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.

The time between the Welsh retreat and when I left for India (after finishing Art College in 1984) only served to deepen my conviction that the path of meditation and spiritual study was what I felt deeply called to. I left for England in December of 1983 to meet Christopher in London to travel with him to India to begin my studies. I didn’t know what was going to follow, but I had no timeline or plans to return to the US.

The time in India was life-changing (far more to do with the timeless power of mother India herself than almost anything I could have found on a month’s retreat) leaving me shaken and questioning how it was that I had been given so much for so long- something until going to India I had never questioned in any way. At the end of the retreat Christopher asked me to move to Devon to help him run a mediation retreat house that he and his partner Christina had founded. I accepted, and after taking some time to travel I returned to England to live and work the following spring.

I adored England, and felt deeply at home. I enjoyed my work for Gaia House, and my reconnection with many of the others who were in the Vipassana community, many of whom I had met first on the retreat in Wales and were on the board of Gaia House.

During this time Christopher began a community at Sharpham House, a nearby Manor house who’s owner offered the to nursery wing (an amazing space) for Christopher’s students to live in and use to offer classes and weekend retreats. It was there that I moved, just after word of an American’s enlightenment began to hit the shores of this pastoral world.

I’m not sure I can even convey what a shock even these rumors were. All that I had learned since 19 was that one’s duty was to “one’s practice” and developing equanimity. Enlightenment was utterly out of the question, off the charts, arrogant in the extreme to even wish for. That was the Buddha, and perhaps a few sages like Ramana Maharshi, or Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. That an American, just a few years older than me…well it was both utterly inconceivable and like a flare, lit up the landscape of assumptions and structures that none of in the Vipassana community had ever questioned. Little did I know that this was a wavelet, a fractal of the tsunami that Andrew was to bring with him and that I was to be immersed in for the next 23 years.

Very shortly after Andrew landed in Totnes, Devon (on the invitation of Murray Feldman who had introduced him to HWL Poonja) he began teaching in the living room of Murray and his wife Shanti’s cottage every night and taught there for about a month, if memory serves. In spite of the fact that the cottage was – no exaggeration – at the top of the drive to Sharpham House where I was living with others from Christopher’s community, I found myself very divided and did not go. I could not, however, insulate myself from the currents, rumors, and tremors that were shaking this formerly sleepy Buddhist community that I had left America to be part of…Stories of profound meditation and spontaneous awakenings of great depth; in many cases happening to people with no prior history with meditation or even any religious tradition.

The gatherings in the cottage living room quickly outgrew the space as more and more people came for satsang. So Andrew, Alka, Orly, Brad, and the others that had come with him from Rishikesh, decided to rent another larger cottage a few miles down the road. It was at this point that my boyfriend, Steve, decided that he needed to see what all the ruckus was about…not a small thing for someone on the board of the local Buddhist meditation center (that I also had managed) and with even longer ties than me with its main teacher and founder Christopher Titmus.

Steve went to satsang one night, and came back amazed and filled with stories and encouragement. He went again and shortly afterward arranged to speak with Andrew privately. He came back from that meeting profoundly affected and with no doubt that Andrew was a true Guru.

At this point, in spite of all my fears of spiritual authorities I felt I had to see for myself what was going on under my nose. Andrew seemed to be awakening revelations that I had read about in the sutras and “I am That”. But, after many years of Vipassana meditation and retreats, these accounts honestly did not in any way seem plausible to me.

But I was wrong. In a packed, stuffy Devonshire cottage living room, full of the smells of wet wool, wellies and smoke from the fire, strangers and friends sat crammed together or perched on the window sills or out in the hall. Into this crush, night after night, Andrew would descend from his room upstairs in jeans and a t-shirt. Some nights he would just sit in meditation, in the overstuffed green chair that he used every night, and the room would be enveloped in a profundity of living silence that I had never, ever experienced before. Other nights he would speak or answer questions, and when he spoke with others it was as if he was answering my most secret unasked questions.

One night, several weeks after I began coming I was held up and arrived late. The only seat left was an old wooden rocking chair set out of the line of sight, at the very back of the room in an alcove under the stairs. Because I could not see Andrew easily, I closed my eyes to listen to him speak. As I listened I fell more deeply into a timeless space of  no-thought than Iever had before. The next thing I knew, Steve was shaking me to leave. Satsang had been over for perhaps an hour, and I had had no idea, in spite of being surrounded by dozens of talking people drinking tea. Deeply disoriented, I knew I had to get home to where I could be quiet again, because I knew I would be able to “keep it together” for only a minimal amount of time. Keep what together, and for what, I had no idea but I would soon find out.

As soon as I got home, I lay down on my bed. Almost right away, I left my body, the first and only time this has happened to me. I could see it on the bed below lying next to Steve, but felt no fear, only relief, excitement and awe. In the bizarre nature of such things, it seemed like I went up to the top far corner of my bedroom ceiling where both a doorway and the being who guarded the door awaited me. Whenever I try to remember what this being looked like I can only remember light, and get the image of an angel from one of the early 15th century paintings of the annunciation. Strange, but there you are. There were no words, but there was communication – of joy, love and of great welcome. I was allowed to pass. As I entered the vast field or space I was aware of countless other beings in a sea of light, and a boundless wash of Love that was not mine and not theirs – but was all of us, and was also profoundly more than all and any of us…more vast and beautiful than can possibly be described. It was into that Love and perfect Joy that I disappeared as all individuation vanished. And I knew then, beyond any doubt that my truest Self was this Love, but that it was also the final nature and Truth at the center and bottom of everything, seen and unseen.

I was stunned and more than a little shaken by what had happened when I woke the next day. But I never had a moments doubt that what I had seen and felt was real, however extraordinary and hard to explain. A few days later I had the opportunity to tell Andrew about it. He pulled me aside to talk privately, and then left for a moment to return with a picture of Ramana Maharshi. “You do know” he said, “that this man’s experience and yours are one and the same?” This completely stopped me – I held Ramana in awe. I had traveled almost the length of India in second-class train carriages a few years before to spend time at his ashram. I had also had a deep experience while meditating at his tomb prior to leaving Arunachala – so in this world there was probably no-one I would have been less inclined to place myself in the same sentence with. However, as Andrew said these words, I saw, and even more importantly, knew something even more deeply. It was that this Love was my True Self it was also THE True Self, and so in that deepest place, the most (and only) real place, I was the same as Ramana, and that also, in this, Andrew and I were no different…and even more than that, we were One – that his truest heart and mine were the same. This lasted the merest sliver of a second, but seemed forever. In the next moment I saw the vast implications of that truth on every level…the total surrender, care and big-hearted abandonment of my personal history that I also knew in that moment would have to be given. And in the next heartbeat I utterly rejected it.

In all fairness, I have to confess here to the benefit of 23 years of hindsight and probing compressed into this last sentence. At the time, all I was aware of was the barest flicker of recognition, followed by a tsunami of “me?? Ramana??? Who on earth is he kidding? Doesn’t he know what a neurotic young/American/woman/mess I am?” And then I pulled back in what seemed to me to be confusion.

The reason I am emphasizing now something that happened at the very beginning of my relationship with Andrew is because I now know that these events set the stage for everything that has come since, both profoundly good and extraordinarily difficult. In that moment, the moment of showing me my True Self, Andrew became my Teacher, my Guru. And in that he also became the one who would accept no less of me than he knew I was capable of – a fight of wills that would at times be very painful for both of us. After this event I became more and more immersed in Andrew’s teachings, ultimately leaving Devon and moving back to the states to be Andrew’s student.

Shortly after the time above Andrew taught in Amsterdam for the first time. Then he went to Rome, Israel, and beyond as people who had met him invited him. More and more, the joy of being with others who were experiencing the same extraordinary Freedom became the focus of all of our lives. Also, at the same time (as has been recounted elsewhere on Guru Talk) Andrew began to see that direct and unequivocal experiences of the divine source were not enough for most of us – even those who viewed him as their Teacher – to surrender the ego and live in true service of love and unity, no matter what we had seen or said.

So, the following arc of the years – leaving England to return to the States to settle in Cambridge, then out to Marin, California where we were for eight years, and then finding and settling in Foxhollow in Lenox, Mass…were all woven through with trips, Teachings, and Retreats in India, Europe, Australia and beyond, with the continuous evolution of his understanding of the human condition. This was fueled by his struggles with all of us (myself emphatically included!) to live up to what he knew we knew and to be willing to come together in trust, care and interest in the Truth. The trouble being that the Truth also includes the facts of the closer than close conditioning of gender, culture, and self image and personal history…and on his repeated demand to truly lean into these issues with a big heart I also fought Andrew tooth and claw for many years, while sure I was doing everything possible.

My point is – as all scripture says – the ego is a tricky, slippery, nasty bastard! So, as its sworn enemy, Andrew did resort to strong tactics at times. But – and this is crucial- he only did this with intelligent, self-determined adults who had sworn directly to him that this was their life and they didn’t want kid gloves!

I must also confess that much of what has become controversial in later years I did not see, as my own form of stark refusal was to pretend I had no memory of what I knew and was utterly unable to do more than serve in the kitchen…with a few illuminating exceptions. But (and I can see clearly now why) my and our refusal to transform, at its worst, made Andrew exhausted, angry and despairing. And so the years were very, very up and down, with what seemed at times more down than up. Yet even during the hardest times we were learning and things did change and evolve. But they never, ever would have without the pressure Andrew had to bring to bear – to his own distress.

It’s important also to see that all of this was against the reverse curve of Andrew needing more and more authentic conviction and humility from his students, not less. With some, this was occurring, but they were few. For myself, four years ago after a particularly difficult retreat and follow-up, I decided to no longer be part of Andrews’ community…that I had to find another way forward.

In the midst of a particularly difficult time for Andrew’s female students, I left. I found a light-filled apartment not far from my work, and settled in for the winter depressingly convinced that I had wasted the bulk of my life and all my youth (I was then 48) on a bitter failure. Six months later, a lifeline came from a totally unexpected quarter. Two of Andrew’s closest male students had begun a conversation that resulted in a realization that Andrew’s community as a whole had almost no respect or appreciation for its beginnings and that this was something that needed addressing. So, with the greatest trepidation I and others who had met Andrew in the first few years began speaking with them about this. The effect was astounding. Whole chunks of my experience that I had taken totally personally began to be seen from a much bigger perspective. And even, perhaps more important, I realized that that which had led me to Andrew was still totally alive and that none of it had been a waste…and that the mystery, possibility and journey was there for me to engage with now and in going forward.

As a result of these conversations a number of us decided to meet in Israel and to have a retreat together in En Gedi on the Dead Sea to speak further. It was an amazing gathering, with a wide range of Andrew’s current and ex-students…all of whom had been his students for 20 years or more. From right at the beginning, as we walked and spoke in that amazing landscape there was a depth of Presence and a releasing, an up surging of Love and connection to the ineffable that, shortly before, I had thought I would never experience again. There was also a gradual healing over those days, and a deepening understanding of the magnitude of the forces that are at play around any true teacher of Enlightenment…Evolutionary transfromation is a messy business and the biggest of hearts is needed. And even more than that, the Mystery is always a Mystery…and it wasn’t over yet! A facet of this is the strength of connection and care between so many of us that have been Andrew’s students. This was, for many of us, re-booted by our time in En Gedi and has only gone from strength to strength since and continues to expand.

I came back to Boston that spring with the renewed heart and passion to ask myself anew how to live my life with integrity and purpose. And, with my history with Andrew fully in the picture, to begin to find out what was the right path for me outside of the formal community of EnlightenNext. Again, to my surprise, the answers were not long in coming.

Standing doing dishes one day I had a vision. It was of me, but not in any recognizable form. Rather, it was of a soul-map, showing very clearly the areas that were developed and those that were not. Not surprisingly, perhaps, my area of dignified mature engagement with the world was weak, as was my area of human vulnerability and love. Again, not surprising as I had not been in a romantic/sexual relationship for over 17 years (and even then it had hardly been my forte!)

Having been offered guidance, I decided it only made sense to follow the thread. After a lot of thought and research I decided to go to Graduate School, to deepen and solidify the dignity and self-reliance that Andrew had very specifically asked me to cultivate so many years before. And I also decided to take the risk of a relationship that presented itself at that time…something that would have been inconceivable only months before.

Now, two and a half years later, the pursuit of my MS is going very well, and is nearing its completion. The initial relationship was not so successful, but showed me in many ways how much I had grown and how much Andrew’s teachings were part of me. And, perhaps even more important, that in the face of the resulting emotional turmoil, I re-discovered how they were indeed the truest bedrock of sanity, goodness and love imaginable – and in no way the abstractions I’d been making them for so long. It was also then that I began to have many “aha” moments…”Oh that’s why Andrew said that”, “Oh that’s why Andrew so wanted women to be independent” “Oh that’s why the Five Tenets are the foundation for living a liberated life. They actually are! They just are, Period!” …All this, after 22 years!! There were many moments I’ve also felt like Homer Simpson (Duh!) and like sending Andrew a telegram. “Dear Andrew, I get it. I’m very sorry for being such a total idiot. Love, Kate”

In a way I did send that telegram. I’ve stayed in touch with Andrew and the more independent and authentic my inquiry became, the closer we have become. And at a certain point I realized that we had never been this close, except perhaps right at the beginning. Not because of anything Andrew had done, but because (at least in part) I was finally growing up as he had asked me to do for so many years…and in that I was beginning to realize the fact my responsibility for everything he has taught me.

A year ago I decided not to be a coward, and gave love (small l) another chance. And amazingly, in spite of all my ideas that pretty much anyone would run upon hearing the story above, I have met and fallen in love with a wonderful man on a search of his own. One that had taken him though the seminary rather than the more Eastern route, but the difference has proven immaterial.

So…much happened for me both within and outside Andrew’s formal community. But none of it has happened outside my relationship with Andrew and what he is bringing to the world. How my part in all of this will continue to unfold is unknown, but possibilities and goodness are beyond doubt. I look forward to what is next with a very full heart!

Kate Fleming can be contacted at kfleming333@gmail.com