An interview with Andrew Cohen

Feminism is the radical idea that women are human beings. Years ago, I bought a button with this slogan on it at a conference because I found the saying both poignant and outrageous—funny, sad and maddening. On the face of it, it seemed nonsensical. Of course women are human beings. Did it need to be said? Yet, there was the rub. Somehow it did. I didn’t take this to mean that men held the secret of “human being,” but there certainly was some very real way that, in the world in which we all lived, who men were and what they did mattered in a way that wasn’t available to women.

And I stood at ground zero, the center of a seismic movement, a wave of righteous rage and blazing passion that was going to tear up the very ground where we all stood, rip the moldy fabric of society and forge new bonds between women and between women and men to create an entirely new, unknown possibility for both women and men to matter. Nothing else on the planet was important but this. This was the movement for women’s liberation in the late seventies and early eighties. I was part of it; I was a feminist. This was utter, complete revolution.

Or so I thought. Something happened on the way to the revolution. It didn’t happen. Not that the social world hasn’t changed somewhat, but the radical promise of women’s liberation for all humanity has been swallowed up by the status quo without much more than a bit of indigestion now and again. In my naïveté and fervor, I would never have predicted that. Nor would I have predicted that I would be thrilled to interview a man about true human liberation beyond gender. Twenty years ago, had someone made that prediction, I would have laughed—oh, yeah, right! Amazingly, much to my surprise and joy, Andrew Cohen’s call for the total, absolute liberation of women and men holds the true promise of revolution that the women’s movement only hinted at.

Feminism is the radical idea that women are human beings. I don’t know when the term “feminism” was first used, but in the popular press, and in my high school, the movement or ideology or hope for women’s freedom was known as “women’s lib” (or, too often, “women’s lip”). “Feminism” seemed to take the word “feminine” and give it a kick. But a difference has evolved between women’s liberation and feminism. In the past twenty years, women’s liberation, a movement for social change, became feminism, an ideology. In that transition, it moved (as I did, too) from the streets into the academy, from whispers in the women’s room to endless discourse in gender studies, from a nuanced realization of shared experience to an aggressive individualism further fragmented by identity politics. I began to fear that feminism was rapidly becoming a confusing set of ideas that divided us as human beings. Somehow, the passion had gone out of the revolution.

For me, the movement had always been about passion. It seemed perfectly obvious to me, from a very early age, that something was very wrong between men and women. My mother, smart and strong as she was, was a victim and my father, as sweet and funny as he could be, really wanted it that way—even to the point of getting pleasure out of his dominance. Even as I sided with my mother, I never lost touch with the pain evident in my father’s stance of domination. Women’s liberation obviously had to be a movement to liberate women and men from the distortions and limitations that turned us into dangerous strangers, the Other to each other. From where I stood, it never was a competition between women and men. It wasn’t a zero-sum game: If women win freedom, men then lose. Yes, we were often angry (and some of us, unfortunately, still are) as we came to see just how deep and how oppressive is this system accurately called “patriarchy.” And that anger was often directed at men. But feminism’s radical idea didn’t mean that men were either the enemy or the standard for human being. To me, it meant that I knew in the deepest part of myself that what was happening between men and women, who men are and who women are, had to change and could change. And that it would transform life as we know it.

But what was that change? Did it mean that men and women were simply human beings and there would no longer be a sense of men as a group or women as a group? Then the differences among men and women would be as pronounced as those between men and women. Or did men and women being human beings mean that women then could have access to all of what men had (which would make what men were doing now the standard for human being)? Did it mean that women’s roles should be valued as basic cultural values, not just relegated to the ghetto of women’s work? If so, an unimaginable shift would have to occur at every level of society.

It was beyond the imagination. We were trying to dig into something that was so core in all of us that we had no perspective. How could we tell what was real, true, authentic from what we had learned? The contradictions began to pile up. I remember a colleague working on a landmark case about domestic violence who told me of another woman lawyer on the case breaking down at one point because nearly every night when she went home, she was harassed and beaten by her husband. Or our constant struggle to keep women a priority while in a relationship with a man. Or the endless, often unvoiced conflict and falsehood among ourselves as “sisters”—and the rifts between us based on differences in race, ethnicity and class. The deeper we went, the more resistance there was—and often that resistance was in ourselves. Feminism’s idea lost its radical edge and revolutionary passion as we all found out that change was hard. We wanted what was familiar: We felt secure in playing sexual games, depending on men, having power as mothers.

Feminism has no answer to the question: What self is it that’s liberated? Our imaginations couldn’t go beyond what we knew—male roles or female roles, traditional masculinity or femininity, or some form of androgyny that is both together. Yes, feminism may be the radical idea that women are human beings, but the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question is: What does it mean to be a human being? Over the last twenty years, feminists have come to different conclusions about what this means. Some are just beginning to say aloud what they whispered in private: My god, do you think it’s all biology? In this, we are simply intelligent animals who, with our enormous brains, have the possibility to transcend our lower nature, but it’s useless to fight those biological drives that set men and women apart. And others have held on to the view that who we are is all a social construction, that everything that we are—from what we think to how we walk to what we value to how we experience ourselves in our bodies—has been learned from culture. There is nothing that is truly masculine or feminine. In fact, there is nothing real, true or authentic about us at all because we’ve been socially constructed. In this view, liberation comes from creating ourselves anew—getting our own construction permit, deconstructing the old self and making ourselves into whoever or whatever we want to be. One construction is as good
as another because nothing in our experience has any inherent truth or reality to it. Our only guide to self-invention, according to postmodern gender theory, is pleasure—whatever feels good, exciting, forbidden. We are free to play or perform genders, to do whatever we want without shame just because it’s a thrill. Neither of these views, to me, held forth the promise of human being that I had experienced in being alive. Neither seemed to offer a truly human liberation for men and women together.

By the time I met Andrew Cohen, I had come to a point where my fire for women’s liberation was nearly extinguished by cynicism. In my own research, I was more convinced than ever that questioning gender meant questioning the roots of society itself. The questions raised by the women’s movement twenty years (and longer) ago went to the core of everything in society. Gender holds the heart of culture. No wonder it was so difficult! I had come to understand the mechanisms by which we become psychologically almost inextricably attached to our identities as men and women. So much, but how much I didn’t know, of who we think we are came from cultural conditioning. Because we, as males and females, had such different experiences of culture, our psyches were differently shaped to fit into culture and so created us as if from different planets.

But there seemed to be no way out. I watched friends from the movement turning away from consciousness raising and collective action into a soothing “gynocentric” form of goddess spirituality. I found myself withdrawing from leadership as I saw feminism become a respectable profession—just another job—through which women competed (particularly with each other) for attention and power. The rifts between women of different classes and different racial/ethnic backgrounds seemed almost wider than ever before. I felt despair over the fact that I had never worked with a group of women who truly supported and trusted each other. So many of my friends were either stay-at-home moms or holding interesting jobs while having primary caretaking responsibility for the kids. They said it was just easier that way; besides, their husbands weren’t really interested. Our identities as women had become ingrown, turned in on themselves so that more than ever we identified with being women and hung on to whatever we felt that should mean. The questions were still so important, the stakes so high, but I didn’t see any answers.

My first actual meeting with Andrew Cohen came about after being interviewed for this magazine several years ago. From that experience, I knew that Andrew had a commitment to women’s freedom that was very unusual. I went to a one-day retreat that Andrew was leading in New York City and had a short conversation with him afterward. During the retreat, Andrew spoke a little about what he was discovering about gender conditioning—and each time he did, I almost leapt out of my seat because I was so thrilled. In my entire life, I had never been more nervous about meeting a person than I was in meeting him. Our meeting was fairly short—mostly because I was so anxious—but it had an extraordinary impact on me. During our talk, Andrew spoke passionately about his commitment to women’s real and profound liberation. He invited me to join him at a longer retreat if I found what he was saying interesting.

I found what he was saying more than interesting; it stirred something deep within me. Reflecting on the conversation, I realized what a huge commitment Andrew was making. Thinking about my experiences with Christianity and Buddhism, while I knew that both Christ and the Buddha taught men and women (which was extremely radical at the time), neither of their legacies has made a commitment to ensuring women’s freedom. In fact, in my own family, I had seen how Christianity had become a rationale for accepting oppression. Oh my god, I thought, he’s really going to take this on. I was deeply moved. Suddenly, I had the sense that the two main forces in my life—women’s liberation and spiritual seeking—might be connected in some very real and mysterious way.

Later, I realized that my experience of meeting Andrew was the first time I had met with a man (or woman) in a position of authority who respected me completely as a human being and wanted nothing from me except for me to express my full humanity. I was actually stunned by that realization. Andrew’s radical idea is that men and women both are human beings—and the reality of being a human being takes us far beyond anything that I could imagine. But it is always available to be experienced. I had to be in this. I realized that to not join Andrew in moving toward freedom for women, and women and men together, would make a lie out of my entire life.

I did go on a longer retreat with Andrew (more than one, in fact). And I have the extraordinary privilege to be a student of his. As students, Andrew has asked us to come together as women—to make real the promise of sisterhood that is the lost soul of the women’s movement. I am often reminded in this of the consciousness raising that first broke the isolation of my experience years ago. It’s only by coming together that something can change because our separation—from both a spiritual and cultural perspective—is what holds everything in place. And I’ve come to see my own experience as women’s experience in a way that radically implicates me and who I have thought myself to be. Through Andrew’s commitment to the freedom of women and men together, the revolution is finally alive and burning. In the following pages, Andrew reveals far more than a radical idea. He reveals a radical reality that challenges each of us individually and collectively to go beyond our known identities into the revolutionary heart of an unknown possibility for human being that destroys separation and otherness. There may be nothing else on the planet more important than this.

interview

Elizabeth Debold: The first question I have, Andrew, is about how our identification with being men or women is so primary; it’s so central. Freud observed that this basic identification was the core of personality development and of civilization the way it is now—that it is the basis of who we think we are. You have a teaching that you call “liberation without a face,” in which you state that one of the fundamental obstacles to liberation is this gender identification. Could you explain what “liberation without a face” is all about?



Andrew Cohen: In the liberated condition, what one is ultimately identifying with transcends any and all notions of self, including gender. And for most of us, one of the most fundamental components of the experience of a separate sense of self stems from overidentification with gender. We have been very conditioned by the cultures that we come from and are usually very identified with the particular gender that we happen to be a member of.


Now in the context of liberation, identification with any notion of self is recognized to be an obstacle to true freedom. So the goal would be to get to that point where we ultimately have no notion of who we are, yet where we discover who we are in every moment through being free from any prior notion of who we are, including that of being a man or a woman.


In relationship to these notions of gender, most men who we meet are very attached to the idea of being male, and usually experience a lot of fear and insecurity around the idea of being a man. In the same way, most women who we meet are very identified with their gender, with their sex, and also experience a tremendous amount of fear and insecurity in relationship to the fact that they’re women. Most men and most women give a great deal of energy and attention to being a man or being a woman. And many men and women give a tremendous amount of energy and attention not only to being a man or being a woman, but also to becoming a better man or a better woman, or to living up to some idea or ideal of the kind of man or woman that they want to be. But in relationship to the possibility of being a liberated person, all of this energy and attention, which stems from a fundamental sense of insecurity, is seen as a big distraction and as a fundamental impediment to a liberated condition.


The teaching of liberation without a face tells us that ultimately, our true nature is free of any and all notions of gender, of any notions of difference whatsoever. And it tells us that in order to discover the natural state, the natural and unself-conscious state or condition of man or woman, all the ideas and all the attachment we have about being a man or being a woman, as well as all the fear and insecurity that go along with that, have to be abandoned. We have to literally allow ourselves to forget who we are while at the same time not in any way deny the fact of our gender—that we are male, that we are female—and then discover after the fact who or what is the natural expression of our gender.


What I’m pointing to here is very subtle and very delicate. What I’m speaking about is: What would the expression of male or female gender look like and be like if it was free from any and all traces of self-consciousness? Obviously there are inherent differences between being a man and being a woman; along with the physical differences there are particular expressions of maleness and femaleness. But in order to discover what the natural manifestation of these gender differences actually is, we’d have to become so interested in our own liberation that we’d be willing to give up any and all attachment to being whatever gender we happen to be, and in doing so discover innocently what it’s actually like to be a man who’s not attached in any way to being a man, or what it’s like to be a woman who’s not in any way attached to being a woman. But at the same time, that man and that woman are not in any way hiding from or denying the fact of their gender and any differences or particular qualities there may be inherent in that. I’m speaking about an unselfconscious, utterly natural state of being that in no way avoids or denies the fact of gender, but that simply allows the natural expression of gender to reveal itself.


What I’m pointing to is something that has to be discovered through surrender, really. It’s through surrender and taking the enormous risk of not knowing. It’s a very big question. I’m speaking about giving up any and all notions about who we are in relationship to our gender, and then being willing to find out: What does it mean—what does it really mean—to be a man? What does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean to be a man who’s not attached to being a man, but at the same time is not in any way denying or avoiding the fact that he’s a man? What does it mean to be a woman who’s not in any way attached to being a woman, but at the same time is not avoiding or denying in any way the fact that she is a woman? This is something that is very unknown; it’s uncharted territory.



ED: Yes—I think we don’t really know what “man” or “woman” is. Can you say more about this fundamental insecurity that you were speaking about, which comes from all the ideas that we have about being a man or a woman?



AC: Well, from the perspective of liberation or enlightenment, any notions we have about being a particular person that we may feel that we are not living up to, or that we feel that we must, that we should or that we want to live up to, create a tremendous sense of insecurity and self-consciousness. And in that state, our relationship to reality and our relationship to our experience is all based upon the ideas in our mind that we’re always trying to live up to.


The attachment we have to ideas about who we feel we should be, or who we want to be, or who we might not be, creates a constant distraction for the mind and for our attention. And in a sense, we’re always trying to play a role; we’re always trying to live up to some idea about who we think we should be in relationship to notions of gender, notions of maleness and femaleness. So many of the ideas that we have about being men and women have nothing to do with our own natural condition. I think that’s something that most of us really don’t even have a sense of; it’s not something we’ve ever experienced. Again, what I’m pointing to is very subtle: It would be a condition where the man or the woman would be rooted in identification of Self that was free of gender, and yet at the same time they would be aware constantly, in retrospect, of their own reflection in time and space as being male or being female, and would see, after the fact, “Oh, this is who I am; this is what I look like.” They would see the reflection, or they would see the action, of a male or a female who was not attached in any way to being a male or a female. They personally would be free from any idea of being male or female in their innermost self. And then the expression of what it means to be a man or a woman would be a manifestation of liberation itself, literally.



ED: Only in this reflection would we find out what that is.



AC: Yes, one would be in a state where one was constantly finding out what that is, and there would be an inner revelation of what gender really is and what it means. It would be a sense of innocence for men and women alike. A man would constantly be discovering what it is, what it really means, to be a man. And a woman, in the same way, would also be in a state where she was constantly discovering what it means to be a woman. She wouldn’t be doing what most people do, which is trying to live up to preconceived ideas based on cultural imperatives. It would be something that, in a sense, would be constantly discovered and rediscovered, and defined and redefined, literally in every moment. There would be a sense of innocence, you see, in relationship to the notion of gender. And that’s what is missing, almost always, for men and women alike. For most individuals this whole notion of being a man or being a woman is so pregnant with ideas that are painfully fixed and rigid that there is literally no sense of innocence whatsoever, and that’s one of the many reasons why it’s so difficult for men and women to be able to get along together. It’s why it’s so difficult to really make any kind of rational sense out of this whole notion of gender anyway.



ED: Or what we’re doing here together.



AC: Yes. Yet the goal of liberation without a face is a natural state or a natural condition. And what that is, one doesn’t know, but it’s something that one would want to find out. Who am I as a man? Who would you be as a woman? Who would we be as man and woman if we were not in any way attached to the fact of our biological difference, and yet at the same time were in no way denying or avoiding that difference or whatever that may imply? That’s something we’d be interested to discover. But the only way we’d be able to do that is if we were willing to step beyond any and all notions of gender and of self altogether first, and be willing, once we did that, to actually stay there. So it’s a big price to pay to find out what a natural condition of man or woman would be.



ED: Especially since our whole culture is based on gender arrangements, it’s a big thing to realize that we don’t even know what being naturally male or female really is. Our ideas about gender are so present, yet still they have nothing to do, necessarily, with something that’s natural or spontaneous.



AC: Well, no. I think not only does it have nothing to do with anything that is natural or spontaneous, but almost all the ideas we have about being a man or being a woman are so burdened with pain, anxiety, fear and self-doubt. For many of us, the confusion around this question is excruciating because it is usually unending.





Women’s Liberation

and Liberation without a Face



ED: Andrew, I’d like to bring in and speak about some other perspectives from feminist theory and gender theory. There generally seem to be two goals that are offered as the goal of women’s or men’s liberation: One is the liberal perspective, which basically says that the goal is for men and women to be equal and, in other words, that there should be no difference in what they can do and what they can express.



AC: So the goal would be some form of androgyny?



ED: I think actually it’s more that everyone looks a lot more like men. I think that ends up being what it really means, because basically, in this view, the structure of society doesn’t change. You put women into the structure that’s already there. So what you get, mostly, are people who look more like men, the way we understand men right now. And the other perspective is the radical perspective, which says that men and women are different, and that we hold very different values as a result of those differences. In this perspective, what needs to happen is that those differences need to be acknowledged and made room for so that a bigger range of humanity, of human being, can be manifest, and that would require a radical transformation of the structures that we live in. There’s something very fundamental about how we think about ourselves that seems to be bottled in these two different perspectives. Are we equal? Or are we different? And what does that difference mean? I’m wondering, how do these two views relate to your teaching of liberation without a face?



AC: I don’t know if I understand the second one clearly.



ED: The second one is where we look at and acknowledge the differences that exist here now, but we also acknowledge that in the system that we’re in, since it values men and the way men think and function more than women, both maleness and femaleness are twisted in a certain way.



AC: So the second one respects fundamental differences that apparently exist—



ED: That apparently exist in order to make room for something larger in a human being. But it also argues that fundamental changes need to happen in society in order—



AC: To make room for those differences and to respect those differences.


ED: Exactly. So maybe we could look at these views one at a time.



AC: Well, the first view obviously forces women to conform to questionable patriarchal ideas and conventions. So that would seem to be very skewed. And a skewed approach to a bigger view would, I think, just help to perpetuate more gender confusion. The second view makes a lot of sense. But the question I would have is, from the point of view of liberation without a face: What are those differences really all about—based on a primary interest in liberation first and in gender second? Because when liberation is primary and the significance of gender differences is a secondary matter, then the context changes—and it changes the picture completely.



ED: I think that’s where feminism has often gotten stuck. And I think what’s happened as a result of that, actually, is that then the differences become paramount; they become the most important thing. And then there’s a celebration of, “I’m completely different than you are.” I have these qualities. This is what female is or feminine is, and this is what we should be celebrating. But you’re celebrating something that’s been skewed in the system already, so it becomes very confusing.



AC: Exactly. But what I’m speaking about takes more. I mean we really have to be willing to find out who we are instead of rebelling for the equal rights, in a sense, that we’ve been denied, that we do deserve. I’m speaking about something that transcends that completely. And so in liberation without a face, we have to be willing to give up the past. And we have to be willing to give up all the injustices of the past that did exist—that did exist, and that do exist right now. But you see, when we become interested in liberation, we then become interested in that which transcends time. And that points to a very different approach to discovering what equality really is.



ED: In the radical feminist view, you ultimately get to some kind of equality.



AC: Yes, but what that equality is based on is a presumption of fundamental difference, and the inherent difference is about as deep as it gets. The depth that transcends any and all difference isn’t there as a foundation, and that’s why it would be very different from what I’m speaking about.



ED: Actually, what you’re speaking about seems to be the only way out of the whole conundrum of how do you find out what’s true about being a man or a woman given the mess that we’re in right now.



AC: Right, in liberation without a face, we’re speaking about something very particular, because we’re speaking about liberation itself as the primary foundation for the inquiry into any and all notions of difference, including gender difference—that’s the foundation. From a place of no difference, from a perspective of no difference, from an interest and passion in no difference, then we look into the world of differences and really see what they’re all about.



ED: And from a point of no difference you’re not talking about androgyny—are you?



AC: No. I’m not talking about androgyny because there will be differences, because men and women are not the same. But what those differences actually are going to look like when they’re utterly free from self-consciousness is something that I think we have to find out. And even when we discover what they are, what an unselfconscious expression of manhood or womanhood is, we still have to be willing to leave those differences alone and remain firmly established in the perspective and place of no difference. Because the minute any sense of difference becomes too important to us, even if it’s subtle, we lose that seat of liberation and we fall back again into the world of differences. So it’s a very delicate business.



ED: Absolutely. I can feel my own desire to know: “What are those differences, what would they be?”—and in that you pin something down and immediately lose touch with the delicate perspective that has just opened up.



AC: Right, but I’m speaking about a place where, from the point of no difference, differences are recognized. They’re recognized because they’re being expressed, but still there’s no attachment to them, and that’s the tricky part of it. Because whenever there is this investment in being different, in being a man or being a woman versus being that fullness of Self that’s free from any notion of difference and that lacks nothing, then we’ve fallen out of heaven and we’re in the world of becoming once again. And then liberation suddenly has a face again, and the unselfconscious, natural expression of gender isn’t possible anymore because then we’re attached to our difference rather than to that part of our self that could never have a face, that could never be different, that’s free from gender.



ED: One other question that I’ve thought a lot about and wanted to ask you is: What is the relationship between movements like the women’s movement or the men’s movement and the pursuit of enlightenment? Do they relate to each other at all?



AC: No, not at all.



ED: Could you say more about that? Don’t these movements open up some sense of possibility?



AC: They open up a tremendous sense of possibility, but one’s attention in the men’s movement or in the women’s movement is on inherent difference. It’s on the fundamental, inherent difference.



ED: It’s also on a set of problems.



AC: Yes, it’s on a set of problems, and those problems do exist. Those problems are real. And so, for example, in the women’s movement, women are coming together and courageously responding to oppression and subjugation. And in the men’s movement, a lot of men are recognizing that they have been forced to conform to a very narrow and rather two-dimensional picture of maleness and manhood that they have never had the freedom to question. But the point is that in both the men’s movement and the women’s movement, the focus is on becoming; one is still identified with being a woman or being a man, and one is trying to improve, for many of the right reasons, one’s personhood as a woman or as a man. But what I’m speaking about here is something very different—although there are many similarities and points where they meet. What I’m speaking about, as I’ve been saying all along, is putting our attention on that place where any and all notions of gender disappear, and then being in a condition where we’re discovering really who and what we are. We’re not rebelling—we’re not rebelling and we’re not identifying with being wounded. Many women identify with being wounded and being oppressed, and now men are identifying with being wounded because they feel they’ve been forced to conform to a certain mold that suffocates their humanity. This is all true. But in liberation without a face, one is endeavoring, ideally—and it’s not necessarily an easy thing to do—to leave the past behind.

Male and Female Paths



ED: Andrew, a number of thinkers and practitioners have spoken about a gender difference in spiritual pathways. These pathways seem to relate to men’s and women’s different experiences of embodiment. Women, they say, best pursue a path of immanence, deeply connecting to their embodiment and the cycles of nature and finding the sacred inherent in daily life; and men, on the other hand, seek transcendence, which often involves a mastery of or sometimes control over mind and body in order to reach the mystery beyond mind. Based on your experience as a spiritual teacher, do you feel that the path and the goal are fundamentally the same for all people?



AC: I have no doubt that they’re fundamentally the same for all people, assuming that the goal is enlightenment. But if the goal is anything less than that, then the path is going to be different, because then the whole notion of gender and difference, and the exploration of and fascination with what those differences are, is going to be a very big part of one’s spiritual path.



ED: What about at the level of practice? Are there different practices that seem to be more effective with women or men?



AC: Not when we’re speaking about enlightenment. If we’re thinking about any other kind of human development, then I think obviously the answer is yes. But when we’re speaking about seeing beyond the known, all human beings have to walk the same path and pay the same price.



ED: I’ve really been curious about some of the female mystics who seem to have had enlightenment or ultimate liberation as their goal, but the kinds of things that they were drawn to in order to get there often seem to be very different from what men are drawn toward.



AC: Well, I’m not familiar with whoever it is you’re referring to, but I’m suspicious of any man or woman who approaches their own liberation with any kind of gender bias.



ED: I don’t know if that’s where they’re coming from. I think it’s more that they’re questioning, where are my shackles, what is it that’s holding me? And I think for women, because of our greater identification with our bodies, there’s something particular that needs to be untied. And is it untied in the same way?



AC: Is it untied through more identification with one’s body? (Laughs) I don’t think so.



ED: Or fasting or certain things that allow a woman to see through her identification with her body?



AC: It is true that women tend to be more identified with their bodies because in this crazy world, too often, both men and women measure women’s value as human beings in relationship to their physical appearance. But in spite of that painful fact, a path to spiritual liberation that puts too much emphasis on any notion of difference as a starting point is bound to only strengthen the ego or the false and separate sense of self.



ED: I’m also thinking about, in addition to the women’s and men’s movements, the gay and lesbian liberation movements, and that there’s often an identification with sexual preference or the experience of sexuality as the basis of the spiritual path. What do you think about this approach?



AC: Well, I see profound disadvantages in this approach, because we’re making far too big a deal out of our sexual preferences, and in that we’re giving far too much attention to difference. It’s just another form of narcissism, and I think it can be a big problem and a tremendous obstacle. There is a danger in becoming too fascinated with any of these differences, because as I’ve already said, the degree to which we’re going to do that is the degree to which we’re never going to get near any kind of liberation. You can see there’s a tremendous temptation to become very fascinated with what these differences may be and lose touch with something that is far more important.



ED: This is something that is very subtle and very tricky. It seems like an incredibly fine line to walk down.



AC: Yes, because even in this conversation, when you asked this question about different paths for men and women, I could see that there was an excitement in that for you—you were saying, “I have a special path that’s unique for me.” And you see, in all of that is the problem. That should be a sign that it’s the wrong road. Because what you’re getting excited about is not no face, but a feminine face. It’s having a special road for the feminine vehicle that addresses her needs. And as long as that’s going to excite you as a woman, or as long as I’m going to get excited about a particular path that’s going to be unique to me as a man, then we’re still in the world of samsara [cyclic existence]. We’re still in the world of differences, and that’s what we’re going to get. What we’re going to get then is women’s liberation and men’s liberation.



ED: Right. And there’s no human liberation in that.



AC: Well, there’s no liberation without a face. So whatever examples that we may hear about of men and women who appeared to have achieved a state of liberation but who seemed to have had different paths are, I feel, ultimately irrelevant to the point I’m really trying to make. Because when a human being becomes very still—very, very still—so still that they begin to lose awareness and consciousness of their particular gender, and they are simply looking into that abyss where there is no notion of self whatsoever, the world disappears, and so does everything along with it. And that’s really the only place to go, and it’s the only place to remain. The excitement that you were feeling about a special, unique path for yourself as a woman is all part of your identification with and attachment to being female. And that’s ultimately all ego. So we have to be careful about that.


You see, what I’m speaking about is something that is not really from this world. It’s something that transcends it. And if you find that place, and then you look at this particular topic from that place, you’ll see that any fascination with difference is just more samsara, it’s just more ignorance.





Difference, Wholeness and Emptiness



ED: I wanted to ask you about the idea in many religious and spiritual traditions in which there are strictly differentiated roles for women and men, and where men and women strive to fulfill the ideals of these separate roles and then come together in some kind of wholeness. The idea is that men and women, individually, don’t express the unity of God’s vision for humanity, that it’s only through men and women coming together that this wholeness can be experienced and manifest. Do you see any strengths in this view?


AC: Well, the strength of that kind of perspective is that it presents a very holistic view of human life in the cosmos that’s very pleasing, very satisfying. It’s like opposites coming together, and in coming together they both experience wholeness. When you come together with your other half, you immediately experience a sense of wholeness and completeness.


But in my teaching, I don’t speak about two halves coming together in this way; there’s nothing tantric about my particular view on life. In the teaching of liberation without a face, the necessity of men and women coming together in order to become an expression of wholeness is a secondary priority. This is secondary because I feel that for men and women to be able to come together at all, men and women as individuals have to first become liberated from the need to have to come together with anyone, with any other. This experience of wholeness or completeness is something that, in my teaching, each man and each woman has to experience independently of any sense of relationship or relatedness to any other—especially to anyone of the opposite sex. I think that completeness first has to be found in our own Self. We have to consciously experience with utter doubtlessness that everything is already within us, that the whole universe is already within our own Self. And when we begin to experience some confidence in that, then we’re not going to be afraid of the other and also we’re not going to be burdened by the conviction that we need their presence or their embrace in order to experience any sense of fullness. And that’s what creates a forum for a kind of coming together and being together that is free from fundamental need and that’s quite revolutionary.



ED: You have beings who are whole coming together, not individuals who are desperately needing from each other.



AC: Yes, exactly. That’s the whole point. That means as a liberated man, as a liberated woman, I am already inherently full and complete as I am. Man doesn’t need woman and woman doesn’t need man in order to experience his or her inherent fullness. And it’s only when a man and a woman have experienced their own fullness of being, independent of any other, that it would be at all possible for them to come together in any kind of equality. Without that as a prerequisite, real equality, which means real partnership, is not even conceivable.



ED: What do you think about the view that there are important distinctions between male and female energies?



AC: Well, distinctions or differences between the male energy and vibration and the female energy and vibration obviously exist. The male energy and the female energy are an inherent part of being either male or female. And obviously there’s a certain polarity, and those polarities attract each other. This is part of the way the universe works. But the liberated perspective sees beyond all polarities and rests in a state of nondifference. So we can recognize these differences on a gross or subtle level, and see that in and of themselves, they don’t necessarily mean that much. We’re not denying those differences in ourselves or in the other, but that’s not where our attention is primarily directed if we want to be free.



ED: It’s just that the differences are there? They exist, they’re real.



AC: There’s a male form and a female form; and there’s a red rose and a pink rose, etc.



ED: What do you think about the view that both male and female energies exist within each man and woman, and that in order to become whole, men and women have to balance these male and female energies or qualities within themselves?



AC: Well, first of all, I’m not convinced that what are traditionally considered to be “male” energies or qualities or “female” energies or qualities really have as much to do with gender as many people think they do. In my experience, men are not necessarily less sensitive or compassionate than women are, and women are not necessarily any less aggressive or competitive than men are—as a matter of fact, often they are more so! (Laughs) I mean, one of the most extraordinary things about being a spiritual teacher is the rare privilege of being able to look deeply into the very souls of many human beings at the same time. It gives one a unique perspective on the human condition, some of which is breathtakingly glorious, and some of which is frighteningly destructive. These different energies or qualities that seem so distinct, while being very real, are more superficial than I think many people are aware of. The only thing is, not that many of us get beyond the superficial layers of our own being, and that’s why these differences appear to be so significant.


As for the need to “balance” male and female energies within ourselves in order to achieve wholeness . . . from the point of view of liberation without a face, the very notion of trying to “balance” any particular sense of self with another with the mind is the very self-consciousness that is the antithesis of the kind of brave leap into bold innocence that I have been speaking about. You see, we want to find out what it would be like to be a whole and fully integrated man or woman without being attached to the idea of being a man or woman—whatever that means. We don’t want to create this “balance” with our minds. We want to find out what it would look like without being attached to any preconceptions.



ED: It seems like trying to balance these different qualities can be an incredible trap for the mind.



AC: That’s right. And again, I think that making too much of a big deal out of these differences—as interesting and fascinating and compelling and relatively true as they may be—if one wants to really find out what it means to be a liberated human being, will tend to be just a big distraction.


You see, there are certain facts about maleness and femaleness that men and women are both very attached to. And to some degree these real differences are going to continue to exist—because men are still going to be men and women are still going to be women, no matter how liberated they become. But the individual male or female is no longer going to be identified with or attached to these differences. We are aware of these differences, but the ultimately empty nature of their significance is something that’s seen very directly. And that’s the whole point: When their ultimately empty nature is directly seen, the apparent significance falls away. At the same time, it’s not denied. I personally believe very strongly that unless one really sees through this with a lot of depth, it’s going to be almost impossible to get off the wheel of becoming. And I think that very few people actually do, because this is one of the hardest things to see through. A lot of people in spiritual life use the awareness of difference, and the spiritual glorification of difference, as a justification to indulge in that which is ultimately unreal.


As I’ve been saying, in the liberated vision, the liberated view, one sees beyond any and all notions of difference to an inherent fullness that is beyond all pairs of opposites, including male and female. That’s the liberated mind, that’s the liberated state, that’s the liberated perspective. And in liberation without a face, that’s the state of consciousness and the perspective that one strives to realize and experience directly for oneself—and, once realized, that one endeavors to live wholeheartedly in a world that recognizes only differences.





Elizabeth Debold received her doctorate in human development and psychology from Harvard University in 1996 and is author, with Marie Wilson and Idelisse Malave, of the best-selling Mother Daughter Revolution: From Good Girls to Great Women. She is a founding member of the Harvard Project on Women’s Psychology and Girl’s Development (directed by Carol Gilligan), former Vice President of the National Organization for Women in New York City, and a consultant to the Ms. Foundation. She is currently working on a book entitled Beyond Gender: Psychology, Culture and the Possibility of Transformation.