having insight into one, makes you free from all other contagious religions. Sorry!
1:11:48 Q: And is that a movement outside of the consciousness of mankind?
1:11:53 K: Yes, of course it is.
1:11:58 Q: But within the field of that particular thing we’re looking at. It’s difficult, because it is an insight of a kind.
1:12:09 K: Yes, it’s an insight of a kind.

Q: Of a kind. It’s not total insight. It’s a partial insight. Now, move to another realm, which is nationalism. Partial insight is to see the nature of why nationalism exists, for security and so on, how it divides people, how one of the causes is war – so out, finished.
1:12:43 Q: You would not be suggesting though that we have a lot of these insights.
1:12:49 K: No, of course not. I’m just showing how partial insight works, which is taking one by one, going into it, looking at it carefully, so getting a partial, half, lopsided view of it. Partial means lopsided. I won’t go through all this.
1:13:17 Q: Is there an insight into something which…
1:13:23 Q: …wipes out the whole thing?

Q: Right, the whole thing, steps out of the entire consciousness.
1:13:28 K: Yes, sir. You may put it differently. Can you have an insight into the whole nature of consciousness of humanity, which is yourself? Not taking the contents one by one, but the whole structure of this consciousness that exists in mankind. The whole of it. Of course, one can.
1:14:16 Q: Can we look at that minutely, sir? What does one begin to look at in order to have that insight into the whole consciousness of mankind?
1:14:32 K: First of all, sir, if I may point out – I may be wrong, I don’t think I’m subject to correction but I’m saying this politely – first, the division between the observer and the observed must end.
1:14:55 Q: Can we take this more slowly, Krishnaji? Are you suggesting that each one of us – I’ll not use the term ‘individual’ – has access to the complete story?

K: I don’t know. It’s up to you. How can I say that?
1:15:14 Q: But this seems to be implied by what you’re saying, if you’re implying that we are part of a totality of humanity.
1:15:23 K: No, I don’t say that. Sir, I’m saying, so far I’ve been educated, conditioned by religion, by society, by my parents and so on, that I am an individual – my soul, my atman, my characteristic is entirely individual, and ‘salvation’ lies through the individual soul, searching God, etc., and sitting on the right hand side of God. We are conditioned to that so tremendously. That’s a fact. We are so heavily conditioned. Someone comes along and says, ‘Look, that may not be true’. Right? ‘It may be totally false’. You might brush him off because you don’t want to listen to it. But if you listen to it, he explains why, very carefully, and you begin to see that what he says may be true – may be. But the conditioning is so strong, the habit is so heavily anchored, that you refuse to go the entire distance of what he’s talking about. Are we doing that now? Are we saying, ‘My habit, my conditioning, prevents me from seeing whether what you’re saying is false or true’?
1:17:24 Q: I think that’s the situation I find myself in.
1:17:28 K: Therefore, one must be free from the anchor before you can find out what is true or what is false. You can’t be anchored and say, ‘Let me look’. Because the length of the anchor may be very, very short. It is always short. Whatever the length. You may have a mile but it’s still short. As long as you have an anchorage you cannot examine what is true and what is false. So, one has to find out if you can let go, pull up the anchor and move.
1:18:21 Q: Which means self-knowledge has no place.
1:18:24 K: Self-knowledge is there for you to look. The story is there.
1:18:31 Q: But how would that come about? To observe oneself? To be more alert?
1:18:39 K: Not more or less. Just look, sir.
1:18:46 Q: Krishnaji, you said that perhaps the first step in this was for there to be no division between the observer...
1:18:54 K: The first step is freedom from anchorage, freedom from the stake. The next is to look. And find out whether the observer is looking. And discover for oneself the observer is the observed.
1:19:24 Q: Are saying one is mirroring oneself in one’s relationship with others? Is that part of it?
1:19:37 K: The ‘me’ is the anchor.

Q: Yes.
1:19:40 K: Which has been – I’m tired of repeating this.
1:19:43 Q: The observer is the anchor.
1:19:47 K: The observer is the anchor, is the past. What is the difficulty in this?
1:20:00 Q: Part of the difficulty, with me, anyway, is that as soon as we start talking about this, I’m thinking, already wanting to know.
1:20:11 K: Lady, I said I don’t want to know, I just want to see what is happening.
1:20:16 Q: Yes, but that seems to be the problem because one’s already moving.
1:20:22 K: There is no problem. I just want to see how that camera works. I can’t say, ‘It must work this way, or that way’, I don’t know how it works, so I look.
1:20:37 Q: There’s no longer any question of moments of insight which then vanish, because you’re just looking.
1:20:46 K: First, I said, look, to understand somebody I must remove my anchor. That’s so obvious. If I want to understand you, I can’t stick to my prejudice. I must be free of that, first. Then I say, ‘How do I look at you?’ Do I look at you from my past experience about you, from my past knowledge, my past idiosyncrasy and all the stupidities, or the observer is looking at you, so dividing? You understand?

Q: Yes.
1:21:31 K: But when I look at you, you are me because you go through the same. I can’t repeat this ten times!
1:21:42 Q: Can you say what comes, what follows that then, sir?
1:21:46 K: Then, if you go into it, that is, the observer is the observed, the experiencer is the experience, the thinker is the thought. There is no division between the thinker and the thought, between the experiencer and the experience, between the observer and the observed. Psychologically, I’m talking, not observing a tree. If that is so, then you have altogether eliminated conflict because there is no division. Conflict exists when there is division between me and the thing I’m observing. I am angry, I am violent, but my tradition, my conditioning say I must not be violent. So, I have divided immediately, and so, in that division, there is conflict. I must control my violence, rationalise it, escape and so on. So, when I recognise that violence is me, it’s not separate from me, the element of conflict ends. Which is logical. Right? It is sane that conflict ends. Then, what actually takes place is… I’m describing. Aren’t you doing it? Aren’t you doing it, Scott? That you are violent. Violence is not separate from you. The word ‘violence’ may be separating, so forget the word. The feeling of violence. That feeling is not separate from you, you are that feeling. Now, before, you acted upon it. Now you cannot act upon it because it’s you. You can’t hit yourself. Right? You can, but it’s no fun. So, you are that. Then all movement of thought ceases, doesn’t it? Thought which says, ‘I must change, it must be changed. What is wrong with being violent?’ All the movement of thought ceases. Therefore there is no movement except that feeling. Right? Can you hold that feeling without any movement? Then, if you hold it really, really be with it – not ‘be with it’ – let it be, then the thing has no meaning, it’s gone. As long as you’re fighting it has a meaning. As long as you resist it, control it, you’re giving vitality to it. If you say, ‘That’s me, I’m brown’, all right, you’re brown, get on with it – it’s finished, it has no longer significance. So, that’s another matter. We’re really talking about human consciousness as being similar. That’s really important. I am the rest of mankind. I am mankind. For me, that is tremendously significant. Realising that, I am the guru and the disciple.
1:26:41 Q: As a true teacher, what you really have done with us, you have come on our boat and said, ‘Pull that anchor up’. Is that what we should be doing in the schools?
1:26:57 K: I haven’t done it – don’t fool yourself.
1:27:04 Q: But it’s a good feeling.
1:27:09 K: Nobody can do it.

Q: But oneself.
1:27:16 K: You can talk about it, say, ‘By Jove, I’ve got it’, but it’s there.

Q: Yes, it’s there.
1:27:36 K: When I realise that I am the rest of mankind, my consciousness is similar to all mankind, any action in that field is still moving from one corner to the other. Therefore, there is no movement. That is the real crux of the point.
1:28:19 Q: But you seemed to be saying that there must be movement. Pulling up our anchors.
1:28:28 K: When you pull up the anchor, the movement is freedom from your prejudice, from your conclusion, your belief, your idea that you’re an individual. And so, you’re free to examine. Then you discover who is the examiner – and so on and so on.
1:29:15 Q: Could I just get this clear, the realisation that I’m mankind, the consequence of that realisation is that all thought, all kinds of human action would still remain within that sphere. You couldn’t go beyond it. All things that all other people have done and all things that they can do, all the things that lie within the human range of potentials can’t get themselves out of that. Is that the consequence or importance of the realisation?
1:29:51 K: I think so, don’t you?
1:29:54 Q: It seems a very important realisation, yes.
1:30:07 K: Is there a state of mind which is absolutely immovable? Not immovable in the sense holding on to a prejudice – I don’t mean that. But in this consciousness everything is moving. Thought is constantly moving, from this corner to that corner, being occupied. Therefore, that is a movement in time. Now, is there a non-movement of this which has a totally different kind of movement? This movement has a cause. Am I making myself clear? This movement has a cause/effect, and from that effect another cause. The very effect becomes the cause and so on. Now, there is a movement which has no cause. But it is non-movement. I don’t know if I can put it that way.
1:31:29 Q: Why do you call it ‘non-movement’, sir?
1:31:35 K: Because – just a minute. Let’s go back. I only know this movement, moving from one side to another, from one corner to another, from one object to another within this area of human consciousness. That consciousness may be wide or very narrow, but it is still human consciousness. That consciousness is me, you. Now, I only know that movement, which is the movement of time and so on. Now I’m asking, is there a movement which is not that? So, I must be free from that to find out. Like I must remove my anchor of prejudice to move. That movement of lifting the anchor and moving, is still there. Is there a movement which is not of time, which is not of cause, which is not an effect/cause? Which means, first there must be absolute immovability. Sorry! Is there anything that’s absolutely immovable? If there is, that immobility has its own mobility.
1:33:38 Q: But in another dimension.

K: Nothing to do with dimension. Sir, the universe has no cause and effect – it’s the universe, it’s living. Am I making something clear or it’s all idiotic?
1:34:02 Q: You’re saying that normally we move with thought, but that there is a movement when thought ceases, which is out of no thought at all.
1:34:15 K: I mean by immobility a statement like this, that there is no path to truth. That is absolute. Therefore, it is immovable, as far as I am concerned. Right? Like time-thought is fear – that’s absolute, because you can see that. I don’t know… It’s not a logical immobility, it is so. Like daylight and sunrise and sunset, it’s so. You can’t alter it. The sun may rise at different degrees but it is from the east and the west, it’s not from the west and east. That’s an absolute, irrevocable fact. Thought has no path to it, it cannot alter that. We can discuss it logically, rationally, sanely and see it is so. So, is there something that is absolutely irrevocable, immovable? And then, out of that, comes something totally different. I think we’d better stop, don’t you?