Awakening to Your Highest Self

By Joel Pitney

This coming Sunday, March 25th, marks the twenty-sixth anniversary of a meeting that radically altered the course of Andrew Cohen’s life. It was the day he met HWL Poonja, a great master of Advaita Vedanta, and had a powerful spiritual realization that initiated his own role as a spiritual guide to many.

The relationship with a spiritual teacher is subtle and profound, and it is one that is little talked about in our contemporary culture. Over the next week, while Andrew is leading a week-long Being & Becoming retreat in the Mojave Desert in Southern California, we will be sharing a series of interviews and posts from Andrew that explore this unique relationship and illuminate its potential.

This first post of the series is an interview* that Andrew conducted with Rajesh Dalal about his time with the great 20th century sage, Jiddu Krishnamurti. J. Krishnamurti is known for saying “The Truth is a pathless land,” and for fiercely insisting to the thousands who would come to hear him speak that they must find out what that Truth is for themselves. He called himself a “friend,” not a teacher, and Rajesh Dalal, true to his “non-teacher lineage,” also decries the title of teacher. Yet ironically, in this rare interview, you will hear the most beautiful and touching account of Rajesh’s life-changing meeting with this great master and the mark it left on his soul.

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This post is part of a series celebrating the teacher-student relationship. Click here to access the rest of the series.

(*Many of the interviews in this series originally aired in the ten-hour web broadcast, “Awakening to Your Highest Self,” that Andrew produced in 2011 to mark the 25th anniversary of his meeting with his teacher. He spoke with spiritual luminaries from various traditions about their experiences with their mentors to honor and illuminate the transformative nature and liberating intimacy that blossom when sincere seekers meet true masters. Among many contemporary teachers, the broadcast featured Jean Houston on her time with Teilhard de Chardin and Margaret Mead, Swami Chidanand Saraswati on his experiences as a youth with Himalayan masters, and Rabbi Michael Lerner on the social and spiritual activist Rabbi Abraham Heschel.)

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