Mary Adams: Conversations from the Heart - Honouring Andrew Cohen through our Stories

Welcome to conversations from the heart honoring Andrew Cohen through our stories. My name is Daniela Bomater. I was a student of Andrews for 17 years and for the past nine years I had the privilege of living and working alongside him. This service is a tribute to his life, his teaching, and the evolutionary fire he sparked in so many of us. Through these intimate conversations, we remember not only the man, but the depths of transformation he catalyzed in our lives. May these stories keep his legacy alive, honoring the sacred thread that connects us and allowing his voice to continue resonating through ours. [Music] Okay. So, welcome Mary to this conversations from the heart. Thank you that you will have this conversation today with me. I was really looking forward to it. This is the eighth conversation that I'm having and all of them were very different and uh beautiful and I enjoyed it a lot and I think I got a lot of feedback also from people that that uh enjoyed to listen to it because it gives a very broad and wide and deep uh insight in in the experience different people had in their time with Andrew. So there is one thing I always start with. There is one question. How did you meet Andrew and what happened in that meeting? And that's probably the best way to start today too. Great. Um well, thank you Danella. Thank you for uh inviting me to be part of this. And um I just want to say I think it's I think it's great you're doing this because um as we know talking about Andrew or talking about our history or talking even about the teachings it's such a complex picture that the more perspectives experience and you know the multi-dimensional nature of it can come out or be expressed. So I I really appreciate that. I think it's important there isn't just as far as I can see there's not just one one view that any one person can capture really and it's still it's still evolving you know I think it's still we're still understanding it ourselves really so thank you and um yes when did I meet Andrew and what happened um well I met Andrew I mean literally met him, you know, before he was a teacher. And that was in uh well, I met him twice. Once very, very briefly at Gaia House in England. He was doing a meditation retreat there. We had um you know, a center there. I was living in Devon at the time and and uh I met I remember Andrew there sitting quietly. I think he was observing a meeting or something. I was part of the the board or whatever it was that we had committee and he was there and I remember him sitting there very quietly very paying a lot of attention but I didn't even know who he was actually and then a few years later couple years not that much later I don't know maybe a year or two uh he had heard about Murray who was uh my partner um meeting with Punji and Murray and I were in India in South India actually at at the asham and we were we were living in England but we had Murray was visiting Punj and I had come out to meet him too with with our daughter and so we were in Turan it was Ramana's giant so it was masses of people it was very less than now but it still it was very a lot of people there for his birth celebration and suddenly sort of Andrew turned up with his mother and he'd come to seek Marat to really find out about Punja and I remember him being um at that time you know he was quite young we were all quite young I remember he was very very focused and he really wanted to know and they made arrangements to meet in North India and for Murray to take Andrew through to meet with Punji because at that point Murray was there weren't many people with Punja at all. So that's when I first met him literally and then um dial forward you know Andrew had his meeting with Punja Murray was there and you know there's you know he was he was a kind of witness to the whole thing. Um and can I interject something here Mary? Not to interrupt you, but I I think there is something very important because Andrew always told his story that he had heard about you and Murray as the big meditators in India doing this meditation retreats, the two of you and supporting each other in this in this long retreats. The way he described it, I I never heard it from you, but the way he described it, somewhere up north and and like being really secluded and cooking for each other while the other one was meditating. And I just wanted to add to to your story that Andrew was every time when he talked about it so impressed still. And and I think that is also what what uh what made him so curious about when Mari talked about Poncha, he respected you and Mari a lot because he he felt like I think you were a little older than him and he felt like you had you had more experience also in in this spiritual search and and meditation and everything. So that's part of the story. Yeah. Right. Yeah. We were very um Marie and I had we had already been in India I think like seven years or something or more by that point and um and we were very fortunate in fact it was in Turu believe it or not Daniela that we did those retreats those particular ones we did them in different places but we spent three years where we would be living in two different huts and one would be disappear for three months literally we just put a tiffen carrier outside There was a small compound with a single room and then we'd switch over and in the switch over we would always do a production at night. It was incredible and we spend the whole eight hours you know just you know in conversation really about what whichever you know one we'd end up on the other side as the sun was rising having a chai. So those were the days when it was a village and there was literally no um yeah very little uh very little builtup area. So that was Turu was really the place that gave us that opportunity. Yes. Yeah. So that was amazing and we also did them in in Kerala as well actually in the jungle there but but it was Turu that was really such a formative place for I think both of both of us. So anyway um yeah so yes Murray Andrew met met Murray they met up in Bodgaya I think Andrew was doing the his last doing a retreat with Christopher at the time but they had arranged to meet there and go on to Punja which they did and you know the story of Andrew's meeting with Punj is very documented. Uh what happened though was some months later and this is a sad thing actually Daniel is during that time Murray would write me on these little blue arogs that you got in India at the time he would write me and I'll never forget him saying I'm witnessing the birth of a spiritual master. Wow. He said it at that time and Murray was at that time he would never give those sort of you know epithets or he would never attribute that kind of um praise or or elevation to any teacher you know he's he's very um how can I say he's yeah he's very discriminating so I remember reading that and being like I knew something was going down you know I didn't know what and at that point there were no students. There was just Murray and a handful of others in Rishih. So some months later, oh the sad thing of that though is when says all those arograms got lost in a house move at some point in our lives, which is such a shame because they were a document of those really really early days, you know, in the Yeah. But anyway, so but some months later, uh Murray came back to England and I had gone back. We were living in Devon and he he was transformed I have to say and he'd been with Andrew all this time and Punja had sort of handed over to to to Andrew and said you know you you work with with Murray you know that point so there was a kind of trans transference at that point of um to Andrew and um and at that point Andrew wasn't a guru at all I think you know that but he was you know sharing and anyway Murray came back it was absolutely on you know just lit up in a very beautiful way and very clear and you know we'd been together for 12 years by then I think or I don't know how many but a lot of years done a lot of practice seen a lot of teachers quite a few and I'd never seen Murray like that and um so and neither had anyone else in there because there was quite a community in Devon at that point of people who'd moved there who'd been part of a wider spiritual community had either been in India or Thailand or the personal world who'd moved and were living in the area and uh plus other people and so people were very struck by you know and Murray invited Andrew to come to Devon to teach because at that point Punji had said to him you know go and do this right so that was the first you could the invitation and he he came we lived in a tiny little stone cottage in a village in Devon and um with Mitra our daughter and uh Andrew came and he stayed with us and that's when I first really met him after his his awakening and and to be honest Daniela it wasn't like I had an initial it was quite I mean just to give a little bit It's interesting because Andrew started doing uh just meeting people in our living room at night. That's was the very beginnings and we didn't even use the word satsang. I don't think it was just what was happening. People would come and he made himself completely available too. all during the day he'd see people individually they go for walks and he was um my memory of Andrew at that time he was like a volcano you know he was just erupting with um there was a beautiful kind of clarity and passion um and again he wasn't assuming particular teacher role at that point and certainly not a guru but um but what happened was and in the evenings in our little living room there'd be sort initially three, four, five, six and 12 and 15 people and people would be having these really profound experiences and for myself I was a bit like a moth to a flame you know I was completely on one hand I recognized the clarity and and and sort of total um authenticity you know it was just emerging ing from Andrew. There was no fixed teaching at all. It was just pure, you know, enlightened understanding emerging from him. And then those days there were no talks. It was all in response to questions and dialogue. There was dialogue. So it was all erupting in a very spontaneous way. So I was on one hand absolutely transfix and affected by that. another part of me was afraid and I kept myself a bit away. And um and what that was about was that people were having these profound experiences with Andrew and they were starting to sort of speak about him in these very um how can I say just you pure love you know for him and I began to I had never been despite of my years in India and I'd spent a lot of time well not time with the saga daughter and you know I'd been to see a Christian body but I wasn't a guru person. I'd been to see Osho, but I I hadn't that was not my path, I thought. Yeah. And um and so I was a bit I thought, you know, I don't want to become I don't want to get I don't want to enter into a guru relationship with anyone. I have never up to now. And And Andrew wasn't explicitly saying that, but it was kind of naturally happening in a way. And uh so I stayed a little bit removed and suddenly you know this was all happening around there was this amazing sort of community that was emerging that wasn't a fixed community but was a spontaneous one which I'm sure you know about and I was sort of in it and out of it you was like in and but a little bit of me was staying back and um and I was also very I was still on the board of Guyia House. I was close friends with Christopher Titmas. He had not been my teacher for many years but we were very close friends. So I was sort of balancing I could sense I think the destruction about to happen positive destru you know the sort of huge eruption that was about to take place I think some part of me knew that and I was like you know wasn't sure and then um Andrew was invited to uh to Holland and again he was started off in someone's house act with people because people started to come from Europe, I think you know that to Devon and you know from all over the world and Andrew moved out of our house and was teaching another building and was all gathering pace but the kind of um there was this amazing as you've heard you know um happening around him with people that were happening and and like I said I was very much part of that but also I was definitely a step away in my own heart watching and then I was in Amsterdam down and I was living in his house. There was about 10 people there. We rented a house and going to satsang. And all that day before that satsang, I had this I can't really describe it. This sort of sense of something so much bigger than me kind of, you know, enveloping me. Daniela, as even as I walked down the street, it was just there. this sense of something really, you know, and I I wasn't afraid of it, but I was also like I was sort of I guess very alert or something. I'm not quite sure. But anyway, I went to the satsang that night and I was just sitting there and was speaking and at a certain point I had this anyway really profound self eruption to be honest. It was just really powerful. Yeah. And it was um it was you know I mean it's it's slightly different I guess where I go but basically it was absolute dissolution of any barrier between me and and everything you know God and but life you know but everything there was just nothing in the way anymore and there was enormous freedom in that you know my fear of you know there was just it wasn't a feeling of freedom it just was you know and also it was It was very big and I I was I was sobbing. I didn't feel it wasn't sad crying. It was just it was so deep I think and so uh so deep and um anyway I had my eyes shut you know I was just sort of quietly like going through this thing and then I guess the satsang ended and a certain point I felt someone take my hands. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor. And I opened my eyes and there was Andrew sitting literally cross-legged opposite me just there holding my hands and just asking me about it, you know, and there were people getting up and moving around us and leaving the room and he was completely there, Daniela, you know. Yeah, he he knew. Yeah. And he was absolutely speaking to what was happening and you know we were and um and he said to him anyway a whole story but that was really it and um he told me to come and uh see later and you know etc etc but that was really that was it really for me and and the amazing thing was that my fear that had been you know I'd hold this little bit back right all the p the what I had feed was absolutely didn't happen and it was the classic thing it just didn't happen there was like that's the recognition isn't it for everyone exactly and it was very interesting because over the years I can see the perception of Andrew and students and all this became very much from the outside it looked kind of classic you know the guru devotion and all of that and some elements we can touch on that later were no doubt but my experience of that my fears of having a guru and all of that dissolved because it was I wasn't it wasn't about Andrew there was no other you know and yeah and that there was an intimacy in that selfrecognition that Andrew was able to you know um catalyze I guess um so there was an enormous intimacy with this person it wasn't like he was outside oneself though and in that because you are literally you experience no separation. No, you are one. You are in that um together there's and I've thought about this a lot later in terms of how things evolve. There's trust. It's you. It's it's no there's no there's no other. So there's enormous trust because there's nothing other. There's just pure, you know. Um Yeah. Yeah. And there is also and there is also nothing to be trusted because there is just what it is. Exactly. Just together I understand. Exactly. So that was very profoundly liberating because I don't think I had ever had that experience or even come near trusting anybody in my life in that way. You know that that that kind of led to. Um, so I'd always been, you know, a bit a bit of a survivor kind of person. Um, despite, you know, I mean, obviously in the past I'd had very profound experiences and actually with Nisagada, I had a really profound experience. I was much younger. This was slightly different and it was also with someone that was very engaged in the process. So that was that was a different. So anyway, that was my meeting with Andrew and began you know 27 years of um very um yeah intense and close relationship really. Not just with Andrew because this was as you know it it what was so amazing about that is I walked out of that and from then on my relationship to everything else I was I was fully in. Yeah, there was no separation between me and everybody else and that was extraordinary and profound actually because you know there's quite a lot spoken and heard about about the quality of love and you know just dynamism and intimacy and intimacy was also dynamic intelligence at awoken amongst us and Mhm. That was amazing. that and and it is amazing and is because I think that's one of the one of the uh attributes of Andrew's of the work with Andrew was the quality of wasn't just spiritual experiences of bliss and that you know was all of that or oneness or whatever but there was an awaken a an a capacity a a perspective that was living that was and an an access to a kind of understanding ing and uh depth of understanding and knowledge that was way beyond any of us. And um yeah, so that was amazing because that was what the inquiry was just happening spontaneously about. You know what is very interesting for me in these conversations that I'm having with with the few people and and it it it uh bubbled up quite a few times is the realization that this interubjective connection that you are describing because we are together in in this recognition of of the non-separation was there from the beginning that was actually what was there from the beginning because I think I had I had personally a wrong impression of uh the later intersubjective breakthrough we can talk about that yes brought something into into the world that was not there before. But the more I hear all of you uh witness what happened there, the more I realize, no, this was actually what Andrew was calling for or evoking or from the beginning. Mhm. and and everybody who who fell into this this non-dual state could then connect to to each other in the same state in this in this way and and that I think that that's so mysterious and miraculous and wonderful and and I was thinking about we can probably talk about that how how long it was sustained from this from this beginner beginning group. Yeah. What you what you describe what Steve described what I heard from Murray what I heard from Ala even it it was just there. Yes. But then how how did it how did it evolve? How how was it moving forward? because I understand that it couldn't be held in that depth of of in that natural depth that was evoked and that's probably where it started to get more difficult when this natural state was not all the time natural in everybody that was connected. Would you agree? I would I think it's uh it's a really important point because what because actually just to say I agree with you. I think this phenomenon of interubjectivity that's awake that is literally a an intersubjectivity of an awakened consciousness. That's what was happening. Uh but it was it was um yeah as you said it it was not ultimately sustained but what was happening at the time that I think helped sustain it was the conditions we all kind of were like this was what was happening in our lives and people's work they were putting it you know people people were still working in Devon but coming in but this was like the central part right and for better or for worse things were getting sort push back and back burner in in our lives taking less priority. So there was this singularity of focus and um engagement right that was it and I think that those conditions helped that people were moved from or visiting from America even and from from Europe etc were living in these big houses and they were during that period not working right so they were they had this sort of yeah perfect conditions really for this to just develop amongst itself, but there was no consciousness. Oh, but we weren't self-consciously going. We were just in it, you know. It was literally Exactly. And but as you said, um you know, that that did fade and um and then over time and it it went on for quite a while because we traveled to different European cities and I remember towards the end of Andrew's time in Europe, we all went he went to Rome. was invited to Rome and um we all went 100 of us went to Rome and it was like this sort of I don't mean to diminish it or be trivial was sort of like a rock tour or something people were just free you know but uh but but really focused on this so you know time and comfort we were sleeping in on floors and buildings and you know it was just very full you know and there was a lot of because of the nature of it was super engaging and supercharging in a sense you know so we weren't sleeping that much but then there was a there was a lot of joy which there is at the heart of spiritual experience is is that you know so but it wasn't just a bliss festival which I think some people have a little bit reduced it to so I wouldn't want to say that but later um well I want to sort of Fast forward to California really where I think the biggest change happened. Um because we there was a period in Massachusetts which I think other people have spoken about where we were all living in these different houses and you know a lot of us had brought our kids taken our children out of school and you know it was pretty wild. We're living in these houses but there was a very similar it was similar you know this is what we were doing and there was incredible and people were coming in from America and it was extraordinary time extraordinary dialogues and experience I think the rumblings of other things had started then and but when we went to California and we started to live in houses many of us had to work and um you know we I for myself you know I'd taken this time out and all of this and um so a lot of us and because we weren't American citizens, you know, if you think about there was a huge transference population from Europe, could have been a hundred people close to that, we were all having to do these sort of, you know, black market kind of jobs, you know, this sort of what do you call it this sort of secret economy. Um yeah. Yeah. And so they and a lot of that meant very manual work, very menial work. And but none of us cared to be honest, Danielle, it didn't matter because that's what we were doing to support what we were doing. And um but what it meant was is that sort of container where we were like 100% of the time focused, you know, was no longer we were out working and this and that. So I'm now thinking, I've thought about this in the last few years. We were then still living in houses, but what began to happen was that those old structures of personality were starting to emerge and we were starting to sort of rub up against each other and you know this kind of thing. You know, basically want to use the word ego, you could say our ego was kind of reemerging because I think those conditions in a way allowed something to displace all of that. But and then Andrew noticed that um he was very aware this was happening and I think other people have spoken about he started he realized oh we have to we need to meditate we need practices and you know all of this began but it was to address this because he realized that for all his students actually you know this would this didn't hold in the way it had apparently with him and um but I think it was that I think because I've had I've also had that experience you know when I first left India after those seven years and went to live in in in England I suddenly felt my consciousness change because I didn't I was suddenly in the west and having to pay bills and all of that. So that that's an interesting point. So I think that with that change it was apparent that more work had to happen and there needed to be more self-awareness and etc etc and that initiated that whole period. Now this inter subjective was still there but the focus became more it was definitely there but the focus became more on oneself on the individual to um we didn't use the word purify at all but it was more about becoming aware developing self-awareness doing work on oneself you know in order to be able to carry this together and develop it but that's in itself felt very interesting. I find like what you're describing is that as long as you fell into this natural state of awakened awareness, the personal was gone naturally and and that the coming together came from this different place from the place of non-separation. And then when when when the personality sneaks in again or ego or however we want to call it then then you wanna you want to find out what you can do to to get back to the other state. Yeah. Well, I think it was Yeah. I think I don't think Andrew saw it as getting back but I think over time and I forgive me D and I can't remember the exact timeline because obviously there was a lot of conversation about this going on within Andrew and you know some of us as it was happening which was interesting and um I think there was the awareness that it wasn't to get back to state but it was like well how do we mature the vehicles which us right and it was yeah that's also what he would have said right at the end now like he he taught a lot uh how to become experiences independent I called it in one of the the teachings and he encouraged us to to live up to the experiences we had without having to seek them again and again having to to rediscover them again and again but just trust the reality of the experiences but then see okay but that what does that mean to live my life exactly and I I I was always struck by this as a very very helpful teaching for everybody like to because so we saw here in the south we saw so many people chasing after experiences they had 10 years ago 15 years ago 20 years ago and you felt like they were contracted in this trying to re recreate those experiences. Yes. Instead of being happy to have a having had them and then live up exactly to it in how you live your life and explore what its implications are for us as as human beings. Right. That was that was you see these were the things that really attracted me to you know there's been a lot of things said and we will get into that really I'm very aware of the complexity and the contradictions and the paradoxes and extreme sometimes extreme paradoxes within this history but I'm just we're discussing part of it right now which is really I think very important because it's um it's why we were there and I think it's very easy too just to say for us to forget that um and to focus on perhaps the traumas we have especially if they were you know what we left with you know some people left with that so I'm just saying that this was what and obviously people would say it differently they might have experienced it slightly differently but we were there for a reason we were there for this reason and we were all there for this and personally I was very attracted atted to what you just said to the idea it wasn't just about an experience that you have to keep having. I was always very attracted to how do you live this? Well, not just how do I live, how do I live it, but also what's the potential of this? I felt that in myself. Yes. And here was a teacher who was over time that became what Andrew really became what he was what he was about, what his teaching was really about. And at the time that was quite radical because most spiritual teachers it was really about the individual. And you know in your own quote enlightenment or sator or awakening but there wasn't a lot about what that could mean for culture itself and that's was always from the from early on not from the very beginning because Andrew's emphasis in the very beginning too was on awakening but because this other thing happened it shifted he suddenly became aware of the implications of his own of what was happening. Um yeah so that really attracted me and the other thing that happened that was very significant at that time in California was we were living in these houses and because these sort of you know sometimes difficulties would arise and you know we we didn't really have a way of dealing with them properly did you know and people would question if we ever did but you know we didn't have an understanding really of what was happening and so some people would leave, they'd go, "Okay, you know, I'm I'm gone." And it wasn't a big thing. Like Andrew had been their teacher and they left. They just were like, "This not really happening for me anymore." So Andrew realized, and I remember the conversations about this a lot. Everything was very in process, you know, learning on the way, so to say. Uh that actually commitments needed at a certain point. You have to commit to each other, not to him, but to each other, to what we're doing. There has to be some degree of commitment. Otherwise, you can just walk away and everyone else has kind of left and it always has an effect when you're close. So, that's where the very beginnings of the idea of a formal community came from. It was out of what was perceived as a a necessary step to allow development to happen, right, and be supported. So we needed to know we're all going to be here for that, right? Exactly. Yeah. So that's where that the formality h began the formalization. Yeah. Um did you feel that at that time you like the song or the people that were around Andrew could could see this need? I'm asking this because I can say for myself in in the last years how much of a difference it makes to be together with people that are committed versus to people that that uh mainly are consumers of of transmission of teaching or if you if you are are with people that that want to give to this shared project that want to that want to be fully there for for what is what is emerging what is happening and and that is a big So I'm curious if at that time that that was something that was held by you as a collective. Yes. Um well it's a good question. Um because also I'm thinking what did I what have I understood since and what did I understand there? It's sometimes hard to to know to be honest. But and also I just want to say I wouldn't at that time I don't there were very few consumers. Everyone was sort of there was such a sincerity in the people coming to Andrew that and what I'm saying is it's not that these people weren't committed but I think some people just thought you know this is not for me or whatever and probably because we didn't have a clear kind of structure or way of of responding to these difficulties sometimes people just felt you know I don't need this you know so it's not that then they might have continued to come to satsums or they might continued in other ways but um the reason I was aware of it because I think I was um there weren't like senior people or anything then but I was part of the conversations that happened because in those days too Andrew would have these conversations with lots of us you know and um there was no seniority at that time because we all been in the same time so um a lot of things were always discussed together and some of them were happening in his house. You know, you always had a household. Um but he would also you'd be out to dinner together, a group of you, and we'd start discussing these things. So there weren't such lines as developed later. Um so I was clear about that that that did happen, those discussions at that time. So I think yes, there was an awareness of it amongst some of us anyway as to why that happened. Yeah. Um, yeah. So, but it was um I wanted to just say too, I listened to the beautiful um conversation I had. I haven't listened to lots of other ones yet, but I listened to the one of the most recent I think with the two younger students from India. Max. Yeah. Yeah. And um what they were describing about how Andrew was like they had this sort of time with him informal. It was exactly like that in the early days, Daniela. So, you know, it really, you know, we'd all go to picnics in Tampa, you know, on the beach in California. We'd all go uh we'd all go to the movies together or go, you know, I mean, you know, we didn't have a lot of social time by any means, but we but we did a lot of those things together and um and just like they were describing, you know, people would people into music would go to jazz concerts with And all of this there was a mix. It's like nothing was separate though from what we were doing, right? There was never um so yeah, I just want to say there was that blend and it got it changed later because Andrew became more formalized in his position etc etc and uh so much less uh later on but there was always elements of that for sure you know and um or or just with certain people probably. Yes. Just for certain people that that was it too. That was very true. Yeah. So um Yes. California. So you all moved there and then how how did it continue from there? What are we timewise in California? I always forget. Mid9s. No late late 80s to Yeah. to mid 90 to midnight mid 90s. But I I was there late 80s. In fact, I was there were three of us who went over. It was Harry and Steve and I who went over to find this, you know, we had this idea that California would be this amazing place because of the 60s. Uh but it didn't quite turn out like that. But um but yeah, so we went over ahead. We were the scouts to find place for us all to live together and d so I was there from then but then I left in 93. Steve and I got together and I Andrew had just a few months earlier asked he and Chris to go and set up the London center and he asked me to go a few months late later. So I was part of those very early days in London of the London Center. But the California the other thing that was sticks out in my mind that I don't think has been talked about that much and is very controversial. So I'm a little nervous but Andrew it was during that time one of the magazines was devoted to gender exploring gender and the title of one of the one of the articles the key the key article leading article in that essay by Andrew the title is a little odd you know but it was um liberation without a face without the face. Yeah. And it sounds sort of little spooky, but what it really was, what Andrew was getting at in that, what he was feeling out was uh and became really a load, you know, load star for me was that he said, "What would it mean for women?" And this was, I would say, pre the awareness of trans that we have now, but I think it would apply there, too. What would it mean for a woman to be a woman and be liberated? What would it mean for a man to be Yeah. a man and be liberated? In other words, liberated from the conditioning and the identification with with sex, you know, with gender, sex and gender. what would it still mean to be a woman or a man or trans, you know, and I found that very it really impacted me, Daniela, because up to that point, you know, I was sort of also part of the generation that was in the west, you know, about women's liberation and, you know, always that was always, you know, quite very quite strong for me. And this was something different that Andrew was pointing to, you know, that was about women's rights and women's, you know, very valid in itself. This was different. This was looking at what would it mean to be a liberated human being. But that liberation, what would it mean literally as a question that would it look different? Would it not being expressed through a woman or through a man or in now through a trans person? And I found that really Yeah. I just it it became very uh yeah I felt it was a really profound question and had me too. I I I could I strongly connected to that question and I felt that his teaching about that was a jewel and and that very few people actually understood. No. and could be so empowering for for women and men but especially for women where I always felt like so many women especially like in the new age scene and and up to now still think I have to get the other part like the male part and then I'm full I'm liberated I'm full I'm I'm wholly me and his teaching pointed so beautifully to to us being able to be liberated without any other components needed. No, that's that's the liberation. Yeah. And without identifying find out exactly and then find out and how does this liberation look like when it comes to my female body or a male body or a trans body or whatever it is. Exactly. For me, this is still accelerating it. I still feel like it's such an important teaching. Yes, it is. And it's something that um anyway that inspired me after the community ended to write about to be honest two years later um not just that topic but really a lot of the implications of it which I'm had to put aside and still to be written to be finished but but I because I feel it's such an important uh particularly now we live in a world where any this identity with so many things not just sex in general. with everything, right? With politics, with race, with I mean, with just everything and but it's so divisive, you know, because it's lacking. And that's why this to me was so radical because you're reaching beneath those divisions, beneath those identities, but you're not erasing them. You're looking at what would it, you know, and that to me is like, wow. But there's, you know, um, for a lot of women, um, their experience at at Enlightenext was was very difficult. Um, and I mean, I, you know, even now, even saying what I'm saying would probably evoke quite a lot of emotion, some people. Um because you know the path for women Andrew and this is a bigger question right he had these unbelievable insights Daniela into into what to the possibility of what a world that was that was uh awakened would look like and could look like and not as a fixed image but these potentials that were there right if through the teaching through liberation teachings Uh but then the actual execution of how to do that often went very wrong. It it had profound some really profound it's so mixed. I mean that's the point and that's why it's very very complex and um and you know I find for myself we also we live in a world where binaries and the whole our whole history are with Andrew has been rendered into binaries largely up to you know pretty much fairly recently you know and those binaries exist in both of us I know from in in in all of us I know for myself sometimes I have reminiscences and I'm like oh my god, you know, and other times it's like, oh my god, they're both there. And yet um there's a deeper uh for myself. I feel this exploration for myself anyway and the people that I talk a lot about this with it's from that place that we actually met that's alive in all of us and the way we met Andrew that I feel this exploration can happen and is happening. Yeah. is happening in many cases and that's that's amazing where we kind of bear a lot but we also it frees you up to actually explore how things happened and where they happened and what the original intention was and what what messed them up really and where they were able to thrive and grow and develop and you know because both are true and as you know and and what I realized more and more from the conversations I'm having now, but also from many conversations I had with Andrew over the last nine years, is that as you said, while he saw certain things very clearly, like really clearly, more clear than probably many of us, he lacked the the the means to address it in in a in a way that was M that was helpful and and I I I see more and more that that is what in the end probably went wrong that and and sometimes the means did did lead to breakthrough. I mean I I also wanted it definitely led to breakthroughs and I mean I said it in another conversation I I think I was the last one that that that had some pushing that that was borderline that I'm only grateful for and that helped me a lot. So I I do know that that it could lead to breakthroughs. But I also see very clearly that and he admitted that that sometimes he didn't know anymore what to do because he saw the potential. He saw that people were in the way of their own development and he he he didn't have the means to to help them. Especially true with and he thought he did. He thought he did. Yeah. Because I think if he especially with the women Yeah. Especially with the women. I think if he had if he had been aware Daniela that he didn't have the means it could have gone a bit differently but you know it's all what it is but particularly with the women and just want to say it's quite interesting because obviously Andrew matured I don't don't want to go into I how much or whatever you're far more familiar with that and I think it's you know it's it's it's an open question but I definitely on some of this I know he put a lot of thought in, you know, I read his book and and also, you know, it was just clear from meeting him that that he' some of this he'd definitely engage with. Um, but I think it was the and I I don't want to repeat things other people have said, but it was the growing overconfidence because the thing that marked Andrew for the first I don't know how many years I would say 10, but I would think a little less than that was incredible innocence. Unbelievable innocence, right? He was not, you know, and like I said, even when he noticed things, he'd be talking about it with everybody else or other people, and he didn't have, he wasn't like, I've got the answer to this. This is it. Well, was never like that. And we were, as I said, in motion, right, a work in progress, including Andrew, and in that way. But over time, um, and I've thought about this more recently, too, Daniela. I mean this is just an ongoing contemplation but um what I think really changed things and perhaps also changed Andrew more than I think and changed the dynamics of the community was when um someone mentioned this I can't remember who but when the first sort of layer of leaders really went down in a very were taken you know taken out in in quite dramatic harsh you know the harsh ways and um it's been lots of written about that that did bring in for the first time fear and I think part of it was and it brought fear into me as someone who went through that an existential terror to be honest and it wasn't just fear oh I'm going to get you know harsh treatment or whatever it there was something existential about it and I was thinking about this recently and it's because I think of the nature of the relationship with Andrew. what we were talking about in the beginning that total meant that when behaviors started that one didn't understand or felt threatening to this you know to self it touched on it it felt existential and um so that that's that's interesting and so then just to say I mean I'm and I'm speaking for myself I don't obviously people have their own versions of this but one of the things that I think happened is that Andrew ended up being a guru and as we know when it went off the the sort of path pathological side of that is that he became very autocratic right I'm just saying that but that we also participated in that there was I hate the word cult but there were cultlike elements to that for sure you know of of um you know where you sold out your agency to something now this got to bear with me with this. But I thought part of it is that um I just know for myself when I was in those existential crises which for me Daniela lasted 14 years. I spent 14 years being thrown out, brought back in, you know, and leading things and, you know, part of incredible things, part of, you know, but 14 years from 96 to 2010, I think, was the last time I was out. But and during that time, a lot happened. I'm not saying I was just out. I was very engaged and I was brought back in and but um what I was thinking about that was uh I've lost my thread thread here. Um oh yes for myself that fear it affected me in certain ways that I'm not very proud of. Right? it created fear in me. So that um I was always kind I've always been a quite a um um you know I'll say what I think kind of thing right and I'll follow what I think is real true even you know and then if I find out it's wrong I'll you know correct hopefully you know and but I began there were times where I did not follow what I thought was true and there was an erosion of my I was fearful and I would be I would want to Please, Andrew, you know, in terms of I did because I didn't know what the answer was. And this is often in a I didn't sell anyone out. I always want to say that, but in terms of myself, I would try to give him answers I thought were what was needed that I didn't feel good about, you know, to be honest. And that is where when you start doing that, you are I am creating a cult. I've made something. and Andrew, you know, so it was built, I think, it was co-created really and I'm not saying that the responsibilities were equal in that at all, but I'm just trying to understand the phenomena because the other side of this that I want to say is that there were numerous times the reason I came back was because usually I would step out of that state and respond just authentically. I wouldn't think I had the answer and I would just be authentic and Andrew was the very first person to recognize that. To recognize that. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Bring me back in, you know, immediately. The problem is I'd be hurled back into quote leading the women or doing so, you know, and I'd be like, "Oh my god, no." You know, now I'm back. Yeah. So, it was a bit of like that. But that that was always there with Andrew. And that's why the complexity of this is so true. And it wasn't just one thing or the other. They weren't they didn't they didn't balance each other out. But but there was it just true. And and in that I have to say for me that um you know I also learned a lot about myself you know how I respond under extreme how I you know all of this and you know I've learned a lot from the negative things that have happened and I've learned a lot and I've also realized came to realize how for some people who left it was absolutely the right an empowering thing for them to do. It just was for me. It wasn't, you know, for me. I It just wasn't. And um and I want to honor that because I feel, you know, that there's so much diversity of experience and perspective on our time. And some people I really do feel due to what you said, you know, Andrew's lack of capacity to respond in with more nuance to people's development also his own shadows to be honest that were just just were shadows um like we all have. And the problem is he was unaware of them because he had this blanket uh idea of being beyond them. and trusting himself and all of that. So that was a complication. But I think a lot of the diversity comes because people left at different times with very different experiences. And I feel in a way I'm grateful for my experience. I'm not saying everyone should have had that for sure. You know, I think for other people it was incredibly empowering to leave and they they went on and found themselves and developed themselves and there's all kind of variations on this story, but for me I I um I feel grateful because I went through so many different things and where we ended up is is complicated place too. But um there was a lot that was um yeah I'm very grateful for and a lot of it has to do with the women which many many unfortunately women have no idea of because they weren't there and uh they lived through the worst and um or the most challenging put it that way but you know what happened and I don't know if you want me to talk a bit about what happened with the women but I'd like to do that because I think no one it's very rarely talked about yeah we can I just wanted to add one thing and and then let let's go to the the woman women question uh you talked about his innocence at the beginning in the first 10 10 years and hearing that what I find fascinating is he found back to that innocence in the last nine years and I just wanted to share that with you because that was People always say Andrew hadn't changed which is which is just so not true. And one of the biggest change is that he found back to this innocence in a very beautiful way and in a way that made him totally open to to look out into the world and and just let it in and not draw any conclusions and and really stay in this innocent state. and and that's also the place from where he he was teaching in let's say in the last five years or yeah I cannot really put it in the time frame but he developed after the crash towards this innocence again and it's almost like when I hear you it's almost like closing a circle where where he ended up in that place again and and was content there and and uh right it was beautiful to see yes so closely that that he that he ended up there again and and also encourage that in us to be right not have this fixed positions or fixed ambitions or like just be open to to respond to life like it was very interesting it it went from being focused on aross and the go baby spirit. Yeah. To actually respond to what is in the here and now like like literally in the in the present moment and and but to respond not to lean back, not to not to uh just be passive. He he still encourages us to be active but but responding to what is to to let it all in and respond in the most appropriate way. Right. And that that's I think that's one of the biggest changes to his to his teachings to not have this this kind of just drive drive drive drive drive go baby go but but literally look first see what is there. Yes. And then as good as we can as good as we can respond to to life from that place knowing that we never see everything. He he was very clear at the end facing everything and avoiding nothing is never possible. We cannot face everything and we cannot avoid nothing. But we can try to to capture as much of reality as we can and expand our understanding of life and then respond with right beauty, goodness and truth to what we see. And yeah. No. Well, that is still such a beautiful teaching. That is that's and that is Daniela I think a change you know quite a radical change from the go kind of very masculine go baby go you know without and and you know you've heard it all the sort of person doesn't count it's the you know missiondriven at the expense of people that I think really did change in Andra I could feel that when I oh well you've said that but I also So I experienced it in meeting him there was something different on that level. I could definitely feel that and um because those were the kind of apart from the personal some scars or shadows or whatever you want to say or errors or lack of self-nowledge these were the teaching things that need that you know needed to to evolve and change. Exactly. Yeah. And that's that's a wonderful thing because one of the major contributors to it wasn't the major wasn't I don't think the major the most major one but uh that contributed was this um yeah that people didn't matter really that we're all part of we're kind of mechanism we were kind of cogs in something which sounds very mechanistic but there was a lot of the humanity taken out and at the same time Andrew could be the most human person right to the end with one. So this is also why and I've tried because a lot of people have said why did you stay and I'm like well it wasn't one thing you know there was still and also by then we were we had all changed right we had all evolved and moved. So a lot was happening in the student body particularly, you know, that was very creative and change that was happening wasn't dependent on Andrew directly anymore in any way at all. So you know that was and he I think was mixed about that. Some of it he really liked to see and others he felt threatened by. So the whole thing is so complex, right? It's very um and that humanity that how Andrew could be so tender and just un you know just yeah just right there with somebody never left either. So it's it's just very hard to pin down but with the Yeah, it really really is. But um but that sounds like a very dramatic change actually and an important really important one because uh Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And and at the same time, I also still loved his his pointing to a transpersonal way of being together. Like he he did include the our humanity much in a in a much deeper way and in a profound way and and and also the the human frailty and and all our Yeah. the shadows and everything. But underneath it, there was still the transpersonal that I love because I I I'm not good in this overly personal everything points to myself psychological uh things. So that that is still something that I I was very happy that this that this stayed in this teaching and and points to a place where we can be in our full humanity without becoming overly pointing to ourselves constantly. No. Well, I think this is um to me also this was one of the great gifts of Andrew's teaching. Yeah. And um but it's interesting because just to unpack this a little bit Daniela because I think for a lot of us that was very refreshing because very few people who came to Andrew were into a very personal you know uh kind of teaching and his teaching on impersonality was misunderstood by some people outside. They they kind of mix that up with a what we were just talking about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That they tend to conflate the two. But I'm that the kind of not teachings at the expense of people is not what I was talking about. It's not the impersonality. That to me was incredibly refreshing and allowed us eventually. It took I mean it to be honest it took a long time I think for the community as a whole and I can speak for myself to really understand that and be able to absorb it ourselves. Mhm. But the this is another one of the ultimate contradictions because Andrew had this that I think is a very profound understanding of human humanity and how we can even work with ourselves with this um impersonality um that the understanding of it. But he at the same time when he was responding to someone to what to their either genuine egoic structure or whatever maybe not maybe his perceived idea or or whatever else. It was very personal. It felt very personal. It was very and often very punitive which is very different than the actual teaching itself. right? Which is that these things are not personal to one. They're structures that we all inhabit. And some of us occupy certain structures more than others, but they're part of being human beings, right? And part of the spiritual path is that we develop the capacity to see through these things to go, oh, and to Yeah. Yeah. You know, this is the beauty of the evolutionary part of Andrew. we can actually be agents in our own evolution and and and you know to be honest Taka who I want to bring out at some point who Andrew regarded as an elder sister and some of us met with I remember I had a dialogue with her once and she said perception of bondage is the first step to liberation. Oh yeah. To to to liberating the the this part, not to the awakening, but to this, right? To really understanding. And that's that's what that teaching of quote so-called impersonality was about. And interestingly enough, um but you see this is part of Andrew's the complexity about him and the contradictions is he did not apply that. It didn't wasn't applied to most of the students. Very rarely very rarely. And I think that changed too very much which you can speak to. But that's why it often felt we were isolated. We were exiled. We were literally seen as you know tainted. It felt very punitive. You couldn't often see why you were being sent away or being having to do this or that. You just wasn't understanding. And Andrew wasn't able to explain it. It was you know just but just to say fast forward amongst the women who we went through individually and collectively a very difficult time over those years. And part of another one of the ironies of Andrew is his understanding of gender and his perception of cultural conditioning never went back to himself. We never heard about American conditioning and the and his own male male conditioning was never New York New York Jew conditioning. Exactly. You never you know uh so those two in him were never or in the community American conditioning. I don't remember that ever being talked about. But the male conditioning was um pretty I would say limited compared to what was revealed about the women so to speak. But part of the problem Daniela was rather than this being seen as impersonal structures that have to do with history, they have to do with cultural condition, you know, all the different levels that we're conditioned by. It was seen that women have this thing. was almost sort of raified. It fixed then women are like this. And at one point Andrew terrified me actually once told made the analogy the spoke about the Buddha saying the dharma will never thrive in a saur once women get ordained and I was like oh my god I I literally went through a whole night of real terror around that contemplation of that and is that really what the Buddha really mean and all that. So it wasn't well handled despite this brilliant profound insight Andrew had early on and um you know a lot of women we more identified with the worst parts of ourselves actually and you know that that we were constantly struggling against that rather than exploring it and being freed from it etc etc and even I have to say I think that certain conditions evoke structures. They bring them alive. um they can evoke that and that's what I mean about you know when you're under a lot of fear and you know they can evoke certain very primitive dynamics and we were quite lost I have to say in those for quite some time and uh floundering um and then but eventually over time it wasn't just that and we weren't just victims I want to also say that because sometimes the women are portrayed a little bit like that there was a lot of incredible courage, incredible engagement, incredible um tenacity um and all the negative things too. you know that all of this we were in this sort of cauldron for many many years and then eventually I remember very clearly we we just stuck with it and we were we were when I say stuck with it we were really about women women coming together and women's liberation we knew that was potential so that's what we were working at even though it was it was a rough road and eventually we had this meeting and to be honest it was Elizabeth who had this Harvard training in psychology introduced us to um the sort of history of women's history and all the different structures right which are now quite common but for us that was so liberating because we're suddenly looking at the dynamics between us through this lens going way back and Danielle I cannot tell you you know how that transforms something because we put so much work in we were no longer this is you this is you this you know and I'm it was none of that. It was like oh my god look what we've been doing. Exactly. look what we look what we've been doing and beginning to understand yes not everyone did everything we're all different but we occupying structures and that led to really quite a some profound things and I have to say then we took on there was some very moving things in my heart there as a group of women we decide amongst ourselves we're going to do our own practices we at one point had a practice because some were the women were all over the world in different centers where we did a mara we had our own we created you know and we do it so it was 24 hours you know mala is 108 so we constantly so this this what we were chanting together was happening 24 hours a day you know and there was something we were connected in that and there was such a um you know it was fragile I have to say all of these you know everything was bumpy but this was quite major and eventually um anyway there's incredible story about this where we and Andrew recognized what was happening and we reached a kind of stability where following 2001 and the big explosion that had happened, we felt what had happened was of equal significance. It was dramatic really. And so we went to Andrew and it was very moving Daniela because uh at that point the male and female thing was quite separate. It wasn't great. men were quite elevated and um the women quite denigrated and um we went to Andrew who he was aware that this was happening and we demanded that we put up our own stone because there was this memorial to July 31st that we do our own and that it be for women and at first he was with another man and they were like you know but we gauged Andrew and this is the other I was there, you know, the three of us and we said, "No, Andrew, this is, you know, we really, really engaged him, Danielle, and suddenly I knew he was there. He flipped. He flipped from this sort of haha thing." He flipped. He was absolutely, he said, "Yes, go. You do it." You know, we did it. And when we did it, it was a cold day in Massachusetts. We had this beautiful sandstone rock. We had our own thing, our own sort of little thing we'd written on it to commemorate that night we'd had this profound experience of flipping ourselves to suddenly seeing these things are not personal and um helping each other from anyway Andrew was there and because you know he was he's our guru we had we came up some things we wanted to say we read some things and you know we as in the tradition. We put him up. I'll never forget Daniela. Andrew was trembling. There was so much vulnerability. There was just like he was he was as I had seen him in the early day just transparent, you know, and vulnerable because here it was extraordinary moment. And um we had our stone there and you know it was it was quite something. And the men were sort of standing in a group. I think it was I don't know what it was like for them but it was a very different moment where the women were sort of really claiming our own responsibility for our liberation with him but as our own body. Beautiful. Yeah. So that was um where is the stone now? Because the 2001 stone is out here in my garden. Well, the thing is things the thing didn't have a totally happy ending that particular story because after a while um it got taken down um you know because you know evolution you know it's it's you know you know what it's like there's movement forward step back movement forward and again one of my critiques of Andrew particularly it showed up particularly the women but it wasn't exclusive to was that he didn't handle those changes much. In fact, there were four occasions, Daniela, again, many people don't know, where women had the similar breakthrough as the 2001 and each before 2001. Before 2001, exactly. And all of them faltered, but they really just faulted on not a big big deal. But then the response was so strong from Andrew that the confidence that and now I know you know we all probably know these things take building and and again that was just what it was. Andrew didn't have the capacity and I think these deep conditioning he was conditioned by culture around men and women didn't allow that you know so eventually that stone got taken out and uh etc etc but I felt that what had happened and obviously for the women too it wasn't a smooth road different things happened but I felt that sisterhood at the core of it for me has never gone and what happened and yeah has never and he felt desperately about the sisterhood had had to be developed. I I know that he told me that so many times. I just wanted women to come together as men are used to come together in that intimacy where where there are no layers of protection. Mhm. But the problem was down there, I have to say that I feel Andrew was I believe that that he wanted that, but his idea of what that would look like was very male for a start. And he did sadly he did very most of what he did really destroyed that, you know, it just No, not at all. And um and but you know it that's why it's so complex you know I think we all felt the call and that's why we were there the you know I mean it's complicated you know it's it's just totally complicated. Yeah it is. And I I wanted to add Mary I I'm very aware how complicated it is. But then my memory of the time the years I was connected to Enlighten before the crash. I was there from 2008 was always and I was kind of in this outer ring of the committed core. Yeah. Like the ones that I I later learned from Andrew he didn't really take us so seriously. But anyway, what I wanted to say is I always felt there were very strong women in enlightened text and I love that because I'm I'm very uh discerning when it comes to to women. I I I I am not having an easy time to connect to women. I I was working in a male profession. I always had a lot of male colleagues and and I I always felt like it was easier to become friends with male uh people than than with women interestingly enough. But in enlighten this was different. There were women that I could look up to where I felt like that is a role model I would like to live up to. And so that's also part of the complex story. So while I believe you that many women really suffered uh they also developed and they they beautiful I completely agree and I think that um that's true that's sort of and they were incredible women and a lot of them I'm very close to actually still all these years later and some of them left during the time and we reconnected that with their I I completely agree Daniela a lot and they developed they were they were strong often they were strong individuals who came in anyway but they they really developed and the part of that development too was we had an environment that we could also develop in something we hadn't um spoken about much but um but We yeah it was it was pitted. You know there were times that were to be frank hellish and there were times where we would come through that hell still be working together. that builds that builds bonds that builds strength as well because you can't continue on if there's ultimate mistrust you know even though we went through very tough times together and um so you know I feel there was uh some really amazing women and that's why when women are sometimes portrayed as victims of Andrew I don't feel that we were there were definitely you know terrible things that happened but that what that's not the story of the women in lightex. I want to say that and the other thing Daniela that I wanted to uh bring out here is that I feel very grateful for and I think had huge effect on the whole community not just the women and again I appreciate for some people this was not for them. There's totally get that and we had no choice. This is the other thing in this black and white world of Andrew you were in you were in. It meant this. It was, you know, and I know that later he realized, gosh, not this didn't work for everybody and that it didn't mean throwing people out. It meant responding to what was needed and those things weren't there. But we did incredible amount of practice. And personally, I I guess my history, I loved that, right? We did the women. We did a thousand prostrations every morning from I think it was 4:00 or 5 to 6 to 4 6 to 7, you know, together in this big hall at Fox Hollow. We did them together. We'd go in and it was like a monastery, right? And we would just do these silently to on our own. Now, some people I discover later really didn't like that. I understand that. But I I did. And then we would go with Sha still in silence. We'd go and do an hour's meditation all together, men and women, and then go and have breakfast. That was how we began our day. And then every Sunday we would do a whole day of silent retreat. So we had this amazing kind of you know uh what do you call it sort of uh container that was charged because intermittently there were discussion groups every night or men and women's meetings some which were very traumatic. I had to go and they went through different phases but there was this amazing focus. Our life was around that and that had its traumatic times as you know it also has it amazing beautiful times you know where we were so in this together and my one of the last things I wanted to say that also just because it hasn't been mentioned and it might be that people have a very different view on it but after 2001 you after a while when we began to the whole community at first the women weren't allowed to participate and all this sort of stuff But later when we did we we not Andrew decided amongst us at Foxhol we wanted to really this time because we had had these experiences of breakthroughs and then falling back breakthrough ourselves and we wanted to help sustain it. So we came up this idea of having a 24-hour vigil. I'm sure you know about this. So we had it outside the meditation hall which was outside these massive dared pines. We did it for years and we had it so in the winter we would have this little tent with a can a lamp. We'd have blankets all around a snow up to the sides and we we had it so you'd do the chant and you wouldn't get up was never broken until the next person came. So it was dependent on each of us not to to wake up or else the person would be left there. We did this for years and Andrew supported it. It didn't come from him. But you see, when I have one very clear memory of sitting under this stars at about 2:00 in the morning and these big pine trees, you know, the wind and doing this challenging and I felt so lifted, you know, I just felt I was in the right place even though there were times I felt, you know, other times Yeah. you know, I went through a lot, but um so that there was this sort of spirit and care about what we were doing that we all shared. We knew we were trying to create a living, I don't know what you want to call it, but template that wasn't just for us that was for Yeah. Yeah. You know, that was going to be a you know, like not a template, but you know what I mean? A sort of Yeah. Yeah. You know, you know, it existed and therefore would be able to be and that's what it was about. That was always about for me. It was about this vision for what how we could develop as human beings together. And um I that never left me and still hasn't actually. Um and that's what excited me about this versus just the the more traditional enlightenment paths really. I agree. I feel the same. It still excites me. And uh as small as we were over the last years, this was still carrying us and and uh like like like a the seriousness of what Andrew was asking and also giving to to the project because with with with all the the the problems that were there and and also Andrew not handling everything. Uh well, he was serious about about the potential that he saw. Yeah. And that was that was contagious. I felt like like his seriousness and and like and as you said uh a little bit before like his or was it somebody else? his belief in one's potential for for awakening, for enlightenment, for liberation was so strong and and this is what what was driving him and uh what I admired to to the end because he he that he never lost and it it was so beautiful Mary in like he he gave sang until three weeks before he died. Yeah. Right. here in in my living room and every single day people came with all kind people from Kiru with all kind of questions and to see him and he was weak at that point already. His body was very weak. He could hardly walk into the hall. It was it was a a difficult situation. Then he was sitting down. He was meditating with everybody and then he took questions as as at the beginning probably and every single time when I listened to him I felt like he is giving the person the jewel for his liberation. Right. Right. Like this you know when when you feel like he he hits the target fully. He knows exactly what this person needs to hear. Not that many really took it for what it was. But but it was I could see it was right there and it was the only thing he was interested in in that moment. Yes. This one person where he could see what he needed to her or she needed to hear and that was the only thing that that he cared for in that moment. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. That that was and still is so moving. Yeah. No, it is. It is Daniela. And that's when a person did hear that that's why those meetings happened, right? So, and they happen with so many people, right? So many people, which is amazing. And that that formed a foundation. But I think I just wanted to say though that I wanted to I wanted to say that I I appreciate hearing when you mentioned that and that that innocence and trust reemerged in Andrew, right? Because part of to be honest that what I think this is all very tricky stuff but what I feel brought the community eventually down and I think there's a bigger level here I think it had to happen karmically when I look now from there I think things were not going to change to in the form they were in that's my take now but but Um part of the problem was the loss of that innocent Andrew had become overly identified himself with this um the autocratic side and you know this this whole thing and that that became as you know you know there was an impass but in that and I'm saying that with the caveat that it's not the whole picture either and when you say that it really is important because what happened was that um what I think brought destroyed the community I think this is a very important thing for people to understand because I read Andrew's book and the thing having been there to the end that he could not understand why we the senior people you know many of whom were teaching courses and you know doing stuff the time why we didn't quite take it forward in his absence and there's a very very clear reason which is also related to and that is because of the loss of innocence in Andrew and with that the loss of the cap any capacity to meet his own crisis and for a lot of people and you may have heard this Daniela that was profoundly disillusioning and so there was an eruption in the community at the center you know there were these different levels like you said and for people like yourself and even further up we had 500 people on these courses who Andrew wasn't their teacher they loved it and they loved the teaching and you know it was admin it was run by students you know yeah yeah online and then we had your body you know which was pretty serious I felt you know but it was it was you were living your lives but had never experienced that you know the the the moral path pathologies but you see but the inner one side. You had, you know, there were quite a number there who witnessed that. It was devastating. And they it it just literally was like a bomb went off in the middle. It imploded. And I just wanted to say and you can you know it's up to you what you want to keep in this or not but I personally Daniela I wanted to keep the teaching part going the education and I felt we could you know there was lots of people involved in that who really dedicated talented young you know and we were we were a team and um there was no wrong hierarchy amongst us. It was we were really together. And with that disillusionment, that team dissolved and there was literally no one. I was even going to ask the board for $600,000 from the sale of the property to keep that going. And I never could because there was nobody left to work with. And but for me, Daniela, it's not just I was not understanding the karma of the years because then what happened was there's a lot around this but because I was there and as you know um Andrew was going to do the last retreat in Tuscanyany so that the European students you know there could be a closure in a way before his sbatical. Um it was perceived by people who had left under very traumatic circumstances that I or whatever was an attempt to prop Andrew up and keep the old system going and keep all the bad that's how it was perceived and the degree of anger and pain and wroth that came directly I felt it I was on the front line of that made me realize wow there's a lot of karma behind our organization that I was not aware of aware. No, I wasn't. I I just to finish that why I wasn't because I should have been. I mean, I'm not saying I wasn't aware that there were, you know, bad there were there were um not healthy structures. I understand that there were people who had given up everything and felt on the outside. I I totally get I understood that is wrong. And we had even begun talking about how to change all that from within. But I when people left, the way it used to work was you didn't have anything to do with them. That was it. They left and they lived their own life. And I had a personal experience of that. One of someone I was incredibly close with left one time. I was actually out and uh when I came back, they'd gone. And I my perception I told them when we finally talked I said I felt abandoned by you. I thought you'd gone off and lived your wonderful life as a photographer and I was the ship was left the work we're doing. Her experience was exactly the same. I had abandoned her. So this misunderstanding I realized so much communication so much karma. I came to a different I thought look this is going to have to you know sometimes things have to fall to re for the shoots to re be able to um come out again and uh to be able to flourish with with you know with the learnings that's all yeah yeah it I do have a a clearer appreciation of how messy it was at crash time from all the conversations with Andrew, but also with with many of of the people that were there. It was just so messy in all kind of ways and all kinds. It's almost like everybody was out of his and her mind in a way. It was it was a traumatic experience for everybody. So yeah, what I still grapple with is is less this question why why it wasn't carried forward. that was that was bothering me for a time. But I understand that better. But what I'm still grappling with and therefore I'm happy to have these conversations now is why nobody seemed to be open enough to see that Andrew was changing and did change like till now Mary I almost almost daily I get emails through uh our websites of people who often don't even know Andrew or have been with Andrew 20 years ago telling me that Andrew never changed never will change never would have changed and that they know exactly what was going on and that was something that was very painful for me who was for the last nine years closest as close as you can be to Andrew and and supported him through the whole process and and he's obviously gave me a lot and I just found it so unfair that nobody really wanted to know about the changes or or wanted to reconnect in a in a real way. Not nobody like when you and Steve came uh that that was a that was a very beautiful experience of of connection just on the depths of what originally connected us all. Yes. Yes. And I would have loved to have more of that happening without having to process process each and everything that that happening because I don't think it's needed. Yeah. But just this is this deep connection that Yeah. And the love that is still there. I know the love is still there with people. No, it is. Yeah. In many many I mean I can't answer that Daniela but I I I think being there too I understood what you just said more how how painful that must have been and and obviously is for you and Ala. And I think there's probably multiple answers to that, you know, from Yeah. I mean, as you know, some people genuinely are locked in a trauma that they just still locked in and um they can't see beyond that pain. And you know, that's for all kind of reasons. And um I think it 10 years seems or 12 years seems a long time but it's also very little time in the when you put it in the context of the intensity and I don't mean that in in just a negative way but the intensity of what happened and those nearly almost three decades that you know it was all so extreme you know I mean everything, the good, the bad, the ugly, the painful, the traumatic, the cruel, the ecstatic, the tender, the the the transcendent, the, you know, everything was what, you know, it was that's why it was what it was. I'm not saying the negative, but the the tenner of everything of everything in I think allowed that magic, the magic that everybody experienced at one time or other. And I'm not saying that they also didn't experience, you know, and and got left with trauma, but everyone, we wouldn't have been there if it hadn't been there. And we were all called to that. There was something in us that did that. And that brought this incredible magic and led to the amazing things as we've talked a little bit about. But the interubjective, the interubjective, you know, this dialogue, the interubjective inquiry, the you all of these things, the the the sort of being becoming the emergent sort of awareness of emergence and all of this, right? And the agency, capacity for agency, etc. Um, all of that um came out of this, you know, it's amazing. And my prayer or hope or whatever and and and My life is about how do those develop momentum in their different ways too because the collective is you know in the more formal sense that's one way but elements of that teaching and when I say elements I don't mean broken off fractals because I understand what you're saying everything's in anything are happening amongst multiple people that is amazing it is like you you know, the flowering of the hundred flowers or whatever. Um, yeah. And at the same time, there are big wounds. There are big mis, you know, there a lot that we don't know, a lot that people don't know. Not a, you know, so I feel like Andrew's passing has, as we were saying, I think in the very beginning, shifted some, in some cases, it's it's made available again. I wouldn't say it definitely doesn't white. It doesn't it's not about that. It's not about erasing anything in history, but it's like being in touch with that the reason why we were together, which is a living thing. It's not a past thing. It's alive. And when we're in touch with that, it sh it doesn't erase anything, but it gives us a different way forward. That's what I think. And it and I think that that's my hope and prayer that more and more people are able to come together in that or develop their own um expression of that and be with others because even the ones that develop their own expression we're a lot of us are in touch. So you feel this. Yeah. Yeah. I think we spoke about it when I was there. This like network of arteries that have got different nodes, but they're fing they're nourishing each other. And I would want that. And I would want to say to anyone watching this who goes, "Okay, she's just at the same time the way that embraces the darkness, the trauma that that you know, I really feel that coming together in that deepest place and creating these new pathways forward that encompass everything is is is truly got so much potential, Daniela. so much potential for healing, but also the deep learning, you know, that's involved in this and the and the kind of what we can bring forward as human beings having absorbed all of it, right? Yeah. Just like you were saying, I think with Andrew, what I felt I could feel a lot more of the human in him. Yeah. I could feel that. I mean he didn't I just could see that that happened and whether how much more how much less whatever but in all of us there's enormous amount of learning that's so important for I mean we're in such a wounded world right now and such a broken world that um I think the experience of every single person is probably you know has something to bring to this. So yeah and exactly and and and the potential is still there to be relevant for for also cultural change and exactly the change of how how people can come together and Yeah. Yeah. So thank you so much. It was a real pleasure. Yeah. Thank you. [Music]