This is a curated selection of Jean Klein quotes (personally curated by me on my own lifelong learning journey). This page is intended as a learning resource for educational purposes and only meant to offer an overview/introduction. Short quotes aren’t a substitute for source material, so if this page sparks your interest, explore more deeply by checking out Jean Klein’s books (Amazon).
Page Contents:
- Self & Self-Inquiry Quotes
- Subject & Object Quotes
- Waiting & Knowing Quotes
- Absence & Presence Quotes
- Silence & Consciousness Quotes
25 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.”
“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
“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
“What is important for me is the art of living … It is important to free oneself from wrong identification.” — 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
“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 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
Jean Klein Quotes on Waiting & Knowing
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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’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
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
“The essence of every living being is silence … You must discover your original silence.” — Jean Klein
“Silence is truth … Silence doesn’t belong to the mind … Thinking which comes out of silence is praying.” — 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.” — Jean Klein
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