Radical Coherence

hello everybody welcome nice to see you all so what i want to speak about is the is my understanding of the meaning of the term coherence to be one with in the context of my understanding of the nature of enlightenment the experience of uh most profound and high state of consciousness so this is a it's a very interesting and i find thought-provoking intriguing inquiry is what is the nature of coherence to be one with in the context of the awakening to enlightened awareness which is a spiritual experience so just to speak in broad generality it's usually the the experience of enlightened awareness the awakening to the higher state of consciousness in which we become conscious of enlightened awareness our awareness becomes awakened with the presence of enlightened awareness this usually informs our subjective self-sense with the presence of eternity there's suddenly the presence of a timeless and formless beginningless an endless literally eternal ground a being of existence of of essential self of reality itself and in that state of consciousness the sense of duality of twoness falls away one awakens to a sense of being what we could truly call a cosmic singularity in absolute singularity so this singularity has no center and has no boundaries and that's what's so extraordinary about the state of enlightened awareness it's suddenly becoming conscious of that which is eternal and often when when the state of consciousness is spoken about we get the sense of the idea that to awaken to enlightened awareness to become conscious of enlightened awareness of the experience of the awakening to enlightened awareness in that state we automatically become or experience oneness with the other the others the world and the whole universe this is what how it is often spoken about that when i awaken to enlightened awareness when i become conscious of consciousness i experience oneness with the other the others the world and the whole universe and this is presumed to be true more often than not once people are speaking about enlightenment that inheritance state of enlightenment is the experience of oneness with the other the others the world and the whole universe and uh i wanted to question this assumption i want to question whether this is actually really true that is it true that inherent in the awakening to enlightened awareness is there the presence of oneness or not two and a sort of nonduality with the other the others the world and the whole universe is it possible to experience the presence of eternity and in that in in the present and in the face of the presence of eternity to be aware of the other the others the world and the whole universe and maybe feel a sense of unity or oneness with but not necessarily actually being in one word so to repeat what i want to do is i want to inquire into the nature of this experience of enlightened awareness and to question whether inherent in the experience of enlightened awareness is the one that's with all of life all of consciousness all of the cosmos so i want to try and make an interesting distinction here which is that um usually the awakening experience the awakening to enlightened awareness is an inner experience that happens within the subjective sense of cell and seems like it expands to into infinite proportions so in that state one feels non-separate from and connected to absolutely everything that exists seen and unseen known and unknown i often like to describe this as a leap from relative cognition relative consciousness to absolute cognition absolute consciousness so this kind of experiences as i'm sure you all are very much aware absolutely life transforming ultimately exhilarating completely liberating heart opening mind transcending absolutely transformative and when people claim to have had this kind of experience in a very profound way and claim to be or appear to be grounded or rooted in this kind of expanded state of unity consciousness we often find them very compelling we find there if they're if they're the real thing their personality and expression of their persona usually expresses and transmits that consciousness of eternity the presence of eternity the presence of the infinite the presence of a great mystery that the mind can never understand so we often if you get to know people who have had or grounded in this higher state of consciousness and the experience of the scientific consciousness they tend to be a little bit different if they're for real their persona expresses a measure of liberation the measure of transcendence a measure of inner freedom and a measure of transcendental knowledge but then there's the second question compton this is this is this is where all the confusion comes into being which is is there coherence or does there seem to be a measure of coherence or oneness with does it seem to be a measure of coherence in their relationship to the human experience so if someone is supposed to be grounded and awaken to enlightened awareness how is there is there some tangible discernible measure of coherence in relationship to their expanded state their apparent so-called expenditure consciousness in his or her relationship with his or her husband or wife for example is there coherence between the state of oneness the state of trans transcendental cosmic consciousness in the relationship that i would have with my wife and that over that enlightened woman would have with her husband is there a measure of coherence between our understanding about that state and the kind of relationship that that particular individual has with these are here nearest and dearest we would tend to hope so or imagine that there would be a an expression or a manifestation of coherence between the between the higher state of consciousness and the individual seems to have retained and become stabilized in in their relationship with their husband or their wife and their children and in the same way if one has attained a significant measure of stability in enlightened awareness for claims that have done so is there a measure of coherence in relationship to that in that individual their relationship to money because the experience of cosmic consciousness of eternity of consciousness inner freedom is supposed to set us free inwardly liberate us that's what everybody says enlightened awareness is the source of spiritual liberation the buddha called the awakening to enlighten awareness the experience of the deathless the uncreated and the unborn brahmana maharishi called it the self so does the awakening to the self or the conscious awakening to the deathless the uncreated and the unborn change our relationship to many dimensions of the reality of being a human being so in this case our relationship to money is there what kind of is there any coherence in the enlightened one in their relationship to money is there fear and attachment and greed still present and the enlightenment's in the enlightened one's relationship to money or does the relationship to money express a measure of freedom then of course there's the there's a very charged question about student sexuality for example is there any if someone is supposed to be grounded in enlightened awareness the man or woman is supposed to be grounded in lightning awareness how does that express itself in their relationship to the very powerful experience of sexual desire we know this has been a very tricky topic for mostly male spiritual masters over the last 40 years or so is there coherence between inner freedom and a relationship to sexuality this is what i mean by coherence so the point here is that the that inherent in the experience of enlightened awareness the powerful experience of enlightened awareness is the awakening to what's called non-duality or oneness with the other the other the world and the whole universe and everybody says yes when i had my experience of awareness awareness i experienced oneness with the other the other is the world in the whole universe so what does oneness with the other and the other the world the others the world and the whole universe actually look like in real life what does it look like in relationship to our husbands and our wives and our children relationship to money sex power these are important questions because part of the point i wanted to make here is that the exp inner awakening to non-duality or oneness or cosmic consciousness and this absolute singularity doesn't automatically bestow upon us any kind of inherent coherence in relationship to all the dementia all the complex dimensions of being human and if what i'm saying is true and i believe that it is true in most cases this is an important subject for inquiry and discussion if this is something we're interested in if enlightenment is something that we're preoccupied with something we're very consumed by and something we want to understand and ultimately experience for ourselves it's important to understand what its limitations are and the work that i think we all need to do if we're serious about that kind of awakening experience so to continue to expand upon what i've been sharing i think that there's a there's there's a myth that many people seem to believe there's some kind of myth it's the myth in the thinking that if you have a powerful experience of enlightened awareness everything will become coherent everything in your life will begin to line up most perfectly because now you're in a state of enlightened awareness so naturally everything's going to just work out for everything everything's going to make sense your life will be free from contradictions free from any fundamental paradox of course nothing could be farther from the truth but this is this is uh i believe part of the mythical unexamined mythical thinking around what happens when people wake up and working to enlighten awareness now i want to make a distinction between maybe two different kinds of awakening two different kinds of enlightenment one kind of enlightenment is the kind i've been describing in which we experience a profound sense of nonduality and oneness with the totality of our experience this is this is the awakening to consciousness itself when consciousness becomes aware of consciousness and consciousness as we all know has no boundaries or borders the subjective experience of consciousness is that it is timeless and formless and beginningless and endless and if you want to know how i've come to that conclusion all you have to do is look into the nature of your own experience of subjective conscious awareness in this very moment and if you look into the nature of your own experience of conscious awareness in this very moment you won't be able to find in this very moment any boundaries any beginnings and endings so in this in the in in the presence of the direct cognition of the limitless nature of consciousness itself inherent in the subjective experience of the nature of consciousness itself it feels like there's nothing missing everything is there because there are no borders and there's no boundaries and that seems to be enough and it is enough as long as we are not interested in the whole notion of relationship so when we first begin to awaken to enlightened awareness we realize the ultimate truth about the nature of reality is that it's only one so if there's only one and not two there's no such thing as relationship and this is what my my teacher and my guru the great hwl punches you revealed to me is that inheriting the awakening to consciousness is the recognition there's only one and not two which means there is no relationship no relationship is the ultimate truth about the nature of consciousness and the ultimate nature of non-duality is no relationship whatsoever it means there's no here and there's no there there's no hearing there's no there there's no urine there's no me so there's no notion of relationship and in no relationship there's only freedom and that is a state of consciousness what i'm describing is a state of consciousness and no matter how deep and how liberating our experience of that state of consciousness is sooner or later we're going to [Music] need to get up from our seat and go to the toilet make a cup of coffee have dinner or lie down and go to sleep but the whole fact or effect of relationship the inescapable fact of relationship and relatedness sooner or later rears its head in the bliss of our conscious experience of nonduality and the minute this whole notion of relationship and relatedness you and me appears and hearing their peers and their complex reality of being a human being suddenly rears its head and that's when this whole question of coherence enters into the picture so when we're looking at the nature of consciousness itself on its own by itself outside the conscious outside the context of relationship we don't need to think about coherence when the reality of being human and the inherent complexity of being human which involves relatedness and relationship enters the picture everything changes and this it's really this question that's been preoccupying me for about 35 years so so in these two kinds of enlightenment i wanted to describe one kind of enlightenment is the awakening to the consciousness of consciousness or non-duality or oneness or eternity but then there's another kind of enlightenment and in the second kind of enlightenment we understand many great realizes who've had the kind of awakening i've described awakened to an aspiration a conscious conscious inspiration and aspiration to transform the world and ultimately the whole universe into an enlightened paradise into paradise into utopia the tibetan buddhism they called the land of shambhala or heaven so what's what's interesting to me is that it seems that it seem it seems that in bet that's embedded in the awakening to consciousness it seems to be that embedded in the awakening to enlighten awareness is a subtle or not so subtle compassionate aspiration and profound inspiration to transform the world of duality into a paradise of not where the where non-duality reigns to turn the world in the world is is this matrix of this multi-dimensional matrix of relatedness to transform the world of this multi-dimensional matrix of relatedness into a paradise into a heaven realm into the land of shambhala this is not a new idea as i said many great realizers have awakened to this kind of cosmic inspiration or aspiration now one of the defining features of paradise or heaven or utopia would be a would be the presence would be the dramatic presence of overwhelming unavoidable ecstatic and intoxicating coherence so in this in this new world in this new units in this new paradise in this new heaven realm suddenly it's very different than the world we're living in right now i can tell you that everything made sense human beings were all human i'm not speaking about the world we're living in i'm speaking about the land of shambhala the paradise to be it's it's a place where everything makes sense we're all people are rational and compassionate kind and generous where everyone lives through the upliftment of all where everybody is awake everybody has awakened to enlightened awareness everybody's cooperating with each other at the highest level of human potential so in this vision of paradise's vision of heaven on earth the defining feature of paradise for happening would be coherence would be coherence at all levels in relationship to the com relation to the complex challenges of being human there would be profound coherence between the realization and recognition of the ultimate truth of non-duality or oneness and each and every human being's relationship to all the all the multi-dimensional challenging aspects of being human that's coherence and of course one of the things that we find so deeply disturbing and deeply troubling about the time we're living in is because there is so much incoherence happening in the world around us and between us on so many different levels at the same time that it is spiritually challenging and spiritually devastating it's the level of incoherence it's literally overwhelming and for many of us challenges our spiritual idealism as many of you may know i'm i'm very interested in not just non-duality but an evolutionary non-duality non-duality in the context of evolution under becoming so when we awaken to non-duality in the context of evolutionary becoming we awaken to a deep heartfelt yearning for coherence coherence at higher and higher levels of human potential and it's a urine that seems to come from the depths of our soul it's a yearning it doesn't come from the mind it's not manufactured by anybody's mind comes from the soul and comes from the cell and it's a yearning for greater not only for coherence a fundamental level of coherence but a profound level of coherence and a desire for coherence at higher and higher levels of human potential so part of the point i've wanted to make in this talk is that coherence is not inherent it's not inherent in the awakening to consciousness in the awakening to consciousness there is inherent is it there is an inherent coherence in consciousness itself but that is that that's the nature of consciousness itself it's not anything that's beyond it the awakening to consciousness can be an end in itself it can be the ultimate relief and release from attachment to fear and desire to ignorance and on enlightenment but beyond the attainment of the bliss and the freedom of the conscious of consciousness and the inherent coherence available to us in the consciousness of consciousness there's another kind of awakening that happens which is the journey for coherence at higher and higher levels of human potential and what that means to any given individual is going to be different because there's no mythic god-given preordained answer to the question of what coherence looks like for all people at all levels of development what coherence would look like and feel like for an individual and a certain level of development would look very different for for another individual another level of development and someone who pays to tries to pay attention to what people are thinking in this particular field and well i'm very curious about what what are the what are those individuals who seem to be the most enlightened and the most sophisticated the most intelligent the most awake what do they think represents these higher levels of coherence or the highest levels of coherence in relationship to these different to different aspects of being human individually and together i notice that there's not a lot of agreement there's not a lot of coherence about the meaning definition of coherence and our levels of development so this is a very tricky subject it's very interesting and [Music] to find the answers to the quote to find the answers to these kinds of questions requires that we all be willing to dig very deeply into the nature of our own thoughts and thinking in our own experience of consciousness and our own experience of being human and our own thoughts about consciousness and being human the challenge of being human and our own thoughts about the challenges inherent in human potential and the inherent challenge is in actualizing high room potential within ourselves and with each other and between us and it requires us to be [Music] ruthlessly and brutally honest with ourselves so i feel that um at least this is true for myself and i assume this is true for other people i can't say suffer fat but i think once we become to repeat what i said before i think once we've become established in a measure of stability and then waking to enlighten awareness i don't believe that that they're being established and measured and stabilized in the measure of a mind awareness is enough to make us truly happier to ultimately liberate us because because as i explained before what follows from that is a mysterious aspiration that our life in our life would become an expression of coherence in multiple dimensions at the same time which is not an easy task it's the tall order it's the atmos aspiration for coherence i want my life to make sense i want my life to make the deepest sense i want my relationship to life to make sense i want my relationship to life to make the deepest sense i want my relationship to relationships i want my relationship to relationships to make sense i want my relationship with relationships to make the deepest sense and we all know that this the challenge of human relationships and relatedness is a difficult area for all of us to manifest deep profound coherence of love and trust and goodwill kindness and forgiveness integrity so i think inherent in the awakening to enlightened awareness it can bestow upon us this evolutionary thirst this evolutionary yearning for higher and higher and greater greater coherence in and as and through the human experience for our own life and as we get stronger and deeper in our realization this would become a an inspired aspiration at the the universe could become enlightened that the universe that we are co-creating could become the landscape in real time at the universe that we're co-creating could become the paradise that we all know is possible and only then then only then would we be released only then would be would we be released only then we would be released because then it releases it seems like then the job would be done now finally how any one of us would define the nature and meaning of coherence to us personally would depend upon what our values are we don't all share the same values we don't all share the same beliefs conscious and unconscious about the nature and meaning of reality nature meaning of the human experience but each and every each and every one of us will consciously or unconsciously relate coherence to our conscious and unconsciously cherished values and beliefs and as we begin to investigate what are the nature of my values and my cherished beliefs my deepest opinions about the ultimate meaning significance of the human experience of life of consciousness itself in existence itself as we look in as we look inside to discover what our values are we may find that our values could use some work it may be our values maybe we might discover that our values are the values which made deep and profound sense to us maybe 20 years ago or 30 years ago maybe they need to be updated and refined and reworked re-examined may be improved upon and as we work on this process of updating and re-defining our values we'll notice that our consciousness seems to be evolving as a result of that that kind of process that kind of spiritual process we seem to becoming more conscious and more wise much deeper and much more capable of understanding than we were 20 or 30 years ago but as we update our our values how we will interpret the meaning of coherence and what coherence looks like will evolve also our values change as our understanding changes the meaning of coherence will change at the same time this is very interesting so we can see this is a moving target this is a moving target for all of us individually and collectively because as i said before there's no divinely preordained definition of coherence and instead already says self-existing it's up to us to define what these values actually are what they mean what they look like and why they are so important so the awakening to consciousness and the kind of awakening to the consciousness of consciousness awakening to non-duality into cosmic awareness does not bestow upon us any kind of inherent understanding of coherence that's my point so spiritual life and so the spiritual life lived in the enlightened life lived in earnest requires hard spiritual work especially as it relates to this question especially as it relates to the questioning what's the meaning of coherence and the meaning of coherence another way to another way to describe the meaning of coherence is what's the most perfect what would then happen in to put it another way in your notion of heaven whoever you are in my notion of heaven or in your notion of heaven or paradise of the land of shambhala what would the perfect human relationship look like how would it be defined what would the perfect human relationship look like how would it be defined how do human how do enlightened human beings behave in paradise how do enlightened human beings behave in paradise it's a complex question so in my way of thinking the awakening to enlightened awareness the awakening to non-duality and the consciousness of consciousness so just the beginning the fundamental ground of oneness and not twoness the fundamental awakening to the singularity that is all of life the transcendence includes everything it's really just the beginning because after that there's so much work that we need to be doing eternally the longer that i live and the longer that i teach as many people have said before me the more i realize how much i don't know and how much work there is to be done in order to find out so if we if we if a part of our spiritual practice is digging into this question of how to human be how to enlighten human beings pain in paradise it'll give us a lot to chew on a lot to work with especially if we're looking in the mirror when we ask the question so remember cohere the coherence that we would be striving for the coherence is what we're striving for would be would be that ultimate attainment where everything would make sense where everything would make sense and it would feel so good we'd feel so good and so deeply right it feels so right so absolutely delightful i guess to put with the last point i've been making in mythical mythic terms we could say we could say that the this is a mythic statement so don't take it literally that you can if you want to that's the you could say that the energy and intelligence has created the universe and it's creating the universe right now we can feel through our own spiritual yearning through our own experience of yearning spiritually the energy and intelligence that created the universe in this creating universe right now aspires for coherence deeper and deeper levels of complexity the deeper the complexity the harder coherence becomes because there's something because there's so many more variables to deal with but it seems like it feels like that when we at least this is my understanding is that when awake awakening human beings experience this yearning for profound coherence transpersonal coherence cosmic coherence yearning that life would make deep and profound sense at all levels what we're experiencing in those moments would be a yearning that's coming from the deepest parts of our own self not just nothing from our ego or our conditioned minds or even our souls it's going from a deeper and higher place so it seems like at least it feels like the yearning for coherence is coming from the very source of existence and i think this yearning for coherence is the best part of each and every one of us one wondering what has been awakened to liberate and discover it means i really it's really because it really means it means i really care about life it means i realize that i care about life i care about consciousness i care about existence i care about purpose and purposefulness and i don't and i don't believe that the yearning i'm describing for coherence just it just comes from a naive mind or a naive soul mature minds and mature souls can also yearn for this greater coherence and i believe that as long as that we are personally awake to and in touch with this deep yearning for coherence it means we're going to keep trying we're gonna keep trying we'll keep reaching for the highest because we feel compelled to do so not even for our own sake anymore and for the sake of the evolution of the interior of the cosmos and in my understanding that's the greatest gift we can all give each other you