Freedom from the Known

A short book compiled and edited by Mary Lutyens from Krishnamurti's talks, arranged as a continuous argument rather than as separate lectures. Its starting point is that no authority, guru, method or tradition can free us, because each only adds another layer of conditioning. Instead, each person must watch directly how their own mind works. Krishnamurti examines in turn how we are shaped by culture and the past, and how this produces fear, pleasure, violence, loneliness and conflict in relationships. Thought, he argues, is always the response of memory, and so it is always old; the self that tries to improve itself is just more of the same process. A central claim is that the observer is the observed: there is no separate thinker standing apart from thoughts, or controller apart from anger. When this is seen without judgement or justification, he says, a complete change can happen at once rather than gradually. The book closes with reflections on time, love, death and meditation.

It is a clear introduction to Krishnamurti, presenting his challenge to all spiritual and psychological authority and his practice of attentive self-observation in plain, direct language.