UNDERSTANDING OURSELVES
KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION TRUST, BROCKWOOD PARK, BRAMDEAN, HAMPSHIRE SO24 OLQ, ENGLAND, 1999, £ 9 – 14 US $.
Late in the 1960’s, an international school was founded in England at Brockwood Park in Hampshire. This new book, celebrating the first 30 years of the school, presents Krishnamurti’s public talks and discussions at Brockwood Park to which large audiences came in 1969, the first year o the school’s existence. In these powerful talks, Krishnamurti speaks on themes such as: seeing directly what we are, listening without conclusions, learning in freedom and understanding what love is. Part two of the book includes a conversation between Mary Zimbalist and Mary Cadogan, two of the founding trustees of the school, who describe Krishnamurti’s approach to starting the school and his deep and continuing involvement in it. They point to Krishnamurti’s intent that it be a place where students and staff would together ‘shatter’ their conditioning.
Available from Krishnamurti Foundation Trust, Brockwood Park Education Centre, Bramdean, Hampshire, SO24, oLQ, England.
A FLAME OF LEARNING
MIRANANDA, 1993, £ 10
This book features Krishnamurti’s discussions with teachers at Brockwood Park School. Here Krishnamurti assumes the role of a person coming to teach in such a school and explores directly and frankly, the new teacher’s relationship with the school, with his colleagues and specially with students. He questions the nature of freedom and authority, the place of motiveand self-interest, the source of fear and violence, and the possibility of awakening intelligence and sensitivity. Krishnamurti asks: “How am I as a new teacher here, to meet these students and feel m yresponsibility for them? And also I feel that I am the world and the world is me, and I want to help them to be free completely of fear, of violence... Will you do it? Go to the root of it?” (p 78)