Thought For Today 4 September 2021, J Krishnamurti

Religion is something that encompasses the whole of life. It is not for the specialists; it is not for those who are rich or poor, who have nothing else better to do; it is not for the elite or the intellectual. It is something like bread, that you must have. I wonder how many of us take it as seriously as that, not cantankerously, not in a bigoted manner, not as something exclusive, sectarian, or something very special. For religion demands extraordinary intelligence, not knowledge. There must be freedom, complete freedom for the religious man. Most of us don’t want to be free at all. I don’t know if you have observed in the world, where society is being so highly organised, where there is progress, where production is so vast, and so easily one becomes a slave to things. And in them we find security. And for most of us, that is all that we want: physical, emotional security, and therefore we really don’t want to be free. I mean by freedom total freedom, not along a particular line. And we ought to demand it, insist upon it. Freedom is different from revolt. Revolt is against or for something. Revolt is a reaction, but freedom is not. You are not free from something. The moment you are free from something, you are really in revolt against that something. Freedom implies not from something but in itself to be free. That is an extraordinary feeling, to be free in itself, for itself.

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