I was a deeply involved student of Andrew Cohen’s for ten years, living in his communities in the USA and England, traveling to many retreats in India and living the fully engaged life of a student committed to understanding and living Andrew Cohen’s teaching.

In 2002 I left the community and moved into a very different life, where the passionate pursuit of ever-deeper spiritual immersion and action is no longer the all-consuming focus and I do not follow any formal or regular spiritual practice.

It has been fascinating to see the great diversity in students’ post-community evaluations of their experience, community and Teacher. The sum of individual commentary on the web indicates an interesting bottom line – either Andrew/the Community is fundamentally good, although there is perhaps room for improvement or Andrew/the Community is fundamentally bad, although there might be some positive aspects.

For the record, I strongly subscribe to the former. Until recently there were only two perspectives available on the web either from Andrew Cohen himself and active members of his community and organization EnlightenNext or from ex-students who were fundamentally mistrustful of Andrew Cohen and the community. There was no place for ex-students like myself who are living a very different life but remain deeply appreciative of, and profoundly grateful for, their time with Andrew Cohen.

As voices from active members of Andrew’s community have been discounted as being “brainwashed” or extensions of Andrew himself, I really wanted to add my two cents worth in opposition to the view that Andrew is fundamentally flawed and all seekers should avoid him, his teachings and his community EnlightenNext. It may be that Andrew Cohen is not the right Teacher or Guru for many people but if you hear the call, I think you should seriously consider answering, going in with your eyes and heart open and finding out for yourself. Like many others, I answered the call of his Teaching and do not regret a single day I spent under Andrew’s guidance.

Life in the community was a very unusual situation – an experimental pressure cooker carefully designed to create the greatest depth of understanding and change in the shortest possible time. I would not argue that every situation for every individual, or even group of individuals, was perfectly managed. Some approaches worked better than others and the situation was constantly changing and evolving in the light of experience. Living the experiment could, at times, be painful and difficult to bear, but it generated great depth of insight, understanding and genuine change. It seemed to me that although some approaches Andrew tried worked better than others, the overall trajectory was very positive. In terms of the various dramatic incidents cataloged on the web, every situation I was directly aware of – my own or others I was closely involved with – made complete sense, but only in the context of this spiritual experiment.

However, the main point is not how easy/difficult/successful/unsuccessful any particular situation was, but that we students were an intentional community of deeply committed, like-minded, strong individuals, who deliberately and voluntarily subjected ourselves to the absolute rule of our Guru and any arrangement he orchestrated through and with us for as long as we wanted to, in order to go as far as we wanted to, and maybe considerably further than that!

It turns out that for genuine, cellular change to occur, the individual must, at times, allow themselves to be profoundly challenged and then not move, but allow that challenge to reach a crisis. Then, if all goes according to plan, an unexpected and liberating fruition can result. This is a mechanical and deeply impersonal process – when the mind is confronted with its own inconsistencies, ignorance and selfishness, it doesn’t just give up and let God in – it fights like hell to resist and stay the same! Bearing that resistance, and the humbling of the self that goes along with recognition of the truth, is the emotional burden of this process. It is an emotional, psychological and spiritual truth attested to in many spiritual traditions, including the monastic traditions of Christianity and Buddhism.

All of us dedicated students understood this process intimately, because it repeated itself in regular cycles, as long periods of joy, even ecstasy, gave way to difficult times of intense turmoil and insecurity. We all came to recognize the pattern, not as an enemy (unpleasant though it may be) but as the necessary rhythm of authentic change. This was the currency of life in the community and surely anyone willing to stay in such an intense situation for so long had very strong reasons of their own for doing so. And if ever the time comes when those reasons no longer have the strength to keep someone immersed in this vortex, then nothing can or will stop them leaving.

So here’s the thing – what makes one student leave with a heart full of gratitude and another with a heart full of doubt? Both have left, both have come to a point where it is “too much” for whatever reason, both have repeatedly experienced the same transforming fire. I cannot reconcile these facts by blaming the Guru for being fundamentally flawed. If that were truly the case why aren’t there many more ex-students blaming Andrew and why are there so many who remain deeply grateful and fundamentally positive about the whole experience? It also seems unconvincing to say that community members were somehow persuaded to stay in such an environment for ten or more years under false pretences or some sort of brainwashing, something we even laughed about at the time! This was a group of unusually strong, intelligent and determined people and ten years is surely too long to claim ignorance.

It has often been stated – both in the community and in many spiritual traditions – that the spiritual quest is not safe. Casualties of the process regularly occur in many spiritual endeavors and it is understandable if some individuals leave a spiritual community feeling burnt and mistreated. What is problematic to me is the absolute position expressed by some of my friends and fellow students that Andrew Cohen is absolutely not to be trusted as a spiritual teacher. It seems to me that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all and that those who left in disillusionment should not forget why they stayed so long and devoted so much passionate involvement to a process they now regret.

Rick Asherson can be contacted at rasherson@compuserve.com

I have never before had the desire to write about my long connection to Andrew Cohen and usually keep it to myself. This is not because there is anything secret about it – in fact it is a part of me, and those who know me well know how much it is integral to my being. But usually I see no reason to express my views to others unless they want to know. However, given the amount of recent negative press I feel compelled to speak out.

People sometimes pull me to a corner and ask me about the particulars of certain allegations made by former students about Andrew Cohen, asking was it true? Did I experience any of this? My answer is that the question is irrelevant, because the issues are entirely taken out of context.

The stories of wrongdoing, brainwashing and a litany of other things are simultaneously ridiculous and a blight. They are ridiculous because they defy any logic, a blight because they cloud a truth that shines through only to those who are ready to see it. And every human being on earth deserves to have access to that truth. Not everyone will see it, but none of us ever has the right to obscure to others the light of day – whether or not we choose to abide in the dark.

These negative writings come from a place that is deeply flawed in every dimension – logically, spiritually and humanly. They come from people who have been my close friends, and who like me have had the extraordinary privilege of encountering the full-blown forces of Spirit in its rawest manifestation. It is only with a true Master or Guru that one can fully take in these forces, and it is only the very committed who would ever choose to do so.

Many people who have been with Andrew Cohen did not venture there, because they didn’t have the inclination. But those of us who did did so because we deeply trusted, loved and yearned for radical liberation from the miserable existence of spiritual bondage. We did so because we had woken up, for whatever reason, to the glory of the spiritual life. The promise of a life given out of our hands to a higher purpose that we knew we couldn’t and would never be able to capture with our minds.

And that is the whole point. The only reason we got involved is that we knew we didn’t know – and we loved it. We knew that we were playing with fire. We knew that we were in for something that could never be understood or measured in mundane terms. You see, when committing to a Guru, a relationship begins that is beyond the boundaries of every-day reality. Not everyone took this step, many stayed rather more removed and fared a different course. But those of us who went into the deep did so out of our own love and desire, and no one forced us to do so.

There is also a more human dimension to this. We were brothers and sisters. Andrew Cohen was and/or is our Teacher. We were all beholden to each other in our endeavour. We lived, ate, shopped and worked together, had the flu and decorated our houses together. We looked after each others children and hung each others laundry. And most importantly we did our practice together, hundreds if not thousands of hours spent in silence as well as conversation, in the most intimate, boundary-less commitment anyone can ever engage in.

I’m not saying we knew where we were going, because the potential was unfolding itself as we grew, but we knew we had set off on an epic course. We entered states of consciousness and development that had never been consciously placed in a post-modern, Western context before. It was a huge experiment that had no precedent. We were not trying to re-create a prior religion or invoke an existing form of spirituality, we were literally forging a new, 21st Century manifestation of Spirit in Matter. And we were excited to be the explorers on this mission.

So it is no surprise that half the time we didn’t know what we were doing. Most of us had never been in positions of leadership, and I can say safely that all of us were post-modern narcissists, which is normal for our generation. I can confirm that some of the most vengeful articles have been written by those who gave a great deal and were true leaders. I was one myself, and we all blundered through it, because we were arrogant and inexperienced. Few had the humility to learn and find out how to deal with these uncharted levels of consciousness, and those who did can be seen shining now, travelling the world to speak publicly, writing a highly acclaimed magazine EnlightenNext (formerly What Is Enlightenment?) and being inspiring examples to other spiritual authorities.

Most of us did not have the courage and humility. We shone, and then stumbled, at times we did horrible things to each other, sometimes in a hapless effort to do the right thing, sometimes out of blind egotism, but the main thing is that we were too proud and immature to learn from it. I am fully complicit – many reading this article probably still feel the effects of my prideful wrongdoings which will be with me for life. And Andrew didn’t always know what the right thing was – he is a human being provoking the emergence of consciousness as he goes, ever trying to anticipate how we would respond, and staking his life on making this happen.

But why should anyone have known beforehand how to deal with an epic experiment in human evolutionary development? Why should our skills have been ready-made from the start? Who is to say that we precious beings were entitled to open Pandora’s Box and find a manual typed up in English? And should that have been the case, then why didn’t you or I lead the way to keep us all out of trouble?

Evolution is a messy business, and experiments with the force of God can create messy situations. But that doesn’t relieve me from the fact that as simply as I know that my mother loves me, I know that no one ever had evil motivations. Andrew always did the best he could, often saw far beyond what I could see, usually fought much harder for my freedom than I, in my arrogant pride, cared to do myself. And yes, that sometimes came with doses of tough love – as I said, he is a Master. His job was not to placate my ego, but to confront me with it. Yet fundamentally we were all there for a sacred purpose – Andrew as well as all of us arrogant, imperfect people who had come to him to learn.

So we can’t now turn around and blame each other for our weaknesses, much less blame our Guru for our own inadequacy.

To face the imperfections of what happened is one thing. Facing them straight-on comes with facing oneself with courage. But turning around and blaming your Guru is of a different order. Writing distorted accusations is unacceptable. One may think it’s not that bad, actually quite justified really, given how much we gave, it all seems quite reasonable… But this is where I beg to draw a line. It was me who decided to get involved with a Guru and confront the forces of the Universe, not anyone else. And a Student-Guru relationship is not reasonable – which is the very reason we got ourselves involved!

I know what the struggle is like. I came to that point where I found myself faced with the Devil in a dark ally, all alone with no one else around. I was tempted, weak and humiliated. So what was I to do? There were only two options: blame the very person, who has shown me the glory of Life, or swallow my pride, bend my knee to God and say a 4-letter word to the Devil.

There was no doubt in my mind that I was to do the second, and in spite of my humiliation over finding out that I wasn’t the spiritual heroine I thought I was, I found myself blessed with the fruits of all those years of spiritual, psychological, mental, physical and intellectual training. Not to mention the love expressed by my Guru who always tried everything he could to get me to develop and overcome my barriers. He wished me well and gave me his full support when I said I wanted to find my own steps forward. And knowing how much he wanted me to succeed, how could I ever get anywhere near the temptations of resentment?

The part I understand the least regarding those who chose otherwise is how much they are in denial of their own strength. The whimpers and the vitriol of complaint are the denial of those years of spiritual training, which are there in all of us. They have given each one of us the capacity to see clearly, put heart and mind in their right relationship, pierce through the ego, and seek the silent presence of a higher purpose. I know for myself that if I could do this, and if I still sometimes dream of you all as if no years went by, then there couldn’t possibly be a reason why anyone else could not.

My message is: Wake up, get over it, take a hard look at yourself. What kind of a life do you live if you deny the most luckiest thing that ever happened to you? Why justify that however much we gave, we didn’t give what was needed? How much arrogance do you want to tolerate in yourself? And what could you possibly stand to lose?

For me, there was the morning that I woke up knowing that I had half a life in front of me, years of deep experience behind me, the guidance of a sage, the love of a group of lifelong friends, a good dose of stubborn resilience and independence, a disposition for making radical choices, and a heart that is capable of catching fire and falling apart.

I knew there was nothing to wait for and there never will be – each one of us is blessed.

Willa Geertsema can be contacted at willa.geertsema@gmail.com

ENTERING POST-GRADUATE SCHOOL WITH A TRUE GURU

I was a student of Andrew Cohen from the fall of 1989 to late in 2001. With the exception of a few months when I left the community, I managed to stay in the always-simmering cauldron of Formal Students over the twelve years that I lived, breathed, worked, ate, lived, thrived, and at times anguished in the ongoing and sometimes unbearable intimacy of this tumultuous and seething evolutionary community I had managed to land in.

Funny to think of it as an “accident”, as I was in truth an “old seeker” who had read all the literature, lived closely with fellow seekers and done a lot of “sadhana” with a couple of well-known Teachers for ten years before meeting Andrew Cohen. I had in fact asked and maybe even begged at some level, to find a true Master. It was time to “get on with it”, whatever “it” was.

My own initial meeting with Andrew Cohen was preceded by finding a copy of his first book, “My Master Is Myself”. I could not believe the force emanating from this book. I even put it under my pillow during the first couple of days it took to read it. There was a soul-level recognition of something I’d longed for with my whole being for a very long time, and was beginning to despair that I would ever find.

My first meeting with Andrew, which occurred soon after finding this book, sent me hurtling out into the cosmos into a radically new and unknown dimension. The deep abiding peace and immense gratitude which was overtaking me was something I had never experienced. I found myself weeping in amazement and gratitude at odd times over the ensuing months. At that time I was spending a lot of time driving around northern California for business. I kept a photo of Andrew in the car, as I could not even believe this new reality I’d been exploded into. Suddenly everything was so different that I had to keep checking to make sure I hadn’t just imagined what had occurred in this meeting with Andrew Cohen. All my old notions about who I was and what everything was were blasted into infinity. I, like many of us, even thought that finally it was “all over”. Little did we know that being suddenly spun out into this unknown and beautiful new place with “no warning” was just the prelude. Now it was finally time to begin the Real Work—the work of acknowledging and releasing all of those old and now obsolete (but extremely stubborn) structures which were in the way of us becoming established in this new reality.

The unsuspecting and naïve “serious seeker” can never begin to imagine the fiery, all-consuming, and wildly unpredictable force field they are entering when they find their purported heart’s desire. To encounter the “Guru Principle” in one’s own life is a rare thing indeed, as well as an extraordinary and precious gift, regardless of how our own egos interpret it later on down the line after having had a deep taste of what real transformation entails. The interesting thing is that I asked for it—I even cried out and begged for it–as did many of my close friends who shared our years together with Andrew. Many of us have lost touch with this fact—or with the great thrill we felt in finally finding a Guru with sacred fire burning in his veins and who epitomized nothing but Radical Revolution of Everything. I remember this handsome, “hip” Teacher from New York, who transmitted the wisdom of the ancient masters in American vernacular, saying numerous times in different teachings—“My only purpose is to destroy you”. Okay, okay. Of course this was the story we’d all read about, and knew in our guts was, after all, the real and only point of this Sacred Work. And yet none of us had even an inkling of what kind of vortex we had entered—that this kind of “spiritual life” was the Real Deal—something way beyond anything, even all the hair-raising tales we’d read in the spiritual literature. Because we had all been longing for this change with every fiber of our being, we all ended up climbing The Steep Path across The Chasm of Fire. Andrew’s Sangha was a sort of “post-graduate evolutionary school”, and far more demanding than any of the more traditional “spiritual schools” we had previously known, and so the adventure continued…

NOT JUST LOVE, BUT LOVE AND TRUTH!

We all found so much more than we’d asked for or even expected. And certainly a lot more than any of us were ostensibly ready for, despite our “spiritual experiences”, great longing, and deep love of the Dharma. For a long time we all managed to remain deaf to the news that this meeting with one of those rare humans who was a living embodiment of the Guru Principle—was always only about effectively and relentlessly dismantling EVERYTHING we’d ever thought or known or were clinging to. This process would challenge and push us on physical., intellectual, emotional, and spiritual levels far beyond any place we’d ever even imagined, and for sure farther than we thought we’d honestly wanted to go.

We did our very best to carry on with “business as usual”. There were numerous intimations that we had waded into deep waters and had finally found a True Guru, and this was deeply thrilling to all of us. Yet, when the fires of purification began to scorch, part of me still wished that Andrew would be more like a kindly vipassana or Zen teacher, a kind of democratic “kalyana mitra” guiding us gently along the gradual path to Enlightenment. I was secretly personally attracted to the “saint” model of a Guru who would love and affirm my beloved “self”. In Tibetan Buddhism, full awakening is characterized as the full union of Love and Truth. I was all for the “Love” part, but please spare me the “Truth”! The ongoing revelation of my own lack of authenticity and addiction to a false persona was very hard to stomach. It was a soul-level shock to discover that my beloved Guru was more like Mt. Vesuvius, continuously erupting with astonishing and unpredictable and ever-creative force, which often scared the living daylights out of me. And who, worst of all, didn’t even appear to really give a damn about my precious “self”! This was a dreadful affront. Life with a real Guru is nothing if not an ongoing assault on everything you’ve held dear about your beloved self-image that you’ve been honing and refining for ever so long. Even if you know in your guts that this “death” of the false self is necessary for something new to be born, the process is unbearable beyond description. The humiliation and the constant “burning” we all experienced were something that you can’t even really convey to those who have not lived through it.

HMMM, THIS AIN’T NO TEA PARTY!

It has taken me a long time to let in or even begin to grasp the enormity of Andrew Cohen’s vision. He saw early on that humanity was in deep trouble—“homo sapiens” in its present form was way too limited and primitive to deal with the increasingly complex problems facing us as planetary citizens. Andrew could see as well that the emergence of a new kind of human was critical for the survival of the race and the planet—and that this radical change needed to occur quickly, as the message from all sides is that time is quickly running out.

Andrew  Cohen’s entire being was/is nothing less than an ongoing expression of this urgency. There was no time for the “many lifetimes” approach of traditional teachings. His detractors, of course, find his methods too extreme and intense. But Andrew, as we all knew, is deeply surrendered to the Force of Evolution itself—and this force is really only about the destruction of all obsolete and dysfunctional structures, so that a new kind of human can emerge from the rubble. This can not happen with a teacher who wears kid gloves and invites his students to tea parties. Although we were happy to speak about the dharma in intellectual terms (which many of us were pretty good at), none of us had any idea that Everything needed to change for us to be transformed from deeply self-centered men and women who viewed everything and everyone as separate from ourselves—to a new kind of human who KNOWS with every fiber of their being that who they are is nothing less than the Intelligence of the Universe, and that they are fully responsible in and as themselves for the process of evolution.

This is an unimaginably enormous leap, and one that is unlikely to occur in a gentler kind of “spiritual university”. From very early on, Andrew had a vision of something which had to manifest. His vision of the emergence of a Collective Being which includes Everything as Itself, and is thus fully responsible for Everything, was way beyond anything we could imagine or had even ever thought about. And attempting to manifest this vision of course required so much more than we ever thought we would have to give.

WHEN THE EVOLUTIONARY SEEDS BEGIN TO SPROUT

Conventionally-minded friends are horrified by what we experienced, and I rarely even talk about my years with Andrew Cohen. For those who don’t have even an inkling of Andrew’s vision, the whole thing sounds “abusive” and dreadful. “What kind of crazy person would ever get involved with such madness?” When I left the community and moved to Montana in 2003, for many months I felt like I’d been drawn and quartered and boiled in oil, at the very least. I managed to function and participate actively in life, but my initial experience was of being almost catatonic at a soul level. It was as if the whole playing field had been laid waste. I was waiting to find out what I really knew or had to give, if anything. I had no idea who I was, and was curious to see who I might be apart from Andrew and the community I had immersed myself in for twelve years. What did I really know from my own experience? What was I supposed to be doing here on earth? Did I even care about evolution? I didn’t speak to anyone for at least a year about what we’d all lived through. Even then, one can never get close to the whole story except with those who’ve shared it with you, as it is supremely daunting to even try to convey the hugeness of the context we all shared with someone who wasn’t there. Frankly, I wavered and teetered all over the place in my attempts to make sense of this tsunami I’d voluntarily inserted myself into. Brief periods of clarity would open up, only to be followed by falling again into confusion.

But during these six years after I left for a new and unknown life, I continued to find to my surprise that some unknown seeds had been planted in me during my time with Andrew Cohen. When I left, Andrew had told me that “The seeds of the Teaching are in you”. Frankly, I felt that I had been a “failure”, as I’d come to a place where I felt so deeply stuck in my recalcitrant self-centeredness that it seemed I could not continue. But as I continued to relax into allowing the unleashed and untrammeled force of whatever I had encountered to invade my being, I began to experience something new. I realized that by dint of just hanging out and hanging in as closely as I could during my years as Andrew’s student that, despite my intense inner struggle, my own view and understanding was continuing to open up and reveal new vistas.

THE HIGHER VIEW CANNOT BE HELD BY THE MIND

To find and express the deepest truth of these cataclysmic and earth-shaking years during which I lived closely with Andrew Cohen in his community requires a rare level of honesty at a soul level—a deep willingness to keep digging and sorting and looking, as well as a continual attempt to remember and re-align myself with that precious, subtle, and delicate discovery of a magnificent and cosmic perspective which our meeting with Andrew catalyzed us all into. This, I can see, is the ongoing challenge for all of us, and it is not at all easy. We have all had many powerful experiences of higher “states”, but to do the intense and deeply challenging work to convert these “states” into grounded “stages” of human development is a very big deal indeed.

To get anywhere close to what was actually going on during our time with Andrew also requires a massive degree of humility and willingness to “not know”—to live in the constant knowledge that the mind, which is fundamentally mechanical and limited, can only deal with and process perhaps five percent of the total story. To begin to understand this is HUGE. One of its major roles as a consummate “knower” is to take the available “data” and synthesize it into something from which one can then take a summary position, wrap it all up neatly, and pop it into a box as “already known and processed”. And this is what I see occurring in many of Andrew’s students who left early on—and even in a few who stayed longer, who are still speaking from the stance of the Wounded Ego. There is a grand tension one must be willing to reside in when faced with the mind’s zeal to “wrap things up”, and this tension is often supremely uncomfortable. And when one who has been initiated into a higher view then falls once again into a lower perspective and attempts to make sense of an experience from the lesser view, predictably there results a huge mess and enormous confusion. And this is what we who have lived through this time together are still continuing to experience and wrestle with each other about in various blogs and books, as we attempt to make sense of our life-altering experience. And so, for the last few years, separative and warring “factions” have continued to arise among ex-students who have shared a great deal at a soul level, and who are in fact more connected than they even know.

So we are talking about the radical act of suspending the mind, that thing which KNOWS absolutely everything, and taking that leap of faith to a higher view. This is an enormous challenge for those who have lost touch with this view or who are in denial of it. But nonetheless it is always available. Because as has been witnessed ad nauseum for all of us, the scenario of that limited but exalted knowing mind attempting to categorize and make sense of our soul-rocking time with Andrew, when we have temporarily lost touch with a higher and even “cosmic” perspective, results in all hell breaking loose. It seems like “hell hath no fury like a student who feels they have been scorned”, or maybe more accurately, an ego which doesn’t get validated. The “maligned ego” just keeps cranking out separative and nasty accusations time and time again, with its relentless devotion to a self-centered perspective. That ol’ dead horse just keeps getting whipped and beaten. It’s so easy to lose touch with the fact that that “thing” which is so busy making war with Andrew, their old friends, and even their own experience, is, in fact, the very thing which needs to be released for a higher view to reveal itself. And that this kind of release requires letting go of EVERYTHING—not only one’s cherished and beloved “self”, but even Andrew, his Teachings, and in fact all we’ve ever tried to cling on to as a safe refuge.

THE ENORMITY OF ANDREW COHEN’S VISION

My own struggle, which was definitely not special to me, was of attempting to do hand-to-hand combat with seemingly lifetimes of a deeply self-centered perspective. I came to AndrewCohen, like most of us, from a fundamentally personal view of Enlightenment. I wanted to be free of the suffering concomitant with the human condition for myself. Truthfully I didn’t give a damn about anyone else, although I tried to pretend that I did. As an “older student”, Andrew continuously pushed me to take responsibility for the whole situation. I fairly consistently dug in my heels and fought him and everyone. Andrew’s vision was so far beyond anything I’d ever thought about that I sometimes felt that he had suddenly began teaching a kind of “dharma” that I didn’t understand and hadn’t signed up for. It all seemed way too demanding and intrusive into my “personal life”. “Where was the LOVE (for my own ego!)? It is no joke to contemplate the enormity of this transition from a self-centered person to someone who not only cares deeply about everyone else but is willing to participate fully at all times with the human condition and the whole situation AS ONESELF. This is the work that Andrew engaged us all in. And as we discovered, these deep, dark, and sticky old structures die hard—they do not gracefully roll over and die. We are talkin’ huge, crusty, and highly resistant structures!

Early on in my spiritual pursuits, I came across a quote by Trungpa Rinpoche—something about how “it’s better to not even begin the spiritual journey unless you intend to finish it”. When I think about this, I realize how naïve and arrogant I was to think that I was “one of the chosen ones” who would march continuously forth, maybe even leading the charge! The fact is that the “fallout” and “blowback” of even sticking one’s toe into this particular vortex is huge. It’s like some kind of enormous and deeply impersonal cyclotron with the molecules getting splattered all over the place. It’s indeed no small wonder that so many of us continue still to carry on about our time with Andrew in various blogs and individual emails, nursing our “wounds” and trying to make some sense of whatever that “tsunami” was that we wandered into.

WHEN THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE UNIVERSE CALLS YOU

So to speak in practical and here-and-now terms, I have to say, that not only was my highest potential revealed during my life-changing meeting with Andrew, but also my own egoic limitations—my laziness, delight in resting in the easy way, refusal to be simple, vulnerable, straight, and honest with virtually anyone, as well as my fundamental commitment to Number 1, The Great Moi! Those “other people” outside of my immediate sphere were their own problem! And for both of these grand revelations, the only true response has to be Gratitude.

I guess I’ve been the most surprised to continue to discover that despite myself and the density of my own egoic resistance, somehow “I” have changed in unimaginable ways. Much despite myself, this formerly sluggish and selfish person has exploded with some unknown energy which I’d never expected or imagined. My friends sometimes comment on how they can’t even believe what a “hard worker” I am, or even how intense what they describe as my “relentless enthusiasm” is, as well as how much I care (!) And they are talking about that lazy person who was always about doing the bare minimum, at best. Many of my friends even look to me as an example of an authentic, liberated, and independent woman—so clearly very much occurred (which I didn’t understand and resisted quite a lot at the time) during those years when Andrew forced us women to look starkly at all of the manipulative games we had played for so many centuries as a result of the conditioning we had inherited as females.

I can only say that all of this has only to do with those seeds which were planted in me when I met Andrew—despite the fact that I had no idea what the hell was going on at the time! That evolutionary fervor which I used to marvel at in Andrew has now infected my own life. The ongoing revelation of the truly Sacred which comes from giving oneself utterly and with no reservations to LIFE itself at all times, no matter what, has mysteriously taken me in its sway. This is not the old Roberta Anderson—in fact she bears only a dim resemblance to that “terminally self-centered person” who showed up at “satsang” in 1989. And for this, the only true and right response is GRATITUDE! Those memories of what seemed like relentless, endless, and ongoing butt-kicking and “humiliation” even tend to fade, as I continue to do whatever I can to stretch and open to the “cosmic” view. For all of this, I bow down. Not only to Andrew, but to that mysterious and grand Force that he is in fact himself deeply surrendered to.

Something that continues to surprise me is that my own view continues to open, despite myself, from the personal to the impersonal to the cosmic. I have had numerous spontaneous and unexpected experiences of “collective intelligence” around the globe which have blown my mind. I am beginning to understand Andrew’s interest in the emergence of “inter-subjective structures”. There is so much that I didn’t understand and/or resisted vehemently during my time with Andrew that I am now directly experiencing. I continue to discover that, despite myself, my view seems to be morphing into including more and more of the Grand Story.

So because of all of this, the fairly constant undercurrents of whining, wanting “revenge”, “compensation”, feeling deeply “abused” and “victimized”, insisting on “apologies”, or whatever—frankly just shrivel up and fall apart when they continue to show up again and again in our shared universe. “How I suffered with that sadistic monster!” etc. Give me a break! Grow up! Get a grip! Look up! Way, way, up! I am blessed, you are blessed—supremely, though it may take a while for the whole Enormous Story to be revealed. You had the guts to find this Guru and to give whatever you had to this profound evolutionary transformation. Thank yourselves and your own excellent karma and stop whining! Why not start manifesting everything that you have received? It’s time, (and overtime), for something beautiful, astonishingly new, and refreshingly amazing to start showing up. As yourself! Let’s hear it for “homo luminous”, my friends. No matter what we think, this is where we are going and must go.

I realize that I left the community around 2001 when finally, the deep structural changes in everyone who’d managed to hang on longer began to occur, as well as in the community as a whole. And I recognize that many of the “ardent detractors” left way before this time and never even experienced anything about the beginning of the “fruition” of Andrew’s vision. As I’ve said, I am one who has wavered, actually quite a lot, in attempting to maintain this “higher view”. This is of course easier for my friends who were blessed to witness and live through this initial species transformation which is making this entire radically intense ordeal really worth everything. But despite my own wavering, the higher force of Love and Truth continues to cycle about and captivate me. Despite all those forces which only want to bitch, criticize, complain, and express in spades how much they’ve been “victimized”, I keep finding that the Good Stuff keeps popping in and out and up—stuff like Gratitude and Appreciation for a Higher Way and this truly mysterious and incredible transformation that is clearly taking over so many of us old friends. I fully realize my own propensity for being some kind of wild and radical idealist. But the rock-bottom truth is that ALL Of US, no matter what our current “deeply-entrenched position” is, have had a profound soul-level initiation into the Non-Dual. And despite this contrary thought, that analysis, that resentment, this firm “position” etc., we have all been deeply infected with the Virus of Oneness. And Singularity is where we are all headed. I look forward to meeting many of you there. As one of my teachers, Adi Da Samraj, was fond of saying, “Let the Wild Rumpus Begin!”

Roberta  Anderson can be contacted at roberta@guru-talk.com