Spiritual techniques are like learning chords on a guitar. Once you've
learned them you can do all kinds of things with them. But it's still
just a technique.
Of course there is "remains of ignorance" or samskaras with with
enlightened people. I once had an employee who told me he had no ego
and I replied "should I be contacting your next of kin?"
On 01/02/2016 07:16 AM, emptyb...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote:
This explains the utter difference between Traditional Advaita and
Neo-Advaita delusion. Cohen's statement is at the bottom.
*A Fallen Yogi*
**
Recently I received an email with a link to a web blog by a reasonably
famous teacher, Andrew Cohen. He said he was stepping down so that he
could work on himself and become a ‘better person.’ It was a
surprising event because arrogant people invariably live in an
ironclad state of denial, the better to project their emotional
problems on others. In any case he is definitely a slow
learner…evidently the chorus of angry voices that has followed him for
twenty-seven years swelled to such a din that it became too loud to
ignore. His statement will undoubtedly be seen as a courageous act of
contrition, the uplifting resolve of a reprobate taking the first
halting steps on the road to redemption. We wish him well and hope
that he becomes the person he needs to be.
The real lesson here is not his personal story but what it says about
his view of enlightenment, since it was behind this view that he
perpetrated so much misery. Had he been taught by a proper teacher…he
was one of the first Papaji Neos…he might have actually known what
enlightenment is and hundreds of people would have been spared so much
heartache. Papaji, a /shaktipat /guru, propounded the
experientialview of enlightenment.
Mr. Cohen was obviously not enlightened by even the most liberal
definition. What he called enlightenment was merely a ‘deep
awakening,’ an epiphany that had a profound effect on his ego. It
convinced him that there was something ‘more’ than his way of seeing.
It convinced him wrongly, that ‘he’ was ‘enlightened.’
In fact. enlightenment, as it is popularly conceived, is not
enlightenment because enlightenment is not a special experience, an
‘awakening.’ It is the hard and fast knowledge, “I am awareness, the
‘light.’ It is not something that happens
because you, awareness, were never unenlightened. You are unborn and
never die. Experiences are born and die. They do not change you, make
you into something else. If you take yourself to be an ego, an
experiencing entity, you will
be apparently modified by what happens to you, spiritual or otherwise.
We do not like the word ‘enlightenment’ because of its experiential
connotations but if you insist on using it, enlightenment is simply
shedding ignorance of one’s nature
as awareness. It is not the gain of a special state or status.
Any experience is only as good as the interpretation of it. If I am
awareness there is no way to conclude that I am special or unique and
that I have something that you don’t, because everyone and everything
is awareness. The understanding I
am awareness neutralizes the ego, because the ego is just a notion of
specialness and uniqueness. It does not mean that the ego disappears
or is transcended. It means that it is known for what it is, an idea
of separateness appearing in me, awareness.
We do not doubt the profundity of Mr. Cohen’s experience. We question
his interpretation. Because anyone is free to define enlightenment in
any way he or she chooses, he is free to call his epiphany
enlightenment. However, it should be
noted that most of the mischief in the spiritual world in the last
thirty years from Muktananda to Osho and Adi Da right up the
present…the examples of fallen gurus are too numerous to mention…can
be laid squarely at the feet of the experiential view of enlightenment.
What actually happened? Under the spell of apparent ignorance, the
self…limitless awareness…mistook itself for an experiencing entity, an
ego, had a particular type of experience known as an ‘awakening’,
declared itself enlightened and imagined that it had transcended
itself. It came to believe that it now inhabited a special
experiential niche reserved only for the few and that said experience
empowered it to enlighten others not so blessed. Evidently, in Mr.
Cohen’s case his exalted status came with the companion belief that
the end justifies the means, opening the door to abusive ‘teaching’.
This is the story: an ordinary ego had an extraordinary experience,
one that changed its idea of itself but little else. The impurities
that were there before the epiphany survived…as they do…and
immediately out pictured when the
experience ended…with predictable results. I recall hearing many
stories of abuse at Mr. Cohen’s hands over the last twenty plus years.
The enlightenment scenario he envisioned, which he obviously did not
critically examine, is classic duality. It amounts to splitting the
ego into a transcendental self and a self to be transcended. To make
this idea work, the ego needs to be in
a state of complete denial. It must imagine that the non-transcendent
part of itself doesn’t exist. It didn’t exist for him but sadly it
existed for everyone else. To keep the myth of transcendence alive, he
was forced to lay the problem at the feet of those who hadn’t yet
‘transcended’, so his problem could easily be transferred elsewhere.
He finally admitted his folly. Without a trace of irony he said, “My
ego is alive and well.” What an epiphany! It should be brought to his
attention that ego death or ego transcendence, contrary to popular
belief, is perhaps the number one
enlightenment myth. Nobody is transcendent because reality is
non-dual. It is not a duality. There is only one self. *You are
awareness and awareness is ‘other **than’ what it perceives, although
what it perceives is only itself.*During
‘awakening’ moments you are actually experiencing yourself as you are
but ignorance survives these moments and it projects the experience on
the ego. Vedanta calls this phenomenon superimposition (/adyaropa/).
You think that what
something other than your ego. You declare yourself ‘enlightened’ and
imagine that you are qualified to teach others.
The name of the organization that Mr. Cohen founded tells the story,
‘Evolutionary Enlightenment.” It is an idea fit for doers who want to
improve themselves. But enlightenment is not about becoming a better
person. It is about discovering who you really are. Before you are a
person, you are non-dual,
actionless, ever-present, ordinary perfectly full awareness. The
assumption underlying the evolutionary approach to suffering is
incorrect…that reality is a duality, that you are in need of fixing,
that you can do something to get what you
already have, that you can ‘transcend.’ Even in the unlikely event
that he happens to become a ‘better’ person, he is in store for
further disappointment assuming he actually wants to be free. He will
have to start his seeking over again
from ground zero because his idea of enlightenment is incorrect.
Both people who imagine they are transcendent and those who accept the
experiential view of enlightenment often fail to understand that
life’s number one value is non-injury. Non-injury is the most valuable
value because reality is nondual. Non-duality means that you and I are
non-separate. I will only injure something other than myself.
Furthermore this fact implies that I love everyone as I love
myself…because they are myself. When Mr. Cohen finally wakes up, this
is a lesson that he will do well to contemplate.
Here is his statement:
/I’m fifty-seven years old and currently find myself facing the
biggest challenge of my life. I’ve been a teacher of spiritual
enlightenment for twenty-seven years. /*/Enlightenment has always been
and always will be about transcending/*
*/the ego/*/. Over the last several years, some of my closest students
have tried to make it apparent to me that in spite of the depth of my
awakening, my ego is still/
/alive and well./
//
/I’ve understood this simple truth—that we all have egos no matter how
enlightened we may be—and even taught it to thousands of people all
over the world throughout my career. But when I was being asked to
face my own ego by/
/those who were nearest and dearest to me, I resisted. And I often
made their lives difficult as a result./
//
/I’m aware that many of my students over the years have also been
affected by /*/my lack of awareness of this part of myself/*/. And for
those of you who are reading this, I apologize. As time passes I
intend to reach out and engage in a process of dialogue with those of
you who would like to./
//
/In light of all this, for the sake of my own integrity as a spiritual
teacher and as a human being, I’ve decided that I need to take some
time off so I can make the effort to develop in many of the ways that
I’ve asked other people to. Starting this fall, once I’ve fulfilled
some prior commitments, I’m going to embark upon a sabbatical for an
extended period of time. During this hiatus, I will be stepping/
/down from the leadership of my organization, I won’t be publishing
anything here on my blog, and will not be doing any public teaching.
My intention is to become a/
/better teacher, and more importantly, a better man./
//
/One of the most beautiful fruits of my work over the years has been
the international network of people who have studied, collaborated,
and trained with me for so long. They are all examples of Evolutionary
Enlightenment in their own right, and I couldn’t imagine a greater
community of people to carry forward this/
/movement. I’m looking forward to working with them in a very
different way in the future//.///