Embracing Heaven & Earth: The Liberation Teachings of Andrew Cohen

by Andrew Cohen

This is an original contemporary expression of the timeless wisdom of Enlightenment. The fruition of Andrew Cohen's fifteen years as a spiritual teacher, this book presents a radical psychology of liberation. It takes the reader on a journey of self-discovery that reveals not only the liberating fact of our true nature, but the way to live that truth in this world.

102 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Andrew Cohen was a controversial self-declared American spiritual teacher, who was accused by former students, including his mother, of mental, physical, and financial abuse.

Reviews

[Joshua · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hard for me to comprehend what drew people to Andrew Cohen. He rose to prominence in a time when all manner of under-qualified spiritual teachers were making names for themselves, and Andrew seems to me to be the worst of them. Just judging from his words, I find very little that's inspiring. Once you factor in all the scandals.... whew! However, the documentary film How I Created a Cult (filmed with Andrew's participation, in an attempt to come clean) is very worthwhile.

[Halvor (Raknes)]

(Reading notes)

[Skylar Burris · Rating 2 out of 5]

An edition of this book was sent to me to read for some reason, so I did. Embracing Heaven and Earth focuses on five fundamental tenets of enlightenment: clarity of intention, the law of volitionality, face everything and avoid nothing, the truth of impersonality, and for the sake of the whole. People who are interested in enlightenment philosophy might find Cohen's work worth taking up, and it has certainly received praise from many practitioners of eastern spirituality. If you are not already enamored with the philosophy, however, this book has little to offer.

Among other things, Cohen emphasizes the superiority of simplicity over complexity. "You see," he writes, "simplicity means being whole." His description of simplicity and complexity reminds one of C.S. Lewis's description of wakefulness and sleep in his Christian allegory Perelandra. Cohen writes:

The reason for this is that complexity cannot understand simplicity. But--and this is the whole point--simplicity can understand complexity. Complexity cannot see simplicity, but simplicity can see complexity. In order to get in touch with the source of all true wisdom, you have to become simple yourself. It just doesn't work the other way around.

Compare that with C.S. Lewis:

We have learned of evil, though not as the Evil One wished us to learn. We have learned better than that, for it is waking that understands sleep and not sleep that understands waking.

Yet, for all this emphasis on simplicity, the book itself is simplistic only in terms of the writing style. The concepts, on the other hand, are presented with both circumlocution and redundancy. What could have been expressed with equal depth in twenty pages is expanded to fill 102. The book contains a preface, a foreward, and an introduction. One wishes the author would just get to the body of the book and stop assuring us how good it is

[Kabera Al Mazyani]

Quelle est la différence entre une vie faite de confort et de sécurité et une vie faite de risques et d'insécurité totale ? Une c'est être comme tout le monde. L'autre est un grand frisson, elle encourage quelque chose d'inconnu et d'illimité qui est omniprésent. Et c'est cela vivre une vie spirituelle.