Spiritual Transmission: Paradoxes and Dilemmas on the Spiritual Path - Softcover

The Why, How and What of the Book
Nearly seven years after I broke up my 21-year relationship with spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen – by far the most significant, intense, challenging and rewarding relationship of my adult life – I decided to create this book. It has since taken me hundreds of hours of interviews with teachers and students, who I thought could help me cast light on the spiritual teacher-student relationship, followed by perhaps thousands of hours of reading, editing, contemplation and writing. I'm happy and nervous to present you here with my findings, humble though they may be, regarding the paradoxical nature of that relationship. I write in the hopes that we, students and teachers alike, can begin to come to better grips with its meaning in our lives.
The interviews and stories you are about to read are deeply personal in nature. Such is the subject matter itself. I would like to start introducing the subject with the following diary-like entries, which stand for the beginning, the middle and the end of my own relationship with Andrew. The questions I have sought to elucidate in this book are the very ones that I myself have struggled with all these years.
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On a warm July summer morning in 1987 in Jerusalem, at the age of 29 and at the end of my fifth year of medical studies, I was in total turmoil about my life. The turmoil had to do with Andrew Cohen.
He was an ordinary-looking "American Jewish kid from New York", as I fondly thought of him even though he was three years my elder. Sitting every evening with a small group of people who gathered to meet with him in a friend's living room in Jerusalem, listening to him answering people's questions about enlightenment, liberation, timelessness and the absolute reality with utter simplicity and directness and having revelatory personal conversations with him was catalyzing a tectonic shift in me.
I had caught the bug of seeking spiritual liberation when I was 16 but I was always suspicious and even hostile toward the idea of being a student of a teacher. It seemed to me a sure recipe for spiritual slavery, the very opposite of what I was looking for. Even after I lived for two years with a delightfully free-spirited Zen master in Japan, and even though I spoke of him as my teacher and intended to go back to meditate with him after I completed my studies, I never considered him as my Teacher. But there I was, contemplating the possibility that in Andrew I had met my Teacher; and it was driving me crazy. How could I know if this is true? How does anyone know? What does it even mean?
On that morning, the upheaval I was experiencing was so intense that once I arrived at the hospital I couldn't imagine joining my team at the Surgery Department. We were studying anesthesia that day. I needed to figure this out first, I told myself, and without further delay. My life depended on it. But how could I know? My mind seemed completely useless in the face of this question. I walked back and forth on the hospital lawn in an agitated state for what felt like hours. Then, in despair I thought: I should try to have a nap; maybe the answer would come to me in my sleep. I lay down under a tree but the heat, the flies and my agitation made it a hopeless attempt. "I give up," I thought, "I might as well join my team and use the rest of the day for studying." I started to get up and just as I was half-way to standing I had an experience of unitive consciousness.
I have no idea how long I was in that state for there was neither perception of "I" nor time there. I think it was only a fraction of a second but in that moment the very foundation of my being seemed to have shifted. When I found myself back in the world of self and time, I knew that Andrew had always been and would always be my Teacher, and that somehow I had always known that.
I stumbled to the phone booth at the hospital entrance and called the house where Andrew was staying. "Hello," he said in his now familiar voice. "Andrew?" I said, "This is Andrew. I mean, hi Andrew, this is Amir." I couldn't think straight. "I'm yours," I said. I could hear Andrew smiling on the other end. "I knew that since we first met," he replied, "why don't you come over and tell me what happened?"
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September 15, 1987, Totnes, UK
A few days after completing my end-of-year exams in medical school I flew over to the UK, and was warmly welcomed into one of the sangha [Sanskrit for community] houses of Andrew's students in Totnes, a town in the South-West region of England where Andrew was staying.
A few weeks after arriving in Totnes I spent one evening after satsang [Sanskrit for being in the company of a guru] with Andrew and the people who were living with him. The next day I received a message from him that he wanted to talk with me, and so I went over to his house. Sitting in the living room, Andrew laid out for me the full picture of my psycho-spiritual makeup. He said that on the one hand he found me an exceptionally warm, trusting, serious and committed man, and felt a deep connection with me, on the other hand, he felt a heavy presence of ego in me, and he and the other people with him were very aware of it when we spent time together the night before. He said it was rare to have these two extremes co-exiting in the same person. Then he said: “You want to become as light as a feather, and this may take a few years. I suggest that you forget any plans you may have other than being with me. Think of yourself as a wandering monk. This means you should completely forget about your medical career.”
It was a lot to let in, and Andrew saw that and got up to make coffee for both of us. In the few minutes that he was in the kitchen, I decided I was going to follow his advice. Instantly I experienced a change in my attitude. When he came back, holding two cups of cappuccino, I told him: “Andrew, something completely unexpected has just happened to me. Only a few minutes ago I was dreading the possibility that you would suggest that I completely discard my medical career, and now I feel like I've just dropped a few sandbags, to help my takeoff.”
And so it happened that I ultimately and irrevocably discarded my plans to be a medical doctor, and never looked back. Also, this meeting marked another significant turning point in my life. Until that day I never liked coffee, and under any other circumstances I would have refused it, but when your guru makes you a cup of cappuccino you drink it. I drank it – and to my utter surprise, I loved it. That day I became a coffee lover.
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November 1990, Santa Cruz and Mill Valley, CA
In mid-1988 I moved, together with Andrew and over a hundred of his European students, to live in the US. We lived for about a year in Boston and then moved to Marin County, California. Around the middle of 1990 the pressure on me by Andrew and my friends in the community, to face my "Israeli macho" conditioning was becoming unbearable for me. I could see some of what they were pointing out to me, but I also felt that there wasn’t much I could do about it. I fell into despair and considered giving up my spiritual aspirations and returning to "life in the world". At some point I left the community and moved to Santa Cruz, a few hours away from where the community was living. I rented a room in a house there and spent a few months working and thinking about what I wanted to do with my life. The crisis ended surprisingly in a dream.
In my dream I was sitting face-to-face with Andrew, close to him, telling him in great detail all I was seeing and understanding about my psychological and spiritual condition, all the obstacles I saw in my way, which of them I already faced, which of them I felt I could overcome and which of them I had no confidence I could overcome. Andrew listened to me very attentively without responding, and when I finished speaking (in the dream it was after a long time) he said to me very simply: it all depends on what you want.
I woke up immediately. It was still completely dark outside. The dream was so lucid, so tangible, that it could have been real. I knew that in the dream I was clearer and more accurate than I could be awake, and decided to write down all I said in the dream while it was still fresh in my memory. I opened my diary and started writing feverishly. I wrote about the obstacles in my way, but as I read what I wrote I knew these particular obstacles could not stop me. At the end of the process I had all the obstacles clearly laid out on the pages of my diary and none of them was a real obstacle. I knew what I wanted.
At 9am I called the office of the community and asked to give Andrew the message that I wanted to come back. Minutes later I received a call from Andrew. I told him what had happened, and asked him to let me come back to the community. "Why don't you come over and meet with me and a few of your friends," he suggested. A few days later I moved back to the community.
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January 1991, during a month-long retreat with Andrew in Bodhgaya, India
"Andrew, what happens when we die?" – The question came from a Bhutanese monk, wearing saffron robes, who had been coming regularly to satsang with Andrew. "I don't know,” said Andrew, “I don’t have any memory of it. But when I get there I’ll send you a postcard.” We all laughed, and I started thinking: do I know anything about this question? Is there anything in my experience that could indicate to me what happens after we die? What if I died right now – would everything stop or would something of me continue?
I sat there and imagined that I died and suddenly, without anything leading to it, I knew that my death would have absolutely no effect on my relationship with Andrew. It wouldn’t even register on that level – it would be completely insignificant. I didn’t know how I knew it, but I had no doubt that it was true – and contemplating it I was flooded with intense ecstasy. I was thinking about death and I was totally ecstatic, because I knew my death would mean nothing for my relationship with Andrew.
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January 1998, during a month-long retreat with Andrew in Rishikesh, India
"I've just inherited a lot of money and I don't have to work anymore," said the man sitting in front of Andrew in satsang, "On the one hand I am attracted to do social work and help the needy, and on the other I am pulled to dedicate my life to the spiritual quest. What should I do?" "You should find what it is that pulls you like a black hole, that if you immerse yourself in it you will disappear into it, and then you should give yourself wholeheartedly to that," replied Andrew. I contemplated for a minute what that black hole was for me, and quickly came to the answer: it was the purity and absolute nature of the enlightenment teachings that I felt drawn to and wanted to immerse myself completely in.
I sat there happy with that answer, when it suddenly hit me that it was my relationship with Andrew much more than the teachings, that I was pulled to. What? How could that be? – The answer made no sense to me. How could the relationship with Andrew, who is just a human being, be more powerful and all-consuming than the teachings? To my mind the answer made no sense, but at the same time my heart was exploding with it, and tears were streaming down my face.
I knew I had to ask Andrew what this meant, and after satsang ended I went and asked to talk with him. “I have a spiritual question I want to ask you,” I said, and told him what had happened and my bewilderment about the insight I had.
“You’re right!” exclaimed Andrew when I finished. “Do you know why? First of all, because I am the teachings! Secondly, it’s also a perfect answer because a smart guy like you can find a way to remain separate and intact in your relationship with the teachings, but you sense and know that you will lose yourself completely in your relationship with me.”
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December 26, 2008, at Foxhollow (the world center of EnlightenNext, the worldwide organization and spiritual community that grew around Andrew, with a dozen centers in Europe, the US, Israel and India), MA, USA
"We've been putting so much energy, time and money into it and it never took off," said Andrew, "so, as disappointing as it is for me and for everybody, we decided to close the Israeli center. I want you to move back to Foxhollow and be part of the core group here."
I sank in my chair as if all energy was drained out of my body. The room turned darker suddenly. A horrible feeling of total and final failure came over me. But it wasn't the failure of our Israeli center and of me as its co-leader. At that moment I sensed that for me, it would be the failure of my relationship with Andrew and the promise it had carried.
In a way, it was the culmination of a half-year process, in which my mistrust in Andrew's motivation was growing – mistrust of his willingness to support me in the independence, strength, creativity and responsibility I was discovering. The stronger and more independent I became, as a leader and a cultural activist, the more I felt tension growing between us. Having me back in Foxhollow also meant that I would be again in Andrew's sphere of tight control, and a major setback to my growing autonomy.
From the bottom of the sinkhole I heard myself mumbling "I cannot do that. I cannot leave Israel and all the projects I'm involved in. That would be completely wrong." "Why don't you think about it, and let's talk again tomorrow," said Andrew. "I think it would be good for you to be here, with your brothers and close to me. You've become a leader, and here you'd be part of the worldwide revolution, rather than wasting your time in Israel." "I cannot leave Israel," I repeated, now with a little more determination, "that would be a total let-down of my friends and colleagues there, and of my own integrity. I'm not going to do that."
As I stepped out of Andrew's office into the freezing wind and started walking back to the house where I was staying during my visit, I already knew that that conversation marked the end of my relationship with Andrew as my teacher. It was the first time in nearly 22 years that I told him directly that he was wrong and that I wasn't going to obey his instructions. This meant that I trusted myself more than I trusted him. This meant the termination of our teacher-student "contract". But at that moment, it also meant to me failure, disappointment and heartache. I was left with a big, gaping "What Was It All About?"
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Five years later, Andrew’s worldwide organization of EnlightenNext collapsed. I decided to even more fully engage with the questions I was left with as a student and take their exploration as far as I could, at least for myself at this point in my spiritual process. I didn't know where it would lead or what discoveries I would make in the process, but just the idea of diving into these questions made my nerves tingle with excitement.
I started by reading every book and article on the subject I could find, and taking my first steps in interviewing teachers and students in Israel. My very first interview was with a British Sufi teacher Peter (Hakim) Young who was visiting Israel with his Israeli-born wife. We met on a sunny morning in a café on Sheinkin Street in Tel Aviv, and I vividly remember the first exchange in that first interview. I asked Hakim to tell me about his relationship with his teacher, Bulent Rauf, and he replied that the man never regarded himself as a teacher but as "a fellow student." "Gosh," I thought to myself, "this project is going to be trickier than I thought..."
My second interviewee was Aikido teacher Miles Kessler, in another café in Tel Avi...