Mary Lutyens’s 1969 selection of Jiddu Krishnamurti’s talks, organised into the most accessible single-volume entry to his teaching. Krishnamurti himself asked Lutyens — his lifelong friend and one of his authorised biographers — to compile the book and suggested its title. The text is his, unaltered; only the arrangement is hers. The recurring move: that thought, conditioning and the entire apparatus of religious-and-philosophical "knowledge" is precisely what cuts the perceiver off from direct seeing, and that any technique-of-liberation reproduces the problem at a subtler level.
Published in 1969 by Harper & Row in the United States and by Rider in the United Kingdom, the book has functioned for half a century as the standard entry point to Krishnamurti for English-language readers. It draws on talks given across Europe and India over the previous decades, including the material that would later anchor his work at Brockwood Park in Hampshire. The argument that there is no method, no path and no teacher — that "truth is a pathless land" — is here in its most condensed form, alongside the chapters on fear, pleasure, relationship, and the silencing of thought that recur throughout the wider Krishnamurti corpus.
First lines
Man has throughout the ages been seeking something beyond himself, beyond material welfare — something we call truth or God or reality, a timeless state — something that cannot be disturbed by circumstances, by thought or by human corruption.
Reception
Probably the most-recommended Krishnamurti book — if a friend says 'where should I start with K?' this is the answer. Krishnamurti's broader standing has been remarkably resilient: his split from Theosophy in 1929, his decades of teaching at Brockwood Park and Ojai, the David Bohm dialogues, and his explicit refusal to found a movement have left a body of recorded talks rather than a tradition. Critical reception inside academic philosophy is muted; reception among 20th-century spiritual teachers (Bohm, Capra, Chopra, Anais Nin, Aldous Huxley) is unusually high.
Frequently asked
What is Freedom from the Known about?
It is Krishnamurti’s argument that thought, conditioning and the entire apparatus of religious-and-philosophical "knowledge" is precisely what cuts the perceiver off from direct seeing, and that any technique-of-liberation reproduces the problem at a subtler level. The book covers fear, pleasure, relationship and the silencing of thought across sixteen short chapters.
Who compiled the book?
Mary Lutyens — a lifelong friend of Krishnamurti and one of his authorised biographers. Krishnamurti himself asked her to compile the volume and suggested the title. The words are his, unaltered, drawn from previously unpublished talks; the arrangement is hers, designed for the reader’s entry into his teaching.
Is it a good first book to read by Krishnamurti?
It is the most commonly recommended starting point. The arrangement is more linear than the talks themselves, the material covers most of the recurring themes (fear, conditioning, pleasure, relationship, thought, silence), and at around 124 pages it is short enough to read in a few sittings before deciding whether to go further into the recorded talks or the David Bohm dialogues.