Sympathy

I think the first time I felt sympathy for Andrew was after reading an article by a person who said he might have become a spiritual teacher himself. He said he decided not to, because he didn't want the temptation that would come with having a crowd of people idolizing him. Unfortunately, I don't remember the link. That caused me to question what it must be like for Andrew in a way I hadn't before. What was it like on his end, sitting above a crowd of people looking up at him adoringly, who truly believed he had all the important answers? It brought me up short. Of course that doesn't excuse him, he worked very hard to cultivate that crowd, but it must have been a great temptation. Just as we got something out of the powerful feelings and experiences and the security we got from looking at him as an authority, he must have gotten something similar from us. In the foreword to William Yenner's book, "American Guru," Stephen Batchelor wrote of his impressions of attending an early teaching of Andrew:

"While the students experienced some sort of ecstasy by collectively projecting their spiritual longings and ideals onto Andrew, Andrew seemed to need the adulation of others to endorse the sense of being the enlightened guru he and his students wanted him to be. The more this interchange of mutually reinforcing desires went on, the greater became the certainty that Andrew really was the savior of our age and the students his first blessed circle of disciples. As long as this bubble of shared conviction remained intact, everyone got what they wanted."

I don't believe I was able to appreciate these remarks when they came out.

In the early days of Andrew's teaching in Marin, I remember Andrew telling us he fundamentally had no relationship with anyone outside of those he was involved with in a spiritual context. Of course he dealt with other people on a practical basis, but he was only close to people involed in the project he was. At the time, I thought this was laudable, an indication of his seriousness focus on higher matters, and of course an example of the firs tenet. It was just like the story of Jesus who, when told his mother and brothers were waiting to speak to him, gestured to his followers and replied, "These are my mother and my brothers."

Now it seems to me to be terribly sad. To Andrew, being interested in spiritual matters largely meant acknowledging Andrew's own attainment, that is, allowing Andrew to see his own idealized reflection in the other person's eyes. It's sad if Andrew can't have supportive relationships with others outside of a relationship that feeds his self image. With nearly all his students having left, he must feel very alone.

As his students, most of us (myself definitely included) took on this attitude. It was all part of the first tenet. What we were doing here with Andrew was of the highest importance; everything else, job, family, friends outside the community were at best secondary. Once joined, one wouldn't think of entering a committed relationship with a partner outside the context of the community, and many such bonds that had been formed before we joined were torn apart. Many of us were subsequently humbled when, after we inevitably left Andrew's circle, to find love, support, forgiveness, and acceptance from those we'd turned are backs on, love of a personal character that was absent in Andrew's teachings.

This is very much connected to the fourth tenet, everything is impersonal. In practice, this meant our life before Andrew and the bonds we'd formed were of, at best, secondary importance. Andrew regularly criticized such bonds. When asked in a public teaching how a father and son both practicing the teachings should relate, Andrew said the father should see in the son only another brother in the teachings, and should only be interested in supporting their freedom, and the son should see the same.

As another example, Andrew said the only purpose of intimate relationships was sex. When once asked if there was anything more, he thought about it, and answered "convenience." You found someone who you got along with and were compatible with, and that was that. Andrew said that in public, couples among us should not treat each other any differently than any other students. Ideally, one shouldn't be able to tell who the couples were by watching our public behavior. It was important that people in relationship not only be both practicing the teachings, but be roughly in a similar position of approval, and relations were regularly broken up and reformed accordingly. Everything is impersonal, there should be nothing personal in a sexual relationship, and so terminating one at your teacher's behest shouldn't be a big deal.

As another example, in one of the teachings, a women said she was interested in spiritual matters, but she was worried they might cause her to neglect her child. Andrew answered this reflected a lack of trust in God, that God would not care about her child. Of course in the teachings parents were expected to do as Andrew directed without regard to the effects that had on their children; that was, after all, just another personal relationship.

It's my view now Andrew needed this from us. He needed us to give up our former personal relationships, to be able to focus our devotion on him, on his teachings, and on the community he was creating. He was not complete without us. During a particularly dark part of the period when Andrew was putting pressure on his formal male students, and we were walking around like zombies, Andrew felt deep anguish. We were of course regularly shouted at how our betrayal of Andrew was causing our master so much pain. I believe his pain was genuine, even though was at the same time orchestrating the source of it; he was a deeply divided man. At one point he said that in losing us, he felt he was losing parts of himself, he was losing his arms, he was losing his legs. Those who were still "with" Andrew would, when they carried out his instructions, say it wasn't them doing this, it was Andrew. It wasn't me who struck you, it was Andrew. It's Andrew, it's Andrew, it's all Andrew. In retrospect, this was all terrifyingly warped.

There were other occasions that in retrospect further support this view. In one of the discussion groups he said that when a human begins to ask a question (I forget what the question was, but it was about interest in some spiritual matters), God recognizes they exist. So God doesn't even recognizes someone as a person, an individual to be taken into consideration, until that person becomes interested in evolution. Of course this is the extreme of the arrogance of the Evolutionary Enlightenment movement. But it also sheds light on how Andrew viewed things. He generally took it for granted that God and he were in agreement. So other people aren't important except insofar as they are interested in what he was, that is, his idealized image of himself.

In my opinion, Andrew is still either unable or unwilling to relate to anyone outside this context, which would explain why he would want to rebuild what he had even after it caused so much destruction. It explains the lack of reaching out to former students; how can he reach out when we're no longer involved or interested in his teachings, when we've even rejected them? When I asked to speak with Andrew, someone who'd spoken with him themselves encouraged me to couch my request in a framework that expressed interest in what his current investigation was about. Admittedly, I didn't do that, but he still spoke with me.


In my Skype call with Andrew, there was only one point in which he seemed interested in me as an individual. Out of the blue he told me with concern and animation that he had heard from others that I had been saying the big event that had occurred between the formal students just after I left that was the fruition of what he'd done with us was merely something he'd orchestrated, that nothing had actually happened. He asked me if this was true. I'd sent him letters including links to my blog on a couple of occasions which if he'd read, he wouldn't have had to hear it from "others." So, I said, well it's a little more complicated than that, I wouldn't say literally "nothing" had happened, but broadly speaking what he was saying was true. He looked at me with a disappointed expression. Then he said, "Well, I'm sorry you think it was all bullshit." That is the only apology I've ever gotten from him. Not that I want an apology, I want him to do no more harm, to give up being a spiritual teacher and authority. I told him earnestly at the time,almost pleading, that he would never be able to change if he kept on hanging on to that story of an extraordinary event. I believe that more than ever now.