I first met Jean Klein in 1990 and last saw him in person in 1996. Between those meetings I attended as many of his retreats as I could. What remains with me most vividly is his presence: the joy, beauty, peace and Welcoming I felt with him.
I arrived at the first retreat with a journal full of questions. Before Jean entered the room, every one of them had fallen away.
Before Seattle: a life already devoted to yoga
By 1990 I had been studying yoga for more than two decades. I was an Iyengar Yoga teacher with a prosperous teaching business in Halifax. I first heard about Jean through an article in Yoga Journal. After reading it, I wanted to meet him.
Alongside my yoga studies, I had been studying the works of Jiddu Krishnamurti, whose connection with Iyengar Yoga interested me. After reading many of his books, I discovered videos of his talks and began sharing them with students. Eventually I learned that I could obtain videos from the Krishnamurti Centre in Vancouver, BC, and I hosted screenings at Dalhousie University.
Through this, I corresponded with the administrators of the Vancouver Centre, who also administered the Krishnamurti Centre on Vancouver Island. The two Dr. Siddoo sisters owned the Centre; the administrators ran it. It was through those administrators that I was offered the position of resident Iyengar Yoga teacher at the school.
My life was already full of commitments, but I agreed to move across Canada to Vancouver Island for that position. A student who had apprenticed with me took over my Halifax business.
Along the way, I played a small part in organizing the Iyengar Yoga Conference in Edmonton, Alberta, in the summer of 1990. Mr Iyengar was there throughout the conference. I had also agreed to teach a class that he would personally audit, accompanied by some thirty teachers from around the world.
About halfway through my class, Mr Iyengar took over. He described me as a good junior teacher and said he would show me how I could have taught in a more advanced way. To have him there, observing my teaching and then teaching through the same class, was a significant encounter.
After the conference I spent time camping and travelling in the mountains. When I eventually reached Vancouver Island, I learned that the resident teaching arrangement could no longer go ahead. The administrators at the Krishnamurti Centre welcomed me to stay and study for about three weeks while I settled in Victoria.
I had given up an established yoga business, taught under Mr Iyengar’s eye, and crossed the country for a new position. Now I was on Vancouver Island without that job.
During my stay, David Bohm led a couple of retreats at the Centre, which I was able to attend. Being there also gave me opportunities to share lunches and walks with him and other guests. It was a privilege to connect with Bohm and spend some informal time in his company.
Another vivid memory from those days is having tea on consecutive days in the back of the elder Dr. Siddoo sister’s Rolls-Royce while she recited chapters of the Bhagavad Gita from memory.
A letter from another James
A close friend had read the same Yoga Journal article. His name is also James. While my teaching commitments and move had kept me from travelling to Santa Barbara, he had gone there to meet and study with Jean.
Then a letter from James reached me. He is someone who does not exaggerate. In that letter he wrote: “Jean Klein will answer every question you’ve ever had about your true nature.”
He also told me that Jean would be guiding a retreat in Seattle in about a month. I immediately decided to attend. I began a journal and wrote many, many questions in preparation.
Joy before Jean entered the room
On the first day of the retreat, the schedule listed “Meditation with Jean — 7 PM.” I arrived at the hall at six. To my surprise, about forty other people were already there. We found our places and sat in silence, waiting for Jean.
As best I can tell, it was about twenty minutes before seven when an overwhelming joy came over me. All my questions fell away. I was happy for no reason whatsoever. I sat there feeling incredibly blessed.
At precisely seven o’clock, Jean entered the room. The joy I had been feeling seemed somehow centred on him. What I saw was an older, refined gentleman who walked to the front of the room and sat cross-legged on the slightly raised platform prepared for him.
He did not speak. His presence was like a flower emanating beauty, love and peace. The joy and Welcoming I felt continued throughout the session.
What came to me was: “It’s possible!” I felt I was seeing with my own eyes what it was like to be in the presence of a jivanmukta, one who has realized his true nature while living.
Something else was immediately familiar. Jean appeared to me like a male version of my grandmother. She had loved me unconditionally. With her, I knew I was welcomed. I felt that same Welcoming with Jean.
After about an hour, he stood up and left. He had said nothing.
Later that evening I spoke with my friend James. Jean had made such an impression on him that he had rented a house in Santa Barbara to be nearby and could travel to retreats such as this one in Seattle. I told him about the joy, including that it had begun some twenty minutes before Jean entered.
James told me that Jean always wanted to be precisely on time. That evening, he and Jean had been waiting together in the hallway outside the room for about twenty minutes. James came in just before seven. Jean entered alone at seven.
The joy remained throughout the four days of that first retreat. We had meditation sessions, questions and answers, and yoga, which Jean spoke of as bodywork. I had nothing to say. The questions in my journal no longer called for answers.
Years of Listening
After Seattle, I attended as many retreats with Jean as I could. When I moved back to Nova Scotia, I travelled to retreats in upstate New York. Through those years, I never felt a need to ask him a question.
Eventually James asked whether I had ever asked Jean anything or had a conversation with him. I told him I had never felt the need. He encouraged me to ask, saying that speaking with Jean could be an even deeper connection.
When an opportunity arose, I asked about awareness in deep sleep. It was a question I felt I already understood. I asked because James had encouraged me, rather than because it was a living question for me.
Jean listened politely. I felt that we both knew the question was not sincere. He was mostly silent and, at the end, said something to the effect that awareness is our true nature. I remember the encounter more clearly than his exact words.
The young man whose questions were welcomed
At a four-day retreat in Northern California, there was a young man who asked questions whenever he had the chance. In him I could see a version of myself some twenty years earlier.
Some of his questions seemed obvious or unnecessary to other participants. During breaks, people complained to him about how much of Jean’s time he was taking. The young man continued. Jean patiently and lovingly welcomed every question.
On the final day, the young man remained quiet until about half an hour before the last session ended. When he spoke, he drew together what he had been asking throughout the retreat. As I remember it, his question amounted to this: if the true nature of his being was something he already was, could Jean show him that?
Jean often allowed five, ten, fifteen or more minutes of silence before responding. This time there was no hesitation. He answered emphatically: “Yes!”
I was seated near the back of a room with about forty people in it. Most were leaning forward, listening intently for what Jean would say next.
One by one, I saw them settle back and gently exhale as they got it. Finally, the young man also sat back. He too got it. Jean saw this, smiled, and the session was over.
I remember Jean’s Welcoming throughout those four days. Every question had room. His patience was part of the teaching, just as his immediate “Yes!” and the silence that followed were part of it.
“Do you get it?”
When there is no asking there is prayer. When there is no meditator, there is meditation.
Jean Klein, Blossoms in Silence
Another retreat in upstate New York was advertised as an eight-day retreat for advanced students. People unfamiliar with Jean’s approach were advised to wait for a more general retreat.
For the first four or five days, we had two sessions with Jean each day. They were not announced as silent meditations. The schedule simply gave the session times. Jean came, sat with us, and remained silent.
After one of these sessions on the third day, I went to the washroom. A man using the urinal beside me leaned over and asked, “Do you get it?”
“Get what?” I asked.
It had been three days, he said, and this man had said nothing. He did not get it.
I replied, “There’s nothing to get; you can’t get what you already are.”
He said he still did not get it, shook his head, washed his hands and left.
Somewhere around the fourth or fifth day, Jean asked whether there were any questions. I did not encounter the man again, so I do not know what happened for him afterwards.
The last retreat: Rhinebeck, 1996
The last retreat I attended with Jean was near Rhinebeck, in upstate New York, in 1996. The centre had a main gathering building and cabins scattered through the surrounding woodland.
By then I had come to associate the joy I first felt in Seattle with Jean’s presence. Looking back, I understood that first evening as having felt his energy through the wall before I saw him. I had felt that same energy at retreats over the intervening six years. Yet the experience was so extraordinary that I still had doubts.
At Rhinebeck, I decided to test what I felt. I would walk among the cabins and see whether that feeling would indicate where Jean was staying. I thought he would probably be in one of the cabins near the main hall, so I concentrated on the ten or so closest to it.
As I passed one cabin, I felt that this was the one. I sat beneath a tree about fifty yards from its entrance. After roughly thirty minutes, I saw Jean come through the front door and walk towards the main centre.
The private audience that did not take place
After the evening session on the first day, James told me that, having attended so many retreats, I could ask for a private audience with Jean. He offered to arrange it. I agreed.
Early the next morning, I was told that the audience had been arranged for eleven o’clock, shortly after the morning meditation. I knew which cabin to go to. At eleven, I was there.
I knocked. When a man opened the door, I introduced myself and said I had come for my audience with Jean.
He looked surprised. There must have been a mix-up, he said. Jean had just told him that he wanted to take a nap. The man offered to arrange another time.
In that instant I knew I did not need a private audience with Jean. Oddly, I also knew I did not need to attend any more retreats with him.
I told the man it was okay and that there was no need to reschedule. He asked whether I was sure: it was only a matter of finding another time. I said I was sure. I did not need to take up Jean’s time.
He asked again. Was I quite certain? This was not an opportunity everyone had.
“I am certain,” I said.
I completed the retreat. I never saw Jean in person again.
What remains
The energy I felt associated with Jean—the same energy I knew through my grandmother—is still with me to this day.
These memories are part of the living background of my teaching. Listening and Welcoming were present in the way Jean sat in silence, received a question and allowed an encounter to unfold. With him, I felt the openness I call Welcoming: the way you show up is welcomed.
For me, the invitation continues through bodywork, meditation, conversation and self-inquiry. A doing flowers as being. What we truly are is already present. Listening gives room for the error of taking ourselves to be something limited and separate to become clear.
I speak more about the Welcoming I learned through my grandmother in Relationship: Welcoming, Listening and Love Lived. My Teaching describes how these encounters inform Being Yoga today.
Listen with your whole being. What you truly are and how you appear are not-two.
A brief note on Jean Klein
Jean Klein came from Central Europe and trained in musicology and medicine. His inquiry into a reality independent of acquired learning took him to India in the early 1950s, where he spent several years studying Advaita and yoga. He began teaching in Europe around 1960 and later taught in the United States. New Sarum Press’s biographical note provides this background.
These are my recollections of encounters with Jean between 1990 and 1996. Dialogue is related as I remember it; where I do not recall exact wording, I have paraphrased. The young man’s question is a paraphrase; Jean’s emphatic “Yes!” is the word I remember distinctly.
Continue with Jean Klein and the Energy Body, Self-Inquiry: Who Am I? and Kashmir Shaivism and Spanda.
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