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.

I was not unfamiliar in myself with what was expressed in those writings. It was the growl of that part of ourselves that had been dispossessed by the explosive light of our encounter with what is beyond mind and our limited sense of self. That part of ourselves would, and will always, fight against that revolutionary experiment that the life with Andrew represents. And here in these writings it was finally expressing itself freely, but now of course at a safe psychological and material distance from that light.

It should be noted that these writers are all people who spent a significant amount of time with Andrew and with the community, many of them in a position of leadership. And when I say significant time I mean 10, 15 years or even more. They were all very close friends of mine, since we lived all together, very close together, and I know them as very confident and intelligent people. Now, if the situation in which we shared our lives had been as it is described in these writings, how could they possibly endure such a teacher in an unjust, unrewarding environment for such a long time? From my point of view, since I lived what they lived, the answer is very simple: they could because it was very different from what they describe.

I would like to make clear that we are talking about very close students of Andrew here, as there were many who, while living close to the community, were not sharing the same kind of commitment of the smaller group of closer students. Each one of us could choose how close to the fire we wanted to live, or we would naturally end up as close as our desire to participate actively in the process would allow. After the first few years, as the whole community was moving forward, to became a close student required a few years of training in which the student got to know Andrew and the community, (and themselves!) and the kind of demand that a spiritual life actually lived in a communal context in space and time, as opposed to only in one’s own internal experience, requires.

We all were very aware that the life we had chosen required everything from us – and Andrew had made that very clear literally countless times. “Enlightenment has nothing to do with getting something for yourself” or “There’s no guarantee!” – to cite a few examples, a very different approach from some of the descriptions I have read that Andrew was luring people just by promising heaven on earth!

Looking back now, the reason that Andrew emphasized the absolute nature of this demand made sense to me from the very beginning…

 

Coming Home

I attended my first teaching with Andrew in 1988 in Rome and, during the second night after a brief exchange with Andrew, something mysterious opened up in my vision. I became aware of a powerful presence in the room and, more than that, I became aware of the source of that presence – a mystery that was the essence of everything. Even the room, the walls, matter itself, appeared not solid, but made of That. The people around me were suffused with light, and so unbelievably beautiful. The presence in the room was pure, overwhelming Love.

The realization came upon me that the whole of reality is ONE – everything is It, something Absolute I was perceiving directly. The bliss and the beauty of it was almost unbearable and yet a profound sense of peace, a powerful and silent stillness was at the root of everything. I saw Andrew was immersed in that and was speaking from that.

That first intense experience lasted three days. During that time, while I was once again in a more or less “normal” state of consciousness, the light of what I had witnessed meant that everything appeared totally different. Gone was the suffocating limitation in which I had tried to make sense of this mysterious miracle called life. An unlimited Vastness had exploded into my consciousness. My heart was finally at peace and I felt the unmistakable sweetness of having come home.

But together with the bliss and the spiritual experiences that were constant companions of my life then, I could also perceive something in me that was resisting the unbelievable lack of boundaries, the freedom and the huge opening of perspective, the experience of love and intimacy with my now spiritual brothers and sisters. The resistance was also there because surrendering to all of this meant the end of my reign over my own separate life, however illusory that had been revealed to be. In that vastness I, or to define it more precisely, my separate ego could not exert any control. And, I would like to point out, that this was not because of Andrew – it was inherent in the nature of that Absolute itself that had been revealed to me in spiritual experience.

Spiritual Life is a Serious Endeavour

A few months after Andrew had left Rome, I decided to leave everything to become his student. But things rarely go as planned. A few weeks into my new life, I had another very powerful experience. I was taking a short walk at night, after attending a teaching with Andrew, just outside my house. It was a very beautiful summer night, and I was looking up at the sky when I started to perceive—I ‘m not sure how to describe it—a very intense Consciousness, far more intense and awake than ours. It was (and here words really fail to describe the experience) like an intense scream coming from the depths of the universe. As strange as it may sound, I wasn’t surprised but felt I was meeting again something I had already met. This was actually something I knew very well and very intimately, but had not been fully conscious of. Then, suddenly, a profound shift occurred and I was THAT looking back at myself. I saw clearly that what I had always thought of as myself was actually just a faint veil on the surface of Reality and it didn’t really have any independent existence.

In a brief moment, everything was back to “normal” – but I was in a state of sheer panic! I was “myself” again but I couldn’t forget that I had literally witnessed my non-existence. I ran back to the house, I was really scared. All the people I was living with were in bed. I turned on the TV; I needed a big dose of normality! As I was slowly calming down, I wondered if maybe the experience I had was just a hallucination. Actually I was hoping that maybe it was so. But no matter how I tried to entertain this possibility I knew that the reality of what I had seen was undeniable.I wrote about this experience to Andrew and he was the only one who could really understand what had happened. But then, in the days that followed, the implications of what I had seen where becoming clearer to me. It is one thing to read in spiritual literature that the ego is not real and that the ultimate truth is that “I am That”, but it is another thing altogether to fully FACE into that as an actual fact. I realized that up until that point, although I thought I knew that spiritual life was a very serious endeavor, I actually had no idea of how unthinkably big and real it all is. I also realized that Andrew really had no choice, and that he was never going to stop. He couldn’t because, as I could see now, he was totally surrendered to something indescribably powerful and Real.

Something in me was completely shaken to the core. As time went by I realized that I wasn’t so sure anymore that I had what it took to live spiritual life for real, and I felt I needed some time by myself. I let Andrew know that I was leaving. He was not happy about that but I felt I couldn’t do otherwise at the time.

A few days later I was back to Rome. But it didn’t take me very long to realize that I had made a big mistake. As much as I tried, there was nothing for me there. I had no interest whatsoever in the things that used to interest me, in my old life. I was feeling quite ok, peaceful and full of energy, and even my friends were noticing that, but something big was missing. There was nothing I wanted or that I wanted to do—only a steady pressure inside was telling me that I wanted to go back.

Just a few weeks later, I wrote to Andrew, describing my experience, and I asked him to take me back as his student. I was waiting for an answer from Andrew with some trepidation, since I wasn’t sure he would accept me again after I had left so abruptly. I felt I had behaved very carelessly in my relationship with him. Andrew wrote back and told me to wait six months and then, if I was still sure that it was what I wanted, I could come back. Andrew’s responses were often like this, completely empty in their essence of any pollution from personal feeling—although he would often not hide at all what his own feelings were!

Six months later I was back in what was going to be my home for many years to come. This was the beginning of a thirteen year relationship that has been the most intensely challenging and, at the same time, the most real and rewarding of my entire life. In spite of my often stubborn refusal to give myself fully to the life I had freely chosen, Andrew has always taken my own evolution far more seriously than I ever have.

It was at times very challenging, but yet in the midst of every challenge I couldn’t hide from myself the fact that this relationship was the working out of the whole predicament I was in: on one side the ineffable knowing that comes from the touch of the Absolute and the Unknown, and on the other the relentless resistance of my ego trying to preserve itself inside his own imposed boundaries and division.

The Separate Ego

“It is the ego-sense which clinches the division and in which the ignorance we superficially are finds its power to maintain the strong though always permeable walls it has created to be its own prison. Ego is the most formidable of the knots which keep us tied to the Ignorance…

For in this vital ego there is frequently a mixture of the charlatan and mountebank, the poser and actor; it is constantly taking up a role and playing it to itself and to others as its public. An organised self-deception is thus added to an organised self-ignorance; it is only by going within and seeing these things at their source that we can get out of this obscurity and tangle.”

Sri Aurobindo – The Life Divine

It is not so rare if your desire is strong and sincere enough, and if you are lucky enough to meet that rare Teacher like Andrew is, to have a powerful and liberating spiritual experience, but those for whom an enlightenment experience is enough to be liberated are extremely rare indeed. For most of us, such an experience is only the beginning of spiritual life. It is the beginning of the unfolding, sometimes blissful and exciting and sometimes difficult and intense, of the potential innate in us as human beings, of our potential for evolution. The fundamental, all-important goal being the expression and manifestation here, in space and time, of that Oneness revealed in spiritual experience.

Spiritual life is an unthinkably serious endeavor. Real spiritual life with a Real Teacher is a constant challenge to who you think you are, since the particular way in which you limit or define yourself is the most formidable barrier to the stable realization of That which is beyond any limit and beyond the grasp of the mind. And whatever lies beyond that limit or definition becomes automatically non-self. This is the very root of separation and division in us and among us. This is what ego is.

From this point of view, on a practical level, spiritual life always involves a battle against the ego. Ideally a battle with the student and the teacher on the same side.

Being free from the ego’s clutches means being a free human being. This means facing into the many tricks and deceptions of the ego in oneself over and over again. A real Teacher will never allow his students to be deluded by it; he will always encourage and, when necessary, take the risk to push the student to face their pride and self-deception. And it has been always my experience that Andrew is such a teacher.

But the ego wants to survive, and to survive it needs to win over whatever is threatening it, to feel superior and safe, and it will use whatever means necessary to that end. Andrew will never compromise in these matters – we could put our trust in him as a teacher precisely because of that. And at those times when Andrew would win the battle, as I experienced myself more than once, the outcome was progress, renewed strength and freedom. A very different result than when the battle is between TWO egos.

There was always ample room to overcome our limitations (and we had all the help we needed – women’s and men’s meetings, meditation together and individual spiritual practice, each other’s help and, most importantly, the constant help from Andrew). The whole environment represented both the means of our evolution and the goal and very expression of it. And Andrew would very often warn us about the obstacles and limitations we needed to address, individually and collectively. We were living so closely together that anything we would do had an effect on everybody and on the whole situation.

Ego is indeed “the most formidable of the knots which keep us tied to the Ignorance” and there were times when none of Andrew’s efforts were enough. And when push comes to shove, ego will deny and hide its own real nature and will therefore fight to prove that Andrew is WRONG. And, as a last resort, there is always the possibility of an unyielding defiant response, whatever forms that might take – which by definition always wins.

This is the reason why, in the writings of former students who portray Andrew in a negative light, you will never see any mention as to what Andrew was actually responding to in those situations. Since these “critics” stuck to it for ten or more years Andrew’s behavior and motives must have made SOME sense to them – but no mention is made of that.

Context is Everything

The perspective and context that Andrew, with all the means at his disposal, was relentlessly fighting to keep alive in us, that Light that had sparked the beginning of our life together in its own unthinkably vast field, was the full meaning of our life together.

It was this that was the almost constant presence in my thirteen years with Andrew. Both in the periods when things were easy and flowing, and also in the moments of turmoil and battle, when the mind was crowded with clashing thoughts and clarity seemed nowhere to be found. This was what would make the battle against human conditioning, in ourselves and as ourselves, even in the moments of the greatest difficulty, a challenge that was possible for us to meet, provided we had the willingness to make at least the first step in the right direction.

Because this unfathomable, unknown, all pervading and all-meaning presence is the blessing of the life with a Real Teacher. It was the blessing of our life with Andrew Cohen.

The author can be contacted at enzo@guru-talk.com