“Evolutionary enlightenment is about the ecstasy that compels us to create the future. And it’s not a future that’s going to unfold by itself while we go back to sleep. It’s a future that we forge the hard way through direct, conscious, intentional engagement with the life-process itself.”
My teachings are about spiritual enlightenment-both traditional enlightenment, and also what I call the new enlightenment, or Evolutionary Enlightenment.
Traditional enlightenment is what I learned from my teacher, but Evolutionary Enlightenment is what I have discovered in my own work over the last three decades. During this time, I have found a new source of emotional, psychological, and spiritual liberation that easily exists within anyone’s reach-anyone who has the eyes to recognize it and the heart to desire it.
To put it simply, enlightenment is evolving. It is no longer found only in the bliss of timeless Being; it is found also in the ecstatic urgency of evolutionary Becoming.
Andrew Cohen is quite correct. I have experienced the One between two or more. It is One. This is perhaps the most clear description I have ever heard Andrew make. It is in this state that we can solve and evolve, together. It does require a commitment that is extra ordinary or the ego will escape and sabotage the experience. Bravo!
If non-duality is a state, that's duality. Who are we kidding at this point? A spiritual experience of "shared non-duality," which is all "intersubjective" means, is also known as communication between two (seeming) individuals in whom the idea of being limited, separate, inadequate, and/or incomplete has been displaced by self knowledge. That's not special, it is ordinary. That it is not common is another matter, but that is due to the same issue that makes you think it's special - ignorance. I'm not insulting you; in fact, you once told me that "ignorance is the idea that there is something obscuring your experience of perfect reality." Pretty damn good answer. I define it now, thanks to Vedanta wielded by a proper teacher, as the belief in limitation. Really not different from your answer to me although it turns out that by "me" you didn't mean existence/consciousness/unending fullness; rather, you were affirming my limited nature as you imagined your unlimited nature. In any case, time to get with it, it's not too late.
Sanatana scriptures talk about three kinds of differences: 1. Vijatheeya bhedam 2. Sajatheeya bhedam & #. Svagatha bhedam. First one is about the difference between two or more differing species. Say, like the difference between a stone and water in inert substances or a crow and a lion and a man in sentient beings. Second is about the difference between two of the same kind, like a crow and an eagle. Third is about the difference between limbs of the same being like the hands and the legs in a man or animal. It is the third which excites our ( at least mine ) imagination of our experiences. Normally the ego registers an event in the outside world, likes, dislikes or not bothered about it. In the liberated realm when the actual Self watches the ego self and thro' it the event (also on its own thro other minded beings thro' their sentience and a direct perception of the event thro the participants in the event each severally or each enmeshed over each other forming a single template) , it may be bemused about the event or experience, still registers it as merely an event without any opinions about it as it does not operate thro' the mind. Whether it is kept in the memory of Swarna Garbam or not is a mute point. I think it does not. However when the ego goes thro' a similar experience again and brings info back from its memory, it is witnessed by the Consciousnes as memory being brought back and the reaction of the ego again without undergoing any emotions . How many pictures within pictures within pictures and memories within memories, it witnesses and that too instantaneously is mind boggling. This is my ego speaking. However Sri. Ramana would advice to drop everything and observe only he seer within ( it is the ego-mind for me and I enquire 'Who am I' dutifully. at some rare moments I see the real I appearing to see the phantom I, which in turns questions the events.), but everything vanishes in a trice! I do not know whether I have touched first base, I keep trying again and again. I am reminded of the Upanishadic tale where a Brahmarakshas sitting on the forest tree top making a meal of every Brahmin who passes by and is not able to answer its questions. After the meal it invariably turns towards The Gopuram (tower) of Lord Siva' temple in the distant village, and prays, 'oh Lord, how long? please have mercy on me! - my situation is somewhat similiar.
Spiritual enlightenment is often over rated. How about we address the following issue Mr Cohen: 2 billion people living in squalor. Poverty. Please explain how we could improve on this situation instead of repeating yourself over and over again for the next few decades. What can we DO?
Mine has lasted decades. You're right its very difficult (in our collective environment) to awaken. It takes wanting it more than all else. Stay the course friends we're almost there........ A new beginning. 🙏💚🙏
Life is not without suffering. But we can recognize that the joy of friendship, companionship, love outweighs the suffering which is why we are here. Hence why I am happy I remained a Catholic. Even after everything else I read; the Catholic tradition of Love is the most complete.
We identify individual aspects to everything. So a table and a chair as two separate things in relation to everything. But when we are not doing that, there is already everything. Free from the need for individual aspects to be identified. The identification of individual aspects is knowing, we are searching to know everything. Everything is already free from the need to be known. There is just absolute freedom, covered over by that search for knowing.
@@wthomas5697 Yes it's very simple. However the majority of people live in a world of individuality unaware that individuality is not the case, and all there is is everything as a total or as a whole/ wholeness
@@jefferyjimson8574 Everything is obviously interconnected. Our brains are designed to separate the various aspects of reality. For survival. Why would you see a problem in that?
@@wthomas5697 There is no problem with that it is a great thing. What is being said in non-duality though is that identification of individuality besides or regardless of us doing it there is already everything as a total or whole or wholeness which is free from the need for anything in particular to be identifed. There's just absolute freedom.
Oh! Being right is related to feeling secure. That's an interesting insight you mentioned. I hadn't thought of it that way before, and it makes sense. That can explain why we often defend our ideas so strongly. And religion and spirituality has a lot of that! Even scientific and political views are often fiercely defended. Survival instinct stuff.
“There is a cult of ignorance… and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” - Isaac Asimov
Yes! Nondual God. And God is evolving as the manifestation and yet is changeless and infinite in its total state (Brahman) that includes also the unmanifested future. We are a part of the manifested aspect of God, like Christ who said that the Father is greater than him (because God also includes the unmanifested).
Destiny, excellent topic. Before I listen to your explanation, my take is that the mechanical determinism proposed by Laplace is false. However, Braham as changeless, and the Word in the Bible (John 1) being changeless makes sense to me. The trick as I see it is that there can be strong emergence, which means events that are more than just a result of past events.
Regarding the question "Who's life am I living?" from a nonduality perspective that easy! The universe's life. Then what about the individual, sovereign, unique and eternal soul? My view is that the individual soul is an eternal, changeless and unique point within existence, so my life is different than other people's lives even though we are all the same one oneness. Edit: However, one huge mistake I suspect is happening in the nonduality community is that people get an intellectual understanding while their subconscious still operates as a separate ego.
Synchronicity! I was just thinking of something I learned called a steelman argument which is the opposite of a strawman argument. A steelman argument addresses the opponent's strongest points. I think that enhances the connection for shared values in situations where there are differences.
I think it's simple! That choice is an illusion. But then it get's tricky because there may be what in philosophy is called strong emergence which means that events are more than just a result of the past. That's different from Laplace's mechanical determinism. In Buddhism there is the similar concept of dependent origination, meaning that there are no separate causes of things.
I think Buddha is just a story, and that Jesus Christ is just a story. But that those are profound stories! Pointing to transcending the separate self. The separate self as I see it is an illusion, like a sunset where it appears that the sun is moving below the horizon. Similarly the ego believes it has separate agency, while reality is a wholeness in motion without separate causes at the foundational level.
At the end of the 3 part documentary about your collapsed cult, you say that you want to continue teaching, because it's your gift. I can assure you, it's not. Any of your students who happen to evolve spiritually, do so in spite of your grandiose, self promoting ramblings.
Positive ego vs negative ego, I hadn't heard of that before. That's interesting. I just learned that in A Course in Miracles the ego is only the false view, so much so that the ego cannot forgive (in the sense of ACIM) and can only judge wrongly because of experienced separation. I think ACIM is correct, but there also needs to be an ego integration. Edit: An idea came to me now! ACIM is absolutely uncompromising and the aim as I see it is that the negative (false) ego needs to be completely severed so that there is only nonjudgmental pure awareness, and only after that can the integration into the positive ego begin. I would love to hear Andrew's take on this.
That we are generally not sovereign as you mentioned I find interesting. We are heavily conditioned by society! And that's still in the world a very divisive mindset (including up to the Green vMeme), what can be called separation consciousness.
Okay Andrew i saw the tears in your eyes when your teaching crashed, may be you can now have Embodied Language? Please read my blog Language Enlightenment. In this video you just sound horrible and boring.😂
You have freedom of speech, but I can’t guarantee you will have freedom after speech…. - Idi Amin This guy should be arrested and jailed. He’s a danger to humanity.
Does he have some nervous system disorder causing him to shake constantly or am I seeing things? After watching the documentaries about the depth of this man's narcissism and how he hurt so many people when he had power over them, he really should have retired forever.
This lying deceiver needs to depart from his stupidity and those supporting him need to look into his life to see who he is. Words can be lures for unstable minds.🤮
The first woman (Sitrea SP?) asks a beautiful, real question. She has glimpses of being awareness but is frustrated because she can't maintain it. The Vedanta answer is: You ARE awareness. The mind cannot and never does interfere, it is NOT you. AC's answer is: Cultivate unconditional desire. Why is Andrew questioning her desire instead of clearing up her misunderstanding? Cultivate means she's not there yet or not good enough, but is that true or is she just ignorant (like most of us) of her true nature as non-dual awareness?
Transrational that was a new term to me. A similar term transconceptual I see as rising above thought. Thoughts may just be training wheels for the soul, that they become transcended and included by being integrated with awareness into a state of knowing instead of thinking. Just my guess.
