What was positive about the experience?
Without doubt the discipline (which I’ve mostly discarded in my spiritual life at least, but then my lack of spiritual discipline has made some relaxed space in which God can do His work).
Without doubt the experience of enlightened communication. When human beings come together with their focus and intent on what can be created between and beyond them something incredible can happen. EC as taught by Chris Parrish in the context of EE, talks of communication beyond ego, which in EE is synonymous with beyond the personal. Yet, I’ve come in my re-Christianized perspective, to believe that the image in which we are created is personal (God is personal) and the purpose and goal of spiritual growth is the divinization of the personal and the creation of the interpersonal. Andrew put a stop to EC because it was a successful practice that created an authentic free space in which he had no authority. So what would happen if EC was practiced with the engagement of the personal, not with the goal of going beyond ego, but of transforming (divinizing) the personal? What happened with EC at its most powerful, I described as a kind of Pentecost. Spirit manifest between people. How might that be brought to bear in personal transformation.
What was negative?
The absolute denial of the personal.
The absolute denial of doubt and the obsession with certainty. The systematic suppression of anything that even remotely contradicted Andrew. Interesting that a teaching that is supposed to be about creating the new is so obsessive about squashing doubt in its practitioners. (Grapple with your doubt, be ferocious with your doubt. Pull everything apart, look through the cracks, under the blankets, The abuse.
The abuse.
The abuse. You haven’t lived till you see a bunch of otherwise mature and intelligent people fall over themselves trying to please a guru who might turn on them at any time. The guru’s love is ALWAYS conditional on the student earning it. All that waiting about, in hallways, in streets, in stairwells, with groups of students waiting for the precious audience with the guru. And Andrew was ALWAYS late for meetings with his students, and always the threat that it MIGHT NOT HAPPEN. The obsessive assumption of blame for ANY FAILURE by the student. A teacher with so many failed students might be thought not to be a great teacher, but in this teaching (like in all good cults) the teacher is perfect and the students self-flagellating.
The lies – the private ridicule of Deepak Chopra – the public adulation. Amy Edelstein’s denial that Andrew ever asked students to prostrate themselves to his picture, when not one minute of practice was ever done without his blessing. I could go on, but hardly seems worthwhile.
On balance not much to say for Andrew. Hard to believe that after 25 years as absolute ruler that he's really changing his ways. The senior students are the same people who grappled their way to the top in the years of abuse. They've learned everything they know from Andrew, what are they going to do different?
I would still love to engage in EC again, but can't imagine doing it with Andrew's students (even if they were allowed to). But God's there every day now, not dependent on the will of the guru. With God there every day, there's less need to seek after those peak experiences (though they are awfully fun). Religion needs to evolve, and the evolution is in progress, just how do we engage with God in that evolution?
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