Educating the Educator (part 2 of 2)

Questioner: Is education in creativeness possible? Or, is creativeness purely accidental, and therefore nothing can be done to facilitate its emergence?


Krishnamurti: To put it differently, the question is wether by learning a technique you will be creative -- that is, by learning the technique of painting, will you be an artist? Does creativeness come into being through technique, or is creativeness independent of technique? You may go to school and learn all there is to know about painting, about the depth of color, the technique of how to hold the brush, and all the rest of it. Will that make you a creative painter? Whereas, if you are creative, then anything that you do will have its own technique. I once went to see a great artist in Paris who had not learned a technique; he wanted to say something, and he said it in clay and then in marble. Most of us learn the technique but have very little to say. We neglect, we overlook the capacity to find out for ourselves; we have all the instruments of discovery, without finding anything directly. So the problem is how to be creative, which brings its own technique.

Then, when you want to write a poem, what happens? You write it. If you have a technique, so much the better; but, if you have no technique, it does not matter; you write the poem, and the delight is in the writing. After all, when you write a love letter, you are not bothered about technique; you write it with all your being. But when there is no love in your heart, you search out a technique, how to put words together. If you do not love, you miss the point. You think you will be able to live happily, creatively, by learning a technique, and it is the technique that is destroying creativeness -- which does not mean that you must not have a technique. After all, when you want to write a poem beautifully, you must know meter and all the rest of it. But if you want to write it yourself and not publish it, then it does not matter. You write. It is only when you want to communicate something to another that proper technique is necessary, the right technique, so that there will be no misunderstanding.

But, surely, to be creative is quite a different problem, and that demands an extraordinary  investigation into oneself. It is not a question of gift. Talent is not creativeness. One can be creative without having a talent. So, what do we mean by creativeness? To go into it fully and deeply one has to go into the whole problem of consciousness. I say that everyone of us can be creative, in the right sense of the word, not merely producing poems and statues or procreating children. Surely, to be creative means to be in that state in which truth can come into being. And truth can come into being only when there is a complete cessation of the thought process. When the mind is utterly still, without being compelled, forced into a certain pattern of action; when the mind is really quiet, not compelled; then in that state, truth can come into being. That state is creation, and creation is not for the few, it is not the talent of the few or the gift of the few. That creative state can be discovered by each one who gives his mind and heart to search out the problem.

Questioner: Whom would you call a perfect teacher?


Krishnamurti: Obviously, not the teacher who has an ideal, nor he who is making a profit out of teaching, nor he who has built up an organisation, nor he who is the instrument of the politician, nor he who is bound to a belief or to a country. The perfect teacher, surely, is one who does not ask anything for himself, who is not caught up in politics, in power, in position; he does not ask anything for himself, because inwardly he is rich. His wisdom does not lie in books; his wisdom lies in experiencing, and experiencing is not possible if he is seeking an end. Experiencing is not possible for him for whom the result is far more important than the means; to him who wants to show that he has turned out so many pupils who have brilliantly passed exams, who have come out as first-class M.A.'s, B.A.'s, or whatever. Obviously, as most of us want a result, we give scant thought to the means employed, and therefore we can never be perfect teachers.

A teacher who is perfect must be beyond and above the control of society. He must teach and not be told what to teach, which means he must have no position in society; he must have no authority in society, because the moment he has authority, he is part of society; and since society is always disintegrating,  a teacher who is part of society can never be the perfect teacher. He must be out of it, which means he cannot ask anything for himself; therefore, society must be so enlightened that it will supply his needs. But we don't want such an enlightened society, nor such teachers. If we had such teachers, then the present society would be in danger. Religion is not organised belief, which does not lie in any temple, church, or mosque. Without the search for truth, no society can long exist; and while it exists, it is bound to bring about disaster.

Surely, the teacher is not merely the giver of information; the teacher is one who points the way to wisdom. And he who points the way to wisdom is not the guru. Truth is far more important than the teacher; therefore, you who are the seeker of truth have to be both student and teacher. In other words, you have to be the perfect teacher to create a new society; and to bring the perfect teacher into being, you have to understand yourself. Wisdom begins with self-knowledge and, without self-knowledge, mere information leads to destruction. Without self-knowledge, the airplane  becomes the most destructive instrument in life, but self-knowledge, it is a means of human help. So the teacher must be one who is not within the clutches of society, who does not play power politics or seek position or authority. He has discoved that which is eternal in himself and, therefore, he is capable of imparting that knowledge which will help another to discover his own means to enlightenment.