(This piece was actually written a couple years ago, and is out of order here.)
Reading Simeon's account of his dinner with Andrew, what struck me more than anything was the passage where Andrew talks about the July 30 event.
“July 30th, 2001. . . . You left too soon, Everyone who was still there at that time saw the beauty and potential of this teaching become manifest in a way that left no room for doubt, and it's because of what happened on that day that I have no doubt that I brought something beautiful into this world, and that because of that, nothing will ever be the same. But without having the context of that experience, you can't possibly understand what I'm talking about.”
I wasn't there for the event itself. I was one of the last formal men, perhaps the last formal man, to leave before this happened. Towards the end of the "holocaust," Andrew announced this wasn't about coming through collectively anymore. We were all to meet with him and face him when we were ready one on one.
When everyone returned, he put them on an intensive retreat. It was, I think weeks of meditation and spiritual practice (and if someone who was there who was part of this could fill in the details, that would be great). Eventually he declared there had been a crack, some sort of fundamental awakening, the birth of a new consciousness, something had stabilized.
I believed this story for years after I left. I accepted that I had been inadequate, but that what Andrew was attempting to do was real, what he was attempting to achieve was real. Sometime after I left, for reasons unrelated to my prior involvement, I became viscerally aware at what a terrifying age we live in. We were, as a species, blindly exploiting the planets resources without regard to the future, and it seemed to me, and still seems to me, that there was little likelihood human civilization as we understood it would survive another century.
This vision terrified me, and at the same time, drew me back to Andrew's teachings. It was exactly then the journal published their issue on collective intelligence. And it seemed to me this was exactly right. The human species was fragmented. You had the scientists off in one corner who could see what needed to be done, but we didn't trust trust each other, coordinated intelligent action was impossible. Andrew's vision of a collective consciousness that transcended the individuals involved seemed exactly what was needed.
What eventually disillusioned me was I knew the teachings too well. The intelligence was supposed to endow the collective with a truly objective perspective, a perspective that transcended our tribal fear based view. And of course Andrew had always taught that the test of spiritual experience was not how extraordinary it felt in the moment, but how it manifested itself in the world.
And it became clear, that there was no such transcendent objective perspective making itself known at Foxhollow. My first clue was reading Craig's attempted take down of Susan Bridle's piece in What Enlightenment. While at the time I didn't share Susan's perspective, I could not help but admire her attempt to write candidly and objectively about her experience. And Craig's response was so cloyingly condescending, so disrespectful, it practically made me want to gag. And of course I knew a letter like that, a public letter in such a contentious arena must have been written with Andrew's close involvement, and no doubt the involvement of other high ranking students, after long careful deliberation.
And once this idea entered my head and I started to look, the fantasy of a great spiritual awakening manifesting a collective objective perspective that might save humanity, sadly, fell apart. Foxhollow was horribly dysfunctional. They couldn't even manage their own finances, and when things fell apart, there was the scape-goating and vindictiveness you'd expect in any human organization. Far from expressing a perspective that might conceivably save the world, my family collectively exhibited more maturity and better judgement than Andrew's project
And when I let go of the fantasy of a miraculous awakening, it was easy to see what had happened. There was a miraculous collective awakening because Andrew wanted there to be one. He didn't want the crises to go on and on, he wanted there to be a happy ending, and when the happy ending he envisioned proved impossible, he finally gave up and made up one. And of course we wanted a happy ending too, we didn't want to accept that our teacher who we identified with the highest impulses of humanity had collectively abused us over months for no good reason. All Andrew had to do was declare an awakening had happened, and we'd go along. He'd ask each one of us if it was real and to be honest. And in the unlikely event anyone had the independence to say they thought that yes, there seemed to be something, but nowhere near as earth shattering as Andrew claimed, they'd soon fall into a spiritual crises and wouldn't be heard from again. Andrew went into a fury when Mr. Lee's students told him politely that yes it seemed something had happened, but hardly anything unique.
So the great awakening happened because Andrew said it happened. And why would anyone disagree, or if they did, why would they stay? It comes across clearly reading Andrew's blog; there are accounts of an ineffable experience that fundamentally changed the world that no one can possibly understand who hadn't been there, and even those who had been there and left couldn't understand because of course the ordinary mind can't hold on to that which is transcendent. Forgotten are the early teachings that it's not the content of spiritual experiences that matter, but how we interpret them that is everything. Forgotten are the teachings that how awakening is manifested in time and space is the only thing that matters.
I still believe Andrew had a genuine awakening, that he did have a kind of spiritual discernment, that he was able to inspire and awaken others, and that he did actually wish to liberate people, to make them free. But the problem was he wanted to make them free, and in that freedom not to threaten him! He wanted his students to be strong and independent, and in that strength and independence, to freely support him 200%!
And of course that placed an impossible demand on his students. At least with a tyrant who demands nothing but self-abasement and devotion you can please him! You can humiliate yourself and at least he'll be happy. But Andrew wasn't satisfied with that. Letters where students talked about how miserable they were only infuriated him. No, he wanted, he demanded that his students stand proud and tall and independent, and in their independence to do nothing that might threaten his vision of himself.
Given that, it's surprising he had as much success as he did. Even during the holocaust, people did rise up in fits and starts, they did express a humanity and independence that was beautiful, that pleased Andrew when it occurred. In my case, I wrote a series of letters dissecting the men's pathologies, how we'd divide into groups and demonize one another in a raw ugly battle for survival. Andrew took what I wrote and blew it up and posted it on the walls, hugely approving. But what if I'd gone on to continue my analysis? What if it had occurred to me to question that maybe, just maybe, these pathologies were somehow connected to Andrew's teaching methods? I don't think he would have been so supportive then.
Understanding this clarified a mystery for me. As Andrew's student, we witnessed a reoccurring phenomena. Some student would rise up, show unusual confidence or independence or insight. They might even rise in the hierarchy. Then suddenly they'd have a crises, and they'd fall apart! It seemed in taking risk, they had exposed parts of their ego and limitation that they were fundamentally unwilling to face. Now I realized the explanation was simpler. Someone would rise, show some independence, and Andrew might be pleased, but he'd also be threatened. When that independence expressed itself in a way didn't like, he'd come down hard. Perhaps the student would make a genuine error, or perhaps they'd just do something Andrew didn't like. It didn't matter, as we all accepted Andrew's intuition as objective fact. And then the student would be put in the impossible position of having to either recant their own intuition and common sense, or their teacher they'd devoted their life to. It was no wonder under that situation so many cracked. The worst example of this I know of was a senior student and a leader among Andrew's students, someone utterly devoted to Andrew who I never heard say a critical word, who was taken down for no reason anyone has been able to explain, outside of Andrew's need to keep control.
When I realized this, it flashed into my head a cartoon that could have been drawn for the men's sauna room walls. In it, Andrew would be standing in the foreground addressing us as he often did, demanding, "Why don't more of you rise up and be leaders?' Behind him would be a guillotine and a basket full of heads.
So, during the "holocaust," I still believe he was genuinely trying to bring about an awakening; he was just doing it in a way that made his goal impossible, and squeezing the vice ever tighter when what couldn't succeed didn't succeed.
And finally, he gave up. His original goal, clearly stated, was for the formal men to come through not individually but collectively; he specifically wanted a collective response. And in the end he simply reversed himself, and he declared that each one of us had to reconcile ourselves individually with him.
Talking with Susan Bridle, she told me the same thing happened with the women. He'd pressured them for a collective response, but in the end gave up just as he had with the men. She told me in the end that was what convinced her to leave.
After the holocaust, something changed in Andrew. There was a very noticeable shift in the character of his writings, particularly visible on his blog. Beforehand, he had a certain unsentimental hard nosed realism. It was a quality that, even when he was misguided, I liked and respected. He told it like it was and didn't care what people thought. When Mimi asked him about Poonjaji, he said matter-of-factly the man meant nothing to him now.
Afterwards all that changed. Of course we all know about the miraculous spiritual reunion he had with his master, now safely dead and unable to impinge in any way on his fantasy. He wrote a weird maudlin letter to Stas from his dog. His posts on his blog waxed on about how wonderful his life was, how wonderful this awakening was. For a while I wondered if he'd always been like this and I'd just been too blind to see, but I don't think so. I think he genuinely changed. I think he cracked, in a way.
When Pete Bampton waxes on about his gratitude to Andrew for the great collective awakening, I can't find it m myself to be angry with him. I can't even find it in myself to be angry when he lashes out at others to protect it, even though I know it's wrong. I understand the impulse he's acting out of too well. He's doing his part as we all did collectively to uphold Andrew's fantasy. In the end, we were all actors, desperately trying to fulfill his play.
The ancient Hebrews taught one should never worship idols. Zen Buddhists have declared, if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. Great teachers declared that one should only trust that which cannot be touched, cannot be seen, cannot be grasped by thought. But most human beings are simply unable to do that. Most of us need to identify that which cannot be identified with something substantial, a person, or a doctrine of some sort. And when that identification happens, we defend it irrationally, compulsively, because we are convinced that attacks on that relative representation of the absolute are attacks on that which is the source of all value itself.
For most of us, we identified that with Andrew, which of course he encouraged us to do, assuring us that in this one instance it was correct to ignore the ancient injunction. Andrew, in turn, identified it with his own spontaneous responses. Now that that has finally broken, all he has left is that event.
If Andrew really wants to help others, he has to give up that fantasy there was some unique awakening, he has to give up the fantasy that all that nightmarish drama was somehow finally worth it. To my mind, that is only thing he can do to make amends; in liberating himself from that fantasy, he might help to liberate others too.
One of the earliest things I remember Andrew teaching applies now. In the end, there can be only one final reference point, one final principle that supersedes all others.
Hold onto nothing.
Hold onto nothing.
Hold onto nothing.
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