Andrew Cohen

Andrew Cohen is a moderately popular teacher/figure in the spiritual subculture. His rise to fame began with a visit to India in the mid-80s, where he met guru Hari Lal Poonja (aka Papaji). Andrew had some big special experience; Papaji looked in his eyes and declared the young man as his enlightened spiritual successor.

After a period of gloppy devotion to Papaji, Cohen rejected his former Master, and set out a-guruing on his own. He attracted his own mother as a disciple. Mom eventually concluded that sonny had gotten a bit full of himself; she left his group and denounced Andrew in her book Mother of God. (When your Jewish mother stops supporting you, you know there's some seriously bad weirdness going on.)

These days, Cohen has been partnering with author and self-aggrandizing philosopher Ken Wilber. Wilber has a history of glorifying authoritarian teachers, having gushed for years over bizarre guru Adi Da. Wilber refers to Cohen as a "Crazy Wisdom Teacher," which I believe is spiritual-speak for "He's an a**hole."

Cohen has been credibly accused of all sorts of deception and abuse of his followers (see the wonderful memoir Enlightenment Blues for details). Recently, the blog WHAT enlightenment??! has re-opened, for former students to reveal secrets and criticize Andrew and his org. Below are the comments I contributed yesterday to this blog's discussion. For context, see the original posting for these comments, The Truth Will Set You Free.

George said... the fact is just about everyone around him has those experiences.

It's not that Andrew demonstrates the power to reliably induce big special experiences. It's not that he could, for instance, take a randomly-selected group, move them into his community, and have them all report stunning experiences after a few days or weeks.

Rather: The people who encounter Andrew are a self-selected group who want special experiences. The price that Andrew demands (in money and subservience) insures those with the most desperate wants are the only ones that stick around.

Suppose that 1 in 20 people who come to Andrew indeed get a big experience. The other 95% soon wander off. The 5% from each new wave of arrivals accumulate around Andrew (the secret is volume). Eventually, there's the illusion that Andrew induces big experiences in most people who meet him. This is not the case… though it does require some careful critical thinking to see through the superficial appearance.

Carlos B said... Mata Amritanandamayi… It seems to me to be the perfect justification for Cohen's behaviour - particularly later in the article where she talks about the need to discipline her followers and the requirement of absolute obedience to the guru.

It’s not for nothing that Amritanandamayi has her followers call her “Amma” meaning “Mother.” All of us start out life as blind followers of our parents; otherwise, we’d have little chance of surviving childhood. As adults, we gradually learn to think independently. We do so to different degrees, and at different paces.

A percentage of the population look to rekindle the dependency, devotion, or absolute faith that we had for our parents as kids. They'll seek and find someone to play the role of a perfect parent. Either it’ll be an Andrew-like or Amma-like guru, or another person, or group, or belief-system, used with similar (if unconscious) intention.

Simon said... make no mistake, meeting a truly enlightened being is major catalyst for spiritual exploration.

We have no definition to use in determining who’s a “truly enlightened being,” so I don’t know how helpful this concept is.

True, many people have big special experiences when in the presence of an explicit guru (a person on a big chair, dressed in a fancy costume, speaking beautiful words, surrounded by like-thinking followers, accompanied by an attractive environment with tinkly music etc). Many many other people get big special experiences from a mind-stopping situation that doesn’t involve any enlightenment-claiming guru. In the US, most people who get transforming special experiences find them in charismatic churches, without any Indian-style guru involved.

Carlos B said... shouldn't love and compassion always be at the very center of a spiritual practise rather than speculative, self agrandising attempts to explain life, the universe and everything?

There’s no universal authority to tell us what the center of a practice (i.e., our life-direction, the thing we hold as most important) should be. So it’s our privilege/burden to decide for ourselves.

Should the most important thing be clarity and compassion towards each being we encounter? Or should it be a self-aggrandizing attempt to gain superior understanding or become more "evolved" than others? We can experiment with both paths, and see how it works out. We can be aware that it’s our own choice to make.

Anonymous said... What I would encourage you all to do is file a class action law suit against this creep and sue him for all the pain and suffering he's caused you… Just shut him down so he isn't continuing to do these things.

Or... we could focus on our own lives, our moment-to-moment thoughts and actions. If we don’t want to follow Andrew, no one is forcing us. If other people choose to follow Andrew in spite of readily-available warnings, we can leave them alone. People have their own ideas and situations; it’s not mandatory to force anything on others (by suing or shutting anyone down).

Maybe the most effective medicine is for each of us to think independently… rather than believing that the cause of suffering is rooted in some external evil.

philip said... [those who] doubt the intelligence and/or strength of character of those who [follow Cohen]: read those studies by Janis, Milgram, Asch and Zimbardo.

Many guru-types claim to have magical energy, or “shakti” that gives people special experiences. Superficially, followers can feel the energy flowing from the guru’s body, or photo, or from objects he's touched.

In controlled testing, there’s never any support for these magical claims. Desire, expectation, and belief (especially with group support) have been proven effective in inducing special experiences. But no guru's claim of magical energy has been supported by evidence.

There are people who are intelligent in some areas, but lack the skills to critically examine and test such claims. Critical thinking (a learned skill) does make a difference. You don’t have to be a Physics PhD; a basic understanding of scientific method is enough to detect the BS. People who lack this understanding/skill... can develop it with some effort and attention.

you must conclude you are probably more conformist than you like to think. The vital finding from those works is that the sense of independence westerners are so fond of entertaining is rarely put to the test, and largely illusory.

On the contrary… in Milgram’s experiment, most people sheepishly followed authority, but others refused to obey. There were those who were guided by their own independent thinking and ethics, and rejected the orders.

In the decades since Milgram’s experiment, society has moved further from blind conformity (pushed along by Vietnam, Watergate, counter-cultures, and free-flowing information). Were the experiment repeated today, maybe there'd be fewer blind followers.

Milgram proved that some people have a strong tendency to obey authority, while others do not. There are skills we can develop that affect which group we fall into. The lesson is not that we’re helpless against persuasion techniques. It’s that some people think and act less independently than others.

ordinary people who... assume immunity from manipulators like Cohen.

Metaphorically… beer companies put out highly attractive commercials, which induce some people to become drunks. But mostly we’re not helpless in the face of intense persuasion. We can learn to think independently in the face of authority, persuasion, and group-think. Rather than focus exclusively on “manipulation” by gurus or groups or beer commercials… it may be more efficient to examine our own minds, to see what’s at the root of our desire to believe and obey and follow. We can perceive the roots of gullibility in our own thought-process. Then we begin to have more choice as to whether we ultimately believe in authorities and groups and belief-systems… or in ourselves.