Freedom from Belief and Knowledge

Bill B. asked if I could share his recap of a recent Krishnamurti study group, below.  Thanks to Robert for sharing his notes as well… Last Saturday afternoon, four of us got together to read from “The First and Last Freedom”. Krishnamurti talked about the great importance we put on knowledge, and how it adds to our feeling of certainty and security. We also sometimes substitute belief for knowledge, creating a mental model of the world, based on assumptions, fears, and desires that are not always based on truth. K. mentions that the desire to be secure, to be certain, causes us to place immense value on knowledge. The question is asked: “Is it possible for the mind to be free from knowledge and belief?”. He also notes that this is the true path to freedom. The group acknowledged that anything new that we see is filtered through the distortion of our memories and beliefs – therefore it cannot truly be seen. K. suggests that a mind in that state can never have true peace. Krishnamurti is relentless in his approach to inquiring into thoughts and actions, and especially how the mind creates its own world. Some of our conversation went beyond the concepts in the chapter but were intriguing nonetheless. We discussed how it can be seen that even the mind or thought is not personal – but rather universal to all apparent people. And that it seems to create an earth… trees… mountains and people, just like a virtual reality game that we are all playing. But on closer investigation by scientists, it has been discovered that there really isn’t anything physical at all. Nothing solid really exists as a stand-alone entity – including bodies, planets and stars. One member thought that Thich Nhat Hanh put it nicely when he described a flower as having emerged from earth, water, soil, sun and consciousness. In fact, each flower is made completely of non-flower elements… thus, whatever we see around us, including ourselves, all are essentially emerging and part of the oneness. Another member brought up that these discoveries show clearly that all there is to a body or world is the impersonal sensing of it by the apparent small ‘m’ mind. Underlying that: as Awareness we are also the screen that seems to be hosting this ongoing parade of appearances. A key takeaway point for some of us was that as our beliefs and mental constructs fall away, we begin to notice this Awareness – being less distracted by the ideas that tend to float by, or the myriad of beliefs or images we have projected onto the screen.