Note: a more recent — although higher-level — report is in my Review of William Yenner’s “American Guru” book.

Although I have not met Cohen, I have read 3 books by or about him (both positive and negative) and I have done extensive online research, with the goal of deciding whether I should get involved with his group. I want to clarify that my opinion here is only mine, and, as you can see from below, it is partly just gut-level / instinctual. I believe that all opinions on this topic are valid for the individual speaking them, and that it is important that all viewpoints be heard. Important both to the Evolutionary Enlightenment movement itself to examine, and to people who are considering engaging the movement and are looking for information. Failure to do this is a failure of the very integrity so prized in EE.

The conclusion of my research is that I can’t say whether EE is a cult or not; however there are so many serious ethical problems that Cohen refuses to deal with credibly, and major personality (ego) issues which preclude my ever taking him as a guru. I still think of Cohen as a spiritual genius and a gifted teacher and I consider myself a student of Evolutionary Enlightenment, which I place inside the overall framework of the Evolutionary Spirituality movement. “Enlightenment” however, it is not – I would say it’s more about building Cohen’s platform – and given the well-documented history I believe that any prospective student of EE should seriously consider this information before engaging.

I am going to summarize below a small part of the large body of evidence concerning Cohen’s reported abuses of power and complete failure to respond credibly to any of the charges. Mixed in with this are my own, gut-level responses to his own writing, followed by my assessment of the value of this inquiry for myself. Writing this article has been an extraordinary month-long research effort for me that has given a return way beyond what I had hoped, in terms of clarifying my own search for an authentic spiritual path. I hope it does the same for you, or at least that it is helpful in some way.

1) One of the more serious issues has to do with his treatment of Jane O’Neil, who donated two million dollars with which Cohen purchased Foxhollow in the early 2000s (I believe). This is told on What Enlightenment blog, of how other students were forbidden to talk to her during the decision process, how she was subjected to relentless pressure while in a rather fragile mental condition, and coached on every aspect of dealing with her uncle, from whom the inheritance was obtained after selling assets at considerable financial loss due to the time pressure of Cohen needing the funds. Cohen has never expressed any remorse or made any public apology for this, or offered to return the funds, that I know of (or apologized for any other action in his career that I am aware of).

2) The first third of Cohen’s “Autobiography of an awakening” I found intensely exciting. The last two thirds absolutely horrified me, as it reads as a long victim story of how how his guru betrayed him and how hard it is to be a teacher, of how his students, who lack his good fortune to have been totally awakened at once like himself, resist his teaching, how nobody understands the majesty and power of his teaching, etc. An interesting parallel is Swami Rudrananda (“Rudi”) in John Mann’s book “14 years with Rudi”, who also talks about the difficulties of being a teacher, but there is not the same feeling of victimization – Rudi is grateful to have the opportunity of being a teacher and expresses it eloquently. Rudi was also betrayed by his own guru (Muktananda) in at least as bad a way as Cohen was, and he took it in and moved on.

3) Cohen’s “Declaration of integrity” does not read as a statement from a mature conscious individual, who recognizes he can make mistakes and who suffers occasionally, as we all do, from narcissism, grandiosity and ego-inflation. Instead it is an attempt to explain the behaviour of his detractors by various means, they “failed” as students and needed to make excuses, that gurus like him don’t live by the kind of rules that ordinary people live by (and so we are not qualified to judge him), that his extreme commitment to his mission causes him to be intransigent of mediocrity and that people get offended by that, etc… The document is very transparently narcissistic (as I experience much of Cohen’s more personal writings) – there is zero expressed concern or assumption of responsibility for legitimate ethical concerns around his actions. What is glaringly lacking, in particular, is “sorry, I fucked-up”.

4) Andre Van Der Brack’s book “Enlightenment Blues” talks about Cohen’s temper tantrums, atmosphere of fear around him, and his sometimes brutal techniques to “awaken” his students. Cohen cannot be blamed for all the crazy ideas and feelings aroused in his students (for example the decision by some of his women students to do prostrations / immersions in a frozen lake in winter for 45 minutes). However, Cohen supported this action, which seems quite telling, and there are dozens of incidents of verbally and physically violent and/or shaming behaviour that Cohen initiated in the name of “getting rid of ego”. For example, Cohen’s telling Andre Van Der Brack, before Andre left EE, that he was “evil” (Van Der Brack’s book occurs as sober and sincere, I do not believe that he would lie). Or read the absolutely heart-breaking Story of Caroline Franklyn on EnlightenNixt and also Wendyl’s Story or Simeon Alev’s response to “Declaration of Integrity”.

5) Cohen’s defense of the “guru principle” and his frequent expression of the need for “hierarchy” in spiritual work. I can understand the need for “discipline”; but I have a sneaking suspicion that when Cohen talks about “hierarchy” he is referring to the need for his students to accept as a God (ie infallible) an individual who appears, at least from the outside looking in, to have all the characteristics of a major character disorder.

There is a very interesting thread on Rick Ross’s anti-cult site, relating to Adidam (Da Free John, a highly abusive guru who was also a student of Rudi) that really opened my eyes to this kind of problem. The idea is that an individual can have all kinds of spiritual powers and charisma, but be emotionally and morally undeveloped. In other words, we frequently confuse spiritual powers and charisma for true enlightenment. Another very interesting resource is Alan Kazlev’s article on Integral World “The Wilberian paradigm – a fourfold critique” and also his post on Sri Aurobindo’s “Intermediate zone” of spiritual development.

I have noticed, among members of some personal growth / transformational organizations, a tendancy to resist and deny information on the ethics and personality issues of their leaders. I have seen the same thing in the case of the (now-deceased) Harvey Jackins of Re-evaluation Counseling. Their reasons for doing this should be fairly obvious – that more than anything, people want to belong (to love and be loved) and to feel that their lives have a deeper purpose and meaning. Membership in a world-changing (or culture changing organization) and the powerful and deeply meaningful experiences to be had from that, can be very intoxicating, and so for people to consider issues that would put their membership (belonging) at risk, and/or challenge the legitimacy of the endeavor, can be very painful. For some more profound reflections on this topic, including an interesting analysis of the benefits to be had by studying under a flawed guru, read Simeon Alev’s article. This article also poses the fundamental question as to why Cohen refuses to apologize to anyone, admit wrong-doing, or return money that was taken under ethically dubious circumstances, which would seem to be the rational thing to do and would allow the movement to progress unimpeded by all these allegations, that must be painful for Cohen to deal with and ultimately limiting (and possibly fatal) to EnlightenNext. To me this represents a fundamental lack of courage, self-awareness, or both, on the part of Cohen.

In any case, the way that I have solved this problem for myself (the problem of needing to belong somewhere), is that I have started my own cult :), an intentional community where I now live. Unfortunately, or fortunately, for me, my housemates don’t view me as a God, and if I ever get too arrogant or too full of myself my wife will just tell me to get off it (and if I don’t respond to that, she has other ways of making my life so miserable I will come back begging for mercy soon enough). If I were to take anyone at all as a guru at this point in my life, it would be my wife.

And if, in this decision of mine (to be wary of self-proclaimed “gurus”) I have permanently eliminated the possibility of enlightenment in this lifetime – if through this decision I am simply stuck in my lower-level Wilberian “Green” (egalitarian) meme and will never get to Stage II development – so be it. We’ll see who has more fun at the end of the day.

Although I can joke about these things, underneath it I am heartbroken that one of the most inspiring and charismatic spiritual figures of the 21st centrury is building a movement in which I cannot participate in any meaningful way. Even though EnlightenNext is doing some great work, some powerful and world-changing work, the entire organization is thrown out of integrity by the absurd claim of Cohen’s enlightenment, the shared belief system around that, the conspiracy of silence around Cohen’s personality problems among his students, and some vicious attacks, by both Cohen and his acolytes, on any person who challenges it – see for example Craig Hamilton’s response to Susan Bridle, which response I will [saracastically] summarize as “how dare you small-minded and pitiful individual challenge our Great Teacher who gave you so much and is building this great movement” – a point of view that reveals the same level of narcissim and ego-inflation as in Cohen, no surprise.

So I am left with trying to find an authentic spiritual path on my own, or with the help of more traditional spiritual movements (for example the Goenka Vipassana movement which is still amazing but doesn’t have the global vision that EE does).

There is a bitter-sweet feeling around all this. I just feel grateful that I am able to make these observations from a distance and that I am not one of Cohen’s victims myself (and no-one can accuse me of attacking Cohen in order to justify my own failures :-). And yet there is no question that Cohen has helped a great number of people, quite aside form the extraordinary power of his ideas. There is a kind of paradox in this that is going to require much more work and introspection for any of us to fully understand, I think.

As I continue to reflect on these ideas I uncover more subtle distinctions. The sheer divisiveness created by these issues makes for very interesting conversations.

Every historical world-changing movement – be it the American Revolution, the French Revolution, late 19th century anarchism, Marxism and communism, the 60’s counter-culture, etc – created, among its adherents, a tremendous excitement and intoxication, a feeling of being on the “leading edge of culture”, a feeling of the “historical certainty” or the inevitable nature of the shift, a kind of dogma about it etc.  The danger, of course, is that when an  idealistic movement becomes a religion (based on faith rather than reason), all kinds of destruction and  hypocrisy can result – the supreme example of which, of course, is communism (Lenin was by all accounts, an extremely idealistic and well-intentioned person, but he created a system that resulted in the murder of 18 million people in the name of freedom).  I see similar patterns in EnlightenNext. Any time one’s belief (dogma) overrides responsible and “common sense” dealings with other people, this will happen.

Does this mean that these movements did not contribute something to the culture, or that they were not personally transformational for the people involved? Obviously not. There is definitely something wonderful about being identified with a cause that one feels to be just, that one’s whole community is also identified with and gives one validation for, and where one feels that one is a leader in a world-changing movement. Hey, I have had these same thoughts myself at times :-).

The problem with Cohen, and where the issue becomes less ambiguous, is that Cohen’s claim to complete enlightenment, his demand for submission to himself as a pre-condition for enlightenment, and other elements of his belief system, are absurd.  I believe that Cohen’s manifest (although unconscious) goal is to build his platform, not to inject more love in the world, and that authentic spirituality does not jive with treating people like shit the minute they oppose you. I also don’t believe that the pursuit of love is compatible with the pursuit of power. Love happens through simple acts of kindness and compassion, not in the infatuation with large ideas or the obsession to build a world-changing organization. The entire Evolutionary Enlightenment movement, therefore, is based on a fantasy, a delusion.

But even if all this were so, does it negate the value of Cohen’s teachings? I think not. There is a lot to be said for living in a happy delusion – many great works were accomplished while in that state. I for one, will not say that living an exciting fantasy is worse than living an empty and meaningless existence. There is no question that Cohen generates a tremendous excitement in his entourage, that many people around him are transformed, that many go out into the world and do wonderful things with his teachings. Who am I to judge another person’s spiritual path or to say what is right for their development in the moment? And I am certainly in no position to stand in judgment of other’s delusions (pathologies).

I just hope that they go into it with eyes open. That is the only purpose of this article. Because there has been a great deal of actual harm done by Cohen.

This inquiry continues to fascinate me. These are very complex questions that I do not feel equipped to answer. I will close with this thought, however: who among us is actually injecting love into the world – and who among us is just talking about it?

Because to my mind that is the test of an authentic spirituality.

“The true test of your spiritual success is the happiness of the people around you.”

– Rudi