Krishnamurti in Four Ideas
the essentialsTruth is a pathless land
No organisation, guru or method can lead you to truth; you must find it yourself.
The observer is the observed
The self that watches its thoughts is itself made of thought — there is no separate observer.
Choiceless awareness
Attention without judgement or choice — seeing what is, as it is.
Freedom from the known
Psychological freedom means freedom from the past, conditioning and the self.
Jiddu Krishnamurti (11 May 1895 – 17 February 1986) was an Indian philosopher and teacher. As a boy in Adyar he was “discovered” by the leaders of the Theosophical Society, Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater, who proclaimed him the coming “World Teacher” and created a worldwide organisation, the Order of the Star in the East, around him. In 1929, at Ommen in the Netherlands, he dissolved the Order in front of three thousand members, declaring: “Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect… I do not want followers.” For the next fifty-seven years he travelled the world giving talks and holding dialogues, teaching that psychological freedom comes only through choiceless awareness of one’s own conditioning; that “the observer is the observed” — the self that watches thought is itself thought; and that no authority, tradition, method or guru can bring transformation. He founded schools in India (Rishi Valley), England (Brockwood Park) and California. His dialogues with the physicist David Bohm and his books Freedom from the Known (1969) and The First and Last Freedom (1954, with a foreword by Aldous Huxley) influenced seekers, scientists and educators worldwide.
Curiosities
did you know?- Discovered as a boy on the beach at Adyar by the Theosophist C. W. Leadbeater, who declared his aura free of selfishness.
- His long friendship and dialogues with the physicist David Bohm (The Ending of Time, 1985) explored thought, time and the nature of the mind.
Questions to Argue About
debate club →- Can one be free of all authority — including Krishnamurti’s?
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