Background Listening - by Jean Klein
Jean Klein was a French author, spiritual teacher and philosopher of Advaita Vedanta (Nonduality).
Very often when you listen to something, you emphasize the object. There is still an action; there is still eccentric energy, I would say. In welcoming, you emphasize the welcoming. That means in welcoming you are completely open, open to the perception. In welcoming you are waiting, completely directionless. You live freely without representation, without psychological memory. Your real nature is welcoming.
When you come to the understanding that there is nothing to achieve, nothing to obtain— that all knowledge is a going away from what you are looking for— then there is a spontaneous giving up.
You do not give up, it gives itself up.
Then there is welcoming and another way of listening where the listening and the welcoming are open to themselves. It refers to Itself. Welcoming, listening, is an impersonal state where there is no place to be somebody, to be a person. That is why in welcoming you are spontaneously excited. Excited is not really the word— you are completely expanded. The moment the person comes in the play, you are contracted, fixed to the body.
Very often when you listen to something, you emphasize the object. There is still an action; there is still eccentric energy, I would say. In welcoming, you emphasize the welcoming. That means in welcoming you are completely open, open to the perception. In welcoming you are waiting, completely directionless. You live freely without representation, without psychological memory. Your real nature is welcoming.
When you come to the understanding that there is nothing to achieve, nothing to obtain— that all knowledge is a going away from what you are looking for— then there is a spontaneous giving up. You do not give up, it gives itself up.
Then there is welcoming and another way of listening where the listening and the welcoming are open to themselves. It refers to Itself. Welcoming, listening, is an impersonal state where there is no place to be somebody, to be a person. That is why in welcoming you are spontaneously excited. Excited is not really the word— you are completely expanded. The moment the person comes in the play, you are contracted, fixed to the body.
You must be clear about the nature of your desire. Do not let second-hand information influence you. There is only love and in this love the man and woman sometimes appear.
In receptivity, all objects unfold and are transmuted into love. When someone is being negative and you do not provide a hold for his negativity – he may suddenly be brought back to himself. It is as if he reaches out to grasp a door handle he is sure is there and, finding it not there, suddenly becomes aware of his empty hand. Then the situation no longer belongs to an image. It belongs to observation itself.
This presence is not a detached attitude, a witnessing position. It is not a feeling of separateness, of being ‘outside’. It is the presence of wholeness, love, out of which all comes. When no situation calls for an activity we remain in emptiness of activity, in this Presence.
Be clear in your mind that what you are looking for can never be an object. Because you are what you are looking for, so you can never see it, never comprehend it. You can only be it.
The everlasting present is completely unrelated to time and space. Therefore it has no link with the past, the future or any given place. In its very essence, it is reality, hic et nunc ( here and now). Since this reality lies outside any mental framework, it cannot be expressed, communicated or known by any means but by pure experience alone.
From this background, thought, and with it the world of multiplicity, arises and then back to it returns. When the mind is in any way active, this background is consciousness as witness, absolutely non- involved. When mental activity ceases, it is pure object less consciousness. This background is our true nature and can only be revealed spontaneously, I.e. , in an attitude devoid of any striving, of any premeditation, any intention. This reality, being formless, escapes any qualification whatsoever. However, the traditional words peace and bliss are nearest to expressing it.
Listening to something is easy because it doesn’t go through the mind. It is our natural behavior. Evaluation, comparison, is very difficult because it involves mental effort. In this listening, there is a welcoming of all that happens, an unfolding, and this unfolding, this welcoming, is timeless. All that you welcome appears in this timelessness, and there is a moment when you feel yourself timeless, feel yourself in welcoming, feel yourself in listening, in attention. Because attention has its own taste, its own flavor. There’s attention to something, there’s also attention in which there’s no object: nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing to teach, only attention.
Since in general, we know ourselves only as an object and not as consciousness, few, after death, will dissolve in consciousness which knows itself. The consciousness which knows itself is fulfilled and does no longer look for another expression. As the residues of the body are dispersed into global energy, consciousness dissolves in its own light. There is nobody going anywhere, and there’s nowhere to go.
All ideas about the different states and stages of the dissolution of energy are, therefore, meaningless to the awakened, and are an obstacle to the one who is engaged in the process of letting go of all qualifications and all attachments. Such concepts cause confusion. They are mind constructs since there is no one left to know such things. As long as these ideas exist, there is still someone who knows. And as long as there’s someone who knows, there was no real dying.
Taking note does not mean you jot it down in your mental diary and forget about it. Here you make it a concept. You have emphasized the fact, not the seeing. This is the lazy way, the passive way. Taking note means that you remain alert, you see the fact and the alertness remains after seeing the fact. See how the seeing acts on you, how it feels to be the seer. The background is emphasized. This is where the transfer of energy occurs.
Very often when you listen to something, you emphasize the object. There is still an action; there is still eccentric energy, I would say. In welcoming, you emphasize the welcoming. That means in welcoming you are completely open, open to the perception. In welcoming you are waiting, completely directionless. You live freely without representation, without psychological memory. Your real nature is welcoming.
When you come to the understanding that there is nothing to achieve, nothing to obtain— that all knowledge is a going away from what you are looking for— then there is a spontaneous giving up. You do not give up, it gives itself up.
Then there is welcoming and another way of listening where the listening and the welcoming are open to themselves. It refers to Itself. Welcoming, listening, is an impersonal state where there is no place to be somebody, to be a person. That is why in welcoming you are spontaneously excited. Excited is not really the word— you are completely expanded. The moment the person comes in the play, you are contracted, fixed to the body.
What you are looking for is peace, silence, yourself, and it can never be an object. It is a feeling. It is a jewel in your feeling. You must love the jewel. You must be it, never go away from it. The jewel is the jewel of your heart.
The world you perceive is none other than a figment of your imagination founded on memory, fear, anxiety, and desire. You have locked yourself away within this world. See this without jumping to conclusions and you will be free. There is no need whatsoever for you to free yourself from a world which exists only in your imagination…Be neither someone nor something, just remain free…This will establish you in your autonomy.
Do not bring conclusions to these interviews, do not try to understand, to retain. Let live, live with the words we exchanged. Understanding is instantaneous, it never passes through analysis, it is the inner attitude not to want, not to seize, to be open simply that allows you to be in communion, in unity with what was behind words, Between Words: silence.
Real seeing is direct perception…It is facing the facts, the sensations, the state of things without a justifier, controller, without rationalizing or thinking about them. There is no seer in seeing. It is an instantaneous apperception that occurs when you no longer try to escape the facts. Then all activities are in you but you are not in them. You no longer feel lost in activities, no longer identified with them. On the contrary, activities are lost in you
That which surges forth unexpectedly, on the spur of the moment, without any cause, free from the past; that which springs forth without roots and neither flowers nor fades; that which is most natural, free from strain, is the Self.
When we are free and know that no one thing is any more important than another thing, then we can do exactly what we wish: that which warms our heart. We can sort the opportunities of our existence like we do with a deck of playing cards and deal out a hand that we think might be interesting and joyful.
There are basically two known approaches to truth, the gradual and the direct. In the direct approach the premise is that you are the truth, there is nothing to achieve. Every step to achieve something is going away from it. The path , which strictly speaking is not a path from somewhere to somewhere, is only to welcome, to be open to the truth, the I Am. When you have once glimpsed your real nature, it solicits you. There is therefore nothing to do, only to be attuned to it as often as invited. There not a single element of volition in this attuning. It is not the mind which attunes to the I am but the I am which absorbs the mind.
In the gradual approach you are bound to the mind. The mind is under the illusion that if it changes, alters states, stops, etc., it will be absorbed in what is beyond it. This misconception leads to the most tragic state in which a truth- seeker can find himself: he has bound himself in his own web, a web of the most subtle duality.
Q: If I am perfect and there is nothing to do, why am I here, why this existence on the planet?
A: It is only to be knowingly in this perfection.
This presence is not a detached attitude, a witnessing position. It is not a feeling of separateness, of being ‘outside’. It is the presence of wholeness, love, out of which all comes. When no situation calls for an activity we remain in emptiness of activity, in this Presence.
Your attention must be bipolar, observing the inner and outer fields. Relationships are the mirror in which your inner being gets reflected. Be aware that you are a link in the chain of being. When you really feel this, the emphasis is no longer on being individual, and spontaneously you come out of your restriction. You do not live in isolation, in autonomy. In relatedness is the fore-feeling of presence.
Vedanta is a direct path; its starting point is the deliberate rejection of the subject- object duality which is the framework of all our usual activities ( metaphysical speculation included). This path enables us to reach fullness and ultimate bliss without the support of objects.
Traveling along this path is an entirely upstream journey implying the complete rejection of all our usual mental activities. Even in their highest form.
He who has understood the entire futility of any search for perfect bliss in the world of duality, can undertake the slow return journey which will bring him back from the exterior to the discovery of his own transcendental reality. The world of names and forms is the result of mental activity. Ignorance ( Avidya) begins at the very moment when the ego takes names and forms to be separate realities.
It is by the suppression of this ignorance, in other words by attaining knowledge, that all these energies hitherto pointing towards the exterior are brought back, are reversed and leave the world of becoming, thus returning to the unity of being.
This reintegration is a spontaneous and necessary result of knowledge. Such a result can only be brought about in the total absence of any effort, by the simple virtue of discernment.
Originally published on Spirit Awake
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