Social Maladies & Some Preventive Measures in The Light of Jiddu Krishnamurti
HOI, Raghunathpur Nafar Academy(HS), Howrah
Jiddu Krishnamurti, an eminent philosopher and educationist of modern era, was born on 14th May 1895 in Madanapalle, a small town in South India. He and his brother were adopted during their youth by Dr.Annie Besant, thethen president of the Theosophical Society. Dr. Besant had a prediction that Krishnamurti was to play the role of a world teacher whose arrival to earth was predicted by the Theosophists. To make the world aware of this arrival a World-wide organization called the ‘Order of the Star’ in the East was set up and young Krishnamurti was entrusted with its headship. In 1929 Krishnamurti finally discarded the role that the others expected him to play. After that Krishnamurti travelled for almost sixty years throughout the world until his death on 17th February, 1986. He shared his views with great many people and among young people about the need for a sea change in human psyche which would bring effective change in society.
Ever since I came across Jiddu Krishnamurti, I have been fascinated by his radical ideas on education and his approach to life as a whole. There is a sublime serenity in his approach which certainly offers a kind of repose to one who is in search of a right approach to life in a world which is tormented by rivalry, jealousy, exploitation and environmental catastrophe. It is really difficult to frame Krishnamurti’s views as set theory or ideology as they are mostly scattered and include a large area of discussion at a time. Much like Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa Jiddu Krishnamurti did not have much formal education but his insights to life have been of immense importance. It can lead one to develop a separate and alternative approach to life. His ordinary talks are of most extraordinary importance. Our civilization is passing through a crisis and human values have been degraded to such an extent that mutual trust and fraternity have become a rarity. Under the circumstances Jiddu Krishnamurti’s views on right education would surely pave the way for a healthy and sane society. Krishnamurti was against everything mechanical and to him to be educated means to flower in goodness. Right education should help one to do away with all kind of inner disorder of soul. It should bring a transformation of human psyche which in turn must ensure social change. Equally striking is the fact that on the basis of his notion of education Krishnamurti had set up several educational institutions in India and abroad and needless to say those institutions have been running quite successfully. Surely Krishnamurti has tremendous relevance in the present worldwide scenario of education. In this context I would like to discuss some of the major challenges that we face in recent times and at the same time we will see how J.Krishnamurti has suggested possible solution to combat them with the help of right education.
From time immemorial Human beings have lived with wars and rivalry but we cannot afford it any more due to the tremendous power that science and technology have placed at our disposal. Our hatred of each other could only express itself in the killing of a few individuals as we lived then with bows and arrows, spears and knives. Today with atomic and nuclear bombs we can annihilate a whole nation in a few minutes and no war remains a local war any more. This has greatly enhanced the urgency of the problem since mankind is in danger of turning itself into a republic of grass and insects in case there is a nuclear war. We cannot therefore afford to put off the solution to this problem. Human history has ever been a history of wars and if we do not learn fast, we shall soon have to face our last war.
One of the major problems we are facing today is the environmental calamities which remain a constant threat. Serious environmental hazards like depletion of the Ozone layer, global warming, industrial pollution, deforestation, soil erosion, nuclear fall-outs and over population are tormenting us every now and then. The root cause behind this is the attitude with which we look at nature, treating it as a resource meant to be exploited only for human benefit. We being the masters of the world look upon nature as something meant for use. We have almost forgotten that like everything else we need to share a harmonized relationship with nature, that is, thinking of it as companions and not as resources. In the past mankind was related to nature but in the last century our attitude has undergone radical and superficial change and unless this shift in paradigm is done away with we are going to face more and more severe environmental catastrophes.
The greatest problem perhaps that we are facing of late is the fact that human beings have fragmented themselves into various groups. There are racial groups, national groups, religious groups, linguistic groups, economic groups, political groups, professional groups . Each individual identifies himself or herself with his or her own group where he is most safe. He feels rivalry with other groups and cares only for the security and progress of a particular group he belongs to. These groups willingly exploit, cheat and even destroy each other. It gives rise to most of the violence that we confront in the form of wars, terrorism, rioting and militancy. This is a great malady that afflicts both - the most progressive and the most backward people in the world today. The reason is hardly difficult to understand. The individual today always identifies himself or herself with that particular family, country, religion and culture respectively in which he or she is born. He or she feels proud of it and defends its ways. The mind of the individual resembles to a lawyer defending self interest and attacking others. In identifying with his or her group, he or she finds a kind of security but this identification is in reality brings great insecurity in the world today.
The institution of marriage and family has important role partly to regulate sexual behaviour but more importantly it ensures that we are able to discharge our responsibilities towards the society and future generation. The human child is taken care of not only for few months but for a period of at least twenty years, since the process of mental, emotional and spiritual growth is involved during this period. This is best ensured through raising a child within a family based upon co-operation between parents. Today, unfortunately, this co-operation between man and woman is at stake and the incidence of divorce is now as high as 60% in some affluent societies. The children are the worst sufferers of this breakdown in co-operation and consequently juvenile crime is rising at a rapid pace. This clearly shows that we are not approaching life positively and we need to rethink to find our mistake.
Dictatorship chiefly means the exploitation of the weak by the powerful. As long as we believe that power is meant for oppressing the weak, we still remain a believer in the fact that might is right, which is a kind of barbarism. Both between nations and within a nation one can see this malpractice of using power as a means of exploiting others. Power is just the ability to do things. But mankind should change its tendency to use power for destruction and domination. We very often object to dictatorship in the level of the government but all sorts of dictatorship is evil, whether it is in an organization, a business or in the family. The spirit of democracy needs to be revived in every individual to eradicate the problem of dictatorship.
In spite of rapid development in health care, human beings throughout the world seem to be suffering from numerous health problems due to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, allergies, respiratory ailments etc. The hurry and stress of modern life have accentuated this. Use of chemicals in agriculture indiscriminately, the pollution of air and water resources, the easy availability of drugs, the tensions of modern living have all contributed to enhance health disorder and increased dependence on medical assistance. The quality of modern life is declining very fast as we have moved away from nature.
We usually make our children learn to obey and conform to what the elders are saying. We must remain alert also to encourage an inquiring mind, which questions what it is told, is aware that mind has many prejudices that need to have a probe and is willing to undertake the task of discovering and recognizing the true. Doubting one’s own opinions, discriminating between truth and falsity is the sign of awakening of intelligence. The elders very often find it inconvenient to awaken the intelligence of the child because it may begin to interrogate their values and their style of living. It is essential for the elders to encourage and respect criticism if we are not looking forward to form a static society that is rigidly caught in a network of fossilized groove. The all pervading inertia in society today can only be removed by creating a mind that raise questions not only in matter related to science, but also raises social, moral and religious questions. In other words we must strive to develop a mind that is intelligent about life in its entirety and not merely about an aspect of it.
A Different Vision as Proposed by J. Krishnamurti:
The major challenges that threat mankind today are not because of lack of education. They are not created by the illiterate villagers but they are created by highly educated and sophisticated professional minds, lawyers, business administrators, scientists, economists, diplomats and the others who plan and run governments, organizations and businesses. So we need to develop a different vision of education. The prescription would not be identical for all countries and different cultures may move forward in their own unique way, but on the basis of Jiddu Krishnamurti’s vision of , the broad outlines can be stated in the following manner.
However inconvenient may it seem for the adults, it is important that children should grow up with questions rather than answers. At each stage of growth the questions will naturally be different but the ability to inquire and to learn for oneself is more important than to obey and follow unquestioningly what one is told to do. It follows that our relationship with the child must have no fear as fear hampers inquiry and initiative. The child must have liberty to make mistakes and learn for itself without the constant fear of being rebuked by an adult. A mind without fear is rational, flexible and not dogmatic. It is always open to change and not irrationally attached to framed opinion or belief. This implies the absence of all propaganda for any sectorial belief, including nationalism. A propaganda like “Our country is the best country, our culture is the best culture” may sound well but it is not true and it separates people.
According to J. Krishnamurti the awakening of intelligence is more important than the cultivation of memory, both in life and academics. If we provide information to the child we contribute to his knowledge but intelligence is concerned with self learning. The material to be taught is limited but learning is endless. The greatest things in life are those that can never be taught but they can be learnt and felt. The abstract feeling of love, respect, beauty and friendship cannot be taught but like sensitivity, it can be awakened and this is an integral part of intelligence. Individual ability to discern what is true and what is false is also intelligence. It is important to create a mind that neither accepts nor rejects an opinion or a view too readily, but stays with the question whether it is true.
As citizens of one world we share the earth as common habitat. Problem in one part of the world is a concern to all of us. So we need to have a global mind that has concern for the entire world and not just for one’s own country. Being a part of one world, one humanity, if we are capable of settling issues within a country through democratic means and adjudication, it can be done with other countries also. If we have a global mind which is a non believer in the idea of ‘might is right’, there would be no enmity. That is the vision that we must develop for the 21st century. We may start solving a local issue with a global understanding.
Education must regard children as resources for gaining economic progress of the nation. Its primary concern should be all around development of a human being – physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual – so that the child lives creatively and happily as an integral part of the whole. Human beings may differ in their abilities but they are not in all respect unequal, neither superior nor inferior. They must be respected irrespective of their abilities. Goodness must have greater value above efficiency.
In the 21st century world stress on individual achievement for name and fame is absolutely irrational and egotistic. We all are interdependent and little can be achieved alone in isolation. Co-operation is the key to democracy. The sense of unhealthy competition that we are encouraging in children today gives rise to envy, jealousy and rivalry. It scatters the seeds of division between human beings and destroys the bond of love and friendship. It is evil. Education should help one to develop the ability to work harmoniously with others and it is more important than individual achievement.
A purely rational, scientific, intellectual mind can be extremely cruel and devoid of love and compassion. On the other hand an individual who is solely religious in the narrow sense can be extremely emotional, sentimental, superstitious and consequently neurotic. We must therefore strive to create a mind that is both scientific and religious at the same time – one that is inquiring, precise, rational and doubtful but at the same time has a sense of sublime beauty, wonder, aesthetics, sensitivity, humility and an awareness of the intrinsic limitations of the intellect. Without this undeniable balance between emotion and intellect, a mind is not appropriately educated. Understanding oneself is no less important than understanding the world. One is not really educated until one develops proper understanding of nature, fellow human beings and society at large. One must also have deep respect for life.
According to J. Krishnamurti education should have greater concern with the art of living creatively. It is much greater than the specific arts of painting, music or dance which we usually teach learners at presents. We have, unfortunately related the quality of life with the standard of living and we generally measure this in terms of the Gross National Product or the per-capita income of people. We must remember that a mind that is constantly worried, bored, envious or frustrated cannot possibly lead a life of high quality.
We should not educate only for economic development but for human development as well. Happiness of the individual should be our prime concern and physical well-being and comfort are a small but necessary part in it. It is also important to work with joy, without having conflict with others. If the individual remains insensitive, there is constant boredom and to escape from it there will be a continuous pursuit of pleasure. One must not work for a reward and rather for the joy of working. When we work for reward we actually separate work from pleasure. In such cases mind is energized only when there is a reward, otherwise it lives in a state of boredom. The art of living perfectly consists in enjoying everything one does, irrespective of the results it begets. Only then one can work most creatively along with sensitivity and it is not for achieving personal goal.
Such art of living does not have a formula. It springs from one’s understanding of life and of oneself. Hence, education must help one to obtain such understanding. Virtue, which is the manifestation of goodness in human consciousness, is a by-product of self-knowledge. It is not a skill to be practiced mechanically.
Contemporary education is more tend to produce specialists. Some amount of specialization in skills may be a necessity but it should be remembered that we are human being first and engineers, doctors, lawyers, artists afterwards. Consequently specialization must not be at the cost of understanding, particularly when it amounts to live fully as a human being. The human consciousness is comprised of several faculties and right education should lead to a holistic development of all the faculties and they should be developed in a balanced manner. This means that in order to cultivate one faculty, we must not damage another. For example, one cannot take resort to fear and punishment to make learners work harder since that obstructs inquiry, intelligence and initiative. One must not use comparison and competition as an incentive since that damages love and aggravates aggression. One must not encourage rewards as that would inculcate greed and insensitivity.
The challenge that a teacher confronts is to reveal the beauty inherent in the subject to the child so that education becomes a joyous process and not a dreary task to be achieved somehow. A good school is one where the children are greatly happy, not the one which achieves the best measurable academic excellence. The chief responsibility of education, according to J. Krishnamurti, is to make the child sensitive to all forms of beauty of life, and there is sublime inherent beauty in art, in literature, in science, in mathematics, in music, in games and sports, in nature and in human relationship – indeed in every aspect of life. Education should help individual to be in full bloom.
There are several problems in imparting education as proposed by J. Krishnamurti. The major problem is that we have not received the right kind of education. Therefore we tend to artificially repeat what we know. We need to probe our methods and it requires us to be original, intelligent, creative and not merely asserting ourselves. Our minds are conditioned into the conventional systems, the old vision. As a result we ourselves are obstacles in the way of the new.
In the new vision we are not only taking the responsibility to impart information and skills but also to awaken sensitivity and creativity in the child. Krishnamurti has no particular methodology for achieving this. It is our responsibility to build an atmosphere of working co-operatively, with joy and friendship, working hard but with no personal ambition or any sense of rivalry what so ever. There must be an open atmosphere of questioning, of inquiry, and the joy of learning together. This means we ourselves must live and work following that way. Sermonizing is not effective. A child learns from what he sees; from what is actually happening around him, not from what the educators deliver through their lecture in the classroom.
Intellectually the adults may know more than the child but in the larger issues of life they face the identical problems, the same difficulties as the child faces – the problems related to boredom, worry, fear, habit, conflict, desire, frustration and violence. So the elders must remain alert to relearn along with the child, not merely teach. It demands great honesty, humility, sensitivity and patience on the part of the elders. It is really difficult to find an educator who is willing to accept that challenge and who will not seek an easy way out. The deeper truths that come to a reflective mind as insights, cannot be taught by another. Insights can never be created but one must not engage them with an ambitious and entirely active mind which hardly has time to stand and stare.
Presently mankind is caught in a great dilemma. It thinks that through political and social reform, through scientific and technological progress, through greater knowledge, greater wealth, power and control, all its problems could be solved. It may solve some problems only temporarily. These methods will create new problems on the one hand and will try to solve them on the other to maintain the illusion of progress. If human beings fail to transform inwardly, they will soon join the list of those unfortunate creatures that lived a million years ago or so on and then became an extinct race for lack of adaptation. Survival does not require the intelligence of ‘progress’ but the ability to co-operate and love each other and to live in harmony with nature. What we need now is not greater ability and more efficiency, but greater cohesion, greater compassion, greater ability to share and work together.
21st century education must therefore concern itself not with greater advancement but with the inner transformation of the human psyche. Lord Buddha, Socrates and Christ and numerous other sages in all communities have hinted this truth long ago. Till now we do not pay heed to what they have said but somehow managed our survival. We cannot afford to continue this anymore as we are inevitably heading towards an impending doom namely the nuclear holocaust which will make survival hardly possible. J. Krishnamurti’s vision of education emphasized the need for educating the whole human being and not merely the intellect. It is important to pursue that vision of life and live actually that way throughout life. Unless education helps individual to achieve that, it has very little importance. It means one must remain student all through the life, searching reply to some deep and fundamental questions.
Bibliography :
Krishna, P.(2015) :A Jewel on a Silver Platter. Remembering Jiddu Krishnamurti, Varanasi :Pilgrims Publishing.
Lutyens, M. (1987). J. Krishnamurti – Freedom from the Known. New Delhi : B. I. Publications Pvt. Ltd.
Lutyens, M. (1988). Krishnamurti – The Open Door, John Murray.
Lutyens, M. ( 1989).Krishnamurti : The Years of Awakening, London : John Murray
Mehta, R. (1979). Krishnamurti and the Nameless Experience, New York : Samuel Weiser, N.
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