People: Ken Wilber & All Things Integral

When you are asleep at night and dreaming that you are doing something somewhere, where exactly are you? Are you the body/person in the dream or the body/person asleep on the bed, and if you are identified with neither -- for you in fact are capable of holding both as objects of your attention -- then who or what are you? Do these bodies you "see" contain you, or do you contain them? Perhaps both are not literal containers for "you" but rather are expressions, different expressions, of the essential you, means through which you can relate to your current environment, however unusual or alien that might be...

George Leonard, a charismatic, tireless journalist who foresaw -- and then pioneered -- the human potential movement, died Wednesday at his home in Mill Valley after a long illness. He was 86.

Director Oliver Stone's upcoming Showtime documentary miniseries "Secret History of America" promises to put mass murderers such as Stalin and Hitler "in context."

I spent much of the four days of the C3 Conference crying. In the midst of discussions about the theory of conscious capitalism (more on that in a moment) what moved me the most was the sense of having “arrived.” I had arrived by coming into contact with a philosophical framework and a group of highly successful people who mirrored my own deepest convictions about the power of entrepreneurship to simultaneously create benefit for individuals and for society as a whole, in what John Mackey calls “a virtuous circle.” I felt like I had been a young girl crawling in a dark forest for two plus decades, really on my own, and I had somehow emerged into relatedness with a group of strong older brothers (and a sister or two…I am still looking to meet more such women business leaders), and that I could now walk in allegiance with this strong larger group.

American Guru is a multifaceted account of life in the contemporary spiritual community known as EnlightenNext, and the controversial “teaching methods” of its New York-born founder, self-proclaimed “guru” Andrew Cohen. With contributions from several of Cohen’s former students, William Yenner recalls the thirteen-year trajectory of his career as a leader and manager in Cohen’s community -- his early days as an idealistic “seeker,” his years of service on EnlightenNext’s Board of Directors, his ultimate disillusionment and departure, and his efforts to make sense of his experiences as a once-devoted follower of a “Teacher of Evolutionary Enlightenment.” With wit and insight, Yenner and his colleagues have produced a riveting cautionary tale on the dangers of authoritarian spirituality, and an insider’s case study on the promises and pitfalls of postmodern discipleship.

I believe meditation and contemplation are generally positive responses to North America’s culture of busyness. But can meditation, contemplation and related practices encourage people to detach too  effectively from their so-called negative thoughts, leading them to actually detach from life itself?

I just finished reading god is not Great by Christopher Hitchens. He's given us another powerful work in the vein of Sam Harris (The End of Faith), Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), and Bill Maher (Religulous). Team Rationality is ushering in a long-overdue examination of religion in the modern world. They make a strong case that religion is sick and dehumanizing. I would say more specifically, sick religion is dehumanizing. And we do have a global pandemic of sick religion: billions of believers stuck in low levels of consciousness, riddled with pathologies.

Ramakrishna was a homoerotic pedophile. His chief disciple, Vivekananda, visited brothels in India. Krishnamurti carried on an affair for over twenty years with the wife of a good friend. Chögyam Trungpa drank himself into an early grave. One of Adi Da's nine "wives" was a former Playboy centerfold. Bhagwan Rajneesh sniffed laughing gas to get high. Andrew Cohen, guru and publisher of What Is Enlightenment? magazine, by his own reported admission sometimes feels "like a god."

My name is William Yenner, and I am the former student who was subjected to the “gag order” mentioned in the official responses given to journalist Yonatan Levy. While I know from personal experience that most of the replies given to Levy by Andrew Cohen’s representative are false and/or misleading, this particular question and the circumstances surrounding it have been, in particular, a big presence in my life for many years, so I’m providing more information here for anyone seeking to know the truth about Andrew Cohen and EnlightenNext. I was bound by this “gag order” from 2003 to 2008, forbidden by an enforceable contract from making any public statements about Andrew Cohen or EnlightenNext.

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