- Paperback: 228 pages
- Publisher: Pilgrims Publishing (1 Dec 2006)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 8177693824
- ISBN-13: 978-8177693829
- Product Dimensions: 21.2 x 13.8 x 1.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,420,286 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
This title chronicles the author's spiritual journey and disenchantment, as well as the development of a missionary and controversial community around the teacher. It powerfully exposes the problems and necessities of disentanglement from a spiritual path.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I'm a big fan of spiritual travelog. Among the best I've read are 'The Entronauts', by Piero Scanziani, 'Mutant Message from Down Under' by Marlo Morgan, and 'Meetings with Remarkable Men' by Gurdjieff.
This is an interesting wrinkle on the theme. This is a story about one man's experience with the controversial and purportedly controlling and manipulative Andrew Cohen. It's a book about aspiration, idolatry, disillusion and ultimately self-healing. Well written, and clearly difficult for the author to have done. However, that's where my praise and sympathy for the writer ends....
When you give away as much of your freedom, self-governance and will to a charismatic spiritual leader, and idolise them (beloved guru, gorgeous master, divine leader - these are all the types of terms that van den Brak uses in his early relationship with Cohen), then you deserve all you get.
The bleating, self pitying, victim language that characterises the latter half of this novel is a foreseeable consequence of this sort of unconditional spiritual surrender. It would take a bigger man than Cohen is rumoured to be not to get a little power-drunk on this sort of snivelling adulation.
Is Andrew Cohen enlightened? Has he enlightened anyone? I doubt it. In fact, I invite ANYONE making this claim to come forward and prove it. I've met some charismatic and compelling characters in my life, but no-one I could categorically state had made the trip. In fact, I've not even been able to validate whether enlightenment exists beyond fleeting experiences that ultimately vanish with time. It strikes me very strongly that this should be the first task for any serious spiritual seeker - and I don't mean being blinded by people who appear to radiate love and light or being sucked in by nonsensical rhetoric of the type foisted on the vulnerable by con artists with messianic delusions. Peak spiritual experiences are wonderful, but ultimately temporary - the expectation that this can be different buys $multi-million estates in New England.
Andre van den Braak - this is a great book. It's an exact facsmilie of what any serious spiritual seeker should NOT do. For that very reason it gets five stars. That said, anyone who supplicates so unconditionally to a spiritual teacher with unverifiable credentials deserves to have wasted ten years of their life.
This is an interesting wrinkle on the theme. This is a story about one man's experience with the controversial and purportedly controlling and manipulative Andrew Cohen. It's a book about aspiration, idolatry, disillusion and ultimately self-healing. Well written, and clearly difficult for the author to have done. However, that's where my praise and sympathy for the writer ends....
When you give away as much of your freedom, self-governance and will to a charismatic spiritual leader, and idolise them (beloved guru, gorgeous master, divine leader - these are all the types of terms that van den Brak uses in his early relationship with Cohen), then you deserve all you get.
The bleating, self pitying, victim language that characterises the latter half of this novel is a foreseeable consequence of this sort of unconditional spiritual surrender. It would take a bigger man than Cohen is rumoured to be not to get a little power-drunk on this sort of snivelling adulation.
Is Andrew Cohen enlightened? Has he enlightened anyone? I doubt it. In fact, I invite ANYONE making this claim to come forward and prove it. I've met some charismatic and compelling characters in my life, but no-one I could categorically state had made the trip. In fact, I've not even been able to validate whether enlightenment exists beyond fleeting experiences that ultimately vanish with time. It strikes me very strongly that this should be the first task for any serious spiritual seeker - and I don't mean being blinded by people who appear to radiate love and light or being sucked in by nonsensical rhetoric of the type foisted on the vulnerable by con artists with messianic delusions. Peak spiritual experiences are wonderful, but ultimately temporary - the expectation that this can be different buys $multi-million estates in New England.
Andre van den Braak - this is a great book. It's an exact facsmilie of what any serious spiritual seeker should NOT do. For that very reason it gets five stars. That said, anyone who supplicates so unconditionally to a spiritual teacher with unverifiable credentials deserves to have wasted ten years of their life.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Thank you Andre.
Another book about good old Andrew Cohen, the fellow-traveller on the vipassana circuit who found Enlightenment in India and returned to Devon to take Totnes by storm. Today Totnes, tomorrow the world, though it hasn't quite worked out like that. And in the process old Andrew is said to have become so precious that if he was a chocolate drop he'd eat himself. I enjoyed this book and found it helpful. This is because it's about one person's experience, their own personal struggle, their own blood and tears, and to read such a book is always of value. The author is writing about his own struggle to make sense of his life once he has been swept off his feet by the charisma, general good hair sense, and genuinely inspiring "teachings" of Mr Enlightenment, good old Andrew himself. This is what I valued about the book - we have all been there (some of us anyway) - we get drawn to a particular "teacher" by their great wisdom, clarity, depth, etc. etc. and then make the quantum leap into assuming that they are wise, wonderful and enlightened in all aspects of their lives and relationships. Fat Chance. But it takes us time to realise this. And how do we then leave, turning our back on what we thought at one time was the most wonderful wonderful path for a life of (as it may appear at the time) poverty and loneliness? And how do we integrate what we have learnt into our new life and know what is baby and what is bathwater? (It is traditionally thought to be a bad idea to throw baby out with bathwater). This book is valuable because it documents someone going through this process, showing his thinking/feeling/living evolving step by step. Thank you Andre.
Another book about good old Andrew Cohen, the fellow-traveller on the vipassana circuit who found Enlightenment in India and returned to Devon to take Totnes by storm. Today Totnes, tomorrow the world, though it hasn't quite worked out like that. And in the process old Andrew is said to have become so precious that if he was a chocolate drop he'd eat himself. I enjoyed this book and found it helpful. This is because it's about one person's experience, their own personal struggle, their own blood and tears, and to read such a book is always of value. The author is writing about his own struggle to make sense of his life once he has been swept off his feet by the charisma, general good hair sense, and genuinely inspiring "teachings" of Mr Enlightenment, good old Andrew himself. This is what I valued about the book - we have all been there (some of us anyway) - we get drawn to a particular "teacher" by their great wisdom, clarity, depth, etc. etc. and then make the quantum leap into assuming that they are wise, wonderful and enlightened in all aspects of their lives and relationships. Fat Chance. But it takes us time to realise this. And how do we then leave, turning our back on what we thought at one time was the most wonderful wonderful path for a life of (as it may appear at the time) poverty and loneliness? And how do we integrate what we have learnt into our new life and know what is baby and what is bathwater? (It is traditionally thought to be a bad idea to throw baby out with bathwater). This book is valuable because it documents someone going through this process, showing his thinking/feeling/living evolving step by step. Thank you Andre.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Andre's book has raised red flags for those following Mr. Cohen's teachings. In continuing to question the validity of any spiritual authority, it's crucial to try to get the whole picture, and also to observe how a teacher and his/her group handle critical statements from former students with allegations of abuse.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Thank you Andre
Thank you Andre.
Another book about good old Andrew Cohen, the fellow-traveller on the vipassana circuit who found Enlightenment in India and returned to Devon to take Totnes... Read more
Another book about good old Andrew Cohen, the fellow-traveller on the vipassana circuit who found Enlightenment in India and returned to Devon to take Totnes... Read more
Published on 12 Oct 2004 by Richard Hughes
What IS Narcissism? Cohen supplies the answer!
I recently went to the website of Andrew Cohen and viewed an "engaging" clip of him and Ken Wilbur "in dialogue". Read more
Published on 2 Jun 2004 by "jilldevine"
Try this little experimentÉ
Read the previous review, posted by Caragh/aka ÒGinaÓ. As she says, sheÕs ÒEnlightenment BluesÓ author Van Der BraakÕs former girlfriend, the... Read more
Published on 28 May 2004
No smoke without fire
Having seen Andrew Cohen twice during his public appearances, this book confirms my own experience when hearing this man speak. A man who appeared arrogant and lacking compassion. Read more
Published on 13 Mar 2004 by Michael Grace
A two dimensional fabrication of an extraordinary life
This book is a complete falsification of people and events that occurred during the eleven years that Andre was a student of Andrew Cohen and a member of his community. Read more
Published on 18 Jan 2004 by "caraghf"
Where do we go from here?
The list of spiritual teachers who simply don't measure up just gets longer: Gurdjieff, Trungpa, Adi Da, Erhard, Rajneesh, Shoko Asahara etc.... and now Andrew Cohen. Read more
Published on 22 Nov 2003 by Murasaki53
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