By Eb Schmidt

I am writing this article because of my past involvement with EnlightenNext and Andrew Cohen.  Although I left the inner core of students a few years ago, I was part of the evolution of Cohen’s teachings and organization for more than 10 years. When I heard that some of his former students were speaking out publicly in a negative way about their time as Andrew’s students, I felt compelled to share my own experience. I want to tell my story not only because  I feel  that  a number of ex-students have misrepresented and even distorted the facts of their time with Andrew, but also  because I feel strongly that they have betrayed their own experience with a Teacher whom they chose freely. I also believe that they are tearing down a possibility and potential that they themselves freely gave their lives to, had experienced deeply, and then later denied. 

Andrew Cohen’s spiritual life began at the age of 16 when he experienced a spiritual experience spontaneously during a conversation with his mother. He later described that during this experience he was “completely overwhelmed and intoxicated by Love and struck by a sense of awe and wonder that was impossible to describe.”  From that revelation he “suddenly knew without any doubt that there was no such thing as death and that life itself had no beginning and no end… life was intimately connected and inseparable. It became clear that there was no such thing as individuality separate from that one Self that was all of life. The glory and majesty in the cosmic unity that was revealing itself  to me was completely overwhelming”

After this experience the young Andrew Cohen asked everyone he could about the experience that had occurred to him and no one he found seemed to be able to help him. In his autobiography Cohen states that at the time of his spontaneous spiritual awakening as a teenager he was reading his first spiritual book, William James’ classic of comparative religious study “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” and it was only this book that gave him “some understanding” of his experience.

Andrew Cohen: "Sex, Trust & Creative Friction"

Evolution is a messy process. So anybody who really wants to make the effort to strive for something new is going to have to be willing to make mistakes, take wrong turns, even to fail, but never give up. The simple truth is this: if not failing is more important to you than genuinely succeeding, you’re never going to make it. If you really want to succeed, you have to have the big heart, heroic will, tenacity, courage, and commitment to fearlessly engage with the evolutionary process until something profound, mysterious, and extraordinary happens that cannot be undone.

Andrew Cohen, Feb. 2010

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.

On January 6th, 2010, George Leonard—the man who coined the term “human potential movement”—passed away at the distinguished age of eighty-seven. With his death, the world has lost a true giant in the field of spiritual evolution. There’s so much to say about Mr. Leonard. And much of it has already been said. So we thought the best way to honor his life and his contributions would be to post a previously unreleased interview that we did with him back in 2002. In “If You’re Not Changing, You’re Not Learning,” Leonard tells EnlightenNext founder Andrew Cohen and former editor Craig Hamilton about his vision for spiritual evolution and “the future of us.”

If You’re Not Changing, You’re Not Learning
An Interview with George Leonard
by Craig Hamilton

Open Integral posted this before I could get around to doing so, for which I am grateful. There is an interesting discussion going on in the Gaia Integral Postmetaphysical Spirituality pod.

The discussion originated around the teleconference being led by Craig Hamilton, founder of Integral Enlightenment and found member of Ken Wilber's Integral Institute. One could just as easily plug in Genpo Roshi or Bill Harris or Andrew Cohen (and here) - all of whom are associated with Wilber.

Here is the post from Open Integral. I agree with him, in part, but I am one of those who criticizes Wilber and the insular nature of I-I, and yet I am still going to the conference this year. There is no other group, aside from Integral Review and the Arina Foundation, that has the resources to put on a conference.

Andrew Cohen: "Evolution is Something You Do"