When Shadow Meets the Bodhisattva: The Challenging Transformation of a Modern Guru

Andrew Cohen with Hans Plasqui

Forward by Allan Combs

Inner Traditions, publisher (2023)

ISBN 978-1-64411-590-9

Paperback, 276 pages

Review by Joe Szimhart (March 2023)

In the opening blurbs promoting this book, we read from the author of Superhumanities, Jeffrey Kripal: “Can one actually experience evolution? Or must it remain a scientific abstraction that can be mathematically modeled and genetically mapped but never really known as such?”

And from Ken Wilber whose Integralism looms large in the book as a consciousness model: “This an extremely and highly recommended book. It’s beautifully written and comes straight from the spiritual heart. Get it and read it—it will change your life.”

And the forward by Allan Combs, teacher at the California Institute of Integral Studies, begins with this: “Before you is the story of a spiritual teacher becoming fully human.”

With endorsements like that, for me, the book, if it were a horse, should have never gotten out of the gate. Yes, I read the book and I read hundreds of pages of writings by its author and its endorsers, as well as four books by former members of Cohen’s collapsed cult at Foxhollow, MA. The ex-members first experienced Andrew Cohen in the late 1980s as an exciting and enlightened guru, but later, as Cohen’s mother Luna Tarlo wrote in her memoir, The Mother of God, her son had become a monster (her word) to many of them. After his claimed enlightenment while visiting the guru Poonja in India in 1986, Luna submitted to her newly enlightened son so that he could help her overcome her wretched egoic resistance. Her son seemed to be so self-assured that she believed him enough to follow his directions for years into her near psychological ruin.[1] 

Cohen fell from grace in 2013 after more than a decade as a popular teacher on the higher consciousness seeker circuit. Now, after some purportedly deep soul-searching and many dark nights of the soul, along with a stint serving the poorest of the poor at one of Mother Teresa’s centers in India, he is ready to teach again. With others, he launched Manifest Nirvana, a new website and enterprise—a kind of digital commune—to draw students to himself once more to explore what he calls evolutionary enlightenment.

Why did I say that this book should never have gotten out of the gate? Asking, “Can one actually experience evolution?” is a nonsense question. Everything biological that exists experiences what we call evolution—why ask the question? The answer lies in attracting seekers to countless workshops and techniques like meditation that claim to enhance experience of self-awareness or what is commonly called a higher self. But experience remains a mere starting point for serious inquiry and lasting understanding. Experience of enlightenment in and of itself can be manipulated and utterly misleading whether at a Zen meditation retreat, an ayahuasca session in the Amazon Forest, or while being awed in the presence of a guru in India. Robert J. Lifton called this “mystical manipulation” when the engineers of group experience, intentionally or not, create the conditions in a social environment that allow mystical conversion experiences to seem to arise spontaneously.[2] Experiencers tend to bond to the social environment or context in which the ecstasy arose—like conversions at a Pentecostal rally. The question is, what is the context?

You cannot not experience evolution if you are a living organism. Wilber’s effusive endorsement that this is “an extremely and highly recommended book” and that “it will change your life” is not only poor grammar—extreme recommendations are not especially trustworthy--, but the suggestion that reading a book will change anyone’s life is only that, a suggestion. A confidence man will plant suggestions in his target’s mind to sell him a product. The product in this case is another consciousness-raising process introduced by Andrew Cohen, who is now fully human. We can only guess if his history repeats itself.

As inane as to be fully human sounds, Cohen’s major supporters appear to view his fall from grace as a guru and subsequent service tending to destitute people in India as a pass on a reality test. We are asked to believe that Cohen’s fall, apology, and social work gave him special insight into not only his essential nature but also into the human condition, a condition that sorely needs a reboot if I am reading this book correctly. The human condition as such was a major discussion subject in my classes on Existentialism when I was in college in the late 1960s. So, what is it? Perhaps a gander at a website ambitiously called HumanCondition.com will give us a clue. The website is part of The World Transformation Movement (trademarked as such in 1983) and it offers “The Breakthrough Biological Explanation of the Human Condition” based on the ideas of the Australian biologist, Jeremy Griffith. Griffith concentrates on the science end of bio-social research but not without controversy. His idealistic and prophetic movement was once characterized as a cult in the 1990s by Australian news media which later had to apologize.[3] Part of the issue was Griffith’s thorough condemnation of Left-leaning culture that could lead people to ruin.

There is no direct connection that I could find between Griffith and Cohen despite their participation in the same world-saving transformational impulse. In any case, the human condition is still a thing to talk about. What it means to be fully human might mean, basically, that we must accept our human condition however we might define it. If that sounds vague and confusing, you are getting my point. Both Griffith and Cohen want us to turn to them as guides so that we too can be enlightened about what it means to be fully human and how to transform ourselves and society if we are not.

Cohen’s new book is comprised of two parts that include thirteen chapters, a forward and an epilogue that introduces us to Manifest Nirvana, the author’s newest project. An Appendix reproduces an “Open Letter to My Former Students” written by Cohen in 2015, two years after the collapse of his Foxhollow commune experiment. Ex-members called it a cult and a bad one.[4] This entire book is an extension of that open letter, which is an apology and an appeal to not lose what was great about the quest under Cohen. That much is understandable in as much as Cohen seeks to reinvent himself as a teacher. He was bad but the purpose was good. Part 1 rehearses the “Rise and fall of Our Spiritual Community.” Part 2 is about “Exploring the Spirituality of Tomorrow,” which is where I will concentrate the remaining part of my review.

In a video I posted about this book, I mentioned how Cohen and Wilber rely on a similar Hegelian concept of the evolving dialectic in history. Chapter 9’s title, “The Owl of Minerva Flies Only at Dusk,” is a famous dictum of Hegel’s that means wisdom (as owl) appears only at the end of the day in the darkness. “It’s the way evolution works. Only in retrospect can we truly understand history’s [sic] at times ruthless developmental logic.” So, Cohen’s argument is that in hindsight in his darkness (thus the Jungian “shadow” in the title) he (the Bodhisattva) can unveil the truth of his quest as never before: “It is my hope that the story of our work can eventually serve the evolution of the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, as these time-honored spiritual jewels [referring to the Triple Gems of Buddhism] move into their post-modern expressions.”[5] The Bodhisattva, our author, has spoken.[6]

Now, Hegel was by far the most influential philosopher in the 19th century as new ideas about evolution took hold in various ways. Marxism applied Hegelian evolving dialectics with a naively scientific application to social evolution, upending Hegel’s Christian perspective. For Marx, evolution was leading to the rule of the working man and not to please the evolutionary plan of a deity in heaven. Both Fascism and Communism in the early 20th Century applied the idea of an evolving dialectic as an excuse to force changes onto society in the name of an eventual total synthesis of the human condition into a kind of utopia. Violence and wars were merely a means, the antithesis, we could use to purge the old thesis so the Phoenix of the new synthesis could arise.

Hegel was likely turning in his grave as he saw how history applied his theory, which was in the end a ridiculous if brilliant thought experiment. And that is exactly how Soren Kierkegaard criticized Hegel’s ideas: If Hegel’s Science of Logic was a thought experiment, Hegel would have been one of the most brilliant thinkers in history, but as Hegel took his ideas seriously, he was merely comic. Kierkegaard’s complaint was that Hegel’s logic was not a logical system, rather it was a veiled attempt to be an existential system. For Kierkegaard, existential systems are never logical and are better approached through the aesthetic realms. In other words, if you are truly enlightened, stick to poetry, parables, music, stage magic, and art. Do not start a political movement, new religion, or cult. Do not take yourself so seriously.

Kierkegaard’s critique, in my view, applies to Cohen’s reliance on Ken Wilber’s Spectrum of Consciousness, a model first envisioned by Wilber in 1973. His Spectrum is reproduced in color in Cohen’s new book (Chapter 10) and it features a rising, rainbow scale of around 11 levels of consciousness that begins with the Archaic in an Infrared zone, then rises through the rainbow spectrum into Magic, Mythic, Mental until we get to a Green zone as the Pluralistic. In Wilber’s scheme, the Green zone is where modern consciousness of the last 150 years got us, where people Individualistically value pluralism and equality, relativism and sensitivity, civil rights and environmentalism, and world-centrism.  Wilber and company are pushing for the next level that he calls the Integral that tends toward Turquoise on the Spectrum and sees natural hierarchy within systems of systems, holds multiple perspectives, is holistic and Kosmocentric, and sees the World as alive and evolving. The next levels that go from Indigo to Violet to pure White are Global Mind, Meta-mind, Overmind, and Supermind. Are we climbing up the chakras of the kundalini here?

How does he know? Well, he doesn’t. As with Hegel, his total Spectrum system is an intriguing thought experiment at best if no one takes it seriously. But in as much as Cohen’s book and his new students do take it seriously, I’ll go with Kierkegaard: They are merely comic. And I will go further. The system requires elitism and exclusiveness, much as the ancient Gnostics did when they mythologized the Christ to the point that only the few pneumatics, as they called them, in society contained the truth that was hidden from the potentially enlightened psychics (those with a soul or inner means) and the utterly ignorant, soulless hylics (mud people) or the masses who have no chance for gnosis. The truth or cutting-edge reality here is Integral consciousness. The best of the old era, the Green zone people (Wilber’s psychics) on the Consciousness Spectrum must be replaced if we are to evolve into what Cohen calls the “Higher We” in Chapter 13, titled The Triple Gem Integral. Green zone people are “finite,” whereas the Turquoise zoners or Integralists are “infinite” in their consciousness outlooks.

Referring to Jim Rutt of the Santa Fe Institute, a technological think tank, Cohen likens his collective evolutionary emergence ideas to Rutt’s game-theoretic ways humans apply to operating systems. In brief, Game A ways are finite, not made to last, whereas Game B ways are infinite and made to last as a new model of cooperation. We are in dire straits, suggests Rutt, and we now require a “whole-systems [sic] change, including new systems of government, economics, politics, education, and health care.”[7] Cohen is asking for no less with his Manifest Nirvana new religious movement: We must manifest the ultimate consciousness of nirvana asap and he can help guide us there, or we will remain stuck in what Wilber called the “green meme view.”[8] Integralists like Cohen see us failing globally if we do not get immediate help because the Green zone people are not getting the message to evolve: “The green postmodern leading edge of evolution itself has, for several decades, degenerated into its extreme, pathological, and dysfunctional forms.”[9] Essentially, we need a forced paradigm shift.

So, how is this Integral help supposed to look? Cohen turns to Wilber to explain: “When you have Integral consciousness, you certainly want a form of communion, but you want communion only with other Integralists. Even though it might be selfish and elitist, you find your community with your Integral peers. And because so few people, at least in our lifetime, are going to be authentically Integral, it’s necessarily an elite group. And most of those people naturally have a kind of allergy to green spiritual communities.”[10]

If you have read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand—I read it three times—you will find clear echoes of Galt’s Gulch in Wilber’s proposition for an elite communion of Integralists. Rand’s 1957 fictional solution to the collapsing social order was Galt’s Gulch, a hidden commune in Colorado protected by an invisible force field where the capitalist leaders and essential technicians could gather and thrive unmolested by the parasitic Socialists leeching their genius and talent. The elites at Rand’s commune would wait out the Socialist collapse, then emerge to establish a new Reich based on her Objectivist principles.

This formula or pattern has been repeated countless times throughout human history, sometimes with benign success but more often with the rise of fascist type regimes under kings, czars, and dictators—and cult leaders. We can turn to Aum Shinrikyo, The People’s Temple, and the Manson Family as recent, egregious examples of elitist groups that believed that when the system collapsed, perhaps by their doing, the dazed and confused society remaining would turn to them to lead the way into a new Eden.

Another way to look at Wilber’s Spectrum of Consciousness level that he calls Integral in the Turquoise zone is by using W. R. Bion’s observations on how basic assumption groups operate.[11] Basic assumptions tend to be fixed views that encourage group dependency on that view while resisting any corrections from outside that might either improve that view or eliminate it based on better ideas from a working group. The distinction here is scientific: Working groups are ready to admit failure where evidence proves them wrong whereas basic assumption groups (BAGs) are not. BAGs will suffer cognitive dissidence when challenged and generally will rally with new excuses for their basic assumptions. Wilber’s spectrum and his miserable record of guru endorsement has been roundly criticized,[12] but it appears that his Integralists remain fixated on it as an evolutionary model or basic assumption about evolutionary reality. It reminds me of dependencies BAGs have with astrology which, despite its bogus foundation, remains popular as people continue to adapt their experiences to an elaborate astrology model of celestial influence. And that is perhaps why Wilber’s model is so attractive: It is elaborate and intellectual enough, like astrology, to draw a wide variety of anxious if naive seekers to adapt to it.

As for Cohen’s idea of forced rapid changes in evolution as opposed to social change, we can turn to In a Post Culture, an essay published in 1971 by George Steiner: “There are currently, particularly in the United States, some fashionable, silly theories about total revolutions of consciousness. Mutations of internal structure do not occur at such a rate.”[13] Steiner’s essay is an elegant response to Cohen’s silliness about evolution in consciousness. More so, in concert with Kierkegaard, Steiner celebrates “the gamble on transcendence” taken by the finest thinkers and artists who too often die in obscurity before their work is celebrated.”[14] Wilber and Cohen have already had their fifteen minutes of fame—or it is infamy?

There is an uncanny resemblance between Wilber’s Integral zone claims and the “integral” therapies of the abusive cult like therapy of the Sullivanian Institute:

“[Jane Pierce and Saul Newton] believed that there was a part of the self—which they called the “integral Personality”—that remained open to growth and experience: “The integral personality is a true system, logically and subtly organized, and directed unreservedly toward its own expansion and satisfaction…it hungers after the infinities of growth. It operates from earliest childhood, and its fuel is experience…It cares little for the conventionalities of that ominous audience to whom the self-system so dutifully recites its lessons.”[15]

Note the parallels as to Sullivanian “infinities of growth” and the infinite Game B propositions that Cohen wants to teach among elite Integralists on Wilber’s Spectrum. The Sullivanian commune formed around the 1960s and survived into the 1990s, so it is possible that Wilber heard of Sullivanian integral therapy by 1970.

A more likely connection was the Integral Yoga teachings of Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) who developed a spiritual practice at Pondicherry, India from 1910 until his death. His envisioned the evolution of human life through Integral Yoga leading to a transformed human that was divine in nature with a divine body, enabling a divine life in earth.[16] Wilber’s scheme is less reliant on Vedic philosophy, but the imposition of Mahayana Buddhism (Manifest Nirvana) onto Wilber’s Spectrum is clear in Cohen’s book. In any case, both Aurobindo and Wilber co-opted evolutionary theory to bolster what they thought was cutting edge spiritual science that could drive human evolution if understood and practiced.[17]    

I have a T-shirt with a silhouette of Kierkegaard and a warning written underneath: Read Hegel and you will regret it. I could say the same about this book and its primary prophet, Ken Wilber.

[1] Tarlo, Luna. 1997. Mother of God. Plover Press

[2] Lifton, Robert J. 1989. Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. University of North Carolina Press (422)

[3] “Apology”. The Sydney Morning Herald. 6 June 2009.

[4] Yenner, William. 2009. American Guru. Epigraph Books; van der Braak, Andre. 2003. Enlightenment Blues. Monkfish Book Publishing

[5] When Shadow Meets the Bodhisattva, 147

[6] ” Mahayana bodhisattvas are spiritually heroic persons that work to attain awakening and are driven by a great compassion. Bodhisattva - Wikipedia

[7] When Shadow Meets the Bodhisattva, 234-235

[8] IBID, 243

[9] IBID, 231

[10] IBID, 246. Quoting Wilber, Ken. 2017. The Religion of Tomorrow: A Vision for the Future of the Great Traditions. Shambala, 625

[11] Bion, W. R. 2009. Experiences in Groups and other papers.Routledge

[12] “The Rise and Fall of Ken Wilber” by Mark Manson. 4 June 2012. The Rise and Fall of Ken Wilber (markmanson.net)

[13] Steiner, George. 1971. In Bluebeard’s Castle. Yale University Press. Chapter 3. “In a Post-Culture,” 91.

[14] IBID, 89

[15] Stille, Alexander. 2023. The Sullivanians: Sex, psychotherapy, and the wild life of an American commune. Farrar, Status, and Giraux: New York

[16] Sri Aurobindo | Biography & Facts | Britannica

[17] To explore this connection between Aurobindo and Wilber, this hair-splitting article by Rod Hemsell is informative: Ken Wilber and Sri Aurobindo: A Critical Perspective (infinityfoundation.com)