If one created a questionnaire about freedom and put it to ordinary people on the high street, then obviously the answers they would likely give would reflect the way the word “freedom” is most commonly used in our collective life.
These uses would include the freedom to do what one wants - aka, the freedom of choice - and also the freedom of speech, democratic or civil freedoms, freedom from political tyranny, freedom to love or marry who one wants to, freedom from coercion in the workplace, freedom from social harm or exploitation based on sex, race, religion, etc. For others freedom might mean material freedom, the freedom that having money brings, to travel, to change jobs, to buy new houses or cars. Or the freedom of athletes to jump, run, or swim (or birds to fly). For people brought up in Christianity, freedom probably means freedom of the will, to choose good rather than evil, or evil over the good. For religious people in India and parts of Asia, freedom might mean moksha, spiritual liberation, nirvana, for which they are willing to accept the authority of the lineage, the rimpoche, the guru, the tradition.
So freedom has many connotations. There is also the freedom of neutrinos to pass through concrete objects without interference, the freedom that infinite space has from any possibility of containment, and various science fictional or occult freedoms to bend space-time or manifest energy at will.
However, we are not free to stop our own physical death. We are not to free make the world conform to our image of how it ‘should be’ (dictators and tyrants try this, but they always fail). Physically, mortally, our freedom is definitely circumscribed. So there is no unconditional freedom for the body. Matter follows strict laws that can only be broken under limited conditions that are themselves subject to supervening (limiting) forces. The energy that underlies matter may be free after a fashion, but as soon as matter takes on form - as it has done for the whole universe, including our brains and bodies - it is subject to limitations that cannot be wished away.
So as macdougdoug writes, we are discussing psychological freedom primarily. This is clear from the dissolution speech Krishnamurti gave in 1929 from which you started this thread.
That is, Krishnamurti gave that speech to dissolve the organisation with which he was associated because it - like all religions and spiritual organisations - had become a psychological limit on the freedom of the mind:
it becomes a crutch, a weakness, a bondage, and must cripple the individual, and prevent him from growing, from establishing his uniqueness, which lies in the discovery for himself of that absolute, unconditioned Truth.
That the freedom with which Krishnamurti is concerned is primarily psychological is clear from the examples he uses:
I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects
He says he wants to set people free
from all fears–from the fear of religion, from the fear of salvation, from the fear of spirituality, from the fear of love, from the fear of death, from the fear of life itself.
What Krishnamurti considers imprisoning factors are
Your prejudices, your fears, your authorities, your Churches new and old–all these, I maintain, are a barrier to understanding
And therefore
I have only one purpose: to make man free, to urge him towards freedom, to help him to break away from all limitations, for that alone will give him eternal happiness, will give him the unconditioned realization of the self.
Happiness and realisation have to do with the mind, not material factors primarily. Fundamentally, freedom for Krishnamurti is
the absolute, unconditioned Truth which is life itself
And I wonder how many of those hypothetical 1000 people polled for their opinion would say this? Probably only a few!
So, nobody, are you willing to limit the discussion to a concern for psychological freedom primarily (not that social and political freedoms don’t have their place)? Because, otherwise, there is likely to be endless miscommunication on this topic.
