Notes from the Revolution

Andrew has often remarked that getting people to change can be like attempting to split the atom. Indeed, he sometimes goes to extraordinary lengths, and takes tremendous risks, in order to compel his own students to live in accordance with their own highest potential. And having witnessed in myself and others the tenacious resistance to change that seems to be part of human nature, I wouldn’t hesitate to say that Andrew’s analogy of atomic fission is no exaggeration.

Andrew is giving everything to catalyzing human transformation for a very good reason. When he first began teaching, he had intimations of an extraordinary, higher potential for human beings. He recognized that when his students came together in a shared passion for freedom and truth, something spontaneously emerged between them—a higher collective consciousness that not only dissolved any and all separation, but released with it an infinitely creative, intelligent, and liberated force. This higher unity seemed of far greater significance than any one individual’s spiritual enlightenment.

Beginning in late 2000, Andrew began to make a concerted effort to bring into being what he had witnessed years earlier. He felt that if this new, impersonal enlightenment could be sustained through conscious intention among a group of his students, it would confirm his earlier intimations that an evolutionary leap in human consciousness was truly possible. After months of Andrew’s ongoing attempts to get his students to fully give themselves to this endeavor and to go beyond any self-serving motive, Impersonal Evolutionary Enlightenment was born on the summer evening of July 30, 2001. On that date, which we now call Evolutionary Enlightenment Day, a higher collective consciousness emerged among a group of his students, and was sustained for a number of weeks—the first living proof of Andrew’s vision and the fuel for the subsequent development of his philosophy and practice. Here you can read students' letters, quotes, and excerpts from an interview between Andrew Cohen and integral philosopher Ken Wilber about this event and its significance for the evolution of human consciousness.

(9 min)

On August 24, 2002, a little over a year after that event, Andrew shared the story of July 30th at the end of a two-week retreat.

Andrew Cohen and Integral
Philosopher Ken Wilber in Dialogue:
“The Evolution of Enlightenment”

In the first installment of a series of dialogues featured in What Is Enlightenment? magazine, Andrew Cohen and integral philosopher Ken Wilber discussed in detail the nature of this evolutionary explosion. The following is an excerpt from Andrew´s description of it:

"Several months ago, an extraordinary event occurred a number of times among a group of my students. They witnessed and directly experienced the spontaneous descent of a cosmic power—a powerful conscious presence within and without that was instantly enlightening. In other words, each individual experienced, in their own consciousness, inherent liberation and the unlimited potential that the liberated heart and mind feels as the living universe calls for our unconditional participation in the process of its own unfolding. It seems that it was both the collective nature of the event and the willingness of the participating individuals to bear witness to what was unfolding that made the emergence of this consciousness possible. This thing has happened a few times, among different groups of my students, and I realized that this expression of enlightenment beyond the personal was really the target that my teaching has been heading toward for the past sixteen years."

A Matter of Integrity

“A struggle ensued between our teacher's insistence on absolute integrity and our unwillingness to shed our attachment to ego and self-satisfaction and follow him into the unknown.”

click for Carter's WIE editorial

After the event that occurred on July 30, 2001, and during the weeks that followed, Andrew was flooded with letters from his students describing the emergence of this new collective enlightenment among them:

Click for more letters »