Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti

There is the family, the neighbor and the state, and by questioning their significance you will see that intelligence is spontaneous, not to be acquired, not to be cultivated. You have sown the seed of awareness and that produces the flower of intelligence.

If there are only five people who will listen, who will live, who have their faces turned toward eternity, it will be sufficient. Of what use is it to have thousands who do not understand, who are fully embalmed in prejudice, who do not want the new, but would rather translate the new to suit their own sterile, stagnant selves? If I speak strongly,... See more

The ideal, the what should be, does not help in understanding what is; on the contrary, it prevents understanding.

Freedom is a state of mind—not freedom from something but a sense of freedom, a freedom to doubt and question everything and, therefore, so intense, active, and vigorous that it throws away every form of dependence, slavery, conformity, and acceptance. Such freedom implies being completely alone. But can the mind brought up in a culture so dependen

... See more

The organization becomes a framework into which its members can conveniently fit. They no longer strive after Truth or the mountaintop, but rather carve for themselves a convenient niche in which they put themselves, or let the organization place them, and consider that the organization will thereby lead them to Truth.

Please, I do not want to give you examples and similes, because I want you to think it out, and if I give examples I do all the thinking and you merely listen, whereas if you begin to think about what I am saying, you will see, you will observe for yourself how mind, being accustomed to so many substitutions, authorities, escapes, never comes to th... See more

By the look of things political, war may break out again. It may break out in two years, in five years, in ten years. An intelligent man can see this and intelligently act. But the man who is stagnating, who is waiting for pain to force him to action, looks to greater chaos, greater suffering to give him impetus to act and hence, his intelligence i... See more

Of course, you are going to have to stand alone but that can come about not through force, determination, or desire but when you begin to see the false things around you and in yourself: the emotions, the hopes. When you begin to see that which is false, then there is the beginning of awareness, of intelligence. You have to be a light to yourself a

... See more

To have this profound revolution, you must become fully conscious of the structure which you have created about yourself and in which you are now caught. That is, we have now certain values, ideals, beliefs, which act as a net to hold the mind, and by questioning and understanding all their significance, we shall realize how they have come into exi... See more