– Now what is the function of an educator? Is it merely to give you information, knowledge, or is it to bring about this intelligence in you?
– Do you know the world is mad, that all this is madness – this fighting, quarrelling, bullying, tearing at each other?
– Is this right, is this what education is meant for, that you should be willingly or unwillingly fit into this mad structure called society?
– Since you are young, fresh, innocent, can you look at all the beauty of the earth, have the quality of affection? And can you retain that?
– So what are you going to do?
– Do you know what love is? Do you know what it is to love people?
– What is it that we call time? Can you divide this instant from the rest?
– Can the cells in the brain bring about a mutation in themselves, not through drugs, not through various genetic processes, but can the brain cells themselves say, “This is all wrong – change”? …
Can the brain cells themselves, uninfluenced, undrugged, see what they have created and say, “this is wrong – mutate” ?
– Do we see that logic has a limitation?
– Where does self-interest begin and where does it end? Is there an end to self-interest? Or is all action born out of self-interest?
– What is our relationship to a flower, to a bird that passes by? And what is our relationship with each other – not with the speaker but with each other – with your wife, with your husband, with your children, with the environment, with your neighbor, your community, the government, and so on? What is our relationship to all this? Or are we just isolated, self-concerned, intensely interested in our own way of life?
– Do you know what it means to attend, to pay attention?
– There are these three kinds of knowledge – scientific, collective, personal. Do they collectively make for intelligence?
– Now what is knowledge? Is knowledge related to intelligence?
– Are you becoming sensitive, alert?
– Are you thinking objectively, clearly, with intelligence, understanding? Is there a harmony between knowledge and intelligence, a balance between the two?
– How is the mind, which is conditioned, to unravel itself, to get out of conditioning? How do you propose to get out of it?
– First of all, do you know that you are conditioned? How do you know? Is it only because somebody has told you that you are conditioned that you know?
– Do you know what virtue is – to be moral, to be good?
– Do you ever walk by yourself? Or do you always go with others?
– How can there be a complete development of the body, of the emotions, of the capacity to think deeply and widely, so that the whole being becomes astonishingly alive to everything about it, to every challenge, to every influence? And is that possible, in a world like this, a world where technological knowledge is all important, where making money, being an engineer or an electronic expert is assuming such importance? Is it possible to be sensitive?
– But can you have technological knowledge, be able to do things, make a little money and still live in the world with intensity, with clarity, with vision?
– Now, is it possible to learn without authority? Do you know what learning is?
– Is it possible to have knowledge and yet learn to be free from fear?
– When do you learn most? Have you ever watched yourself learning?
– How will you find out about fear? Are you afraid of public opinion, public opinion being what your friends think of you?
– Suppose I am afraid of my neighbor, my wife, my god, my country – now what is that fear? Is it actual or is it merely in thought, in time?
– So can I say, “I am going to look at that fear now, not ten days later”? Can I invite what they [society, my parents etc.] are going to say in the present and look at it and if they happen to be right, can I accept it? Why should I be frightened? And if they are wrong, I also accept that. Why should they not be wrong? Why should I be frightened?
– Can that “me” die to a wish? Can I say “I do not want that wish, I do not want that pleasure”? Can I end it, die to it?
– When you woke up this morning, did you look out of the window?
– Have you ever thought what it means to be serious? Is it the stopping of laughter? To have a smile on your face, would that indicate that you are not serious? To want to look at a tree and see the beauty of a tree, would that be lack of seriousness? To want to know why people look that way, what they wear, why they talk that way, would that be lack of seriousness? Or would seriousness be always having a long face, always saying: “Am I doing the right thing, am I conforming to a pattern”?
– Life is both pleasure and pain, is it not? … But why should we cling to pleasure and avoid pain? Why not merely live with both? … If you cling to pleasure what happens? You get attached, do you not?
– Is it possible to live in this world without an image about yourself?
– Can you watch your gestures, the way you walk, the way you talk, the way you behave, whether you are hard, cruel, rough, patient?
– Can one behave the same inwardly, whatever the circumstances? Can one’s behavior spring from within and not depend on what people think of you or how they look at you?
– What is thinking and why have we made problems with it? Why do we have problems in our life? …
– What is a problem and what is the meaning of that word problem?
– Why is it that all our life, from the moment we are born till we die, we have problems – about death, about fear, about a hundred things? Are you asking this question, or am I asking it for you?
– Why do we think at all? Is there a different way of action? Is there a different manner of approaching life, of daily living, that doesn’t require thinking at all? … What is thinking? …
If you had no memory of yesterday, no memory at all of any kind, would you think? …
So what is memory?…
Now, what is knowledge? How does it come about? …
So what is experience?
– What are you apart from your name and profession, your vows, following some guru? What are you? Or I’ll put it another way – are you your name, are you your profession, are you part of the community, part of the tradition? … Actually, what are you? Is this the first time that this question has been put to you – what are you? Aren’t you your fear, aren’t you your name, aren’t you your body? Aren’t you what you think you are the image have built about yourself? Aren’t you all that? Aren’t you your anger? Or is the anger separate from you? Come on, sirs, aren’t you your fears, your ambitions, your greed, your competition, your uncertainty, your confusion, your pain, your sorrow – aren’t you all that? Aren’t you the guru you follow? So, when you identify yourself with that, aren’t you all that? Or are you something higher up – superself, superconsciousness? …
– Who has put all this together? Or is there only one structure? Who has divided all this? Who has said I’m a Hindu or I’m a Muslim? Is it merely propaganda? Who created the division between countries? Thought? Or is it desire, the longing to be identified, to be safe?
– I am asking you most respectfully, who has created this division? Is it thought? Of course, but behind thought there is something else. Who is doing all this, apart from thought? What is the desire, what is the urge, what is the movement behind it? Security, isn’t it? …
– Is there security at all? Is there any place where I can say, “I’m safe”? …
– Why do you want security? Is there security in your thinking? Is there security in your relationship – with your wife and with your children? Is there security in your job?
A school is a place where one learns about the totality, the wholeness of life. Academic excellence is absolutely necessary, but a school includes much more than that. It is a place where both the teacher and the student explore, not only the outer world, the world of knowledge, but also their own thinking, their own behavior.
