Jean Klein > Quotes

“It is only through silent awareness that our physical and mental nature can change. This change is completely spontaneous. If we make an effort to change we do no more than shift our attention from one level, from one thing, to another. We remain in a vicious circle. This only transfers energy from one point to another. It still leaves us oscillating between suffering and pleasure, each leading inevitably back to the other. Only living stillness, stillness without someone trying to be still, is capable of undoing the conditioning our biologoical, emotional and psychological nature has undergone. There is no controller, no selector, no personality making choices. In choiceless living the situation is given the freedom to unfold. You do not grasp one aspect over another for there is nobody to grasp. When you understand something and live it without being stuck to the formulation, what you have understood dissolves in your openness. In this silence change takes place of its own accord, the problem is resolved and duality ends. You are left in your glory where no one has understood and nothing has been understood.”
― Jean Klein, I Am

“The root of all desires is the one desire: to come home, to be at peace. There may be a moment in life when our compensatory activities, the accumulation of money, learning and objects, leaves us feeling deeply apathetic. This can motivate us towards the search for our real nature beyond appearances. We may find ourselves asking, 'Why am I here? What is life? Who am I?' Sooner or later any intelligent person asks these questions. What you are looking for is what you already are, not what you will become. What you already are is the answer and the source of the question. In this lies its power of transformation. It is a present actual fact. Looking to become something is completely conceptual, merely an idea. The seeker will discover that he is what he seeks and that what he seeks is the source of the inquiry.”
― Jean Klein, I Am

“The root of all desires is the one desire: to come home, to be at peace.”
― Jean Klein

“Go deeply into the urge to be silent and not the mental interference of how, where and when. If you follow silence to its source you can be taken by it in a moment.”
― Jean Klein, Who Am I?: The Sacred Quest

“[W]hat is important is neither pleasure nor pain, success nor failure, what is important is to understand that neither of them have any importance whatsoever. This understanding calls for peace, calm and serenity.”
― Jean Klein, Be Who You Are

“When we live in memory we cut ourselves off from the universe, we live in isolation. This is the root of all suffering.”
― Jean Klein, I Am

“But when you live in beauty and look from beauty, everything points in different ways to your wholeness.”
― Jean Klein, I Am

“The moments of satisfaction you experience are not in a subject/‌object relationship where you can say “I am free, I am happy.” These moments without thought, dream or representation are our true nature, fullness, which cannot be projected. It is an experience encountered where there is neither somebody experiencing nor a thing experienced. Only this reality is spiritual. All other states, “highs,” whether brought about by techniques, experiences or drugs, even the so often exalted samadhi, are phenomena‌—‌and carry with them traces of objectivity. In other words, as what you are is not a state, it is a waste of time and energy chasing more and more experiences in the hope of coming closer to the non-experience.”
― Jean Klein, I Am

“Deep inquiry leads to contemplation, or prayer. Through dedicated contemplation we can attune to consciousness, the light which constitutes all phenomena. This light is our intrinsic nature. Our being is always shining. Our real nature is openness, listening, release, surrender without producing or will. Prayer or contemplation is welcoming free from projection and expectation. It is without demand and formulation. It invites the object to unfold in you and reveals your openness to you. Live with this opening, this vastness. Attune yourself to it. It is love. Ardent contemplation brings you to living meditation so ultimately they are one.”
― Jean Klein, Who Am I?: The Sacred Quest

“If we turn away from the present,
or rather if the present is so often unable to hold our attention,
it is because we conceive of it as being a known and registered reality,
therefore devoid of interest, or as a disappointing one.
Just so long as we have not understood that true bliss is not in objects,
but in us, we continue to place our hope in the future and keep racing ahead.
We thus live in a state of imbalance, bent upon, and
striving endlessly towards the future.
What we must come to understand is that awareness in the present
is the only starting point and that
this starting point is at the same time the point of arrival.”
― Jean Klein

“When you inquire in yourself, all you desire is desirelessness.”
― Jean Klein, Beyond Knowledge

“What you call the personality is an inflexible accumulation of emotive images. The real personality appears in your stillness only when you need it and disappears when the situation no longer calls for it. It is flexible without a periphery. It is multidimensional, free from psychological interference. When you are called upon to be a mother, a father, a lover, a student, a teacher, a fighter, you are these temporarily, but they do not remain as a state you identify with. Then there is love, there is affection without affectivity.”
― Jean Klein, Who Am I?: The Sacred Quest

“When timeless moments solicit you, accept the invitation. Go deep within it, until you find yourself in your absence.”
― Jean Klein, I Am

“You want me to talk about love, to give you a hold, something to feel, to admire or obtain. I will not give you a straw to grasp, and in this emptiness you will be taken by yourself. You are love so don’t try to be a lover.”
― Jean Klein, Who Am I?: The Sacred Quest

“Be knowingly silent as often as you can and you will no longer be a prey to the desire to be this or that. You will discover in the everyday events of life the deep meaning behind the fulfilment of the whole, for the ego is totally absent.”
― Jean Klein, I Am

“When you become responsive to the solicitations of silence, you may be called to explore the invitation. This exploration is a kind of laboratory. You may sit and observe the coming and going of perceptions. You remain present to them but do not follow them. Following a thought is what maintains it. If you remain present without becoming an accomplice, agitation slows down through lack of fuel. In the absence of agitation you are taken by the resonance of stillness.”
― Jean Klein, Who Am I?: The Sacred Quest

“You are your own nearest environment, so begin with yourself.”
― Jean Klein, Who Am I?: The Sacred Quest

“Emotion integrates but emotivity isolates. So free yourself from affectivity. In this absence of emotivity, you may have the impression at first that you become indifferent. But very soon you’ll see that there is really affection for your surroundings. Emotion, affection, is giving.”
― Jean Klein, Who Am I?: The Sacred Quest

“Discipline is of no use whatsoever, since things are naturally eliminated by discernment without it being necessary for us to treat them brutally. Even in the course of the technique known as “letting-go”, a faint shadow of discipline is implied, for letting-go of an object implies a certain discipline. Only an effortless and choiceless, I repeat choiceless reaction, is the hallmark of liberation.”
― Jean Klein, Be Who You Are

“Welcoming, openness, is the nature of life.”
― Jean Klein, I Am

“Ultimate Reality is itself multiplicity, diversity. It is a waste of energy to strive to explain the world and its origin, which only diverts us from the essential Experience.”
― Jean Klein, Be Who You Are

“What any desire really aims at, is a state of non-desire. This non-desire is a state in which we demand absolutely nothing. Thus it is a state of extreme abundance, of fullness. This fullness is revealed as being bliss and peace. You now know that you are really seeking nothing else but fullness and absolute peace.”
― Jean Klein, Be Who You Are

“The world is directed towards the perceiver, it celebrates the ultimate perceiver. He who is established in the Self is in no way interested in theologies and cosmologies.”
― Jean Klein, Be Who You Are

“In silent surrender there is bliss and prayer without request or demand. There is no doer, experiencer, lover or beloved. There is only a divine current. You see that the very act of welcoming is itself the solution to the problem and the action which follows your comprehension is very straightforward. When you become familiar with the act of surrender, truth will solicit you unsought.”
― Jean Klein, Who Am I?: The Sacred Quest

“You are the guest of joy, you cannot impose yourself.”
― Jean Klein, Who Am I?: The Sacred Quest

“once energy is no longer projected in strategy and end-gaining it returns to a state of equilibrium where everything remains peaceful and points towards silent awareness, within which all thoughts and perceptions come and go.”
― Jean Klein, I Am

“The real quest begins when this not-knowing ceases to be an agnostic concept and becomes a living experience.”
― Jean Klein, Who Am I?: The Sacred Quest

“Advaita is not a system, a religion or technique. It is not even a philosophy. It is simply the truth.”
― Jean Klein, Transmission of the Flame

“What do you think about astral travel? And about getting out of the body? ... I do not know about it. I am very happy in this body. Why should I get out? [laughter]”
― Jean Klein, Beyond Knowledge

“When you act you are one with the action, it is only afterwards that the ego appropriates the act from which it was absent, and says “I have done this.” At the moment of acting there is only acting, without an actor.”
― Jean Klein, I Am