New age: Details about 'Andrew Cohen'
|
||||||||
Home
|
Andrew Cohen is an American guru, spiritual teacher, and author who has contributed to the subject of what he calls "evolutionary spirituality." He sees himself as working to bring about "the next stage" of human cultural development. Cohen was born in New York City in 1955. Raised as a secular Jew, his life was changed by a spontaneous experience of "cosmic consciousness" at the age of sixteen. As a result, Cohen studied martial arts, then Kriya Yoga, then Buddhism. In 1986, he met the Advaita Vedanta master H.W.L. Poonja. With the encouragement of Poonja (with whom Cohen later parted ways), Cohen began to teach.
IdeasCohen’s original spiritual teaching, Evolutionary Enlightenment, is said to be unique for placing the traditional realization of enlightenment in the context of cosmic evolution. By awakening to the timeless "Ground of Being," Cohen maintains, human beings can liberate themselves from selfish motives, or ego, and learn to manifest what he calls the "Authentic Self." This self beyond ego is said to represent humanity at its most wholesome: creative, compassionate, and motivated by an "evolutionary impulse" that is "one with the big bang itself." According to Cohen, when human beings choose to live as the Authentic Self, they can realize their inseparability from the universe and thereby discover a purpose for living that transcends egoism—that is, the "uniquely human" capacity to participate in the evolution of consciousness itself. The founder and editor-in-chief of the magazine What Is Enlightenment?, Cohen believes that "it is on our shoulders to create the future." He sees WIE as a popular forum for dialogue and inquiry regarding the meaning of spiritual life in the postmodern era. WIE has developed an international speaker’s series called Voices from the Edge, an online multimedia forum known as WIE Unbound, and a partnership with the Graduate Institute (TGI) to offer a master’s program in Conscious Evolution. In 1988, Cohen founded EnlightenNext, a nonprofit educational and spiritual network committed to creating a new global culture. In addition to small groups of students located in various parts of the world, EnlightenNext has public centers in New York, Boston, London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris, Copenhagen, and Rishikesh, India. The main center for EnlightenNext is a 220-acre (890,000 m²) retreat venue in western Massachusetts, where Cohen and his largest body of students currently reside. CriticismBy some, including some ex-members and his mother, Cohen is viewed as a charismatic and manipulative cult leader. Several books including Dr. André van der Braak's Enlightenment Blues: My Years with an American Guru and articles have been published which post various allegations including demands for large cash sums and extreme devotion from his followers. In 2002, Cohen's magazine "WIE" conducted an interview in India with Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet discussing her role in the Supramental Yoga begun by Sri Aurobindo, her teachings of Evolution, of a Cosmological perspective and of the limitations of the typical view of Enlightenment of the Buddhists. "WIE" did not publish the interview, made no mention of her in their "Guru and Pandit" discussions or an exclusive article on Sri Aurobindo's Supramental Yoga, "Why Sri Aurobindo is Cool". The main criticism of Cohen held by Norelli-Bachelet's students is the unanswered question, "Why doesn't Cohen make any reference to her work, even though he knows about her and even though he knows that for 30 years she has made significant contributions to the issues that he is just starting to delve into and expresses as a new teaching, regarding Evolution and the Cosmic perspective? Books by Cohen
Books about Cohen
Articles
Critical websites
|
|||||||