William Yenner reflects on responses to "American Guru"

In the weeks since my book, American Guru: A Story of Love, Betrayal and Healing was published, I have been amazed by the volume and intensity of the public outpouring of defenses and rationalizations of Andrew Cohen's actions by fellow former students who lived through exactly the same experiences that I did. The two principal forums for these responses have been amazon.com and a website, guru-talk.com, created by another former student, Pete Bampton, as part of a concerted effort to rebut the implications of what I and my co-authors have presented in our book. The narrative unvaryingly articulated in these responses is that none of the events described in American Guru can be properly understood outside of a "context" that I, William Yenner, once subscribed to but have now conveniently forgotten. And more typically than not, this argument has been accompanied by "informed" attacks on my character, presumably also sanctioned by this rarefied or "missing" context, and further justified by the "nastiness" and "distortion" of my presentation of the facts, for which it is apparent that I need to be shamed, isolated and ostracized—all the familiar pedagogical techniques of the EnlightenNext community.

At the same time, most of the offended writers do not hesitate to turn this vicious "context" loose on their own supposed failings or inadequacies as a means of explaining why they were forced to terminate their participation in Andrew Cohen's revolutionary experiment in "evolution beyond ego." It seems that even after a period of years outside of Cohen's physical orbit, his influence remains a powerful factor in their assessment of their own motivations and general unworthiness as spiritual practitioners, and though my sympathy is neither solicited nor appreciated, I can't help but extend it. This is, after all, a tragic situation for all concerned, including Andrew Cohen himself, and Cohen's hovering presence in the thought processes and the very language of his still-devoted ex-students is impossible to ignore. It seems to have occurred neither to Cohen nor to his defenders that their responses—from the earliest emergence of allegations of questionable practices in the EnlightenNext community to those aired more recently in my book—have never reflected the humble self-assurance or basic decency one expects to encounter in individuals who have supposedly ventured "beyond ego."

Clearly, what these responses reflect is something other than enlightened understanding, and it is precisely this "something other than" that American Guru, however clumsily or offensively, is an attempt to uncover. I ask: How is it that these people as a group have thoroughly internalized Cohen's vocabulary and conceptual framework without any apparent benefit to their own independence or self-esteem? Of what productive use is it to a human being to introject a paradigm according to which he or she has "failed," while the one who invented it can only claim "victory" by appealing to a "higher context" that justifies anything he does? Is it inadmissible to speculate that this kind of indoctrination may be a form of cultic manipulation? I know that according to these former disciples my articulation of such questions is supposed to be a reflection of my own ego-driven delusion, but still—the facts are the facts, and no one, however passionately they defend Cohen or attack me, has so far convincingly denied them. And now, more heartbreaking than even the facts themselves, comes this unselfconscious demonstration of what it really means to be a student of Andrew Cohen, and to have imbibed his version of "consciousness and culture": submit to his control long enough and you may never again be able to believe in your own goodness, integrity or intrinsic self-worth; even after leaving, the best you can hope for is to join the ranks of the "failures," and you may never truly recover your footing again. (Bampton is thus far the first and only of such former students to suggest that the "stigma of having 'failed'" is inapplicable to those who left after the historic "surge of consciousness" of July 30, 2001—a rationalization yet to be articulated by the other, far more self-critical ex-disciples posting on his site.)

Interestingly, however, in the same period during which Andrew Cohen's reputation has been so stoutly defended by guru-talk.com's cadre of "fallen" or "unsuccessful" students, the integral community has also seen the emergence of another of Cohen's former disciples, Craig Hamilton, as a self-proclaimed "teacher" in his own right. As I implied in a footnote of American Guru, no one who knows Andrew Cohen is likely to believe he was pleased by Hamilton's surreptitious departure from Foxhollow, much less by Hamilton's own subsequent (and well-planned?) ascent to integral guruhood—but if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Cohen ought to be feeling swell. As a "successful" former student, Hamilton has outdone his fellow alumni not only in his wholesale assimilation of Cohen's "teaching model" but in his astute—some might say opportunistic—emulation of his teacher's tried-and-true PR strategy of using public dialogues with famous "luminaries" as a means of enhancing his own reputation. That Hamilton was able to cultivate such relationships while selflessly "serving" as his guru's senior editor and ambassador to high-level interfaith conferences is, at least from my point of view, yet another manifestation of Cohen's less than inspiring human legacy.

In fairness, it remains to be seen whether Hamilton's "Integral Enlightenment" is a "teaching" that lives up to the great expectations he has worked so hard to inspire, or whether the key question resolved by Hamilton's heady formula—so perfectly in sync with the latest advances in cyberspace voice transmission—is how to capitalize (literally) on the hungry idealism of his audience. Of course it doesn't hurt to be convinced of the depth of one's insight and the soundness of one's ideology; yet experience has repeatedly shown that, from a potential follower's point of view, such uninhibited confidence is all the more reason to be wary. Proclamations and endorsements of a teacher's exalted status, of the depths of his wisdom, of the emergence of his voice as one that "needs to be heard," all feed the idealistic temptation to regard him as one who embodies the "advances in consciousness" most essential to the resolution of the pressing crises of our time.

At such moments, it is worth remembering that the list of spiritual leaders who have "fallen on their faces"—often with catastrophic results for their followers—is a long one indeed. In his foreword to American Guru, Stephen Batchelor suggests that things might have turned out far differently if, at the time of Andrew Cohen's "emergence" as a teacher, those who felt they had reason to question his motivations or qualifications had spoken out more forcefully. This is all the more reason to scrutinize Hamilton's account of his many years "working side by side" with Andrew Cohen; yet despite his acknowledged involvement in "trying to guide and work with [Cohen's] global body of students," Hamilton remains curiously silent on the issue of the abuses that took place under his nose (and mine) at Cohen's Foxhollow ashram. As Daniel Shaw has observed, "It would be wonderful to see...honesty and courage demonstrated by...leaders of the New Age movement. Instead of rationalizing and minimizing the extent of [Cohen's] abuses, instead of ignoring and dismissing the experiences of former followers, wouldn't it be wonderful if people like Ken Wilber, Genpo Roshi, Rupert Sheldrake, Deepak Chopra, Bernie Glassman, etc., could have the courage and the integrity to pay attention, to take up the cause of Cohen's former members, and confront Cohen publicly?” As an up-and-coming "spiritual luminary"—not to mention one who was actually there! —Craig Hamilton certainly deserves to have his name added to that list. The dangers of a "free pass" based on charisma and inspiring intentions having been borne out by history, I feel it ought to be perceived as reasonable, rather than gratuitously destructive, to raise questions about anyone representing himself as a "pioneer" of a cutting-edge spiritual discipline.

While Hamilton evaluates himself rather differently than most of his fellow former students—insinuating references to his own "awakening" into his “free preview,” to a virtual audience of nearly 700 spiritual seekers, of a 9-week "teleseminar" for which he is charging each participant $285—he shares with guru-talk.com's contributors the same abiding nostalgia for a community very different from the one I remember (a community in which abuses such as those documented in American Guru took place over a period of two decades) as well as their retrospectively rose-colored notions about the significance of what happened there. To hear Hamilton tell it:

"I lived in this vibrant global spiritual community for thirteen years with the guidance of my spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen, and spent a great deal of that time really working side by side with him in trying to sort of guide and work with this global body of students who were all giving one-hundred percent of their lives to trying to evolve consciousness. And in this laboratory, which like any laboratory is kind of a specialized environment [that] allows you to see things you would never see outside...I was afforded an opportunity to see some things about the human condition that are not normally apparent....

"In this evolutionary laboratory, we had a unique opportunity...because, honestly, the conditions could not have been better. Our life was entirely organized to support our individual and collective evolution.... We spent several hours every day engaging in vibrant, powerful spiritual practice. We had direct and extraordinary spiritual guidance coming into our personal lives on a regular basis.... There I was, producing a cutting-edge spiritual magazine and spiritual events, and my entire life was consumed in this, and all this was happening in a breathtakingly beautiful place, eating healthy gourmet vegetarian food, three meals a day. It's a bit of a spiritual utopian environment in a sense, and initially I want to acknowledge that it seemed to be everything that could possibly be required to catalyze everyone's radical evolution. And the inner life of everybody there was elevated to a profound level of well-being—I mean, in this environment everybody was living in a non-ordinary state of consciousness most of the time; there was a sort of enlightened Buddha-field...that permeated the place....

"For most of us, we would say, 'If I had all that, there would no longer be anything in my way.' And so what I want to share is what we found in this environment, because you see, when all the external obstacles to change have been removed, the stark truth reveals itself, which is that when it comes to our higher self-evolution, our authentic spiritual transformation, most of us don't want to change all that much.... We don't really want to change our deep habits of being, our deep habits of relating to life.... Very few of us honestly want to let go of the familiar ways of being and behaving that we are accustomed to. And why? Because we don't want to get outside our comfort zone. There is a deep, primitive, ingrained impulse toward stasis, toward preserving the status quo....

"I was perhaps a more extreme case...than most people," Hamilton continues, "because I came into this with an incredibly strong self-image...as a deeply sincere, committed spiritual seeker.... I was a big spiritual ego, you could say.... My teacher told me early on...'Craig, you've developed a lot of capacities that have served you well in your life...but you're going to have to let go of all of that if you're going to really succeed in this work, in really waking up spiritually'...and I could feel how much I really didn't want to let go of everything I thought myself to be, and all the familiar ways of being that did allow me to navigate life.... It was years of hard work and intense soul-level trials, I would say, before things really started to break open...and this was universal for everybody in this environment, so I think what we really had to confront was that most of us self-proclaimed evolutionaries who really see ourselves as wanting to evolve consciousness through ourselves...deep down were still largely being run by some very ancient, not particularly evolutionary software....

"If we want to really engage in a process of spiritual awakening, if we want to be truly awakened human beings, there's something that we need to pay a lot more attention to than our personal conditioning, our personal psychic make-up, and that is our collective conditioning.... We have been playing a game of survival, a very primitive game in which self-preservation is really the primary drive, and we just have to get that that is all still deeply wired into us, and so changing it is a really big deal....We have to get that it's really this deeper, primitive, survival orientation that is what's really our obstacle..."

These are noble sentiments, all the more poignant in light of the events I have described in American Guru, from which I have excerpted, HERE, sections of Chapters 3, 4, 11 and 15.

Ungagged: Ex-student Breaks Five Year Enforced Silence

My name is William Yenner, and I am the former student who was subjected to the “gag order” mentioned in the official responses given to journalist Yonatan Levy. While I know from personal experience that most of the replies given to Levy by Andrew Cohen’s representative are false and/or misleading, this particular question and the circumstances surrounding it have been, in particular, a big presence in my life for many years, so I’m providing more information here for anyone seeking to know the truth about Andrew Cohen and EnlightenNext. I was bound by this “gag order” from 2003 to 2008, forbidden by an enforceable contract from making any public statements about Andrew Cohen or EnlightenNext.

I was a member of the “inner circle” of Cohen’s students; in fact, I lived in his personal residence for several years, was a member of the EnlightenNext Board of Directors, and was the real estate scout who located and helped arrange the purchase of the 220 acre, nearly three-million-dollar, EnlightenNext “World Headquarters” at Foxhollow, as well as the EnlightenNext Centre in London. I was a student for a total of thirteen-and-a-half years, leaving in 2001.

Like most long-term students, after years of dodging bullets, I finally incurred the wrath of my teacher (Cohen) in a form that I could not internalize and work with, and in 1999 I had my own personal version of falling out of his favor, with all its attendant humiliations and debasements. Under extreme psychological distress and in an emotionally crushed state of mind, in an effort to save myself from what seemed like a form of death-spiral, I decided to offer up all I had at the time, which was a recently received inheritance of $80,000. Giving sizeable donations at a time of spiritual and personal crisis was, after all, the solution I had witnessed countless other students resort to; and I had also witnessed how reliably this course of action brought others back into the fold after they had been similarly cast out by their teacher. Some weeks after making my offer to Cohen, I got a call from his assistant telling me to send it in, which I did.

Though my situation took a big “up-tick” following this “donation,” overall I was still treated like damaged goods, having lost the trust and belief in Cohen’s project that had guided me for so many years. My discipline, confidence and goodwill were now compromised beyond repair, though at the time I was barely aware of this as I tried to hold on to the life I had committed myself to. There is a lot more to this story, including much that I personally witnessed and also took part in, which I will go into in greater detail elsewhere. However, I did leave about a year after this “donation” was made.

Subsequent to leaving EnlightenNext, I discovered that I had a great deal of painful and extremely confusing history to deal with, and began the process of pulling myself back together and putting together a new life—one not based on blind obedience, humiliation and abuse. This process was liberating and took me to places I’d never expected to go. One of those new places was a strong resolve to confront Cohen for what I was beginning to realize was his hidden agenda of conquer-and-control at any cost to his students—which in my case had included the extraction of my “donation” at what had been the lowest point, psychologically, of my entire life. I realized that taking money from me when I was really broken was just wrong, and so I wrote to Cohen in the spring of 2003 to demand its return.

To my surprise, he did agree to this, but with the stipulation that I sign an agreement not to make any public statements about him or EnlightenNext for five years. What he was saying in effect was, “You can have your money back, but you must remain, like all my students, in a state of muteness; keep your mouth shut, because I’m not ready to let go of you yet.” His reply to Levy denying the existence of a gag order, “or for that matter any other court order,” is utterly dishonest and disingenuous. Of course it wasn’t an official court order; he had gotten me to sign it without having to go to court because he knew that I wanted my $80,000 back. There is a copy of the original “gag order” previously posted on this site, which can also be viewed here . I got my “donation” back, and Cohen bought a few more years of my silence.

It must be emphasized that this kind of silencing is the norm at EnlightenNext; no current student would ever venture a public critique, or dare even to utter one privately in the presence of Cohen or a fellow student. And as is demonstrated by my case, Cohen will try mightily to silence even former students. I have posted my own personal story here in support of all those who have come forward before me to help reveal the corruption that is, sadly, the norm in the world of Andrew Cohen.

Further to this discussion and investigation, I have been working on a book, along with several contributors, which will go into much greater depth and detail and which will be published soon.

The Truth Will Set You Free

Introduction

In June of last year, the editors of this blog were contacted by Yonatan Levy, a contributor to the Israeli online journal NRG-Ma’ariv, for an article he intended to produce on Andrew Cohen and Cohen’s organization, EnlightenNext. Levy had sought an interview with Cohen himself, specifically in order to seek a balanced perspective on the allegations against Cohen previously published on this blog. While the interview he’d requested was never granted, Levy did receive from EnlightenNext’s “Communications Director,” Amy Edelstein, a series of official written responses to questions he had submitted in advance of the proposed interview. He also received an intimidating letter from Cohen’s lawyer, dated the same day, advising him of NRG-Ma’ariv’s potential legal liability in the event of the article’s publication. These documents are available here:

EnlightenNext's responses to Mr. Levy Letter from EN's attorney

Under the circumstances, NRG-Ma’ariv’s legal department encouraged Levy to seek firsthand confirmation of any allegations against Cohen or EnlightenNext that he intended to outline in his article. It was for this reason that Levy contacted us with the answers he’d received from Edelstein—in which she declared that most of the information published by former students of Cohen on this site is simply false.

Almost a year later, Levy’s article has still not seen the light of day, and it now appears that it may never be published. However, EnlightenNext’s responses to Levy’s questions represent an historic event of sorts, as they constitute its first official denial of the events described on this blog. Although previously Cohen and his defenders had publicly taken refuge in the notion that the incidents reported here have been taken “out of context” by “a few disgruntled former students,” they have never—until now—gone on the record with official declarations that the reported incidents never actually took place.

Although it seems clear from the correspondence reproduced above that EnlightenNext’s representatives believed coordinated legal intimidation would be sufficient to keep their denials below the public radar, What Enlightenment??! has decided—in the interests of a free, transparent and open exchange—to publish them here. Doing so will accomplish two objectives. First, it will give EnlightenNext a platform from which to “go public” with its reportedly common response to the queries it receives from current and potential students about the contents of this blog, i.e., that they are mere fabrications. Secondly, it will give former students who have direct experience of the reported incidents an opportunity to respond specifically to EnlightenNext’s denials.

It is worth reiterating that the publication of these documents represents an historic moment in the public dialog that this blog was created to facilitate but could never fully accomplish without the full participation of both sides. This is why we have decided, at least for a limited period, to re-open it. It is our sincere hope that potential responses, from current and former students alike, can now begin to focus specifically on the truth and accuracy of our recollections, as it is only by these means that we can arrive at any meaningful reconciliation—or, in Andrew Cohen’s well-chosen words, “come together in the truth.”

Searching for the truth about Andrew Cohen:

A journalist's odyssey

My name is Yonatan Levy. For the last few years I’ve been a writer and editor for the spirituality section of NRG-Ma’ariv, a major Israeli media site. Nine years ago I attended a weekend intensive led by Andrew Cohen in Israel. It was my first encounter with a living spiritual teacher and my impression was positive. I was impressed by Cohen’s simple and clear meditation instructions and by his powerful personality. Soon afterward, I attended a meeting of a group of his followers, but found the atmosphere awkward and unnatural. Yet I still found the rhetoric of Cohen’s writings moving and inspiring. I was thus surprised and bewildered to discover dozens of accounts in the What Enlightenment??! blog depicting Cohen as a capricious, dishonest tyrant—especially in light of his emphasis on ethics and integrity as a crucial aspect of true spiritual evolution.

Before Cohen’s next visit to Israel, I asked to interview him, with the intention of asking about the allegations. In response, I was told that the interview would be granted on the condition that I would not ask about anything in the WE??! blog, because Cohen had not yet responded publicly to the issue as a whole, and was planning to do so on his own blog; after this, I was assured, I could ask about anything I wanted to. I was willing to wait, but all of my interview requests following Cohen’s post (“A Declaration of Integrity”) were declined. Finally, I decided to write the article without an interview. Yet I did send Cohen a list of questions concerning the issues and accounts that had been presented by the What Enlightenment??! blog, adding that if the allegations proved untrue I would call the article off.

The answers to my questions, formulated by Amy Edelstein, perhaps with the aid of Attorney Barry Fischer, are the first detailed public response by Andrew Cohen’s organization, EnlightenNext, to the accounts of Cohen’s ex-followers. Some of the answers use juridical language, taking advantage of inaccuracies in the phrasing of the questions to evade the matter. Others seem to be blatantly counterfactual, or are so easily refuted that there is little doubt they were primarily given in order to convince me not to write the article—which ultimately did not appear on NRG-Ma’ariv for fear of a long and costly lawsuit.

As part of my research, I sought reactions and statements of verification from former contributors to the WE??! blog, whose accounts of abuse on Cohen’s part had raised the issue in the first place. Some of these appear below. In several cases, I was able to speak with individuals directly involved in incidents described on the blog, who also confirmed the accuracy of accounts that have been denied or disputed by EnlightenNext.

Here then (above), for the benefit and judgment of those who are interested in Andrew Cohen’s standards of integrity, openness, honesty and “soul strength,” are the questions I asked and the answers I received from his organization, EnlightenNext.

Yonatan Levy ~ Tel Aviv, Israel

*******************************************************************

Selected responses to EnlightenNext's statements

from former students of Andrew Cohen:

Student #1 Student #2 Student #3 Student #4

To view readers' comments or to post one, click on the "comments" link below:

A Farewell With Deep Gratitude

by Hal Blacker

More than two years ago I decided to write publicly about what I felt had gone seriously wrong with Andrew Z. Cohen's teaching methods and his community. I had received disturbing reports from other former students that eventually compelled me to speak out. I wrote then:

…A few years ago I began to learn of things that caused me great concern. An old friend who I worked with on What Is Enlightenment? magazine called and told me she had left the community. I told her a little about my thoughts about it—how I had come to see how oppressive life in the community was, how wrong it was that there was no personal freedom or autonomy permitted, how abusive the confrontational methods used to enforce conformity now seemed, how frequently we lived in fear, and how criticism was always forcibly squelched. She interrupted me and said, “Hal, things have gotten a whole lot weirder since you left.” I asked her what she meant, and she told me stories involving the use of physical force and abuse against students. She spoke of being ordered by Andrew to deliver “messages” to fellow students consisting of slapping the student in the face as hard as she could. She told me she had been ordered by Andrew to paint messages in blood-red paint on the walls of a student’s room at Foxhollow. She described to me the conversion of the spa at Foxhollow into a kind of psychological torture chamber.

As the years passed I spoke to many other former students who confirmed these stories, elaborated upon them, and told me many more. I learned of students having large “contributions” psychologically extorted from them. I heard how a student was required to sign a “gag order” agreement prohibiting him from publicly criticizing Andrew as a condition of having his “contribution” returned. I was told the story of community women prostrating in a freezing cold lake in the winter, some suffering dangerous exposure, as a symbol of their devotion and repentance for “women’s conditioning.” I learned of a student being forced—against his will and his moral compunction—to engage in daily visits to prostitutes in Amsterdam for weeks on end as a kind of penance for past sexual indiscretions. I was told by a student how he was ordered to reveal to his estranged teenage daughter her mother’s infidelity that occurred many years in the past, in order to teach the daughter not to hold her mother, now a critical former student, in such high esteem. I heard these stories and many, many more. As the weight of the awful truth about what Andrew and his community had become accumulated, I began to feel that something must finally be said. People must be warned. At the very least, any prospective student should know what they are signing themselves up for when they join Andrew Cohen’s community.

In the more than two years since I personally "broke the code of silence," all of these disturbing events, and many more, were documented and corroborated on this blog, over and over again. Three former editors of What Is Enlightenment? magazine, including myself, spoke out strongly here about the abuses in Andrew Cohen's community. Other close students have also put their names on the line to attest to what went wrong with the community's beautiful dream of creating heaven on earth. The woman who financed Cohen's Foxhollow EnlightenNext world center wrote about how he unfairly took advantage of her vulnerability and largesse. Numerous other students have also contributed here, both named and anonymous, shedding light on the authoritarian abuses around Cohen, their causes and their harmful effects. In contrast, not one specific or credible factual denial has emerged from Andrew or anyone associated with him about what has been reported here in great detail and depth. Instead, we have only heard the refrain that we have failed to include the "context," as if any overarching purpose could justify the abuses described here and the pain they caused. No cry of "context" could obscure the devastating truth that the participants in this blog have had the courage to reveal.

I hope it will not be regarded as overly dramatic if I say that I look back over what has occurred on this blog with awe, gratitude and humility. This blog's truly collaborative, interactive and collective nature makes it, perhaps, unique in the blogosphere, on the Internet, and, perhaps beyond. I haven't seen anything really parallel. I believe that, beyond the collaborative nature of the editorial work here, the collective intelligence, truthfulness and vulnerability of the contributions, responses, arguments and discussions have made this effort at healing and truth-telling unprecedented. I don't think that so many have spoken out before with such rawness and honesty in an attempt to warn the unwary, comfort the injured and understand humbly how something they believed in so totally could go so wrong. For this effort and honesty, on behalf of all of the editors of this blog, I bow to everyone who has participated here, whether anonymously or named, and whether former student, interested observer or friend.

While what has happened here will always remain, this seems like a good juncture at which to conclude this particular project of honesty and love. So, on behalf of the editors and administrators of this blog, I have been asked to write a kind of farewell. The discussion here could go on endlessly, or as long as authoritarianism hides behind masks of evolution, enlightenment or other ideals. This is not cynicism. I am not saying that evolution or enlightenment do not exist, or are unworthy of a life's dedication. But the capacity for deception is endless, and opportunists and the self-deluded who use and abuse high ideals, whether consciously or unconsciously, will probably always be with us. For this reason, I hope the discussion engaged in here will persist in one form or another.

But I think that this particular forum has run its natural course. The essence of what needed to be expressed has been said. Most of the former students I know have moved on, or are in the process of doing so—they have regrouped or are regrouping, they value what they learned, both good and bad, and they have ventured into productive new lives. Those lives now may be less filled with drama, buzz and high romanticism, perhaps, than their lives with Andrew Cohen. But they seem, to me, to be lives that are far more genuine, lives that are making, or have the potential to make, greater contributions to this world. The former students I know are, by and large wiser, softer, humbler and happier than they were when in the thrall of the community discussed here. They are professionals, artists, parents, workers in the non-profit sector, and many are actively engaged in working for their own and others' spiritual liberation. I think the healing that was, in part, the purpose of this blog has occurred to a great extent and will continue. And what has been written here will stand as a warning, a cautionary tale for the benefit of those who may consider taking a similar path to the one that went astray, as described here.

I feel confident that everyone whose life has been touched by this discussion has benefited in some fashion. Even those readers who chose to become involved with Cohen or to continue their involvement with him cannot help but be a bit smarter about it—or at least have an awareness of this resource for helping them pick up the pieces when reality shatters their dream. And we have heard that some of the more extreme abuses of community members have been stopped or moderated in the wake of their being revealed on this blog.

There is only one person for whom I still have great concern. I fear that he is perhaps the only one who has not been able to learn something of value here and who may be irretrievably committed to a painful and destructive path. That person is Andrew Cohen. I sincerely hope—and I think most ex-students will join me here—that some day our former teacher will find the humility to revise his own idea of himself; that he will demonstrate the vulnerability and lack of pride that he taught us but failed to live; and that he can find a way to recover his balance if and when his bubble implodes. We were mistaken in our assessment of him, but we did recognize his potential, and I think we all would like nothing more than to see that potential fulfilled in truth and humility. But that would require a difficult self-reckoning for him, one for which it is hard to find genuine reason for hope.

Still, against all reason perhaps, I believe in basic goodness. I have faith in the happy ending. No ending would make Andrew's former students happier than to see him change. And nothing is completely beyond possibility in a world where the courage and honesty demonstrated by all who participated here can manifest.

For now, WHAT Enlightenment??! is signing off. We may create a web site in the future, for the sake of posterity, with some of the articles on this blog. This blog will remain as a resource, but in a few days comment posting will be turned off.

On behalf of the blog editors, I want to express deep gratitude to everyone who has participated in and contributed to this journey of healing and truth. Best wishes to you all on your path.

May all beings be happy!

Deja Vu All Over Again

By Anonymous

I came across this blog surfing on various spiritual topics. I recently met a creative (and quite successful) entertainer who told me he lives in Andrew's Community. I later recognized Cohen's name from the "What Is Enlightment?" magazine I'd see on the stands.

I once belonged to a major meditation sect for nearly a decade, living and working in their largest US community for several years. While followers were never physically violated, the familiar financial, mental and shame pressures were all there. The movement later ventured into politics also (but often with laughable results).

After reading just a few cross-postings here, I just got cold shivers of recognition. I recognized the same two roles, played over and over again -- no matter which particular group or leader it is about. I know this since I played both roles over time.

I was once the bright, angry apologist whose eager, dismissive counter-attacks barely hid my own insecurity and indignation. I relished jumping on any dissenter to pick apart his story and credibility. After all, I was defending the "perfect." And it is only a doubter's own, personal failure to recognize it as such.

Then I became the burnt-out, disoriented, ex-member who was trying to make sense of their positive experience while raising uncomfortable questions about all the logical disconnect. I would come across similar stories on ex-member sites, only to recognize their names as those who once vigorously defended the Movement (and sometimes help keep me in line!). What a shock! And then I'd read the same, predictable, snide responses to them from the faithful.

These templates, and the types of people who fall into them, never seem to change -- just the labels.

Will we ever learn?