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April 16, 2010
The Evolution of Enlightenment: a new article by Andrew CohenAn Authoritative Introduction to Evolutionary Enlightenment
This article is available as
a downloadable PDF.
My teachings are about spiritual enlightenment—both what we could call 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 and created in my own work over the last almost quarter of a century. During this time, I have discovered 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. It was only after many years of deep introspection, dialogue with masters and thinkers from all traditions, and committed work with thousands of spiritual seekers throughout the world that I began to understand what this new enlightenment is all about, why it is so different from what has come before, and why, as I believe, it holds the key not only to our personal development but to our cultural evolution. In the passage that follows, I will briefly share with you the journey I took from the old enlightenment to the new enlightenment. I became a spiritual teacher in 1986 after a powerful awakening irrevocably transformed my life. My own teacher, H.W.L. Poonja came from the Advaita Vedanta tradition, and it was the timeless simplicity of this ancient teaching that catalyzed my awakening. The essence of my realization was simple: everything IS as it is. It was a classic satori, or enlightenment, experience—seeing through the illusion of time directly into timelessness, awakening to the eternal Now, the mystical, absolute, nondual, nonrelative Ground of Being. My teacher taught me—as he’d been taught by his teacher, the great saint Ramana Maharshi—that the freedom I was looking for was already present as the very ground of my own awareness. That ground, the deepest dimension of who we all are, always already exists prior to time and the creative process. That is why mystics throughout the ages have told us that there is nowhere to go and nothing to do except to realize THAT. After my own awakening to this timeless truth, I initially taught in the same way that I had been taught. My spontaneous response to those who came to me in the first few years of my teaching career was simply this: Realize and surrender. Realize and discover that mystery that cannot be understood by the mind, and surrender to that and that alone. Realize that you were never born. Surrender to the fact that you were never unfree. Realize that there was never a problem and never back down from that realization. Surrender to that and that alone. I was convinced beyond doubt by my own experience that there was nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no one to be or become. In fact, in those days, I was so sure about this view that I questioned the authenticity of any spiritual teaching that implied that there was anything in the future to become other than who we always already are. This teaching is not new. It has been the precious jewel that has passed from Master to disciple for thousands of years. The perennial goal it points to is essentially transcendence—a dramatic release or escape from time, mind, and world that is found when one awakens to the timeless, formless domain of Being.In most traditional mystical teachings, this other-worldly emphasis on transcendence as the goal of enlightenment hasn’t changed since the Buddha preached the dharma in ancient India twenty-five hundred years ago or since Adi Shankara wrote his Crest-Jewel of Discrimination in the eighth century.And for us postmodernists, it also hasn’t changed since the glory days of the1960s when Harvard psychologist-turned-psychedelic-rebel Richard Alpert, a.k.a Ram Dass, published his groundbreaking spiritual manifesto and call-to-arms Be Here Now. Almost forty years later, spiritual bestsellers are still proclaiming the same message: Transcend the mind and time. Rest in the “now,” in the infinity of the present moment. All else is a temporary illusion. From this perspective, the world and all of manifestation is a mere “play” of consciousness, or lila as it’s called in Vedanta: What happens here is not ultimately real. Only the Absolute, unchanging, timeless, formless, unmanifest Ground is real. Therefore, nothing needs to change in this manifest world, and true freedom is found in escaping from it altogether. Why entertain an illusion? Why try and improve that which is not real in the first place? But as powerful and as liberating as this perspective was at the time of my own awakening, as a spiritual teaching in our day and age I soon began to find it problematic. I observed that many who came to me in those early years found themselves plunged into the same miraculous state of liberated consciousness that I had discovered, but the effect of this powerful experience was generally not the same. It seemed that, in most individuals, awakening to the bliss of Being did not automatically lead to radical transformation. Many individuals had great difficulty letting go of doubt, even in the face of their own ecstatic flights into enlightened awareness. They were reluctant to accept and stand for the liberating truth of what they had seen with their own minds and hearts. To me it always appeared obvious that the power and significance of that which is Absolute was given validation only through our willingness to stand for and embody its glory as ourselves—through action, through choice, through the way we lived in the world of time and form. As I began to engage more deeply with those around me, I discovered that the state of the individual’s soul—their capacity for integrity, authenticity, and higher conscience—always played a critical role in determining how ready they were to embody their own deepest realization. So I began to put more and more of my attention on the all-important question: How can we cultivate the ability and readiness to express the beauty, perfection, and wholeness discovered in spiritual revelation? This was the beginning of a radical divergence from the path and perspective I had been taught. Slowly, over a ten-year period, my teaching became more and more about the transformation of the individual and the world; whereas in the traditional teaching the emphasis was really on liberation from self and world. The differences in the way I was now seeing were based upon an emerging new way of interpreting what enlightenment meant. In the traditional Eastern metaphysical perspective, the world isn’t real, it’s only an ephemeral appearance, an illusion, a mere insubstantial, transient dream in the mind of God. I felt differently. To me, the world was certainly real and in fact, was an inherent and all-important dimension of what God always is. For millennia, this question has been the spark of an ongoing metaphysical argument among sages, seers, and philosophers. And it is a significant one. If the world isn’t real, then nothing needs to be done about the way things are. But if the world is real, then it soon becomes apparent to us that there is real work to be done. This work was what my life was now devoted to. I was wholeheartedly committed to the transformation of the world—to bringing the power of enlightened awareness into the world through rational action, through moral being, and through engaging with the process of time in the most deliberate and creative way. From the very beginning, since my early days as a seeker, I had always been convinced that enlightenment had to make sense. It gradually dawned on me that I was going to have to figure out for myself how to translate the profound shift of perspective I was experiencing into a form that would make deep sense to the world I was living and working in. I needed new ways to interpret the meaning and purpose of enlightenment as it traveled from its roots in the traditional East to its new home in the postmodern West. I knew that the questions I needed to answer in order to find my way forward were important beyond just my own experience. But I could never have predicted where they would lead me. As the years passed, my emphasis that enlightenment is an action and not merely a higher state emerged more and more powerfully in my teaching. I remember one particular morning many years ago during a retreat in India—I was giving a talk, and an unbridled passion poured through me spontaneously. I didn’t know where it came from, but it was calling for this miracle, this mystery beyond time, to become manifest in the world of time and form, as ourselves. I found myself imploring those around me not only to awaken to their true Self as timeless Being but to dare to respond to the urgent call to express that liberation in the world of Becoming. Over time it became clear to me that this awakening passion was really a passion for much more than enlightenment in the traditional sense. The spiritual energy that was running through my veins was calling me to a new, active, and creative expression of enlightenment. It was an enlightenment that by its very nature could never be content with the way things were in the past, no matter how glorious that past may have been. It was an enlightenment that could also never be content with how things were in the present moment, even at those rare instances when everything seems like it couldn’t be more perfect. It was an enlightenment that was defined by a ceaseless and ecstatic reaching forth towards an as yet unborn and unmanifest potential, a constant stretching toward a future perfection that would always lie just beyond one’s fingertips. My inner eye and heart were focused on the freedom of that mysterious place between the immediacy of the present moment and the endless thrill of the possible. Slowly but surely, in my quest to redefine enlightenment, I began to connect it to the most important emergent narrative of recent cultural history: the discovery of evolution. Seeing our presence in this world from the vantage point of a fourteen-billion-year process powerfully recontextualizes the spiritual impulse in a thrilling, rational, and deeply meaningful framework. In this context, we realize that awakening to timeless Being, the perennial goal of Eastern enlightenment, is only half of the picture—half of the totality of reality. The other half of the picture is the world of form, the process of Becoming—the universal creative impulse, that explosion-in-motion that is the entire evolutionary process that we are all part of. If enlightenment is the discovery of what IS, then it must embrace the ultimate nature of all things—seen and unseen, known and unknown, form and formlessness, both Being and Becoming. Being is that timeless void out of which the cosmos was born, the empty ground from which everything arises and to which everything ultimately returns. Becoming is the something that emerged out of nothing and is still emerging in this moment. Becoming is Eros, the evolutionary impulse, the first cause, that original spark of light and energy that created the entire universe. And I realized that it was that very same creative spark that was now awakening in my own heart and mind as a sense of ecstatic urgency to evolve. This is why I began to reenvision the very goal of the spiritual path, seeing the purpose of enlightenment as not merely to transcend the world, as I had been taught, but to transform the world through becoming an agent of evolution itself. Enlightenment was not the end of the path. It was the beginning. In the East, they believe that enlightenment is a final endpoint, a monumental attainment that marks the end of becoming for the individual. Someone who is enlightened has liberated him or herself from identification with anything that exists in time. And this conclusion makes sense when you consider the cultural context in which it first emerged. In ancient India, they had not yet discovered evolution. Like most of the world at that point, they had not yet discerned that time had a beginning and moved in a straight line from the past to the present to the future. They believed that time, like life and death, was a repetitive process that was constantly going through the same cycle and would for eternity. As a matter of fact, many Hindus in modern-day India still prefer to see our cosmic origins through the lens of their ancient Vedic science, rather than accepting the findings of Western science and modern cosmology. And if reality is seen through this particular cultural lens, it would make sense that one would soon grow weary of the eternal tedium of cyclical existence and hunger for a final release. That’s why the traditions say that the individual who is “fully enlightened,” who has gone all the way, is that rare one who has finally achieved emancipation from the endless repetition of birth and death on the wheel of endless becoming. It’s important to remember that up until very recently in human history, we didn’t know what we know today: that we are all part of that developmental process that had a beginning in time and that is going somewhere. It’s only been in the last couple of hundred years that we discovered evolution, and only in the twentieth century that we came upon what is known as “deep time”—the incomprehensible span of fourteen billion years since the universe burst into being. When we apply the perspective of evolution to the nature of enlightenment, it changes everything. From the perspective of the eternal timeless ground, the traditional teachers are right. The highest spiritual truth is that nothing ever happened, you and I were never born, and the big bang never occurred. That’s enlightenment, that’s liberation, that’s samadhi, that’s satori. But from the perspective of evolution, the entire picture changes. Modern science and cosmology have clearly revealed that time doesn’t move in predictable cycles that return again and again to the same point, but is, in fact, a linear process. Fourteen billion years of development have produced all of manifestation—the entire known universe and everything that’s contained within it, including its greatest mystery: the capacity for consciousness itself. The arrow of time is a creative process and that capacity for creativity and novelty is the most extraordinary part of the whole dramatic unfolding—from the big bang to the present moment. This is not just another repetition of an endless cycle. This hasn’t all happened before. Where we are going is not predestined. The most exciting part of this realization is that we discover, if we look deeply into our own experience, that our own emerging desire for spiritual freedom is not separate from the impulse that is driving the entire process. I call this the Evolutionary Impulse. When we awaken to this impulse, we discover something miraculous: that that dynamic and ever-evolving creative principle is none other than our own Authentic Self. This is the new source of spiritual liberation in the teaching I have come to call Evolutionary Enlightenment. It’s not just about awakening to timeless being—it’s about awakening to eternal, ecstatic Becoming. Evolutionary Enlightenment calls on us to awaken to both the timeless peace of Being and the relentless passion of the Evolutionary Impulse. The reason that the Evolutionary Impulse is the source of the New Enlightenment is because of its future-oriented directionality. And this is the important distinction: the old traditional enlightenment is not future-oriented; it is not time-oriented at all. Traditional enlightenment points us beyond the world, beyond time and space, towards what has been, at least until now, the perennial source of spiritual freedom and mystical liberation: the Ground of Being. But those of us in the twenty-first century who are looking towards the future, urgently need a mystical spirituality and source of soul liberation that points us not away from the world but to that big next step we need to take in our world. That next step will not emerge by itself—it must be consciously created by human beings who have awakened to the same impulse that is driving the process. As we awaken to this vast perspective, an overwhelming and profound truth becomes clear: At this point in evolution, the process is dependent upon us. The evolutionary process desperately needs our conscious and committed participation. This has become the defining theme and ultimate purpose of Evolutionary Enlightenment over the last ten years. The old enlightenment, with all its power to free the human mind and heart from suffering, can only lift us beyond the world. But when we realize that the world needs our engaged and enlightened action,it becomes urgent that we find a spiritual path, practice, and philosophy that empowers us to courageously and passionately participate in the fast-changing process that we are in the midst of. This liberating spiritual perspective on the human experience is contemporary and inherently creative. It’s a spiritual teaching for our own time because its central tenet is that a more enlightened future for our world depends on one thing and one thing alone—our higher development. The world around us changes for the better as much as we are willing to change ourselves. The world we occupy and cocreate begins to transform as we do. The old model of enlightenment was one in which the individual was liberated but the world remained the same. In the new enlightenment, the point is no longer merely the liberation of the individual; it’s the evolution of self, culture, and cosmos through the individual. That’s Evolutionary Enlightenment. Post a CommentBefore commenting, please note that this is a moderated forum and all comments are reviewed before posting. In the interest of furthering the topic of discussion, comments that do not comply with the comments policy will not be posted. Please take a moment to read the guidelines. Due to the time needed for review, comments will not be posted immediately, but please do not double-post just because your comment did not appear right away. |
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The clarity and passionate conviction present here is overwhelming. A ever positive burst of life evolving through these words. The thrill of the future lies in our hearts and hands authentically. To be true and real and face ourselves with the path ahead of us, cocreating a future unknown beyond any expectations of cultural, personal conditioning to create a life of potential excitement.
Thank you so much for this clear and powerful articulation of Evolutionary Enlightenment. It is a message that needs to be heard again and again and more importantly lived by real human beings with a heart big enough to embrace its implications. Thank you for bringing this vision and teaching into the world and empowering us to participate in it. As you said, it’s only through our committed participation that the world can move forward to new stages of development.
This Is True...Yet, Very difficult.There is nothing easy about doing group work for the sake of evolution.Still There are very few people who actually wake up in this life.
Tara
Interesting to think of enlightenment as evolution. However I respectfully disagree. To be enlightened means to be a light unto yourself. Enlightened and evolution would mean something incompatible. I don’t think some people are enlightened and others not. I think it is understanding that is the difference. Some have looked into the nature of their being and understood they r not who they think they are. That’s it!
Let us open our minds for the grandest vision for mankind in this moment of time. Let us open our hearts and make way for the force of this creative process and let us recognize that what is of true importance; our total and fearless commitment. Thank you…
Understanding that constant evolving dialogue and a committed, unwavering, unified engagement in the evolutionary process is key to a unified existance in form. Creating the desire for global ascension in conscioussness, thinking, dialouge and engagement is the task at hand, and I’m grateful to all who are fearlessly doing what they know to create this...” one for all and all for one”
Andrew, you keep articulating and clarifying the only position that makes complete sense intellectually, experientially and emotionally for anyone with a deep recognition of that which transcends everything, but who keeps waking up to a new day with real tasks and never-ending and often miraculous possibilities. The old enlightenment liberates oneself, the new empowers us together. Thank you for this post!
These two lines are the keys: ‘If the world isn’t real, then nothing needs to be done about the way things are. But if the world is real, then it soon becomes apparent to us that there is real work to be done.’
Thanks again Andrew for a great article, already transferred a link on social medias!
When we begin to realise emptiness then we are confronted with the need to take compassionate action (ringing the bell). Evolutionary enlightenment or a natural manifestation/consequence?
Well, if we want to talk about time...I believe that linear time is our own creation and interpretation. About enlightment...yes, life is illusory...detachment is important in a material world , because this is matter.Let’s no grow too atached to it since it’s not forever. However, I always believed that if I am capable of desiring, wanting and able to achieve it through my own creation...that is what I am supposed to do while at the same time being able to be free from it at any moment because my being is the most important experience for me. In any case, I do have a problem with what’s real and what is supposed not to be...hunger is real...go tell someone from my country that their hunger is not real...just “ be “and it will go away...Right. And about Evolution...yes I believe in it… it is a being like Mother Theresa and many others with no names that walk on this plane of reality and are totally unknown.
First-rate message! Is “Evolutionary Enlightenment” the same as the creative pulse or cosmic throb that is the heart of Kashmir Shaivism, which expounds that everything in creation (Kosmos) is no different from Shiva (the ground of being), i.e. Shiva is BOTH resting in complete stillness AND simultaneously dynamically pulsating into manifestation? See “Nothing Exists That Is Not Shiva” by Swami Muktananda.
This makes a very powerful reading. What is significant to be noted is that none of those masters who got ‘liberated’ from the world lived exclusively in that state of being. Rather they set out to transform the world through their teachings and to let the masses emancipate to the new understanding of reality; both evolutionary reality and the the reality of the ultimate state of being. It is said in Hindu scriptures that any self realized soul gets 21 days either to stay back in the world to bring about salvation of people at large or be pulled up to the abode of highest state of being. Infact there are traditions like DVAITHA philosophy ( fornded by Saint Madhwacharya in 12th century) which not only regard the world as real but also highlights the distinction of each created matter & life forms and hence presupposes the importance of both being and becoming. This then IS evolutionary in its character.
Thank you so much Andrew for your fine articulation of this deeper understanding of evolutionary enlightenment. It was like a missing puzzle piece for me..that co-creative action and connection that called for a deeper understanding of Being. There is a “doing”, too, that flows forward to develop ever more..always expanding and enhancing. It is how Essence shows itself.
Thank you. Your views are similar to the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin described in ‘The Phenomenon of Man’ and Paul Brunton in ‘The Wisdom of the Overself’.
It is very unusual to find a philosophy which integrates the ground of all things with the creation of space time relativity and the evolution of cosmic self awareness.
Thank you for this powerful, illuminating post, Andrew.
One thing that strikes me is how the Western mind finds it almost impossible to relate to the idea that the world is not real. When I was practicing Buddhism, all the practice of “detachment” never really landed… it mostly just made me kind of weird
I think what was going on was an internal conflict between the teachings of transcending the world and my own deep belief that the world is what IS ultimately real.
Since coming across your teaching eight years ago, that division has vanished. Evolutionary Enlightenment’s profound embrace of both “transcendence and immanence”, with its distinctly Western emphasis on immanence--or the reality of the world--has brought a spiritual sanity and confidence to my life that I didn’t know was possible… and that I didn’t even know was missing before.
So thank you, Andrew, for this precious gift of the evolutionary dharma.
We have inherently been raised in the west to know that doing is important, but there was never a true spiritual basis for it. There was no clear reason to do it that made ultimate sense. Thank you for the continued clarity as to what that reason is.
Bravo! ... Well said.
My most influential living Teacher recently said, when asked how he considers his own being ....
“A space for the Truth to GO TO WORK (emphasis mine)”.
I get he is saying what Andrew is saying!
I recently had my classic satori style awakening also…
I didn’t even know what it was at the time but it felt amazing… still feels amazing but i can turn it on/off like a switch - sometimes the ego in others do it for me.
Since i haven’t been able to stop researching all this. Since that moment, as i go in and out, the only thing that has remained consistent is my drive to discover, understand deeper, and learn how to spread this message further throughout the world…
i’d very much like to awaken my family - yet it doesn’t seem possible
- but from somewhere within i realise and acknowledge an inner awareness that the only important thing from here on in my life is to both live and exist as i am and all i can ever be, and do what i can in this moment to help the lift the consciousness and understanding of others…
It’s like when the Buddha said he had just found an ancient path in the jungle, hidden by overgrowth. Andrew have rediscovered it and made it available to us once again. But if you look close enough, Christianity has always lived with the tension between the now and the future. The imagery is different but not too difficult to decipher if you really want to understand. The most beautiful thing is this is completely natural for our real being; when we walk our gaze is up ahead to see where we’re going while our feet do the here and now talking.
Thank you for this beautifully written piece Andrew. It describes with such clarity the remarkably creative act of bringing into the world such an entirely new and comprehensive teaching - at exactly the time it is so urgently needed. This could only have come, as you say, from “that mysterious place between the immediacy of the present moment and the endlesss thrill of the possible.”
Andrew, I am indebted to you for helping me understand vital things about spiritual life.
I have to disagree with you on some things you have mentioned here. 1) All eastern teachings are not equal to Advaita + Buddhism. 2) You have combined interpretations from Vedantic view, Puranic view, Religious View (Saivaite or Vaishnavaite etc.,), local and popular views in the Hindu systems of beliefs as if they are one and the same. 3) If you want to be objective about it, the sense of Deep Time in human history is first mentioned in the The Hindu Puranic Texts, (is it much older than the 14 billion years ? that needs to be calculated) and there has been no end since the beginning so far. 4) The idea of everything is GOD, the moving and the shaking is as old as the Narayana Upanishad. The quote is much more elaborate and doesn’t leave any room for world being unreal.
Love, Ananda padmanaban.
Your view is similar to Theilard de Chardin, and as well very similar to Rudolf’s Steiner’s ``Philosophy of Freedom’’, written in 1894, that very few people have read among the groups I know.
Sounds that Enlightened Masters from the West [ Steiner certainly was a non dual realized Master] have always believed that the East was making a huge mistake by removing themselves from the World.
All the ancient paths of Initiation, had the goal of coming back to the world and changing it [ they called this transformation : transmutation].
But now the question is how to set up the fire.
How does the thermodynamics of desire, pain and joy is working with Eros ? Does one still need the radical realization to set up the Evolutionary fire ?
You will find exposed with absolute Mastery the idea of Enlightenment as an ACTION in Steiner. I urge you, implore you, to have a read of his ``Philosophy of Freedom’’. You will find there a soul mate of the highest caliber with still things [ I believe] to learn from him.
On the side, modern science doesn’t really know what time is.
The microscopic time of scientists is reversible. When describing the systems with many particles, then one gets a flow of time in one direction, but then the theory stops… we don’t have yet a time dependent thermodynamics [ description of the ``many’’ ] . We didn’t discover a single fundamental principle yet for it.
Evolution doesn’t define the time of scientists.
Thankyou for the ongoing committment to make sense of our human experience. Its encouraging to know other’s have such committment. Rudolf Steiner’s writing’ s about the evolution of human consciousness gave me an insight into a Western path to enlightment, which fits with our modern consciousness rather than the older Eastern path. It’s fascinating to read how your search has lead to conclusions which have a lot in common with this Western path.
Thank you Andrew for the work that you are doing on this, our small blue planet.
For many years now I have felt that having a great awakening was only the start of something. One wakes up the next morning and sees that although ones perspective has completely changed, the world has not. The old expression of, “Be in the world but not of it”, is escapist. Yes, one could go to a cave as the whole world went to hell in a handbasket because one had attained but it all seems a bit selfish now.
If the old question was, “Who am I?” then maybe the new question can be, “What does Truth want to do with me?”
Thank you so much for this! I am still trying to wrap my head around how the collective ‘We’ consciousness relates to the individual experience. There is a real potential through this perspective for the individual to accelerate the shift in consciousness with their intention and realization or awareness of their being in the moment.
I do think it is our destiny to evolve, however. The Evolutionary Impulse assures we will all evolve, those of us who are awake can actively help to accelerate it.
Sir,
One tastes freedom, absolute freedom on realisation. Now you can not further bind it as to what one should do. If so, the realisation is not complete. Realisation itself ensures that one is open to all the possibilities at every moment. The charm to bring evolution to some definite form or point is to discredit what has happened. It is to tie oneself to the History and not Freedom from History (your book). Realisation includes what you call evolutionary enlightenment.
The realisation is never a done thing. It is opening up to the unknown dimensions.
Y V Chawla
www.fundamentalexpressions.com
The Power of Enlightenment
The Enlightened is free of suffering, because of the understanding that mind, individuals, actions and time are illusory and nothing could be controlled by the mind which is just a mirror to reflect an illusion of sound appearing as words with meanings. The ego taking thoughts to be real has spontaneously sophisticated itself into the witness which perceives thoughts as illusory.
However, this understanding is not a cold and weak state but most powerful. The Enlightened’s trust in Life is contagious to others and such in the evolutionary process of Life a shift could happen. But if there is an “I” believing to be the conductor of this power and therefore to be “enlightened”, it is deceived. The Enlightened is not using the power, he IS the POWER (like everything else too).
Before Enlightenment, the ego kept on reacting conditioned by its believes - now the witness watches Life responding to Life. In both cases nothing could be done about it, such is Life.
Dear Andrew
I do not agree that the old enlightenment-teachers such as Buddha or Jesus or a new one like Tolle is all about being free and not about changing the world. I think their teachings have got everything to do with changing the world and our moral development - individually and colletively. I think it would be great in this new international world if we could get more together in this - buddhists, christians and newer teachers, instead of holding on to how different our terms or teachings could seem.
Thankyou for the obvious effort in writing this. It is with great pleasure that I agree with you. Our tole is to understand the nature of reality within the context of our creation, as it is a self created state of consciousness that emerges through us and so as we change it changes. Having read this I am looking forward to seeing more of you work,
thanks
Dave
What you call evolutionary enlightenment I call Growth in Consciousness. I see no difference or contradictions from the highest of ancient teachings, especially among the “householder Gurus” who were fully and actively engaged in contributing to the upliftment of their world.
Much later, when you look at Leonardo DaVinci’s inexhaustible creative impulse, many of his discoveries and inventions were not accepted at the time because the consciousness of the poeople was not developed enough to believe it was possible.
So I believe the nature of Consciousness is by definition, evolutionary in itself. Always was and always will be. Teillard de Chardin spoke of that as well.
I applaud you works to bring these concepts to greater awareness in this world of being and becoming.
Great article Andrew. I agree and disagree. Present moment awareness is the most peace I have ever felt and at the same time “evolving” is very important to me at the same time.
I was truly inspired by your blog this morning. I too feel these things. I have come to that enlightenment that we are all one and I also feel excited to be a part of the great transformation that is going on. I also have that very strong impluse to evlove into someone who can help bring change to the world. We all need to waken to the fact that we are the ones we have been waiting on. I am continuing on my journey through research and learning on teachings such as yours and many others I am beginning to find that help keep me inspired and postively hopeful that we can do this. So as I find my path to help bring these changes I just want to thank you for giving me such inspiration in your words, it lets me know that I am not alone. It really is an awesome time to be alive.
Andrew,
This perspective couldn’t have come at a better time for me. I am 55, recently divorced and the kids are gone. I have been doing constant spiritual work for the past 2 years.
By doing the work of Byron Katie, I found myself without meaning, without purpose and without a story. I had no new story i wanted to create, because it wasn’t real.
The problem with teachers like this is that there might be a great danger. My ego was not ready for all this loss. I constantly struggle with apathy.
Reading this has restored hope. I need meaning and purpose. There is a lot of talk about willing and allowing. I think the solution might be aligning with God’s will, rather than my own human desire, which just doesn’t seem to work and doesn’t feel right.
Thank you again. I am looking forward to being an evolutionary. I like having a label again.
Sheryll
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Even though I have had the good fortune of having attended a weeklong retreat of Andrew, I still had’nt caught on to the nature of his message. This article has been very useful in understanding what Andrew is trying to convey. I am now going to follow Andrew’s teachings more closely. We had formed a nice group in India after attending his retreat. I wish we had kept it up.
What a nice fable
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I have very much enjoyed your powerful articulation of your Work, Andrew. And directly referring to your book binder, “Evolutionary Enlightenment--practitioner’s guide,” I am still today actively and diligently engaging in the everyday practice just as you have outlined it, effectively starting in the everyday practice since the first day of January 2009, and still continuing with it this very day of this writing.This form of meditation, that is, ‘Abiding As Awareness Itself’, is totally new to me and I am still today finding it to be the greatest challenge of all. While I have tasted some measure of success with it, at certain times here and there, I have experienced it as most thrilling. And having persisted with this practice, with great efforts and difficulties for just about seventeen months now, I am still not ready to abandon it. In closing, I want to express my appreciation for your mailling it to me in December 2008.
Thanks so much, Andrew for your clarity of perception. I feel quite thrilled in that your call is for the emergence of the eternal creative potential inherent in us all. It feels almost as though we are being squeezed through a bottle neck towards freedom, the genie (our Authentic Self) ready to grant the most spectacular wishes. It’s just the cork of choice we need to release a grandeur and splendour we can never again contain.
As astronomers are now discovering, the universe is expanding at an ever increasing speed, and here we are with such an incredible opportunity to evolve in tandem and to discover and embrace more wondrous things about ourselves and our one Self. Best of all, we can make a difference to everyone as we do it for ourselves.
But, we have to DO it! How can we not desperately want to be a part of such a dynamic and thrilling expansion and explosion of consciousness?
I don’t think I get the difference here between what humans have always thought i.e. ‘the future will be better!’ and what Andrew is saying.
Is there a difference?
Should there be a difference?
In the mind there is an openning of the usual ‘can of worms’ when concepts of time, scientific theories, and ‘where are we headed’ starts up.
These are Important but essentially ‘political’ and to do with power and who thinks they are right or wrong.
The beauty of truth is that it is true and that it can be seen to be true.
Literally ‘ who knows?’ with scientific theories and evolution and time et al.
This is why so far I can’t see the difference.
can anyone explain?
Graham
without the mind, where is the world ? a dream is a dream, right, we can discuss all the theories on the earth but only in the dream, in reality which is changeless, which always is, which doesn’t appear and disappear like our world, which is who you are, who speaks ? and with whom? truth is timeless, neither ancient nor modern
Your views articulate what the ancients have said all along--and that includes Hindus, Mahayana Buddhists and Taoists. After all, bodhisattvas love all sentient beings so much that they even will defer their own enlightenment to serve the world. The Taoist aspirant after she arrives at enlightenment goes back into the world. It is a full circle--one has to embrace the world and its problems if one is truly enlightened. Furthermore, Hindu tradition talks about the whole universe appearing and disappearing--the circularity of time--which is also what science seems to avow. As for time, it is truly a man-made concept.
Transcendence into a higher truth requires sacrifice. We must sacrifice our old habits and ideals to achieve this higher range of being.
Anything of value requires sacrifice and transcendence is unquestionable.
Thanks, Andrew, for this motivating talk.
I cannot claim any of your experiences but I most certainly claim what I have preached for the past 20 of my 83 years is exactly what I understand you are saying. A world of continued creation and expansion makes no sense if its most exalted member would remain static and oblivious to what is going on around him and without contributing to its becoming.
I will go as far as claiming that our own physical being is undergoing changes this very moment to accommodate a new world-vision of a changing world. Present senses will be expanded, and existing ones presently unavailable for the average being will become accessible. A pity I will not be around to witness and enjoy it.
Sheryll’s words above--"I found myself without meaning, without purpose and without a story. I had no new story i wanted to create, because it wasn’t real"--really speaks to the limitations of transcendence. In my Hospice work, it was well known that people often died upon commencement of their retirements. Why? No Purpose, No Meaning, No more story. Too, in my training as a psychologist, I’ve most resonated with self-determination theories of Ryan & Deci (2000) on human motivation and personality, concerning people’s inherent growth tendencies and their innate psychological needs for meaning and purpose. It seems there is a resurgence of teleology occurring. I am beginning to plan my research for my dissertation on the role of “meaning and purpose” in terms of a grounded theory towards a teleological psychology based on consciousness evolutionary theories. Thank you Andrew for laying the ground work and introducing these concepts to the larger population.
Full enlightenment would mean freedom from thought, freedom from “this or that”, “for vs against”. Ease, acceptance, beauty.
Thank you ramesh s, I agree with you. Reading ramana maharshi and Tony Parsons lately, there is only this.
Love and compassion our true selves, we all know really, all else is not us but mind fantasy trips.
Still don’t get the ‘future’ thing but hoping it may be explainable. Would love Andrew to truly explain it.
Not convinced so far
Graham
Could it be possible that without that initial awakening and transcendental experience it is unlikely that one would be able to relate to the evolutionary experience?
Sandra.
Yes of course this is a possibility in the mind. It’s like mountain climbing, there is always a peak higher than you are.
In the mind these kind of things are illusions.
We know this so we can’t go back to that way of seeing as being real?
This is really my point I think, thanks for reiterating it in two lines, brilliant, thank you.
Graham