Synopsis: Twentieth-century spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti conducts a series of lectures and dialogs in which he leads his audience through an exploration of the processes of their minds in order to understand the mechanisms by which fear, confusion and striving exist.
Recommended For: Readers serious about self-inquiry practices who see more value in asking questions than in being handed someone conclusions -- by themselves or anyone else.
Response: Krishnamurti has a very unique form of discourse. One can envision him alternatively prodding and berating his audience as they fail to grasp what he is getting at. And the reader can hardly succeed in every case where a live audience benefiting from expression and non-verbal cues failed. Which is to say, this is a book you chew slowly and take a long time to digest -- a little bit goes a long way. But that seems to be what he was going for. He repeatedly and vehemently decries the act of conclusion -- especially if it is someone else's conclusion -- in favor of walking step by step through the the experiential process.
A serious study of this book can lead the right-minded reader to some profound realizations. I'm sure it will leave a dusty gap in my bookshelf many times to come.
Read November-December, 2006
