To me, authority is terrible, destructive. The quality of authority is tyrannical - the authority of the priest, the police - authority of law. Those are all outward authorities. There is also the inward authority of knowledge, of one's own dignity of one's own experience which dictates certain attitudes to life. All this breeds authority and without exercising this authority, you have to look after the child, to see that he has good taste, that he puts on the right clothes, eats properly, has a certain dignity in speech, in the way he walks; you have also to teach him to play games, not competitively and ruthlessly, but for the fun of it. To awaken in him all this without authority is extremely difficult and because of its difficulty, you resort to authority.
One must have discipline in the school. Now, can you bring about discipline without exercising authority? Children must come to meals regularly, not talk incessantly at meal time, everything must be in proportion, in freedom and affection; and there must be a certain non-authoritarian awakening of self-respect.
To give knowledge which does not become an end in itself and to educate the mind to have a long vision, a wide comprehension of life, is not possible if education is based on authority.
Teacher: It is extremely difficult to bring about an inner orderliness in the child without discipline, without restraint and authority. Adults are in a different position from children.
Krishnamurti: I wonder if that is so. We are conditioned and children are being conditioned. Can education bring about a revolutionary mind? The difficulty is that this has to begin at a very tender age, not when children are fourteen or older. By then they are already formed and destroyed but if they came to you very young what would you do to encourage a feeling that there are other things than mere sex, money and position?
Besides giving the child information as knowledge, how would you show him that the world is not only the immediate but that there are other things far greater? First, you and I must feel this, not merely because I talk about it or you talk about it. I must be burning with it, and if I am burning with it, how do I communicate it without influencing the child? Because when I influence, I destroy the child; I make him conform to the image I have. So I must realize, though I feel very strongly about all this, that in my relationship with the student, however young, I must not encourage an imitative attitude and action.
This is all extremely difficult. If I love somebody, I want him to be different, to do things differently, to look at life, to feel the beauty of the earth. Can I show him all this without influence, without breeding the imitative instinct?
Teacher: Before we come to help the child without influencing him, is there an approach which we can establish in ourselves, because in our lives there seem to be so many contradictions?
Krishnamurti: In order to establish it - one must change, remove the contradictions, wipe out destructive feelings. That may take many days or perhaps no time at all. We say that can be done through analysis, through awareness, through questioning, enquiring, probing. All that involves time. But time is a danger. Because the moment we look to time to change, it is really a continuation of what has been. If I have to enquire into my mind and be aware of my activities and my conditioning and my demands and each day probe, all that entails time. Time as a means to mutation is illusion. And when I introduce time into the problem of mutation, then mutation is postponed, because then time is merely a further continuation of my desire to go on as I am.
Time is necessary to learn French. The time taken to learn French is not an illusion, but to bring about a psychological mutation, a psychical change in myself through time is an illusion, because it encourages laziness, postponement, a sense of achievement, vanity. All that is implied in the employment of time when I use time as a means to mutation. So, if I do not look to time at all for mutation, then what happens?
It is a marvellous thing. All religious people have seen time as a means of change and actually we find mutation can only be out of time, not through time.
"There is also the inward authority of knowledge, of one's own dignity of one's own experience which dictates certain attitudes to life"
ReplyDeleteDo we see ourselves that the main authority is internal (evolutionary reflexes, inborn tendencies, good and bad past experiences, how we have been influenced by our parents, school and society)?
Can we put the seed of suspecting this in other people? How come we saw that the main authority was internal? somebody pointed to it? (in my case it was K), is pointing out enough and the only action?
And the second issue he is raising, time. It is this past that has conditioned us, the evolutionary past, the past of our culture, the little past of our own existence.....now, K says this past is projected into the future, a better future, a spiritual "awakening", a defeat of suffering, perhaps a projection od "happiness".....a question comes in my mind: is this why K says that "time as a means to mutation is illusion"?.....or is something else....let´s talk about this, come on.....
Thank you very much for the wonderful blog! Also, it is great that you chose "Krishnamurti on Education", because the way K. deals with the practical issues of the schools might reveal something that is less obvious from his usual public talks.
ReplyDelete"Do we see ourselves that the main authority is internal?"
It was very interesting for me to discover how broad the issue of authority really is. One might even ask whether authority is implied in every movement of thought. I don't think such a question would have ever occurred to me without reading K. Of course, people like Foucault speak about the relation between discourse and power.
"Can we put the seed of suspecting this in other people?"
Is it necessary? I can understand that it would be natural if a person is really interested in this question of authority.
"a question comes in my mind: is this why K says that "time as a means to mutation is illusion"?"
It certainly seems to be one of the reasons. But why is it so difficult to see the idea of a possible future mutation merely as a projection of the past?