Andrew Cohen (born October 23, 1955) is an American spiritual teacher. He is an author, former editor of What Is Enlightenment? magazine, and founder of the global spiritual community EnlightenNext, which dissolved in 2013. Biography and beliefs Cohen was born in New York City into an upper-middle class secular Jewish family. Cohen recounts that his life was changed by a spontaneous experience of "cosmic consciousness" at the age of sixteen. At 22 years of age and after pursuing a career as a jazz musician, he began a quest to recover his earlier spiritual experience. He eventually met H. W. L. Poonja in 1986, a student of Ramana Maharshi, who taught that no mind effort is needed to attain enlightenment "because it is merely the realisation of what one already has". At their first meeting, Cohen realized that he "had always been free". He claimed that Poonja declared him his heir, so Cohen began to teach as a neo-Advaita teacher, and gathered a community around him. However Cohen only spent a short time in the presence of H. W. L. Poonja, who later claimed never to have given Cohen permission to give spiritual teachings. Within a few years, Cohen considered that the ecstatic experiences his students had in his presence were limited. Being convinced that he himself was fully free from karmic bondage, he began to demand more commitment from his students, insisting on complete "ego-transcendence". This change in teaching-style led to dissent and a break with Poonja, who Cohen felt had ethical and enlightened behavioral shortcomings. According to Cohen, "Poonja insisted that the realization of the Self had nothing to do with worldly behavior, and he did not believe fully transcending the ego was possible." According to Poonja, "Karmic tendencies remained after enlightenment, [but] the enlightened person was no longer identified with them and, therefore, did not accrue further karmic consequences." For Poonja, ethical standards were based on an understanding of duality and the notion of an individual agent, and were therefore not representative of Advaita: "For Poonja, the goal was the realisation of the self; the illusory realm of relative reality was ultimately irrelevant." Cohen did not agree, insisting instead on "flawless behavior" as the manifestation of enlightenment. In 1991, Cohen founded EnlightenNext magazine (under its former title, What Is Enlightenment?), which "established him as a major contemporary spiritual figure." In 2004, EnlightenNext magazine partnered with the Graduate Institute