Dr. Jean Klein's book on nonduality, 'I am'...

Ajay0 · Jul 12, 2021

Free pdf of Dr. Jean Klein's book on nondual philosophy, 'I am'.

https://pgoodnight.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/i-am-jean-klein.pdf

Dr. Jean Klein is a French medical doctor and musicologist , who fought for the French resistance in the Second World War.

He is a master of Advaita Vedanta or nonduality in the tradition of Ramana Maharshi and Atmananda Krishna Menon. He attained enlightenment in 1955, and from 1960 onwards started teaching in Europe and the West.

Some excerpts from his book , 'I am'...

The chief obstacle to the fulfillment of our potential is the concept of a me. It is nothing but a figment of the imagination created by memory and by the social context we find ourselves in.

Do not nourish the ideas you have built around yourself nor the image people have of you. Be neither someone nor something, just remain free from the demands of society. Don’t play its game. This will establish you in your autonomy.

The ego is nothing but a thought amongst many others. It is a product of memory, of the past. Believing itself to be a separate entity, it protects itself by building a screen and reacts against anything likely to menace this supposed existence, supposed continuity. This belief is the cause of agitation, worry and dispersed activity.

The personality is nothing other than a projection, a habit created by memory and nourished by desire. Ask yourself the question “Who am I?” and lucidly observe that the questioner, thinker, doer, sufferer are all forms that appear and disappear within the consciousness of “I am,” the ever-living background. They have no reality in themselves. What we call the person is due to a mistake. Thoughts, feelings and actions appear and disappear indefinitely, creating an illusion of continuity. The idea of being a person, an ego, is nothing other than an image held together by memory.

You are the owner of all memories but you are not the memories. You must realize that you are now only a heap of conventions, habits, what society has made of you. Once all these have left you, you will realize that they were defenses and aggressions accumulated solely to maintain this ego which simply does not exist. Then the real Self shines forth. It does not belong to memory. It is there because it is there.

It is only memory that gives the false impression of continuity. The individual has no independent existence. It is a fabrication of memory and habit. Always agitated, it hopes and claims, striving to accumulate, searching for confirmation and security. Basically it is frightened and does not dare question itself profoundly.

It is a fact that once a desired object has been acquired, there is a brief moment of desirelessness, a moment free from all intention, from the me, the knower and the known. It is only later that the me stakes a claim to this experience and transforms it into “I am happy,” into a subject/object relation-ship. The me is never present but is made of memory and thus uses memory to exist.

True awareness cannot be obtained by projecting known factors in terms of concepts and perceptions. What you are fundamentally cannot be experienced through reason and is only reached once you eliminate what you are not.

Only awareness which has nothing to do with mental activity, which is free from all reference to the past, free from bodily and psychological habits, free from selection and repetition can open the door to spontaneous understanding.

The contemplative witnessing state leads us to discover what we are not. We become aware of our body and thought-patterns, the reasons that motivate our actions of which we were previously scarcely conscious. When we observe thought without interference or evaluation, without reference, the thought vanishes in the observing. As the emphasis is no longer on the thought process and content but on the observing itself this witness state becomes a purification, a letting go, without there being a person who purifies or lets go. A whole world of unsuspected energies releases itself. Mental activity ceases to be agitated and spontaneously fol-lows its natural course. We discover ourselves in attention. We completely abandon the “I am this, I am that,” reflex. This attention transcends the experience and the experiencer. It is pure awareness.

A wilful ego hinders you from being. The witness must enter upon the scene, enabling the ego to be recognized for what it is, an object. This witness is a pedagogical device that opens the door to being. The ego cannot “know” itself because it identifies with what it thinks, feels, experiences. For the ego, there is nothing but resistance, defense, agitation. It is the witness that shines forth and shows up the ego for what it is, an illusion.

Truth cannot be perceived. It can only be lived in the non-dual continuum, the non-state where there is neither seer nor seen.

All imagination is unreal, based on memory. But all that is not anticipated, all that is unexpected, that causes wonder, astonishment, surges forth from living reality.

He who longs to know his true nature must first under-stand his mistaken identification with objects: “I am this,” “I am that.” All identifications, all states are transitory and consequently unreal. Identifying the “I” with this or that is the root of ignorance. Ask yourself what is permanent throughout all the stages of life. The question “Who am I?” will be found to have no answer. You cannot experience what is permanent in a subject/object relationship, as something perceivable. You can only formulate and explain that which you are not. What you fundamentally and continually are cannot be put into words or reasoned out. Being is non-dual, absolute and constant, ever present whatever the circumstances.

The sage has not the slightest idea of being a person when he acts, feels, thinks. The ego is totally absent. The ego itself is no more than a thought and two thoughts cannot take form simultaneously so identification with the ego only takes place once the thought concerning the object has subsided. Then it claims this thought as its own. The sense of ownership, “I saw it, I did it,” comes after the fact and has nothing to do with the fact. Once this mechanism becomes clear, you realize that the identification you previously took to be real is but an illusion. You neither own nor are a slave to the situation. Your true nature transcends it. Silent awareness is not a state but is the continuum in which all states, all things appear and disappear.

The person only exists within the pain and pleasure structure. The ego maintains itself by forever seeking the one and running away from the other; it lives in constant choosing, in continual intention. The first insight shows us that all intention, all will is to escape from the suffering incurred by the illusory ego. Choosing, attaining and ambition are a needless projection of energy. The object itself contains neither suffering nor pleasure, but is entirely dependent on the person behind it. Our inability to see all the elements of a situation as simply facts, in other words, to accept the situation, is due to the choices made by the illusory personality. We suffer but suffering and pain are strong pointers, inviting us to inquire just who is suffering.

What habits reinforce the ego?Habits such as being attached to things, looking back to the past, recalling past experiences and their emotional content, wishful thinking and daydreaming in search of security for the continuity of the person, all do so. The person is a phenomenon of time but being is eternal.

Our natural state needs no learning. There are paths where there is unlearning of wrong learning but this is a progressive way which in the end is still a new learning. Be free from learning and unlearning, doing and not-doing. No volition is necessary to see you are conditioned. In seeing all that you are not in one moment, no other state is projected because it is not possible to conceive of an unconditioned state. So in seeing what is false there is a spontaneous giving up and all that remains is the unconditioned, inconceivable non-state, that you are.

Total, living freedom is exempt from all concepts such as the image of the ego. Projecting a “me-image,” just like any other object, is conditioned by purely accidental factors but is always dependent on the unchanging ultimate subject: pure consciousness. It is only the imaginary me which feels deprived of liberty

For whom do pleasure, pain, like and dislike exist? For the me who is but a creation of society, a fictitious entity. When the ego sees this fact quite clearly all its problems vanish. These questions find their answer in enlightenment, the “I am” beyond words, thought and expression.

The Self is silent awareness but this silence is beyond concept and complementarity and cannot be defined in terms of a silence as opposed to noise. Thus trying to rid ourselves of agitation so as to attain a state of silence keeps us in conflict. It keeps us in the realm of opposition, defense, fighting, attaining and rejecting. But if on the contrary we accept the agitation, accept it as an expression of silence, it dissolves in the acceptance. Then you will reach the silence of the Self, beyond silence and agitation.

When we talk of the present, we mean the eternal present, presence to the Self, which is unthinkable, beyond the mind and the psyche.

Only a clear vision and deep understanding can bring change. Change comes when you see facts because every situation has its own solution. As long as you look from a personal view-point you cannot see facts. So first come to know your own conditioning, the depths of your personal view. Real acting is never personal. When you face a situation impersonally you will be brought to right acting.

The ego cut off from its origin is easily filled with fear. We live in fear of suffering; the person is nothing but suffering. This suffering must first be fully felt and it can only be felt when it is accepted. Accepted as a fact, objectively not fatalistically. This scientific acceptance can only take place when there is no psychological relationship with the fear, when it is seen from the impersonal standpoint. When we don’t conceptualize fear it leaves us, for we no longer nourish it. It is condemned to die when seen in clear-sighted presence.

The understanding that the ego has no reality in itself springs directly from our true being. It does not result from any effort but is instantaneous, neither discursive nor mental. It brings about total presence, wholeness, where fear has no place

When we become familiar with the impersonal position new aspects appear in the situation which were concealed by opinions, likes and dislikes. These additions completely change the chess board.

Agitation is produced by desire, the desire of the individual me to bring an end to its isolation, its separation from its origin. In its distress it tries every imaginable means to create pleasure and security. It ultimately longs for joy. Though moments of pleasure and satisfaction are reflections of ultimate fulfillment they remain conditioned by time and space. They are temporary and there is always the fear that loneliness and emptiness will return.

The moment we recognize ourselves as the knower and not “the suffering one” all psychological pain disappears. Physical pain, when seen objectively, is dramatically reduced.

Clear seeing of all the elements of the situation comes when there is no involvement in the perception, when it is seen objectively. This uninvolvement is the first step towards freeing ourselves. It is only when all the facts have been seen that creative action occurs.

Unthinkable Presence is your real nature in which all appears. Because you identify with your thoughts instead of presence, you feel limited, restricted. In freeing yourself from this restriction you come to live your limitlessness. Then everything that happens in your life will have new meaning. ~ Jean Klein
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