by Enzo Badolado

A few years ago I started reading some of the negative reports about Andrew that were circulating on the web. These were written by ex-students who, for some reason that I found difficult to fathom, had decided to publicly portray Andrew in the most negative light possible. One particularly disgruntled individual continues the pattern in a recent book.

I was/am more than surprised how far from my own experience these reports were/are. While some of the things that are described in these writings are technically true as “facts”, most are distorted to create a very specific impression. All of them are obviously taken out of context, hiding crucial information from those readers who would have no way of knowing the whole import and meaning of any given situation. All of the accusations are described as if Andrew’s sometimes strong and challenging responses were coming from the “void”, with little logical reason to justify them. Hence the only explanation left, because of what these commentators would like us to believe, was that he was indeed out to satisfy his own thirst for power over his students. Continue reading…

By Eb Schmidt

I am writing this article because of my past involvement with EnlightenNext and Andrew Cohen.  Although I left the inner core of students a few years ago, I was part of the evolution of Cohen’s teachings and organization for more than 10 years. When I heard that some of his former students were speaking out publicly in a negative way about their time as Andrew’s students, I felt compelled to share my own experience. I want to tell my story not only because  I feel  that  a number of ex-students have misrepresented and even distorted the facts of their time with Andrew, but also  because I feel strongly that they have betrayed their own experience with a Teacher whom they chose freely. I also believe that they are tearing down a possibility and potential that they themselves freely gave their lives to, had experienced deeply, and then later denied.  Continue reading…

Evolution is a messy process. So anybody who really wants to make the effort to strive for something new is going to have to be willing to make mistakes, take wrong turns, even to fail, but never give up. The simple truth is this: if not failing is more important to you than genuinely succeeding, you’re never going to make it. If you really want to succeed, you have to have the big heart, heroic will, tenacity, courage, and commitment to fearlessly engage with the evolutionary process until something profound, mysterious, and extraordinary happens that cannot be undone.

Andrew Cohen, Feb. 2010

By Kate Fleming

I met Andrew Cohen in 1986, in Devon, England. Within days of beginning to attend what Andrew was then calling satsang, I was immersed, dissolved, and overwhelmed by a depth of living realization and a magnitude and singularity of Love that I had never dreamed was possible. It was the beginning of the most important relationship of my life, a relationship that I was both utterly unprepared for and had sought for with all my heart for most of my conscious existence. But to backtrack…

At the time I met Andrew I was deeply involved with the Buddhist/Vipassana community and had been since I was 19, when I did my first 10-day retreat at the Insight Meditation center in Barre, Massachusetts. It was there that I first fell deeply in love with the teachings of the Buddha, and later met Christopher Titmus with whom I developed a mentor/student relationship and friendship. It was he who encouraged me to deepen my practice by going to Wales for his annual month-long summer silent retreat; which I did the summer I turned 21. Afterward, he encouraged me strongly to go to India for his winter retreat in Bodh Gaya, with the goal of perhaps going afterward to Thailand to ordain, as he had many years before. Continue reading…

Dear Friends,

I’m so happy and relieved to read your accounts on Guru Talk. To hear so many stories from former close students who actually “remember” like I do who Andrew Cohen is, what the community is and what the context of it all is, despite leaving – is pretty amazing and deeply reassuring. My heart was literally pounding reading name after name of people I hold dear.

Until now, every public account I heard from former students was almost universally negative–very negative, given what being with Andrew was and is really all about! I’ve never felt as awful inside as when, after doing “battle” for some months as a virtually lone voice with former students (who I knew very well) that were posting all their dubious negative interpretations online, I finally started to hear the vague far away voices of doubt.

I have continued to enjoy listening to Andrew and be profoundly awed reading about the emergence of evolutionary enlightenment that has become a living reality around him, but Guru Talk really and truly hits home for me. Thank you so much for starting it, and contributing to it.

Dave Reid

By Esther Kassovicz

I was moved to write about my many years as a student of Andrew Cohen mostly for the sake of all the many well-meaning seekers of higher consciousness and evolution who are sincerely endeavoring to know and understand more about the process of true spiritual transformation.  Having plunged deeply into an authentic path of transformation myself, I know well how confusing and challenging this twisty path can seem. But I am writing this because I am still convinced that aspiring to become a human being who is a bright, full, and consistent  expression of Love and Truth is the most important, as well as the only truly meaningful, endeavor that any of us could commit ourselves to in this lifetime. Continue reading…

By Rod Stanbrook

When I met Andrew Cohen in Seattle in 1990, I was elated and tremendously relieved at seeing myself and those around me brought to such clarity through the lucid transmission from Andrew. Over the subsequent years of being a student and living in the community, those experiences – being transported to higher states of consciousness, the levels of trust between people, wanting like nuts to finally be free, and gratitude – were put to the test like nothing I’d ever experienced or could have imagined. Continue reading…

I was with Andrew in the early days in Devon, UK. At the time I was one of three managers at the then well-established Buddhist meditation centre Gaia House. Not long after Andrew arrived in the area and began to teach I stayed with him and the growing community for a few years which took me from Devon to Amherst, MA and finally to Marin county, California. I left with good will from Andrew telling me that “I knew everything I needed to know for the rest of my life”. That has never left me. Continue reading…

By Eva Schuster

I would like to begin telling my story about my work over nineteen years as a student of Andrew Cohen by describing a public retreat with Andrew in Massachusetts in February of 2008 which I, and a number of other students and friends attended. This retreat began with many of us speaking about the values we had inherited from our various cultural backgrounds. Continue reading…