A Wholly Different Way of Living – Krishnamurti in Dialogue with Prof. Anderson

Door Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895 - 1986).

269 Pages | Published in 1991 | Softcover | Krishnamurti Foundation India, Chennai | ISBN: 818732614X.

At a time of unprecedented outer change in the political and social spheres, is there a fundamental inner change that is demanded of each one of us? In the eighteen dialogues with Professor Allan W. Anderson, Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at San Diego State University, J. Krishnamurti indicates that pinning our hopes on organized religion, science, political idealogy or the market economy not only fails to address basic human problems but actually creates them.

The way out of our difficulties, Krishnamurti states, can only start in the mind of each one of us, in an awareness of the way we actually perceive life, ourselves and others. Professor Anderson, throughout these dialogues, refers to many passages of Western and Eastern religious scriptures that he believes have been misunderstood and which in fact support Krishnamurti's statements. The dialogues reproduced in an edited and slightly abridged version in this book, took place at San Diego State University from 18 to 28 February 1974.

From Dialogue XIV - 'Death, Life and Love are Indivisible - The Nature of Immortality' (p. 193):

Krishnamurti:

" That's the most absurd thing. Now what we are discussing, sir, is the understanding of death, its relation to living and this thing called love. One cannot possibly understand the immensity - and it is immense - of this thing called death unless there is real freedom from fear. That's why we talked sometime ago about the problem of fear. Unless the mind really frees itself from fear there is no possibility of understanding the extraordinary beauty, strength, and vitality of death. "