Jean Klein: When you become more and more familiar with the art of observation, you will first see that you do not observe; when you see that you do Not observe, you are immediately out of the process. There is a moment, a kind of intuition, when you see yourself free from all will, free from all representation; you feel yourself in this fullness, in this moment beyond thought. It is mainly through observation and attention that you get to feel what you are fundamentally.
Stephan Bodian: How would you describe liberation?
JK: I'll give you a short answer. It is to be free from yourself, free from the image you think you are. That's liberation. It's such a blast to see that you are nothing, and then live completely in harmony with that nothingness. The body approach that I teach is pretty much a beautiful pretext, because in a way the body is like a musical instrument that needs to be tuned.
SB: And we tune in to play on it the song of our own naughtiness.
JK: Exactly. Liberation means living freely in the beauty of your absence. You see, in a moment, there's nothing seen or seen. Then you live it.
SB: This is what you refer to as living free from psychological memory.
JK: Of course.
SB: Is it really possible to live in the world in this state of total openness and freedom of our own identity, doing the things we do — leading very busy lives, taking care of family, etc?
JK: Yes. You can live in a family perfectly without the image of being a father or a mother, a lover or a husband. You can perfectly educate your children not to be something, and have a loving relationship with them as a friend, rather than as a father.
SB: Do you agree that we have to be somebody before we can be nobody?.
JK: First you have to see how you work. And you'll see that you function like somebody, like a person. You live constantly by choice. You totally live in the psychological structure of "like" and "dislike" that brings you affliction. You've got to see that. If you identify with your personality, it means you identify as your memory, because personality is memory, which I call psychological memory. In this view, this natural abandonment, the personality disappears. And when you live in this nothingness, something completely different emerges. Instead of seeing life based on the projections of your personality, things appear in your life as they are, as facts. And these appearances naturally bring their own solution. You are no longer identified with your personality, with psychological memory, although your functional memory continues. Instead, there is a cosmic personality, a trans-personality, that appears and disappears when you need it. You are nothing but a channel, responding accordingly.
