The following are excerpts from letters written to Andrew Cohen by his students regarding the events that took place on, and after, Monday, July 30th, 2001...
Dear Andrew,
The love affair between consciousness and ITSELF that you have catapulted us into is unimaginable. In deepest meditation, it is experienced as the fulfillment of the burning desire to know the Self which occurs when awareness turns in on itself. In our meetings the experience is of true communion in which that emptiness that I experience as the vast expanse of self beyond the mind rushes out and pours into that very same emptiness in the other. At the same time that very same emptiness in the other rushes out and pours itself into me! ... I find myself wondering what it will be like when every speck of the personal is eradicated from existence. What will Consciousness decide to do then? How will perfection manifest in the world of time and space? What will heaven look like on earth?
Jeff C.
Dear Andrew,
The miracle is beyond everything one could imagine! The mind cannot grasp the dimensions of this revolution. When the fire took over the whole room yesterday, a new world broke open. We have no idea what is going to happen from here. We have no idea. But the fact is: it has happened. It is happening. There is no way back. A new dimension of human consciousness is opening up. Nothing is as it has been before.
Tom S.
Dear Andrew,
Last night we literally reached a critical mass and exploded. As more and more voices expressed the same doubtless conviction, the transformative power leapt off the scale of anything we have experienced before. The change in just 24 hours was truly phenomenal as we plunged deeper and deeper into ecstatic intimacy. We were a tornado absolutely out of control, a raging forest fire burning and consuming all ignorance and separation in our way.
In revelation after revelation, the living understanding of the sweetest perfection of your teaching unraveled in front of our eyes—the emerging presence of a mystery that can never be known. All it recognizes is One, and it´s on a seek-and-destroy mission against all separation. We were on our knees before this miraculous phenomenon: impersonal evolutionary enlightenment. This explosive force is unstoppable, none of us have any idea where we are going, and yet undeniably this is why we are with you, to be consumed in the white heat of perfect communion, and in that to set the whole world on fire.
Will R.
Dear Andrew,
Last night I finally got it: this is actually enlightenment manifesting between us. What I realized was that a group of unenlightened people, willing to leave themselves behind, can start to experience the enlightened vision and BE it. It is amazing how easy it felt, really like a natural state, yet it took you 15 years of hard work to come to this beginning. I see why you call it evolution! Now something has been proven to be possible for the human race as a whole.
Arjan K.
Dear Andrew,
Impersonal Evolutionary Enlightenment keeps exploding between us, as us. It seems that as more people join the view, join this revolution, the fire and the implications of this happening are growing in an exponential way. There is no mercy with the personal. Any attempt to relate to what is happening in any kind of personal way gets attacked and destroyed on the spot! The mystery discovering itself through us has no concern but itself. And as you said, the key to all this seems to be humility. It's the humility to not deny the fact that we, whoever we are, are nothing but this mystery. It's the humility to leave it untouched, untainted, only being itself as the eternal exploding Truth. This Truth is rushing through our veins, pouring out of our cells. There is nothing to claim, nothing to own, because there is nothing but That. Any attempt to grasp hold of this mystery gets destroyed by the outcry of the mystery itself. It won't allow anything to interfere with its absolute beauty and magnificence.
Tom S.
Dear Andrew,
Is all this really happening? Has the mystery of what it means to be a human being just taken a giant, immeasurable leap into the 4th dimension? I knew in the deepest cells of my body that something that had never entered through the doors of possibility declared itself as REAL in our last gathering.... YES, ALL OF THIS IS TRUE! You have known this from the very beginning, you have seen this day as if it were etched into your sight and you have stopped at nothing and have been willing to sacrifice ABSOLUTELY everything to make this manifest.... The One and the Many indistinguishable. Fullness, emptiness—it really is the same thing.
Matt T.
Dear Andrew,
Again and again, the fact that we were here, in this circle bearing witness to this TRUTH brought us to our knees in reverence. The One and the Many, the One and the Many—indivisible and whole. We were as One Body. This unity destroyed all boundaries between meditation and communion, speech and silence. This divine alchemy is changing the very cells of this One Body.
The radiance of this beginning is indescribable. An ecstatic communion that is never separate from who we are is the context in which we abide. All we are left with is “Oh my God—this is so, this is so, this is so!” The fact that it is in our coming together that this Love moves and acts has transformed our gatherings into a sacred event. At the end tonight we are left speechless and without mark. Our hearts are united with yours in explosive peace.
The sheer magnitude of what is beginning to happen is profoundly humbling. The veils of ignorance are literally being peeled away in front of us and each one of us is personally responsible for bearing witness to that extraordinary fact...Every voice that joined in the unhesitating testimony to this fact added to the growing strength of the impersonal perspective amongst us and instantly created deeper integration and communion in the gathering. It is profoundly moving to recognize and acknowledge our undeniable obligation to be that One without a second as ourselves, and to renounce anything that could possibly be in the way of allowing only that One to speak. The nature of the One is constant destruction and birth—ever new, always now, without gap or boundary, lacking nothing.
Sri P.
Dear Andrew,
Because of your unwillingness to compromise, something unimaginable is unfolding among the men.... I only know that it is undeniably real, it is what you have known is possible all along, and that there is a transformative power being unleashed as a result, with implications the magnitude of which none of us can conceive.
Craig H.
Dear Andrew,
After last night I have no doubt that it IS happening now. This has to be the beginning of something so vast, profound, and uncontainable. What made this unprecedented, more than a collective experience of oneness, was that this did encompass the full depth and breadth of impersonal evolutionary enlightenment. What was of overarching significance was not anybody's “experience” of revelation and liberation, but the conscious recognition and surrender to the obligation, the imperative, the call from within to BE an expression of that Explosion in Motion Now! Andrew, this has to be the beginning of the fruition of your teaching, your vision, of everything you have poured into us. Everything that has gone down has to mean something, has to clear the ground for Something that came from Nothing to happen.
Pete B.
Dear Andrew,
There has never been such a coming together amongst us before—this trust, this effortless arising of knowledge and insight, this awe-struck wonder and reverence for a mystery that is a consuming fire between us. What does it mean to know beyond the personal, feel beyond the personal, perceive beyond the personal—live beyond the personal? Who are we beyond all knowing and separation? These are all becoming living, sacred questions—fuel for a contemplation that is taking root in our hearts—as direct pathways to the One Heart.
There is Nothing. Nothing at the beginning, nothing in the middle, nothing at the end. We are nothing—this is the sacred obligation to which out lives are beholden. For reasons beyond our ken, this knowledge, this revelation, this mystery stands before us, as us, and demands response. There is only submission to it, only surrender, only relinquishment, only the knowledge that this is not a personal matter! The obligation stands on its own, of its own accord, as its own motive, leaving us as dust, reeling with abandoned love. This transcendent ecstasy is so simple, so human—asking us only to meet without knowledge of other, with fearless vulnerability so that heaven can indeed manifest here and now as objective reality.
Sri P.
Dear Andrew,
What you are igniting and what is happening between us men is so incredible. The Absolute is manifesting between us, through us, as us. I look in the eyes of my brothers and I know it is one human being looking at itself having no idea who it is but knowing it is me. I had no idea about the significance of your impersonal teachings. As this teaching is spontaneously manifesting itself in us coming together it becomes clear how this will tear the world apart. Something like that is unheard of in the world and I know it is the Source becoming self-aware as human beings, the universe becoming self-aware through us. I see my brothers and I literally see me. This revolution of consciousness is me, always has been me, us. And everything which is in the way just has to burn, go down in ashes, because it is a lie, a big lie.
Tom S.
Dear Andrew,
I bow down in full prostration in utter awe and with overwhelming gratitude for this inconceivable glory that you have fought so hard to make us fit to receive, for the sake of life itself.
...There is no choice but to meet the explosion that is happening. THE SOURCE COMMANDS SURRENDER. It is so absolutely SIMPLE, black and white. All that is false and unreal must be renounced in its entirety for FREEDOM to BE. My God, I simply cannot believe all this. The teaching is coming ALIVE in my experience in a way I could never have imagined.... Everything that has been such a stretch to embrace, everything that I have felt a core resistance to letting in, is just there in my experience being recognized as my Heart's desire. It all makes complete and perfect sense!
Pete B.
Dear Andrew,
Your grand experiment in ego destruction all heading for the Omega point where Heaven and Earth become one...It is a miracle in action! It is all one event, the meditation and our gatherings together.
Your ENORMOUS heart has beaten my raging ego into submission. It currently resides somewhere in the back end of the universe whimpering like the coward it is. The mind is no longer censoring the heart. How have you done this?
Jeff C.
Dear Andrew,
I am left in the most unbelievable place I would never have imagined. I am no more than I have ever been, in fact I am sure that I am less than I have ever been before—ever! I literally feel under new management! It's actually hard to describe because who I am right now and it is not who I was five seconds ago. Ocean waves of bliss overwhelm me and then I am left utterly empty not knowing what is going on at all. I had no idea it was possible to love life this much.
Matt T.
Read more about the events of July 30, 2001 on Notes from the Revolution