Who Am I? by Jean Klein

Author:Jean Klein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spirituality/Philosophy
Publisher: New Harbinger Publications
Published: 2013-05-02T04:00:00+00:00

THE ART OF LISTENING

Free from selection

Q. You say that when the body-mind is freed of psychological interference it comes spontaneously to listening which is the tool of self-inquiry. Would you talk more about this?

A. The discovery of your real nature cannot come about through memory. It comes through multidimensional attention, which occurs naturally when memory is absent. This innate attention is listening. When you are in listening you feel yourself in vastness, in immensity, where there is no listener or looker. Only in listening can the transmutation from having knowledge to knowing as being happen. Listening is an art with which you must become acquainted. It is being open to all the expressions of life. Life’s expressions are never repetitious. There may be analogy but there’s no repetition. See that apparent repetition is only memory. Listening is a welcoming of life without reference to the already known. Real discovery is only in the immediate moment itself. We can never comprehend the unknown through the known. We are educated to experience, to look with motive, to interpret, but we must explore the possibility of living as non-experience. This exploration takes place in non-reactional listening. In unconditioned listening we are open to all possibilities, and in the absence of restriction direct perception occurs.

Q. How can I become acquainted with the art of listening?

A. Only by living it, as a musician learns to listen by listening. There are no techniques, disciplines or ideas that you can substitute for listening itself. All these are sweets for the ego. The more you become acquainted with listening through listening, the freer you are of the self-image. The teaching is only to bring you back to listening. In listening there’s no listening to; you find yourself in openness, in the listening non-state itself.

Q. You say listening comes through listening. Could you be more explicit about what it actually is?

A. Listening is not a cerebral process. It is not a function. It is an open sensitivity free from anticipation, achievement or attainment. It is not an attitude one assumes nor is it confined to the ears, just as when you understand something and you say ‘I see’ it has nothing to do with the organs of sight.

Q. How can I come to this global sensitivity?

A. If you let your attention go to your ear, you’ll feel that it is constantly grasping. It is the same with the eye, the mind and all your organs. Let the grasping go and you will find your whole body is spontaneously an organ of sensitivity. The ear is merely a channel for this global sensation. It is not an end in itself. What is heard is also felt, seen, smelled, touched. Your five senses, intelligence and imagination are freed and come into play. You feel it as being completely expanded in space, without centre or border. The ego which is a contraction can find no hold in this presence and anxiety, like or dislike dissolve. You feel this wholeness without feeling it. You feel it but you cannot categorise it into any known feeling.

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