by Andre van der Braak
Published by Lorrie Kazan in Intuitive-Connections
In the 1980s Amsterdam, Andre van der Braak having just completed college was embarking on what felt like a numbing career. But he was saved when his close friend, Harry, called him with ecstatic news. The two had explored various paths of enlightenment together and had promised to alert one another if either one of them found the true teacher.
Harry returned to Amsterdam, no longer the suffering, depressed person he’d been when Andre last saw him. The change came as a result of time spent with the emerging guru, Andrew Cohen, whom he believed would be their generation’s Buddha.
Entranced, Andre attended Andrew’s Satsang where almost immediately he entered into a state of bliss. (Satsang has been loosely defined as a gathering of friends, in the presence of and loving communion with a Master). This was everything he’d been looking for. Previously Andre had been struggling with maintaining a Buddhist practice that he’d found overly rigorous without offering the kind of emotional sustenance he still craved. He was elated and relieved when Andrew Cohen told him, “Enlightenment is now. You’re in it and you no longer have to prepare.”
When their new guru, Andrew, relocated to England, both men followed. For Andre, this was a chance to be near the epicenter of something exciting, and possibly world-changing. It offered him enough of a respite from his own depression and distraction from malaise that he was able to overlook any misgivings about relinquishing his current life.
With Andrew, everything seemed possible. They joined other devotees who lived communally together in several houses in a kind of extended family. Their lives revolved around Andrew, his teachings, his pictures, spending time with him, and discussing him; they viewed him as their Beloved Master, just as they believed Andrew regarded his own Indian teacher, Poonjaji. After all, it was Poonjaji who had anointed Andrew as one worthy to be called Master.
Quickly the devotees found menial jobs that would not interfere with their spiritual pursuits. They felt as if their lives had taken on a sense of the sacred as if everything they did was important. Soon, however, bliss began to darken. The next move was to America, and it was in the U.S. that their Master became more autocratic.
Now Andrew no longer called them enlightened. Increasingly, the devotees had to prove themselves to be without ego, anxiety, guile, or anything that might provoke Andrew’s ire. However, his anger was fairly consistently provoked, and devotees found themselves censured (for instance, sent to live in a less prestigious house) or banished from the community altogether.
Andrew called house meetings where the devotees would regularly apply Andrew’s standards in order to correct and discipline each other. They labeled intimate relationships as disloyalty to the group. To avoid attachment, Andre and his girlfriend, Sara, were forced to dissolve their relationship in order to stay in the community.
This pattern with relationships was revisited two more times for Andre during his eleven-year tenure with the group. Three times the relationships were either encouraged or allowed to progress to a certain depth before Andre and his partner were forced to sever their ties, all in the name of living the teachings, and not showing favoritism or attachment.
When the house members intimidated each other, it was done in the name of cutting through the ego. How do you argue with someone who has your best interests at heart and is telling you that your ego is blocking your vision? Andrew’s vision.
Disturbances grew to such an extent that Andrew’s own mother, Luna, (an early follower) left the fold and authored a scathing book about her son and the prototype dysfunctional family she believed he had created.
Andre had respected Luna, and her words mirrored some of his own feelings. However, he had committed his life to this relationship with Andrew and the others. When we commit to someone or something, we commit to our dream of what we think that is and what we believe we’ll receive as a result of our commitment. Ultimately, the dream may keep us in a situation long past the time when its reality has become untenable or even unbearable.
Several questions arise. For instance, why would intelligent people continue to delude themselves and mistake megalomania for enlightenment? What did Andrew provide that allowed them to shut out their own better instincts? Why do we stay in situations that hurt and betray us?
My assignment in this article is to make Andre’s situation understandable to the reader. How does his situation reflect our own lives? On one level, the question is where do we sell ourselves out in order to belong? What will we give up for approval? How much power will we give others over us? How do we trust ourselves, and clarify and not cross over our values? On a karmic level, are we irresistibly drawn to some people? What is being completed? What healing are we searching for via our connections in the world?
Whether it’s a cult or submitting to painful hazing to join a fraternity, we’re dealing with issues of self-sabotage, seduction, and betrayal. In the infatuation stage of a relationship, we’re in projection, seduced by what we perceive or even project upon the object of our affections. Sometimes that person is actively saying or doing what they sense will draw us in. Take a look at what’s currently being revealed in the news about Scott Peterson’s seduction of Amber Frey.
However, seduction is often followed by betrayal because people’s real selves and real issues tend to reappear.
Nothing is ever one-sided. The seducer is hoping for the same level of enrichment as the seducee. In effect, both people are projecting the hope of fulfillment onto each other. People don’t become followers just through a lack of intelligence.
Andrew’s coterie was composed of highly intelligent people. Temporarily, they filled a need for each other, but ultimately they couldn’t fulfill something deeper. They weren’t supporting individuality or individuation.
Andre’s search for enlightenment took him to Andrew, where initially he entered a state of bliss, of shared approval, a kind of high at having connected with like souls and being recognized for his true self. Then personalities took over and love turned into a kind of drudgery of people reacting to each other and trying to win Andrew‚s increasingly rare approval.
Isn‚t this one of the reasons people seek fame, in order to fill themselves with love and approval on a more massive level, a desire to be actually seen and heard?
What Would I Advise Him If He Sought A Psychic Reading?
First of all, he would need to seek my advice, and I’m not sure he would have been in a place to do that before his final disillusionment with Andrew. He was relying on his best thinking and on others in the group. And everyone still believed that Andrew was in some way above them, more gifted, able to bestow something upon them that they couldn‚t give themselves.
It’s interesting to me that Andre and Andrew have such similar names. Edgar Cayce, one of the most documented psychics in history, said that like always meets like. We come to face ourselves through others and to face our past lives through our current issues with others.
Andre already had a strong sense of dissatisfaction about how he and the other devotees were treating each other. He’d observed the changes in Andrew‚s mood and his teachings, and he’d certainly experienced the negative side of Andrew’s personality but he had not trusted himself.
Instead, he rationalized. After the person who sponsored their move to Amherst dropped out of the group, Andre silenced his misgivings by rationalizing that the sponsor must have succumbed to the pull of his ego. “It’s a reminder to us all,” he thought, “how important it is to have clarity of intention and to guard enlightenment against the poison of our own egoic minds.
If you cannot trust your own mind or your inner guidance, then whom do you trust? In this case, Andrew recommended that the devotees convene regular house meetings where they could hold each other accountable for living up to his standards. Andrew’s message had been, that nothing has to change, everything is perfect as it is, just realize this and surrender to it deeply and all your problems will be over. So what is all this talk about having to change now?
Even though Andrew’s time was much less available, Andre at first tried to share his concerns with Andrew. You have to align yourself with the standard of enlightenment, Andrew told him. However, the standard of enlightenment now seemed to be subject to Andrew’s whims and upsets.
Victims
There’s a saying that “there are no victims, only volunteers,” which probably makes no sense when you are in an abusive situation where it appears there’s no choice. The question is, why stay in those circumstances? As I’ve mentioned above, one has committed to an ideal; in Andre’s case the ideal was based upon another person, and there was still the hope that what he’d once received (or perceived) or even projected would be available again.
Relationships
Andre formed three successive, meaningful love relationships with women in the group, and ultimately after leaving the group, married a former devotee. He portrays the women as having an easier time releasing the intimacy that he struggled to give up, and still intensely needed. Andre bonded, even in the relationships that were arranged for convenience. Perhaps there was something in his bonding that was non-specific and co-dependent?
If Andre were willing, I would look at where he was open to get hooked. After all, there were many people who heard Andrew Cohen and did not feel the need to give up their lives in order to become a meaningful part of his. I question where Andre’s unresolved childhood issues were making him vulnerable to manipulation and false hope. For instance, did he need a mentor/father figure that personified the unique potential he saw in himself but was unlike the more forceful or rigid father he had internalized?
From a Cayce perspective, following a leader, such as Andrew, would be suspect. Cayce, a Christian mystic, didn’t even like to channel entities. He believed in strengthening our relationship with our Creator, which he often referred to as Jesus Christ or as our older brother and role model.
Andrew’s devotees saw themselves as apostles. It seems relevant to note that the apostles made their mark in history, as well, though it was through recording the works of Jesus. Andre actually was instrumental in facilitating the book of Andrew’s teachings, though without any appreciation, acknowledgment, and with considerable abuse.
The seduction for Andre was being considered special. He didn’t see this happening in the outside world. Hooked initially by a sense of belonging, feeling seen and understood needed to be completed by a sense of connection with something greater. Connection to an exploitive guru could not take its place.
In an abusive relationship, there is generally a point where something turns. The good that lured Andre disappeared. Looking back he could spot red flags he chose to ignore.
Cayce talked about cooperation, about each person setting an ideal and looking to see how one’s thoughts and behavior measured up to that ideal. He encouraged reading scripture, learning from the sages, and applying our learning daily. In fact, he counseled people to be long-suffering, a term that conflicts with a promise of more instant gratification.
In writing this article, I’ve been asked to posit how we might empathize with Andre rather than judge him or see his life as something completely separate from our own. What I see is the need to be loved and accepted by someone of quality, or renown. We live in a time when celebrity is supposed to mean happiness. Andre’s eyes were on his leader and the power of that movement. He was out of touch with his own integrity and boundaries.
In any community, no matter how great its purpose, there is the reality of human beings clashing. Twelve step programs caution seekers to follow principles rather than personalities. In his time, Edgar Cayce insisted we were here to learn cooperation, and ultimately to become soul mates with everyone.
No matter what situation you find yourself in, you have an opportunity to grow in consciousness. Cayce advised setting an ideal each year and measuring yourself and your life in light of it. Your heroes may fail to live up to your ideals or the ones you believed they stood for.
In this book, the author’s ambition is to warn others from being fooled by false gods. Though even members of his family have repudiated him, Andrew Cohen is still part of the “enlightened” or conscious community. I could name others still selling themselves on the consciousness circuit who have credible salacious charges against them. Remember the people who died when their leader told them to stay in the burning sweat lodge despite their tortured bodies saying otherwise? They paid $10,000 to gain what they presumed their leader knew and died trying to follow it.
Pascal said most of our problems stem from an inability to sit quietly alone in a room. Let’s hope Andre has found rooms where he can sit quietly and an inner core that he can trust. I wish that for all of us.
Lorrie Kazan (www.lorriekazan.com)
Copyright © Lorrie Kazan 2002-2005
