The Guru and The Shadow

Reflections on my conversation with Andrew Cohen

Most Gurus wouldn’t admit to having started a cult. Imagine Osho apologising for creating his cult in Oregon, where his students practised actual bio-terrorism! Impossible to conceive of!

But Andrew Cohen is different — a humbled and repentant Guru, which may seem like a contradiction in terms. In any case, Cohen’s harrowing story of meeting the shadow of the Guru is compelling. And in our merciless world of cancel culture, I think it deserves to be told.

Cohen has written a new book entitled “The Shadow and the Bodhisattva” — it could have been called The shadow and the Guru. While he clearly admits his failures and blind spots, he also defends his achievements and the Guru principle in general. A word without great spiritual masters — and access to a vertical dimension — is a postmodern flatland. And Cohen asks the question: what does the Guru look like in the post-post-modern age?

A Guru is, to modern sensibilities, a sociopath, a sexual or emotional predator, a marketing genius and/or a demonic arch-manipulator. And today, the amount of fallen Gurus, especially due to sex and power abuse, is as numerous as grains of sand on the bottom of the…