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THE JOURNAL OF THE KRISHNAMURTI SCHOOLS NO.25

our behaviour is still largely, if not almost entirely, driven by that
agenda. “I am asking you”, K says, “to jump a million years.” The
aeon-long clasp of our conditioning is something that it seems
humanly reckless and irresponsible to ignore and leave intact.
Third—the relationship between brain and mind. K’s final
account of this is found in the dialogue with David Bohm on 20
June 1983. The statement that it is the quietness of the brain—with
thought in its rightful, limited place—that allows the higher func-
tions of mind—intelligence, compassion, love—to operate is for
me a statement of great beauty and explanatory power. It demands
to be checked out, verified as far as one can.

Being inspired by live contact with K to explore his teaching is
no longer possible nowadays for the new generation, which has
to rely on videos, audio recordings, books, and the Internet. And
among those who now visit our Centres there are those who ask,
“Do you know anyone who has fundamentally changed?” To seek
such a guarantee, as one would with an upgrade of Windows, is
something K dismisses in the psychological area as dependency.
We all have to go solo in looking at how our brains work. Tak-
ing responsibility for that is like one’s first dive into a swimming
pool.
But if one is asked that question, what can one say? An aloof
silence can suggest that I am the holder of a mystique. I think next
time I shall say, “Yes, I have changed, but I haven’t the faintest
idea of how much, in what way, and how it came about! Nor am I
bothered about that.” I am confident I must have changed some-
what because whenever one reads, hears, or sees something seri-
ous it fires neurons in one’s brain, but how fully, to what effect …
well, who knows! Of course, the significance of these firings will
get reality-checked by life sooner or later, but our grasp of the

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