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Andrew Cohen

Mar 02

David Lorimer and New World Values

By Andrew Cohen, Findhorn Foundation, Kate Thomas, Ken Wilber, Scientific and Medical Network (SMN), Stanislav Grof, Wrekin Trust
David  Lorimer
In 2005, I composed a letter of complaint to David Lorimer. The mailing list was extensive,  including over sixty members of the Scientific and Medical Network (SMN), led by Lorimer. Only one of those recipients replied, and in a purely personal context. The key addressee, David Lorimer,  was notable for a total lack of response.
The contents of that letter included reference to various anomalies within “alternative” organisations influenced by Lorimer. Details were provided of the Findhorn Foundation, closely linked to SMN membership and subscriptions. Discrepant behaviour of authority figures was a primary feature of content. Evasion was preferred by SMN recipients.
Lorimer is known for his activities as a writer and lecturer, including the book Radical Prince (2003), the subject here being the Prince of Wales. He was Programme Director for the SMN, and Vice-President of the closely associated Wrekin Trust, “a charity concerned with adult spiritual education,” to use one of the media descriptions. Lorimer’s blog emphasised “vision and values for a new world view.” So what are the royalist connotations of “spiritual education” and “new world”?
Lorimer had expressed estimation for both Ken Wilber and Andrew Cohen, two controversial new age celebrities promoted by the Findhorn Foundation. His arguments were not convincing. In 2004, Lorimer even stated: “I have been impressed by the level of debate between Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber in What is Enlightenment?” This deference to a commercial magazine, the well known vehicle of Cohen, tends to confirm “new world” drawbacks in spiritual education. Elsewhere, Wilber and his “integral spirituality” are the subject of strong critical attention from former enthusiasts and other commentators. Cohen has gained a very unenviable reputation as an American guru of extremist tendency.
To provide an update here,  other  entities are favoured  in the SMN ratings. In 2011, Lorimer named “Jung, Maslow, Stanislav Grof, Charles Tart” as being “far more meaningful” than the psychology syllabus in British universities (article formerly online). In particular, the explicit deference to Grof merits close attention.
In the same interview, Lorimer stated: “One of the assumptions I am making is that my mind is the Universal Mind.” Reminiscent of the Ken Wilber “Big Mind” lore promising enlightenment, this belief can cause acute confusion. We should be very careful before assuming that our very limited individual bundle of mental impressions has any relation to a “Universal Mind.” The neo-Advaita of Andrew Cohen is noted for a theme of cosmic identity, which is flippant to the point of absurdity in new age circles. 
The designation of Scientific and Medical Network is problematic. This organisation is not calling themselves, e.g., the Alternative Scene for New Age Beliefs and Daring Theories. No, they are something far more reliable, far more ultimate, and indeed far more authoritarian. To the extent, indeed, that they can ignore complaint. They are too scientific to be criticised. That is the implication. They are too medical to be taken to task for supporting the holotropic and psychedelic beliefs of Stanislav Grof. New world values mean, for instance, that hyperventilation (employed by Grof) is a deceptive avenue to cerebral hypoxia, denoting a decreased supply of oxygen to the brain (Stephen J. Castro, Hypocrisy and Dissent within the Findhorn Foundation, 1996, pp. 45-6). The results are purely material, not spiritual, like the blatantly commercial motivations involved.
Holotropic Breathwork (HB) was a very lucrative exercise devised by Grof at the Esalen Institute in California, subsequently employed at the Findhorn Foundation for several years until official intervention occurred. In this “new age workshop” sphere, everything is done for money. Grof resorted to HB because his LSD psychotherapy faced legal problems in the 1970s reaction to the hallucinogenic drug. He also employed “MDMA therapy” until the mid-1980s, his method having been described as “drug-aided mind manipulation in order to create paranormal beliefs” (Shepherd, Pointed Observations, 2005, p. 126). Grof chose to gloss psychological problems as “spiritual emergencies.” Grof transpersonalism has enjoyed a big dollar turnover via Grof Transpersonal Training Inc.
In this suspect scenario of  new world elite, wealthy academics and promoters can profitably ignore complaints. Entrepreneurs thrive on the absence of criticism, which is banished from the convenience of commerce and pseudo-meaning. On the basis of LSD experiences and holotropic sessions, Grof has devised a “cartography of the psyche,” which critics reject as spurious (cf. Grof, Psychology of the Future, 2000, pp. 20ff).
Alternative therapy was big business, for several decades, at places like Esalen and the Findhorn Foundation. I have related how a 1990s unfortunate lost his wife in this popular quicksand, after she had suffered most of the following drawbacks created by group sessions of “therapy”: nervous breakdown, suicidal tendencies, severe headaches, involuntary muscle spasms, memory failure, and lack of decision making ability. Despite realities, therapy deceptions have gained the status of “a unifying shift in our worldview,” to quote one of the ubiquitous celebrations on the new age media.
In the direction of drug use, exhortations are widespread on the internet. Some channels are strongly associated with the Grof bandwagon. Even at relatively low volume pitch, on email responses to journalism, one can find strident web voices urging that humanity has been taking drugs for thousands of years,  the police therefore being an obstruction to presumed benefits. More realistically, there are devastated LSD victims in wheelchairs, while the more recent craze for ketamine has involved extreme bladder problems and stomach operations for young victims. The new age now features teen sufferers with incontinence. Also in evidence are daily “recreational” users of skunk cannabis who favour the popular “shift in worldview.” They are unable to stop their drug habit, which can prove deadly, being only a step away from cocaine and heroin.
The main subject of the Letter of Complaint to David Lorimer was a former member of the SMN, whose situation (as a relative of mine) I was closely familiar with. Jean Shepherd (Kate Thomas) suffered discrimination because she was a critic of drug use. The agent of cordon here was Findhorn Foundation Trustee Janice Dolley, a close colleague of David Lorimer. The victim expressed an opposing view that drug experiences are counterfeit, comprising a delusion of “spirituality” for the partisans, and a misleading cue to addiction for the clientele. However, the critic was downgraded by the SMN in favour of Grof’s academic disciple Christopher Bache, an exponent of psychedelic neoshamanism. 
The Bache encounter with LSD involved a major problem: “I interrupted my work [for seven years] because the extreme nature of the states I was entering became too stressful for my family to endure” (Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, SUNY Press 2000, p. 311 note 10). Anomalously, the academic drug advocates deny causing any complication, talking of their “moderate” usage as distinct from street excesses. The pro-cannabis refrains of Tart, and the LSD lore of Grof and Bache, have been very influential, permeating counterculture with false concepts, thereby assisting drug-pushers on the street.
The academic drug advocates are viewed, by citizen philosophy, as “shallow mystics who invent a form of specious logic that misleads thousands and millions of people deceived by prestigious credentials” (Shepherd, Some Philosophical Critiques and Appraisals, 2004, p. 50).
In the strongly contested new age, Scientific and Medical now signifies evasion, commercial “workshops,” Jung lore, and psychedelic theory. The “new world” orientation leads to a blind alley of “channelling” delusion, hallucination, visits to real medics for assistance in survival, aversion to criticism in the interests of income and economic expansion, and  a  neglect of ethical considerations.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd

ENTRY no. 53

Copyright © 2013 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved

Oct 30

American Guru Andrew Cohen

By Andrew Cohen, Crazy Wisdom, William Yenner

 

Andrew Cohen

A recent disillusioned book, concerning the Western guru Andrew Cohen, is difficult to ignore in any assessment of the subject. American author William Yenner states: “No one knowingly joins a cult. I spent more than thirteen years following the American guru Andrew Cohen” (Yenner 2009:1). This vocation ended in a perception of “forced enlistment in the service of an individual bent on total control” (ibid).

Yenner is not the only witness here. The sub-title of his revealing book includes the phrase “former students of Andrew Cohen speak out.” The diverse contributors are clearly dissidents from former beliefs. Cohen’s website states that, in 1988, he founded EnlightenNext, “a nonprofit educational and spiritual organisation dedicated to pushing the edge of progressive culture” (ibid:6). To critics, the word “progressive” is one of the most suspicious words in the American (and English) language. In extensive usage since the early 1970s, that word still fails to convince.

The dissident book relates that Cohen consulted a lawyer to impose a five year gag order on Yenner, when the latter demanded repayment of a large donation (ibid:7). Yenner divulges that the information curtailed by Cohen was “my own firsthand experience of operating, managing and leading his [Cohen’s] organisation” (ibid).

William Yenner

Twenty years earlier, Yenner had first learned of Cohen. In 1988, he heard a glowing story of how Cohen had gained enlightenment (in 1986) at the hands of  H. W. L. Poonja (d.1997). This Indian guru claimed to have been enlightened by Ramana Maharshi (d.1950). Cohen’s mother expressed surprise that her son was considered transformed after only two and a half weeks of instruction (Tarlo 1997:80). Andrew Cohen thereafter spent two years teaching in England and Israel, returning to America after having gained over a hundred students (Yenner 2009:18).

Yenner quickly became a devoted follower, attracted by the Advaita Vedanta teachings employed by Cohen in his discourses. Those teachings are open to fluent duplication and distortion. There transpired to be no comparison with the example of Ramana Maharshi. Cohen’s community then numbered “approximately 130 people” (ibid:20). An increasing authoritarian policy emerged, with a proliferating code of punishments for supposed transgressions. Cohen became notorious for verbal lacerations of his students. Yenner now writes: “Of 130 of Andrew Cohen’s original students, 123 have left him, and Cohen has vilified almost all of them for having done so” (ibid:63).

Yenner became business manager, and one of the Board of Directors, at the 220 acre Foxhollow estate in Massachusetts, the headquarters of EnlightenNext. He was the only student to gain the privilege of living in Cohen’s house (apart from the latter’s wife). Entrance fees and donations became a hallmark feature of the proceedings, along with the confrontational severity. “Andrew referred to his updated version of ‘crazy wisdom’ – a teaching modality with centuries-old roots in some Eastern spiritual traditions – as ‘Acts of Outrageous Integrity’ ” (ibid:29-30). Critics consider American crazy wisdom to be an improvised attribute of extremists like Chogyam Trungpa and Adi Da Samraj, connoting a fashion in aborted mysticism.

Face-slapping and name-calling became routine at Foxhollow, along with bizarre punishments for those who disobeyed the purportedly enlightened American guru. One female victim had four buckets of paint poured over her head by ministrants of the guru’s displeasure. “She left the property traumatised and fell ill” (ibid:33), being further harassed by accusing phone calls at the guru’s instigation.

In the mid 1990s, Cohen encouraged donations to atone for mistakes. “Andrew now began attaching price tags to his forgiveness for perceived wrongs” (ibid:43). The ambitions of EnlightenNext required constant funding. The extraction of donations has been described in terms of “financial exploitation” (ibid). The coerced donations could vary from small amounts to 80,000 dollars. Yenner was a donor at this extortionate rate, which he later regretted.

After leaving the Foxhollow community in 2001, ex-devotee Yenner commenced legal proceedings. He did manage to retrieve his donation, a success which he describes as an unprecedented event (ibid:48). However, the attached gag order meant that he could not openly discuss Cohen community problems for five years, a period ending in 2008. These events were subsequent to his devotee efforts in which Yenner, for example, “began each day at 3 a.m. with a three-hour practice of one thousand prostrations before a photograph of Andrew” (ibid:53).

The book by William Yenner includes chapters about female students. Cohen is here revealed as being very harsh towards that contingent, one of whom wrote after leaving Foxhollow in 1998: “I was in a state of deep traumatic stress for months afterwards; I would wake up every night in terror, with panic attacks and thoughts of suicide” (ibid:76). The same victim states: “We attempted to pay for our ‘sins’ by contributing money to buy expensive clothes and floral bouquets for Andrew, which had for years been the standard way to buy forgiveness” (ibid:75). An even more discrepant episode is recounted of an elderly woman, who after being bullied on the telephone in 1999 by a shouting male student, “died with a broken heart and in a state of absolute inner terror and anguish” (ibid:84).

Another ex-devotee, Andre van der Braak, suggested that Cohen was projecting his anger towards his mother in situations proving adverse to the female students (Braak 2003:162ff). Certainly, the rift between Cohen and his mother Luna Tarlo has been considered significant. In 2008, a representative of EnlightenNext claimed, on Cohen’s behalf, that Tarlo had admitted to having “fictionalized aspects of her book for dramatic effect” (Yenner 2009:109, 133). The following year, Yenner interviewed Tarlo, who denied the claim of the Cohen camp, saying that she was prepared to go to court with her notebooks to defend the accuracy of her book (ibid:110). Tarlo also stated in the interview that her son was “responsible for destroying people” and for “damaging people” (ibid:117). She implicated the Indian guru Poonja in the train of errors.

William Yenner concludes that Andrew Cohen’s version of perennial wisdom “rests on a foundation of dishonesty, corruption and pernicious abuse of power” (ibid:149). Yenner also queries the position of celebrities who have endorsed Cohen, including Ken Wilber, Rupert Sheldrake, and Deepak Chopra.  The sector of “alternative thought” is clearly a deceptive prospect.

Postscript 2020:

During the intervening decade since I wrote the above, Andrew Cohen has become more famous and more notorious. The controversial Cohen is a sad joke in some quarters. Reported excesses can cause astonishment (Catalog of Traumas and Abuses). Under mounting pressures, Cohen withdrew from his guru career, only to return afterwards with an obvious desire to resume teaching. The strategy has not escaped disapproval. Critics reflected that the ruse was successful to some degree.

Cohen is part of the neo-hippy misconstruction of India. His mother wrote: “In 1983, my son Andrew set off for India to seek enlightenment” (Tarlo 1997:7). Numerous other Westerners shared that intention, believing they could become Buddhas. Many of them fell prey to the most unlikely incarnations of wisdom. A soporific precedent to this afflicted quest was Richard Alpert (1931-2019), the 1960s LSD partisan who changed his name to Baba Ram Dass, in the fond belief that he had undergone a spiritual transformation. The floodtide of confusion still persists. Basic misconceptions may last for generations (or centuries), given the disinclination of many enthusiasts for due analysis.

Relevant details concern Cohen’s guru Poonja, the originating impulse for his exotic career. The supposedly enlightened Indian guru is reported to have told Cohen: “You don’t have to make any effort to be free.” The purported consequence of this suggestion is relayed in terms of: “Cohen instantly was free.” The disputed Poonja “assured Cohen that he was enlightened and urged him to help others achieve that state.” A setback occurred in this deceptive situation. Poonja subsequently “complained to others that Cohen was a delusional egomaniac” (John Horgan, Skeptical Writer Meets a Cult Leader). The misleading ideological derivative known as Neo-Advaita is attributed to Poonja and his followers. Poonja is said to have permitted hundreds of admirers to believe they were enlightened.

Bibliography:

Braak, Andre van der , Enlightenment Blues: My Years with an American Guru (New York: Monkfish, 2003).

Tarlo, Luna, The Mother of God (New York: Plover, 1997).

Yenner, William, and contributors, American Guru (New York: Epigraph, 2009).

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
October 30th 2010 (modified 2020)

ENTRY no. 34

Copyright © 2020 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Mar 05

Pseudomysticism and Cults

By Andrew Cohen, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Findhorn Foundation, neo-Advaita, Rajneeshpuram

Rajneeshpuram in Oregon, 1980s

The stance of an analytical citizen philosopher does not mean any form of convergence with popular beliefs. Quite to the contrary, at least in my case. Philosophy denotes a discipline of mind and exposition. Compromises are potentially disastrous.

I believe that the viable form of philosophical exercise extends to psychology, sociology, logic, language, history, biography, metaphysics, and yet other channels of analysis. For instance, the difficult subject of metaphysics is no barrier to philosophical commitment, and can be argued for and against with many permutations. To be convincing, the subject has to be closely argued with due reference points. This is just not the same procedure as one tends to find in the widespread “alternative thought” clichés so closely associated with the confusing post-1950s American “new spirituality” trend.

The 1960s “Me” decade of pseudo-enlightenment left ongoing symptoms of debility in contemporary thinking processes. Simplistic refrains are still taken for granted; the word “therapy” is dominant  in too many versions of supposed spirituality. Countercultural Americans of the neo-hippy ambience elevated therapy to the status of a mystical achievement. The Esalen commerce in alternative thought disliked philosophical rigour, which was and is unfashionable in sectors of “Inner Science” and related claims.

The general confusion is staggering when duly analysed. The field under discussion is ripe for linguistic and other forms of appraisal, which could perhaps never be exacting enough at the present time. The idioms employed to capture commercial therapy clients and nominally “holistic” subscribers have been nauseating for many years. The pseudo-holistic commercial adventure so frequently subsists upon banal language and suggestion.

The “workshop” vogue was imported from America to Britain and Europe, providing a career income for numerous entrepreneurs in the spurious esoteric. Some of this is on detailed record. The surfeits of pop-mysticism are not merely erratic, but totally misleading in too many instances. For some indications, see Stephen J. Castro, Hypocrisy and Dissent within the Findhorn Foundation (Forres: New Media, 1996), chapter six; also Findhorn Foundation Commercial Mysticism (2008).

Another pitfall was supplied by the “guru cults” and related phenomena. These have varied from relatively harmless religious sects to predatory activities, also suppressive strategies conducted against dissidents. An early danger signal was afforded by the Rajneesh sect, which transplanted to Oregon from India in the 1980s, creating the intended city known as Rajneeshpuram.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho) became noted for his sponsorship of reckless alternative therapy of the neo-Reichian type. This activity was strongly implicated as one factor causing belligerent attitudes within the sect at Oregon, where a group of Rajneeshi women resorted to terrorist acts of food-poisoning in the local area. The American authorities had to intervene, with the consequence that Rajneesh was deported. See further Professor Lewis F. Carter, Charisma and Control in Rajneeshpuram (Cambridge University Press, 1990). 

Relevant is an account of discrepancies in the activity of “neo-Advaita” and “crazy wisdom” guru Andrew Cohen. See William Yenner, American Guru (2009). Yenner was a leading participant in Cohen’s community EnlightenNext for thirteen years. A related website describes the book as “documenting a history of abuses that Cohen and many of his current devotees have gone to great lengths to conceal.” See also the review by Professor David Lane.

My first three websites profiled some anomalies in the popular field of presumed “spirituality.” Psychologists, psychiatrists, medics, victim support organisations, and yet other agencies, have been concerned at the drawbacks in evidence, which amount to rather more than the well known controversies about Scientology. 

In future, it is not the claims to prowess that must be taken seriously, but the visible repression of dissidents by any suspect organisation. There is the further complication of extremist verbal aggression displayed towards outsiders by sectarian believers. See Internet Terrorist and Hate Campaign Blogs.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
March 5th 2010

ENTRY no. 14

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Feb 06

Ken Wilber and Integral Theory

By Adi Da Samraj, Andrew Cohen, Frank Visser, Integralism, Ken Wilber

Ken Wilber

The American thinker Ken Wilber is well known for an integral approach, generally described in terms of psychology and spirituality (and formerly classified in terms of transpersonalism). He has reacted to the format of analytical philosophy (and also “continental” philosophy) associated with the universities. His outlook might be described as one form of citizen philosophy. I have attempted to point out the substantial differences from my own version.

Wilber became famous as a writer of numerous books on psychology, therapy, and “perennial philosophy.”  Commencing with The Spectrum of Consciousness (1977) and The Atman Project (1980), his output continued in the 1990s with such works as Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (1995) and Integral Psychology (2000). This led to an accolade from the Dutch partisan Frank Visser, who produced a detailed study of Wilber’s books after having personally interviewed him. See Visser, Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion (State University of New York Press, 2003).

Frank Visser

Many readers were surprised when Visser soon afterwards became a critic of his subject.  Other converging web critics such as Jeff Meyerhoff (author of an online book) also became noted for a resistance to Ken Wilber’s worldview, described as being too ambitious and lacking due supporting proofs. Wilber’s Quadrant Theory aroused opposition, claiming an “Everything” scope based on metaphysical doctrines and questionable deductions. Such counters are in evidence at the Visser site integralworld (formerly in support of the integral psychologist). Wilber has strongly denounced his critics as having failed to reach the spiritual “altitude” required for the perspectives under discussion.

Wilber has the rare distinction of having his Collected Works available in a multi-volume edition. He has launched in America the Integral Institute, declaring elaborate objectives and an interdisciplinary scope. I am certainly not against the interdisciplinary ideal, having myself pursued a form of that ideal for thirty years. One of my objections relates to the issue of what can usefully be integrated. I am not an integralist, but an analytical commentator. 

My disagreement with the approach evolved by Ken Wilber has spotlighted, for example, the “new age workshop” issue. See Ken Wilber and Integralism (2009). Cf. Wilber, Integral Spirituality (Boston: Integral Books, 2007), pp. 201ff., referring to “Integral Life Practice workshops offered by Integral Institute.”

There is a basic disagreement about the viability of “integral” concepts in a “new age” format, however modified the latter might become (Ken Wilber is not typical of the “new age” by any means). A presentation in terms of spirituality invites strong analytical responses. The claim to spirituality is a widespread contemporary problem. This does not mean that spirituality cannot exist; however, the claim is no proof of competence.

Adi Da Samraj

Ken Wilber aroused query when he supported the controversial American guru Adi Da Samraj (Da Free John) many years ago. That deceased entity became notorious as an antinomian opportunist. See Ken Wilber and Adi Da Samraj. Wilber modified his enthusiasm in that direction; he nevertheless continued to esteem the teaching of Adi Da. He also substantially assisted the profile of the “neo-Advaita” guru Andrew Cohen, regularly appearing via a dialogue feature in the latter’s popular magazine What is Enlightenment ? The dialogue duo were rolecast as the guru (Cohen) and the pundit (Wilber). Cohen became the subject of strong criticism. An American Professor of Philosophy described Cohen in terms of being “in deep need of long term therapy.” See David C. Lane, Andrew Cohen Exposed (2009).

Many contemporary confusions relate to the subject known as “perennial philosophy.” This became popular in the 1960s and later, though seldom attended by a due sense of perspective. Adi Da Samraj made some strong overtures in this direction, which critics have found unconvincing, despite the trappings of “crazy wisdom” that supposedly proved legitimacy.

Wilber was for long a promoter of perenniality; he has since opted for a “post-metaphysical” exegesis. Some ask why the fantasised subject of “perennial philosophy” has thrived in contemporary alternativism, where so much academic literature on the history of religion is ignored. This has been one of my own complaints. My citizen presentation has quite frequently resorted to scholastic literature, which can supply information too often overlooked.

Ken Wilber is unusual for having defined his intellectual career in terms of successive phases. He has enumerated Wilber-1, Wilber-2, and so on. Wilber-5, concurrent with “integral post-metaphysics,” expanded his controversial Quadrant Theory, declaredly comprehensive. He affirms: “The Integral Approach involves the cultivation of body, mind, and spirit in self, culture, and nature” (Wilber, Integral Spirituality, 2007, p. 26).

Ken Wilber stresses a spiritual altitude relating to “levels of consciousness” signified by spectrum colours. Via Integral Life Practice, Wilber partisans are supposedly participants in the favoured zone of turquoise to Clear Light. Critics require a more convincing exposition that does not lead to “workshops” and bizarre gurus whose followers have so often defected.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
February 6th 2010 (slightly revised 2018)

ENTRY no. 12

Copyright © 2018 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.