Andrew Cohen in India, Leading Satsang at the Sivananda ashram

and welcome Andre very popular it's a great pleasure to welcome Andrew back to Shand Ash I first met Andrew in New Year's Day 1995 it's such an honed to be speaking in this satsang Hall I can't express it in words so it's a this is quite a big deal for me to be sitting here I was sitting here when I sat down remembering uh when I had heard Swami jand and Swami chrishanda give satang here and I don't think I could have imagined that I would ever be speaking here myself so here we go in 1984 I was the first time I visited rishikesh as a seeker and um my wife uh had become a friend and a disciple of Swami Krishna nand and I had met in and I had met him as a result of as a result of that but I didn't really know him very well and I came into this Hall and he was sitting more or less where I'm sitting and he was giving a talk and I remember I don't remember what the talk was all about cuz I don't I don't remember anything that he said but he he he closed the he came to at the end of his talk he he he was basically saying that God or a spirit is Whispering there's there's a whisper there's a call and he says can you hear it and he said the he said the call or the whisper is come together and he kept repeating this do you hear it he said come together come together come together he said in unity there is strength come together come together come together in unity there is strength come together he kept repeating it and I I I went into a state of absorption I I could not move I went into a state of of like salar I couldn't move and there was something that he was transmitting in that moment to me I mean it obviously there were a lot of people there but there was something he was transmitting to me something that I received in that moment that had a very big effect on the way I be the way I began to teach now when I was a Seeker all I was interested in was my own Enlightenment I didn't really care about anything else I didn't care about saving the world I didn't care about transforming the world all I cared about was my own Liberation so when Swami was uttering those words and he and he made it very clear that this was this was that God was or Spirit was commanding us calling us to come together come together come together in unity there is strength come together come together come together so I remember after he was finished that talk I could not move I was completely absorbed something had happened to me as a result of hearing that and I did I remember I walked out of this satang room and I stumbled down the steps to the to the ganga and it took me a few hours to recover and I realized um years later after I actually became a teacher that I I'm convinced that in that moment in that during that satang he really he was transmitting something to me that became really the uh the the foundation of what it is that I began to teach when I began to teach what I call evolutionary Enlightenment and and what he was really saying was that if we are going to be able to affect change in the world this is something that we can't do alone that if we simply become uh a a singularly enlightened individual all by ourselves our ability to affect change in the world world is going to be severely limited