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RA65TS1 - Why are you being educated?
Rajghat, India - 1 December 1965
School Talk 1



0:00 This is J. Krishnamurti’s first talk with students at Rajghat, 1965.
0:10 Krishnamurti (K)What would you like me to talk about?
0:30 No suggestions?
0:45 By Jove, you are a very silent crowd, aren’t you?
1:04 All right, if you don’t want me to talk about something special, then I will talk about what I want to talk about.
1:20 Perhaps, after I have talked a little, if you aren’t too sleepy by then, you will ask me some questions and we can discuss.
1:34 Student (S): Sir, some people say you must live in the present, and same people say, you must be far-sighted.
1:58 So how can we...
2:10 K: God.
2:17 (Laughter) Shall we answer that question a little later?
2:28 Or, shall I answer it now? Would you like me to answer it now?
2:59 Probably he doesn’t understand English.
3:23 I am a bit lost. You know—I’ll answer his question afterwards—you know what is going on in the world, don’t you?
3:37 Current history—somebody must be talking to you about it.
3:45 The wars going on, in Vietnam and in this country other parts of the world there are revolutions, various types of killing, the world is getting over-populated.
4:03 There is, especially in the East, lack of food.
4:12 There is terrible tyranny, that is, government suppressing people, no freedom of thought, no freedom of speech.
4:25 And then, there is the other end—everybody can say what they like, do what they like, think what they like, terribly rich and very poor.
4:39 People have in America two or three cars in a family or more, and here hardly anybody, few, very, very few have cars.
4:54 In some parts of the world it rains a great deal, pours. In Switzerland, while we were there, this summer, it rained practically every day for three months.
5:10 four months. They call it green winter and white winter. Everywhere there is a terrible lot of confusion, misery.
5:27 And in this country there is much more so, more poverty, there hasn’t been enough rain, crops are going to fail and there is going to be much more famine, more hunger, more poverty, because of this war and because the rains have failed and because the way we live.
5:54 They are all interrelated. Seeing all this—the misery, the confusion, the over-population, the lack of food, the utter callousness of people—you know what callousness means?, indifference—doesn’t matter what happens to another.
6:28 Nobody seems to care for anybody. So seeing all this, not only in Benares, but the world over, one asks—at least you must ask yourself, and I hope you do—what is it all about?
7:03 Why is there such misery? Why do human beings like you and me, and that poor lady that goes by on the road carrying heavy load, why has all this to be?
7:22 Why have we got to live this way?, in such anxiety, fear, hopeless despair, why?
7:37 One has put this question from time immemorial, from time beyond memory.
7:48 They must have put this questions in Babylon, Nineveh, that was five thousand years ago.
7:58 They must have put this same question in Egypt, in Greece, in Rome, and now we are putting the same question.
8:11 And we are supposed to be civilized human beings.
8:18 That is, we are supposed to be learned, we are supposed to have learnt so much more.
8:26 We know so much more. We know about geography, the climates of various countries, the population, the production, the statistical growth of industry, we are supposed to be more cultured, we are supposed to be more thoughtful.
8:56 And throughout the world religions have failed. They repeat words that you are a Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Catholic and so on.
9:10 But they have no meaning any more. You may go to a temple and mutter some stupid prayer or invite a priest to do your marriage or when one dies.
9:25 But really nobody cares two pins about all that. And the leaders—political, religious—have also lost their meaning nobody cares because there have been leaders like Hitler, Mussolini, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and they have all added more confusion, more misery.
9:58 Little clarification here and there, but generally it is all a frightful mess.
10:07 So one has lost trust in leaders, in religions and it used to be few years ago that science would solve all our problems and science has.
10:30 They can go to the moon, they can live under the sea for a week, a fortnight, in a tent, marvellous instruments as computers, automation.
10:50 But man, you and I, ordinary people, we have lost faith in everything.
10:58 Naturally and quite rightly.
11:05 We really have no faith in your parents, in your elders.
11:17 So, what is one to do? So, one asks: What is the function of education?
11:33 Why is one educated?—you—why are you being educated?
11:42 Are you being educated, taught mathematics, geography, history, science, to be a responsible human being, responsible for what he does, for what he thinks, what he feels, responsible in his relationships?
12:15 Or, are you being merely educated to pass some examination—B.A, M.A., Ph.D. or whatever you will and then get a job, and then follow the pattern for the rest of your life—going to the office for forty years, day after day, grumbling, sweating, anxious, fearful and be like the rest of the world—confused, miserable, anxious afraid.
13:00 If that is the purpose of education, then I don’t quite see the value of it.
13:09 You might be able to do things better, to produce more, research into various forms of diseases, to produce more.
13:28 But surely that is not the whole business of life.
13:37 So I think, one has to ask oneself, primarily yourself, and then perhaps the teacher, and then perhaps much further away, Government, why we are being educated and when we are educated—naturally it is essential that we be educated—then how are you going to blossom as a human being?
14:22 You understand my question? What are you going to be?—just a housewife, just a clerk or a bigger clerk as a governor.
14:45 So unless we begin to ask these questions and find out the right reply to them, we shall be wasting our lives.
15:00 You may be very clever in your examinations. Probably have a B.A., an alphabet added after your name, but if you are not a human being, that is, if you have no feeling for others, if you don’t love others—not your little children, and your father and mother—you don’t really, nobody cares about that.
15:27 If you don’t love people, if you don’t love animals, if you don’t love trees, if you don’t love birds, the skies, the river and have no sympathy and therefore work for somebody, not ideologically, don’t join any groups, that of course is the end of everything.
15:55 But, as a human being, to feel, to be responsible, to care for your children, for everybody.
16:09 If you don’t do that, what is the point of having a degree, earning ten thousand rupees, or thousand rupees or five thousand, whatever one earns.
16:19 What is the point of it at all? To have little more clothes, a bigger car, go to the mountains when it is very hot?
16:32 And what happens to your children? Are they getting right education? Will they ever get it? So all these questions are being asked.
16:52 You may not ask it here, but all over the world people are asking, searching, trying to find out, how to live without hate, without wars, how to live so that you are not a Muslim, that you are Hindus and I am a Muslim, somebody else is a communist, somebody else is a—I don’t know what else.
17:30 So, from now on, when we are young, this is the time to be a revolutionary, not when you grow older, you won’t be, because then you will be married, will have children and will say, for goodness sake let’s all be quiet, let us all carry on, don’t disturb.
18:00 And you will find convenient theories, slogans, join this or that group that give you little satisfaction, do little social work and talk about ideologies indefinitely.
18:14 But this is the time when you are very young, full of vitality, if one has enough vitality, which means right food, enough sleep, enough games.
18:33 It is now that you must be in a state of revolution.
18:41 Question everything—all your traditions, question your gods, your priests, your beliefs, your leaders, your everything, question.
18:56 Don’t accept anything, except naturally, technological knowledge, you can’t question that.
19:06 You can’t question what’s the distance between here and New York or Bombay.
19:13 You can’t question how an architect builds a house, you can inquire and ask and learn, you can find out.
19:28 But we are talking of questioning, doubting, this whole structure of society.
19:39 That you are a woman and I am a man.
19:47 I treat you one way and you treat me another. You treat your servant differently, and your priest differently and your politician still more differently.
20:06 Unless you begin to be in revolution, not merely in revolt, like smoking or drinking, that doesn’t lead anywhere, but to be really revolutionary—not as a communist, as a socialist, as something—but to feel tremendous discontent.
20:32 And you must be discontented.
20:40 You know, it is strange that most of us, when we are young students, looking at life out of our windows of our mind, we are discontented, we are unhappy.
20:59 But as we grow older, that discontent which used to burn, which used to boil, gradually disappears because you get married, you have a little job and there you settle down.
21:18 You are then discontented with little things, like having a few more saris, a few more coats, or a bigger car or this or that.
21:28 But I don’t call that discontent. Discontent is something much deeper, much more wide, which is not easily satisfied.
21:51 And unless, from now on, you keep this flame burning within, you will end up like the rest of the people, thinking the same routine, standardised thoughts about ideals, about governments, about priests, about families, about your jobs and you’ll be caught up in the wheel of this monstrous society.
22:38 And so from now on—please do listen to me—from now on, you must be in a tremendous state of discontent.
22:56 That is, not with society only, not with your environment, but discontent within oneself, to find out how to live rightly, because we have to live.
23:16 We have to get married, have children. But do it rightly, happily, intelligently, to have right relationship with people.
23:30 And you can’t have right relationship with people if each one of us is seeking one’s own importance, if each one of us wants to be the most prominent citizen or become a very rich man, a very powerful man.
23:53 And that’s what everybody is doing. Each one is thinking about himself.
24:04 You know, this thinking about oneself has been going on for not only when you are young, it has been going on, oh. beyond time.
24:25 And they have found, they have tried to find various substitutes for it. Are you listening to all that I am talking about? (Laughs) Or, is the English rather complicated and difficult. I am sorry I don’t speak Hindi or any other Indian language. I am sorry. As I was saying, one wants to forget oneself, because one sees how stupid it is and therefore one joins a group and you identify yourself with the group which is just the same as your thinking about yourself.
25:09 When you say, I am a Hindu fighting Pakistan, you are thinking about yourself, only you have covered it up under a different name.
25:29 And all religions have said don’t think about yourself, it’s not worth it, but they haven’t succeeded.
25:39 So you have to look at all this, that is right education.
25:46 Not merely going to a classroom, learning how to read or calculate, or become an engineer.
25:54 That is part of life, very, very small part.
26:01 But this is a vast field which lies inside oneself.
26:13 And very few of us know how to look at that field, how to understand it, how to explore it and see what lies beyond it.
26:26 And all that is education. And when you miss this vast field that lies within oneself, you are not educated, you are not a civilized human being.
26:39 You may have trousers, beautiful saris, ride in a car, fly, go in an aeroplane from here to New York or Moscow or whatever place one goes to.
26:53 That is not education. Education is the understanding of the whole of life.
27:06 The life that we live secretly within ourselves, the life of fear, the life of ambition, the life of wanting to fulfil oneself as a great author, as a great politician, or as wanting to be somebody—all that’s life.
27:36 And you can’t understand it by being smug, by accepting tradition or just being in revolt against tradition.
27:52 You can understand it only when you are constantly asking yourself, constantly watchful, constantly questioning everything you come across.
28:21 Then out of that perhaps we can create a different kind of society than it is at present.
28:30 Then perhaps we shall have governments without politicians. You understand? After all government is a glorified housekeeping. Why do you want politicians at all?
28:50 Why do you want any priests, any monks, any sanyasis, when you yourself can come into contact with some great beauty, yourself coming into contact with something that is beyond the little mischief of man.
29:19 And with these electronic brains, with the automation, man is going to have more and more leisure, more and more time for himself.
29:35 Either he is going to spend that time in amusement, entertainment, which is going to football, churches, temples, drink, and excitement as sex and so on, or, you are going to investigate more deeply into the vast field that lies within oneself.
30:05 So, to inquire into all this, a mind must be very sharp, very clear, not stuffed with knowledge only.
30:26 To inquire into all this one mustn’t be afraid.
30:33 So, our education is really an exploration not only outside as knowledge, but also exploring this thing that lies within ourselves, within our skin and when the two meet together, the outer and the inner, then you live a life of enormous richness, then you live a life of extraordinary beauty.
31:25 And it is only a life that has understood beauty can be righteous.
31:35 Without understanding beauty, you can never be righteous.
31:47 And education is part of all this. That is why one has to study tremendously, you know, your books, your science, effectively, so as to have a good mind, not a sloppy, silly little mind.
32:17 And when you sharpen the mind outwardly, then with that sharp mind you can go inwardly.
32:27 And out of that inward clarity one can live an extraordinary life of joy, with little or with much, it doesn’t matter then.
32:42 Right, sirs.
32:44 Q: Sir, can men really be .... without any effort?
32:53 K: May I answer that boy’s question first? May I answer that question first? All right?
33:03 Q: Yes.
33:05 K: All right. The question that boy put was: some say that you must live now and others say that you must concern, have a, look further beyond the present.
33:28 Isn’t it? That’s the question, wasn’t it? I don’t know. Probably he’s gone to sleep.
33:39 I don’t know. (Laughter) Q: The same people say both...
33:51 K: The same people say...
34:01 Q: The same people, sometimes they say that we must live in the present. The same persons, sometimes they say we must have a foresight.
34:04 K: The same person says at one time that you must live now and the same people say that you must also consider the future, right?
34:16 By Jove, this is rather a philosophical question, isn’t it?
34:26 You know what now is, do you?, the now?
34:33 You are sitting there, aren’t you?, and you are listening to me, to the speaker.
34:40 Right? Listen carefully. You are sitting there, we are sitting here, we are talking together. Either you listen very carefully, attentively, without coughing, you see, (laughter) without coughing, without looking at somebody else, without yawning, stretching, scratching—listening very sharply, clearly, attentively, with full intention.
35:16 Now, when you listen like that, there is only the now, isn’t there?
35:24 You are not concerned about tomorrow or yesterday or even the next hour. You are completely attentive now. So, that’s part of the now, isn’t it? Right? But—oh, oh, oh, oh, cough, right, sir, cough completely, get it over.
35:51 (Laughter) Go ahead. There is nothing wrong about coughing, if you’ve got a cold.
36:05 But perhaps you are coughing out of nervousness. Perhaps you are coughing because you don’t want to listen. You are coughing because what is being said may be disturbing.
36:22 So, if you’re—(Laughs) (Laughter) You see, somebody got up and went out just now and you are all turning your head and looking, right?, which means you are not attentive, which means already the now has gone.
36:58 You understand? With that person going and your looking at that person, the now has already gone.
37:08 So the now is the moment, that split-second, that interval between two movements of thought when your whole attention is focussed, when your whole being is listening, watching, asking.
37:36 Now, if you can live like that all the time, all during the day, then, the how you have lived that now all during the day is the tomorrow also.
38:02 And the tomorrow is the yesterday. I don’t know if you are following all this? It is extraordinary simple and extraordinarily beautiful if you know how to look at this.
38:14 So, there is no yesterday, today and tomorrow, when you know how to live the now so completely.
38:29 And you can live so completely when you are neither running away; when you are not frightened, when you say, well, I will be a great man tomorrow.
38:46 When you give your whole attention to your whole being, then you will see that now is the tomorrow and the yesterday.
39:07 And because we can’t live that way, because we don’t know how to live that way, we say we must also think about the future.
39:24 And the future is what was yesterday through the today to tomorrow.
39:33 You are understanding all this? The future, say, for instance your future as a girl and a boy—you are still coughing?—your future for example, that is, what you are going to be when you grow up, will depend what you were yesterday, how you thought, how you felt, how you hurt another, what you did to help another—yesterday what you did.
40:21 What you did yesterday, is going to operate today, is going to shape your thoughts, feelings, everything today and today is going to shape the tomorrow.
40:35 So, yesterday, through today, creates the tomorrow.
40:44 So, it is all a movement.
40:52 So, if you are tremendously intelligent, very alive, you will watch today enormously—what you do, what you say, how you think, how you study, whether you join this group, that group, whether you get caught up in some ideology.
41:12 Then you are building from yesterday into today which is going to shape your future.
41:23 That is, if you are growing up say for instance, as a traditional human being, as a Hindu, with all the customs, superstitions, fears, anxieties, separating himself against the Muslim, if you are going to grow up that way, tomorrow you are going to pay for it, because there are going to be wars, you will be fighting your Muslim across the border and he will be fighting you, your children and you will be in tears.
42:08 They’ll come back home without arms, without eyes, you understand? For God’s sake, wake up. So it matters tremendously that you watch the now, you are so aware of the now—your feelings against Muslims, against the foreigner, against Bihar, you know?
42:54 So out of the now, you create misery, or confusion, or disgrace, or misery, or, from the now, because you understand the enormity of it, you live a different life altogether.
43:16 What was your question my lady?
43:24 Q: Can man really be human without any effort?
43:37 K: Can man without effort become a human being?
43:45 Is that it? Be a human being. I wonder why you ask that question?
44:06 You heard me say live without effort, have you?
44:13 If you have, and if you are questioning is that possible, then let’s find out.
44:22 Don’t ask questions, you know casually, without knowing what you are asking and not caring what is said.
44:31 You just ask. You know people do, show off their cleverness, or their erudition, or because they know cleverly how to compare, what is that, some great saint or some great philosopher, ten thousand years or now.
44:56 So, you are saying, is it possible to live a life, and life of a human being without effort?
45:13 Now, we have lived, as far as human history goes, we have lived, human recorded history, which is about six thousand years ago, we have lived since then till now in constant effort, right?, battling.
45:40 Not only outside, with our neighbours, with our society, with our country, with the land, with everything, conflict, conflict, conflict, effort.
45:55 In your school, in your class, you are making tremendous effort to beat the other fellow, to be more clever than that boy or that girl, to get a better degree in an examination because then you will get a scholarship, then perhaps you will be able to go abroad, and get a better job, marry a right person, little more money, more cars.
46:23 So we keep this up. Right? This is what we are used to, from the highest politician to the highest sanyasi, or to the lowest, poor servant.
46:40 We are used to this. And that is all we know. Somebody else comes along, like me, and says, what a way to live?
46:59 What a way to treat life as a battle?
47:08 You understand? As a field in which all of us are fighting like animals. And yet we are all supposed to be highly educated. So one says, perhaps there is a different way of living. There must be a different way of living than this fearful, battle, outside and inside.
47:34 You understand? I fight with my neighbour to get a better job, to get ahead of him and I am fighting against conflict, you know, torn into myself.
47:45 So is there a different way of living? So one says, why do we have conflicts? Right? If you had no conflict, you won’t make an effort. Right? First we have conflict; then we make an effort. Right? Now, why is there conflict?
48:20 There is conflict because we compare.
48:30 I am going step by step. You’ll see it. I am comparing. I am comparing myself in my class with somebody who is much cleverer than me.
48:42 So I struggle, struggle to keep up with him. And I am a clerk in a bank and I struggle, struggle to become the manager or the super clerk, whatever it is.
48:54 And I belong to a political party and I struggle, struggle, struggle to become a Minister.
49:02 So, there is not only comparing, right?, which leads to conflict, but there is also, I compare because in myself I want to do at the same time two different things.
49:26 I don’t like and I like. I love people and at the same time I hate people. I want to be ambitious. I am ambitious. I want to reach the highest post I want to do everything. At the same time in this ambition there is frustration. I can’t get what all that I want. I would like to be the big man in this filthy little town and I can’t.
49:58 So I begin to weep inside. So I struggle. So, there is conflict not only because there is comparison, also there is conflict because I have opposing desires.
50:18 Right? And also, there is conflict because of our habit.
50:26 We have been told for centuries upon centuries that you must struggle, otherwise you will go to sleep.
50:40 You must struggle to find God, to be a good, you must struggle to control your appetite, sex, food, struggle, struggle, suppress, you follow?, so that has become a habit, like smoking.
50:57 And also in ourselves we fear that if I don’t struggle, I will just go to sleep, right?, I will vegetate, I will be nothing.
51:15 So all these things make us make effort. Right? Now, can I live without comparing? Can I study in my class without comparing myself with somebody else? Of course, I can. Probably, when I do study without comparing myself with another I can give much more of my attention to it.
51:45 You know, when you love somebody, you don’t compare, do you?
51:56 When I love what I am doing, whether it is a gardener, whether it is a professor, whether it is somebody, social work, whatever it is, when you love what you are doing, that means non-comparing, not using what you are doing to get more money to become—you follow?
52:20 When you love to play an instrument for itself and not because you become famous, or you get a lot of money or your name is printed in the newspaper and so on, so on, so on, when you love to play, then there is no effort in that.
52:40 Right? You do it, don’t shake your heads and say quite right, but do it.
52:48 Do it in your class. Don’t bother about marks, whether somebody gets more marks, whether somebody is better than you, but love the thing that you are doing.
53:05 And you say, I don’t love mathematics, it is a frightful bore.
53:14 I want to go out and play in the garden. I want to look out of the window and look at the bird.
53:25 Look out of the window. Do listen. Look out of the window. When you do look out of the window, give your whole attention to look. You understand? Don’t look and say, by Jove, I must study, look at this book and at the same time look out of the window.
53:52 You can’t do it. But when you do look through the window, and look at the tree or the bird or who goes by, look at it. Don’t be frightened, don’t bother what the teacher says. Oh, yes quite. (Laughter) I mean it. Don’t bother. But you are frightened. I mean it, don’t bother.
54:14 Because when you look out of the window at that tree you are then looking with attention.
54:26 Right? That same attention, look at your book. And you can’t give your attention if you are saying, well, so and so is better than me and I must catch up.
54:44 So when you give your attention—if you don’t like mathematics, find out why you don’t like it.
54:52 You have to have mathematics. You have to. It is part of education. You can’t say I don’t like. That is too stupid to say, I don’t like to study geography. You have to know geography, history, mathematics, you have to know science, you have to be educated. By studying you sharpen your mind. By saying, well, I don’t like, you become dull.
55:24 You are dull. So we live in conflict because it is our habit, because we compare, because we want to be somebody, which means we don’t love what we are doing.
55:49 And when you love what you are doing, you do it much more efficiently, without effort, you get up at 2 o’clock, 3 o’ clock, doesn’t matter, you love the thing you are doing.
56:04 And it is only when you love what you are doing, out of that there is discipline, there is goodness.
56:14 And goodness doesn’t lie beyond that.
56:21 Q: Sir, what is the difference between affection and love?
56:35 K: What is the difference between affection and love.
56:43 First of all, do you know what sympathy is? Now wait a minute. Listen, listen, listen. Do you know what sympathy is? When you see that woman going along the road with that filthy sari, bare-footed, having in her stomach very little food, carrying weight and selling what she is carrying for a pittance—do you have sympathy for her?
57:27 Do you? Do you? Yes? Now wait a minute. You have sympathy, don’t you? Do you look at her, or do you generally have sympathy? (Laughs) Is sympathy an idea? Or, you look and say, my God, how can such a thing happen in the world?
57:58 Little girl is going out, don’t look—attention.
58:09 (Laughs) If you look, look. Don’t bother to listen. If that girl wants to go out, let her go out. Watch her going out. You will only make her more uncomfortable. That is all. So, either you have sympathy, because you think you must have sympathy, because you have been told about it, and therefore it is no sympathy at all, but when you see that woman, if you have seen her, if you are not too occupied with your own ideas, with your own desires, with your own ideologies, and you look at her and say, I must have sympathy and have sympathy, which is not sympathy.
59:05 But when you look at her, wide-eyed, giving your attention—have you ever done it?
59:23 If you have done it deeply, you will cry. And it is right to cry, because we have reduced her, we have made her—your country, your politicians—you have produced her, you are responsible for her.
59:58 And because we feel so much, we say, I would rather not look and talk about ideologies, God and you know all the rest of the nonsense.
1:00:08 So when you do look, you have tears, you must have tears and that is sympathy.
1:00:17 And when that sympathy is sharpened by action, by doing, then out of that sympathy comes tenderness.
1:00:35 Out of that tenderness comes affection.
1:00:45 If we have no sympathy, no tenderness and therefore no affection, it is no good talking about love.
1:01:05 You see, when we have sympathy, we say, I must do something to alter the society.
1:01:13 So, having sympathy, the desire to act, we join groups—communist, socialist, the group across the road, or behind the road or somewhere else—we join groups.
1:01:28 And the group say, you will help her if you follow this pattern of thought, this pattern of activity.
1:01:37 So you follow and you have forgotten your sympathy, your love, your tenderness, for that woman.
1:01:44 All that you have is the idea, the pattern, the ideology and then you become hard, full of intellectual concepts without a single feeling.
1:02:02 So when you look at that woman you must bleed, you must cry.
1:02:17 And then out of that perhaps you will do something directly to help her, give her a sari, carry her burden.
1:02:32 We have done this, I am not talking of, I have done this. I couldn’t give her a sari, but I gave her a kurta.
1:02:43 I have done this. But, they don’t like it either, because they think you are patronizing. It all depends how you do it, with what intention, with what beauty, grace, tenderness.
1:03:01 So unless you have grace, beauty, sympathy, tenderness, there is no affection for your children, for your sister, or your father or for your neighbour.
1:03:17 Then only you can talk about love.
1:03:35 Q: How am I to know that I am bad? And how am I to improve?
1:03:44 K: How am I to know that I am bad. How am I to improve. Who tells you are bad? Who tells you? For God’s sake, what are you? Who tells you that you are bad? You mean you are mischievous, you are naughty, you want to pull somebody’s hair, you over-eat, you are not punctual, you want to play, you don’t want to study—that’s all.
1:04:33 That is not bad.
1:04:40 One must be naughty. If you are not naughty when you are very young, something is wrong with you. But you see, in a class where there are twenty, thirty people, when you are naughty, you know, you can’t hold the class together.
1:05:07 So the teacher or whoever it is says, you are bad. And so you say, by Jove, I am frightened, I must be quiet and I must improve.
1:05:19 And that’s where all life goes, when you grow older somebody tells you that you are bad, you are not good, you are not efficient, you must work much harder.
1:05:35 We don’t see the thing for itself, in ourselves.
1:05:42 That means, for a little child it has to be explained, gone into with patience, with feeling, not call it you are bad.
1:05:57 And you can’t improve. Don’t improve. Good gracious me! idea that you must improve! What are you going to improve? Your own selfishness? Become super-selfish? (Laughs) You see, we use these words very easily—I must improve, I must become better, improve.
1:06:33 First find out what is there to improve. There may be nothing to improve. Because, after all, when you are jealous, as most people are, how do you improve it?
1:06:56 (Laughs) By becoming more jealous? Or, you say, by Jove, I am jealous, I won’t be jealous. Not fight over it. I won’t be jealous—finished. You see, this idea of improving if dreadful. It is really the most appalling thing man has talked about— improvement.
1:07:25 And this improvement leads to bourgeois state. You know what a bourgeois state is? I am sorry I have used a word which is rather difficult to explain.
1:07:40 Which is, try to fit into the pattern which society has established as the good, the bad, the right, the virtuous, the respectable.
1:07:57 Respectability is the height of bourgeois mind. You understand? (Laughs) Is that too much? And that’s what all of you are going to end up—being terribly respectable.
1:08:24 So, don’t improve, but change.
1:08:36 Change radically right through.
1:08:45 But a man who is always considering improvement will never change. He will become more respectable, more hypocritical.
1:09:01 But a man who radically changes, he is really virtuous. To him what anybody says about being good or bad is just words, means nothing.
1:09:28 Q: Sir, what is the ... in nature which attracts us?
1:09:44 K: What is attractive...?
1:09:49 Q: ...in this nature.
1:09:52 Q: Why does nature attract us? K; What?
1:09:54 Q: Why does nature attract us. What is that in nature that attracts.
1:09:56 K: I don’t understand.
1:09:58 Q: What is there in nature to attract?
1:09:59 Q: What is there in nature to attract us?
1:10:00 K: Which is it? Why does nature attract us? Is that it? Or what is the nature of attraction... (Laughter) Q: What is there in nature to attract us.
1:10:09 K: Aha, you mean, why does nature attract us.
1:10:18 Is that it? Why does a tree, a forest, a river, a blue sky, lots of birds flying, a whole flock of green parrots rushing across the sky—why does it attract us, is that it?
1:10:39 Very simple, isn’t it?
1:10:50 You are attracted by it, either by the sheer beauty of it, you understand?, seeing a bird rushing across the sky with the light on its wing is a lovely thing, isn’t it?
1:11:11 You are attracted by it. You say... I want to look. Or, you look and you want to be attracted because you don’t know how to live. You escape from living to that. Right? You are following what I am saying? So which is it? Either you are escaping from life, the daily grind, the daily ugliness, the daily worries, the daily monstrous struggle.
1:11:45 And so you say, by Jove, I am going to worship nature.
1:11:53 Or, you are not escaping and therefore the bird and life are both attractive, are both beautiful.
1:12:08 And to see the beauty of both, you need vitality, energy and not escape. Is that enough for this morning?
1:12:31 No? Have you got a class after this?
1:12:37 Q: Yes.
1:12:39 K: No?
1:12:40 Q: Yes.
1:12:42 K: Do you want to sit here and avoid the class?
1:12:52 (Laughter) Yes? So you are treating this as an entertainment, are you? (Laughter) I suppose you think this is as good as a cinema.
1:13:08 (Laughter) We have talked for an hour and a quarter, isn’t that enough?
1:13:21 I think that’s enough sir. We meet on the 4th morning. That is when?
1:13:33 Q: Saturday.
1:13:35 K: We meet on Saturday at 9.30 here.