This is an important book. It's the story of a guy who spent eleven years trying to attain Enlightenment under the tutelage of American guru Andrew Cohen. At first, ol' Andy Cohen seems to the book's author to be the real deal, a truly enlightened spiritual master of the highest caliber, an honest and true human being. But as Cohen's fame grows, so does his megalomania and deep-seated paranoia. He turns from a sage into a monster, a manipulative, self-important petty dictator to an ever enlarging group of wide eyed followers prepared to follow their "beloved master" wherever he may lead them which is frequently straight into the bowels of Hell itself.

I've heard stories like this before. It seems like there are plenty to go around, unfortunately. But what made this one so very personally terrifying was the description of Andy Cohen himself. Look at what Andy's best buddy Ken Wilber says about him:

I have often heard Nice-Guy teachers say that Andrew Cohen is rude, difficult, offending, edgy, and I think, "Thank God."

Andrew's magazine What Is Enlightenment? is the only magazine I know that is deeply, truly, outrageously Rude: which is to say, the only magazine asking the hard questions, slaughtering the sacred cows, and dealing with the Truth no matter what the consequences. You do well to be deeply offended by Andrew; he is, indeed, damn rude.

Andrew Cohen is a Rude Boy. If you can stand the heat, then enter the real kitchen of your own soul, where you will find nothing other than the radiant God of the entire cosmos. For it is radiant Spirit that is looking out from your eyes right now, speaking with your tongue right now, reading the words on this very page, right now. And it takes a very, very Rude Boy to point that out and to stay in your face until you recognize your own Original Face, shining even here and now.

Sound like anyone you know? I was almost puking when I read this stuff. It made me want to re-think my whole approach. Shit. Maybe I should just get me some robes, shave my noggin and start writing nice, flowery stuff that doesn't bother anyone...

Nah... What I say doesn't have anything in common with Andy's message except very superficially. But it looks like we do play to the same demographic.

What I know about Andrew Cohen comes strictly from reading this book and taking a quick gander at his web page. That's all I really need, thank you very much. The web page is profoundly un-enlightening, and van der Braak isn't the only one with an axe to grind. Cohen's own mother describes him as a fascist. Andy Cohen says just enough interesting stuff to make me believe that at one point in his life he had a fleeting glimpse of something profoundly true. But, like so many others, he was unwilling to follow through on what he discovered. When the Universe showed him that perfection is a fantasy and he took that to mean that fantasies are perfection. When it showed him that his imperfect self was perfection itself, he believed it was therefore his duty to make everyone just like him. He wants so badly to believe in the ideal of the Perfectly Enlightened Being that nothing, not even Reality itself, can get in the way of his vision. It's no wonder not a single person in his organization ever found the Enlightenment Andy preached about. It doesn't exist. Never did. Never will. Not for Andrew Cohen and not for anyone else. Oh sure, the book is full of scenes where someone suddenly freaks out during one of Andy's vapid little speeches and Andy goes, "That's it! You got it! That's Enlightenment!" OK. And if the same thing happened at one of my silly talks and I said, "That's it! You've got it! That's a pastrami sandwich on rye bread!" would it actually be a pastrami sandwich or not?

But what really fascinated me about the book is what the author, Andre van der Braak, leaves out. Van der Braak is a very intelligent guy, but he's face to face with a very profound question, yet he seems unable or unwilling to address it. The biggest question is why was he -- along with so many others -- so willing to give his life over to the ideals that Andrew Cohen held out? Why was van der Braak's own idea of Enlightenment so very dear to him that he was willing to undergo such severe pain and anguish to achieve it? Why was the "reality of the here and now" always somewhere off in the future, unattainable unless van der Braak followed his guru's increasingly bizarre instructions? I mean, Andy had this poor guy spending months and months on fruitless "therapy sessions." He's forever writing Andy letters of apology (accompanied by the requisite bunch of flowers) for transgressions defined for him by his guru. He works on Andrew's books and suffers his master's constant belittling of him and criticisms of "ruining my work" without ever once saying, "It's your book, dude. Why don't you try writing it?" (some of us do it that way, you know, Andy...) Why doesn't the author ever notice his own ideals for what they really are?

Why don't we all?

You can see the problem right from the author's first meeting with the guru. He's so taken by Andrew's serenity, his radiance of "certainty and charisma." But the "here and now" he seeks isn't here and now, it's over there in the possession of Andrew Cohen. The "present moment" isn't the present moment, it's something he can attain in the future with Andy's help. This is a typical mistake -- one I know very well. Like Fox Mulder, we believe the Truth is out there when, in fact, it's always right here. And right here means right exactly here. Not right here when right here matches the fantasies of the Enlightened State we've constructed. But right here. Here with all its shortcomings, its confusion, its frustration and feelings of unfulfilment. Because here is the only place you can ever be. This state may be mediocre. But understand mediocrity for what it really is and you've understood everything.

What van der Braak and the rest of Andy's flock wants more than anything else isn't the here and now. They want what most of us want out of the so-called "spiritual life," a new Mommy or Daddy. We want to give up all responsibility for ourselves and give everything to Big Daddy or Big Mommy to take care of for us. We want to be relieved of all responsibility for ourselves. Guys like Andy are willing to take on responsibility for other people's lives in exchange for the rush they get from power and manipulation. And this isn't just something that happens in the realm of religion.

The very same force that had this poor author throwing away eleven years of his life on some transparently phony guru-boy is the force that drove millions of people to follow Adolph Hitler, that drives far too many intelligent young people today to literally throw away their lives for the sake of religious ideals, beliefs in things that have no basis in reality at all.

What makes Andrew Cohen so frightening is that the ideals he professes are often so very, very close to the truth. It's scary enough that there are idiots out there who'll crash airplanes into buildings because they believe they'll be reborn in some twisted Playboy Channel inspired version of Heaven where they each get 28 virgins a piece to do with as they please. People like that are obviously nut cases. But it's triple-scary to know that there are charlatans like Andrew Cohen who've used the promise of living truly in the here and now without illusions or fear as a basis for getting folks to give up their money, their time, even their souls to serve him like a bloated modern version of King Henry VIII. It goes to show you that anything -- even the truth -- can be used for personal gain. Even the truth can corrupt and destroy.

No. I don't need to go quite that far. It does prove that the mere fact that a teacher talks about the here and now does not mean he has the slightest clue what that really means. Living the truth isn't a matter of getting whapped on the head by God Almighty and thus becoming perfectly Enlightened forever and ever amen. It's a lifelong commitment. It's a never ending struggle to keep yourself right every single second of every single day. And you'll never succeed completely no matter who you are. But here's the neat part, after a while trying so hard to stay right is the only thing you'll ever want to do.

Reading this book had me concerned that some folks might be looking to me the same way Andy Cohen's followers look to him, as some kinda groovy "Rude Boy" who's gonna give them the Big Answers. It's just as bad to follow someone just because he's abrasive as it is to follow someone just because he's soothing and kind. It is the following itself that is damaging. Never follow. You are the center of the universe. It is absurd for you to ever follow anyone. You must never, never, never allow anyone to define for you what Enlightenment is. Not Andy Cohen. Not some Zen Master. Not me. Not even yourself.

You do not need Andrew Cohen to see the truth of the Universe. And you do not need Brad Warner either, for that matter. You don't need to read this stupid web-page or Hardcore Zen any more than you need to read one of Cohen's idiotic magazines or buy a box full of the complete works of Ken Wilber. No guru or Zen Master can give you anything other than what you already have. If you ever start to feel that you need your teacher's blessings, his approval, even his passing you on some koan or any other such nonsense, that is the time to run screaming out of the temple like someone had set fire to your panties. All authority must be torn down. This goes for my authority every bit as much as anyone else's. There is no Enlightenment. Enlightenment is nothing more than shared illusion. Enlightenment is for pussies who can't face reality.

Another big mistake the author of Enlightenment Blues makes is in his assumption that the dirty, manipulative, authoritative bullshit guys like Andrew Cohen foist upon their students is somehow OK in the mystical East but just unsuitable for the Western mindset. This, van der Braak seems to believe, is why Andrew failed. This is the kind of thing you'll often see from someone who's never spent enough time living in an Asian society to see how things really work. It's one of our fantasies that there is some kind of Eastern mind which is fundamentally different from the Western one. There is not. The guru system, the Zen Master system and every other variation on that theme is just as horrible and destructive to folks with amber skin and almond shaped eyes as it is to folks with white skin and blue eyes. It didn't work 2,000 years ago in Rishikesh, India any better than it works right now in Racine, Wisconsin. Sure it's lasted a long time, but sure has gastrointeritis. The only teachers who've really kept the decent traditions alive are the ones who did not play those kinds of games.

But, those criticisms aside, I still feel this is a wonderful book. These are fairly mild -- though important -- concerns in what happens to be a very powerful piece of work. It's riveting like a good mystery novel. I found myself unable to put the thing down once I'd started it. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to see where the path of following spiritual authority really leads.