Brockwood Park 1979

The Relationship Between Teacher and Student

Modern education in ordinary schools is merely concerned with giving information, giving a certain amount of knowledge and helping the students to get a career.

What is our relationship here at this school? Is there any deeper relationship?

Are we concerned, not merely with the now, the now being good relationship, helping them to understand not just mathematics but the whole significance of life, and also to be concerned with their future?

Psychologically we are on the same level. How shall we help each other to be free of mediocrity? We are both conditioned, how are we to help each other to uncondition ourselves? How shall we begin to free ourselves from the results which society and we have imposed upon ourselves?

We Have Divided Life as the Outer and the Inner

Q: What is education?

Education should be preparation for the whole of life instead of limiting it to earning a livelihood. How will you help the student to come to this, to the understanding of the whole of life?

Are we trying to change the human character, the condition of man, from the outside? Or is it not from the outside, but from inside, inside the skin, psychologically, inwardly? Or is there no such thing as division, but it is a constant moving, outer and inner? Can these two streams be brought together?

Have you a relationship with the student? That means being concerned about his dress, the way he walks, the way he talks, the language he uses, cultivating his taste, manners, politeness, the whole of it - help him to be free of fear, help him to be free.

The Art of Listening

What is the relationship between a teacher and a student, when both realize that they are conditioned?

That we are, as human beings, wherever we live, we are conditioned by the society, culture, religion. And part of that conditioning is ambition, which expresses itself in the desire for success. Is conditioning self-centredness?

If I am prejudiced, if I have a certain point of view, and stick to it, I can't listen to you. You may be contradicting my point of view and so I won't listen. So if I can learn the art of listening, I would solve a great many problems.

If you are passionately involved not verbally, but wholly, in what you are saying your very passion makes me listen to you.

Q1: Is it possible ever to be free of self-centred activity? Is there a real self apart from the self-created image?

Q2: Will the practice of yoga help to bring spiritual awakening? Is it true that yoga can awaken the deeper energy called Kundalini?

Q3: Can there be absolute security for man in this life?

Q4: Emotions are strong. Our attachments are strong. How does looking reduce the strength and power of these emotions?

Q5: Why does the mind so readily accept trivial answers to such deeply felt questions?

Q1: The speaker has said going to an office everyday is an intolerable imprisonment. Is K's teaching therefore only for the few?

Q2: Isn't insight intuition? Would you discuss this sudden clarity some of us have? What do you mean by insight and is it momentary or can it be continuous?

Q3: You say organizations will not help man to find what we Christians call salvation. So why do you have your own organization?

Q4: Is sex incompatible with a religious life? What place has human relationship in spiritual endeavour?

Q5: Can thought be aware of itself as it is taking place? Or does the awareness come after the thought? Can consciousness be aware of its whole content?

Q6: I have tried meditation, fasting and a solitary life, but it has come to nothing. Is there one thing that I can do that will end myseeking and my confusion?

What Is One To Do in a World of Increasing Violence?

What am I to do to change this world of increasing violence and disorder?

How do I approach this problem? The approach may decide the quality of my enquiry. There is disorder, disintegration, confusion. We must examine what is happening, the cause of the violence.

I may be having difficulties with my family my wife, keeping a job, earning a livelihood so I am not greatly concerned with what is happening in the world.

Is the world of misery something out there that I have nothing to do with? Why do we lose sight of the understanding, the reality that we are the world?

Do we see the fact that there is terror, violence and disintegration? The fact is what is actually happening, not opinion. Why is it so difficult to see a simple fact?

Observing My Prejudice

The world is me and I am the world.

In this disordered, violent society with its terror, confusion, misery what am I to do as a human being, what is my action? Is there an action that is accurate, precise and not self-centered?

Can I observe myself, which is the society without any distortion, without any illusion? I have prejudices of various kinds opinions, prejudgements, experiences to which my mind in memory is attached. What will make us, each one of us, drop his prejudices?

Is the observer different from the bundle of prejudices? I change completely when I see the truth that the observer is the bundle.

What Is the Root Cause of the Disorder in the World?

My consciousness is made up of all the accumulated despairs, anxieties, grief, sorrow and violence thought has put there. All that is me. Do I know consciousness with all its content or only part of it?

Mankind has gone into, asserted, and denied that there is something not put together by thought. In the process of examination and investigation are we missing something that has great vitality which will wipe away all this?

Are you observing all this as an idea or as truth that you are an integral part of this whole, vast, decaying humanity? If you realize that, there comes quite a different state and from that there is action.

When the Illusion of Individuality Ends

What is right action in this world? Is individual action right action? As an individual whatever action I do must be destructive, pleasurable, violent.

When we discover the truth that we are an integral part of this enormous humanity what place has individuality? Is there an action that is not born out of the idea of the individual? I can only find out if I am not living in an illusion.

When you drop the illusion of individuality do you still carry the memories, the structure, your past in your mind or have you lost the remembrance of sorrow? Is your individuality dead? Then what is action?

What Do I Do in a Deteriorating World?

Where there is separation there must be the expression of individualit. Can this entity that thinks it is separate which is essentially an illusion, can this entity love?

Can I have an insight into the nature of action which is not individualistic? Is there an action without the "me"?

Can separativeness come to an end through immediate perception which brings about intelligence that is love. When there is love there is care, there is attention, responsibility. An action will arise from your new state of mind which is a state of compassion.

Can You Have Insight If There Is a Centre?

Can we perceive the whole movement of the individual in its activities and its organizations?

If there is that insight and intelligence with love and affection what is the action of the mind in a world of violence?

What is the quality of the mind that is no longer centred in itself? As long as there is self-centred activity occasional insight will not bring about a radical illumination of the centre.

Is there such an action as insight that totally eliminates self-centered activity? Have I reached the point when I can do nothing psychologically? That means no activity of thought so that my brain, my thinking is entirely different.

What Will Make Us Change?

Can we think together of the absolute necessity for a good society? In daily life, to have a relationship that is essentially good. Can we as human beings bring about a radical change in ourselves?

Why do I accept conditioning? Being conditioned will I listen to another? Can I look at the fact of my conditioning? If I reject all authority and organizations created round it, what happens?

Is it the "me", the image I have created about myself that is hurt? Can the mind be free of that image?

Analysis is separative because psychologically the observer is the observed. What takes place when the observer is the observed is an actuality?

Is Thought the Instrument of Right Action?

Can the human mind being aware of conditioning bring about a deep transformation in itself?

Do we use the senses only partially or can we observe with all our senses? What is the relationship between the senses and desire? When thought dominates the senses and creates the image, desire begins.

Is there an observation that is not the instrument of thought? We have made an effort to discipline desire to suppress and control it. When you understand desire is there effort? You can't love with effort, can you?

Tomorrow is the Root of Fear

Is the mind unwilling to look at fear? Can you observe fear as it arises? Are you different from the fear?

In observing is there only pure perception without interpretation by thought?

What is fear without the word? Is thought, which is time, the root of fear?

Pleasure is private. Is that why we pursue it? Why shouldn't we have pleasure? Pleasure may be the cause of isolation.

Can you end attachment voluntarily? In ending, is there the beginning of something new? Isn't it intelligence to end? What is death?

Eternal means out of time.

Is There Something Enduring, Immovable?

What is the meaning of life? Is there something beyond time, beyond the burden of memory?

To find out if there is something beyond time mustn't you be free of problems? Isn't one with problems caught in time? Do problems arise when relationship is not understood?

Can the mind observe a fact without direction? In that observation hasn't the mind pulled together all its energy?

Desire, demanding something, is in time. Meditation is the ending of time. Does effort have any place in meditation?

Can all search come to an end?