Why are we being educated at all?

J. Krishnamurti interviewed by Fred Hall

 

Mr Fred Hall (FH): Mr Krishnamurti, you are now working toward the realisation of a new school in the Ojai Valley, an educational centre. We have, I think, four or five private schools and an abundance of public schools here. Now, I’m wondering why another school.

Krishnamurti (K): You are asking what the difference is between this school and other schools.

FH: Certainly.

K: Sir, first of all, why are we being educated at all? When we are educated, in public schools, private schools, universities and colleges and so on, either we condition the mind or we give emphasis to a particular segment of the brain, which is the cultivation of memory and the skill in action of that memory. That is what is generally considered education in the modern world, both in Europe and in America. And it is going on in India. All that is a fragmentary kind of education. What we are trying to do is to educate the whole of man.

FH: Will you be starting with a very young child in elementary school?

K: Yes, from the age of 8 to 18.

FH: Would you require any particular background for this youngster?

K: No, no. Naturally, we do not want them to be drug addicts, (Laughs) and when children’s parents are divorced, it makes it awfully difficult.

FH: You do not want a disturbed child.

K: We can have one or two, but not a whole group of them.

FH: Are you talking of a residential school?

K: Residential as well as partly non-residential.

FH: And you would offer a basic education of the kind that is required.

K: Of course, first class academically, as we do in England and India.

FH: Well now, just in reading some notes about the school, you refer to it as a place where one can learn a way of living that is whole, sane, and holy. Would you mind taking those three things, whole, sane, and holy, and explaining to me what you mean?

K: You see, the word whole, if you look in a good dictionary, means healthy, physically healthy. That means, non-drug, non-alcohol, non-smoking and keeping the body perfectly healthy. The right nutrition, good food, all that is implied. Then, sane; that word sanity means a mind that is not crippled by belief, a mind that is not conditioned by propaganda, that is capable of thinking clearly, freely, not bound to any particular tradition.

FH: Are any of us at 8 years of age, for example, in that position?

K: Of course not, poor chaps! No, of course not, but as they progress, as they grow older, we are going to work to have a right relationship between the teacher and the student, so that in discussing with them, both the teacher and the student uncondition themselves. That is the whole problem of education.

And whole means, also, holy: to treat life as something sacred. After all, man is not just an animal and not just a technological entity. We want to respect nature. We want to respect other human beings, not become violent, not become brutal, selfish. All that is implied in that word holy, and much more.

FH: Do you see a tendency today in school systems throughout the world to dwell on material things primarily, how to function in society?

K: Oh, obviously. Because everybody is concerned with how to get money, get a job, get a position—in India as well.

FH: They are all trying to make their way.

K: They are all trying that, and therefore it is becoming very materialistic, though they pretend to be very spiritual—you know: ‘I believe in this’, and another believes in that. That is all pretence, it is make-believe; actually all of them are going after money.

FH: What is the net result of this kind of education?

K: Well, you see, it is accepting immoral governments, irresponsible action; accepting violence and immorality as a natural thing. And if it is not that, it is drugs or alcohol, or sex which is another form of drug, and is rampant. You know what is happening in this country, and it is gradually, unfortunately, spreading all over the world.

FH: America is the instigator?

K: I’m afraid so, and also America, especially California, has set an example in certain other things, not just freedom and inquiry. You know all that.

FH: You talk of a school as a place where one learns both the importance of knowledge and its irrelevance. Explain its irrelevance.

K: Sir, what is the function of knowledge? What is the function of accumulated experience technologically, scientifically, sociologically? It becomes knowledge, stored up in the brain as a remembrance which will help you to act skilfully. That is the function of knowledge, and if we function only in that realm we are merely becoming computers, which we are.

FH: We have no life of our own.

K: Through thousands of years our brains have become excellent computers; not as good as electronic computers, but we function automatically, mechanically, superficially. One realises the superficiality of a mechanical way of living, a repetitive way of living, a second-hand way of living. All knowledge is second- hand. A man may have new knowledge, but it becomes second-hand the next minute. If you live in that there is actually no freedom. It is like having an excellent computer and talking about freedom. It is irrelevant. And you must have freedom to learn, you must have freedom to inquire. I mean, the whole Christian world as well as the Hindus and Muslims are conditioned to certain forms of belief, dogma, rituals, tradition. And so gradually what should be human inquiry into truth becomes an acceptance of faith or a belief or a dogma, or constant repetition of rituals. I feel knowledge has its place. It must have its place, otherwise we could not do all this, but as long as we remain in that area all our life there are other areas which we neglect totally, which are slowly beginning to awaken.

FH: Are they beginning to awaken because of an awareness that we are missing these things?

K: No, I think the awakening is because there is a great deal of mystery involved in it, a great deal of mythology, a great sense that this is so limited that we must find something else. Unfortunately, it is not from understanding when knowledge is irrelevant and when it is relevant.

FH: If you take a youngster who is about 8 years old who has grown up in an average family, and has been conditioned by the prejudices and biases of…

K: …the society he lives in, by the friends he has. The other day we were talking to a boy of 15 or 14; he is already becoming violent.

FH: How do you remove him or separate him from that kind of conditioning?

K: If he comes to a school of this kind it is our responsibility, the educator’s responsibility, to see that, in discussing with the student and in having lessons and all that, both the teacher and the student see that they are conditioned. It is not that I am unconditioned and you are conditioned, but that we are both conditioned, so let us—through talk, through discussion, through watching, through observing ourselves, through all kinds of methods—uncondition ourselves. Because otherwise we destroy each other; that is what is happening in the world.

FH: Of course. So your choice of teacher is really the key, isn’t it? It must be extremely difficult to recruit.

K: Of course, extremely difficult. Because, in the world, an educator is ill-paid, is not respected, and those who cannot get good jobs turn up to be teachers.

FH: And those who have good jobs become cautious and very conservative.

K: So we have tremendous difficulty in finding the right teachers.

FH: How are you going about it at the present time?

K: We are doing it by asking whoever is interested to come and stay with us, discuss it, go into it, see what we can do. It isn’t for money. Of course, you have to have money to live and so on. Primarily it is to bring about a different relationship between human beings, between the educator and the educated.

FH: Let’s stop for just a moment and talk about the physical entity that will be this school. Where will it be and how might it begin, in terms of buildings and so on?

K: Sir, you know the Oak Grove, down there.

FH: Where you talk from time to time.

K: We have that property now, about one hundred acres.

FH: One hundred of the most beautiful acres in the world, I think.

K: I know. They are enchanted by that. It is high up; it’s like a nest. The whole town along with Meiners Oaks and all those hideous buildings, but on top there it is completely like a new world. We’ve been there with the architect, and have more or less chosen the places with him. And we need money, you know, the whole business.

FH: Oh sure. As I understand it, money derived from your talks here this year will go toward that school.

K: Ah, no, I personally do not take money at all. I have no bank account. I have a horror of all that stuff. I’m not a guru who is coining money and hoarding it up. (Laughs) They need money, are asking people for donations, begging, passing the hat around.

FH: You’ll start in a small way, then.

K: Obviously, small and slowly, carefully. We are not going to have 500 students right off. We cannot. We will probably start with 30 or 20.

FH: Will it be more than a school, will it be a meeting place, a place to meditate?

K: Yes. That is why we have called it the educational centre; a place where older people can come to think, discuss, exchange, meditate, go into things, go into themselves, transform. It is not just a meeting place, it is a very serious thing.

FH: Is it similar at all to the school at Brockwood Park in England?

K: Yes and no. (Laughs) There are four schools in India which I helped to start—I am not boasting about it, I am just helping to start. Each school should be different from the others, not just imitate, so that it is a creative thing. Brockwood is entirely different from the Indian schools; and we want this school in Ojai to be entirely different from the others. But they all have the characteristic that they are international, that they are non-authoritarian, non-hierarchical, not the principal first and then the students. We are creating it all together, with the parents who take interest in the school, who come there, look at it, discuss it with us. It is a total thing; it is not we start it and everybody else looks on. The parents, the teachers, the older people who are interested in all this, all of us are creating this.

FH: I had wanted to ask you about the parents because that’s a third factor: students, teachers, parents.

K: Yes, parents. We have suggested that the parents should take part in all this. And the parents want their children to be educated this way, not educated one way at school and at home be pushed in another direction. That would put the poor child in a great conflict. So, there must be cooperation from the teachers, from the students, from the parents.

FH: And from the community to some extent.

K: The community, if they wish to join, may come into it.

FH: I would like to ask you about three more words, in the context of your views of them. If I may quote this little pamphlet, you say, ‘It is here one learns the importance of relationship which is not based on attachment or possessiveness. It is in the school one must learn about the movement of thought, love and death, for all this is the whole of life’. Thought, love, death.

K: Yes. (Laughs)

FH: We talked a little about thought, less about love and death, I think.

K: Yes. You see, sir, it is a very complex subject. The whole Western world—for the moment I am talking about that; but I am not contrasting it with the Eastern world. The Western world is based on thought. Their religion is based on thought.

FH: To some extent.

K: They invent the mysterious. Thought invents the saviour. Thought invents all the structure of religion and all the economic relationships. They call it love but it is essentially based on thought. I am not saying it is right or wrong, I am pointing out. With the result that one lives a totally contradictory life. You believe in morality and act immorally. It is so obvious what has happened in America during the last few years with the whole business of politics. The Eastern world said thought cannot possibly capture or understand the immeasurable, because thought is fragmented, thought is limited, finite, and through thought you cannot understand reality, nor truth, and so on. But they exercise thought to capture that. They said to control thought, meditate, force your body, do this, don’t do that, follow your guru, all that nonsense. So both are the same. But we are saying thought has its right place, but thought cannot possibly understand the other. So you have to find energy—I am sorry to use simple words—to find energy that will not be created by thought. Say, for instance, thought creates the energy of competition, thought creates the energy of possession: ‘I possess my house, my wife’, and so the energy that thought creates breeds conflict. These are all facts, not my invention. If you will observe it, you will see that when you are attached, you become the house.

FH: That holds the thoughts.

K: Of course. If I am attached to a piece of furniture, I become that furniture; I am that furniture. If I possess my wife, as most men do, what am I possessing? It is the idea of my wife, or my girl or whatever it is, or my boy, the image I have created about her or him, that I possess.

FH: Yes, I do follow you. And you talk of thought as being finite. Love is infinite then?

K: No, we must understand what love is. Is love pleasure? We have made it sexual pleasure. We have made love of the earth a pleasure. But is love pleasure? Pleasure means memory; that is, I had a marvellous experience and I recorded it; the brain records it, and that gives me great pleasure, and I want to repeat it.

FH: So I love it.

K: I love it.

FH: Yes.

K: So, one has to find what love is. Is love pleasure, fulfilment, desire? Can a man who is ambitious love?

FH: That is a good question.

K: Can a man who is competitive love? He might say, ‘I love you, my darling’, to his wife or his girl, but on the side he is ambitious, competitive, aggressive, violent. So love can only exist when there is not this sense of an ambitious, competitive, aggressive, violent mind.

FH: The third word: death.

K: Ah, death. Oh yes. (Laughs) Do you want to talk seriously about it?

FH: In the time that we have, yes. You said very clearly here, and I imagine that many people reading this, having heard you many times, would know what you meant.

K: I will tell you what I mean. Sir, the ancient Egyptians believed in reincarnation. In India and in Asia they believe in that, believe that they are going to be reborn in a next life. The reward in a next life or the punishment in a next life depends on what you do now, how you behave, because behaviour is the highest form of relationship between man and man. If you do not behave properly you are going to pay for it next. They do not behave, but they believe in reincarnation, which is nonsense. And in the Christian world they have their own ideas of resurrection.

FH: And of heaven and hell.

K: If you do not believe in Jesus, you go to hell; if you do not accept certain dogmas, you go to hell. The Christian world, with the inquisition, with excommunication, with threats; all that is part of fear. On one hand you say, ‘Love Jesus’, and on the other hand you say, ‘If you do not believe, you will go to hell’. It is all so utterly irrational and stupid. So one has to find out, without believing, what happens when you die. Will one find out what death means in a state of unconsciousness or disease? Or you have an accident and are killed? Or in creeping old age when you become gaga, senile, and say, ‘Oh my God, I am frightened of death’? When you are diseased, unconscious, you cannot find out anything. So, what is the significance? The organism does not go on forever and ever, because we misuse it, we drink too much, we indulge in too much sex, so we destroy the organism. It has its own intelligence, but to find out what death means psychologically—it means really to be free of all that you have: your name, your wife, your house, your money, your everything. That is going to happen to you. Now, can you voluntarily be free of all that, in living? So that you incarnate each day, make yourself anew.

FH: I see. You talk of the death of the conditioned self.

K: No, death of the self, not the conditioned self. Self is conditioned, is the result of conditioning.

FH: Yes, yes. There is one other basic question I have to ask you that is a kind of all-encompassing one. You have travelled far and spoken often and have been heard by millions, and you have created several schools and another now in the offing. Do you feel that you have made a dent, that you’ve communicated meaningfully with large numbers of people?

K: I hope so, sir.

FH: Do you feel that it is worth the effort?

K: I would do it even if it was not, if it had no results. I don’t seek a result; that is a horror. This is what I want to say; take it or leave it. This is real; face it. It is a thing that everyone has to face. You have to face this life. You have to act righteously now. Because otherwise we are destroying everything. We are destroying the whales. We are destroying the earth. The communists, the Christians have destroyed people by the millions. I say, for God’s sake listen to what I am saying; do not accept it or deny it; just look.

FH: Do we delude ourselves entirely when we feel that we have become civilised?

K: I question it. Are we evolving only in the sense of becoming more inwardly concerned with life, not with just getting money, cars, position? Otherwise, what is the point of all this? What’s the point of killing people in the name of nationality or God, or whatever?

FH: Young people increasingly seem to be asking that question. Is that encouraging to you?

K: Yes, sir, but they won’t stick to it. You see what is happening in America. All these gurus are creating such havoc in this country, bringing their old, conditioned beliefs and theories and dogmas. It is just the same as the Christian world.

FH: Why are they getting such an acceptance?

K: Because Americans want something new.

FH: A new answer, because the old one doesn’t work?