ICSA TODAY 20
Book Review
Paradise and Promises:
Chronicles of My Life
With a Self-Declared,
Modern-Day Buddha
By Marlowe Sand
Alresford, Hants, UK: O-Books, an imprint of John Hunt
Publishing, 2015. ISBN-10: 1782799907 ISBN-13: 978-178279990,
PCN: 2015931104 (paperback). 15.99£/$26.95 (Amazon.com:
$19.25). 264 pages.
Reviewed by Marcia R. Rudin
Marlowe Sand, (a nom de plume) has written an excellent
memoir about her 15 years—from 1986 to 2001—in what
throughout the book she calls The Community. Officially
known as EnlightenNext, the group was headed by self-styled
guru Andrew Cohen, who attained enlightenment in India but
based his teachings on his own personal experience rather
than on Eastern philosophy and religion.
Apparently always a seeker, at the suggestion of her
homeopathic therapist Marlowe went to a Satsang, an evening
session with Andrew in her small town of Totnes, in England.
She experienced ecstasy that night and an immediate
transformation. She continued to attend evening meetings
with Andrew, where she attempted to find total freedom
through denial of her selfhood. This process gradually led
Marlowe to leave her German husband and take her two small
daughters with her to follow Andrew to Mill Valley, California
and eventually to Foxhollow, a large former retreat center in
the Berkshire mountains of Massachusetts.
In Cohen’s group, followers lived communally, assigned
to houses and apartments and housemates according to
their spiritual status (i.e., approval from Andrew). Cohen
divided them into lay students and formal students—those
more serious and committed—and adherents constantly
ascended and descended the ladder. Living conditions and
locations depended on one’s metaphysical status, one’s
spiritual development. Consequently, Marlowe attributed
this unsettling arbitrariness to the formal students. So while
this constant seesaw of praise and criticism bothered her,
“Not knowing which way to turn among these students for
safety,” she explains, “I held onto the beacon that was Andrew.”
She didn’t realize until after she left the group that this rigid
hierarchy of followers acted only on the orders of Andrew, that
through them he completely controlled his members’ lives
through capricious evaluation of their spiritual quests.
And what a difficult life it was. In addition to working in the
outside world full time, doing difficult household tasks and
often spending large amounts of their own money on group
activities, moving frequently to different group houses, and
attempting to find time to raise her daughters, Marlowe
spent hours in house meetings and general meetings and
performed exhausting physical exercises and meditation. In
one startling passage, she tells us:
Every morning at 4 am, the three women in the
house cleared the living room of sofas, lay down our
eight-foot wooden boards, and placed a picture of
Andrew Cohen in front of us. We stood up straight,
raised our arms to the sky in prayer, fell to the
ground, and stretched the full length of our bodies
out on the wooden board, and slid up again to
standing. We did this 600 times [emphasis mine]…
(p. 124)
At first, Marlowe didn’t question either Andrew’s teachings or
the structure of the organization:
I half-understood that, by accepting the premise
that my vision was clouded and Andrew’s was clear, I
had become incapable of independently evaluating
what was going on. It crossed my mind that I was
losing my ability to draw conclusions for myself, but
I decided this would only be a problem if Andrew
were imperfect. … We wrapped ourselves in the
certainty that Andrew stood alone in defiance of the
ego … I therefore absorbed the hierarchal structure
and the value system believing it supported my
growth. (p. 84)
Marlowe and the other followers were extremely intelligent,
talented, and hardworking, accomplished professionals from
all over the world. Many contributed large amounts of money.
Cohen controlled his members by keeping them exhausted,
uprooting them frequently from their living situations, and
randomly changing his mind and teachings and policies and
approval/disapproval behavior toward them, thus purposely
leaving followers off balance and blaming all doubts on their
shortcomings. He forbade family and emotional ties unless
he gave his permission for followers to form a relationship
and only those with high status were allowed this privilege,
which could at any time be withdrawn. He was negligent if
not downright hostile, Marlowe tells the reader, toward her
children and the many other youngsters in the group. He filled
them with fear of leaving the group, telling his followers that,
as Marlowe quotes him, “Anyone who leaves will be haunted
for the rest of their lives.” Most important, Cohen, like other
cult leaders, conferred ontological reality upon his members,
what Robert J. Lifton terms Dispensing of Existence. Marlowe
reports that Andrew told his followers that, once they left the
group, “they ceased to exist as real people.”
Book Review
Paradise and Promises:
Chronicles of My Life
With a Self-Declared,
Modern-Day Buddha
By Marlowe Sand
Alresford, Hants, UK: O-Books, an imprint of John Hunt
Publishing, 2015. ISBN-10: 1782799907 ISBN-13: 978-178279990,
PCN: 2015931104 (paperback). 15.99£/$26.95 (Amazon.com:
$19.25). 264 pages.
Reviewed by Marcia R. Rudin
Marlowe Sand, (a nom de plume) has written an excellent
memoir about her 15 years—from 1986 to 2001—in what
throughout the book she calls The Community. Officially
known as EnlightenNext, the group was headed by self-styled
guru Andrew Cohen, who attained enlightenment in India but
based his teachings on his own personal experience rather
than on Eastern philosophy and religion.
Apparently always a seeker, at the suggestion of her
homeopathic therapist Marlowe went to a Satsang, an evening
session with Andrew in her small town of Totnes, in England.
She experienced ecstasy that night and an immediate
transformation. She continued to attend evening meetings
with Andrew, where she attempted to find total freedom
through denial of her selfhood. This process gradually led
Marlowe to leave her German husband and take her two small
daughters with her to follow Andrew to Mill Valley, California
and eventually to Foxhollow, a large former retreat center in
the Berkshire mountains of Massachusetts.
In Cohen’s group, followers lived communally, assigned
to houses and apartments and housemates according to
their spiritual status (i.e., approval from Andrew). Cohen
divided them into lay students and formal students—those
more serious and committed—and adherents constantly
ascended and descended the ladder. Living conditions and
locations depended on one’s metaphysical status, one’s
spiritual development. Consequently, Marlowe attributed
this unsettling arbitrariness to the formal students. So while
this constant seesaw of praise and criticism bothered her,
“Not knowing which way to turn among these students for
safety,” she explains, “I held onto the beacon that was Andrew.”
She didn’t realize until after she left the group that this rigid
hierarchy of followers acted only on the orders of Andrew, that
through them he completely controlled his members’ lives
through capricious evaluation of their spiritual quests.
And what a difficult life it was. In addition to working in the
outside world full time, doing difficult household tasks and
often spending large amounts of their own money on group
activities, moving frequently to different group houses, and
attempting to find time to raise her daughters, Marlowe
spent hours in house meetings and general meetings and
performed exhausting physical exercises and meditation. In
one startling passage, she tells us:
Every morning at 4 am, the three women in the
house cleared the living room of sofas, lay down our
eight-foot wooden boards, and placed a picture of
Andrew Cohen in front of us. We stood up straight,
raised our arms to the sky in prayer, fell to the
ground, and stretched the full length of our bodies
out on the wooden board, and slid up again to
standing. We did this 600 times [emphasis mine]…
(p. 124)
At first, Marlowe didn’t question either Andrew’s teachings or
the structure of the organization:
I half-understood that, by accepting the premise
that my vision was clouded and Andrew’s was clear, I
had become incapable of independently evaluating
what was going on. It crossed my mind that I was
losing my ability to draw conclusions for myself, but
I decided this would only be a problem if Andrew
were imperfect. … We wrapped ourselves in the
certainty that Andrew stood alone in defiance of the
ego … I therefore absorbed the hierarchal structure
and the value system believing it supported my
growth. (p. 84)
Marlowe and the other followers were extremely intelligent,
talented, and hardworking, accomplished professionals from
all over the world. Many contributed large amounts of money.
Cohen controlled his members by keeping them exhausted,
uprooting them frequently from their living situations, and
randomly changing his mind and teachings and policies and
approval/disapproval behavior toward them, thus purposely
leaving followers off balance and blaming all doubts on their
shortcomings. He forbade family and emotional ties unless
he gave his permission for followers to form a relationship
and only those with high status were allowed this privilege,
which could at any time be withdrawn. He was negligent if
not downright hostile, Marlowe tells the reader, toward her
children and the many other youngsters in the group. He filled
them with fear of leaving the group, telling his followers that,
as Marlowe quotes him, “Anyone who leaves will be haunted
for the rest of their lives.” Most important, Cohen, like other
cult leaders, conferred ontological reality upon his members,
what Robert J. Lifton terms Dispensing of Existence. Marlowe
reports that Andrew told his followers that, once they left the
group, “they ceased to exist as real people.”
