The First and Last Freedom

This man’s wisdom is a gift to the world. He knocked down all of our crutches. Truth is a pathless land!

JK was a mystery. His life story was dramatic and his teaching controversial - so many people found his talks transforming and yet many also were disillusioned. I myself, who was too young, foolish and too far away to see the man when he was alive, have been puzzled by the fact that supposedly no one who studies his talks was deeply transformed, sadly admitted by JK himself. But how could we measure his merit as a teacher by that fact alone? Twenty years after he died, everytime I read his words, the man came alive, sharp, passionate, uncompromising and compassionate. He came to the earth pure and clean, and he learned the mess of the human psyche in order to teach; he was a deeply religious and poetic man, evident from his few talks after his realisation and before he disbanded the Order, but in order to talk to a wider audience, "his beloved" was reduced to "the nameless" or "that immensity" in his later talks, with only a very slight touch at the end of talk; he didn't study any religious traditons, not even the Bhagavad Gita, and his talks were all his own, which perhaps explains why many people found his talks hard to grasp, because they can't be put into any familiar systems which we have learned before. How can we judge him or measure him? He reached and touched more people than anyone else in modern times; his talked "from the ground up", from this drab of life everyone lives instead of exclusively to long time spiritual seekers; and his words are the best guards against superstition, which goes hand in hand with spirituality. I salute you, Sir !

Why do so many people still look to Buddhism, Christianity, Taoism etc for wisdom and truth? How sad it would be if in 2000 years noting new has come along that is as true as those things. And because of the impact of time, translation, censorship and the rest, the old texts are more or less meaningless to a person today, other than to become the object of their fetishising and idolising. I don’t know if there is such a thing as ultimate truth, god, awakening, but looking only at what I do know, this book is full of marvellous writing that can help one to look in new ways and at new things. Krishnamurti doesn’t give us something new to believe in, but asks again and again, in modern intelligible English, to look into ourselves. Whatever is possible for a spiritual teacher to impart, and I’m not sure it is all that much, this book offers as much as any book can.

The book is great i already read the first chapter, the author’s writing, point of view is mind blowing! Highly recommend if you want to understand the ‘reality’ and ‘mind’ concept, and off course much more. Not a religious book at all, only the author’s talks about his radical, outstanding views.

I tried to read a book by Krishnamurti over thirty years ago when I first became interested in Eastern spirituality and philosophy. I remembered that his writing style was dry and repetitive, and that one of the early comments he made was, "Don't read books." I followed his advice, at least in regard to his book that I was reading. Recently, however, I became interested in the ideas of the physicist David Bohm, by reading WHOLENESS AND THE IMPLICATE ORDER, and discovered that he had co-written a book with Krishnamurti. On reading THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM I rediscovered that his writing is dry and repetitive, confusing, and not especially helpful. Although I find that I agree with nearly all of his opinions, or he agrees with mine since I had them before reading this book, I came by my opinions without being "enlightened." It is always gratifying to find that someone more or less famous agrees with my opinions. But if these opinions have any value, they must be passed on to other people in a way that people who do not already share these opinions might be influenced by them. I find it hard to believe that Krishnamurti's writing is likely to be able to do this. Perhaps someone younger would find him more helpful, but I suspect that they will like him because he is understood to be enlightened and expresses ideas that they already share with him. I like him for those reasons myself. Krishnamurti has a fascinating history. He was born in colonial India next to the headquarters of the occult Theosophical Society. Charles Leadbeater and Annie Besant, the leaders of this society encountered him and raised him under their tutelage, convinced that he was the vehicle for the messianic World Teacher, and organized the worldwide "Order of the Star" in support of this belief. As a young man Krishnamurti denounced his saviorhood and the concept of gurus as guides to absolute truth. His idea was that unconditional psychological freedom is within the reach of everyone - though just how this can be achieved is not made clear in this book. Though Krishnamurti had the reputation of being enlightened, he asserted that this was meaningless because only someone who was enlightened could determine whether or not he had realized reality. It is quite likely also true that only one who has realized reality can grasp the teaching of one who is enlightened - if there is such a thing a being enlightened. Other enlightened teachers, Paramahansa and Hawkins for instance, explain that in the enlightened state one can see that everything is perfect and beautiful. We only see disease and murder as ugly and evil because we judge them with our limited minds. If this is true - and I know it is not -- then I prefer self-deception. Krishnamurti, at least I understand him, does not have this view of reality. We are miserable because we lack intelligence, but our lack of intelligence is not in itself perfect and beautiful. "What leads to a better life is intelligence; and there cannot be intelligence if there is belief, if there are class divisions, if the means of production are in the hands of a few, if there are isolated nationalities and sovereign governments" (206). He sounds like a revolutionary, and he was concerned that the present crisis - the one in 1954 - was without precedent because it dealt with ideas. The greatest calamity is "to use ideas as a means to transform man" (146). Enlightened people are supposed to eschew the notion of being revolutionaries. On the other hand, he advises against judging and comparing as this leads to duality and isolation. Krishnamurti wants a world free of ideas. Right-thinking comes with self-knowledge. Without understanding yourself, you have no basis for thought; without self-knowledge, what you think is not true" (12). We mistakenly identify ourselves with our beliefs and thereby use them to hide from ourselves. Not only does Krishnamurti advise us not to read, we should also not pray, not meditate, not make any specific effort of any kind. Because these are all associated with ideas and will thereby lead to isolation and entrapment rather than freedom. "So the mind must be free of the known, which means the mind must be completely silent, not MADE silent. The mind that achieves silence as a result, as the outcome of determined action, of practice, of discipline, is not a silent mind" (207). But he never really explains how we should attain this silent mind, just that any actual effort we use will not achieve it. The eternal comes into being when the mind is blissful, with no thoughts either conscious or unconscious. I am by no means blissful, and my mind is full of constant pointless chatter, and I find that meditation helps quiet my mind and worries. I do not anticipate that meditation is going to lead me to the eternal, but it is at least somewhat more helpful than not making this effort. Since Krishnamurti insists that these efforts do not lead to the eternal, then he implies that all the gurus who claim to have achieved ultimate truth by these methods are deceiving themselves. This has also been my conclusion. But he also implies that he has achieved this blissful state. Maybe so, but he has no explanation of how he did, not anything useful to impart beyond advising us to be cautious of chaining ourselves to ideas. "The very nature of the mind is to be dishonest, crooked, and incapable of facing facts" (228). We train it to be clever and mistake that for intelligence, and we honor cleverness, no matter how corrupt, and mock wisdom. Belief in God has no reality because this belief is just an idea and not the reality of God. Belief in God as idea rather than God as reality does not make you a better person. None of this is new, and simply stating it one more time accomplishes nothing. Krishnamurti's advice is that one's transformation can only be NOW, from moment to moment, and transformation is simple: "seeing the false as the false and the true as the true" (286). Love and truth are identical and are the mental state when time has completely ceased. This is very heady but hardly helpful. I shall read his dialogue with David Bohm and see what I think.

Krishnamurti's work belongs on the shelf of everyone's library (Kindle) in the "most important books" section. Huxley's foreword is remarkable enough, then Mr. K takes you on a journey through the philosophical, spiritual and moral tangle we know as "life" on a beautifully designed path. The first section deals with key aspects of the human condition and interaction the second section is as you might expect: a question is asked and Krishna answers...38 topics (sex, love time, God, lonliness, etc.). It is the most thought provoking work I have read. I do not immediately agree with much of what he puts forward, but you cannot escape thinking long and hard on the essential elements...some ironic, confusing, contradictory, revolutionary, idealistic...but all getting back to the essential... what is...the real truth...and what action is right action. Some will get it, many, unfortunately, will not. An invaluable experience. A book I keep by my bedside. It has a lot of markers and marginal notes. As a constant reference book, I do not recommend it for Kindles, but I most highly recommend it for someone who would like to end or reduce the level of suffering and to be liberated and own, live and enjoy the First and Last Freedom....that is what it is.

This book helped to trigger a mutation in life. It is utterly relevant. What he said on p. 81 is what occured what continues to occur, and what can occur for any human being who is sincere in this: "When you see the whole process, the cunning, extraordinary inventions, the intelligence of the self, how it covers itself up through identification, through virtue, through experience, through belief, through knowledge; when you see that the mind is moving in a circle, in a cage of its own making, what happens? When you are aware of it, fully cognizant of it, then are you not extraordinarily quiet - not through compulsion, not through any reward, not through any fear? When you recognize that every movement of the mind is merely a form of strengthening the self, when you observe it, see it, when you are completely aware of it in action, when you come to that point - not ideologically, verbally, not through projected experiencing, but when you are actually in that state - then you will see that the mind, being utterly still, has no power of creating. Whatever the mind creates is in a circle, within the field of self. When the mind is non-creating there is creation, which is not a recognizable process."

I found this book when I was 18 and read it with an open mind, open heart, and genuine curiosity of the perspectives of not only other cultures but specifically other humans and their experiences. This book is a staple in my like now. Beautiful work by a truly amazing mind.