I wonder how much of the perceived problem is Andrew Cohen confronting students and insisting they `let go and respond` – LIKE A COMMAND. And this is sometimes said from his ego and sometimes not. If it is said from his being then it will be heard in that way by the recipients spirit. If it is said from his ego then it will be heard from the recipients ego … we are hardwired for this to happen.

It is part of the survival mechanism. Our survivAL MECHANISM IS PART OF WHAT IS AT THE EDGE OF OUR ENLIGHTENMENT AS INDIVIDUALS AND AS HUMANITY. (caps not meant).

He talks about it being tougher now for babyboomers and offspring to let go their ego. I can see what he means but I do not agree. It is because babyboomers onward have a greater sense of individual self and expressing it that makes way for searching for an ultimate meaning outside of the agreed reality! So it is actually easier. When the ego `confronts` spirit it cannot win. And so the only way to get enlightened is to search from your spirit and the spirit recognises and hears and gets the greater consciousness connection.

Over and over again the individuals EGO will step in again and look to claim the glory … but once you have conversed with spirit you know the essence is not in the ego, and so can sense your ego`s game and smile.

So I might say YES let go EGO and let my spiritual individuation shine through to humanity and breath with it hand in hand with the evolutionary pull dropping off the baggage of the ego and shining the way for all humanity and the very being of us all – us all who are the one.

I would like to make a more detailed answer to what one hears in this dialogue between Ken and Andrew. Hopefully Andrew’s blog is the right context to do this. Maybe if the ideas do unfolds powerfully, I will put it on my blog.

OK there was the issue that Science and Spirit are not yet integrated at the moment and that the real dialog between the actors of Science and the Spiritual teachers is just beginning. I explained myself on this issue in the previous comments.

Here I want to address another issue which seems important to me. In this dialog Andrew and Ken seem to agree on the fact that the post modern ego will refuse to submit to a teacher no matter what, and that the real crusade towards post post modernism is to submit the ego of the post modern self.
Andrew has this sentence that he explains to Ken over and over :
“ I tell my students submit and respond, submit and respond, and the strongest of my students have been doing just this”.

Just note for the moment that Ken doesn’t answer anything to this sentence. He doesn’t say that he agrees; he doesn’t say that he disagrees with the method. He doesn’t take position.

Now I would like to address this issue in a scientific terms. First, it is not true that post modern selfs don’t go for a teacher. I did, for example, and Andrew has had many and many examples of post modern students who came to him. Many of them left and some stayed. My first point is that one cannot reproach to the ones who left not to have been opened to a teacher, not to have recognized has power and greatness. I have left and I feel I
really recognized that Andrew had something to teach and that he has a gift. In a sense, only the people who have become students have fully recognized the teacher. I mean something simple: when one sees something great one goes on and check by oneself. One engages. Students of a teacher like Andrew, all of them, including the ones who left have shown more recognition to the teacher than external people did, even his supporters. This is a paradox, I know.

Now at some, point , like all the people who left, I refused to submit. I refused to submit because I felt that what the teacher had in mind was too simplistic, and didn’t’ address fully my own complexity. Now the teacher of course will claim that “ it is your ego resisting me”… with a big finger pointed on me which is to a certain point, very authoritarian and intimidating. And of course at some point under pressure my ego entered the game, as a reaction of defense against intimidation, as both Andrew and Ken beautifully said. Indeed the ego entered the game, but well, did it have a point or not ? The famous ego, when it entered the game in defense reaction, was it right or not ?

It might be shocking for some to say that the ego might be right. I have heard over and over again in spiritual circles that “ your ego is wrong, no mater what it says to you, don’t listen to “it”, just submit to the teacher etc…”. but I disagree with this. The ego of course can be right, the only difference is that the ego is always relatively right, never absolutely right. It is precisely where the Scientific attitude enters. The scientific minds ponders. It ponders over ideas and in this ponderation it determines with certain probabilities what is scientifically right or not. Hence the scientific mind indeed works with the ego, and has good reasons to do so.

Now just imagine that you are a scientist, a good scientist, I mean, that you have mastered to a certain degree this ponderation mechanism. That you have mastered it to a point that you know its limitations and its strengths, that you have scientifically pondered the limitations and strengths of your own mechanism of though, in a purely scientific way. ( There is a certain perfection into this if you notice; it is the bottom up way the way of humble wisdom)
I believe I am not a bad scientist and my command of this ponderation is quite good ( there are better folks than me in the scientific community for sure). Now suppose that you are face to face with a teacher who tells you “ submit and respond” but deep down all the scientific lights are red. You feel that what the teacher asks you is not correct, that he is making a mistake, and not only for you own case, but that he is making a generic scientific mistake. What do you do ? do you listen to your own mind, or do you trust the teacher ?

I feel everyone has to answer this question . I am a scientist, so if my ind tells me with 99% that there is a problem, then I will follow my mind at the need of the day. I will follow my mind independently of the passion I can have for the teacher, and independently on how right the teacher can be on other issues. A teacher who would push me to submit in this context would rape my freedom of thought. And if I submitted in this context I would prostitute my Soul. As simples as this. Soul prostitution. And actually, even if I had left myself been intellectually raped, well, the freedom of the human mind is bigger than all this, and one day or another I would revolt and reclaim it.

If you are like me and if you would never submit to a teacher when your mind tells you not to, then one must admit as a scientific truth that the technique that Andrew uses is not convincing. At the very least it must be state that it cannot work for everybody, but only for a certain type of people who like to submit in all circumstances. There will allays occur an occasion where the student is right and Andrew is wrong. In this occasion shall the student submit ? with no discussion ? with no place left for the scientific uman rationality to express itself ?

That’s why I think that the whole issue of Guruship with post modernism is much more complex than what Andrew and Ken insinuate. Some post modern people interested by spirituality really want to learn. But they don’t want to loose their autonomous way of determining what is true, even if this way is relative, like Science is for example.

I strongly believe that one doesn’t have to go against ones convictions- and certainly not against pure systemic logics- in order to progress in spirit, and that the future of mankind passes through the emergence of human beings fully committed to truth, no matter what, no matter what spiritual authority one has in front of us. If I had the Buddha in front of me and he was saying something silly, I would not submit. I would first listen, ponder,ponder again, listen again, and then if in my mind I feel that he is not right or that I don’t’ understand, I would not submit. I believe in the emergence of a human culture where one never submits when one is not convinced at a deep intellectual level. Never, never, never. The human intellect has to be respected if science and spirituality have to come together. A stance like the one used by Andrew ( “submit and respond”) applied with very little discrimination is doomed , one day or another, to damage the capacity of people to think independently.

It is a scientific fact that out of so many committed student that Andrew had very many left, and a few stayed. I want to defend here the integrity of the student who left. They didn’t leave simply because “ their monster ego refused to submit to the master” . They left because, as post modern complex persons they claimed their freedom to be right on some issues while the Guru was wrong. And believe me, this happened, it happens many times.

I don’t’ know whether saying this is striping down the Guru. I personally believe that Andrew is a fully Enlightened master, and that he has a great gift that very few people have to put light on things. Now as human being he is sometimes wrong, sometimes quite wrong, and sometimes completely wrong. Nothing wrong with being wrong, it happens to all of us, and humility maybe starts with recognizing this. It could happen to me at the moment for example. But it is to everyone ego to determine where is the Truth. And to me the right spiritual attitude, when a teacher tells you something that you feel is wrong, is to respond by “NOT SUBMITTING”.

I also think Andrew shall evolve to adapt to different type of students. The future is to merging together in the truth. Not to impose submission on people’s critical sense. It maybe worked with what Andrew calls his “strongest students” although even for them I have a doubt. To my scientific taste they lack this depth of freedom which says that they will never submit to anyone even to their Guru if he is wrong. I have the sensation that they have prostituted their Soul at least one time. At least one time they were sure that they were right and the Guru was wrong, and they chose to submit to the Guru’s authority no matter what.

To integrate Science and Spirit, one needs to be happy with criticism. Can a Guru do this ?

Nobody is interested and loathing is reciprocal it seems. So when we meet someone one the way who just wants to listen from both sides, it is like our Soul is getting some water form a very long time.

Hearing Ken said that Science and Spirituality are already reconciled within his integral movement made me want to die. Maybe I am wrong maybe i have missed alt hose opportunities to speak so so many open people there ? I would give anything to be wrong to tell the truth. But so far, the number of open Souls is scarce, very scarce. Some listen, but to have a real passionate dialog about these issues with a spiritual teacher I never had so far. The communication is completely blocked.

How many working scientists do you have in your movements ? in a percentage ? 0,001 % or simply zero ?
How can you talk about integration then.
How many enlightened quantum physicists is there in the world ? Ken said maybe less than 1 %. Well,if I find one I would be happy. Now how many spiritual teachers are early interested in doing just this, in talking to scientists without despising what they have to bring, in really trying to connect. So far I don’t meet any single one.

If you knew on what edge I am living my everyday life, you would simply not say that there exists a welcoming place where scientists in quest for spirituality can come and be heard and start to merge and really interact deeply with spiritual teachers. This has not happened yet. There are some starts in that direction, but very shallow.

In spiritual groups that I have frequented in the last form years, nobody has even bothered to discuss with me about what it implies for a scientist to look for enlightenment, about what it would be to become an enlightened scientist, of what it means to talk about science from a spiritual perspective or to talk about spirit from a scientific perspective. I don’t’ blame people, teachers and students : they had other things to do, their have their own priorities and obviously those questions, which for me are vital, were not interesting for them.

Basically I find myself terribly lonely with those questions and my Soul is really suffering from loneliness here. So well, if I am wrong and if such a group of people interested in going really deep into those questions- going into them at an existential levee I mean, does exist-, could someone be kind enough to indicate me their door so that I can knock at it ?

To open myself a bit , I am quite desperate for finding a field of people where these issues are discussed in detail, with working scientists, and not only spiritual teachers like Ken and Andrew telling us that it has been done. I mean I want to stay open, but if it has been done, if scientists and spiritual teachers do discuss together openly, where can I find such a group of Enlightened scientists ?

My experience as a spiritual seeker is that it is extremely difficult for me to be heard and express myself when I talk about Spirit within a scientific context, it is equally difficult to talk about Science in a spiritual context without betraying Science.

In the spiritual groups that I frequented during the few years that I am in quest, it has been extremely difficult to simply have a dialog with Students or Teachers, as a scientists. My feeling at the moment is that spiritual teachers, including Ken and Andrew are not really interested by what Science could bring to the field, be cause they don’t’ really see yet the potential it can have.