Krishnamurti-Freedom and Love: Approaching a Mystery [Paperback]

Peter Michel (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German

Product Details

• Paperback: 205 pages
• Publisher: Bluestar Communications Corporation (January 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1885394004
• ISBN-13: 978-1885394002
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,878,523 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Definitely worth a read - ***1/2 star rating, September 3, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Krishnamurti-Freedom and Love: Approaching a Mystery (Paperback)

Peter Michel's book is short but distinctive. As the back cover says, it draws on material not previously looked at by other authors. Importantly, Michel gives his own fresh impression on the facts of K's life, drawn from primary sources, interviews, and books that many people may not be aware existed. Michel criticizes K for his dismissal of religious groups such as the TS and Christianity. This is probably the weakest part of the book, in my view. Michel is unable to conceed perhaps that K might have made such harsh criticisms for a reason. Why assume that K is extraordinary on the one hand yet dismiss those parts of his teaching he doesn't like? His insistence on the importance of K's esoteric past rather missed the point of what K stood for and spoke about. All in all, I suggest everyone with an interest in Krishnamurti read this book. It is not nearly the best book written about K, by a long shot, but it is a necessary and important addition to the biographies on Krishnamurti.

4.0 out of 5 stars Review zooming in to the Scott and Anrias Material, February 3, 2010

By 

Govert W. Schuller (Wheaton, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Krishnamurti-Freedom and Love: Approaching a Mystery (Paperback)

Introduction

In order to be considerate to all those who have legitimate different viewpoints of Krishnamurti, anybody writing about him would do well by trying to view his subject from at least four angles: academic (historical, sociological, etc.), Theosophical, philosophical and in terms of Krishnamurti's own teachings. These are arguably also the four categories of people with the most interest in Krishnamurti. For reasons of space I will limit this review to 1) a short view on Michel's contribution to our understanding of K on a scholarly level and 2) a Theosophical view, especially regarding Michel's use of the Scott and Anrias material.

Michel's Thesis

Starting with the scholarly point of view I like to see whether the author came up with a thesis about his subject and how well he makes his points. The title of the book refers to love and freedom and about these two qualities Michel says "they are the key to understanding the mystery of Jiddu Krishnamurti."(p.144) Freedom being the door to the mystery, which essence is love (p.145). In his chapter on freedom Michel makes it quite clear how freedom was for Krishnamurti "an absolute value, a solitary, sacrosanct object," and became the leitmotif in K's mission, which was, as K said in his landmark 1929 speech, "to set men absolutely, unconditionally free." The following chapter on love very well expresses the author's feelings and thoughts about K's capacity of great love and compassion and the way it could have an impact on those who were touched by it.

Though not strictly reasoned, Michel makes his point mainly by giving a great wealth of biographical and anecdotal stories, illustrative quotes and his own lucid, sometimes even poetic, commentaries. Obviously Michel himself was also deeply touched by K. Probably he could not give a strictly reasoned demonstration because he feels that K was "inconceivable, filled with mysticism, enveloped by an aura of mystery, with an irresistible radiation and characterized by an abundance of strange phenomena." (p. 67) Here the sub-title of his study--Approaching a Mystery--becomes relevant. Michel categorizes the mysteries under the headings "Spiritual Healing', "Clairvoyance", "The Masters"," The Process", "The Overshadowing" and ending with the mysteries regarding the statements K made about himself. Michel's exploration of possible explanations of the mysterious side of K leads him into the bosom of Theosophy, where he finds the ideas and terminology to get at least a conceptual framework for understanding these mysteries.

Interestingly, K can also sometimes be found thinking within the Theosophical framework in accepting the existence of the Masters, feeling his chakras work and being intrigued by an old Tibetan prophecy about Maitreya manifesting through someone named "Krishnamurti." In this latter case Michel thinks he is getting "very close" to the essence of the K-mystery. Though K objected to the idea of Maitreya manifesting ("The Maitreya cannot manifest, it would be like the sky manifesting. It is the teaching that manifests."), Michel asks "what is the essential difference between the 'entity' Maitreya and his teaching?" (p.84) Michel seems to imply here that, if the essence of Maitreya is his teachings, then the statements "Maitreya manifests" and "the teachings manifest" refer to the same phenomenon. Therefore Michel can state that the "old Maitreya-Theory" comes very close in solving the mystery of Krishnamurti. On one side--defending K here with some exoteric philosophical means--it is obvious that there is an essential difference between a person and his statements. Maitreya as a conscious unity is a personal, temporal phenomenon. His teachings are trans-personal, trans-temporal entities, which are true (or false) regardless of Maitreya's existence. On the other hand--defending Michel's more Theosophical leanings--it could be argued that Maitreya, as an allegedly enlightened being, is himself a trans-personal, trans-temporal entity, whose essence is the living and being of the World Teachings. Therefore, if K manifests the World Teachings, it can be argued legitimately that Maitreya overshadowed K.

In a final analysis of the K-mystery Michel makes the observation that only "the like can recognize the like"(p.90) and therefore only an enlightened consciousness could reveal the mystery of K. This obvious opens the possibility that only the Masters themselves--if construed as enlightened beings--could have something insightful to say about K. Here it gets interesting because Michel actually does mention some ideas that, "from a theosophical point of view," have some explanatory relevance, and those can be traced back to a source with an allegedly Mahatmic status.

The Scott and Anrias Material

The issue is Michel's problematic use of the writings of Cyril Scott and David Anrias, both of whom made strong claims of being connected with several Masters of Wisdom and provided elaborate Theosophical critiques of K's teachings in the early 1930s.....

(Continued on the [...] web site)

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You learn about the man and his teachings, October 29, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Krishnamurti-Freedom and Love: Approaching a Mystery (Paperback)

As complex a character as Jiddu Krishnamurti has been, the author was able to introduce me to a man whom I can relate to. I learned new facts about his life and his teachings. I recommend this book for people that have not heard about Krishnamurti before as well as for people who want to study more about him.