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I Am
In this book Jean Klein once again offers us one of the clearest and most direct expositions of Advaita in our times. “The root of all desires is the one to come home, to be at peace. There may be a moment in life when our compensatory activities, the accumulation of money, learning and objects, leaves us feeling deeply apathetic. This can motivate us towards the search for our real nature beyond appearances. We may find ourselves asking, 'Why am I here? What is life? Who am I?' Sooner or later any intelligent person asks these questions. “What you are looking for is what you already are, not what you will become. What you already are is the answer and the source of the question. In this lies its power of transformation. It is a present actual fact. Looking to become something is completely conceptual, merely an idea. The seeker will discover that he is what he seeks and that what he seeks is the source of the inquiry.”
168 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
January 6, 2012
This is a book on nonduality that consists of dialogues between Jean Klein and seekers. It was my first encounter with Klein. The style is similar to Jiddu Krishnamurti. The message is of utmost important, no doubt. Nonduality can not be expressed in logic via words and all verbal accounts of it should be taken as mere pointers: The map is not and can never be the territory. So, I expect and tolerate seeming logical inconsistencies in advance in these kinds of books. Given this, Jean Klein's statements seemed less tight than some other nonduality masters I have read. He often offers very brief and speculative answers, and I have to say he doesn't get the best of questions either. I wouldn't recommend it as a first encounter with nonduality. However, I would recommend it as yet another voice who speaks this same profound message. Each teacher has their own style and it is fun and interesting to experience them each.
January 23, 2020
"What you do is of no importance whatsoever; what matters is the way in which you do it, your inner attitude. The role you play on the world’s stage has no meaning other than the clear-sightedness with which you play it. Don’t lose yourself in your performance—this only blurs the vision of your inner being."
"In everyday life we rarely give sensations time to make themselves felt. We prematurely intervene, conceptualizing and qualifying them. Perceptions and concepts cannot exist simultaneously and we tend to cut the perception short before it has fully flourished."
"This sitting is a laboratory for exploring the motive to want to meditate, for finding the entity who is looking for god, peace, happiness. As long as you have not discovered the nature of the meditator you will continue to sit and look for it. But eventually you will see that the meditator can never find peace, god or happiness because it belongs to the mind, to the intellect. When this is seen, and it happens suddenly, there is no dynamism “to meditate:’ All that remains is presence where no one is present to anything."
"The world you perceive is none other than a figment of the imagination founded on memory, fear, anxiety and desire. You have locked yourself away within this world."
"You cannot expect reality to appear, for it ever is. Events appear and disappear. Never forget the passing character of all experience, this is all you need to do and the door to grace will open before you. As soon as opinions and reactions such as “I like, I don’t like” intervene, you have fallen into the personal habit and you weave a web around yourself and lose sight of your true nature. Feelings of antipathy and sympathy lead you to turn your back on the Self. Your ideas of change, progress, better and worse are fractional and personal. When you look at the world from wholeness the world will change in you. You are the world."
"It is a poetic formulation which betrays residues of belief in a past incarnation. Of course there is no past incarnation because there is no past. As long as you take yourself for somebody there is incarnation."
"Truth, that which needs no agent to be known, is inconceivable. It cannot be thought, it can only be lived."
"Your true nature transcends the mind and body. This is why the question “Who am I” can never be answered. It has no hold on you: all terms of reference slide away and you awake to all-answering silence."
"In this lies the meaning of the Zen saying: First there are mountains, then there are no mountains, then there are mountains again. First the mountains are objects and are called real by the ignorant. Then they are not seen as objects because the subject/object relationship evaporates. But then from the global view they are seen again, not as object mountains but as expressions of oneness. The mountains now appear within totality."
"First of all you must realize that nobody lives, there is just life. It is the mistaken belief that there is a personality alive which drives you to look for security in objects, to maintain a feeling of continuity, to try and dominate life. The idea of being the doer of your actions is the one and only pitfall preventing you from really living. Life is free, without fear, it follows its natural course. Attune yourself to life, be one with it."
"Believing oneself to be somebody, an independent person, objectifying, projecting, are all objects amongst others, they are pure imagination. Projection is but a fraction of the whole. Taking decisions and thinking from this divided, fractional point of view, can only give rise to a fragmented result. A fraction is a state of imbalance and imbalance can neither achieve nor create a state of equilibrium. We cannot possibly understand the greater by the lesser. Fractions cause insecurity, suffering and a lack of plenitude. However, this feeling of lack originates in the forefeeling of plenitude and is intuitively conscious of it. Desire or lack lead back to their source. If there were no reminder, nor intuition of its origin, there could be no desire. This is where we need a master to point out to us that all objects point the way back to our true being."
"What we call the Self is not a soul-like thing, a state, it is the uninterrupted flow of life. We cannot apprehend it with the faculties we use every day such as impressions, feelings or memory, which belong to the fractional, objective point of view. We cannot think it because we are it. In the silence that is beatitude, directed energies such as concepts of time, space and the individual memory leave no trace. Things are lost in consciousness but consciousness is not lost in them. Thus activities go on and we remain firmly established in our true being."
"Something that is happening at the present moment, or something you remember, both appear within awareness. When you think of the present moment it is already part of the past. So all your qualifications and feelings about life are already past. Problems, weariness, boredom, depression stem only from the mistaken notion of taking ourselves for a certain person with certain ideas, a particular background, etc. Our difficulties come when our projections into the future in the hope of attaining some result are thwarted. We choose the results and goals we think best but it is a choice entirely dependent on our likes and dislikes, our personal conditioning, our attitudes. Thus, no matter how many objects we collect, how much accumulated learning or experience, we are inevitably locked into the round of pleasure and suffering. Only when we live in our wholeness, free from the person, free from all goals, preference and choice, can there be a full expression of life. When we live without qualifying we live in the moment, the eternal present “now.” Here, in the absence of thoughts of the past and longings for the future, we are in our fullness. From fullness flows love and all actions come out of love."
"Regarding Yoga, Yoga is an Indian system, a discipline completely founded on duality. This dual system can never bring you to the non-dual non-state. It can, however, bring you to see that you are in a dual system and in seeing it you are out of it. But I was introduced to another, unorthodox, way of seeing yoga when I met a swami in India in the 1950’s and asked him what he understood by “yoga.” He gave an answer that astonished me; he said, “It means sitting right.” Then he added “walking right and right doing.” For him, yoga was not about asanas and kundalini, it meant sitting according to the chair and acting according to the situation! So we can say that from the ultimate point of view, letting life flow in your alertness and being adequate in all circumstances are exactly the same."
"In everyday life we rarely give sensations time to make themselves felt. We prematurely intervene, conceptualizing and qualifying them. Perceptions and concepts cannot exist simultaneously and we tend to cut the perception short before it has fully flourished."
"This sitting is a laboratory for exploring the motive to want to meditate, for finding the entity who is looking for god, peace, happiness. As long as you have not discovered the nature of the meditator you will continue to sit and look for it. But eventually you will see that the meditator can never find peace, god or happiness because it belongs to the mind, to the intellect. When this is seen, and it happens suddenly, there is no dynamism “to meditate:’ All that remains is presence where no one is present to anything."
"The world you perceive is none other than a figment of the imagination founded on memory, fear, anxiety and desire. You have locked yourself away within this world."
"You cannot expect reality to appear, for it ever is. Events appear and disappear. Never forget the passing character of all experience, this is all you need to do and the door to grace will open before you. As soon as opinions and reactions such as “I like, I don’t like” intervene, you have fallen into the personal habit and you weave a web around yourself and lose sight of your true nature. Feelings of antipathy and sympathy lead you to turn your back on the Self. Your ideas of change, progress, better and worse are fractional and personal. When you look at the world from wholeness the world will change in you. You are the world."
"It is a poetic formulation which betrays residues of belief in a past incarnation. Of course there is no past incarnation because there is no past. As long as you take yourself for somebody there is incarnation."
"Truth, that which needs no agent to be known, is inconceivable. It cannot be thought, it can only be lived."
"Your true nature transcends the mind and body. This is why the question “Who am I” can never be answered. It has no hold on you: all terms of reference slide away and you awake to all-answering silence."
"In this lies the meaning of the Zen saying: First there are mountains, then there are no mountains, then there are mountains again. First the mountains are objects and are called real by the ignorant. Then they are not seen as objects because the subject/object relationship evaporates. But then from the global view they are seen again, not as object mountains but as expressions of oneness. The mountains now appear within totality."
"First of all you must realize that nobody lives, there is just life. It is the mistaken belief that there is a personality alive which drives you to look for security in objects, to maintain a feeling of continuity, to try and dominate life. The idea of being the doer of your actions is the one and only pitfall preventing you from really living. Life is free, without fear, it follows its natural course. Attune yourself to life, be one with it."
"Believing oneself to be somebody, an independent person, objectifying, projecting, are all objects amongst others, they are pure imagination. Projection is but a fraction of the whole. Taking decisions and thinking from this divided, fractional point of view, can only give rise to a fragmented result. A fraction is a state of imbalance and imbalance can neither achieve nor create a state of equilibrium. We cannot possibly understand the greater by the lesser. Fractions cause insecurity, suffering and a lack of plenitude. However, this feeling of lack originates in the forefeeling of plenitude and is intuitively conscious of it. Desire or lack lead back to their source. If there were no reminder, nor intuition of its origin, there could be no desire. This is where we need a master to point out to us that all objects point the way back to our true being."
"What we call the Self is not a soul-like thing, a state, it is the uninterrupted flow of life. We cannot apprehend it with the faculties we use every day such as impressions, feelings or memory, which belong to the fractional, objective point of view. We cannot think it because we are it. In the silence that is beatitude, directed energies such as concepts of time, space and the individual memory leave no trace. Things are lost in consciousness but consciousness is not lost in them. Thus activities go on and we remain firmly established in our true being."
"Something that is happening at the present moment, or something you remember, both appear within awareness. When you think of the present moment it is already part of the past. So all your qualifications and feelings about life are already past. Problems, weariness, boredom, depression stem only from the mistaken notion of taking ourselves for a certain person with certain ideas, a particular background, etc. Our difficulties come when our projections into the future in the hope of attaining some result are thwarted. We choose the results and goals we think best but it is a choice entirely dependent on our likes and dislikes, our personal conditioning, our attitudes. Thus, no matter how many objects we collect, how much accumulated learning or experience, we are inevitably locked into the round of pleasure and suffering. Only when we live in our wholeness, free from the person, free from all goals, preference and choice, can there be a full expression of life. When we live without qualifying we live in the moment, the eternal present “now.” Here, in the absence of thoughts of the past and longings for the future, we are in our fullness. From fullness flows love and all actions come out of love."
"Regarding Yoga, Yoga is an Indian system, a discipline completely founded on duality. This dual system can never bring you to the non-dual non-state. It can, however, bring you to see that you are in a dual system and in seeing it you are out of it. But I was introduced to another, unorthodox, way of seeing yoga when I met a swami in India in the 1950’s and asked him what he understood by “yoga.” He gave an answer that astonished me; he said, “It means sitting right.” Then he added “walking right and right doing.” For him, yoga was not about asanas and kundalini, it meant sitting according to the chair and acting according to the situation! So we can say that from the ultimate point of view, letting life flow in your alertness and being adequate in all circumstances are exactly the same."
June 3, 2014
Out of all the Jean Klein books, I like this one the most. Each chapter has a talk, which is followed by questions (of no particular order or related topic). There are some very clear descriptions and insights regarding self-inquiry, direct experience and nonduality in general. However, it would probably suit those already experienced with this path, and as more of a 'confirmation' supplement, rather than a beginners book. There isn't much of practical value here, and one needs to be comfortable with JK's often vague or poetic way of describing things. A good read for the 'already initiated'.
December 30, 2018
While Jean Klein wrote many good descriptions of how non-duality is practiced, I stumbled over his ego a couple of times. First, Sanskrit mantras such as the 12 syllable one I was given, are very carefully taught by the guru so the student does achieve peace while saying this. Jean Klein maintained that very few people say their mantra correctly and therefore most people do not derive any benefit??? Where did he get that? And his statement that yoga does not lead to realization of non-duality, that it is a strictly dual path going nowhere, is another leap from reality. Yoga has been practiced for thousands of years because it does lead to non-duality realization just as The Bhagavad Gita states. Vedanta teaches yoga practice. When did he start assuming that tried-and-true methods of teaching Oneness are incorrect? I gather he believes it is only his teaching that is really correct which is not a good conclusion for a spiritual teacher. I was saddened by these 2 maligning passages of age-old teachings, but there were many parts of his writing that contained memorable sentences of this Vedic state.
September 22, 2011
I think this is one of those books I need to read again. The subject matter is subtle - enquiring through direct experience into the nature of our own consciousness - and it takes a certain receptivity and quietness of mind to appreciate where the author is coming from. Some parts of the dialogue are wonderful and clarifying, explaining aspects of the Vedanta approach in plain English.
My main critique of the book is in the editing. This is a collection of dialogues put together. The same essential point is therefore often made many times and there isn't an obviou8s order or progression. I felt it could have been better arranged.
One to read slowly and receptively - then a few sparks of illumination arise.
My main critique of the book is in the editing. This is a collection of dialogues put together. The same essential point is therefore often made many times and there isn't an obviou8s order or progression. I felt it could have been better arranged.
One to read slowly and receptively - then a few sparks of illumination arise.
September 14, 2018
Klein was gifted, as in this book, at using a minimum of words for a maximum of effect. This is the second of his books I have read, and much enjoyed and was inspired by them both.
January 27, 2023
In my (assuming i exist) top ten of all-time and definitely a top 20 book for finders and seekers of the effulgent supreme self
Two thumbs up, but not in an objective fashion
Two thumbs up, but not in an objective fashion
March 11, 2022
Another amazing read for any being awakening or on the path to realization. The book is in a question and answer format. The chapters were perfect to pace out the reading and let messages sink in. It would be a wonderful book to use daily too and just open at a ‘random’ page, read the question at hand, reflect and move on.
I believe 4 months ago I wouldn’t have made it past the first few pages as I wouldn’t have been able to grasp the essence. Beautiful to see the journey I’ve embarked on and how today the words had an easy flow, the answers felt right and I found many points of validation within and with previous teachings as well as newer learnings to integrate
I believe 4 months ago I wouldn’t have made it past the first few pages as I wouldn’t have been able to grasp the essence. Beautiful to see the journey I’ve embarked on and how today the words had an easy flow, the answers felt right and I found many points of validation within and with previous teachings as well as newer learnings to integrate
July 10, 2012
Keep re-reading as it supports my meditation practice.
March 26, 2020
Jean Klein’s sharing about awakening is excellent. I appreciate the simplicity and clarity of his writing.
I give this book only 4 stars, not 5, because at times his writing is long and complicated. However, many of the questions are clearly from people who are trying to think through and intellectually understand what Klein’s saying. So Klein answers in a way that will make sense to the questioner’s level of understanding. A simpler answer might be too simple and therefore not helpful.
One of my favorite quotes from the book is: “The only way out is to simply observe.”
I give this book only 4 stars, not 5, because at times his writing is long and complicated. However, many of the questions are clearly from people who are trying to think through and intellectually understand what Klein’s saying. So Klein answers in a way that will make sense to the questioner’s level of understanding. A simpler answer might be too simple and therefore not helpful.
One of my favorite quotes from the book is: “The only way out is to simply observe.”
November 29, 2022
Precise
Jean Klein writes with an anatomical precision pointing to our True Nature, that of Pure Being, Pure Awareness and Ultimate Freedom.
I've read a number of "Enlightenment" books, but none so precise, on-point, without vagaries, and even as if he has the gift of scholasticism, but without the negative connotations of that word.
I found this book matter-of-fact, clear, concise, and worth re-reading to really solidify the message.
Encouraged to read other of his works (revelations)!
Jean Klein writes with an anatomical precision pointing to our True Nature, that of Pure Being, Pure Awareness and Ultimate Freedom.
I've read a number of "Enlightenment" books, but none so precise, on-point, without vagaries, and even as if he has the gift of scholasticism, but without the negative connotations of that word.
I found this book matter-of-fact, clear, concise, and worth re-reading to really solidify the message.
Encouraged to read other of his works (revelations)!
December 7, 2020
otro gran libro de Klein. Lastima que las conferencias no esten datadas. Uno de los pocos seres, junto con el linaje de Nisargadatta que muestran claramente el no estado y como reconocerlo y no se encallan ni confunden con estados elevados, ademas con lenguaje adaptado a occidente , tomando loe elementos justos del tantra y del vedanta y desechando los degenerados , supersticiosos o culturales, religiosos y etnicos que pueden confundir o causar rechazo
March 2, 2019
Simple. Direct. Clear.
As clear a pointing toward true nature as it gets. Read each line slowly. Take your time. Don't rush. Allow these words to penetrate your ego to reveal the truth within.
As clear a pointing toward true nature as it gets. Read each line slowly. Take your time. Don't rush. Allow these words to penetrate your ego to reveal the truth within.
December 19, 2017
Simple yet profound
Soothing words that walk the truth within each of us up So grateful for such clarity and simplicity look no further the answer lies within
Soothing words that walk the truth within each of us up So grateful for such clarity and simplicity look no further the answer lies within
March 28, 2020
Truth
Consciousness speaks, verily. Only the truth in each sentence. Profound. Reading itself, with reflection and internalization, is the sadhana. Grateful.
Consciousness speaks, verily. Only the truth in each sentence. Profound. Reading itself, with reflection and internalization, is the sadhana. Grateful.
February 4, 2021
Ear Opening
Very interesting take on the truth. Starting to read it again while the ideas are still fresh. This book has caused a shift.
Very interesting take on the truth. Starting to read it again while the ideas are still fresh. This book has caused a shift.
April 24, 2024
a must read
I’ll read it over and over. A clear explanation of no duality. Can’t wait to read more of the authors works.
I’ll read it over and over. A clear explanation of no duality. Can’t wait to read more of the authors works.
August 9, 2021
“Only in the complete absence of yourself is there total presence.” - Jean Klein, I Am.
Currently reading
January 2, 2008Always interested in the non-dual Masters. I read this stuff almost exclusively early in the mornings and very slowly. My first encounter with Klein.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews