The Abusive Guru: Andrew Cohen

Thanks WH for this information…it is really enlightening.

The more I read about those things, the more I believe in what I keep saying to myself (and others) all the time: Consume EVERYTHING with moderation…including moderation itself.

This is what I call integral spirituality: being able to embrace and willing to know and learn different points of views but always making a balance after all assimilation. That’s one of the reasons I stopped reading too much KW and AC and others. Both have surely wise and certainly some true ideas to share with us but it makes me feel sad and sometimes even sick when I witness the energy that is sometimes spoiled by enlightened or not enlightened souls around the same person over and over again.

Hey, let’s be realistic. No one owns the truth (and i am surely the last one) but exactly this should be in our minds every time we read something somewhere, independently of his name or fame.

If I look back in my life, I have learned some very interesting points of view from both the Guru and the Pandit and I am thankful about this but I will never create a new religion around it…or live my life exactly the way they expect it from you in order to get “enlightened”… and this is the main thing causing problems all the time…the creation of “followers”.

What I like about our community here at zaadz is, that there are so many different thinking persons over here, all of them living his own spiritual path and I still feel a togetherness over here! The day I feel, that everybody over here is following the same “Guru”, I’ll be the first one to quit.

Namaste,
Diana

In late 2003 Andrew van der Braak published his memoir about his ten years or so in Andrew's community. I wrote a review of Andre's Enlightenment Blues at  http://www.enlightenment.com/blogs/j/jordan/jordan3/archives/000542.html that seems relevant to this discussion…. 

Bill, this is an invaluable discussion.  One of my complaints about my own work is it's heavy-handedness.  In this regard (heavy-handed approaches) there can be, though not necessarily so, an ugency which streams in with unbound reach and it's commitment to the well-being of all in this crucial time as the suffering is radically transparent.  That's one thing.  An other is the fact of “types” which we simply have to allow as regards both student and teacher.  Obviously, everything is a teacher, including lions and tigers and bears, and worse.  But, that's not the whole story when we start to consider the kharma and settings coming and going, for better or worse.

On the other end of the divide are, say, self-indentified Divine Lala Landers (if you'll forgive my sharp tongue), who frankly don't give a damn about Dafur, e.g., unless it helps their self-image.  And, there are many layers in between the light weight and the heavy weight.

Of concern, as well, is the problematic of humility which when overly exhibited lacks the force to move people out of their comfort zone and when inadequately present fails to reach into the bounded comfort zone of folks most in need of getting over themselves.

So, I'm glad to see you bring this up in this way.  Perhaps, it will lead to a better understanding of the metes and bounds.  I would certainly like to work more toward the middle or more balanced ground on a regular basis (being a Libra, as it is) without losing the joy of the good fight and seeing folks quicken.  Consequently, I'm looking to see what I can accomplished in this regard, and, again, discussions such as this are helpful.

I just blogged about gender and sexuality issues and include some reference to problems with Cohen's teaching, but also Eckhart Tolle…I'm a newbie to blogging, so if you comment, please go easy on me, but not so easy, of course, that you'd be just stroking my ego.

For what its worth, I feel that shame is a big issue here: shame-based spiritual striving gives  spiritual teachers who haven't done sufficient shadow-work the “hook” they need to keep followers.  If we do our shame-healing work, we won't be hooked… (this is not always easy to do!)

Bran,

I want to try to amplify your point above.

In my experience in many personal growth seminars, often it was when the facilitator seemed to be taking a hard line on someone – sometimes requiring what in effect became a protracted one-on-one processing session in the middle of a room with a hundred or more people – that that person eventually had a major breakthrough. Had the facilitator not “toughed it out” with the participant, they would have never had the re-ordering gestalt that came to them. (Granted, once the participant went home and the “group effect” and the “seminar effect” dissipated, they may not have kept the insight and certainly would have gone out of the particular altered state they were in, but nonetheless, they had a landmark, a beacon, a breakthorugh that they could in theory return to and use to leverage their personal evolution.)

So, how do we tell the difference between crazy wisdom and just pure craziness? Between richeous consciosuness and outrageous unconscoiusness and projection? How can we tell if, e.g., David Deida is piercing through our veils of maya or if he is just being rude and coarse in his use of abusive language in some of his books?

One standard, of course, is “by their fruits ye shall know them.” While Andrew Cohen has apparently encouraged or participated in some pretty strange behavior if the various accounts are to be believed, there are many others (more, probably) who would say that he has added huge amounts to their lives. And, of course, his magazine has always been good.

My sense, which goes back to the essay I wrote that I link to above, is that Carl Jung was right, and that, generally speaking, giving all of our power over to a teacher/guru of any type doesn’t work that well for most Western people. It’s just not part of our “politicadl DNA.”

Here's a quote from Andrew's “Declaration” which gets to the core of the matter:

> As far as I'm concerned, the spiritual life is
> just like any other endeavor-you can succeed or fail.

(The context is that the people who criticize Andrew's actions do so because they've failed at the spiritual life.)

We all already understand the world of success and failure. If you want to make money, then success means getting rich. If you want sex, then success means making a sexual conquest. And so on.

The spiritual life that Andrew offers is also like this. The particular thing he tells us to want is different. Instead of trying to get money or sex, he advocates trying to get “enlightenment” or “higher consciousness” or “evolution.” But he pointedly is NOT changing the underlying mind, the mind that wants something, that makes goals, that creates distinctions like “success and failure.”

Andrew's path is therefore appropriate for those who want to change the content of their desires, without letting go of desire itself. To question the very idea of success and failure, we need to go elsewhere. There are other teachers and paths that question more deeply.

Stuart