THE CHALLENGE OF GETTING CLEAR--An Essay On Andrew Cohen's Teaching

By Bruce Ryan

[A Note From WHAT Enlightenment ??! : What follows is the Prologue of a longer essay critiquing Andrew Cohen's teaching by former Cohen community member Bruce Ryan. Due to the length of the essay, it has been posted in its entirety on its own website where it can be downloaded as a Word document. If you would like to download a copy of the whole essay, go to GETTING CLEAR. On the front page please double click on the second module in the right hand column. This will bring up an active link to the essay on the left side of the front page. Double click on that link and the essay will appear as a download.]

PROLOGUE: TRUE AND FALSE RELIGION

I’ve noted in my conversations with members of the "shadow" community that many of us are still under the illusion that Andrew Cohen has victimized us with his teaching. One even noted on the WHAT Enlightenment ??! blog that she didn’t care about that because her evil, stubborn ego deserved to be victimized. It is difficult to get to the bottom of this issue from a viewpoint like that because that is precisely the viewpoint Andrew brings to the table. Perhaps that accounts for the fact that on the WHAT Enlightenment ??! blog, while I have not yet read all the contributions, I have yet to read any really pointed observations on the so-called “dharma” that Andrew proposes. This is a pity because from that “dharma” has flowed all the perceived abuses which have sent so many people fleeing the community. The confusion behind that “dharma” must be deeply understood and one must see very clearly how it pales in the light of the Dharma that liberated Andrew.

True Dharma is that Dharma which describes the phenomenal world exactly and precisely as it is. It does not add anything to that description, nor does it take anything away. Dharmas that do not meet this standard are typically larded with colorful metaphors, clever phrasing, and poignant images that prey on the seeker’s emotions and seduce him into thinking they are true. This is especially true of seekers who approach them with an open heart. That is why it is the seeker’s obligation not to respond to a dharma solely on the emotional level but rather to dig beneath the surface and find out if it is true. It is the truth which sets one free, not dharma-talk.

Take, e.g., a description of Enlightenment posted currently on Andrew’s website in which he urges the seeker to “drop his ego like a hot potato.” Who could not respond to such a colorful metaphor? It is part and parcel of his idea that Enlightenment always occurs in the “now” and that when one really looks, one will see that the “now” is all there is. So it communicates a kind of urgency. It tweaks one’s desire to be free. It inspires one to get on with the process. But any seeker who takes up the challenge of dropping his ego “like a hot potato” will find that he is in for a rude awakening, if you’ll pardon the pun. The trouble with it is that the “now” Andrew is talking about is timeless while the “now” the seeker is in is karmic. The seeker’s “now” is a coalescence of all the “thens” which went before it. Those “thens” were filled with seeking and as a result so is his “now”. The truth is, of course, that he is already free. But that is his truth only from the point of view of the timeless “now”. But from his perspective he is not in that “now”. This means that he is not in possession of this truth. If he were in possession of it, why would he be seeking? So in his actual condition he is not free. As a result he is not free to “drop his ego like a hot potato” either.

I urge the reader not to take my word for this. Try it for yourself. Try to drop your ego “like a hot potato” and see what happens. This kind of dharma-talk has a sort of instant appeal to it. It gives the seeker the idea that Enlightenment is easy. But it puts the cart before the horse and only ends up dashing one’s hopes in the end.

Andrew’s teaching is filled with this kind of talk so to call it a Dharma is quite a stretch. Indeed one is hard-pressed to find words to describe it, since no one in the world of Spirituality has had either the audacity or the gall to turn his back on the very Teaching that liberated him before the advent of Andrew Cohen. Perhaps the best descriptive phrase is a “mock” dharma because it radiates out of a false premise. This might explain why in all his many years of teaching no one has been able to make it come alive in his or her heart. One might say that it is basically a collocation of half-baked ideas, linked together by a false logic flowing from an unexamined assumption. At any rate that might do for starters.

In order to see these points clearly however, one must free oneself from the shackles of the victimization game. This is edgy stuff and the emotions run deep around it. For this reason advice is often risky. Still, if one has had some headway in this endeavor one has an obligation to speak up. In this sense I can only relate what worked for me.

When I left the community I was crest-fallen. I felt that life had derailed my eight-ball in the biggest possible way. All my hopes and aspirations were tied to that teaching and had been for ten years. I wallowed in self-pity for several weeks. But as bits and pieces of my former life began to come back to me I was overcome with a deep sense of relief. This sense had to do with, not so much a return of the familiar, but the knowledge that I was not going back to Moksha again. This knowledge allowed me to relax. It gave me a sense of space. That space was deeply inviting. Occasionally thoughts would enter somewhat like a bird might land on a door stoop. They would look around, flutter their wings, and fly off into the sunlight again. One thought persisted over time however: a sudden and deep recognition that this “teaching” was not The Way. This was the bird that would not fly away.

At first I had no idea where this intuition came from but I did remember that I had had that same intuition during my association with several other spiritual communities. In those cases, while I did not drop my ego “like a hot potato”, I did drop those teachings in precisely that manner. But soon I began to recognize it as an intuition that had been lurking in the background during my involvement with Andrew for actually quite a while. I had just not paid much attention to it because I was uncomfortable with the power it had to let my ego off the hook. But as I continued to look at it, it seemed to pull together my experiences with Moksha in a way that no other idea did. It was deeply satisfying. For several years I did not take my eyes off that intuition. I watched in silence as it grew stronger. I began to see my association with Moksha as a sort of experiment I had undertaken to deepen my understanding of the Dharma. The experiment failed, or so I thought. But so what? The experiment was much like the driver who goes the wrong way down a one-way street and ends up at a dead-end. Does he sit there and rant and rave at what a dirty blow life dealt him? Of course not. He turns the car around and moves on. Let’s face it: he gambled and he lost. Whose responsibility is that? In this way I came to the end of the idea that I had been victimized.

The one word which embodied my experience with Moksha like no other was failure. I was a total failure at Andrew Cohen's teaching right out of the starting blocks, and right to the very end. For the last year of my life in that community I felt like I was walking around with a big X on my forehead and that the only issue at stake was who got to make the kill. In the end it was Andrew himself but he did so in the gentlest of manners, sort of like he was executing a bird which had broken its wings. This was interesting in itself because I had witnessed several ugly blow-ups in precisely this kind of circumstance. At any rate what felt like an execution in the beginning, turned out to be a liberation in the end. He liberated me from his teachings and for this I am eternally grateful. It’s an exhilarating feeling to be free of it! In my crazier moments I’ve often wished I could return the gesture. But that will never happen. His karmic circumstances will not allow it.

This paper grew out of that sense of freedom. It is excerpted from a work-in-progress on the difference between true and false religion. I had intended to entitle the online version OUTING ANDREW COHEN, but after much reflection I became concerned by the provocative nature of it. It seemed to appeal to a part of me that is still in rebellion against the world. That part is better left unexpressed in this case because it would cheapen the point of the paper.

It is not about the idea that a teacher made foolish mistakes. It is far bigger. It is about an intense challenge which faces every aspirant on the Spiritual Circuit: how to get clear on the Dharma. Indeed, the challenge is bigger, even, than that. It is a challenge not only for the aspirant, but for the teacher himself. If the teacher is not clear on the Dharma, how can his students be clear?

I first began to think around this topic almost a year ago. My lifetime of failed involvements with religion covers a span of almost sixty years. The specter of this failure has haunted me continuously, especially since exiting from the Moksha community some years ago. That was my seventh – and final - spiritual community, or so I thought. Previously however I had always approached the examination of this issue in a personal way – how I failed here, why I failed there, etc. My investigation was all about me. Suddenly it occurred to me that this too was just another idea. Perhaps I didn’t fail these religions. Perhaps they failed me.

Teachers, of course, don’t like to hear this kind of talk. Religions don’t fail. People fail. Many see it as just another version of the blame game. I was willing to concede that possibility but I wasn’t willing to take it for granted as I had on so many previous occasions. I had to find out whether it was true. As I pushed into this issue it became clear to me that I needed a new tactic. Previously I had bounced these ideas round and round in my mind, mulling them over incessantly as I walked my mail route. Often a thought would come to me and I would dash it down on paper. After a while thoughts would come so fast I found myself scrambling in the bushes to find scraps of paper to write them down on. Several times I found myself using gum wrappers! All these pieces of papers were put in a little basket that had come to me as a Christmas gift. One night I began poking through them and realized that they seemed to link themselves together in a sort of logic that was really quite convincing. On the other hand, how could I know for sure unless I tried to work this logic out? Such a task could only be done with pen and paper. So the name of the game became: put it all down on paper.

I recommend this strategy to anyone who thinks he understands an issue, whether it is religious or not. I guarantee that you will find out very quickly whether or not you do! One doesn’t have to be a Hemmingway to do this and one doesn’t have to have an ulterior motive either. All I am doing is trying to get clear on an issue that has gnawed at my innards for years. I never had the intention to write a book and to this day, although I’ve often talked that way, I have no idea whether that will be the result of my reflections or not. Only time will tell. Still, the attempt is revealing. I tried to write down my reflections exactly as I had thought them in my mind over the previous months and the result was an embarrassing hodge-pod of false ideas, illogical conclusions, incorrect facts, unexamined assumptions, and just plain bad thinking. Nevertheless as I wrote and re-wrote a kind of clarity began to emerge.

It seems to me that if one brings the issue of true versus false religions to the table in an open minded way three permutations appear. One can live a true religion, or one can fail to live a true religion. On the other hand one cannot live a false religion. One can only fail to live it. In fact it is guaranteed that one will fail to live it. That is because it is false. If a religion is false that means it cannot come alive in the human heart.

To meet this challenge of this paradox I had to get very clear about the structure of a true religion. This meant that I had to develop a vision of religion in the biggest possible way. There was no help for me here, and rightly so, as no one I talked to saw things my way. Nevertheless the issue was clear: is there such a thing as a true religion? If so, one has to be able to identify the principle which makes a religion true and distinguish it very clearly from the principle which makes a religion false. As I pushed into these issues it became apparent that the principle in question is an assumption. Not any assumption, but an assumption about the nature of the Universe itself. If one does not make this assumption there are an endless number of ways a religion can go false. I present one of them here. So while I see Andrew Cohen as a stand-in or a proxy for false religion in our time, in point of fact any TV preacher would do just as well. Andrew’s thinking, of course, is obviously deeper. And there is no denying that his insights are often more poignant. But these are not stand-alone features of the Truth that sets us free. While Andrew does not trick his audience with a feel-good story about how, even though they have egos, they will go to heaven and sit at the right hand of God forever if they will only believe so-and-so, he does something just as wrong: he cons them with a feel-bad story about just how evil the human ego really is. Both of these stories are false. Neither recognizes the transcendental nature of the human heart and its impulse to move beyond ego. Both lack a commanding vision of the Truth. That is why, with respect to the fundamental concepts of religion, there is no substitute for clarity.


Bruce Ryan

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If you would like to download a copy of the entire essay from which the above prologue is an excerpt, go to GETTING CLEAR. On the front page please double click on the second module in the right hand column. This will bring up an active link to the essay on the left side of the front page. Double click on that link and the essay will appear as a download.