What is Evolutionary Enlightenment?

Q: Why do we need a new spirituality?

A: Because we're living in the twenty-first century. We're not in ancient India, or in biblical Israel, or even, dare I say it, in the sixties, anymore. And we need to find out what spirituality, and its ultimate goal, enlightenment, means for our time. You see, many of us postmoderns grew up in a time of great transition, which left us devoid of any kind of spiritual, philosophical, moral, or ethical context or direction for our own lives. We became too sophisticated to believe in the myths of our own traditions, and moved beyond them. But the problem is that we haven't found anything to replace them. And this has left us spiritually adrift. We have had to find our own way and most of us haven't done very well. In the sixties, some of us turned to the East in search of the answers we couldn't find at home and we discovered the enlightenment traditions and their wealth of ancient wisdom. But as many of us are beginning to find out, the fact is that traditional approaches— East and West—are in many ways inadequate to meet the needs of the evolving human at the time in which we are living.

Q: What's the problem with traditional approaches?

A: To put it very simply, most of the traditions don't embrace the cosmic, evolutionary, time-developmental, forward-moving context of human emergence. And especially in the East, there tends to be an overemphasis on transcendence. For example, in most traditional teachings of enlightenment, the goal is the experience of a state of consciousness that liberates the individual from the world. And in this sense, the spiritual aspirations of many Christians are not all that different—because the whole point is to be able to go to heaven when you die. But as long as the goal of one's spiritual path lies beyond this world—whether we call it nirvana or heaven—one is going to inadvertently end up having an ambiguous relationship to this world. And as we all know, a lot of earnest and sincere spiritually minded people, from Buddhist monks to Catholic priests, often seem to have an ambivalent relationship to the manifest realm. You see, any overemphasis on transcendence invariably makes it difficult to relate to the human experience in a truly whole, integrated, and ultimately life-embracing way. And too often these days, the concept of transcendence is used as a kind of narcotic, as a means to avoid the enormous challenge of coming to terms with the complexity of living a passionate and engaged human life in this crazy world. This is why I'm endeavoring to define a new enlightenment, which is all about embracing life and this world passionately, wholeheartedly, and fearlessly. I call this “evolutionary enlightenment.”

Q: Why is this new enlightenment evolutionary?

A: Because evolution is its purpose! The goal is liberation from ego, just as in traditional enlightenment, but no longer as a means of escape from the world. In this new vision of enlightenment, one seeks liberation from the bonds of ego, from narcissistic self-concern, so that one will finally be able to participate wholeheartedly in the unfolding of evolution itself. That's the whole point. You see, whenever we look at the human experience in an evolutionary context, the entire picture begins to change.

Q: What is the “evolutionary context” you're speaking about?

A: Well, it's taken fourteen billion years of evolution for matter to develop to the point where you can even begin to understand and appreciate this very fact. Think about that. We've really only known about evolution for about 150 years. When the great traditions emerged, the fact that we were part of an evolving universe was not yet known. But now we're beginning to understand the extraordinary developmental process that's brought us to this point. And if you let this in, it changes everything. Suddenly your own experience will no longer be seen as a small personal melodrama that you are trapped in, but will be recognized to be a tiny part of an unfolding, infinitely vast symphony of creation. And you will realize that this context demands from you a completely different relationship to life.

Q: Why would an understanding of evolution change the way we live?

A: In the recognition of this vast evolutionary context, we begin to appreciate how fortunate we are to actually be here. And we suddenly awaken to the fact that we have the extraordinary opportunity to choose to give all of our energy to the very evolutionary process we are already a part of. We're already a part of it, but we're not aware of it. Most of us are not conscious of the big context in which our life is occurring. But when we awaken to that context and recognize that in the power of choice itself we can not only free ourselves from narcissism and ignorance but simultaneously become one with the very force of creation, our enlightenment has begun. You see, everything lies in the freedom of choice that we possess as human beings. Our liberation and our bondage. There is no other species that has the power to choose to evolve. In light of this discovery, you have to ask yourself: What am I doing with the gift of choice that is my birthright as a human being? How am I living? Am I fully and wholeheartedly participating in the life process for the sake of the evolution of consciousness itself?

Q: How is it possible that our individual choices can affect evolution?

A: The point is, we already are affecting evolution. You know, a friend of mine, cosmologist Brian Swimme, recently said that at this point in development, the process of natural selection has been superseded by human choice. What does that mean? That means that for the first time in history, the choices that we are making as human beings have become the primary force that is directing our planet's future. And for the most part, these choices are unconscious. As long as we're lost in the unconscious nightmare of narcissism and self-concern, we'll never be able to appreciate what the gift of choice actually means. That's why it's so urgent that we wake up now, that we liberate the power of choice from our compulsive addiction to the fears and desires of the ego.

For the mature human being at the beginning of the twenty-first century, this is the purpose of enlightenment in a nutshell: to liberate the miraculous power of human choice from the tyrannical grip of ego. And it means everything. It means the survival of our species and the evolution of our species. And very practically, it demands that more and more of us be able to recognize the vast evolutionary context in which we find ourselves, and be willing to take responsibility for its implications. We must begin to live the gift of human life and use the gift of human choice for the sake of evolution itself.