Andrew Cohen is an American spiritual teacher known for his unique approach to enlightenment.
At 16 he experienced a profound spiritual moment leading him to abandon a jazz career and seek deeper understanding.
In 1986 he met teacher H. W. L. Poonja and soon started teaching himself focusing on ego-transcendence and demanding commitment from his students.
Cohen founded EnlightenNext magazine and even a jazz-funk-fusion band Unfulfilled Desires.
However controversies arose around his teaching methods involving abuse and psychological pressure.
After a break and criticism from students he took a sabbatical in 2013 returning in 2016 with a new website and teaching platform Manifest Nirvana launched in 2020.
Here are the best quotes by Andrew Cohen.
Best Andrew Cohen Quotes
Stillness is training for action. ~ Andrew Cohen.
There’s nothing tantric about my particular view on life. ~ Andrew Cohen.
What you’re getting excited about is not a face, but a feminine face. ~ Andrew Cohen.
Everybody wants to get enlightened but nobody wants to change. ~ Andrew Cohen.
When you come together with your other half, you immediately experience a sense of wholeness and completeness. ~ Andrew Cohen.
I’m suspicious of any man or woman who approaches their own liberation with any kind of gender bias. ~ Andrew Cohen.
It is not enough to be well-intentioned; one must strive to put those intentions into action in a capable way. One must consider the effect his actions will have on others. Looked at like this, to persist in ignorance is itself dishonorable. ~ Andrew Cohen.
I am already inherently full and complete as I am. Man doesn’t need woman and woman doesn’t need man in order to experience his or her inherent fullness. ~ Andrew Cohen.
If you know only one language, you’re a prisoner, stuck in the tyranny of that one language. ~ Andrew Cohen.
We have to be willing to give up all the injustices of the past that did exist – and that do exist right now. When we become interested in liberation, we then become interested in that which transcends time. ~ Andrew Cohen.
One of the most extraordinary things about being a spiritual teacher is the rare privilege of being able to look deeply into the very souls of many human beings at the same time. ~ Andrew Cohen.
Our true nature is free of any and all notions of gender, of any notions of difference whatsoever. ~ Andrew Cohen.
The excitement that you were feeling about a special, unique path for yourself as a woman is all part of your identification with and attachment to being female. And that’s ultimately all ego. ~ Andrew Cohen.
Famous Andrew Cohen Quotes
The mess of the human condition is that fundamental trust has not yet been realized. The true value of profound spiritual experience lies in the discovery of that fundamental trust. ~ Andrew Cohen.
To campaign against colonialism is like barking up a tree that has already been cut down. ~ Andrew Cohen.
Men are recognizing that they have been forced to conform to a very narrow and rather two-dimensional picture of maleness and manhood that they have never had the freedom to question. ~ Andrew Cohen.
Almost all the ideas we have about being a man or being a woman are so burdened with pain, anxiety, fear and self-doubt. For many of us, the confusion around this question is excruciating. ~ Andrew Cohen.
In my experience, men are not necessarily less sensitive or compassionate than women are, and women are not necessarily any less aggressive or competitive than men are – as a matter of fact, often they are more so! ~ Andrew Cohen.
The executive branch maneuvered this result deftly. ~ Andrew Cohen.
When a human being becomes so still that they begin to lose awareness of their gender, and they are simply looking into that abyss where there is no notion of self whatsoever, the world disappears. And that’s really the only place to go. It’s the only place to remain. ~ Andrew Cohen.
It is true that women tend to be more identified with their bodies because in this crazy world, both men and women measure women’s value as human beings in relationship to their physical appearance. ~ Andrew Cohen.
We have been very conditioned by the cultures that we come from and are usually very identified with the particular gender that we happen to be a member of. ~ Andrew Cohen.
Popular Andrew Cohen Quotes
I’m not convinced that what are traditionally considered to be male energies or qualities or female energies or qualities really have as much to do with gender as many people think they do. ~ Andrew Cohen.
Most men are very attached to the idea of being male, and usually experience a lot of fear and insecurity around the idea of being a man. Most women are very identified with their gender, and also experience a tremendous amount of fear and insecurity. ~ Andrew Cohen.
Spiritual experiences and their results are not meant for the individual. They are for the evolution of the whole race. ~ Andrew Cohen.
Freedom has no history. ~ Andrew Cohen.
Our relationship to reality and to our experience is all based upon the ideas in our mind that we’re always trying to live up to. ~ Andrew Cohen.
Top Andrew Cohen Quotes
A lot of people in spiritual life use the awareness of difference, and the spiritual glorification of difference, as a justification to indulge in that which is ultimately unreal. ~ Andrew Cohen.
We really have to be willing to find out who we are instead of rebelling for the equal rights that we’ve been denied, that we do deserve. ~ Andrew Cohen.
Hopefully, America will really get a sense of how justice can be served in this country. And hopefully, they’ll forget the Simpson trial. ~ Andrew Cohen.
We’re making far too big a deal out of our sexual preferences. It’s just another form of narcissism, and I think it can be a big problem and a tremendous obstacle. ~ Andrew Cohen.
In an evolutionary context, the goal of the spiritual life is not peace; it’s perpetual development. Evolutionary enlightenment is about the ecstasy that compels us to create the future. And it’s not a future that’s going to unfold by itself while we go back to sleep. It’s a future that we forge the hard way through direct, conscious, intentional engagement with the life-process itself. ~ Andrew Cohen.
So these were the 32 quotes by Andrew Cohen.
If these quotes and sayings connect with you, check out our other posts on Vandana Shiva quotes and Aesop quotes.
