iamom | Nonduality from Jean Klein, via the Non-Duality Press and the Nondual Highlights (Reply)

Nondual Highlights Issue #2588 contains some interesting excerpts from a reprinted title of Dr. Jean Klein (Dr. Klein is male; his first name is pronounced like the French for John) released by Non-Duality Press. See Non-Duality Press's Jean Klein page if you're interested in ordering the books.

The excerpt I'm including here starts with Jerry's intro:

Some readers who are fairly new to the teaching of nonduality may not be familiar with Jean Klein. He was teaching and publishing in the 70s and 80s. Some who have been in the nonduality racket for 30 or more years forget that people are newly discovering the teaching of nonduality and may need to informed of the spectrum of writings available. Perhaps Non-Duality Press will do more reprints in the future, though their expertise seems to lie in discovering and publishing new writers and teachers.

The excerpt in this issue of the Highlights is from Who Am I?: The Sacred Quest.
Q. When you are no longer identified with the person, how is life affected?

A. The first thing you notice is how much richer and deeper your perceptions are. Communication becomes so much more varied. Generally, we are fixed in patterns of communication but when we live in openness a great sensitivity arises, a sensitivity we never dreamed of.

When we approach our surroundings from wholeness our whole structure comes alive. We do not hear music with the ears only. When the ears cease to grasp sound for themselves we feel music with our whole body, the colour, the form, the vibration. It no longer belongs to a specific organ. It belongs to our whole being. This creates a deep humility, an innocence. Only in humility is true communication possible.

Then one lives in a completely new dimension. To live as a personality is to live in restriction. Don't live in restriction! Let the personality live in you. In living in the environment without separation there is great, great beauty.
Q. I'm afraid of the nothingness I'll be faced with if the personality dies.

A. You are accustomed to living in fraction. When the self-image dies you live in completeness. This fullness can never be objectified because there's no agent left to think it. It can only be lived. You must familiarise yourself with dying. It's a new feeling. A feeling without feeling.

You imagine that the death of the I-image is an absence. But this is only the ego speaking on behalf of its own survival. Come out of the vicious circle of living in the narrow world of the ego. True death of the insecure ego leaves you in complete security. So what is insecurity from the point of view of the relative 'I' is absolute security in terms of your whole being. There are people living in tragic situations but they prefer to live this way rather than in no situation at all because where there is no situation there is no more hold for the 'me'.

Q. Is all fear then based on a fractional view?

A. Yes. Because a fraction is isolated. It is separation from totality. This separation brings up fear and anxiety. Fear and who is afraid are one, not two.
Q. What is a teacher?

A. when you become established in truth you may or may not be a teacher. To be a teacher takes a certain pedagogical gift, the capacity to pierce the mind directly so that the answer comes with the perfume of silence and unveils silence in the questioner. It is the capacity to see into the disciple and know instinctively in which way to present the teaching. There is no fixed teaching as there is no fixed disciple. In fact there is no teacher, for the teacher is identical with what is taught. He is established knowingly in his teaching and it is at the core of his being that he knows there is nothing to teach.

One who lives in his real being takes himself for nothing. He brings the disciple to understand that there is nothing to teach. This creates a new perspective: that there is no disciple and no teacher.

The disciple takes himself for an ignorant person with something to acquire. When he meets the nothingness of the teacher and the teaching, he is brought to a letting go of his desire to be somebody who is enlightened, spiritual, religious, and so on. He is brought back to himself.

Behave as if you do not need any teaching, as if you are free, secure and contented. When you think there is something to acquire, you live in lack. The only thing to learn is how to approach.

I like that line that says, "You imagine that the death of the I-image is an absence. But this is only the ego speaking on behalf of its own survival." It's kind of weird to think of your ego as a separate entity and energy force or something, since most of us tend to associate our personalities and our ego with our true selves; that is to say, we think that our personality is WHO we are. He also said, "To live as a personality is to live in restriction. Don't live in restriction! Let the personality live in you." That's great: let the personality live in you, instead of vice-versa.

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