Jean Klein This Silence: “… All that exists appears in tranquility and dissolves in silence and tranquility … ~ Jean Klein
Indeed … everything arises from – and dissolves back into – silence …
But what is this silence?
This is what Jean Klein explores at one of his gatherings held in Provence, France (September 1989). The venue was an old monastery La Saint Baume : a place imbued with “… an objective silence which echoes the silence within …” …
Klein posits that this silence is the “living backdrop” of all experience. The dialogue ranges from “trying to be still” to the disappearance of the witness, from the body’s attunement to the transmission that “lights your flame.” Klein’s answers keep returning us from concepts to immediacy—silence not as a state we achieve but as our nature, already present between thoughts, beneath movement, and prior to choice.
The transcript of the gathering is available in Klein’s Transmission of the Flame …
We have been reviewing many such gatherings to explore Jean’s answers to similar questions – that are practical everyday concerns. The transcripts of these gatherings are available as a series of his books … all of which we are previewing – via chapter excerpts with our preambles – on an ongoing basis:
… starting with his classic Book of Listening … in a 5-part series … and
… then Living Truth which is ongoing with 2-parts so far … and
… then Who Am I … which is also ongoing with 2-parts so far …
… then Beyond Knowledge … which is ongoing with 1-part so far …
… then Be Who You Are … which is also ongoing with 1-part so far …
… and, more recently The Ease of Being … which is also ongoing with 1-part so far …
So, today, we start part 1 of a multi-part series on Transmission of the Flame …where we offer an excerpt that traces this arc: the confusion of effort, the taste of stillness, the question of attainment, embodiment, and how our actions refer back to a ground that does not move … with questions like :
… Is this silence a vacuity?
… Does there exist a silence of the body?
… Is this acceptance which comes from silence detached from all emotional feeling? Should we just live the silence?
… and more …
All italicized text (except noted otherwise) below is from Transmission of the Flame by Jean Klein and is published here with the publisher New Sarum Press‘ generous permission. Scroll to the bottom for a free downloadable Table of Contents. You can purchase the book at Amazon.
Jean Klein This Silence …
The silence we speak of is beyond noise and quiet. When you speak of silence, you think of noise. But in the silence of which we speak any reference to quiet or noise is cancelled. It is a silence beyond all complementarity. And you live this silence in identity, not in duality but in oneness. When thought is completely absorbed in you, as happens from time to time, when it is completely exhausted, when there is nothing concrete left in thinking, then you live this silence, you are attuned to it. It cannot be objectified or experienced. It is not a state one enters and leaves. It is the light, the presence, the background of all expression, of all appearing and disappearing. There are many moments in the day when this silence is there, free from all activity. But as you are so accustomed to living in a subject-object relationship, you take this silence for an absence, an absence of something, an absence of activity. But this absence is the real presence.
Is this silence a vacuity?
A vacuity means vacant, absence of object. When there is absence of objects, there is plenitude. Fullness. Silence.
Silence is also manifest in movement.
Movement refers to silence. Everything refers to silence. It is only through this reference to silence that things are true; otherwise, they are false, abstract.
Who were the saints, like St. Francis of Assisi and Meister Eckhart?
Francis of Assisi had integrated knowingly the silence, lived in silence. He actualized the silence and we too are also this silence. But we are silence waiting to be actualized, we are potentially the silence. That is the only difference, to live in potentiality or actuality.
How can one at the same time cultivate the depths of body-feeling, and fan the flames in ourselves for the ultimate?
In this ultimate desire, our body knows its right place. It belongs to the totality. This ultimate desire is not a fixation, it is an expansion. We can feel it bodily. The person, the “me,” is a fixation, a contraction. The desire for the ultimate leads us already into expansion, relaxation. Then, in a certain way, everything we do, everything we think is carried by this organic feeling of gentleness, vacuity, expansion.
Real communication is in silence where there is plurality. The personality belongs to individuality, singularity, but what we are functionally belongs to plurality. We are all the same, the same essence. In this silence there is at the same time communication and non-communication.
All our activities always refer to this background, this silence. All expressions of beauty, of life, refer to this silence.
Does there exist a silence of the body?
The body only has reality in silence. It has no reality in itself. It depends constantly on consciousness-silence. There is no reality outside of consciousness-silence. The body awakes in the morning in silence. Consciousness is. The body wakes up and with it the world. There is no world before the body wakes up. The world is only our corporeality, our five senses and the sixth sense, conception. There must be a body to perceive and conceive.
When you understand really well the word acceptance, the accent is not on what we accept, it is placed completely on the accepting itself. And in this comprehension of the word acceptance, when you feel it really, there is a total letting-go. Welcome is even a better word than accept.
Is this acceptance which comes from silence detached from all emotional feeling? Should we just live the silence?
We are right to live this silence when we have discovered the limits of thought, when we have seen that it cannot be thought, that it does not come into the realm of thought. Then there is a complete letting-go.
Stay tuned for more … Jean Klein’s teachings from Transmission of the Flame …
All italicized text (except noted otherwise) below is from Transmission of the Flame by Jean Klein and is published here with the publisher New Sarum Press‘ generous permission. Scroll to the bottom for a free downloadable Table of Contents. You can purchase the book at Amazon.
And, may you experience the gifts of … this silence … in your everyday life … and …
May you remain safe and healthy.
Images (edited & Logo added): 1 & Featured) Rhododendron flowers in mountains. by AndrewMayovskyy, 2) Transmission of the Flame cover image from New Sarum Press, 3) Narrow alley lit up at night with street lamps. Santillana del Mar, Santander. by josemiguelsangar, 4) Tropical sunset on the beach. by vrstudio, 5) Dawn at Black sea. Morning seascape with mountains. Ukraine. Crimea by beerlogoff2. All except 2) purchased from 123rtf and/or depositphotos. All are for use only on our website/social channels (these images are not permitted to be shared separate from this post).
