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Invitation to Silencesayings to awaken the selfby Jean KleinCompiled by Billy DoyleNew Sarum Press
invitation to silenceCopyright © 2023 Emma EdwardsCopyright © 2023 New Sarum PressFirst published by New Sarum Press, December 2023 ISBN 978-1-7397249-9-3All Rights Reservedwww.newsarumpress.com
v“As the sayings come from truth the verbal structure dissolves and what remains is the essence which we all have in common. e content of the words is the same as the presence of the guru and our own presence. To be completely impregnated we must not emphasize the words of the guru, the apparent “outside” but listen deeply to how they resonate in us, how they stimulate our own wakefulness. We cannot hold on to the sayings but must let them dissolve so that they can act in us”. Jean Klein, I Am
viiTable of ContentsIntroduction .......................................................... ix1. Open to the Unknown..................................... 1 2. I Am .................................................................. 73. e Ease of Being ........................................... 154. Be Who You Are ............................................ 235. e Book of Listening ................................... 276. Living Truth ................................................... 397. Beyond Knowledge ........................................ 478. Who Am I? ..................................................... 539. Transmission of the Flame ........................... 6310. Blossoms in Silence ....................................... 71
ixIntroduction Jean Klein was a musicologist and medical doctor origi-nally from Central Europe. From an early age he had the deep conviction that there is a “principle” independent of all forms of learning. e exploration of this conviction led him, in the 1950s, to spend several years in India where he was introduced through a ‘direct approach’ by study-ing Advaita (non-dualism) and yoga, to the non mental dimension of life. Living in openness free from past and future he was taken one timeless moment by a sudden clear awakening in his real nature. It was not a mystical experience or passing state but a non state, the absolute continuum in which birth, life experience and death take place. From 1960 he started teaching in Europe and later in the United States.e teaching is through a direct approach pointing straight to our real nature. It is not concerned with pro-gression, mental activity, striving or levels of spiritual attainment. It takes us directly to what is beyond the mind, to inner stillness and peace beyond the psychologi-cal, to infinite expansion, to pure love, in other words, to being what we fundamentally are. Jean Klein embodied unconditional love to all who had the great fortune to meet him.
xIntroductionIntrinsic to his teaching and the experiential under-standing of his philosophy is what he called “the body work”, an exploration of the contractions and conditioned habits of the body, through a particular kind of body sensing and releasing evolved from Kashmiri yoga he had learned in India. Several of his students have made this teaching their own since their Guru’s death including Billy Doyle who has chosen the selections for this book. Billy has been a single minded student of Jean Klein’s teaching for forty years and shares his love for his Guru in seminars and publications.I am very grateful to Billy for all the time he has put into these selections. From the ten books published in English so far, he has chosen short excerpts he feels por-tray the teaching over a wide variety of subjects. It is a work of devotion. Since Blossoms in Silence, the hand made and signed by Jean Klein, limited edition (200) of a few sayings, is dif-ficult to find, this book is very timely. e proceeds from this book will be donated to the Jean Klein Foundation charity to further future publications. Emma EdwardsOctober 2023
Invitation to Silence
11Open to the UnknownWhen you are really still—still means in not knowing anything—that is really a blessed state. When thinking starts from thought, it is a defense, it is aggression. But when a thought starts from silence, then I would say it is an offering. It is thanking. anking for being allowed to be. You must not try to be open. You are open. When you say, “I must be open,” you create a state. When you say, “I am going to meditate,” you make a state of it. You are meditation. When you go into the state of so-called meditation or openness, you are like a donkey in a stall. An object is meaningful only when it points to its origin, the perceiving. en it is sacred. Otherwise it is profane.
2Invitation to SilenceOnly an object can suffer, but you are not an object. You know the suffering, you are the knowing of the suffering. e intellectual understanding brings you to the correct attitude to understand what can never be understood. It evokes an inner attitude which helps you to see that you can never come to objectless con-sciousness through the thought process. We could say it takes you to the helplessness of thought. e teacher does not refer to the “I,” to psychology. It is meaningless to teach at the psychological level about what is beyond the “I.”Awareness is concealed by volition, by remaining in the process of desiring and becoming. You can only know what you are not. What you are, you can never know, because there is not a knower of it. It is your globality, your totality.