Why so much anger?

I remember when I first met Andrew in Santa Cruz. I remember the relief I felt, the gratitude I felt, when the existential doubts that plagued me then fell away. It was years later that I became seriously involved with Andrew as a student. But that first meeting was enough for me to get on with my life, to get over my stagnation. I applied to graduate school. If that had been the extent of my involvement with Andrew, I believe I would feel gratitude towards him to this day (though I’d be baffled at what later happened).

There is, I believe, an aspect to reality that is beautiful, that we cannot help but love. When one somehow becomes aware of this, there is a spontaneous choiceless arising of gratitude, and a desire to serve what one has realized. I have experienced this a few times. The first was with Andrew.

I still don’t understand how, but Andrew had a talent where somehow some of those around him awakened to this aspect of being. The problem is that he exploited this. He used it to attach people to himself. He told us he was the perfect representative of what we had realized, and that to surrender to him was to surrender to it. He told us he had a vision of what was possible that only he understood, and that to get there we had to unconditionally trust him, even as he lead us into what seemed to be a senseless hell. He took that which is most sacred and used it to persuade us to submit ourselves to him, and then subjected us to the hell of his own mind. This is a spiritual crime.

I can’t tell you how angry I became when I realized this. There was a period of a few days where I was so filled with rage that it seemed to me that the world itself, that being itself, was filled with rage. Over time I was able to work through it. The important part came when I realized Andrew was never the man I thought he was. He was never the selfless enlightened servant of being. And he wasn’t a conscious betrayer of the sacred either. He was a sick deluded narcissistic man who, as awful as his actions were, was to be pitied. My anger faded when I realized the man I was angry with never existed.

Finally, there is a teaching Andrew gave. He said something like, every aspect of reality has to make sense on its own terms. The spiritual aspect, the ethical aspect, and the practical aspect each have to make sense when taken separately. And when the spiritual aspect is used to justify what happens in the ethical aspect, both are corrupted.

 

How could you have stayed with him for so long

This is a response to a letter someone wrote me, that I thought others might find of interest.

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You ask,

"The people in the sanga were some of the finest, most intelligent, sweetest, wonderful people I have ever met. Yet for the life of me I cannot understand why anyone would stick around for this torture and abuse done to you by a man who had gone mad with power, power which was given to him from everyone's deep love for him no less."

On one level, I think the answer is painfully simple. As human beings we are more subject to conditioning than we like to think. Andrew gave positive reinforcement when people thought along the lines he wished, and negative reinforcement when they did not.

And of course Andrew had available what may be the most powerful form of positive reinforcement for a human being; he was able to give them spiritual experiences. Andrew could say something to me seemingly inconsequential, and I would be stunned. I would feel relief from existential doubts, I could barely even speak except to say, "Thank you. . .thank you very much." The primary feeling I felt was gratitude. And in that state, it's very difficult to entertain cynical thoughts along the lines of, what is this guy getting out of this? There is an innocence in that state which Andrew took full advantage of.

I remember, early on in Satsang, well before I was a student, I had a conversation with Andrew, and at the end, I said "Thank you." Andrew responded something like, "No, Thank you! You keep coming here and being happy, and I want all my students to look at this man as an example." Oh, I was beaming after that, it felt so good. It didn't even occur to me to question. Why had he used me to shame his students in that way? He'd been on their case for something, as an outsider I didn't know what, but oh what a put down to publicly compare them to a character like me, one who wasn't even a student. I didn't know it at the time, but this was my first example of how Andrew would use one group to shame or manipulate another. And of course it was powerful positive feedback for me, roping me further in.

Over time, in gross and subtle ways, Andrew would encourage his students to identify what we'd experienced on those occasions with him. He was the source of it. He told us our relationship to the truth was not any different than our relationship with him. And while we all know we're not supposed to identify that which is realized in such experiences with any relative entity, don't create idols, if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him, and so on, as human beings its difficult for most of us to do this. We want something concrete to identify it with, whether it be a doctrine, a tradition, or a person. And this is very dangerous, for once we take that step, anything perceived as an attack on that doctrine, tradition, or person, isn't perceived as merely an attack on a doctrine, tradition, or person, but upon the most precious think there is.

In my own case, looking back, I fell for something called, "The Lord or Lunatic Argument." This is an argument used by some Christians. It basically runs, some people deny Jesus is God, while affirming he was a great moral teacher. But this position is untenable, because Jesus said he was God, and a person who wasn't God but said they were God must be either a lunatic or a liar, and a lunatic or a liar cannot be a great moral teacher. Therefore, you must make a choice; either Jesus is a lunatic or a liar or God, you cannot hold that he was merely a great moral teacher.

So, when I met Andrew, while I didn't understand all the dharma he taught, the parts I did understand made sense to me. I had the sense he'd gone far beyond where I had gone, that he was speaking from experience, and of course he had an extraordinary gift of transmission. So when he began to communicate, in gross and subtle ways, that he believed himself to be a completely awakened being, the dustless mirror, one who was so pure they were incapable of causing suffering through ignorance, I believed him. The very outrageousness of the claim made it more believable to me, because if it wasn't true, then he was the most monumentally arrogant person I'd ever met, and how could that be true given my experience of him?

This leads into another theme. Andrew encouraged new seekers to give him "the benefit of the doubt." Most of us upon first meeting with Andrew were unaware of his past, unaware of what he did with his students behind closed doors. We might have a sense something strange happened, that some student was under pressure, but we didn't know the details. Or, as another example, when I first met Andrew, there was something about his mannerisms that seemed off to me. It seemed to me he was short with people, he was rude to people, he was sneering at him. This purely an instinctive reaction, I couldn’t really justify it.

So Andrew would ask newer people to give him the benefit of the doubt. He asked people to focus on what he was telling them, on their experiences with him, and to set aside doubts. Perhaps you’d heard strange stories about his students going threw crises or being put under pressure? Well, that was his advanced work, you did not have the context to appreciate what was going on, and it wasn’t relevant to you anyways as you weren’t his student. If what he was saying to you made sense on its own, that should be enough. Or if you were having niggles or feelings or suspicions, again he wasn’t asking for your surrender, at least not yet, give him the benefit of the doubt.

That seemed entirely reasonable to me at the time. After all, when I was a student in school, and a math teacher said something that made no sense to me, I’d give them the benefit of the doubt. They knew much more than I did, it seemed much more reasonable to assume I didn’t understand them than that they didn’t know what they were talking about. But of course, this was hopefully a temporary measure. Some day in the future I hoped to understand what they were saying for myself. But in the mean time, it was reasonable to give them the benefit of the doubt.

But the thing with Andrew was there was never an end to giving the benefit of the doubt. There was never a point where we found out what happened and could conclude, ahhh, it makes sense to me now. What tended to happen instead as were brought closer to the inner circles was we discovered even more shocking things than before, and we had to give more benefit of the doubt not less. We became experts, deeply skilled at giving Andrew the benefit of the doubt.

I remember how the early part of this process evolved in me. When I first met Andrew, there was something that grated about him to me. He seemed rude and disrespectful to me, though I couldn’t justify these feelings, and so dismissed them. Very early on, this stopped. Overnight, he seemed perfectly reasonable, even loving to me. What I had taken to be rudeness now seemed just to be a blunt way of expressing himself, one perhaps due to his innocent nature. At the time I thought I was seeing him more clearly. Now, I believe I was seeing him more as he wished to be seen. This happened at a very deep level, pre-thought, on the level of my immediate emotional intuitions.

The direction to give him the benefit of the doubt shifted as we became students and that was no longer appropriate. It turned into a teaching on the world of ego and the world of enlightenment being two parallel lines that never meet. The line of ego couldn’t understand that of enlightenment, and for the line of enlightenment, ego was unreal. And therefore, it was imperative to stay in the line of enlightenment. We all knew what the truth was, there was no need to question. And questioning was playing with demons, playing with ego. A split second of doubt could land one in the hell of ego. And the further one advanced in the teachings, the further it became imperative to take this stand. And part of taking this stand, standing in this line, looking at everything from the perspective we’d been taught, was the experience of an extraordinary sweet intimacy between us. As someone who’d never been part of a spiritual community before, I’d never felt anything like it. Questioning falling out of that line and into what Andrew insisted was hell was very painful. When I finally did leave, I felt such a deep ache, a sense of loss.

You write, “I think that people were like drug addicts, doing anything for the bliss of Andrew praising them.” While there is certainly truth to this, I also think it’s not entirely fair. Andrew also appealed to peoples’ highest ideals. There was a point after I left Andrew, but before I’d questioned him, that I became aware of the danger humanity is in, how we’re recklessly treating the environment and our resources, and I became terrified. It seemed clear to me humanity was on a path to destruction. And then I read a copy of the journal, which talked about how people could come together in a objective view that transcended any individual. I read that, and thought that’s it; that’s the answer to the crises humanity is in. At that time, I knew I could never be a student of Andrew’s the way I’d been before, but I still wanted to support him. I became a lay student in the center in California.

And until I was able to question that ideal, or at least the notion Andrew was the solution to that problem, I was blind. I read whatenlightenment, casually admittedly, but enough to be aware of some of the horrible things that had happened. Not that I didn’t know plenty of things that were horrible enough before. But it just didn’t impact me. Perhaps Andrew made mistakes, I could see the critics were coming from what seemed a valid point of view, but it didn’t impact me. Because they were leaving out the context of what this was all for.

But then the moment I questioned that ideal, the illusion fell apart. I began to question critically whether what was happening at Foxhollow was what I should have expected if what Andrew said was true. I quickly saw it wasn’t. And my eyes were opened, and my conscience awoke from its long slumber. So that’s another reason it was difficult to free myself from Andrew. It involved questioning one of my highest hopes, one of my highest ideals.

There’s no obvious reason why it should work this way. It’s just my observation it does. Why couldn’t I be impacted by the horror of what happened while still holding onto the ideal? It just doesn’t work that way. Evidently, at a deep level I was not aware of, my conscience was shut off if it seemed to threaten that ideal. There’s been a long argument between former students about the baby and the bath water. Some of us have been accused of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, forsaking the high ideals we embraced in our anger towards Andrew and the abuse we endured. But in my experience, you have to throw out the baby. Only then do things start to become clear.

This is why, when I spoke to Andrew, I told him the most important thing he could do was to let go of that story of a spiritual breakthrough that occurred, literally cosmic in its signficance. He was still holding onto it, insisting to me that yes he’d made mistakes, he’d done horrible things, but at the same time something extraordinary had occurred and both of these facts were true.

Moving on, you say you don’t understand how a group of sensitive thoughtful people could have stuck around Andrew, could have endured the torture both to them and to each other. The reason it seems incomprehensible is because you’re focusing on the end of a process rather than the beginning. It took at least months, usually years before we were conditioned enough that we would endure such nightmarish treatment. And this was in an environment where Andrew had complete control, where everyone around us was supporting him.

So instead of asking how could we have stood for that outrageous behavior, instead ask the question, how could we have taken that first step? How could we have given Andrew the benefit of the doubt? How could we have trusted him, before who he was and the horrors that were to come were revealed? From what you write, it sounds like you can understand that, you may have been tempted to take that step yourself. And if you do understand that, then you understand everything. Once one takes that first step, at a deep level a critical faculty is shut off. It’s a seemingly small thing at first. It may take years to build on that, to produce people who will see nothing wrong with a teacher who treats his students as less than human. But once that first step is taken, the rest is almost inevitable. It’s like knocking down the first domino in a long long line.

And that’s why secrecy has been Andrew’s best friend. That’s why, if an organization is going to give Andrew a public platform, the least they should do is tell those attending about Andrew’s past before they meet him. And not just vague generalities about him being a demanding teacher who may have gone too far, but specifics. If you tell them later, after they’ve become seriously involved with Andrew, they will probably not care.

Finally, I highly recommend Marlowe Sand’s book, “Promises and Paradise: Chronicles of My Life with a Self-Declared, Modern-Day Buddha.” She describes as well as anyone I know what it was like on a day to day basis to be a student of Andrew’s, the mechanics of how he persuaded to transfer their devotion to what they’d realized in the experiences he’d engendered to him, and why someone would stay with him for so long.

To those of you who wish to see Andrew teach again

Back when I was a student of Andrew’s, in Marin and in the early days in Foxhollow, there was a young man who was also a student of Andrew’s, who was a leader among the formal men. He had a strong character, and he was devoted to Andrew. He was a natural leader in our meetings. I realize now that on a few occasions he treated some of us badly, undoubtedly on Andrew’s instruction. But overall, he was a good leader, and we all looked up to him.

And then one day, as happened to so many leaders in our community, he disappeared. He was still there, but we didn’t see him anymore, and the word was he had been challenged and was facing into something. And then, we formal men were brought to meet him. He was lying in a bed, a playboy magazine on a table by his bedside as well as a glass of liquor, implements Andrew had put there as a teaching device whose purpose I couldn’t guess

This man, my brother in the teachings, lay stretched out on the bed devastated. He had a soft smile on his face, but he was transformed, he was not the strong man I knew before. The closest I’d ever seen to such a transformation was due to a physical illness, when my father had cancer of the brain and was completely changed from the strong independent man he was before.

I was so disturbed at what had happened to him, that when I saw Andrew in the kitchen, I walked up to him and asked him, “What happened to ---------?” In those days I almost never spoke to Andrew, I was too intimidated by him. So that’s an indication of how disturbing this event was for me, that I would dare to approach Andrew without even making an appointment and question him. Andrew turned towards me and said, “Ego, ego, ego!” and then he walked away. Soon afterwards, my friend left the community.

Years later, after I was no longer a student of Andrew’s, I found out what had happened from the website WhatEnlightenment.blogspot.com. Today, among the long list of abuses Andrew inflicted on his students, is the following:

“Ordering a student who is a physician to simulate the amputation of the finger of another student who had sworn, under pressure, that he would cut off his finger if he failed to complete a writing project. This simulation included full preparation of the student for the amputation by the doctor and the doctor’s readying of surgical knives and only ceased just before actual amputation. As a result, the student was emotionally traumatized and soon thereafter fled Cohen's residential center, Foxhollow.”

A while ago in a conversation over Skype, I asked Andrew why he did this. He admitted it was a mistake, it was meant as a teaching device, and he just didn't know any better back then.

This is the man some of you here want to see in a position to teach again. Why? It’s not a matter of forgiving Andrew. It’s not a matter of denying he can change. I wish he would change. I wish he would take responsibility for his actions, and work to do what he can to mend the relations with those he’s abused. But that is irrelevant to the question here. Someone can develop, change, and become a more humble person without becoming a spiritual teacher. And someone who’s used their teaching position to do the things Andrew has done (of which the example I give here is one among so very many) should never teach again, ever.

The best thing Andrew could do to show he’s changed is to renounce his role as a spiritual teacher and authority forever. It’s the only thing he can do, if he wishes to convince me he truly regrets the damage he did to my friend and to so many others.

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.

On Evolutionary Enlightenment (2)

Andrew taught that there were two aspects of enlightenment. One of them was exactly as Ramana Maharshi described, timeless, changeless, always perfect, the unconditioned. Always the sense of no problem whatsoever. The other side was the evolutionary side, where we’re always in crises, the house is always burning down. Andrew declared he’d gone beyond most eastern teachers as they only taught the first side of enlightenment but not the second. But when he spoke about the first side, he was very much like those eastern teachers. When he spoke about the unconditioned, he didn’t speak about evolution, or change. When speaking about the unconditioned, he insisted from this perspective everything was always perfect, there was never any problem, nothing to do, nothing to become. Andrew taught both sides of enlightenment were important; both had to be practiced independently of one another. When meditating, there should be no thought of action or evolution. And when acting in the the world, one should participate fully, without any reference back to that experience in meditation.

When I picked up his book on Evolutionary enlightenment (as a former student), I found the parts on the evolutionary perspective difficult to read, and didn’t get far. But reading the beginning where he set out the unconditioned view, I felt myself sinking inside despite myself, feeling that spiritual experience, even though I didn’t particularly want to. It still had power over me.

I think Andrew had a genuine connection with that first side of enlightenment, the unconditioned. I think he was able to transmit it, and I think that gave him his power. But it wasn’t good enough for him, at least not alone. After all, what’s the good of powerful experiences if they don’t lead into action, if we remain selfish, if we remain divided and in crises as a species? What good are such experiences if afterwards his students still behaved in ways Andrew found annoying, that brought his attention to aspects of himself he was assiduously avoiding? It’s a tempting thought, and I certainly bought into it. But it was his use of the second side of the teachings that in retrospect seems to be where the mess came from, where he confused the evolutionary impulse with his deepest fears and insecurities, and that resulted in a community of terrified people trying to live up to and project a particular standard that by and large was the reflection of the neurosis of our teacher. On retreats, at least when I was a student, Andrew always started with the unconditioned. The first few days of a retreat would always be about meditation, about sinking into that place of meditation. Only when we were grounded enough in that view, would he go on to the evolutionary teachings, the five tenets, or whatever it was at the time. Ostensibly, this was because we needed to be grounded in the unconditioned view to have the depth of vision to explore the more advanced part of the teachings. In actuality, I think that meditation was necessary to make us malleable, to make it easier to manipulate us.

I don’t like the term “evolutionary enlightenment.” I’m not ruling it out. But most of the time when I’ve heard it used, it’s together with the assumption of an evolutionary wave of which we spiritual folk are at the edge of. The unspoken assumption appears to be, just by being aware of evolution, we are more evolutionary advanced. In my opinion, a friend of mine said it best (and I hope I’m stating what he said correctly) when he said he didn’t like the “evolutionary view,” but if we were going to refer to such then everyone and everything would have to be considered to be on the evolutionary edge.

On Love

Andrew didn't use the word "love" very often and didn't seem to like it, even though when he was asked where it came in, he'd say "at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end." At the time, I thought he worried that using it would lead into a mushy feel-good approach to things. He would also say that most people didn't know what love was, and he'd say, "True love burns." He seemed to feel he was the only one who knew what love was, and of course humiliating people, at least when he did it, was an expression of this cosmic love.

In retrospect, one of the more painful destructive aspects of being Andrew's students was the effort we made to make Andrew's twisted ideas about love our own.

Skype call with Andrew

I had a Skype call with Andrew a little while ago. This is my account of it.

The tenor of the conversation was friendly for the most part, and even during the periods of mild tension, it was still mutually respectful. We showed each other our pets, and I cradled my pet rat Chiska in my hands for most of the conversation. I felt warmth and affection towards him for the most part, and I believe he felt the same. To a degree, he freely admitted his mistakes, admitting that over the years as a teacher there was a huge amount of evidence that something was wrong that he ignored. He talked about being overly critical of other spiritual teachers and his own teacher in the early days, and of being naively ignorant of much of what was involved in being a human being and a teacher. There were some other things we talked about I don't recall, but there was a sense of agreement. We discussed treating people as means rather than ends.

I brought up some of the darker episodes I indirectly experienced as his student, the pseudo amputation of a finger of a fellow student, the formal women at the lake. He expressed remorse for these and acknowledged he'd done horrible things. When I brought up his lack of response to students since the first apology, he didn't respond, and I'm not sure that made it in. I didn't push too long on that; I'm not sure I'd want him to start writing letters because someone told him he should.

The major points of disagreement were two. The first arose when I asked Andrew what the so called "holocaust" was all about, why had he done all that. He seemed surprised that I would ask that question as though I didn't know, when he'd explained it so many times before. Then he gave an explanation he could have given 14 years ago--the formal students were stuck, we were happy with the way things were, he needed to put pressure on us to make something happened. I was genuinely surprised, although I suppose I shouldn't have been. After so much time has passed, after admitting to doing so much that was genuinely wrong and harmful, the story he tells about his basic motivation hasn't changed even a bit. I argued with him. I invoked the second tenet, and said it was impossible to reconcile this image of himself with the actions he performed, which bordered on sadism. I read the piece from my blog, "The Liberated Ego" to him. I don't think that helped.

The second point came up when he brought up something I'd written a couple years ago he said another student had shown him (it's currently on my blog under "Hold onto Nothing). He asked with concern if I really thought that he had orchestrated the breakthrough the formal men experienced and that nothing really happened. I was gratified both that he remembered that passage and that that point seemed to disturb him. While I qualified it a little, saying one couldn't literally say nothing happened, that there were shifts and various insights among everyone throughout our involvement with him, fundamentally, I was confident whatever happened was not the historical shift in consciousness he had described it as, and that he had orchestrated that event because he needed one. I also said I was convinced that as long as he held onto that conviction of a break through, that he'd never be able to respond to his former students,that he'd remain fundamentally unchanged. I reminded him I'd originally believed in the picture he'd painted myself, and I described the moment when everything deflated for me, when I realized that great drama between the impersonal forces of enlightenment and ego was all an illusion, how I was an actor in an imaginary drama in Andrew's mind. He of course confidently declared I was wrong. He said that two seemingly contradictory views were both true, and denying either was to miss the whole picture; it was true he'd made terrible mistakes and did awful things, and at the same time it was true a fundamental breakthrough did occur. I said that view was madness, and so long as he held on to it he would remain stuck. My response seemed to disappoint him, and he expressed regret that I viewed it all as B.S. I felt compassion for him, through much of this I was almost pleading with him, if he didn't face this, nothing was going to happen. But unsurprisingly we did not come together here, and we had to agree to disagree.

Overall, he's very much as others who've met with him have described him. On one level, he is looking into things, he is acknowledging the wrong he's done. On another level, he is fundamentally unchanged. And I believe Harry's post on Elizabeths' blog was perfectly on the mark; he's still holding on.

So I was satisfied with the call but not because of anything Andrew said. Going in, I don't believe I wanted anything from him. All I wanted was to say what I needed to say. I believe I did that, and as a result I feel unburdened. I feel I satisfied the contract I had with him from so long ago. While I found to my surprise I did care for him and I do hope he can open his eyes, at the same time what he does with what I told him (and what plenty of other people have told him as well) is up to him. People change when they are ready to change and not a moment before. And at this point, having said what I needed to say, until he responds it simply isn't my problem anymore.

I'm still fascinated with this phenomenon, that a human being falls in love with an image or an ideal representing love, and becomes blind to the real thing. I don't understand it, but I've seen, and even experienced it myself. I was unable to acknowledge the nature of the abuse I'd seen with my own eyes, until after I'd let go of the idea that I'd been involved in some noble struggle for humanity, and when I did, everything became clear. I hope Andrew may also eventually be able to let go of that idea. But in the mean time, I am not going to hold my breath.

 Addendum:

There is something I forgot to mention which is significant. One of the issues I pressed Andrew on was my fellow student, who he had hand undergo a fake finger amputation. Of course the doctor was directed to end it at the last moment, but the student was emotionally shattered. He left soon after. When I pressed Andrew on this, expressed remorse. He said, "I lost a good man." Do I have to point that that man was never Andrew's to lose in the first place? But that's how he worded it. We were his, and he expressed remorse in "losing" one of us. I think that is also the source of his comment to me, "I'm sorry you think it was all bullshit." To me what that meant he was sorry that I did not share his vision anymore, that I was not part of his enterprise anymore, that I was no longer his. We no longer had a relationship. And he was sorry that was the case.