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…

By Barbara Waldorf

Walking down the road in Stockbridge MA, my head is buzzing after talking with everyone. Something is burning through my nervous system, wanting to come through. Something is emerging that has its own life and force. This emergence happens in apparent spaces between us that don’t really exist: in the living paradox of autonomy and communion and a palpable energetic  field that can only be Love. Continue reading…

When it has all been said and done what perspective will we relate from? I learned from Andrew early on that we always do what we want. Everything is volitional. We all joined Andrew because we wanted to, and we all left because we wanted to. Simple. No one could have anticipated the wonderful and sometimes terrifying ride we were in for. Continue reading…

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.” Continue reading…

By Rivka Attal

I met Andrew when I was 25 years old through a school friend whom I respected a lot. I was studying accountancy in Israel. He had then been a student of Andrew for two years and even though I thought one day he might return to ‘being normal’ (leaving behind his spiritual teacher), I appreciated some of the views he shared with me regarding the true nature of thoughts and feelings, which later I learned were coming from his association with Andrew. Continue reading…

By Rivka Attal

Is Andrew Cohen an abusive teacher whose main purpose to gain power through using his position and authority and abuse his students trust in him, as is expressed by a few ex-students who have gone public with their conclusions whether through book or blog? Or is there something else going on and, if so, what is it?

Continue reading…