What is Enlightenment?

Mike King

American Guru: A Story of Love, Betrayal and Healing – Former Students of Andrew Cohen Speak Out, 
William Yenner
Epigraph Books, 2009, 170 pp., £10.37, p/b ISBN: 0982453051

11 Days at the Edge
Michael Wombacher
Findhorn Press, 2008, 512 pp., £11.69, p/b ISBN: 1844091368

What is enlightenment? (That is, enlightenment of the kind pursued by the Buddha, rather than the Western philosophical movement.) This question has occupied me for over thirty years, so I was interested to receive two books about Andrew Cohen, the American guru and founder of What Is Enlightenment? magazine (now re-launched as EnlightenNext magazine). The first book, by William Yenner, is a compilation of writings from ex-students of Cohen lambasting him as a failure and fraud, while the second book is the account by an enthusiastic student of a Cohen retreat held in 2005. The first book is a short and easy read, while the latter is long and will probably only appeal to the hardened aficionado of such literature. When discussing the project with Cohen Wombacher told him that the two books that had left the greatest spiritual impression on him were Irina Tweedie’s Daughter of Fire and Nisargadatta Maharaj’s I Am That. Wombacher’s book is indeed in that tradition, and I would add one more: The Gospel of Ramakrishna. These works all give a day-by-day account of life with the guru, though of course the question posed by Yenner’s book is whether Cohen should be included amongst the ranks of ‘respectable’ gurus or not. Yenner was with Cohen for thirteen years, and his book is perhaps the third serious work to attempt to debunk Cohen, the first and most remarkable of which is the one by Cohen’s own mother (Luna Tarlo), called – with superb irony – Mother of God. Yenner’s book includes an interview with Tarlo, and sections by other disaffected students. Right at the outset Yenner states that he joined willingly, but his commitment turned into an ‘enforced enlistment in the service of an individual bent on total control.’ 

Yenner sets out the questions at the heart of the guru phenomenon, including: ‘What is the nature of enlightenment, and is devotion to a guru the surest way to attain it?’ The fact is that the guru principle has not travelled well from its natural environment in the East to the West. If we turn to seventh-century Hindu sage Shankara, we find it uncontroversial in his setting for him to state that the three greatest advantages in life are human birth, the longing for liberation, and discipleship to an illumined teacher. An examination of the Indian guru tradition shows that it rarely fell into the controversy that Western gurus are prone to, but there is a rich Western literature on the failings of the modern guru. So what are the charges that Yenner levies at Cohen? Is Cohen merely on a control-trip? Certainly the evidence he puts forward is compelling, and many people on finishing his book will be persuaded that Cohen is a fraud. But, on turning to Wombacher’s book – if one has the patience to complete it – one is left with a quite different impression. What then can one use to arbitrate between the two claims effectively put forward in these books?

I would suggest two factors are important here. Firstly, how seriously does one take enlightenment in the first place? If it is anything less than a passion, then one might be perfectly safe to accept Yenner’s warning and have nothing to do with Cohen. On the other hand, if one finds it a really serious question then one might need to look more closely at both books. Yenner’s book has a foreword by the well-known author on Buddhism, Stephen Batchelor, who claims that his early acquaintance with Cohen led him to foretell that it would all end badly. Yet, if Cohen is as arrogant and domineering as is claimed, why did he publish an interview with Batchelor in an issue of What is Enlightenment? It is clear that the two men have very different views on enlightenment, but the discussion is courteous, and readers are left to make their own minds up. Indeed the eighteen years of the magazine provide a resource for enlightenment unparalleled in the modern world, and, although Cohen is the editor and appears in articles and interviews, practically every contemporary voice on the subject has been aired at one time or another. If one is serious about enlightenment, one would at least have to acknowledge Cohen’s contribution here.

The second clue comes from Yenner, and, I have to admit it was a surprise to me. He suggests that we should consider Andrew as a teacher in the ‘crazy wisdom’ tradition, which would include gurus like Gurdjieff and Rajneesh. I first encountered the term ‘crazy wisdom’ in Georg Feuerstein’s excellent book on gurus, Holy Madness, but it had never occurred to me to apply it to Cohen. Yenner comes to the conclusion that ‘crazy wisdom’ gurus are inclined to apply all kinds of bizarre pressure on their students, but that Cohen, even if he is to be included alongside such teachers as Gurdjieff, is ‘exceptionally ham-handed’ in wielding authority. Wombacher’s book shows otherwise, but of course the retreat is effectively a public forum, and only Cohen’s closer students know what goes in private. Perhaps Cohen is as arbitrarily cruel as the accounts suggest. From Cohen’s point of view however, we gather that students like Yenner are seen as those who can’t take the pressure, and are collectively labelled the ‘shadow sangha’. 

Now, perhaps we are deeply committed to the idea of enlightenment, but are not drawn to the ‘crazy wisdom’ tradition. Further, the allegations of bullying by Cohen’s former students – and mother – suggest to us that he should be discounted as a significant figure in the field of enlightenment. Is there then anything more than Cohen’s admittedly ground-breaking magazine series, particularly for the SMN to be interested in? Wombacher’s book illustrates what this could be. It is Cohen’s insistence on evolution. Cohen was invited to speak at the SMN Mystics and Scientists conference in 2004, but, as I recall, said little about this, concentrating instead on an account of his own ‘awakening’. His presentation seemed to divide the conference almost equally for and against him, but the relation of his thought to evolutionary science and the work, for example of Teilhard de Chardin, got lost. However in Wombacher’s book this issue crops up again and again. (I have to admit being divided over the question, for example how is it possible that enlightenment has ‘evolved’ since the time of the Buddha?) Cohen’s own spiritual lineage is through his master Poonjaji to the world-renowned Ramana Maharshi, and mingles perhaps with his Judaic heritage. Hence in a dialogue with Rupert Sheldrake (an extract of which can be found on You Tube) the question of evolutionary telos is explored in both scientific and East-West religious terms. In this and other sources we glimpse the possibility that Cohen’s thesis is both deeply considered and significant for our time. Wombacher’s book gives many examples of where the implications of evolutionary enlightenment are worked out on the spiritual path that Cohen teaches.

In conclusion I would say that these two books between them pose a problem worthy of attention. If Cohen were only a guru with some disgruntled former students, the issue would be of little interest. But, because of his magazine series, and because of his exploration of evolutionary enlightenment, we are left with this question: does his brilliance in reframing enlightenment in the modern context suggest we should have sympathy with discontented students but somehow ignore them in considering his work, or do their complaints suggest that we should discount the work as the product of a deeply flawed man?