A Propos De Dieu

by J. Krishnamurti, Colette Joyeux (Translator)

"La question n'est pas de savoir si Dieu existe ou non, mais comment l'homme peut découvrir Dieu." Or, Dieu, ce n'est pas la description qu'on en fait. "Le mot Dieu n'est pas Dieu." Pour le trouver, ce "réel absolu", "l'esprit doit être libre, affranchi des rituels, des dogmes, du savoir et de l'expérience", dans un état d'"innocence". À nous de nous préparer à recevoir Dieu sans nous fier à nos constructions intellectuelles ni à notre foi aveugle, sans l'appui d'un gourou. Simplement avec une attention sans faille à "ce qui est". Avec intensité, mais sans effort, sans délibération, sans spéculation. En laissant s'instaurer en nous le silence.

Krishnamurti (1896-1986), refusant le rôle d'"instructeur du monde" dans lequel on voulait l'enfermer, consacra toutes ses forces à apprendre comment désapprendre (voir L'Esprit du Tao). Les enseignements de ce grand maître spirituel forment plus de soixante volumes. Ce livre est un choix de textes, présentés non par ordre chronologique, mais comme une sorte de courbe dont chaque point nous incite à un retour sur nous-mêmes. --Colette-Rebecca Estin

Genres: Spirituality, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Religion

220 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published October 15, 1992

About the author

Jiddu Krishnamurti was born on 11 May 1895 in Madanapalle, a small town in south India. He and his brother were adopted in their youth by Dr Annie Besant, then president of the Theosophical Society. Dr Besant and others proclaimed that Krishnamurti was to be a world teacher whose coming the Theosophists had predicted. To prepare the world for this coming, a world-wide organization called the Order of the Star in the East was formed and the young Krishnamurti was made its head.

In 1929, however, Krishnamurti renounced the role that he was expected to play, dissolved the Order with its huge following, and returned all the money and property that had been donated for this work.

From then, for nearly sixty years until his death on 17 February 1986, he travelled throughout the world talking to large audiences and to individuals about the need for a radical change in humankind.

Krishnamurti is regarded globally as one of the greatest thinkers and religious teachers of all time. He did not expound any philosophy or religion, but rather talked of the things that concern all of us in our everyday lives, of the problems of living in modern society with its violence and corruption, of the individual's search for security and happiness, and the need for humankind to free itself from inner burdens of fear, anger, hurt, and sorrow. He explained with great precision the subtle workings of the human mind, and pointed to the need for bringing to our daily life a deeply meditative and spiritual quality.

Krishnamurti belonged to no religious organization, sect or country, nor did he subscribe to any school of political or ideological thought. On the contrary, he maintained that these are the very factors that divide human beings and bring about conflict and war. He reminded his listeners again and again that we are all human beings first and not Hindus, Muslims or Christians, that we are like the rest of humanity and are not different from one another. He asked that we tread lightly on this earth without destroying ourselves or the environment. He communicated to his listeners a deep sense of respect for nature. His teachings transcend belief systems, nationalistic sentiment and sectarianism. At the same time, they give new meaning and direction to humankind's search for truth. His teaching, besides being relevant to the modern age, is timeless and universal.

Krishnamurti spoke not as a guru but as a friend, and his talks and discussions are based not on tradition-based knowledge but on his own insights into the human mind and his vision of the sacred, so he always communicates a sense of freshness and directness although the essence of his message remained unchanged over the years. When he addressed large audiences, people felt that Krishnamurti was talking to each of them personally, addressing his or her particular problem. In his private interviews, he was a compassionate teacher, listening attentively to the man or woman who came to him in sorrow, and encouraging them to heal themselves through their own understanding. Religious scholars found that his words threw new light on traditional concepts. Krishnamurti took on the challenge of modern scientists and psychologists and went with them step by step, discussed their theories and sometimes enabled them to discern the limitations of those theories. Krishnamurti left a large body of literature in the form of public talks, writings, discussions with teachers and students, with scientists and religious figures, conversations with individuals, television and radio interviews, and letters. Many of these have been published as books, and audio and video recordings.

This author also writes under: Jiddu Krishnamurti

Reviews

[Gorab · Rating 1 out of 5]

Picked this for I wanted to read something by Jiddu Krishnamurti.
The book lives up to its expecations! People have asked the following questions to JK, and each chapter is his response to the same.

Questions:
What is your thought concerning God?
Our mind knows only the known. What is it in us that drives us to find the unknown, reality, God?
What is God?
What is the easiest way of finding God?
Is God everywhere?
Man must know what God is before he can know God. How are you trying to introduce the idea of God to man without bringing God to man's level?
Tell us of God.
You never mention God. Has he no place in your teachings?

The last question cracked me up!!! After going through all this, did someone really ask that? Like really? :D
My bad for picking a book with discussions which are beyond me.
The title says it all. No idea what else I was expecting :|

[Brian Wilcox · Rating 3 out of 5]

First, this tome is not about God in any sense of traditional theism. Krishnamurti clarifies well that any idea of God is based on memory, so the past (i.e., what we have been told God is), and this God, created by the mind, by thought, can't be God. One, then, can't receive God by thinking God, by a thought(s) of God. One receives God, or the unknown, or reality, only when the mind is silent, passively alert. This is apparent in his saying that creation happens when creating ceases; so, as long as we are creating God, God doesn't appear, we can't receive God. Even seeking God is seeking what one thinks the God is that one is seeking, again based on thought, so memory, like an heirloom from past generations. Hence, one might find it disappointing to come to On God and think he or she will be told this-or-that is God. Krishnamurti clarifies that he's avoiding the word "God," for persons think they know God. Also, he uses varied words interchangeably, including God, truth, the unknown, and reality.

I've read several of Krishnamurti's works and find golden nuggets among much repetitive, oft rigid verbosity, but the nuggets are very golden. And repetition is a tool of wisdom teachers to return again and again to impress upon listeners the simple truth being pointed to, the obvious that we often aren't seeing that we see, though we're looking right at it. Again, with Krishnamurti, society has trained us not to recognize the truth in plain sight, to think we know the truth instead, while what we think being a thought given to us to think.

To me, one has to read much of Krishnamurti to sense what he means, for he doesn't clarify well how he uses common words in uncommon ways. He does this, however, apparently to help in deconstructing the beliefs we unconsciously maintain as truth, so to urge us on to receive God, reality, truth, not continue holding onto beliefs as truth. In doing this, he can appear somewhat merciless in his approach, and, so, whether you like him or not, agree with him or not, that uncompromising directness is an affirmation of his love for the truth and his listeners.

Last, Krishnamurti's approach to the unknown is like veins of teaching in varied wisdom movements. This teaching is that we know God by unknowing. Most religious teaching purports to tell us who God is. Yet, the wisest guides help us receive that we cannot know, by unknowing what we think we know. This in the Christian contemplative path is called the apophatic way, the way of knowing by not-knowing, or un-knowing. Through this, we come to know. Paradoxically, as Krishnamurti teaches, God appears when I know I don't know God.

[Steve Woods · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite appearances and expectations this is not a book about God! It rather explores the essential surrender of the sense of separate extant self ("thought" in Krishnamurti's terms)that is the central plank of all spiritual practice. His point is essentially that the concept of God held by most ,of whatever religious persuasion, is just a creation of thought, the known (the self) and therefore is anything but divine. It will of necessity carry all the prejudices, judgements, emotions, wantings and delusions that are inherent in the limited sense of self.

He talks at length about the procees, the letting go of all thought and coming into the presence of that which is timeless (and not of self) and the role meditation plays in this. He is careful though to point out that meditation as most practice it is just as much and expression of the self as the misguided belief in the God that is the product of thought.

This was a tremendous book for me, it forced me to explore my own experience of practice at a much deeper level than I otherwise might have done, (to look into it deeply as he would say). I would however had a lot of difficulty just coming to grips with what he meant had I not walked as much of the journey as I have.

[Shambhavi Pandey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Haphazard and disconcerted. On God, a theme book, is a collection of Krishnamurti's talks and writings on religion and meditates upon the search for the sacred. Despite the on-point speculative title, it is far from exploring God in any sense of established traditional customary belief(s). It treads on metaphysical reasoning that creation comes into being only when the act of creation itself ceases, thus rendering that God exists as a projection of our own thoughts, beliefs, and ideals. You can only 'find' God when you are not seeking God.

The telling invariably uses words like reality, religious mind, meditation, god, and sacred, all used interchangeably to filter down to what's considered 'god.' It gets too philosophical with an immeasurable wordly depth given to seeking what is holy and godlike.
I am not quite a reader of books from this genre, so being all newbie, I might not have been perfectly receptive to the rendering of this book. I felt I needed to read and watch more of Krishnamurti's works to thoroughly digest what this book offers. Perhaps a few years from now and I’ll be able to appreciate it more? All I take away from Krishnamurti's words is: One can only find God when one knows that he doesn't know God (yes, that's about it:"))

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full of meaning, truth and explanations about our proper course of action undoubtedly.. His tone and use of second person during his teachings was kind of strange to me..

[Bhakta Kishor]

The word "God" is the tradition, the hope, the desire to find the absolute, the striving after the ultimate, the movement which gives vitality to existence. So the word itself becomes the ultimate, yet we can see that the word is not the thing. The mind is the word, and the word is thought. People generally ask if there is god. We said: the word leads to illusion which we worship, and for this illusion we destroy each other willingly. When there is no illusion the "what is" is most sacred. Now let's look at what actually is. At a given moment the "what is" may be fear, or utter despair, or a fleeting joy. These things are constantly changing. And also there is the observer who says, "These things all change around me, but I remain permanent". Is that a fact, is that what really is? Is he not also changing, adding to and taking away from himself, modifying, adjusting himself, becoming or not becoming? So both the observer and the observed are constantly changing. What is is change. That is a fact. That is what is.

[Sebĉjo · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ou comment faire 220 pages avec ce qui tiendrait largement en seulement 2.

[Gautham · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be free is to be detached of the past.

[John Herceg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I could give it a sixth star.

[Mukesh Dhaka · Rating 4 out of 5]

"तथ्य को जब परिभाषित किया जाता तो वह तथ्य नहीं रह जाता है।"
- जे.के.


क्योंकि परिभाषा में बहुत सारे शब्द आ मिलते है और शब्द कभी वह वस्तु हों ही नहीं हो सकते जिसकी बात हो रही है। मनोवैज्ञानिक स्तर पर तो परिभाषा, वर्णन नामुमकिन है।

मुझे हर बार सबसे बड़ा आश्चर्य इस बात का होता है कि जे.के. को पढ़ने और सुनने वाले इतने कम कैसे हो सकते है?

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book at krishnamurti's house in OJAI, CA. So cool!
When we learn what God is not, we make room for what actually IS.

[Prasang Chaturvedi · Rating 4 out of 5]

कृष्णमूर्ति जी को समझना बहुत मुश्किल है, मुझे तो कुछ समझ ही नहीं आया।

[Arun · Rating 5 out of 5]

:-)