Jean Klein

“I met Wolter Keers. He absolutely didn't fit the image of a yoga teacher in my eyes. He smoked and drank whatever he felt like. Nevertheless I was taken by his erudition and insight… Wolter became a friend and teacher. My trip home began. To deepen this search Wolter introduced me to Jean Klein, an advaita-vedanta Guru who also gave instruction in Kashmir-yoga. I attended Jean Klein's seminars for twenty years in Holland, France and England.

Jean Klein was not only an advaita-vedanta teacher, but also a yogi who gave instruction in Kashmir-yoga. In Kashmir-yoga the classical yoga positions are carried out from the energy body. The energy body is the prana or etheric body that feeds and saturates the physical and mental bodies. The feeding, the prana, is in principle unconditioned, just like consciousness. The moment that the prana takes form within the physical or mental body it takes on the conditioning…

Probably for us westerners the direct path, the advaita-vedanta or jnana yoga appeals to us more, than the traditional 'step for step' route of body yoga… Jean Klein brought Kashmir-yoga from India to Europe. During his seminars Jean Klein gave instruction in Kashmir-yoga, pranayama, meditation and advaita-vedanta. Jean Klein was always very clear about the role of hatha-yoga seen from the advaita-vedanta point of view:

'Yoga can never bring you to enlightenment, but gives you a better point of departure. He meant by that this energetic form of yoga could develop a certain openness for 'the Truth' in the body. This openness can be felt in the physical body. But he also put body work in perspective. In answer to a question about why we actually did hatha-yoga during the seminar he answered jokingly: 'Just to pass the time.' He preferred to give the name body-awareness to hatha-yoga, he didn't love the word yoga very much: 'Yoga means connection, but connection between what and what?'

Jean Klein taught a direct, oriented towards experience, form of kashmiryoga. He really let us feel it. He taught us to explore the feeling of touch without the use of memory and then to experience the unconditioned energy body. In this way it is possible to experience the limitlessness of the body…

Whenever I went to one of Jean Klein's seminars I took along a suitcase full of questions; after a few days all the questions disappeared, pretty much all the questions; after a few days only one question remained: Who am I? It was impressive to be in Jean Klein's vicinity, a great clarity and rest came out of him. The approach (or method if you wish) of Jean Klein can perhaps be summarized in one word: Observe. We are accustomed to place the stress, the center of gravity on that which is observed, on objects. We are interested in objects because we think we can find happiness in them and also project unhappiness on them.

Jean Klein in his teachings directed our orientation of being to make an about turn, towards the inside. During the seminars he stimulated us continuously to witness consciously, during the yoga postures but also during the inner movements of thinking and feeling. I can still feel the patience and warmth with which he did that. Everything I have is thanks to his unconditional love…”

~ Johan van der Kooij

“Good company begins with yourself. A teacher does not see himself as a teacher. He or she gives without asking anything in return. He considers himself to be nothing, and in that way he sees to it that the nothing in you wakes up when he says: you are nothingness. That is real togetherness. That is perfect company.”

“My master always pointed out to me during our life together that all perceptions need an Ultimate Perceiver. The ultimate perceiver can never be the object of perception. Once false identification with the body is understood, we are led to the question ‘Who am I?’– and the one who asks is himself the vivid answer. The searcher is himself that which is sought. Then one morning, between deep sleep and awakening, there was a sudden vanishing of all the residues of ‘my persons’, each having believed themselves hitherto to be a doer, a sufferer, an enjoyer.

All this vanished completely, and I was seized in full consciousness by an all-penetrating light, without inside or outside. This was the awakening in Reality, in the I am… I knew myself in the actual happening, not as a concept, but as a being without localisation in time or space. In this non-state there was a freedom, full and objectless joy.”

~ “Jean Klein (1912 –1998) was a French mystic, spiritual teacher, and author on nonduality topics. Jean Klein was born in Berlin and spent his childhood in Brno and Prague. He studied musicology and medicine in Vienna and Berlin, becoming a physician. Having left Germany in 1933 for France, he secretly worked with the French Resistance in the Second World War. After the war, Klein again left for India to study Yoga and Advaita Vedanta for three years. During those three years he met a spiritual teacher of Advaita, “Panditji” (Pandit Veeraraghavachar Rao), and returned to the West to become a spiritual teacher himself. He died in 1998 in Santa Barbara, California. Several of his disciples, including Francis Lucille, went on to become spiritual teachers themselves” ~ Wikipedia

Photos ~ Jean Klein ~ Johan van der Kooij