That’s a very unconventional take on what it means to be free. If you asked 1000 people what freedom meant, I doubt pretty much anyone would give that answer, unless they happened to be a student of Krishnamurti or the like.
So could you please go into it a bit, why is this unconditional freedom for you?
I wasn’t dividing freedom into categories, rather looking at it as a whole, all aspects.
So that is probably a disconnect in our conversation, right?
Do you think that by “Set man free” Krishnamurti meant psychologically free, rather than say physically free or creatively free or politically free or morally free? (All of which are related to psychological freedom, but perhaps not reducible to it.) I’d like to know what Krishnamurti meant, since I started this thread to see his offerings in the new light (for me) of “setting man free.”
Could we leave this for now, it would take too long to hash out and be too much of a tangent. I’m happy to get into it with you sometime, maybe in another thread?
If Bartholomew the believer feels free, Jimmy might say: Ah, but Bart may well be fooling himself, he may well not in fact be free. Whereas Sally might say: Bart feels free, therefore he is free, because freedom is not an objectively measurable quality, rather a subjective state of mind, a feeling.
Who’s right? My vote: Each illuminates part of the whole.
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.
Despite agreeing with James’ excellent response, I’d like to explore the statement above: Psychological freedom deals with our relationship to the world - thus it does also mean freedom from the bonds of physicality, creativity, ideas abourt morality and politics!!! 
Freedom from our concepts of the world, allows us to move freely with the flow of life.
Is the leaf floating in the summer breeze, or floating downriver, free? What about the drunken poet lost in the woods gazing at the stars?
When standing in the rain we all get wet, freedom means it does not matter.
Each persons opinion illuminates their relationship to the world. Its true that feeling free in this moment, not being subject to some mental angst right now, is psychological freedom - and at the same time does not necessarily mean that our unconscious mental bonds have been understood - in the next instant they may be awakened.
To be free from concepts, what does that mean to you?
Not being dependant upon them - realising that they are just mental models that may or may not be useful.
My goal is to find out what Krishnamurti meant by his main concern being “to set man free” and to allow this in turn to help me reframe my understanding of his worldview.
Rather than limiting the inquiry to ‘psychological freedom’ how about limiting it to anything that sheds light on Krishnamurti’s understanding of freedom? That seems appropriate for the goal.
To that end … :
“… my purpose is to make men unconditionally free, for I maintain that the only spirituality is the incorruptibility of the self which is eternal, is the harmony between reason and love. This is the absolute, unconditioned Truth which is life itself.” – Krishnamurti, from the dissolution speech
Is the freedom he speaks of freedom from psychological conditioning, memory, the past, the known?
“Harmony between reason and love” … nice!
What does “the incorruptibility of the self which is eternal” mean? What is the ‘self’ here?
“This is the absolute, unconditioned Truth which is life itself.” What does he mean by ‘life?’ Not biological life surely? Rather: reality, what-really-is?
As map symbols may (or not) be useful for helping us interact with the actual territory.
What if anything does this reveal about the kind of freedom Krishnamurti spoke of?
Freedom is not a reaction; freedom is not choice. It is man’s pretence that because he has choice he is free. Freedom is pure observation without direction, without fear of punishment and reward. Freedom is without motive; freedom is not at the end of the evolution of man but lies in the first step of his existence. In observation one begins to discover the lack of freedom. Freedom is found in the choiceless awareness of our daily existence and activity.
– Krishnamurti, from The Core of the Teachings
Freedom is one of the words in the english language that Krishnamurti has co-opted. In his usage, it no longer refers to the personal - or for that matter, the impersonal - as in ‘freedom from’ or ‘freedom for’ or ‘freedom to’. Hence the confusion talking about it. Freedom as it is being used in the Core of the Teachings passage above quoted by @nobody is phenomenological. He equates it with Life itself. Freedom is awareness, in a totally general sense. Of no use to us personally other than tangentially.
Choiceless awareness** is going on all the time. (Even, arguably, in deep sleep.) Would Krishnamurti have said that freedom is always present, but that we don’t realize this?
** By choiceless awareness I mean the ‘pure’ awareness/sensing/noticing that happens before thought barges onto the scene and seeks to assert its dominance.
I think so, yes …
In which case the ‘self’ / thought creates an image of something called ‘freedom ‘ similar to the image of a ‘higher self ‘ or ‘God’ and creates a desire to one day realize it?
And thought continues its effort to ‘become’.
Freedom is the non- movement of thought in the mind?
[quote=“nobody, post:51, topic:1431”]
We are prisoners of ourselves.
The self being the one that knows whats what, in order to be how it should
Isn’t it that the mind / brain is confused, fearful and finds security in being ‘occupied’, no matter what that occupation consists of? As long as it is occupied, not ‘empty’?
And the contents of that occupation are always of the past. What ‘has been’.
The ‘occupation ‘ is disorder because it is the past.
By freedom K means, in my opinion, a place (?) from where everything comes out naturally. And everything here I mean reason, love, words, logic etc.
As in Nature itself?
If the self is an illusion, how can it “imprison” us?
Yes, as in nature itself. However in my life this is not always the case.
As an exercise to find out more broadly what Krishnamurti understood by the term freedom, I thought I would look through a book published in the early 90s called “On Freedom, Krishnamurti” (published by Victor Gollancz), with selections from his talks on the topic from the 1940s through to the 80s (a wide enough range of time to showcase at least some of the many ways he approached the theme). The following are those passages that stood out for me the most, so I thought I would share them.
When you go beyond and above all thought process, then there is freedom. (Bombay 1948)
Obviously the first necessity for freedom is that there should be no fear…. freedom is not possible if there is any form of outward or inward compulsion…. as long as the mind is seeking any form of security—and that is what most of us want—as long as the mind is seeking permanency in any form, there can be no freedom. (Poona 1953)
The love of something for itself is freedom. (Varanasi 1954)
Freedom is a state and quality of mind. (Poona 1958)
A mind that wants to inquire into freedom and discover its beauty, its vastness, its dynamism, its strange quality of not being effective in the worldly sense of that word—such a mind from the very beginning must put aside its commitments, the desire to belong, and with that freedom, it must inquire…. The serious man is he who wants to find out what is freedom, and for this he must surely inquire into his own slavery. Don’t say you are not a slave…. [Freedom] is a precious fruit without which you lose human dignity. It is love, without which you will never find God, or truth, or that nameless thing…. That reality, that immeasurable something, comes when there is freedom—the total inward freedom that exists only when you have not committed yourself, when you do not belong to anything, when you are able to stand completely alone without bitterness, without cynicism, without hope or disappointment. (Madras 1959)
Is there such a thing as real freedom—a state in which the mind is actually freeing itself from all the traditions and patterns that have been imposed upon it for centuries? (Varanasi 1960)
A mind that is shaped by a church, by dogmas, by organised religion, is not a free mind. A mind that is darkened by knowledge is not a free mind…. The terrible weight of respectability, the acceptance of public opinion, our own fears, anxieties—all these things, surely, if one is at all aware of them, are diminishing the quality of freedom…. After all, reality, or that which is not expressible in words, cannot be found by a mind that is clogged, weighed down…. To bring about this freedom, there must be self-knowledge: knowing the way you think and discovering in that process the whole structure of the mind…. it is only when the mind is free that there is endless energy—and it is this energy that is the movement of reality. (Ojai 1960)
a mind that is not bound by dogmas, by beliefs; a mind that has not taken shelter within the limits of experience; a mind that breaks through the barriers of tradition, of authority, of ambition; that is no longer within the net of envy….
one must see this fact that the mind must be absolutely free…. freedom is essential. And it is only when there is freedom that you can discover if there is, or if there is not, God or something immense, beyond the measure of man. (Varanasi 1962)
Psychologically there can be no freedom at all if the defensive process of thought is not completely understood. And freedom—which is not a reaction to or the opposite of non-freedom—is essential, because it is only in freedom that one can discover. It is only when the mind is totally free that there can be the perception of what is true….
Freedom comes only when we understand the whole process of the mind that creates its own barriers, its own limitations, its own projections from a conditioned and conditioning background….
Freedom comes without your seeking it when there is total attention. Total attention is the quality of a mind that has no border, no frontier, and is therefore capable of receiving every single impression, seeing and hearing everything. (Saanen 1962)
Freedom is not “from something,” but in itself the mind is free. That is an extraordinary feeling—for the mind to be free in itself, to know freedom for its own sake. (Saanen 1963)
We are talking of freedom, not in abstraction but actually; we are talking of the everyday freedom, inwardly, in which, psychologically, there is no bondage to anything. Is that possible?… To discover anything, even in the scientific field, the mind must be free. The mind must be untrammelled to see something new. But most of our minds, unfortunately, are not fresh, young, innocent—to see, to observe, to understand….
Freedom is not liberation in some heavenly world, but is the freedom of every day, freedom from jealousy, freedom from attachment, freedom from ambition, freedom from competition (Madras 1964)
Without total freedom, every perception, every objective regard, is twisted. It is only the man who is totally free who can look and understand immediately. Freedom implies really, doesn’t it, the total emptying of the mind. Completely to empty the whole content of the mind—that is real freedom…. a mind that is crowded, that is heavy with its own despairs, fears, joys, pleasures—such a mind is never empty, and therefore there is nothing new for it, nothing new can come. It is only in that emptiness that a new thing, a new mutation, can take place. This emptiness, this space, is freedom….
Freedom is a state of being. Freedom is a feeling. You have to liberate yourself, free yourself, even in little things: you dominating your wife, or your wife dominating you, or your ambitions, your greeds, your envy. (Bombay February 1964)
Thought is never free. Thought is merely a reaction to accumulated knowledge as memory, as experience; therefore it can never free man. And yet everything that we do—every action, every motive, every urge—is based on thought. So one has to see for oneself the significance of thought, where it is necessary and where it is poison. Mutation can only come about when the mind is totally empty of all thought. It is like the womb: a child is conceived in the womb, because the womb is empty, and out of that a new birth is given. In the same way, the mind must be empty, it is only in emptiness that a new thing can take place….
there must be complete freedom for you, complete freedom from this sociological structure, the psychological structure of society, which is fear, greed, envy, ambition, the seeking of power, the seeking of position, depending on money…. It is only out of this emptiness that mutation comes…. Then you are completely, indissolubly alone. And only then, in that state of complete aloneness, does that movement, which is the beginning and end of all things, come into being. (Bombay March 1964)
Without freedom you can’t look, you can’t inquire, you can’t move into the unknown. For a mind that would inquire, whether in the complicated field of science or in the complex and subtle field of human consciousness, there must be freedom. You can’t come to it with your knowledge, with your prejudices, with your anxieties and fears, for these factors will shape your perception…. So to inquire we need freedom, and therefore we must be aware from the very beginning of how conditioned we are, how prejudiced we are; we must be aware of the fact that we look at life through the desire for pleasure, and thereby prevent ourselves from seeing what actually is. (Saanen July 1965)
You see a bird and you give it a name, or you say, “I don’t like that bird,” or, “How beautiful that bird is.” So when you say these things you are not actually seeing the bird at all; your words, your thoughts—whether you like it or not—prevent you from looking. But there is a choiceless awareness to look at something without all the interference of what you already know…. To look, to see and to listen is only possible when there is freedom from thoughts, emotions, condemnation, and judgment….
It is only when there is freedom from all conflict that there is peace, and out of that peace comes love. But one cannot possibly know that quality of love unless the mind is aware of itself, and has unconditioned itself and therefore is free. (New Delhi 1967)
So one has to ask oneself, it seems to me, whether you want freedom at the periphery or at the very core of your being. And if you want to learn what freedom is at the very source of all existence then you have to learn about thought…. is freedom the non-existence of thought? (Brockwood 1972)