Product Description Counted among his admirers are Jonas Salk, Aldous Huxley, David Hockney, and Van Morrison, along with countless other philosophers, artist, writers and students of the spiritual path. Now the trustees of Krishnamurti's work have gathered his very best and most illuminating writings and talks to present in one volume the truly essential ideas of this great spiritual thinker.Total Freedom includes selections from Krishnamurti's early works, his `Commentaries on Living', and his discourses on life, the self, meditation, sex and love. These writings reveal Krishnamuri's core teachings in their full eloquence and power: the nature of personal freedom; the mysteries of life and death; and the `pathless land', the personal search for truth and peace. Warning readers away from blind obedience to creeds or teachers - including himself - Krishnamurti celebrated the individual quest for truth, and thus became on of the most influential guides for independent-minded seekers of the twentieth century - and beyond.
In the Direction of EnlightenmentJuly 2, 2008 J. Krishnamurti found a path with leads generally in the direction of "enlightenment." His books offer a point in the right direction, but, as such, they are only for those who are willing to do the hard work of actually walking the path themselves and observing their consciousness and their word with honest eyes. Intelligence for Krishnamurti was the ability to keep the mind from lazily settling on any one conclusion ("blocking itself"), and maintaining always an open, alert and unending curiosty about everything. Concentration was another key word for Krishnamurti, and he seemed to feel that most people were unable to take concentration to the level of an art-form, which is what he felt it should always be. That said, this book is an excellent career overview of his "work," but, in my mind, intended for those already acquainted with his take on life. I would advise starting with As One Is or Think on These Things.
UnclassifiableMay 14, 2007 6 out of 7 found this review helpful
This is the first time I had read Krishnamurti, so I don't know how it compares to other compilations of his writings and discussions, but I can say that his is a beautiful mind. What he shares with his audience cannot be classified as doctrine or technique, but rather guidance on how to look for the truth. The teaching that initially resonated with me is his suggestion to start by observing yourself and your thinking, without judgment (good or bad), to really understand your thoughts and move beyond the series of events that you use to define "you." I found that the process of attentive observation is extremely powerful, dissolving the tensions I have built over time and revealing something truly beautiful and energizing. For those who want to explore his works before buying, there are websites with many of his "lessons." If these bits of information ring true to you, do yourself a favor and buy the book.
One last word of advice: Krishnamurti does not offer packaged answers to life's questions like one finds with religion. His suggestions require serious effort by the reader to find total freedom.
The austere beauty of TruthMay 13, 2005 18 out of 28 found this review helpful
Krishnamurti...
Who reads him nowadays? Who ever listened to him when he was still with us? At the end of his life, people were deriding him because apparently nobody, not a single child in all the schools he had founded in Europe, America and India, had awakened. Apparently, it was all a failure and today Brockwood Park, the school he helped set up in England, is begging money because hardly anybody sends gifts or remembers K's noble educational cause in his will.
This message is truly an austere and challenging message of no hope, of no tomorrow of guaranteed liberation. There is no comforting Krishnamurtite doctrine to hold onto. This the mind must irrevocably hate if it is flippant, looking for pleasure or security.
I first read Krishnaji when I was still a staunch traditionalist Catholic. I think the title of the unassuming little volume was "Letters to Students". Although it was couched in very simple terms and contained no slick neo-advaita paradoxes about nonpeople having ever bought any shoes, I didn't understand a word of what was said and thought the man must be some sort of crazy radical. The only idea that stuck with me was the saying "a truly humble man doesn't know he is humble". That sounds awfully trite, but it isn't. It is so true.
We never know it. We can never say: "This is it!"
Krishnamurti truly has nothing to offer you. Most of what he says are questions, invitations to enquire. But he also knows how to write delightful prose, describing nature and people with a love that is both quiet and poignant. In his essays, which make up about half of this superb collection of Krishnamurti's works, one is first invited to wonder at the fragile beauty of the world and to rest for a timeless moment in the innocence of trees, rivers, mountains and a clear starry night sky, before being taken to the enquiry and the clarity of its burning flame.
Who can enquire at all?, some clever neo-advaitists will perhaps ask derisively. You. You can look at your life and see all the deception and mischief wrought by the predatory "me", the "self". Although it is true that K. speaks of going beyond the self, there is not so much as a hint in all of K's works that people are walking nobodies devoid of volition. Buddha, who preached anatta, non-ego, also enjoined people to act. Krishnamurti assumed as a given truth that we could truly do something about ourselves and therefore about the terrible state of the world. But the doing was first and foremost a seeing. One is invited to see, and to keep seeing.
Seeing what? One's desperate and ugly face, one's mean ego and its for ever reborn attempts at escaping reality. To see it in the chaos and violence in the world outside and also within, for "the world is you and you are the world". This coming face to face with oneself happened through the teachings, which he liked to compare to a mirror.
It is important to see in the context of rampant teachings about Consciousness Already Realized and Being Perfect Right Now that the image K showed his hearers wasn't a hypothetical and dogmatically asserted feel-good "perfect oneness", but "what is" in all its disturbing crudeness. Therefore it is no wonder that the Ultimate Mystery, when he talked about it, which he did rarely, was expressed by the word "Otherness". How could "otherness" be "already the case"?
For that to arise, the reality of evil had to be faced. But it was to be faced without judgment, in choiceless or passive awareness. Then and only then, would the transformation occur as the observer would realize his fundamental identity with the observed. It is certainly one of the great and painful paradoxes of this teaching that it vehemently denounces evil within and without, but at the same time shows that colllective and individual holy wars against it will inevitably not only fail, but aggravate the situation. Yoga, rituals, breathing techniques and the rest of the religious arsenal of self-improvement are dismissed as so many routines of the ego. There only remains a passionate inquiry, which is wisdom in search of itself.
Asked by a swami how he would sum up his whole message, he reluctantly said: "Look". It is important to see, specially in our sense and eye-obsessed culture, that he didn't say, "See this", "this" referring to the outside world. K. is not inviting you to lose yourself in the object. Rather he is inviting you to observe, relentlessly but affectionately, the movement of thought, which is the ego. When its utter destructiveness is recognized WITHOUT any judgment or preconception, something else arises, which K. always refused to theorize about.
The difference between "Look" and "See this", which is the slogan of neo-advaita, is a crucial one, one that distinguishes a teaching about immanence and transcendence and the creative and challenging tension between the two, and one that confuses the Absolute with sensual experience and thereby dissolves all creative tension in the mere frictionless movement of the "already" known.
There can be no rest and its corollary, dogmatism, in this. Krishnaji often summed up our existential condition by conjuring the striking metaphor of someone living in a small room with a deadly cobra. As he often said, "It is only the serious man who lives". One is invited to realize the danger and seriousness of living in the world. And even when the transformation has occurred, it isn't the case that one simply self-contentedly celebrates, but there is a constant "learning", a deepening without end and without accumulation because Life is never known completely, because Life is for ever new. To use a word that is greatly appreciated in some quarters, there is for ever more "oneness" because the content of "oneness" is inexhaustible.
Therefore learn, o eternal beginner!
Difficult to read but Impossible to stay away from.April 30, 2004 27 out of 28 found this review helpful
I have been reading this book for almost 7 years many times over. It has been one of the most difficult books I have read. But why don't I just stop reading? Because I can't.
K challenges every bit of our thinking about the truth. After quite a while, I realised why he does not provide answers but just swirls our heads around with questions. He keeps telling us what one is NOT instead of what one IS. He is trying to help us know the "unknowable". He is trying to help us conceive the "inconceivable". He is trying to make us understand why any attempt at organizing the truth only produces an effect to the contrary. How would one explain that in words? I could never do that. But K does that brilliantly. It just takes some effort on the reader's part to follow his words and give them their due moment.
This was my first of a few Krishnamurti books... and I cherish it. What one gains from the book depends on where the reader is on the path of understanding. My experience with this book has proven that the book (it's effect on me) evolves as I evolve. I can only guess what his words will bring me when I read it 10 years from now.
A Spiritual PearlNovember 2, 2003 13 out of 14 found this review helpful
One of the gratest spiritual book. This is a life changing book and you will start observing with every aspect of life with new angle after reading this book. It covers the spiritual journey of K from 1929 to 1985. One will find it difficult to give off the concepts of nationalism and religion from their lives,particularly in such a hostile environment where social and religious conflicts are present in almost every continent,but if those barriers are overcome,world will certainly be a better place to live. Very insightful and thought provoking book.
