Käytetty hyväkuntoinen kirja

Krishnamurti speaks to people in many parts of the world and several of his books, compiled from his talks and notebooks, have become widely read. But the transcriptions of the talks and discussions have hitherto been printed primarily for those who took part at the meetings. A new series of books, of which this is the first, reports the talks with questions and answers exactly as they took place; they are audio typed from tape-recordings and great care has been taken over their accuracy, with only sufficient editing to produce a readable text.

In these talks given in three European capitals in 1967, Krishnamurti discusses problems fundamental to man and society: violence, fear, sorrow, desire, love, and many others. He insists that the understanding of how we look at a problem is as important as the problem itself. He asks, "What is the state of mind which says 'I understand?'" He carefully analyses the "act of looking", the observer (or watcher) and the observed, with the space-interval that is involved in this form of awareness. This leads to the consideration of the pleasure principle, desire, the demand for experience, and the whole ques tion of ideation, how thought arises, the limits of thought, and whether it is possible to observe without mentation.

A question is asked in Paris about the need to contact the unconscious; in Amsterdam about how to be free of the fear of death; in London, whether ordinary people have the ability to understand themselves. Or again, is meditation a whole way of life? If Krishnamurtis answers are often extraordinarily revealing, they are no less challenging, for he maintains that fundamental ques tions can only be answered by the questioner himself, Therefore he tries to show what the question involves and to expose the often arbitrary assumptions on which it is based. "A conditioned mind demanding what truth is will never find it... It can never find that immense, immeasurable thing. But without coming upon it, life becomes dull, stupid, drab, meaningless."

Anyone interested in fundamental questions, and the contemporary human predicament, should not miss the opportunity of reading these talks with their exchange of questions and answers,