If mediocrity and worldliness are
the twin foes of J Krishnamurti’s
teaching, education and enquiry are its
pillars of strength. Indeed, they are not
two separate activities—the search for
wholeness which is the goal of enquiry
is, at the same time, the backbone of
right education. Krishnamurti puts the
challenge thus, ‘Is it possible through
education to bring about this integrated
human being, that is, a human being
who is thinking in terms of the whole …
who is thinking as a total entity, a total
process, and not indulging in divided,
broken-up, fractional thinking?’ Is it
possible? That is the question. It is a
question we cannot afford to ignore.
Traditionally, education has been
seen as a lengthy process of building
knowledge. It is anchored in the notion
of transmission. I go to a teacher because
he knows and I don’t and, if I am lucky,
he tells me what he knows. I build on
what I’ve learnt, adding more, contributing
to the general storehouse of
knowledge which then becomes greater and more highly specialised. This, grosso
modo, is what has happened. There has
been a prodigious expansion in the
volume of knowledge, particularly over
the last 150 years, and it is now impossible
for a single human being to have
anything more than a general overview.
So, in terms of knowledge, homo
sapiens (= knowing human being) has
advanced dramatically, and perhaps this
is why he lays such store by it. After all,
he has built castles and cities, monuments
and missiles, skyscrapers and
cars. What he has significantly failed to
do, however, is procure any lasting peace
for human beings. The fruits of our
actions lie all around us: the decimation
of plant and animal species, social
disintegration, domestic violence and so
on. Homo sapiens may know—but
what about what he has done to the
planet, and what about the way he lives?
And yet, his faith in knowledge
continues. There are tighter controls,
increased testing and a pervasive sense
that measurement is all. Schools’ exam results are published in the media so
that readers can assess which schools
are doing ‘best’. Schools themselves
are ranked by undisclosed criteria and
the results of that ranking similarly
published. But, what exactly are we
trying to prove? If the consequence of
competition is nervous breakdown and
depression, if the ultimate outcome of
conflict is war, where is the benefit in
human terms? If the way we are living
makes no sense, what will make it make
sense, what will turn it around? Right
education is one place, and a good place,
to start.
Most people in today’s world
receive an education of some sort, but
with the increasing impact of government
control it does not empower them
to become free human beings. Indeed,
one could argue the contrary that it
is doubly difficult in contemporary
society not to conform and, hence,
become mediocre. Against such a backdrop,
Krishnamurti’s teachings stand
like a beacon in a dark world. In the first
place, education is not for something—
to gain money, power, position—it has
intrinsic value, it is good in itself. We
are so accustomed to doing something
for something else that we ignore the
present-tense situation we are in, in
order to ‘advance’ to some imagined
good. But even if we get or gain what
we want, the ‘I’ that wants it is still in operation: it wants something better,
something more.
In other words, we think in terms
of time: time is the medium, the carrier,
of our lives. Learning-as-knowledge is
also part of time—it is built through
time, in time, by time. When we call
someone learned, this is what we mean.
At present, the entire educational
system—whether the school is run by
the government or by a well-established
body of governors—subscribes to this
timeworn view of things. It is part of the
structure of consciousness, which every
individual absorbs at birth and which
he replicates in his own particular way.
It behoves us, then, as educators and
enquirers, to consider together the nature
of consciousness. For, if consciousness is
common—and it is—that is the ground
on which we all stand. At the same time,
it is our port of entry, what distinguishes
dialogical enquiry from psychoanalysis
and personal therapy. We are together in
our common search.
This is not some far-flung exercise:
it is as practical as baking bread. But it
does require, and at the same time invoke,
a different quality of understanding,
what Krishnamurti calls intelligence.
“Intelligence,” he says, “is neither yours
nor mine”. It is something that flows
between human beings when their minds
are in focus and they are truly listening.
It cannot be established a priori, nor is there any preparation for it other than
the ordering of one’s own mind-heart.
It is not part of time and has no
continuity; nonetheless, it is palpable
and real. It is waiting, so to speak, to
be activated. As Krishnamurti put it,
‘Intelligence wants to manifest’. It is
there when we are aligned, when we are
thinking together ‘at the same time, at
the same level, with the same intensity’.
That this happen much more in
our schools is imperative—name and
fame are not enough. For it is only by
building this fluid intelligence, this
subtle spirit, this quick understanding
that we can hope to meet, and adequately
deal with, the mounting crisis,
the tsunami of our times. It requires,
since consciousness is common and
intelligence flows between human
beings, that we develop a sense of impersonal
friendship. We have divided
existence as ‘consciousness within’, the
mind, and so-called objective reality,
the world. That this division is false
has been amply demonstrated, not
least by the discovery of the quantum
world which makes no sense without
subjectivity. We are here, whether we
like it or not. We cannot continue in
ignorance of ourselves, leaving the vast
reaches of the psyche unattended.
In other words, in our investigation
we need both the impersonal spirit of
scientific enquiry and the personal sense of something shared. Both factors are
equally important. What we have today
is a disconnect—in education, the
pursuit of knowledge as facts; in life, the
pursuit of goods as promise. Neither can
lead to harmony or happiness. It is only
by drawing together as one, without
mutual dependence or attachment, that
we can establish a wavelength propitious
to enquiry and so lay the basis in
relationship for the coming, and much needed,
next phase of our development.
And, paradoxically, though one may
speak of development, it is essentially a
movement of the timeless, not of time.
It involves a different kind of learning.
We are identified with our ‘mortal
coil’, which is obviously why the pursuit
of knowledge has become of such
importance to us. More knowledge,
more security, greater progress—or so
we think. Actually, however, knowledge
is neutral. The vast advances in computer
technology have enormously facilitated
instant communication; this has also led
to hacking, shaming, online theft and
narcissism. Inwardly, as human beings,
we are exactly where we were—unless,
as many think, we are degenerating fast.
With the overall decline in religious
beliefs, the moral tenets they supported
have also declined and nothing has yet
emerged to take their place. One is
left with a sense of void, of no meaning,
a sapped and pervasive feeling of
futility. It is almost as if the ‘motor of man’, his driving force, had run down,
become entropic.
What conventional education is
trying to do is repair the motor with old,
worn tools. This is patchwork repair, at
best. What we need is a learning that
is instantaneous, perceptive and, by its
very nature, non-accumulative. It does
not go from A to B because it exists ‘in
the middle’, between A and B. In fact,
it is what makes A and B possible.
Without the perceiver nothing is perceived,
and it is our perennial obsession
with the thing perceived, to the exclusion
of the perceiver and the act of
perception, that has led to our lopsided
view of things, with its inevitable
consequences of chaos and destruction.
In these schools, if at present in no
others, this basic imbalance needs to
be addressed.
It is necessary to shift the emphasis
from the thing being learnt (the subject
matter) to the world of the learner and
the process of learning—not artificially or arbitrarily, but because they are part
and parcel of a unitary movement.
If, for instance, I am studying biology,
I become aware of the growth processes
within myself; I also watch my own way
of learning, the how of learning as well
as the what. In this way, my learning is
vastly enriched; it is no longer about
name and form, about facts and figures
in a disembodied world—a world from
which my consciousness is absent—but
what I call ‘me’ is part of the process.
In studying the world, I am studying
myself since the world process is going
on in me and I am a node or focus of it.
This new dimensionality of learning
explodes the timeworn categories of the
learner and the thing-to-be-learnt and
gathers both up in a two-way process
where ‘unitive perception’ is the key
feature and the ‘bridge’. Released from
the trap of Cartesian consciousness,
from a mind abstracted from the world
of ‘things’, we are free to wander, to
question, to enquire.