Tag Archives: Jean Klein

May 25, 2013 · 2:23 pm

Give Yourself Entirely to this Light – Jean Klein

If I am already fundamentally free, then why do l not feel as though l am free?

The only obstacle is your belief that you are an independent entity. That is the only obstacle. You are stuck in this belief. It belongs to a personality invented by society, education, experience, beliefs, second-hand information and all kinds of reading. You have identified yourself with this fictitious “I” and you live from this point of view. You look at and contact the surroundings from this viewpoint. Because the personality is an object like any other, you live in object-object relationship.

What happens when you become aware of it? The moment you become aware of it is the most important opportunity, an opportunity to see how this insight acts on you. Until now your brain has functioned in the pattern of taking yourself for someone, and when this pattern suddenly collapses there is a re-orchestration of all your energy, a transformation of your being. The old reflex, which is so deep-rooted, may come up from time to time, but you are now aware of it. You ignore it and then forget it. Why put yourself in the cage of a fraction? You are the whole, the global.

Is this insight —that you have taken yourself for someone— enlightenment, or is it a forefeeling?

This insight frees the mind from wrong thinking. It comes from your real nature. Often the mind appropriates the insight again, and it appears as a point, an experience in space and time. The insight itself is constant.

Is the insight that you are not the personality the ray of light in the dark room?

Yes, but you are still in the dark room, even though there is light in it. You must give yourself entirely to this light, and it will take you towards its source. Then there will be a sudden moment when you are no longer in the dark at all but are completely taken by the light. This was my experience.

-Jean Klein

From Open to the Unknown: Dialogues in Delphi

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May 21, 2013 · 2:06 pm

Behind the Mind – Jean Klein

There are moments when you hear sounds, but you can’t distinguish anything. As long as you have ears, it will be so. This kind of audibility, which is not really hearing, is there. Likewise, the eyes may be open and you do not see any special object, there is nothing seen and nothing heard. But meditation, presence, is everywhere there. Very often people close their eyes or ears in a kind of introversion. This kind of introversion does not bring them to meditation. Meditation is when all is present. All that is, all that you are, is in this stillness. It is beyond the stillness of the senses, of the mind. It is behind the mind. You can have it before the body wakes up in the morning. The world is not awake because the body creates the world, but there are moments when you are lying down where there is nobody present and nothing is present, but there is presence.

-Jean Klein

From Living Truth, pages 243-244

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October 17, 2012 · 2:04 pm

The Silent Admirer – Jean Klein

Following is an interview with Jean Klein from the early 1990s, which apparently was published only in a small Seattle spiritual newspaper. I am not sure even where I came across it but it is well worth reading.

Q. Often you speak about the ‘I am,’ the silence beyond thought. By what means is this state attained, and why is it worth seeking?

JK: It is “attained,” as you say, when you see that there is nothing to attain. What you are fundamentally is not an object to attain. In all attaining you find objects. What you are is the ultimate subject, objectless consciousness, the subject of all possible objects. There is nothing worth seeking. One day you may see that the seeker is the sought; the seeker is what it is looking for. It is only an ambitious mind that looks desperately around in ignorance. A clear innocent mind is always open, constantly available to grace.

Q. But in your talks and books you use the expression ‘truth-seeker,’ so there must be some kind of seeking.

JK: Our profound desire is to be and this desire comes from being, itself. When you give all your love, all your intelligence and earnestness to this desire it brings you to what you most desire: desirelessness. Desire is the shadow which, if you follow it, brings you to its substance. But you must give all your love to it or you remain with only the shadow desire. A real truth-seeker is impelled by Truth itself. The momentum comes from Truth. All other attainment belongs to the mind, to ideas, to aspirations.

Q. Many teachers of Eastern thought seem to call for the renunciation of all desire and ambition. But for the world to function, for buildings to get built, crops to be harvested, discoveries to be made, someone has to have a vision, a plan, and the drive to turn the vision into reality. And the same would seem to be true in regard to personal or spiritual growth. Aren’t desire and ambition necessary to some extent?

JK: There is nothing wrong with desire, but it must be clear, have gone through discrimination. An ambitious mind is a blind mind. Only a clear and informed mind is open to the ultimate. It is a false notion that in order to function efficiently and harmoniously we need ambition, goals and so on. Correct functioning comes out of the facts of the situation itself. It is not we who find the solution, but the situation which offers its solution. So the important thing is to become fully acquainted with the facts, the real circumstances, and you cannot see the facts when you live from the personal, fractional point of view. In looking at a situation without judgment or preconceived ideas, the situation is free to unfold. You cannot impose a vision because the person has no vision. You must wait for the vision to come to you. This waiting without waiting is our real nature, openness, where there is no more doership.

Q. Is this not a passive state?

JK: Not at all. There is doing, but no longer a doer. You are passive only in that you do not impose old patterns, ideas, opinions, judgments, in short, yourself. When “you” are absent, what remains is alert presence. Within this alert presence all occurs.

Q. Advaita stresses the unity of subject and object, of perceiver and perceived. In trying to understand this concept, one comes face to face with the question: Who am I? Because if I and the world are identical, there is no such thing as the individual. Right? This is a terrifying thought.

JK: Terrifying to whom?

Q. Sometimes one has the feeling that life is a play unfolding, and we are like the audience watching the performance. It makes the idea of effort seem pointless. Is there any validity to this feeling?

JK: Yes. Don’t interfere with the play or create a psychological relationship with the happenings. Remain a silent admirer. Don’t take yourself for a doer, let it be done. When you interfere as a doer you interrupt the doing.

Q. Is there a moment when illumination strikes and one is changed forever, or does it gradually develop? Or is the whole idea of illumination or enlightenment false?

JK: First ask who is there to be bound or to be freed? Who is there to be illuminated? Enlightenment is only when you see there is nobody to be illuminated. When you see you are the total absence it is the most striking moment in your life. In this moment you are the ultimate presence but not presence as an object. This insight is instantaneous but its consequences are in space and time.

Q. Do you mean that the integration of the insight on the psychosomatic plane takes place in space and time?

JK: Yes, because we live in space and time. All appearances are in space and time, but the sudden insight of our absence is out of space and time. So, find out what never changes in you, what is timeless in you.

Q. Is the insight forever or does conditioning come back?

JK: The insight is forever, but it is important that this insight is established on every level of existence. After the insight life goes on, but now every circumstance is a pointer to the ultimate. You see your conditioning endocrine, cultural, language and so on very clearly, but you are no longer bound to them. You face them from the ultimate and they point to the ultimate.

Q. Is the earnest seeker ultimately any better off than the person who is blissfully ignorant of spiritual matters?

JK: The self is always present. The only difference is that one ignores it and another is it. What we are fundamentally is waiting for us. There is no effort needed to attain our real nature. We can never go to it; we can only be available to it, taken by it. It is our nearest.

There is no way to be still; Being Stillness is the way. The way is no-way … Stillness.

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October 10, 2012 · 2:43 pm

The Last Barrier to Realization – Jean Klein

I have often heard it said that without the help of Yoga, metaphysical realization can be very difficult. What do you think about it?

To begin with Yoga is a harmonization of the body, to prevent it from being an impediment to spiritual research. It is also a set of techniques tending to the ending of all mental activity. It is a method of voluntary effort and systematic purification, leading to a state of mental stillness (Samadhi).

Samadhi can be experienced as bliss or emptiness. In the case of bliss, it remains in the world of duality. In the case of emptiness, it is the last stage of duality, but it does not throw it off. The emptiness of Samadhi takes place when the object has reached its ultimate simplification. One might say that it is pure object, without any qualification whatsoever, an object which is object and nothing else. This is why it is a barrier, the last barrier, to realization. Sooner or later, Samadhi experienced as emptiness, will reveal its duality and the longing for unity will appear.

This meeting with emptiness is something absolutely new and it may easily be mistaken for realization. Then there occurs a tendency to settle in this emptiness which one has learnt to produce. It is comforting to pacify the ego and to taste this emptiness. But one should not mistake the taste of a silent mind with the experience of which I am speaking. This taste is still an object, it has to be abandoned, the last step has to be taken, for the Yogi who does not awaken to the Experience, is in a situation which, from a certain point of view, may be considered worse than that of the ordinary man. Indeed, when he returns from the state of Samadhi to find those usual objects which had been temporarily eliminated by a voluntary technique, he runs the risk of rediscovering them with an increased virulence.

Samadhi experienced as joy is in fact a state in which one enters and from which one emerges. Sooner or later its insufficiency is felt. The man who leaves this joy, falls back into the world of objects. He has no precise memory of his experience which, since it belongs to a supra-mental reality can leave no mental trace (memory), but nevertheless he remains in a state of shock, of exaltation, of longing which is a source of confusion. Such is the result of the Yogic path.

In the direct path we, by discrimination, come to the conviction that ultimate reality lies beyond any physical or mental framework. As a sideline, we make use of Yoga to loosen certain knots, or do away with certain disturbances. But we never lose sight of the non-dual background.

Liberation is not reached by subservience to certain more or less strict rules, but by knowledge which wipes out time, space, cause-and-effect. A return to ignorance is now excluded.

-Jean Klein

From Be Who You Are, page 40-41  

This title is available from Amazon.com

To read more from Jean Klein see:  http://o-meditation.com/category/jean-klein/

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August 8, 2012 · 10:10 am

Your Last Trump: The ‘I-am-ness’ – Alexander Smit

Visitor: You were talking once about the last trump which everybody is holding back, the last card that is held back in the game of Self-realisation, when one is standing face to face with oneself. Could you say something more about that?

Alexander: At first sight everybody seems to have his own trump-card, but in the end it all boils down to one thing: the ‘I-am’-awareness, your subjectivity. The awareness of ‘I am’ is your last trump, it is the ground from which you can form opinions, hold views, have a certain idea about something or somebody, or have a self-image. The foundation of this is the phenomenon that ‘I am’.

V: Is there a link between that phenomenon and the ego?

A: The word ‘ego’ leads to a confusion of speech. The ego was introduced by psychologists to mean the whole personality-structure, the ‘I’-structure. But at the root of it there is an almost formless sense of… ‘I am’. Nobody doubts that. Even in order to be able to doubt it you have to be there in the first place.

V: But how can this ‘I-am-ness’ be employed as a last trump?

A: The big delusion is this very ‘I-am-ness’, though hardly anyone gets down to that point. This ‘I-am-ness’ is what is called ‘mula maya’ in Sanskrit, the ‘root of illusion’. Whichever way you turn it, some form of self-awareness is there. You could also call it a sort of ‘perceivership’. But don’t be mistaken! What you want in the end is to disappear, to dissolve in love.

Just look at what you are eagerly longing for. All the things you eagerly want are solvents, i.e. means to disappear in love, your true nature. Whether it is playing the violin, sex, eating or dancing, meditation or football. These things give a sense of liberation, a sense of relief. That’s why they are so popular, because there the state of self-awareness is dissolved for the time being—please note: for the time being.

As a matter of fact, this ‘perceivership’ is the same as the self-awareness. Man is struck by a curious fate, for he is—and, at the same time, he perceives that he is. At the same time, which is a peculiar phenomenon. Perhaps one could try and explain this phenomenon in a scientific way on the basis of the structure of the brains etc., but even so! It is inevitable that all such suppositions, all such hypotheses, again, are being perceived.

V: I am still not clear about that trump of yours.

A: The difficulty is that you are stuck with what your senses are dangling before your eyes. Through the play of the five elements—earth, water, fire, air and ether—a gigantic creation is being conjured up before you. As a result of a misunderstanding you have begun to look upon yourself as a product of that creation. You were getting consciousness mixed up with its contents. It could hardly be otherwise, for until now the only thing you knew was contents. Such is the game.

All you can possibly perceive—from the waking to the dream state up to deep, dreamless sleep—is the ‘I-am-ness’. With deep, dreamless sleep it is perhaps most difficult to perceive it, for you refer to it as, ‘nothing is there’. You bet there is! There is something there, only your search doesn’t go quite that fare! The problem is not that everything is so terribly complex, but that one is not going sufficiently deep.

(8th December, 1978)

-Alexander Smit

From Consciousness, Chapter one

For more from Alexander Smit look here.

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July 30, 2011 · 12:42 pm

Awakening before Enlightenment

We hear the term ‘awakening’ thrown about today like a rag doll. And as is the case with almost all spiritual terminology, there seems to be levels and levels of meaning for the word ‘awakening.’ It is important to first recognize that we are not necessarily using a common language. When I see what the word ‘awakening’ is being used to point at, from the plethora of spiritual teachers that exists today, it is evident that it is being used to denote many different things.

And it is not just the spiritual teachers who use ‘awakening’ with different meanings; you can find references from the Enlightened Masters as well. There are times in the many books of Osho where he is referring to ‘awakening’ as the final enlightenment and sometimes he is pointing to a step that precedes enlightenment. I find the same situation in the works of J. Krishnamurti, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ramana Maharshi and Meher Baba. Although if one looks carefully at the context in which the words are being used it is not as confusing as it seems.

However, in writing this I am not interested in repeating the words of those remarkable Enlightened Ones, but rather this understanding that I wish to share is one that has been taking shape over the last twenty years and is only now become sufficiently stabilized that I feel willing to express openly.

Before we even begin to look at the different meanings we might ascribe to ‘awakening’ let us first acknowledge that all individuals are moving through their awakening at a different pace. It is clear that we did not all begin at the same point. This is illustrated when we see that a sage like Ramana Maharshi realizes his enlightenment at the age of sixteen seemingly without effort. In contrast is the experience of Nisargadatta Maharaj in whom enlightenment happened much later in life. Some were prepared from their very childhood for such an event and some worked through their own efforts at removing the obstacles to the ‘natural state’. Some of us have lived a life centered in meditation from a young age and some of us have stumbled upon it much later in life perhaps after some major crisis that turned our world upside down. So it is important to understand that just because we have not had a certain understanding does not mean that one of our fellow travelers has not and it is equally important to note that if we have experienced some insight or transformation it is not likely that many will understand what we are talking about.

So let us begin with what each of us (at least anyone who is reading this) has probably experienced. For some of us it might have come like a bolt of lightning, for others it may have always been intuited as truth. And that is that life, the world, is very much different than what we were conditioned to believe. Many may describe this realization as an awakening and indeed it is. This awakening would demark the beginning of the journey. It would denote a tremendously important change of direction and priorities in one’s life.

Having changed direction in life, we embark on searching out information, knowledge, understanding and perhaps a teacher to help guide us along the way. We may be fortunate and come across that guide early on or for some it may take many years. And some may not find the guide in whom trust is a natural and spontaneous flowering and so may just wander from teacher to teacher. Regardless even without a guide, and certainly with, it is possible after introduction to meditation, after reading the words of those who have known the greatest mystery, after the necessary inner work, it is possible to come to an “intellectual understanding” of the lay of the spiritual land. Jean Klein refers to it as a “geometric understanding.” One can almost visualize the obstacles that lie before. This understanding often can come as a flash and could certainly be described as an ‘awakening.’ But here, it is important to note, that this intellectual understanding is not the same as being understanding, is not the same as knowingness, it is more like knowledge.

Next we come to what seems to me to be more worthy of such a moniker as ‘awakening.’ This is when one realizes oneself to be out of the mind’s conditioning. The “goose is out.” Here one is being out of the mind and is able to see the mind clearly as an object of perception. It is not that the mind has disappeared, no, but one is not living within the mind. And it is here that witnessing really emerges. In fact this is the witness. The mind is still present but one is not captive to its many grips. But it is important at this stage to allow witnessing its full force through meditation. It is here that the ‘emptying of consciousness’ must take place. If one is not mindful it is extremely easy to slip back into the clutches of the mind. But one is also able to see the horizon. One knows what needs to happen. One cannot make ‘it’ happen but one does need to create the opportunity and with this awakening the taste is known and so it is natural that real earnestness arises.

For what follows we will have to take the words and expressions of those who have known as a hypothesis. We can accept the hypothesis and in our laboratory of meditation discover for ourselves if it is indeed true. The Enlightened Masters have all said that there does come a complete annihilation of the separate ego-mind, one that is irreversible and surely it is ‘this’ that deserves the name “Enlightenment.”

So here we come to the point that has been the fuel for this inquiry for all these years. Without exposure to the presence of an Enlightened Master and, unfortunately for some even with, it is very easy to believe that the “awakening of the witness” is the end of the journey, is itself enlightenment. Some fellow travelers might very well believe that there is no ending of the mind, because that is the limitation of their own experience. They become teachers and this then becomes part of their teaching, thus misdirecting their students. Just as importantly, their unfolding stagnates, believing that they have reached the end thus not allowing the space for “the emptying of consciousness” to take place. This is where the exposure to a fully enlightened master should prove extremely helpful. The master does not allow us to make our house in the sand. He continually goads us to keep on to the very end. May we all continue to the very end, charaiveti, charaiveti (go on, go on to the very end).

-purushottama

Below I am including some links to a few postings that could illustrate much more deeply what is being said.

A Geometrical Understanding-Jean Klein

Minor Explosions-Osho

The Stages of the Path-Meher Baba

Spiritual Snakes and Ladders-Osho

Attainment-Ramana Maharshi

The Emptying of Consciousness-J. Krishnamurti

Flowering, Awakening, Self-Realization and Enlightenment-Osho

Charaiveti, Charaiveti-Osho

To read more from Purushottama, you can look here.

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June 11, 2011 · 9:05 am

Spontaneously Ejected from Time and Space – Jean Klein

What inspired you to go to India?

An inner need, an urge to find peace, to find the center where you are simply yourself—free from all stimulation. All that I’d read about traditional India, especially ancient India, led me to feel that present-day India might still reflect the ancient wisdom, that it might be a society centered in truth. Of course it’s dangerous to think you can adopt another culture, but my going to India was not in search of a new belief, religion or culture. I was aware that I would not find what I was looking for by assuming a new way of living or point of view. From the beginning I was convinced that there is a core of being which is independent of all society, and I felt the urge to explore this conviction.

So you were not looking for a teacher?

No, I was not looking for anything specific but, arriving in India, in a completely new environment, I was left with no referenced to anything in my previous experienced. In this suspension of evaluation I was catapulted into an openness, a receptivity to everything. And I was astonished to meet so soon the man who later became my teacher. You can’t look for a teacher. The teacher finds you in your awareness.

This inner need, the eagerness for freedom—must it be very strong?

The urge to freedom must be tremendous. But it cannot be learned or acquired. It comes through self-inquiry. In self-inquiry there appears a fore-feeling, an intimation of reality, and it is this fore-feeling which brings up a tremendous ardour. It can make you sleepless!

When you inquire, you may first feel a lack. You may not know what kind of lack it is and you will go in many directions in the hope of filling it. As each direction is attained there may be a moment when there’s no longer a lack and the desire it brings. For a moment you are in peace. But because you are not aware of this desirelessness, you fixate on the object, the so-called cause of your satisfaction, and of course eventually it loses its charm and once again you are hungry. You will travel down many of these dead-ends, like a hunting dog who cannot find the scent and runs around frantically. But these cul-de-sacs of experience bring you to a kind of maturity, because inevitably you will question more deeply all the happening and their transience. It’s a process of elimination. You must inquire, inquire like a scientist, into your life. Take note that whenever you attain what you want you are in desirelessness itself where the initial object, the supposed cause of your desirelessness, is not present. See that this desirelessness is really causeless and it is you who are attributing causes to it.

At a certain point of maturity you will suddenly be attracted by the scent of reality and your running around in all directions, your dispersion, will cease. Spontaneously, you will be oriented. Your whole perspective will change. The scent lures you and gives you a fore-taste of reality, the fore-feeling, and this brings up the tremendous urge we spoke of.

Would you speak ore about this fore-feeling? Exactly what is it?

The fore-feeling comes from what is fore-felt. It is the reflection of truth. It is the spontaneous orientation when dispersion becomes one-pointed. The ego becomes more transparent and in this transparency the energy that was fixed by the ego in objects of dispersion is transferred to orientation. When the fore-feeling is there, give your whole heart to it. You must be very alert, very watchful, because the forgetting, which is our conditioning, is very strong.

Did suffering play any part in propelling you into the path?

It depends how you understand suffering. Suffering as an idea, a concept, can never bring you to the knowing of yourself. But the direct perception of suffering is, like all objects, a pointer to your Self. What was important for me were those moments when I faced myself and found a lack of fulfillment; this produced the dynamism to explore more deeply. In a certain way when you really feel this lack without conceptualizing it, it is great suffering—but it is not the kind of suffering caused by a robbery, losing a job, a broken marriage death, and so on. Of course these difficulties lift you out of a kind of complacency, a habitual way of living. They wake you up to interrogate, to inquire, to explore, to question suffering itself.

Make suffering an object. In complete surrender to the perception, light comes up. You must understand that by surrender I don’t mean a fatalistic acceptance or a kind of psychological sacrifice. Real surrender is letting go of all ideas and allowing the perception, in this case suffering, to come to you in your openness. You will see that it does not “go away,” as is the case with psychological acceptance—where the energy fixed as suffering is merely shifted to another area—but it comes to blossom within your full attention. You will feel it as free energy, energy that was previously crystallized. Thus surrender is not a passive state. It is both passive and active, passive in the sense of letting go as with Meister Eckhart’s “Poor Man,” and active in that it is a constant alertness.

Did you practice yoga to come to deeper levels of surrender and alertness?

The word practice generally means habit. We must use it only in the sense of becoming more and more aware of body and mind. We must see that the body is a field of fear, anxiety, defense and aggression. However, the emphasis must not be on the body but on presence, on listening. What is important is to become acquainted with the field of tensions and see that the constantly interfering I-image is not separate from this field but belongs to it. When this is clear, tensions finds no accomplice, the perception is freed, and energy integrates in its totality. The traditional approach is through listeing to the body, not mastering it. Dominating the body is violence. But one can sweep the floor or wash the dishes and be in listening. It makes no difference.

Exploring the body brought me to deeper layers of relaxation and this relaxation brought about the cessation of repetitive patterns in the body and mind. In welcoming the body I became more and more aware of the feeling of letting go, so in this way the yoga participated in the fore-feeling of reality. But it only led me to where I no longer emphasized the object, the body, but the ultimate subject. Yoga brings you to a kind of alertness, a tranquility, and a tranquil body reflects a tranquil mind. But of course you can come to the peaceful body-mind without yoga!

If yoga is not in itself the teaching, what is?

The teaching points directly to what is not teachable. The words, the actions, are a crutch and this support gradually loses its concreteness until suddenly one day you find yourself in the non-state which cannot be taught. The formulations are symbols, pointers, and ultimately you do not see the symbol but that to which it points.

When the teaching lost its concreteness for you and there was this shift in emphasis from the object-symbol to the subject, that to which the symbol points, how did your life change?

The old patterns of thinking and acting—of false identification with the body—having lost their concreteness, no longer had any hold. It was that reduction from dispersion to orientation we spoke of a strengthening of the fore-feeling of truth. It became more and more present and less conceptual. This being understanding gave a new direction to my life. Everything was perceived in a new way. I became more discerning, and although I made no voluntary changes, many things that had occupied places in my earlier life just dropped away. I had been lured by names and forms as I strove for having and becoming, but with the orientation of energy there came a new order of values. You must not interpret this as adopting a new morality of any kind. Nothing was added or given up. I just became aware of the “clearness,” sattvas, and a transformation spontaneously followed from this awareness.

My Master explained to me that this light, which seemed to come from outside, was really light reflected by the Self. In my meditations I was visited by this light and attracted by it and it gave me greater clarity in action, thinking and feeling. My way of listening became unconditional, free from past and future. This unconditional listening brought me to a receptive alertness and as I became familiar with this alertness it became free from all expectation, all volition. I felt an establishing in attention, an unfolding in fullness to awareness.

Then a complete change occurred one evening on Marine Drive in Bombay. I was watching flying birds without thought or interpretation, when I was completely taken by them and felt everything happening in myself. In this moment I knew myself consciously. The next morning I knew, in facing the multiplicity of daily life, that being understanding was established. The self-image had completely dissolved and, freed from the conflict and interference of the I-image, all happenings belonged to being awareness, the totality. Life flowed on without the cross-currents of the ego. Psychological memory, like and dislike, attraction and repulsion, had vanished. The constant presence, that we call the Self, was free from repetition, memory, judgment, comparison and appraisal. The center of my being had been spontaneously ejected from time and space into timeless stillness. In this non-state of being, the separation between “you” and “me” vanished completely. Nothing appeared outside. All things belonged in me but I was no longer in them. There was only oneness.

I knew myself in present happening, not as a concept but as a being without localization in time and space. In this non-state there was freedom, full and objectless joy. There was pure thankfulness, thanking without an object. It was not an affective feeling, but a freedom from all affectivity, a coldness close to warmth. My Master had given me an understanding of all this, but now it had become a bright and integrated truth.

-Jean Klein

From The Ease of Being, Prologue 

You can download a pdf copy of the entire book at:  http://pgoodnight.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/the-ease-of-being-jean-klein.pdf

To read more from Jean Klein see:  http://o-meditation.com/category/jean-klein/

 

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April 10, 2011 · 8:50 pm

In this Openness All is Open – Jean Klein

It is important that you become more and more aware of your body, aware of what you are not. So you must explore what you are not. In the exploring situation you are detached from what you explore, there is space between the exploration and what is explored.

You will come to the absolutely relaxed body. This is not a passive body, but is an energetic, dynamic, elastic body. This exploration can take place in all your daily activities, so that you don’t go back in the old pattern of defense, tension.

When you have this relationship with your sensitive body you will have this relationship with other levels of your body. You will find yourself out of the process, autonomous, free from your body-image. The moment you look at the body, you are free from it. But you must first learn how to look without any end-gaining.

There are many opportunities in the day to bring back the perception to the perceiving where there’s not a perception and not a perceiver. It is the inner, deep stillness where nobody is still and nothing is still. There’s only stillness. There are moments when it comes to you because it looks for you. Or in other words, it looks for itself because there are not two. It solicits itself by itself.

You will also become more and more free from the self-image once you have seen that it has no existence, that it is completely built of memory. You will use it less and less and, and in the end it has no more role to play, it will disappear. Then you will live really in openness. In this openness all is open, nothing is closed. Every object comes to the openness, appears and disappears in openness, refers to the openness. Then there’s spontaneous action free from reactions.

So you must be open to all the levels of your body and mind, your muscular tension, emotivity and defense. Only in this openness is transmutation possible.

-Jean Klein

From Living Truth, page 223-224 

To read more from Jean Klein see:  http://o-meditation.com/category/jean-klein/

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February 1, 2011 · 4:09 pm

Beware of the Blank State – Jean Klein

You said the other day that first one knows the objectified silence and later one comes to real silence which is not within the subject-object relationship. How does one go beyond objectified silence?

By objectified silence you mean an absence of thought, what we call the “blank state”? Yes, an absence of thought is still an object, but you, as the ultimate subject, are the knower of the absence of thought. So you ask how to go beyond any subject-object relationship, how to come to the absence of the absence.

Let us say you are aware of a particular body sensation. You feel your body is warm or cold, or you feel a certain emotional state. The moment you are conscious of a perception, you are automatically outside it, meaning there is no longer any involvement or identification with the perceived. In this sense of non-involvement or “letting-be,” you may become aware of silence. But this blank state, this absence of thought, is still an object of which you are aware.

So the question may arise, “To whom does this blank state belong?” When this question comes up, there is a stop. And there comes a spontaneous switch-over from accenting the blank state, the object, to accenting the perceiver, the subject. And as the perceiver is without an image, as the perceiver can never be perceived, you find nothing to refer to. You are totally open, open for a response. You are now at the threshold of being.

The accent is on awareness itself and the object, the blank state dissolves into awareness. There is no longer a subject, an observer, and an object, the state observed.

For this to happen there must be unqualified observation, an observation free from all reaction. Up to now you know only observation of something. But you may come to really live an observation without anything observed. Then what we call the observer loses its attribute as observer, and is pure being.

We are very accustomed to maintain this relationship of subject-object; observer and things observed. But we must accept the possibility that there can be observation without any observed object, that there is an alert stillness without any perception. You may first come to this in meditation.

In meditation you are first aware of something, of your thoughts, your emotions, or of your body. You may notice you are not really in touch with your body, that, instead, you are contacting a projection, a schema inscribed in your mind. And you also note that you are the producer of this schema. With this insight, production stops.

We can speak of meditation as a moment of non-interference wherein we see how attached we are to producing sensations just to give the “I” a foothold. In granting the perception full expression, the body takes itself in charge. It reveals the conditioning, it tells you its real nature. In other words, you give it the opportunity to be a body because previously it was a defense, a habit. And you’ll observe a new body sensation you have never know before, the original perception of your body.

The body, like every object, is an expression of awareness in space-time. So in the moment free from interference, all energy previously localized in a body sensation returns to its origin, dissolves back into awareness, and there is only stillness.

-Jean Klein

From The Ease of Being, pages 64-65 

To read more from Jean Klein see:  http://o-meditation.com/category/jean-klein/

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· 3:42 pm

Instruments of Consciousness – Jean Klein

When we speak of silent observation we refer to a way of listening, a way of seeing, which allows the observed its full, unqualified expression. In the process of listening, you may discover that the observer is forever judging, criticizing, comparing and evaluating. This insight alone takes you to a position where you are uninvolved in the perceived. Then a feeling of space opens out between your observing and the observed, eliciting the understanding that the perceived arises in you but you are not limited to anything perceivable. Silence is our real nature.

Then is thought itself the root of the problem?

Generally we only know ourselves in perceptions, in states. We only know consciousness of something, listening to something, and so on. We don’t know pure consciousness without an object.

Thoughts, feelings and sensations are objects of consciousness, and have no existence without the observing subject. Since the perceiver can never be perceived, the moment a thought or perception points back to the perceiver it brings you to silence, to pure being, to consciousness without an object.

Then what is the perceiver?

The perceiver is a faculty, a qualification, which exists the moment there’s a perception in space-time. Without the perception, there is no perceiver either. Both are movements of energy in space-time, and both arise out of and dissolve back into consciousness, which alone is timeless.

The perceiver and the perceived are more or less tools, instruments of consciousness. All that appears is an expression of consciousness.

-Jean Klein

From The Ease of Being, page 61 

To read more from Jean Klein see:  http://o-meditation.com/category/jean-klein/

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