First and Last Freedom

JK was a mystery. His life story was dramatic and his teaching controversial - so many people found his talks transforming and yet many also were disillusioned. I myself, who was too young, foolish and too far away to see the man when he was alive, have been puzzled by the fact that supposedly no one who studies his talks was deeply transformed, sadly admitted by JK himself.

But how could we measure his merit as a teacher by that fact alone? Twenty years after he died, everytime I read his words, the man came alive, sharp, passionate, uncompromising and compassionate.

He came to the earth pure and clean, and he learned the mess of the human psyche in order to teach; he was a deeply religious and poetic man, evident from his few talks after his realisation and before he disbanded the Order, but in order to talk to a wider audience, "his beloved" was reduced to "the nameless" or "that immensity" in his later talks, with only a very slight touch at the end of talk; he didn't study any religious traditons, not even the Bhagavad Gita, and his talks were all his own, which perhaps explains why many people found his talks hard to grasp, because they can't be put into any familiar systems which we have learned before.

How can we judge him or measure him? He reached and touched more people than anyone else in modern times; his talked "from the ground up", from this drab of life everyone lives instead of exclusively to long time spiritual seekers; and his words are the best guards against superstition, which goes hand in hand with spirituality.

Guides readers on a deeply rewarding search for pure truth and perfect freedom, which means breaking away from the debilitating, consuming concern with the self.