 Hi everyone, this is Chih-chou. Welcome to my channel. Now, I thought what we'd do in this video is read excerpts from Krishnamurti's education and the significance of life. Okay. And just to give you a quick little introduction to this reading, I've been interested in education for a long time, for a number of decades, and I've read some stuff. I've watched a lot of lectures, interviews, and whatnot, looked at a few different systems of education, and had a fair bit of experience with students teaching mathematics, physics, chemistry, or science, or whatever it is, mainly mathematics, as you know. Okay. And as far as I'm concerned, this book Krishnamurti's Education and the Significance of Life, which I've mentioned in previous videos before, is the most important thing I've read regarding education. And as far as I'm concerned, it should be mandatory reading for every educator in the world. And it's must reading for anyone that wants to take on the task of becoming a parent to raising a child. Okay. Extremely important book. And for me to pull out these excerpts, these segments that we're going to read, I had to read this book or I read this book, took out those excerpts on the third reading. So this is the only book in my life that I've read three times over. Okay. That's how important I consider this book to be. Mandatory reading for any educator in the world. Okay. And we'll consider that the introduction and just get into the readings because I just want Krishnamurti's words to really tell the story of the importance of education in our society. And again, I highly recommend tracking this book down either a hard copy or online. It is available online, freely available online that you can read it. Okay. So I highly recommend tracking this book down and having read through it from the beginning to the end. Extremely important book. And by the way, this book was written in the 1950s just to give you a sort of a timestamp on when these words were first shared. And they resonate today more so I believed and they did back then. So this book was way, way ahead of its time, way ahead of its time. Krishnamurti, education and the significance of life. Segment from chapter one, education and the significance of life. When one travels around the world, one notices that what an extraordinary degree human nature is the same, whether in India or America, in Europe or Australia. This is especially true in colleges and universities. We are turning out as if through a mold, a type of human being whose chief interest is to find security, to become somebody important or to have a good time with as little thought as possible. Conventional education makes independent thinking extremely difficult. Conformity leads to mediocrity. To be different from the group or to resist environment is not easy and is often risky as long as we worship success. The urge to be successful, which is a pursuit of reward, whether in the material or in the so-called spiritual sphere, the search for inward or outward security, the desire for comfort, this whole process smothers this content, puts an end to spontaneity and breeds fear, and fear blocks the intelligent understanding of life, with increasing age, dullness of mind and heart sets in. In seeking comfort, we generally find a quiet corner in life where there is a minimum of conflict and then we are afraid to step out of that seclusion. This fear of life, this fear of struggle and of new experience kills in us the spirit of adventure. Our whole upbringing and education have made us afraid to be different from our neighbor, afraid to think contrary to the established patterns of society, falsely respectful of authority and tradition. Chapter 2, the right kind of education. The ignorant man is not the unlearned, but he who does not know himself and the learned man is stupid when he relies on books, on knowledge and on authority to give him understanding. Understanding only comes through self-knowledge, which is awareness of one's total psychological process. Thus, education in the true sense, in the understanding of oneself, for it is within each of us that the whole of existence is gathered. What we now call education is a matter of accumulating information and knowledge from books which anyone can do who can read. Such education offers a subtle form of escape from ourselves and, like all escapes, is inevitably creates increasing misery. Conflict and confusion result from our own wrong relationship with people, things and ideas, and until we understand that relationship and alter it, mere learning, the gathering of facts and the acquiring of various skills can only lead us to engulfing chaos and destruction. As society is now organized, we send our children to school to learn some technique by which they can eventually earn a livelihood. We want to make the child first and foremost a specialist, hoping thus to give him a secure economic position. But does the cultivation of a technique enable us to understand ourselves? While it is obviously necessary to know how to read and write, and to learn engineering or some other profession, will technique give us the capacity to understand life? Surely, technique is secondary, and if technique is the only thing we are striving for, we are obviously denying what is by far the greater part of life. Life is pain, joy, beauty, ugliness, love, and when we understand that as a whole, at every level, that understanding creates its own technique. But the contrary is not true. Technique can never bring about creative understanding. Present-day education is a complete failure because it has overemphasized technique. In overemphasizing technique, we destroy man. To cultivate capacity and efficiency without understanding life, without having a comprehensive perception of the ways of thought and desire, will only make us increasingly ruthless, which is to engender wars and jeopardize our physical security. The exclusive cultivation of technique has produced scientists, mathematicians, bridge builders, space conquerors, but do they understand the total process of life? Can any specialist experience life as a whole, only when he ceases to be a specialist? Technical progress does solve certain kinds of problems for some people at one level, but it introduces water and deeper issues too. To live at one level, disregarding the total process of life is to invite misery and destruction. The greatest need and most pressing problem for every individual is to have an integrated comprehension of life, which will enable him to meet its ever-increasing complexities. For political and industrial reasons, discipline has become an important factor in the present social structure, and it is because of our desire to be psychologically secure that we accept and practice various forms of discipline. Discipline guarantees a result, and to us the end is more important than the means, but the means determine the end. One of the dangers of discipline is that the system becomes more important than the human beings who are enclosed in it. Discipline then becomes a substitute for love, and it is because our hearts are empty that we cling to discipline. Freedom can never come through discipline, through resistance. Freedom is not a goal, an end to be achieved. Freedom is at the beginning, not at the end. It is not to be found in some distant ideal. Freedom does not mean the opportunity for self-gratification or the setting aside of consideration for others. The teacher who is sincere will protect the children and help them in every possible way to grow towards the right kind of freedom, but it will be impossible for him to do this if he himself is addicted to an ideology, if he is any way dogmatic or self-seeking. Sensitivity can never be awakened through compulsion. One may compel a child to be outwardly quiet, but one that has not come face to face with that which is making him obstinate, impotent, and so on. Compulsion breeds antagonism and fear. Reward and punishment in any form only make the minds subservient and dull, and in this, and if this is what we desire, then education through compulsion is an excellent way to proceed. But such education cannot help us to understand the child, nor can it build a right social movement in which separatism and hatred will cease to exist. In the love of the child, right education is implied, but most of us do not love our children. We are ambitious for them, which means that we are ambitious for ourselves. Unfortunately, we are so busy with the corruption, occupations of the mind that we have little time for the promptings of the heart. After all, discipline implies resistance, and will resistance ever bring love? Discipline can only build walls about us. It is always exclusive, ever making for conflict. Discipline is not conducive to understanding, for understanding comes with observation, with inquiry in which all prejudice is set aside. Discipline is an easy way to control the child, but it does not help him to understand the problems involved in living. Some form of compulsion, the discipline of punishment and reward, may be necessary to maintain order and seeming quietness among a large number of students herded together in a classroom, but with the right kind of educator and a small number of students, with any repression politically called discipline, be required. If the classes are small and the teacher can give his full attention to each child, observing and helping him, then compulsion or domination in any form is obviously unnecessary. If in such a group, a student persists in disorderliness or is unreasonably mischievous, the educator must inquire into the cause of his misbehavior, which may be wrong diet, lack of rest, family wrangles, or some hidden fear. Implicit in right education is the cultivation of freedom and intelligence, which is not possible if there is any form of compulsion with its fears. After all, the concern of the educator is to help the student to understand the complexities of his whole being, to require him to suppress one part of his nature for the benefit of some other part is to create in him an endless conflict which results in social antagonism. It is intelligence that brings order, not discipline. The right kind of education will encourage thoughtfulness and consideration for others without incitement or threats of any kind. If we no longer seek immediate results, we shall begin to see how important it is that both the educator and the child should be free from the fear of punishment and the hope of reward, and from every other form of compulsion. But compulsion will continue as long as authority is part of relationship. The real problem in education is the educator. Even a small group of students becomes the instrument of his personal importance if he uses authority as a means of his own release. If teaching is for him a self-expansive fulfillment, but mere intellectual or verbal agreement concerning the crippling effects of authority is stupid and vain. Past generations, with their ambitions, traditions and ideals, have brought misery and destruction to the world. Perhaps the coming generations, with the right kind of education, can put an end to this chaos and build a happier social order. If those who are young have the spirit of inquiry, if they are constantly searching out the truth of all things, political and religious, personal and environmental, then youth will have great significance and there is hope for a better world. Most children are curious, they want to know, but their eager inquiry is dulled by our pontifical assertions, our superior impatience and our casual brushing side of their curiosity. We do not encourage their inquiry, for we are rather apprehensive of what may be asked of us. We do not foster their discontent, for we ourselves have ceased to question. Most parents and teachers are afraid of this content because it is disturbing to all form of security, and so they encourage the young to overcome it through safe jobs, inheritance, marriage and the consolation of religious dogmas. Elders knowingly, only too well, the many ways of blunting the mind and the heart proceed to make the child as dull as they are by impressing upon him the authorities, traditions and beliefs which they themselves have accepted. Only by encouraging the child to question the book, whatever it be, to inquire into the validity of existing social values, traditions, forms of government, religious beliefs and so on, can the educator and the parent hope to awaken and sustain his critical alertness and keen insight. The young, if they are all, and all alive, are full of hope and discontent. They must be, otherwise they are already old and dead. And the old are those who were once discontent, but who have successfully smothered that flame and have found security and comfort in various ways. They crave permanency for themselves and their families. They ardently desire certainly in ideas, in relationships, in possessions. So the moment they feel discontent, they become absorbed in their responsibilities, in their jobs or in anything else, in order to escape from that disturbing feeling of discontent. While we are young is the time to be discontented, not only with ourselves, but also with the things about us. We should learn to think clearly and without bias, so as not to be inwardly dependent and fearful. Independence is not for that colored section of the map which we call our country, but for ourselves as individuals. And though outwardly we are dependent on one another, this mutual dependence does not become cruel or oppressive if inwardly we are free of the craving for power, possession and authority. There is no essential difference between the old and the young, for both are slaves to their own desires and gratifications. Maturity is not a matter of age, it comes with understanding. The ardent spirit of inquiry is perhaps easier for the young, because those who are older have been battered about by life. Conflicts have worn them out, and death is in different forms awaits them. This does not mean that they are incapable of a propulsive inquiry, but only that is more difficult for them. Many adults are immature and rather childish, and this is a contributing cause of the confusion and misery in the world. It is the older people who are responsible for the prevailing economic and moral crisis, and one of our unfortunate weaknesses is that we want someone else to act for us and change the course of our lives. We wait for others to revolt and build anew, and we remain inactive until we are assured of the outcome. It is security and success that most of us are after, and a mind that is seeking security, that crave success is not intelligent, and is therefore incapable of integrating its action. There can be integrated action only if one is aware of one's own conditioning, of one's racial, national, political and religious prejudices. That is, only if one realizes that the ways of the self are ever-separative. Life is a well of deep water, one can come to it with small buckets and draw only a little water, or one can come with large vessels, drawing plentiful waters that will nourish and sustain. While one is young is a time to investigate, to experiment with everything, the school should help its young people to discover their vocations and responsibilities, and not merely cram their minds with facts and technical knowledge. It should be the soil in which they can grow without fear, happily and integrally. To educate a child is to help them to understand freedom and integration. Teaching should not become a specialist profession. When it does, as it is so often the case, love fades away, and love is essential to the process of integration. To be integrated, there must be freedom from fear. Fearlessness brings independence without ruthlessness, without contempt for another, and this is the most essential factor in life. Without love, we cannot work out our many conflicting increases, confusion and leads to self-destruction. The integrated human being will count on technique through experiencing, for the creative impulse makes its own technique, and that is the greatest art. When a child has the creative impulse to paint, he paints, he does not bother about technique. Likewise, people who are experiencing and therefore teaching are the only real teachers, and they too will create their own technique. This sounds very simple, but it is really a deep revolution. If we think about it, we can see the extraordinary effect it will have on society. At present, most of us are washed out at the age of 45 or 50 by slavery to routine. Through compliance, through fear and acceptance, we are finished, though we struggle on in a society that has very little meaning except those who dominate it and are secure. If the teacher sees this and is himself really experiencing, then whatever his temperament and capabilities may be, his teaching will not be a matter of routine, but will become an instrument of help. To understand the child, we have to watch him at play, study him in his different moods. We cannot project upon him our own prejudices, hopes and fears, or mold him to fit the pattern of our desires. If we are constantly judging the child according to our personal likes and dislikes, we are bound to create barriers and hindrances in our relationship with him and in his relationships with the world. Unfortunately, most of us desire to shape the child in a way that is gratifying to our own vanities and idiosyncrasies. We find a variety of varying degrees of comfort and satisfaction in exclusive ownership and domination. Surely, this process is not relationship, but mere imposition and is therefore essential to understand the difficult and complex desire to dominate. It takes many subtle forms and in its self-righteous aspect, it is very obstinate. The desire to serve with the unconscious longing to dominate is difficult to understand. Can there be love where there is possessiveness? Can we be in communion with those who we seek to control? To dominate is to use another for self-gratification and where there is the use of another, there is no love. When there is love, there is consideration. Not only for the child, children, but for every human being. Unless we are deeply touched by the problem, we will never find the right way of education. Mere technical training inadvertently makes for ruthlessness and to educate our children, we must be sensitive to the whole movement of life. What we think, what we do, what we say matters infinitely, because it creates the environment and the environment either helps or hinders the child. The present educational and social structure does not help the individual towards freedom and integration. And if the parents are at all in earnest and desire that the child shall grow to his fullest integral capacity, they must begin to alter the influence of the home and set about creating schools with the right kind of educators. The influence of the home and that of the school must not be in any way contradictory, so both parents and teachers must re-educate themselves. The contradiction, which so often exists between the private life of the individual and his life as a member of the group, creates an endless battle within himself and in his relationships. This conflict is encouraged and sustained through the wrong kind of education and both governments and organized religions add to the confusion by their contradictory doctrines. The child is divided within himself from the very a start, which results in personal and social disaster. If those of us who love our children and see the urgency of this problem will set our minds and hearts to it, then, however few we may be, through right education and an intelligent home and environment, we can help to bring about integrated human beings. But if we, like so many others, we fill our hearts with the cunning things of the mind, then we shall continue to see our children destroyed in wars, in famines, and by our own psychological conflicts. Right education comes with the transformation of ourselves. We must re-educate ourselves not to kill one another for any cause, however righteous, for any ideology, however promising it may appear to be for the future happiness of the world. We must learn to be compassionate, to be content with little, and to seek the supreme, for only then can there be the true salvation of mankind. Chapter 3. Intellect, Authority, and Intelligence Many of us seem to think that by teaching every human being to read and write, we shall solve our human problems, but this idea has proved to be false. The so-called educated are not peaceful loving, integrated people, and they too are responsible for the confusion and misery of the world. The right kind of education means the awakening of intelligence, the fostering of integrated life, and only such education can create a new culture and a peaceful world. But to bring about this new kind of education, we must make a fresh start on an entirely different basis. With the world falling into ruin about us, we discuss theories and vain political questions and play with superficial reforms. But does this not indicate utter thoughtlessness on our part? Some may agree that it does, but they will go on doing exactly as they have always done, and that is the sadness of existence. When we hear a truth and do not act upon it, it becomes a poison within ourselves, and that poison spreads, bringing psychological disturbances, unbalance, and in health. Only when creative intelligence is awakened in the individual is there a possibility of a peaceful unhappy life. We cannot be intelligent by merely substituting one government for another, one party or class for another, one exploiter for another. Bloody revolution can never solve our problems. Only a profound inward revolution which alters all our values can create a different environment. An intelligent social structure and such a revolution can be brought about only by you and me. No new order will arise until we individually break down our own psychological barriers and are free. Individual enlightenment does affect large groups of people, but only if one is not eager for results. If one thinks in terms of gain and effect, right transformation of oneself is not possible. Human problems are not simple, they are very complex. To understand them requires patience and insight, and it is of the highest importance that we as individuals understand and resolve them for ourselves. They are not to be understood through easy formulas or slogans, nor can they be solved at their own level by specialists working along a particular line, which only leads to further confusion and misery. Our many problems can be understood and resolved only when we are aware of ourselves as a total process. That is, when we understand our whole psychological makeup and no religious or political leader can give us the key to that understanding. Modern education is making us into thoughtless entities. It does very little towards helping us to find our individual vocation. We pass certain examinations and then with luck we get a job, which often means endless routine for the rest of our life. We may dislike our job, we are forced to continue with it because we have no other means of livelihood. We may want to do something entirely different, but commitments and responsibilities hold us down, and we are hedged in our own anxieties and fears. Being frustrated, we seek escape through sex, drink, politics, or fanciful religions. When our ambitions are thwarted, we give undue importance to that which should be normal, and we develop a psychological twist until we have a comprehensive understanding of our life and love, of our political, religious, and social desires. With their demands and hindrances, we shall have ever-increasing problems in our relationships leading us to misery and destruction. Ignorance is lack of knowledge of the ways of the self, and this ignorance cannot be dissipated by superficial activities and reforms. It can be dissipated only by one's constant awareness of the movement and responses of the self in all its relationships. What we must realize is that we are not only conditioned by environment, but that we are the environment. We are not something apart from it. Our thoughts and responses are conditioned by the values which society, of which we are apart, has imposed upon us. Conformity begins in childhood through education and the impact of society. The desire to imitate is a very strong factor in our life, not only at the superficial levels, but also profoundly. We have hardly any independent thoughts and feelings. When they do occur, they are mere reactions and are therefore not free from the established pattern, for there is no freedom in reaction. Philosophy and religion laid down certain methods whereby we can come to the realization of truth or God, yet merely to follow a method is to remain thoughtless and unintegrated. However beneficial the method may seem to be in our daily social life. The urge to conform, which is the desire for security, breeds fear and brings to the fore the political and religious authorities, the leaders and heroes who encourage surveillance and by whom we are subtly or grossly dominated. But not to conform is only a reaction against authority and is no way helps us to become integrated human beings. Reaction is endless, it only leads to further reaction. By conforming we become mediocre imitators, cogs in a cruel social machine. It is what we think that matters, not what others want us to think. When we conform to tradition, we soon become mere copies of what we should be. This imitation of what we should be breeds fear and fear kills creative thinking. Fear dulls the mind and heart so that we are not alert to the whole significance of life. We become insensitive to our own sorrows, to the movement of the birds, to the smiles and miseries of others. Conscious and unconscious fear has many different causes and it needs alert watchfulness to be rid of them all. Fear cannot be eliminated through discipline, sublimation or through any other act of will. Its causes have to be searched out and understood. This needs patience and awareness in which there is no judgment of any kind. We hope to achieve freedom through conformity, but are not the means as important as the end? Do not the means shape the end? To have peace, one must employ peaceful means. For if the means are violent, how can the end be peaceful? If the end is freedom, then the beginning must be free. For the end and the beginning are one. There can be self-knowledge and intelligence only when there is freedom at the very onset, and freedom is denied by the acceptance of authority. We worship authority in various forms, knowledge, success, power and so on. We exert authority on the young and at the same time we are afraid of superior authority. When man himself has no inward vision, outward power and possession assume vast importance and then the individual is more and more subject to authority and compulsion and becomes the instrument of others. We can see this process going on all around us. In movements of crisis, the democratic nations act like the totalitarian, forgetting their democracy and forcing man to conform. We are all human beings, whatever name we may call ourselves, and suffering is our lot. Sorrow is common to all of us, to the idealist and to the materialist. Idealism is an escape from what is, and materialism is another way of denying the measureless depths of the present. But the idealist and the materialist have their own ways of avoiding the complex problems of suffering. Both are consumed by their own cravings, ambitions and conflicts, and their ways of life are not conducive to tranquility. They are both responsible for the confusion and misery of the world. Modern education in developing the intellect offers more and more theories and facts without bringing about the understanding of the total process of human existence. We are highly intellectual, we have developed cunning minds and are caught up in explanations. The intellect is satisfied with theories and explanations, but intelligence is not, and for the understanding of the total process of existence, there must be an integration of the mind and heart in action. Intelligence is not separate from love. For most of us, to accomplish this inward revolution is extremely arduous. We know how to meditate, how to play the piano, how to write, but we have no knowledge of the meditator, the prayer, the writer. We are not creators, for we have filled our hearts and minds with knowledge, information and arrogance. We are full of quotations from what others have thought or said, but experiencing comes first, not the way of experiencing. There must be love before there can be the expression of love. It is clear then that merely to cultivate the intellect, which is to develop capacity or knowledge, does not result in intelligence. There is a distinction between intellect and intelligence. Intellect is thought functioning independently of emotion, whereas intelligence has the capacity to feel as well as to reason. And until we approach life with intelligence, instead of intellect alone, or with emotion alone, no political or educational system in the world can save us from the toils of chaos and destruction. Knowledge is not compatible with intelligence. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not marketable. It is not a merchandise that can be bought with the price of learning or discipline. Wisdom cannot be found in books. It cannot be accumulated, memorized or stored up. Wisdom comes with the abnegation of the self. To have an open mind is more important than learning, and we have an open mind, not by cramming it full of information, but by being aware of our own thoughts and feelings, by carefully observing ourselves and the influences about us, by listening to others, by watching the rich and the poor, the powerful and the lowly. Wisdom does not come through fear and oppression, but through observation and understanding of everyday incidents in human relationship. In our search for knowledge, in our accusative desires, we are losing love, we are blunting the feeling for beauty, the sensitivity for cruelty, we are becoming more and more specialized and less integrated. Wisdom cannot be replaced by knowledge, and no amount of explanation, no accumulation of facts, will free man from suffering. Knowledge is necessary, science has its place, but if the mind and the heart are suffocated by knowledge, and if the cause of suffering is explained away, life becomes vain and meaningless. And is this not what is happening to most of us? Our education is making us more and more shallow. It is not helping us to uncover the deeper layers of our being, and our lives are increasingly disharmonious and empty. Only love and right thinking will bring about true revolution, and revolution within ourselves. But how are we to have love? Not through the pursuit of the ideal of love, but only when there is no hatred and there is no greed, when the sense of self, which is the cause of antagonism, comes to an end. A man who is caught up in the pursuit of exploitation, of greed, of envy, can never love. Without love and right thinking, oppression and cruelty will ever be on the increase. The problem of man's antagonism to man can be solved not by pursuing the ideal of peace, but by understanding the causes of war which lie in our attitudes towards life, towards a fellow being. And this understanding can come about only through the right kind of education. Without a change of heart, without goodwill, without the inward transformation which is born of self-awareness, there can be no peace, no happiness for man. Chapter 4, Education and World Peace Another cause of the present chaos is dependence on authority on leaders. Whether in daily life, in the small school, or in the university, leaders and their authority are deteriorating factors in any culture. When we follow another, there is no understanding, but only fear and conformity, eventually leading to the cruelty of the totalitarian state and the dogmatism of organized religion. To rely on governments, to look for organizations and authorities for that peace which must begin with the understanding of ourselves is to create further and still greater conflict. And there can be no lasting happiness as long as we accept the social order in which there is endless strife and antagonism between man and man. If we want to change existing conditions, we must first transform ourselves, which means that we must become aware of our actions, thoughts and feelings in everyday life. But we do not really want peace, we do not want to put an end to exploitation. We will not allow our greed to be interfered with or the foundations of our present social structure to be altered. We want things to continue as they are, with only superficial modifications, and so the powerful and the cunning inevitably rule our lives. Peace is not achieved through any ideology, it does not depend on legislation, it comes only when we as individuals begin to understand our psychological process. If we avoid the responsibility of acting individually and wait for some new system to establish peace, we shall merely become the slaves of that system. When governments, dictators, big business and the clerically powerful begin to see that this increasing antagonism between men only leads to indiscriminate destruction and is therefore no longer profitable, they may force us through legislation and other means of compulsion to suppress our personal cravings and ambitions and to cooperate for the well-being of mankind. Just as we are now educated and encouraged to be competitive and ruthless, so then we shall be compelled to respect one another and to work for the world as a whole. And even though we may all be well fed clothed in shelters, we shall not be free of our conflicts and antagonism, which will merely have shifted to another plane where they will be still more diabolical and devastating. The only moral righteous action is voluntary and understanding alone can bring peace and happiness to man. Our present social institutions cannot evolve into a world federation, for their very foundations are unsound. Parliaments and systems of education which uphold national sovereignty and emphasise the importance of the group will never bring war to an end. Every separate group of people, with his rulers and his rule, is a source of war. As long as we do not fundamentally alter the present relationship between man and man, industry will inevitably lead to confusion and become an instrument of destruction and misery. As long as there is violence and tyranny, deceit and propaganda, the brotherhood of man cannot be realised. Merely to educate people, to be wonderful engineers, brilliant scientists, capable executives, able workmen, will never bring the oppressor and the oppressor together. And we can see that our present system of education, which sustains the many causes that breeds enmity, enmity and hatred between human beings, has not prevented mass murder in the name of one's country or in the name of God. Organised religions, with their temporal and spiritual authority, are equally incapable of bringing peace to man, for they also are the outcome of our ignorance and fear, of our make-believe and egotism. One of the chief causes of hatred and strife is the belief that particular class or race is superior to another. The child is neither class nor race conscious. It is the home or school environment, or both, which makes him feel separative. In himself he does not care whether his playmate is a negro or a Jew, a Bahrain, or a non-Bahrain. But the influence of the whole social structure is continually impinging on his mind, affecting and shaping it. Here again the problem is not with the child, but with the adults, who have created a self-senseless environment of separatism and false values. What real basis is there for differentiating between human beings? Our bodies may be different in structure and colour. Our faces may be dissimilar, but inside the skin we are very much alike, proud, ambitious, envious, violent, sexual, power-seeking and so on. Remove the label and we are very naked, but we do not want to face our nakedness. And so we insist on the label, which indicates how immature, how really infantile we are. To enable the child to grow up free from prejudice, one has to first break down all prejudice within oneself and then in one's environment, which means breaking down the structure of this thoughtless society which we have created. At home we may tell the child how absurd it is to be conscious of one's class or race, and he will probably agree with us, but when he goes to school and plays with other children, he becomes contaminated with the separative spirit. Or it may be the other way around, the home may be traditional, narrow and the school's influence may be broader. In either case, there is constant battle between the home and the school environment, and the child is caught between the two. To raise a child sanely, to help him to be perceptive so that he sees through these stupid prejudices, we have to be in close relationship with them. We have to talk things over and let him listen to intelligent conversation. We have to encourage the spirit of inquiry in this content which is already in him, thereby helping him to discover for himself what is true and what is false. It is constant inquiry, true dissatisfaction that brings creative intelligence, but to keep inquiry and discontent awake is extremely arduous, and most people do not want their children to have this kind of intelligence, for it is very uncomfortable to live with someone who is constantly questioning accepted values. All of us are discontented when we are young, but unfortunately our discontent soon fades away, smothered by our imitative tendencies and our worship of authority. As we grow older, we begin to crystallize, to be satisfied and apprehensive. We become executives, priests, bank clerks, factory managers, technicians, and slow decay sets in. Because we desire to maintain our positions, we support the destructive society which has placed us there and given us some measure of security. Government control of education is a calamity. There is no hope of peace and order in the world as long as education is the handmaid of the state or of organized religion. Yet more and more governments are taking charge of the children and their future, and if it is not the government, then it is the religious organizations which seek to control education. What is essential in education and in every other field is to have people who are understanding and affectionate, whose hearts are not filled with empty phrases, with the things of the mind. If life is meant to be lived happily, with thought, with ourselves, and if we wish to build a truly enlightened society, we must have educators who understand the ways of integration and who are therefore capable of imparting that understanding to the child. Such educators would be a danger to the present structure of society, but we do not really want to build an enlightened society, and any teacher who, perceiving the full implications of peace, begin to point out the true significance of nationalism and the stupidity of war would soon lose his position. Knowing this, most teachers compromise and thereby help to maintain the present system of exploitation and violence. Surely to discover truth, there must be freedom from strife, both within ourselves and with our neighbors. When we are not in conflict with ourselves, we are not in conflict outwardly, it is the inward strife which projected outwardly because it becomes the conflict of the world. War is the spectacular and bloody projection of our everyday living. We participate in war out of our daily lives and without transformation in ourselves. There are bound to be national and racial antagonism, the children quarreling over ideologies, the multiplication of soldiers, the saluting of flags, and all the many brutalities that go to create organized murder. Education throughout the world has failed. It has produced mounting destruction and misery. Governments are training the young to be the efficient soldiers and technicians they need. Regimentation and prejudice are being cultivated and enforced. Taking these facts into consideration, we have to inquire into the meaning of existence and the significance and purpose of our lives. We have to discover the beneficial ways of creating a new environment, for environment can make the child a brute and an unfeeling specialist or help him to become a sensitive, intelligent human being. We want to be rich and the richer we get, the more ruthless we become, even though we may contribute large sums to charity and education. Having robbed the victim, we return to him a little of the spoils and this we call philanthropy. I do not think we realize what catastrophes we are preparing. Most of us live each day as rapidly and thoughtlessly as possible and leave to the governments, to the cunning politicians, the direction of our lives. All sovereign governments must prepare for war, and one's own government is no exception. To make its citizens efficient for war, to prepare them for to perform their duties effectively, the government must obviously control and dominate them. They must be educated to act as machines, to be ruthlessly efficient. If the purpose and end of life is to destroy or to be destroyed, then education must encourage ruthlessness, and I am not at all sure that that is not what we inwardly desire, for ruthlessness goes with the worship of success. The sovereign state does not want the citizens to be free, to think for themselves, and it controls them through propaganda, through distorted historical interpretations, and so on. That is why education is becoming more and more a means of teaching what to think, and not how to think. If we were to think independently of a prevailing political system, we would be dangerous. Free institutions might turn out pacifists or people who think contrary to the existing regime. Right education is obviously a danger to sovereign governments, and so it is prevented by crude or subtle means. Education and food in the hands of the few have become the means of controlling man, and governments, whether on the left or on the right, are unconcerned as long as we are efficient machines for turning out merchandise and bullets. Now, the fact that this is happening the world over means that we, who are the citizens and educators, and who are responsible for the existing governments, do not fundamentally care whether there is freedom or slavery, peace or war, well-being or misery for man. We want a little reform here and there, but most of us are afraid to tear down the present society and build a completely new structure, for this would require a radical transformation of ourselves. On the other hand, there are those who seek to bring about a violent revolution. Having helped to build the existing social order with all its conflicts, confusions and misery, they now desire to organize a perfect society. But can any of us organize a perfect society when it is we who have brought into being the present one? To believe that peace can be achieved through violence is to sacrifice the present for a future ideal, and this seeking of a right end through wrong means is one of the causes of the present disaster. If we are to change radically our present human relationship, which has brought untold misery to the world, our only and immediate task is to transform ourselves through self-knowledge. So we come to the central point, which is one self, but we dodge that point and shift the responsibility onto governments, religions and ideologies. The government is what we are. Religions and ideologies are but a projection of ourselves, and until we change fundamentally, there can be neither right education nor peace for world. Outward security for all can come only when there is love and intelligence, and since we have created a world of conflict and misery in which outward security is rapidly becoming impossible for anyone, does it not indicate the utter futility of past and present education? As parents and teachers, it is our direct responsibility to break away from traditional thinking and not merely rely on the experts and their findings. Efficiency in technique has given us a certain capacity to earn money, and that is why most of us are satisfied with the present social structure, but the true educator is concerned only with right living, right education and right means of livelihood. Chapter 5, The School. The right kind of education is concerned with individual freedom, which alone brings true cooperation with the whole, with the many. But this freedom is not achieved through the pursuit of one's own aggrandizement and success. Freedom comes with self-knowledge. When the mind goes above and beyond the hindrances, it has created for itself through craving its own security. It is the function of education to help each individual to discover all these psychological hindrances and not merely impose upon him new patterns of conduct, new codes of thought. Such impositions will never awaken intelligence, creative understanding, but will only further condition the individual. Surely, this is what is happening throughout the world, and that is why our problems continue and multiply. It is only when we begin to understand the deep significance of human life that there can be true education, but to understand, the mind must intelligently free itself from the desire for inward which breeds fear and conformity. If we regard our children as a personal property, if to us they are the continuance of our petty selves and the fulfillment of our ambitions, then we shall build an environment, a social structure in which there is no love, but only the pursuit of self-centered advantages. A school which is successful in the worldly sense is more often than not a failure as an educational center. A large and flourishing institution in which hundreds of children are educated together with all is according accompanying show and success can turn out bank clerks and super salesmen, industrialists and chemists, superficial people who are technically efficient, but there is hope only in the integrated individual which only small schools can help to bring about. Right education will become universal if we begin with the immediate, if we are aware of ourselves and our relationship with our children, with our friends and neighbors. Our own action in the world we live in, in the world of our family and friends, will have expanding influence and effect. By being fully aware of ourselves in all our relationships, we shall begin to discover those confusion and limitations within us and which we are now ignorant. And in being aware of them, we shall understand and so dissolve them. Without this awareness and the self-knowledge which it brings, any reform in education or in other fields will only lead to further antagonism and misery. In building enormous institutions and employing teachers who depend on a system instead of being alert and observant in the relationship with the individual student, we merely encourage the accumulation of facts, the development of capacity and the habit of thinking mechanically according to a pattern, but certainly none of this helps the student to grow into integrated human being. Systems may be a limited use in the hands of alert and thoughtful educators, but they do not make for intelligence. Yet it is strange that words like system, institution, have become very important to us. Symbols have taken the place of reality and we are content, content that it should be so, for reality is disturbing while shadows give comfort. Nothing of fundamental value can be accomplished through mass instruction, but only through the careful study and understanding of difficulties, tendencies and capacities of each child and those who are aware of this and who earnestly desire to understand themselves and help the young, should come together and start a school that will have vital significance in the child's life by helping him to be integrated and intelligent. To start a school they need not wait until they have the necessary means. One can be a true teacher at home and opportunities will come to the earnest. Those who love their own children and the children about them and who are therefore in earnest will see to it that a right school is started somewhere around the corner or in their own home. Then the money will come is the least important consideration. To maintain a small school of the right kind is of course financially difficult. It can flourish only on self-sacrifice, not on a fat bank account. Money inevitably corrupts unless there is love and understanding, but if it is really a worthwhile school the necessary help will be found when there is love of the child all things are possible. As long as the institution is the most important consideration the child is not. The right kind of educator is concerned with the individual and not with the number of pupils he has and such an educator will discover that he can have a vital and significant school which some parents will support, but the teacher must have the frame of interest if he is lukewarm he will have an institution like any other. If parents love their children they will employ legislation and other means to establish schools staff with the right kind of educator and they will not be deterred by the fact that small schools are expensive and the right kind of educators difficult to find. They should realize however that there will inevitably be opposition from vested interests from governments and organized religions because such schools are bound to be deeply revolutionary. Self-government in the school is a preparation for self-government in later life. If while he is at school the child learns to be considerate, impersonal and intelligent in any discussion pertaining to his daily problems, when he is older he will be able to meet effectively and dispassionately the greater and more complex trials of life. The school should encourage the children to understand one another's difficulties and peculiarities, modes and tempers. For then as they grow up they will be more thoughtful and patient in their relationship with others. The same spirit of freedom and intelligence should be evident also in the child's studies. If he is to be creative and not merely an automaton the students should not be encouraged to accept formulas and conclusions. Even in the study of science one should reason with him helping him to see the problem in his entirety and to use his own judgment. But what about guidance? Should there be no guidance whatsoever? The answer to this question depends on what is meant by guidance. If in their hearts the teacher have put away all fear and all desire for domination then they can help the student towards creative understanding and freedom. But if there is a conscious or unconscious desire to guide him towards a particular goal then obviously they are hindering his development. Guidance towards a particular objective whether created by one self or imposed by another impales creativity. If the educator is concerned with the freedom of the individual and not with his own preconceptions he will help the child to discover that freedom by encouraging him to understand his own environment his own temperament his religious and family background with all the influences and effects they can possibly have on him. If there is love and freedom in the hearts of the teachers themselves they will approach each student mindful of his needs and difficulties and then they will not be mere automatons operating according to methods and formulas but spontaneous human beings ever alert and watchful. The responsibility for building a peaceful enlightened society rests chiefly with the educator and it is obvious without becoming emotionally stirred up about it that he has a very great opportunity to help in achieving that social transformation. The right kinds of education does not depend on the regulations of any government or the methods of any particular system it lies in our own hands in the hands of the parents and the teachers. If parents really cared for their children they would build a new society but fundamentally most parents do not care and so they have no time for this most urgent problem. They have time for making money for amusements for rituals and worship but no time to consider what is the right kind of education for their children. This is a fact that the majority of people do not want to face. To face it might mean that they would have to give up their amusements and distractions and certainly they will not they will they are not willing to do that so they send their children off to schools where the teacher cares no more for them than they do why should why should he care teaching is merely a job to him a way of earning money. The world we have created is so superficial so artificial so ugly if one looks behind the curtain and we decorate the curtain hoping that everything will somehow come right. Most people are unfortunately not very earnest about life except perhaps when it comes to making money gaining power or pursuing sexual excitement. They do not want to face the other complexities of life and that is why when their children grow up they are in they are as immature and and and unintelligent as their parents constantly battling with themselves and with the world. We say so easily that we love our children but is there love in our hearts when we accept the existing social conditions when we do not want to bring about a fundamental transformation in this destructive society. As long as we look to the specialists to educate our children this confusion and misery will continue for the specialists being concerned with the part and not with the whole are themselves into unintegrated. Instead of being the most honored and responsible uh responsible occupation education is now considered slightly and most educators are fixed in a routine. They are not really concerned with intel integration and intelligence but with the imparting of information and a man who merely imparts information with the with the world crashing about him is not an educator and educator is not merely a giver of information. He is one who points the way to wisdom to truth. Truth is far more important than the teacher. The search for truth is religion and truth is of no country of no creed. It is not to be found in any temple church or mosque. Without the search for truth society assumed the case. To create a new society each one of us has to be a true teacher which means that we have to be both the pupil and the master. We have to educate ourselves. Chapter six parents and teachers the right kind of education begins with the educator who must understand himself and breathe free from established patterns of thought for what he is that he imparts. If he has not been rightly educated what can be what can he teach except the same mechanical knowledge on which he himself has been brought up. The problem therefore is not the child but the parent and the teacher. The problem is to educate the educator. If we who are the educators do not understand ourselves if we do not understand our relationship with the child but merely stuff him with information and make him pass examinations how can we possibly bring about a new kind of education. The pupil is there to be guided and helped but if the guide the helper is himself confused and narrow nationalistic and theory-ridden then naturally his pupil will be what he is and education becomes a source of further confusion strife. If we see the truth of this we will realize how important it is that we begin to educate ourselves rightly to be concerned with our own re-education is far more necessary than to worry about the future well-being and security of the child. To educate the educator that is to have him understand himself is one of the most difficult undertakings because most of us are already crystallized within a system of thought or a pattern of action. We have already given ourselves over to some ideology to a religion or to a particular standard of conduct that is why we teach the child what to think and not how to think. Being absorbed in their own problems many parents shift to the teacher the responsibility for well-being of their children and then it is important that the educator help in the education of the parents as well. He must talk to them explaining that the confused state of the world mirrors their own individual confusion. He must point out the scientific progress in itself cannot bring about a radical change in existing values that technical training which is now called education has not given man freedom or made him any happier and that to condition the student to accept the present environment is not conducive to intelligence. He must tell them what he is attempting to do for their child and how he is setting about it. He has to awaken the parents confidence not by assuming the authority of a specialist dealing with ignorant laymen but by talking over with them the child's temperament difficulties aptitudes and so on. If the teacher takes a real interest in the child as an individual the parent will have confidence in him. If this process in this process the teacher is educating the parents as well as himself while learning from them in return. Right education is a mutual task demanding patience consideration and affection. Enlightened teachers in an enlightened community could work out this problem and how to bring up children. The experiments along these lines should be made on a small scale by interested teachers and thoughtful parents. The first thing a teacher must ask himself when he decides that he wants to teach is what exactly he means by teaching. Is he going to teach the usual subject in the habitual way? Does he want to condition the child to become a cog in the social machine or help him to be an integrated creative human being a threat to false values and if the educator is to help the student to examine understand the values and influences that surround him and of which he is a part must he not be aware of them himself. If one is blind can one help others to cross to the other shore surely the teacher himself must first begin to see he must be constantly alert instantly aware of his own thoughts and feelings aware of the ways in which he is conditioned aware of his activities and his responses for out of this watchfulness comes intelligence and with it a radical transformation in his relationship to people and to things. Intelligence has nothing to do with the passing of examinations. Intelligence is the spontaneous perception which makes a man strong and free to awaken intelligence in a child we must begin to understand for ourselves what intelligence is for how can we ask a child to be intelligent if we ourselves remain unintelligent in so many ways. The problem is not only the students difficulties but also our own the cumulative fears unhappiness and frustrations which we are not free in order to help the child to be intelligent we have to break down within ourselves those hindrances which make us dull and thoughtless how can we teach children not to seek personal security if we ourselves are pursuing it what hope is there for the child if we who are parents and teachers are not entirely vulnerable to life if we erect protective walls around ourselves to discover the true significance of the struggle for security which is causing such chaos in the world we must begin to awaken our own intelligence by being aware of our psychological processes we must begin to question all the values which now which now enclose us we should not continue to fit thoughtlessly into the pattern in which we happen to have been brought up how can there ever be harmony in the individual and so in society if we do not understand ourselves unless the educator understands himself unless he sees his own condition responses and is beginning to free himself from existing values how can he possibly awaken intelligence in the child and if he cannot awaken intelligence in the child then what is his function if children are to be free from fear whether of their parents of their environment or of god the educator himself must have no fear but that is the difficulty to find teachers who are not themselves the pray of some kind of fear fear narrows down thought and limits initiative and a teacher who is fearful obviously cannot convey the deep significance of being without fear like goodness fear is contagious if the educator himself is secretly afraid he will pass that fear on to his students although its contamination may not be immediately seen domination or compulsion of any kind is a direct hindrance to freedom and intelligence the right kind of educator has no authority no power in society he is beyond the edicts and sanctions of society if we are to help the student to be free from his hindrances which have been created by himself and by his environment then every form of compulsion and domination must be understood and put aside and this cannot be done if the educator is not also feeling himself freeing himself from all crippling authority all authority is a hindrance and it is essential that the educator should not become an authority for the student the building up of authority is both a conscious and unconscious process the student is uncertain groping but the teacher is sure in his knowledge strong in his experience the strength and certainty of the teacher give assurance to the student who tends to bask in that sunlight but such assurance is neither lasting nor true the teacher who consciously or unconsciously encourages dependence can never be of great help to his student he may overwhelm him with his knowledge dazzle them with his personality but he is not the right kind of educator because his knowledge and experience are his addiction his security his prison and until he himself is free of them he cannot help his student to be to be integrated human beings to be the right kind of educator a teacher must constantly be freeing himself from books and laboratories he must ever be watchful to see that the students do not make of him an example an ideal an authority when the teacher desires to fulfill himself and his students when their success is his then his teaching is a form of self-continuation which is detrimental to self-knowledge and freedom the right kind of educator must be aware of all these hindrances in order to help his students to be free not only from his authority but from his own self enclosing pursuits people who have no academic degrees often make the best teachers because they are willing to experiment not being specialists they are interested in learning in understanding life for the true teacher teaching is not a technique it is his way of life like a great artist he would rather starve than give up his creative work unless one has this burning desire to teach one should not be a teacher it is of the utmost importance that one discover for oneself whether one has this gift and not merely drift into teaching because it is a means of livelihood as long as teaching is only a profession a means of livelihood and not a dedicated vocation there is bound to be a wide gap between the world and ourselves our home life and our work remain separate and distinct as long as education is only a job like any other conflict and an enmity among individuals and among the various class levels of society are inevitable there will be increasing competition the ruthless pursuit of personal ambition and the building up of national and racial divisions which create antagonism and endless wars but if we have dedicated ourselves to be the right kind of educators we do not create barriers between our home life and the life of life at school for we are everywhere concerned with freedom and intelligence we consider equally the children of the rich and of the poor regarding each child as as an individual with his particular temperament hereditary ambition and so on we are concerned not with the class not with the powerful or the weak but with the freedom and integration of the individual repetition and habit encourage the mind to be sluggish a shock is needed to awaken it which we then call a problem we try to solve this problem according to our well-worn explanations justifications and condemnations all of which puts the mind back to sleep again in this form of sluggishness the mind is constantly being caught and the right kind of educator not only puts an end to it within himself but also helps his student to be aware of it if teaching is one's vocation and if one perceives the grave importance of the right kind of education one cannot help but be the right kind of educator there is no need to follow any method the very fact of understanding that the right kind of education is indispensable if we are to achieve the freedom integration of the individual brings about a fundamental change in oneself if one becomes aware aware that there are there can be peace and happiness for man only through right education then one will naturally give one's whole life and interest to it one teaches because one wants the child to be rich inwardly which will result in his giving right value to possessions without inner richness worldly things become extravagantly important leading to various form of destruction and misery one teaches to encourage the student to find his true vocation and to avoid those occupations the foster antagonism between man and man one teaches to help the young towards self-knowledge without which there can be no peace no lasting happiness one's teaching is not self-affirmant but self-abnegation without the right kind of teaching illusion is taken for reality and then the individual is ever in conflict with himself and therefore there's conflict in his relationship with others which is society one teaches because one sees that self-knowledge alone and not the dogmas and rituals of organized religions can bring about a tranquil mind and that creation truth god comes into being only when the me and the mind are transcended chapter seven sex and marriage as long as there is no deep understanding of the whole process of desire the institution of marriage as is now exists whether in the east or in the west cannot provide the answer to the sexual problem love is not induced by the singing of a contract nor is it based on an exchange of gratification nor on mutual security and comfort all these things are of the mind and that is why love occupies so small a space in our lives love is not of the mind it is wholly independent of the thought of thought with its cunning calculations its self-protective demands and reactions when there is love sex is never a problem it is the lack of love that creates the problem chapter eight art beauty and creation to sing we must have a song in our hearts but having lost the song we pursue the singer without an intermediary we feel lost but we must be lost before we can discover anything discovery is the beginning of creativeness and without creativeness do what we may there can be no peace or happiness for man we think that we shall be able to live happily creatively if we learn a method a technique a style but creative happiness comes only when there is inward richness it can never be attained through any system self-improvement which is another way of assuring the security security of the me and the mind is not creative nor is it love of beauty creativeness comes into being when there is constant awareness of the ways of the mind and the hindrances it has built for itself the freedom to create comes with self-knowledge but self-knowledge is not a gift one can be creative without having any particular talent creativeness is a state of being in which the conflicts and sorrows of the self are absent a state in which the mind is not caught up in the demands and pursuits of desire