by Betty Camhi & Gurubaksh Rai
Adyashanti writes, “Sunyata was the rarest of incarnations. A naturally born enlightened being of singular uniqueness and inventiveness. The story of his life is itself a profound spiritual teaching and a living example of how awakened spirit moves through the challenges of life."
Born in Denmark, in 1890, Sunyata was from birth, utterly without desire, ambition and ego. Thus, the name "Sunyata"—and description of "rare-born mystic"—was given to him years later in India by the revered sage, Sri Ramana Maharshi.
A lover of silence and solitude, Sunyata remained untouched by the common worldly conditioning that entraps so many. His fateful journeys, inspiring friendships, and the spiritual wisdom shared in these collected writings, all reflect the soul of an authentic seer.
Sunyata's experiences and musings are ever relevant, for they concern something that is of value to all—the illumination and liberation of the human spirit.
Download a PDF extract: Dancing with the Void
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Paperback | ISBN: 978-1-919036-00-7 | Size: 5.5” x 8.5” | Page count: 188 | First published 1996
A new edition of this spiritual classic with a preface by Stephan Bodian, friend of the late author and the original editor of Collision with the Infinite.
Stephan writes: “Since the book first appeared in 1996, spiritual awakening and the nondual perspective it reveals have become increasingly popular among seekers who realize the limitations of progressive practices and want more immediate access to the limitless openness and freedom of their essential nature. At the same time, a number of teachers have emerged who point directly to this truth and invite their students to inquire into their experience, rest in awareness, and realize the truth for themselves.
Long before these resources were readily available, Suzanne had a powerful awakening that completely obliterated the illusion of a separate self. But in 1982 she could find no one to guide her through the process, and as a result she spent years in fear, wandering from therapist to therapist, desperately trying to cure herself of being no one, because no one in her world knew what to make of her experience. After a dozen years in the wilderness of what she describes as a spiritual wintertime, she emerged into the radiant springtime of full nondual realization. Because she awoke without a teacher or tradition, and her understanding was so complete, her detailed descriptions of how the vastness functions through these body-minds to realize itself in form are original, and fresh from their source.
I’m thrilled to have this spiritual classic back in print, after years of languishing in obscurity. Now I can begin recommending it to my students once again and share with them the clarity of her vision. As I say in the afterword, Suzanne never pretended to be a teacher, preferring instead to call herself a describer of what it’s like to live as the vastness. In this profound and articulate memoir, she chronicles her journey, and in the process transmits the wisdom that revealed itself to her.”
Editorial reviews
“Collision with the Infinite is like a diamond on fire with living spirit, and a testament to the strange and wonderful ways that spiritual awakening can unpredictably burst forth in any one of us at any time. Read this book as what it has always been, a modern-day revelation of how spiritual presence came alive in one extraordinarily ordinary woman, and how she embodied it like the sky embodies a shooting star.”
—Adyashanti
Download a PDF extract: Collision with the Infinite
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Paperback | ISBN: 978-1-919036-01-4 | Size: 5.5” x 8.5” | Page count: 188 | First published 1996
Louis Brawley met UG Krishnamurti in 2002 and spent the following five years travelling with him in the USA, India and Europe keeping a record of this remarkable non-teacher and documenting his own inner struggles as his ideas about life, love and Enlightenment were constantly tossed around and demolished. Louis fell into the role of foil and sidekick to UG’s bizarre interactions with his friends and audience and, as UG’s health deteriorated, he became his informal caregiver.
Louis Brawley doesn’t use honeyed platitudes to tell the story of a sage and his devoted follower; instead he tells an often unflattering story of his own struggles and shortcomings and the dynamic uncertainties of life with a man who “tore apart everything human beings have built up inside and out for centuries.”
Goner will teach you the meaning of the phrase 'paradoxical truth'. UG Krishnamurti gave up everything for truth, but delighted in ridiculous fabrications; he was a teacher who refused to teach, a man who mocked do-gooders but was deeply kind; he was chaste but foul mouthed, he was a man who decried the supernatural … yet there were strange coincidences around him. “… the way he lived, his living quarters and his mode of expression were one continuous movement, a three dimensional, living book of teaching. If you were observant, you could learn from him on contact with no need for explanation.”
Download a PDF extract: Goner
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Paperback | ISBN: 978-1-919036-02-1 | Size: 6” x 9” | Page count: 390 | First published 2011
This book is a compilation of Volumes 1 – 10 of Jean Klein´s journal Listening, published by the Jean Klein Foundation on a limited basis between 1989-1995.
Each volume of Listening is arranged around a theme, for example, Love and Marriage, The Guru and Disciple, and includes a previously unpublished private discussion or a transcription of a public talk with Jean Klein. Listening also includes one question answered in depth (Your Question) and a brief description of Jean’s unique approach to the role of the body in his teaching. For each volume Jean selected an extract from his own favourite literature and poetry, covering many ages and cultures, which complemented the depth and richness of his own expression.
Most of Jean Klein’s teaching was simply through his presence and through question and answer dialogues where he “answered the questioner, not the question”. Jean emphasised the direct approach to liberation, an approach free from emphasis on the attainment of progressively subtle psycho-somatic states.
Download a PDF extract: The Book of Listening
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Paperback | ISBN: 978-1-919036-07-6 | Size: 6” x 9” | Page count: 392 | First published 2008
In the late 1980s Jean Klein was invited to give seminars in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. In this isolated, peaceful mountain setting a small group of students gathered with their life questions. The conversations of the 1988 seminar were transcribed and printed as a pamphlet entitled Mount Madonna Dialogues, but it was felt that the contents of all of the seminars were rich and rewarding enough to be gathered into a more substantial publication. This book is the result.
Time and timelessness meet in these dialogues that focus on the very root of human experience—that pointless point in which all apparent dualities are reconciled and all that lives has forever lived. Here in these still waters says Jean Klein is the essence and the All—that which neither knows nor needs the other in order to define itself. These dialogues are rich with meaning yet they speak in a language that is as simple direct and inspiring as the pointless point itself.
Read an excerpt: Living Truth
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Paperback | ISBN: 978-1-919036-11-3 | Size: 5.5” x 8.5” | Page count: 278 | First published 1995
“We have come to satisfy the inner need to know ourselves, to share our oneness, to hear directly what life is. To receive life one must be open to it. Life can only be understood by life. This means that the being open is life itself.
During these meetings, be open to the openness, allow yourself to be deeply impregnated by the sayings that come directly from life. To be impregnated, the mind must be free from wrong knowing, that is, free from imposing an independent existence on all that is objective. Nothing that can be known has existence in itself. It depends on a knower. The knower is consciousness. Only consciousness never changes. We must find out what never changes in us.”
Beyond Knowledge is a crystallization in word-form of this timeless wisdom. To read these dialogues is to enter into a scale of inquiry and clarity that knows no compromise. It carries one through to the end of thought and to the beginning of self-knowledge.
Read an Excerpt: Beyond Knowledge
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Paperback | ISBN: 978-1-919036-08-3 | Size: 5.5” x 8.5” | Page count: 138 | First published 1994
“I’m musical. I’m tall. I’m short. I’m American. I am French. I am Jewish. I am Christian. I am black. I’m gay. I am celibate. I’m depressed. I’m happy. I’m married. I am this. I am that. “
We know ourselves only in relation to something. We only know a qualified “I.” When we say “I am” the mind demands “What am I? I am what?” This book is about the “I am” prior to all qualification, what we are before the intrusion of the mind.
“The root of all desires is the one desire: 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.”
Read an excerpt: I Am
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Paperback | ISBN: 978-1-919036-06-9 | Size: 5.5” x 8.5” | Page count: 168 | First published 1989
In the autumn of 1990 students from around the world gathered at Delphi to study with Jean Klein. In this place, once sacred to Apollo, they discussed Advaita (nondualism) with one of its most dedicated exponents. Transcriptions of these lively sessions become the basis for a profound inquiry into our real nature. Unavailable for over fifteen years, this new edition of Open to the Unknown from Manonash Books brings these important dialogues back into print.
Download a PDF extract: Open to the Unknown
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ISBN: 978-1-919036-09-0 | Size: 5.5” x 8.5” | Page count: 132 | First published 1992
Dialogues between Jean Klein and his students and friends, during seminars in the United States and Europe, form the text of this illuminating book. In many different settings and circumstances, Jean Klein casts and re-casts the teaching of Advaita, addressing each individual in his or her own uniqueness, while at the same time demonstrating the oneness of being. These far-reaching exchanges—exploring almost every aspect of self-knowledge—show that it is only through living fully in “not knowing” that we can awaken to our real nature: the “I AM” of pure consciousness.
In addition, Jean Klein discusses for the first time his early life, his meetings with his teacher in India, and the moment of his awakening. The result is an inspiring prologue that not only gives us an intimate look at this remarkable teacher and the discoveries he made in his search for truth, but also makes clear the immediate accessibility of these discoveries to every earnest seeker.
Read an excerpt: Transmission of the Flame
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ISBN: 978-1-919036-10-6 | Size: 5.5” x 8.5” | Page count: 298 | First published 1990
This beautiful small book contains quotations by Jean Klein addressing a wide range of subjects and questions. The quotations have been selected from the ten published volumes of his teachings by Billy Doyle, a noted teacher of Kashmiri Yoga and long-time student of Dr. Klein.
Jean Klein was a pioneering Western teacher of Advaita whose influence, via distinguished students of his work, is still strongly felt in our own time. His teaching belongs to the direct approach which points straight to our real nature. It is not concerned with progression, mental activity, spiritual achievement or any form of striving. On the contrary, Dr. Klein’s work is concerned with a profound letting go. It takes us directly to what is beyond the mind, to inner stillness and peace, beyond the limited psychological, to in-finite expansion, to pure love, in other words, to being what we fundamentally are.
The book features an Introduction by Emma Edwards, the original compiler and editor of Jean Klein’s published works.
Read an excerpt: Invitation to Silence
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ISBN: 978-1-919036-12-0 | Size: 5” x 8” | Page count: 86 | First published 2025
A new edition of one of the most consistently popular titles by Dr.Klein, The Ease of Being is a collection of dialogues with seekers at seminars held in Europe and the United States.
Questioner: I’ve come to hear you for the first time, so would you tell me about your philosophy of life?
Jean Klein: Let’s begin by first looking at why you have come here today. As you search for the reason, you may discover a feeling of inner deficiency in yourself, a kind of hunger which you have come here to try to satisfy. So before going on let’s understand that there is really nothing to attain. The moment you are completely convinced of this, there is a halt. All energy previously expended towards some end returns to its origin, and you are brought back to your presence. At first this may be a presence to something, because it is in the nature of the eyes to see and the ears to hear. But when seeing and hearing become free from motive, end and intention, they no longer belong only to the eyes and ears. Unqualified attention is multi-dimensional: the whole body hears, and you may feel, although not in a sensorial way, that hearing and seeing appear in you, in your global presence. In the end even hearing and seeing dissolve into this presence and you are one with it.
Ultimately there is no longer a subject who sees nor an object which is seen. There is only oneness.
This is what I come here to communicate. Identity with this presence, this wholeness, this fullness, is meditation, but there is no meditator nor object upon which to meditate. This, then, does not belong to a philosophy; it is your real nature.
Edited by Emma Edwards. Featuring a new foreword by Shakti Caterina Maggi
Read an excerpt: The Ease of Being
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ISBN: 978-1-919036-14-4 | Size: 6” x 9” | Page count: 143 | First published 1984
In his well-known, clear and lucid style, Jean Klein offers a book that is fundamentally about ourselves, about our own reality, and about how we can start to realise our true nature, our inner stillness and wholeness.
Questioner: In certain situations in life I feel blocked by a fear which prevents me from acting. How can I be free from this obstacle?
Jean Klein: First free yourself from the word, the concept, ‘fear’. It is loaded with memory. Face only the perception. Accept the sensation completely. When the personality who judges and controls is completely absent, when there is no
longer a psychological relationship with the sensation, it is really welcomed and unfolds. Only in welcoming without a welcomer can there be real transformation.
We are in essence one with all existence; when we truly observe ourselves there is ultimately no observer, only observation— awareness.
Edited by Emma Edwards
Read an excerpt: Who Am I: The Sacred Quest
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ISBN: 978-1-919036-03-8 | Size: 5.5” x 8.5” | Page count: 200 | First published 1988
This book records some key interchanges from discussions in which all kinds of subjects such as words, language, yoga and personal problems become the temporary focus of conversation, only to be seen as no more than crutches or pointers— ‘excuses’—which may lead us on to knowledge of the Self.
Within us there is this profound stillness waiting to be received. In order to open ourselves to it, can we abandon our habitual references to the past, recognise how our projections into the future are incessantly striving for security, and live intimately instead with whatever the present moment may unfold?
Read an excerpt: Be Who You Are
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Paperback | ISBN: 978-1-919036-04-5 | Size: 5.5” x 8.5” | Page count: 108 | First published 1978
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