This page lists some of the all-time best Jean Klein quotes. Enjoy!
Page Contents:
- Self & Self-Inquiry Quotes
- Subject & Object Quotes
- Waiting & Knowing Quotes
- Absence & Presence Quotes
- Silence & Consciousness Quotes
50+ Jean Klein Quotes on Self-Inquiry, Knowing, Silence, & More
Jean Klein Quotes on Self & Self-Inquiry
Q: “What do you think of isolating oneself from the world, such as a monastic life, for realizing your true nature?”
A (from Jean Klein): “My dear friend, the moment you believe to be ‘somebody’, you are isolated.”
“What is important for me is the art of living … It is important to free oneself from wrong identification.” — Jean Klein
“You have moments of happiness, and these moments are not states—that is, it’s a non-state … Your whole, total, global being is happiness. The idea of ‘somebody’ is not present at all. But, you come out and immediately the mind takes it for its own, or the ego takes it for its own.” — Jean Klein
“As long as you take yourself for ‘somebody’, you will live in darkness. When you realize that the somebody is a mental image—when you think of it, when you produce it—then you give it up. This image has no more a role to play. And, in this instantaneous giving up, it gives you up. It produces a great laughing. In this laughing, you will feel yourself free from all representation.” — Jean Klein
“The ‘I’, the ‘me’, is a fabrication. … We have built up in a us a kind of person, but this person is a fabrication of the mind … The person is a mind fabrication, but you are not the mind. You are the ultimate Self … Society can only change when it is conceived—when it is built up—free from the ‘I’, free from the ‘me.'” — Jean Klein
“Who is living? Who is dying? … Who is afraid? In silence, there’s a perfect total disappearance of the ego—of the person, of the ‘I.’” — Jean Klein
“When the question, ‘What is the meaning of life?’ appears in all urgency, when one is ready to give all to this question, then one is a disciple, a disciple of truth, of life … Life is a teacher … The teaching came to me … There are moments in life that you ask, ‘What is life? What is the source of life? Who am I?’ In this question, ‘Who am I?’, the teaching comes to you … If you still keep the word ‘teaching’, it’s to show you in an absolutely deep way that you are not body, senses, and mind—that you are the Self.” — Jean Klein
“There needs a certain maturity to come to this question (Who am I?). By ‘maturity’, I mean that you know in a certain way already what you are not … Maturity comes through inquiring. Inquiring, ‘Who am I? What is life?’” — Jean Klein
“People can stimulate you for the inquiring into what you are … You will see in deep inquiring that there’s not a meditator because the meditator is a mind projection.” — Jean Klein
“You may occasionally be this or that personality from this or that country, but it appears occasionally. In your totality, in your fullness, in your completeness, you are the Self … The personality—the character, or what we call the ‘individual’—has its reality in oneness, in love. It is so on every level—every activity on its own level refers to this oneness … It is this oneness which gives life to all activities.” — Jean Klein
“At the moment, we believe in this restricted being of personality to personality … You are what I am, and I am what you are. There’s no relationship.” — Jean Klein
“The controller belongs to the mind … The mind can never change the mind … There’s conditioning and conditioning. To see it really clearly means wisdom.” — Jean Klein
Jean Klein Quotes on Subject & Object
“Two, which are not two, come together … What you are fundamentally, you can never conceive it in subject-object relationship. You are it … There’s only beingness.” — Jean Klein
“True meditation means the absence of a meditator and something meditated on, the absence of the subject-object relationship … Meditation is from moment to moment, not only in the morning from 6-7.” — Jean Klein
“We are living in the thinking process—in the thinking from object to object … We can never be an object of representation. What we are can never be thought … What you are fundamentally, you can never represent it.” — Jean Klein
“The understanding that you are the ultimate observer, the ultimate subject, the ultimate knower of all objects, is progressively seeing things clearer. But, the I Am is suddenly instantaneous because it doesn’t go through the mind—what you are fundamentally is beyond the mind … To deal with the mind is a waste of energy. There’s a direct way—point directly to the I Am … You are not the person, you are the I Am.” — Jean Klein
“The body is an object of your observation … The purified body, relaxed body, is also a relaxed mind, purified mind … When you see in one moment that you are not body, senses, mind, that means body, senses, mind have no reality in itself—depends on consciousness, depends on your presence—then there is a natural giving up what you are not. You don’t give up any thing, but your understanding brings to the giving up. You will find yourself suddenly in a completely new dimension—a dimension which doesn’t emphasize the object—body, senses, mind—but which emphasizes the light. That is enlightenment. In other words, more simply, in the moment that you understand there’s nobody … You will find yourself in this objectless dimension—this beingness, awareness.” — Jean Klein
“The only truth is being, which is causeless, autonomous. When you see false things for what they are then that is illumination … In this, the direct path, free from choice, there is a freeing of energy and a spontaneous establishment in true being.” — Jean Klein
“Life, consciousness, we can never objectify … Consciousness is the ultimate subject of all objects. It can never be an object … What we are can never be an object. We are the ultimate subject … Every object points to the ultimate subject … All of it is done, emphasized, not on the object part but on the ultimate subject, consciousness.” — Jean Klein
“Try to look at an object and bring the looking back—there’s nothing more to look at, there’s only looking … In looking, you’re free from memory. In looking, you become the looked … One day, when you come to this kind of maturity, you will see the looker is what he is looking for.” — Jean Klein
Jean Klein Quotes on Waiting & Knowing
“Do you know the knower? … Refer immediately to the knower of the mind.” — Jean Klein
“When you ask the question, you don’t know the answer. So, automatically, you find yourself in a state of not-knowing. In the state of not-knowing, your mind is completely unfurnished. You are free from all representation. It is only in this state of not-knowing—in this openness of not-knowing, waiting for the eventual known. Then, the waiting becomes free from what it is waiting for. In this waiting without waiting, there is the living answer.” — Jean Klein
“If we don’t wait, we project. We project the known, memory. Life is never repetition … It is constantly new … In waiting, there’s no memory. In waiting, you are open to the cosmic memory, universal memory … It is objectless waiting.” — Jean Klein
“For long time, I have been in this state of not knowing the knower … For me, knowing myself was body, senses, and mind … It’s what’s very striking to me—that I am a knower of what, so called, I am: body, senses, and mind.” — Jean Klein
“Pains points to the perceiver … It’s not you who suffers—the knower doesn’t suffer.” — Jean Klein
“Strictly speaking, there’s nothing to teach … To teach you what you are fundamentally, I think the word ‘teaching’ is not appropriate … Appropriate would be to tell you what you are not because what you are you can never know it—it is the knowing. There is no knower to know it. It is its own knowing.” — Jean Klein
“It is the ultimate goal in every human being—to know it, to be it … When you know something, you use it in the right way. You can only use it in the right way when you know it.” — Jean Klein
“Become familiar with listening—listening to your sensation, to your feelings, to your reactions, resistance. In this listening, you give the feeling, the sensation, the opportunity to unfold itself in your observation … This unfolding is only possible because you are open to it, you welcome it … Listening is free from all memory—there’s no expectation, there’s no goal … It’s unconditioned listening. The listening is open to itself, it refers to itself, and at the end, it knows itself by itself … It doesn’t need any agent to be known. It knows itself by itself.” — Jean Klein
“Attention means completely being open. When you are completely open, you are not in psychological memory. Psychological memory keeps you in restriction because it is only for the survival of the person. Free from psychological memory, you are open … In attention, you will go into awareness … When you are free from the person, you are free from psychological memory. Functional memory remains, but you are completely free of the vicious cycle of past and future.” — Jean Klein
“The first step is to accept yourself totally … In this acceptance, you will come to know what you are … When you accept things, you’re no longer bound to the things. In a certain way, you know perfectly the thing, and you’re not involved in it—because the knower is never involved in the known … The known is in him, he he’s not in the known.” — Jean Klein
Jean Klein Quotes on Absence & Presence
“We are really our absence. Our absence is presence.” — Jean Klein
“When timeless moments solicit you, accept the invitation. Go deep within it, until you find yourself in your absence … In accepting, you go completely through the fear—you remain completely witness to it. It vanishes in your witnessing … The accepting is completely free of what is accepted … It is in the accepting position that what you accept frees itself and it dissolves in you, in your presence. It reveals really what you are profoundly.” — Jean Klein
“The real birth is after the disappearance … the birth in the total absence of yourself … Our real nature is the absence of an idea to be an independent entity.” — Jean Klein
“In the absence of our self, there’s life, there’s consciousness, there’s happiness … Happiness is completely causeless.” — Jean Klein
“All flows out from the now, and all appears and disappears in the now … When you are established in the now, the present, there’s no place for somebody who reacts, who resists … Presence refers to our eternity. We can never think of it … because we are it.” — Jean Klein
“Every moment is new. You are the creator of every moment … Every moment is a new you, and you face every moment in a new way.” — Jean Klein
Jean Klein Quotes on Silence & Consciousness
“In the direct path, you face directly the ultimate … here, look, what is the nearest. It’s not your body which is the nearest, it’s your consciousness.” — Jean Klein
“There is nothing outside of consciousness … Life is consciousness, and consciousness is life … The teacher never presents himself as a teacher because he’s love, he’s consciousness.” — Jean Klein
“God is a concept, an idea … The moment you free yourself from the concept ‘God’, then there’s God. Only God, not you … To have the experience of God, you as a ‘you’ must disappear … When there’s love, there’s not a ‘you’ or an ‘other’—there’s oneness … In this love, you are free … Love is expansion.” — Jean Klein
“Silence is truth … Silence doesn’t belong to the mind … Thinking which comes out of silence is praying.” — Jean Klein
“The essence of every living being is silence … You must discover your original silence.” — Jean Klein
“An object appears in silence and disappears in silence … All appears in silence and disappears in silence.” — Jean Klein
“We are the silent awareness. We can never objectify it … It is timeless silence in which time and space appear.” — Jean Klein
“All creativity comes out of silence … Creativity comes out from the unknown.” — Jean Klein
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