By Steve Brett
I met Andrew in England in November 1986 soon after he began teaching. Even though I am not an ex-student as such, as I am currently running his EnlightenNext Centre in Rishikesh, I am very much on the periphery of what is happening around Andrew at this point.
The first time I met Andrew was in a small cottage in Devon, England where he was living with his soon to be wife Alka and a few close friends. We sat together in his room upstairs and he asked me about my spiritual life. In the middle of our conversation my mind stopped completely. I was suddenly overtaken by the realization that Life was One Whole undifferentiated Being that was Alive and its nature was Love. Andrew said to me at the time, “You have jumped in the river and now you are standing on the shore. Now you have to decide if this is what you want. But you may not have any choice.”
There is nothing that can prepare you for the meeting with a real spiritual Master. Something absolute and sacred was sealed between us during that first meeting. Something that I now believe is eternal.
Some weeks later I asked Andrew if I could join him formally in the spiritual adventure that had overtaken my life. I believe I was the first person to do this after he came to the West from India. It was a choice I made from the deepest part of myself. And even though I could not possibly have known all that it meant, I made it in full consciousness and with the knowledge that this was a choice in which there was no going back.
There is very little understanding of what the relationship with the Guru is, let alone a real Master like Andrew. It is the ultimate challenge, the greatest privilege and the most serious undertaking that any human being can embark on. This is because what is revealed in the relationship with the Guru is perfect purity, an absolute love that knows no other. Once this has been experienced deeply and a choice has been made to give oneself to it at the deepest level of ones being, sooner or later the promise of it has to be fulfilled. There is no going back. I know in my own life with Andrew this has proved to be true.
It is the ultimate challenge because in the reflection of a real Master like Andrew we all find out sooner or later exactly who we are as a human being. And then, as Andrew has often said, how much love do we have in our heart when we are really tested?
Andrew was always a highly controversial spiritual teacher. On his arrival in England from India in 1986 he swept into, what I considered at the time to be the most serious sphere of spiritual practitioners in the Western world, like an electrical storm. The quiet town of Totnes with its soothing approach to spirituality that made room for all the colours in the rainbow and all the time in the world; was instantly transformed into a crucible of enlightened revelation and Truth Absolute, and the chips fell where they may. Andrew was and remains to be absolutely unabashed and unapologetic about his uncompromising passion for the truth. Andrew wasn’t safe. And for many of the spiritual teachers and seekers around at the time, if they were alive at all, Andrew was just too much. But for the rest of us, including those who now view him so negatively, Andrew’s fearless refusal to see the spiritual quest in anything less than absolute or all or nothing terms, set our hearts on fire.
I had the incredible privilege to have a very close relationship with Andrew during the first ten years I knew him. In fact for years I was his best friend and confidant. He trusted me completely and shared everything with me; including many of the burdens of his life with all of us that no-one would ever have known he was carrying.
Throughout the many struggles I went through in those early years, what made it possible for me to get as far as I did, becoming one of his first senior students and setting up and leading his first Centre in London, was only my relationship to Andrew. Whatever was happening I knew that if I never allowed myself to step back from him, everything would resolve itself in the end. And this is what happened in those years, again and again and again.
In 1992 Andrew asked me to leave our community in the States and create a Centre for the teachings in London with my oldest dharma brother. It was a big moment leaving Andrew but I was thrilled at the adventure that lay ahead. Whereas many of Andrew’s students were quite intimidated at being in a position of responsibility for the teachings, being an English aristocrat, much to my chagrin, it seemed quite natural to me. But as it was, Andrew made many of his older student’s leaders during those years. He knew we were far from perfect, but we were all he had at the time and he was never afraid to take big risks. We had been together as a community with him in the States for five years at that point, and he really wanted the revolution he had ignited to get out there in the world. It was a thrilling period with new centres springing up in cities all over Europe and many new people getting involved.
I remember Andrew saying that in the very early days of his teaching there were moments when he would be filled with fear when he let in what he was really taking on as a teacher and as such a young man. And in those days Andrew was not even that involved with most of us. It was when we all moved to the States in 1988 that Andrew realized, and he spoke about it at great length in his teachings at the time, that unless he really took us all on a living community that was truly an expression of that One without a second that we had all tasted being with Andrew, was never going to occur.
In observing the ecstatic intimacy in which we were coming together with each other around him, Andrew had had a vision that the real significance of enlightenment was not for the individual but for the evolution of the whole race. It was a revolution we were convinced at the time was going to change the world, and it inspired hundreds of us to literally uproot our lives and move to America. But, looking back on it, the scale of what Andrew was taking on in all of us to make this vision stick—the post-modern ego, and the degree of individual and collective resistance there would be in all of us to give it up—was something neither he nor we could possibly have known.
It was through the 1990’s that Andrew began speaking about the unbroken chaos of his life. And it was true. His life had become an endless rollercoaster between heaven and hell. In spite of all the thrilling developments that were happening, worst of all, one by one, all of his leaders began to fall. Away from the protection of Andrew’s orbit we did not begin to have the spiritual maturity to deal with the challenges, particularly the temptations for power and position; that our greater responsibility invited. Other spiritual teachers might not have had such high standards. But Andrew was incapable of compromising on the issue of ego, especially with his senior students, who he was rightly tougher with than anyone else. And the fact was that in spite of how much we had to give, we were all still very primitive people.
After some years I was the only senior student Andrew had left. I suspect the only reason I lasted as long as I did was that Andrew didn’t want to believe the writing on the wall, until it became impossible to ignore. Even though there was a gathering momentum to my fall, I cannot forget that moment in time when I decided it had all become too much and I crossed an invisible line and stepped back into my own world.
It’s true, Andrew never expected us to be perfect, far from it. But everything that he was trying to do with us was based on trust. On a mutual bond in that which was always most important, no matter what. As Andrew’s senior students we were like a tight unit in combat, with him as our commander-in-chief, and we were absolutely dependent on each other. As long as the union with our teacher remained unbroken anything could be overcome. But once we crossed that line, we were no longer in Andrew’s world. I don’t know if I am conveying what a vulnerable position this put Andrew in. He was completely exposed to our egos and to the integrity of our own stand. Recognizing this prompted a spiritual teacher who was a contemporary of Andrews at the time to say, “You’re going to be crucified!”
I could never have imagined I would betray Andrew in the way I did. But I was so far from being the person I thought I was. Over time I had become so attached to the image I had of myself as his right hand man that I could not bear to see how addicted to the rush of power and position I had become, and the extent to which, in the face of it, I really didn’t care. This was only further confirmed to everyone but me when I was confronted by Andrew and my peers with my darkest motives. I refused to look in the mirror. And turning my back on Andrew and all my closest friends, I shut down.
There has been a lot of negative press written about Andrew over the years. And almost all of it has been written by people who were really close to him, or at least were with him for many years. And this has been used as a justification for their view. “We know what Andrew was really like.”
I could be one of those people. In fact in some respects I am. For years I have lived in the same crazy isolated world as they have. It has seemed an almost impossible leap for myself and other leaders of my generation of Andrews community to rise above the values of our post-modern ego, and realize how profoundly beholden we are, and have always been, to everyone else to live up to our potential. Fortunately for Andrew and all of us, those few close students of Andrew’s from my generation that did find the courage and integrity to make this leap, were joined by a new generation that have a much greater respect and maturity than most of us ever did. And as a result Andrew now has a core of students who have created a foundation in which real development beyond ego is occurring.
Where I thankfully completely part company with Andrew’s detractors however, is in their position on Andrew himself. Over the years I have been on the giving and particularly receiving end of what they like to call Andrew’s “abuses of power”, more than most—if not anyone. Except that I have never seen them that way. From my perspective these were all, albeit sometimes desperate, attempts by Andrew to reach our conscience. Andrew made no pretension that he cared about our egos, because to him they were the only obstacle to everything we were all trying to achieve; but he cared in a way that I found a constant confrontation with my own lack of care, for the best part of us. I have some idea of how much of Andrew’s time and energy has been spent agonizing over all of us over the years, especially his closest students. I certainly know how much he has tried in every conceivable way that only he could, to get me personally to change; you can’t imagine the half of it. It has never ceased to amaze me the outrageous personal risks he has been prepared to take again and again to reach out to the best part of us. I truly believe this is because he so valued each one of us; far more than we ever valued ourselves, in the right way.
The bottom line is that I have never been able to get past the fact that Andrew has always been right about the important things, especially when it comes to his judgment of his students. I know from my own experience and all my brothers and sisters who have lived this life will concur, that there is nothing more enraging to the ego than to be unmasked and naked before the truth. This is the place where all the toxicity of Andrew’s detractors comes from. But the point is this is what we signed up for and Andrew has only been doing his job and doing it far better than most of us ever wished he had.
The fact is whatever I have been through personally, is nothing compared with what others, Andrew more than anyone, have been through because of me. You can say I am just an insane sycophant/masochist if you want. It’s an easy way to go. But consider what I am saying and a lot begins to make sense. The Andrew I know could not be further from the lunatic that his detractors portray. And they will never be able to adequately explain what it was that made so many people, including themselves, go through so much for so long to be with him.
So why did we? It was because of who he was and is—miraculously in our darkest moment, a real spiritual Master for our times—with the love, the passion, the courage and the soul strength needed to take on the densest egos the world has ever seen, and not compromise his vision! And the intensity of the reaction of the naysayers to him only proves how deeply Andrew lives in their souls, as he has no choice but to, because of their choice.
None of us were deeply serious about the spiritual life when we met Andrew. We didn’t even know what it meant, because how many people do we know that do? But Andrew made us serious. He inspired all of us to reach for the absolute highest with our lives and not settle for anything less. Most of all he inspired us, through his own example, to want to be victorious in the greatest battle there is, the battle with ourselves—only so we could become fit vehicles for the greatest mission there could ever be: to create a new world in the image of Spirit—together.
Would we have ever gotten even close to such an outrageously positive and desperately needed leap in the evolution of consciousness without him?
Steve Brett can be contacted at steve@guru-talk.com
