nice bit from Jean Klein

[Guest guest]

Student: When I'm sitting in the garden, or on an airplane, there is a sense

of...there is consciousness, stillness. And thoughts pass through, and

people, and there is no problem.

 

Jean Klein: Because in stillness, in consciousness, there is nobody. For

whom could it be a problem? The problem appears the moment you establish a

personal relationship with the situation. When the situation is convenient

for you, you identify yourself with it. And when it is not, you push it

away. Convenient and not convenient belong to the mind. Alors, what is the

question?

 

Student: The question is, in stillness there is no question. In activity,

as the day goes on and one speaks with others or reads or does other

activities, there seems to be an identification which takes place.

Sometimes suddenly there is an awareness that identification has taken

place. And then there is stillness again. My question is that it seems so

strange that identification takes place after the fact. I don't understand

why that movement continues. Sometimes it seems to be a habit, sometimes it

seems to be something else. Because the stillness seems to be the natural

state.

 

Jean Klein: In other words, how can we be this stillness permanently?

 

Student: Yes.

 

Jean Klein: It is only when you see the mechanism, how you function, that

you become aware that you take yourself for somebody. The person comes into

the play; the mind splits into positive and negative, pleasure and pain, and

so on and the reflex comes up to be somebody, to take yourself for what you

are not. Then there is object to object relationship, relationship from

personality to personality. Then there is a problem, because this object

lives for security, recognition, and the need to be loved. There is only

the asking, demanding. At first you will see the conflict, the

identification and, at the end, you will catch it before the reflex comes

up.

>From "Transmssion of the Flame".