About Jean Klein

by Andrew Rawlinson

(From The Book of Enlightened Masters: Western Teachers in Eastern Traditions, by

Andrew Rawlinson, copyright 1997 by Carus Publishing Company; published by
Open Court, Chicago and LaSalle, Illinois. ISBN 0-8126-9310-8)

Dr. Klein (this is how he is addressed in Britain so I follow the convention) presents
himself — though without fanfare — as someone who embodies the teaching that he
gives, namely, that one’s true nature is ‘ultimate awareness’ which exists
independently of any object of perception, including thoughts. This state is utterly
tranquil and self-contained. It has nothing to do with ‘names and forms’ or, to put it
another way, with space and time. It is not surprising, therefore, that it has radical
consequences for personal identity. Hence when someone said that they would like
to ask some persoanl questions, he replied,

“There’s no person to answer personal questions. I listen to your question and I

listen to the answer. The answer comes out of silence.” (The Ease of Being, 19)

But certain facts about his life are available. He was born around 1916 and spent his
childhood in Brno (in Czechoslovakia), Prague, and Vienna. He came from a
cultured background and several members of his family were good musicians. He
himself started to learn the violin at the age of seven and has been a talented player
all his life. He had what he calls “a strong urge for freedom” as a teenager. He read
Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche, and was especially influenced by Gandhi, whose
teaching of ahimsa/non-violence led him to become a vegetarian when he was 16.
He also read people like Coomaraswamy, Aurobindo, and Krishnamurti (though he
found Theosophy itself too sentimental). But the person who had the greatest impact
on him was Rene Guenon. Dr. Klein describes his reading of the The Symbolism of
the Cross (which, like all Guenon’s books, deals with metaphysics, cosmology, and
tradition) as a turning point (Transmission of the Flame, iv).

At the same time, he had experiences that confirmed what he had read. He
describes a “glimpse of oneness or self-awareness” that occurred when he was 17:

“I was waiting one warm afternoon for a train. The platform was deserted and the
landscape sleepy. It was silent. The train was late, and I waited without waiting, very
relaxed and free from all thinking. Suddenly a cock crowed and the unusual sound
made me aware of my silence. It was not the objective silence I was aware of, as
often happens when one is in a quiet place and a sudden sound throws into relief the
silence around. No, I was ejected into my own silence. I felt myself in awareness
beyond the sound or the silence. Subsequently, this feeling visited my several
times.” (Transmission of the Flame, iii)

He went on to become a doctor and outwardly lived an ordinary life. But there was
still “a lack of fulfillment”. Then he “felt a certain call to go to India” (ibid., vii) and
arrived there around 1950. He says that he was no looking for a guru. In fact, he had
no preconceptions of any kind — a central element in his teaching:

“…I was left with no reference to anything in my previous experience. In this

suspension of evaluation I was catapulted into an openness, a receptivity to
everything.” (The Ease of Being, ix)

But he did meet a teacher. I do not know the man’s name. Dr. Klein refers to him
simply as ‘Pandiji (sic) and says that ” I never asked personal questions and I never
spoke personally about him. It was a sacred relationship” (Transmission of the
Flame, xiv):

“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.” (Neither This Nor That I Am, vi)

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.” (ibid., vii)

This realization is regarded by those who have accepted Dr. Klein as their teacher as
‘total illumination’. It therefore makes him quite independent of his own teacher. But
he says that he had an “urge to communicate my experience to all other beings”
(ibid., viii) and his master suggested that he do so in Europe since he was himself
European. In several of his books, it is stated that he “was sent back to…teach
Vedanta” (for example, Neither This Nor That I Am, ix). He started teaching about
1960.

“People came to me. I have never taken myself for a teacher, so I never solicited
students. The teacher only appears when asked to teach.” (Transmission of the
Flame, xx)

Advaita is a well-established tradition in India, of course, with a long history and

many of the accretions that accumulate around any social organization. But Dr. Klein
is not interested in any of this. He acknowledges that he is in a lineage of teachers
“in a certain way.” “The way of approaching truth belongs to a certain current, but
there are no entities in a line…It is only accidentally that I call the current of my
teaching Advaita” (Transmission of the Flame, xxi, xxii).

Like all teachings that hold that our real nature is truth, what Dr. Klein says is
essentially simple:
“You are primal awareness. Life is only primal awarenss. Between two thoughts or
two perceptions you are. You know moments in your life when a thought completely
disappears into silence, but still you are.” (The Ease of Being, 13)

This primal awareness is that which underlies all other kinds of awareness.

“At first you may experience silent awareness only after the dissolution of perception,
but later you will be in the silence in both the presence and absence of objects.”
(ibid., 15)

Dr. Klein also calls this ultimate subject, the witness (ibid., 17) and the Self (ibid.,
63). And though it may sound very removed from ordinary life, in fact it is the
opposite because, no longer caught up in objects and therefore in desire and fear, it
is open and free. So its true nature is love.

“But when you take yourself for somebody, al relationships are from object to object,
man to woman, mother to son, personality to personality. And there is no
communication, no possibility for love.” (ibid., 63)

A natural question at this stage is, ‘If our true nature is free and loving, where does
everything else come from: attachment, desire, fear, the world itself?’ Answer:

“The world of names and forms is the result of mental activity. Ignorance (Avidya)
begins at the very moment when the ego takes names and forms to be separate
realities.” (Be As You Are, 15)

So how do we avoid identifying with the body and mind and all the objects that mind
projects? The first stage is what Dr. Klein calls listening (Be As You Are, 3). He
defines this as global awareness, which is not limited to any of the five senses (or
the mind):

“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 and touched. Your five senses, intelligence and imagination are freed
and come into play. You feel it is 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 and dislike dissolve.” (Who Am I?, 72)

But this is only the first step. It leads on to realization of the Self, “our true nature”
which “is reached by a complete elimination of the world of objects” (ibid., 70).

(the following is a footnote to the paragraph immediately preceding, but is included

here as a continuation of Rawlinson’s text:)

This “complete elimination of the world of objects” has consequences for cosmology
that are quite as radical as they are for personal identity… .Someone once asked
him what significance the world can have — in the sense in which Sri Aurobindo
(and, the questioner might have added, the Mother) uses the term lila, the divine
game of the Lord — if it is seen as unreal. Dr. Klein replied,

“He who aims at Ultimate Reality places no accent on the things of the world: it
would seem completely futile to him since he has ascertained the unreality of
things…The world is directed towards the perceiver, it celebrates the ultimate
perceiver. He who is established in the Self is in no way interested in theologies and
cosmologies. The construction of a cosmological hypothesis, such as the one which
looks upon the world as a divine game, is a mental hypothesis due to ignorance,
which does not understand the true nature of the Ultimate.” (Be As You Are, 87)

Elsewhere, Dr. Klein is unequivocal in his rejection of evolution (spiritual, not

physical):

“This notion of evolution is one of the most characteristic errors of modern

thought….It is the belief that more can come out of less, that better can be produced
by worse. Evolution in the strict meaning of the word, is only an unfolding, a passing
from what is implicit to that which is explicit, from what is not manifest to that which is
manifest. It produces nothing. It never produces, let alone creates. We cannot rely
on it in our search for salvation or liberation. Liberation is not a problem of evolution,
for no evolution can lead to liberation, which is the result of discernment only…. We
are not concerned with evolving, but we should endlessly put the question ‘who am
I?’ to ourselves.” (ibid., 17)

This certainly looks to be at odds with what Andrew Cohen, for example, says about
evolutionary enlightenment. On the other hand, Cohen has his own critique of the
sort of ‘pure’ non-dualism that Dr. Klein advocates. … I mention these
disagreements — which are largely implicit and never raucous — simply because
they are a significant element in the phenomenon of Western teachers. There are
genuine issues here and it is important that it is Westerners who are raising them.
(Here ends the footnote…jk)

Given that Advaita, as Dr. Klein teaches it, is the direct approach to reality, it cannot
make use of any method or technique.

“All technique aims to still the mind. But in fact it dulls the mind to fix it on an object.
The mind loses its natural alertness and subtleness. It is no longer an open
mind…Meditation belongs to the unknowable…The point of sitting in meditation is
only to find the meditator. The more you look, the more you will be convinced that he
cannot be found…Fundamentally, you are nothing, but you are not aware of this and
project energy in seeking what you are…When, by self-inquiry, you find out that the
meditator does not exist, all activity becomes pointless and you come to a state of
non-attaining, an openness to the unknowable.” (Who Am I?, 98, 99)

But there is an obvious question here. If there is no meditator and hence no one to
find the truth, what is the function of the teacher? Answer: to make this truth
manifest.

“Ultimately there is no longer a subject who sees nor an object which is seen. There
is only oneness. That is what I come here to communicate.” (The Ease of Being, 1)
And he gives a splendid metaphor for this process,

“Let’s say you are looking at a sculpture from Angkhor Buddhism. The smile on the
face of the Angkhor statue is particularly beautiful. When you attitude is receptive,
you may be completely taken by this smile…The smile captures you and you feel
yourself smiling.” (The Ease of Being, 7)

In a similar way, the teacher/guru/master embodies the quality that one is seeking
and thus helps to bring it out in the seeker. But since this quality is our true nature, it
cannot be given or transmitted from one to another. It can only be pointed to by one
who already manifests it.

(the following is a footnote to the preceding paragraph:) Dr. Klein has extended this
idea into a complete philosophy of art: ‘true’ works of art indicate something beyond
themselves.

“All objects point to the Ultimate, and a real work of art actively brings whoever sees
or hears it to his real nature, which is beauty. The difference between an ordinary
object and a work of art is that the object is passive in its pointing towards the
Ultimate whereas the work of art is active.” (Neither This Nor That I Am, 10; cf. ‘A
Conversation on Art’ in Who Am I?)

This is obviously connected with what he says about the smile on the face of the
Angkhor statue of the Buddha. (end of footnote.)

The striking thing about Dr. Klein is his independence. He teaches Advaita but he
rarely uses its technical terms. In fact, he has developed his own vocabulary which
consists mainly of the special use of words like ‘listening’, ‘transparency’, and so on.
Nor does he refer back to the tradition for any kind of confirmation. He occasionally
gives a quotation from Gaudapada but nothing more. He does not mention other
teachers (such as Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaj, to name only two of
the best known). His is not an approach which makes itself more persuasive by
making connections of this kind.

Jean Klein passed away on February 22, 1998

Article Source – http://www.nonduality.com/klein.htm