Our body is a beautiful instrument, like a Stradivarius, but it must be tuned. We are the tuner. To tune this instrument that is so sensitive, so secret, calls for a complete metamorphosis of oneself, and this can only happen when we are one with our instrument, with our body. We must be very sensitive to tune our bodies. We must find just the right tone for tuning, because the tone is not only vibration, it is more than vibration.
One tone contains all the tones. One chord attunes all the other chords. We need to have a bipolar listening, Listening inside, attuning to the inside and to the outside. We must listen to what happens inside, in our body, and to what also comes from the so-called outside. Strictly speaking, there is no outside and inside.
This beautiful instrument has to be sensed. It is in sensing that we come to the right tuning. It calls for a very high art of Listening. All our muscle structure should be maintained in tune in inaction and also in action. It is a bipolar listening. We must become able to listen. Hearing these fine vibrations comes first in meditation. There is a very important moment when you listen inside, when you listen to the listening itself.when you are aware in listening, there is no listener and nothing is listened to. There is only Listening. (Long pause)
It is tremendous to discover oneself in listening. But first there is Listening to an object, then comes listening to ourself. When listening is Silence, our musical instrument, our body, is completely penetrated by this objectless Listening. Then there is something born that is beyond the human being.
You are not body, senses and mind. Really live in the absence of what you are not and this reality will be the background of life. Live in the absence of yourself. In the absence of yourself there is presence. We should take every opportunity to listen to ourselves without directing, without changing, or looking for something new. When we listen to ourselves and sustain the listening, there’s transformation, there’s a kind of metamorphosis.
This directionless Listening is fixed neither in the forehead, nor in the heart, nor in the abdominal region. Listening is absolutely objectless. It is really a bird that flies everywhere. See when it lands. The moment you become aware that you fix it, in that awareness an emptiness will appear and this becomes openness. Don’t put the bird in a cage. Open all the doors.
Be aware in the morning that before the body wakes up there’s another kind of waking up. Then you feel the body waking up in this already awakeness. See how the body appears to you in this moment. You will feel how the old conditioned body tries to come back, the old thoughts, feelings, habits and so on. Go to the tactile sensation. It may first appear in the hands. Evoke this tactility, and you will feel a letting go. Sense it. It is enough.
Become aware of the shoulders and also of the forehead. You should let go completely in your bed. Put all the weight of your body, head, shoulders, shoulder blades, hands, and the legs, on the bed, on the ground, until all the parts are heavy. Have the impression that the energy comes from the earth and it comes to the human body and the body is inter- penetrated by this energy. It is something beautiful. You will become aware that your tensions are defenses which are reactions. Let it become so tangible for you in the morning that you keep this knowing as the background throughout the day. It is a kind of inner touching. You feel much more alive. It is only possible to go beyond the contraction of your body by sensing your body, by being aware.
When there comes this expansion of the body, you become free from the forehead, and you feel yourself localized behind, in your old brain. Don’t strain to achieve it, it belongs to you, it makes you free from the body, it makes you free from space, from direction.
I would say, you’re beyond space.
You must be free from the meditator. This is a very deep saying. Make it your own. There is no meditator, there is only meditation. The mind can be still without trying to be still. It is only in your absence that there is stillness, presence. In the absence that you are not, there is presence. But it is not an objective presence, this presence. It is a double absence. And when you have it, don’t move away from it. At the slightest motion you go away from it.
Abandon all residue in the forehead. Only then can knowledge become being the knowing. Knowledge takes place in the forehead, in front of you. Being knowing is localized nowhere. But temporarily it is localized as if behind you. This feeling of going behind is very important because it takes you away from the factory of thoughts in the forehead. When you are localized behind you at the base of the skull, you cannot think.
Even the impulse to think dies down. No formulation can occur when you are localized behind. But eventually even this subtle localization dissolves and you find yourself nowhere, living in nowhere.
Keep the flavor of our meeting alive.
-Jean Klein
From The Book of Listening, pp. 321-323.
Here you can find more about Jean Klein.