Andrew Cohen - N°10 - LAST RETREAT - January 2025

The evolutionary enlightenment simply is simply embracing the evolutionary context and the fact that evolution as a fundamental expression of how God works in the universe. It's a realization that God is not static. God is not a static being. God is also the revolutionary insight is that the absolute principle is evolving. The universe is becoming is a state of constant development and evolution. This is the big insight. This is what's so exciting. It's not just at the material level, the level of matter, but for us it's the level of consciousness. The interior of the universe is consciousness and subjectivity. So when we realize that the interior of the universe is evolving, the God principle is evolving at the level of consciousness. This is the new insight. Because in the old enlightenment which is the foundation of the new enlightenment as I said God is static. Static being is eternal but it's static. It's not it's not going anywhere. There's no coming. There's no going. There's no birth. There's no death. There's no evolution. What makes evolutionary enlightenment new is the discovery of evolution. Human beings didn't know that we're part of an evolutionary process until about 150 160 years ago. We weren't aware of it. So the old enlightenment is the discovery of the eternal ground of all being awakening to the eternal dimension of reality. That's static eternal. Before the universe was created, the ground of being was as it is. But after the universe disappears, the being will be as it is. And throughout the whole process, nothing ever happens there. So that's in the way we present the big picture of reality. You say that's half the picture of what the God principle is all about. God is also the becoming of the universe. And so if the universe is consciously evolving or deliberately evolving and our participation is potentially part of that evolution that Max's relationship to his own mind and to his own life is part of that evolution that changes the picture quite a bit. So then non-duality in an evolutionary context means something very significant about our relationship to life and our relationship to being here. Who am I? What am I doing? Why am I doing it? Then it fits into the big picture of the totality of reality, the context of conscious evolution. That means you're playing a role in the big picture. Because as long as you have a measure of agency, you have a measure of freedom to impact the universe through your small but not irrelevant measure of freedom to impact the way the universe is evolving in a small way, very very small, very very small but not insignificant. So if you really get this, your capacity to make a difference here in the world could be a big deal because your presence here is not irrelevant. You embrace the big picture. The fact that you're here is full of potential meaning full of potential purpose to be actualized. And most people are so unconscious and so lost in their own egoic delusions that what I'm saying wouldn't apply to them. So the fact that the process is not fixed or static but it's developing and evolving and becoming that the God principle itself is evolving and becoming is so exciting. It's so revolutionary changes everything. So that's the new enlightenment piece. So it's beautiful in this teaching is God is static being is still the foundation of reality. But only half the picture and this is dharma. The other half the picture is that the universe is evolving and you're part of the evolutionary process. Your presence here is part of the evolutionary process. Your thought process knowingly or unknowingly is part of that process. The choices you make conscious or unconscious is part of that process. So much potential in this kind of realization. But it's got to be realized. Then we find this capacity to act when you're spontaneously evolutionarily enlightened. Those are the times you can really feel the presence of this evolutionary principle working through you as you You met your body, your mind and your personality available to it. Then when it really works, you'll find the un these the energy and intelligence that created the universe or what I call the energy and intelligence that created the universe will start using your mouth talking through you, walking through you, being itself through your body, mind, and personality for a period of time. Really, that's when you're spontaneously evolutionarily enlightened. And when this happens, you know it. You feel it. You can experience it deeply. You say, "Oh, this is the whole point." And you feel your your relationship to the universe changes in a very big way because you realize your presence here is potentially very important. Not for your ego, but for the universe itself. This is a new expression of the religious impulse. You're turned on. The ego is temporarily transcended. You start moving faster, thinking faster, knowing faster. It's like cosmic intelligence awakens to itself within you and starts expressing itself, revealing itself. You remember when I was talking yesterday and I talked about the dharma exist in this other dimension. I said where does it come from? It's the same thing. If you realize that this whole dimension of existence, the level of intelligence in the universe that just transcends all relative existence, it's thrilling. I like people to ask themselves the question, what would it be like to say yes in this impulse? Are you willing to return eternally to this process? Now, what I find very interesting is that most of us are afraid of physical death. But if you say, well, do you want to live forever? Most people say, I don't think I want to live forever either, but I'm afraid to die. Are you willing to say yes to return forever? So, in that context, most people realize in a split second that the idea of eternal life is horrifying. I'm not making a judgment. I'm just making an observation. But uh but in the evolutionary enlightenment, the vow is to continue to return to help the universe to evolve. Same idea. That's not it's not to help everybody get personally enlightened so they never have to come back here, but you want to help the universe to become more conscious. It needs your help. needs more wise enlightened people to be here to help everyone else along the path of universal liberation. See what makes this interesting is you think who created the universe? God created the universe. Are you separate from God? That means from a certain point of view this is your creation. It's your doing from an absolute point of view, not personally. But Max's true nature was involved in this whole process and he created all this which means it's his responsibility. I find it overwhelming to think about it's unbearable to think about that isn't it? So to answer your question, the difference here between what I call the old enlightment, the new enlightment is that the in the old enlightenment, we vow to return again and again and again. So we can help everybody to escape from some sorrow. And in evolutionary enlighten to the truth of evolution, the truth of who God is the evolving principle and evolution. As I explained the other day, the ancients in the east and the west also, not just easterners, believe the time was cyclical. So it went in cycles where if you truly understood that, it meant I've been through this before, the same story. And if I don't get out of here, I'm going to go through this again and again and again. Imagine what it would be like to wake up and realize unconsciously lost in the same story over and over and over and over and over again. That's what the enlightened ones found. So that's why the Buddha talked about getting off the wheel of becoming off the wheel of the eternal merrygoround of samsaric light. That's why they wanted to get out of here because they wanted to be free from cyclical birth and death. So if if the idea of linear time is from an evolutionary point of view more significant than that of cyclical time then it changes the picture. It means that the universe is evolving along a linear process and I don't think that's the whole truth but it's definitely part of the truth and that's what changes the picture. So that's why we have to change our views about enlightenment itself and its significance based on these new discoveries about reality. Make sense? I have a feeling how it actually works is much more complex than what I just described. But it gives you a basic idea of these distinctions. Not everybody's at the same level of understanding. People can disagree because they they don't necessarily see things the same way. But somebody might see things more clearly than the other. Everybody's not in the same place, but the ego doesn't like natural hierarchy. Feels very threatened by it. It's a challenge of human existence for all of us. It's an enormous challenge to work together, to get along together, to be able to recognize these differences of opinion, recognize where perspectives have higher value than others. The immature mind is always looking for simple solutions, simple simple truths and simple solutions. And you start scrutinizing this at a very deep level. You realize this as I've been explaining over the last two days. The truth here is that a moving target. We're never going to get there completely, but we can get closer to it if we're very careful, very sensitive, and very attentive. But just the knowledge and the information that the truth is a moving target. It's a very mature understanding. It's very rare that that someone could understand such a thing because there's so many paradoxes to embrace here all at the same time. Right? So the thing is a lot of people who aren't that mature would feel insecure if they realize that the truth is not a solid thing that exists in a particular place. Clarity of intention always that it's the primary requirement. These five principles enable us to transcend the ego manually. They cultivate the capacity for manual transcendence. And if if you're good at cultivating manual transcendence, then spontaneous transcendence will happen more often. These are very clear guidelines. So if they're very clear, then we have to practice them on their own terms. And then you find out this works. And if manual transcendence leads to spontaneous transcendence, the more you experience spontaneous transcendence, the more you're going to want to practice manual transcendence when necessary. be less resistance which is good news. No, but when this authentic self comes alive it's it's a temporary instant enlightenment. So you don't need any reference point for these principles when you awaken to authentic self it's spontaneously self-actualized and selfranted self transcendent at the same time. So it's just a state of spontaneous enlightenment doesn't need to be depending upon these principles. These principles help us get from unenlightenment to enlightenment. Once we experience the enlightened state, we don't need to rely on these principles anymore. Since most people don't stay enlightened for very long, we go back and forth between depending on these principles for when we are not spontaneously enlightened and we are we drop all of these support mechanisms because the whole point of the authentic self is it's spontaneous enlightenment. Isn't that beautiful? Means when you awaken to the authentic self, you're already enlightened. You don't have to do anything to take part. They just have to be yourself. Without any doubt and then it'll unfold naturally. But once again, we don't want to be too rigid about these distinctions. Creating a general picture of the right direction. These principles help you find the simplicity. They're very very very very very simple. So if they're so simple that anybody who's intelligent can never get confused if you follow these principles. Doesn't mean you won't struggle, you won't suffer, you won't experience fear or confusion or be existentially challenged in a profound way. But the simplicity of these principles will help you find your way through every time. Clarity of intention says I want to be free more than anything else without excuses. you want to be free or not. So we make it confusing but it's not objectively very confusing. So the simplicity of these principles help enormously to deal with the complexity that you're asking about. But um the part of us that doesn't want to be free which is the ego it will thrive in the complexity within the complexity the ego can hide but remain hidden in the simplicity the ego's motives are revealed and seen so clear for what they are. So people are trapped in their ego they never completely get it. Say yeah I kind of get it but it's kind of confusing. What you're saying is not so clear but I kind of get it but I don't really get it. The ego likes to remain hidden. So this is why I was speaking so much about self-transparency. If you want to be free, if you reach the point of spiritual maturity, which is a rare thing, then you're prepared for transparency because that's what you want. If you want that kind of transparency, you're giving up all other options. The ego finds that very scary. No other options. The ego is a shape shifter. It always wants to have another chance to play the game of being real. And we've heard me say this many times, the vehicle for consciousness is the body, mind, and personality. There's a body, the mind, and ego personality is the vehicle for consciousness. So I always say, who's in the driver's seat of your vehicle, of my vehicle? happy ego, the unhappy ego, the true self of the authentic self. That's what's important is who's in control of the vehicle. That's what's important. These five principles are all the simplicity you need. And I think we want to strive to become in ourselves expressions of simplicity. People that are too complex can give you a headache if you spend time with them. The self is so divided against itself. There's a bag of confusion. Why do you want to jump off the plane without a parachute? Cuz you want to be happy, right? Don't you want to be happy? Because you were speaking about jumping off the airplane without a parachute only in negative terms. But but why would you want to do it then if it's all negative? You'd only be attracted to jumping out of the airplane without a parachute if it represented hope of eternal happiness. But you didn't say anything about that. That's that's the only reason to jump to be to be eternally happy to know the absolute truth. But you didn't say anything about that. You were just talking about your ego's fears. So if you constantly look at your ego's fears, you're going to become frozen. And remember that in with the enlightenment dimension, there's enormous potential for profound healing of all this pain and suffering. Everybody forgets about that. There's a personal part of yourself that feels it needs to be healed. Is that healing ever really happen? I know a lot of people working on a healing, but is it is the promise of healing fulfilled partly? But if the thing is if it's a true healing, if it's a radical healing, then the problem is gone. But anyway, point I want to make you is that the leap, the leap out of the plane can change your whole life, can change everything for you. You should be focused on the positive potential of what what that represents. Having nothing, knowing nothing, being no one. I keep reminding everybody about the the natural state of these the true self and the authentic self. So for the true self, it's going from I have a problem of the ego. The ego's position is I have a problem, therefore I am. The ego's position is something is wrong and therefore I am. Right? It's the ego's position. Something's wrong, therefore I exist. Therefore I experience my existence. The verse is nothing ever happened. True self. Nothing ever happened. Nothing ever happened. And there's no trauma to overcome. That's the true self, authentic self. You go from I have a problem, therefore I am to all things are possible, infinite potential, fundamental experience. All things are possible. Those are absolute states of consciousness. Relative insights. You're you're tuning into an absolute dimension of reality. It's more real than the relative reality. So all of this feeling of trauma, pain, suffering, and fear is only relatively real. It's real. It really happened. And you you did suffer and you're experiencing the consequences of that suffering now. But it's only relatively real compared to what's absolutely real. So when you when you awaken to that which is absolutely real, you can see this relative pain and suffering in context. Suddenly it's not such a big deal anymore, not so overwhelming, not so frightening, not so confusing. The reason you're in this state of fear is because you're looking at the problem and you're freaking yourself out. So if you keep looking at the problem from within the ego, you just create more terror for yourself. So you're creating the problem. It doesn't have to exist. It's a negative position. So what I want you to do is go back and study these principles, these tenants. Work with them because what you're describing is the ego freaking itself out. You're looking at the very thing you're afraid of and getting more frightened and more frightened and more frightened. But you're doing it to yourself. You don't need to do that. You can you can contemplate that your own potential for freedom. What would it be like if I could be inwardly free? Wouldn't that be nice? Did you know why I keep repeating these things over and over again? Because they're true and they're important. So, it's very helpful if if you hear me keep repeating these things over and over. I'm trying to help you. So, it' be good accept the help. Instead of worrying about your fear, concentrating on your fear, concentrate on the possibility of your own liberation. Now imagine, have you ever thought you could be free? You have. Why don't you think about that? That's very positive. Life positive, self positive, existentially positive. A lot of the negative selft talk comes from the ego. It's drive ourselves crazy thinking negative thoughts. Again, you get frightened by we frighten ourselves to death. So jumping out of an airplane without a parachute means I want to be free and I never want to suffer again. metap metaphorically. It's a very positive idea. Want to be free from conditioning, free from the mind, free from everybody else's mind, free from all the trauma and doubt and fear and terror, free from all the frustration, the anxiety, the resentment, the anger. Wouldn't that be nice? So, contemplate the nature of your own desire to be free. And obviously, you're serious because you came to this retreat. So, a lot of the things the ego is afraid of for all of us don't happen. Sometimes they do. Most of the time things we're afraid of are just manufactured by our minds. So when you find yourself habitually thinking about what you're afraid of, stop doing it. Just shake yourself out of it and and think about what would happen if I jumped out of the airplane without a parachute and I really had a wake up experience. I woke up to my eternal potential for infinite liberation. But wouldn't that be beautiful? And if you awaken to the eternal nature of your own potential for freedom once, you're going to awaken to it again and again and again and again and again. This changes the whole picture. Remember that when I was telling you about when I met my guru, he took my enlightenment more seriously than I took him. So I want to encourage you to take your own potential for enlightenment seriously, which means you have to stop believing in your ego. Your ego is a sham. It's not your friend. So in this case, I'm saying it doesn't need to be healed. It has needs to be transcended, gone beyond, step into another world of potential within yourself. That make sense? It's technically the way to do it is to assume the position of no relationship, zero. So even if your mind is torturing you, you can choose to have no relationship to it. for five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes. It can be dancing all around you. You can choose not to let it bother you. Let it be there. Because if the ego knows you're not afraid of it, it won't stick around forever. As long as it knows it can intimidate you, then it will stay. The way you're behaving, you're giving the message, you can intimidate me anytime you want. So, you are empowering the worst part of yourself. But if you're through your behavior, you let the ego know that it cannot intimidate you no matter what it does. Even it dances around you forever. You won't move a muscle, but you're not afraid of it. The picture will change. There's no other way to do it. There's no other way it works. Do you see the simplicity to what I'm saying? Be stoic. Be stoic. Many of us in our unenlightened, in our ignorance, are afraid of our egos all the time. So when it shows its face, we go We're so afraid of our small self. So we react with terror and said, "Yeah, yeah, I know who you are." And also be absolute about it within your own experience of consciousness. Allow yourself to be totally vulnerable. Open yourself up to everything. Allow yourself to be totally vulnerable and non-reactive. It's okay to be vulnerable. Allow yourself to be o open and vulnerable. Let all these things happen. But you you're having no relationship to any of it. When I give meditation instructions, I tell people to see everything and identify with no thing. See everything. See everything but identify with nothing at the same time. Another form of meditation instruction is to think about the nature of zero. Zero means to have nothing, to know nothing, and to be no one. When you think about having nothing, knowing nothing, and being no one, how does it feel? Feels free, right? Enlightenment is lightness of being. Enjoy. Enjoy. Lightness of being. So jumping out of the airplane without a parachute doesn't mean anything except that. That's all it means. Having nothing, knowing nothing, and being no one. It doesn't mean anything else. But it's a profound letting go of the whole story. And the enlightenment is letting go of the whole story. Trying to let go of my negative emotion. I'm trying to let go of this trying to let go of that. Try and let go of this piece and that piece other piece. But it only works if you're willing to let go of the whole thing. So if you let go of the whole thing, you don't know what's going to happen. So then you become very vulnerable to the spiritual impulse because you make yourself available. And to put this in kind of mythic context, if I can speak in a mythic context. So for in a mythic context, the the god principle is I believe I'm speaking metaphorically, poetically. This is not necessarily really true. It's waiting for us to let go completely of anything else so we can be available for it. That can be a much more helpful way to think about this. But what I'm saying is actually true. When you show up fully available, undefended and vulnerable, the spiritual principle will be there to respond immediately. But the ego has a whole agenda for you. And if you want to be free, the whole thing's got to go. The whole agenda has to just disappear. And you start to feel so happy, so free without it. So full of potential, full of infinite possibilities. You don't know what's going to happen. But the feeling of infinite possibilities makes you feel so free. That's the point. So I want you to concentrate on those things, the positive part of all this. Practice contemplation of all the positivity inheritance, not the negativity. Cuz your ego is never going to be happy about you being here. You follow selfactualization needs to become the foundation for self-trcendence. a strong and positive ego. So I'm making this controversial point that Jack Angler made a long time ago. He said you have to be somebody before you can be nobody. So paradoxically it takes ego strength, ego confidence to be able to let go of the ego. It's self-contradictory funny way, but it's true. Bizarre. So in my opinion, people who have a not fully self-actualized and have a weak ego structure, when they start playing with self- transcendence, they start going a little crazy, acting a little crazy and being a little crazy. So they can't handle it because the self-trcendence, which is the awakening to this eternal non-relative absolute dimension of reality need to be grounded in the strong ego structure. Because if you tell somebody who is not grounded in a strong egoic structure, if you start talking about timeless, formless, beginningless and endless, eternal absolute truths, their weak ego structure gets scared to death. They start shaking with terror consciously or unconsciously. So enlightenment is not the solution for the lack of selfactualization. Self-actualization is a solution for self-actualization. And that means we have to discern where we're weak, what we need to work on. We need to work on those things very practically, simply, directly, honestly, and humbly, and succeed. If you've had a very hard time for a very long time, your soul could be in trouble. Now, you need a lot of good experiences in this life. good karma, good experiences, good relationships, good fortune, lots of blessings and grace because it's soul damage. It takes a long time to heal an impression in that part of yourself that can take a long time to recover from. That's your past successes and your past failures. It needs to be taken very seriously. A lot harder to recover from soul damage than is from ego damage. It's not the same thing. You see, you only get to know what someone's soul is all about when you get to know people very well. You can't tell some you can't tell about another person's soul if you just meet them for a few days or a few weeks. You have to get to know somebody over a period of years and see how they behave under the straight of life challenges and you get to know what their soul's made of. Each time we sit down to meditate, we have an opportunity to let go and we have an opportunity to get let go. Absolutely. So that's what when we when we do leave the body, that's what we're going to have to be prepared to do. And it'll be much better if we have the we're in the habit of being prepared to let go. Absolutely. This is why I always encourage people to make these big considerations every time they sit down to meditate. Not to meditate just unconsciously, but to realize the big implications of what one is doing big context because then it becomes more and more potentially meaningful each time we sit down. I don't feel I in my personal experience from my own personal vantage point which is very relative and full of ignorance. None of us can see ourselves clearly. My my own position is that my experiences is not that special or that extraordinary but I find when I share the teachings how extraordinary it obviously is. So because my guru gave me this teaching that itself is unknowable and ungraspable by the mind. I really took this on board. I let started letting go of all the experiences I had in the past and all the experiences I have in the present. So everything seems to just flow through and as I teach it's the letting go that I seem to be good at makes it appear I'm having all kinds of experiences all the time that I'm not aware of. This is why I keep telling everybody the secret here is not having a particular experience that your mind can get busy with and keeping you separate from reality by being so distracted by it saying this is it. I've got it now baby. Minute you think you've got it, you don't have anything. You're trapped. So I've I'm very good at letting go of ideas and feelings, thoughts, which leaves me with nothing. And that's true that that is my experience. But the nothing is obviously rich and alive and vibrant and obviously able to help people so in such a beautiful way. I'm very touched by all of you with the way you always responding so beautifully. I'm very moved by it. So the fact that a part of me that I can't see can catalyze this kind of awakening in you. It's extraordinary for me to behold. But I don't have a dual I don't have a dualistic relationship to it. That's the thing. So it's happening but I can't quite see it. It's happening behind my capacity to see and objects intercept from me. I can't see it. I objectively observe what's happening and I'm aware of what's happening and I care about what's happening. I'm committed to what's happening. I'm devoted to it. I give my life to it. I I care about this more than anything else. But I can't see it as a separate object. So when I hear a lot of you talk about your experiences, I always say the same thing. Can you let go of it? People get very happy about their experiences. And I once I say it's very good. It's beautiful. And I let go of it. Go back to the before the beginning. And people are reluctant to let go and go back to before the beginning because the experience was so meaningful. I say the experience might appear very meaningful, but it'll still keep you trapped unless you let go of it. So the not knowing is the source of freedom and liberation for me which is what I teach. So there's the renunciation that I have to practice which we all have to practice which is letting go of the duality which is the ego's worst nightmare. It's the ego's worst nightmare to let go of duality because then the ego doesn't get to be the center of attention in story. suddenly becomes meaningless. The reason I enjoy meditating is because it gives me relief from my mind. It's very mundane. My mind tortures me just like your mind tortures you. So when I meditate, I experience relief, very ordinary. At times I have extraordinary feelings and insights, but so do most people. So the realization that I have, the enlightenment that I my my teacher bestowed upon me exists in a separate quadrant of my being that I can't see because I trust it. It takes care of me. That's not an object that I can see. Like the last couple of days I felt awful physically because of my disease. I was feeling very unpleasant in my body mind. But uh the teaching was beautiful. I was amazed. So the source of my enlightenment is unaffected by my body's challenges. One doesn't affect the other. So I I'm not aware of the connection at this point. Don't know what else to say because the enlightenment seems to exist in a different dimension. Don't know where my body occupies. So it's unaffected by my body. It's a place where nothing ever happened. It's it's static and always free. My guru was so far along his development. He would have never been capable of doing what you call shadow work in a million years. It would have never happened. The enlightenment existed independently. of the karmas of the body mind. In my opinion, the fact that it flows through unobstructed by these by the body mind's challenges is the miracle because that means it's truly indestructible, transcendental and immortal. It's not dependent upon circumstances or conditions. Free from circumstances and conditions. So that's why it's what it is. That's why it's so extraordinary. But if you think about it, a lot of the greatest realizers had challenges. Rama died of cancer. Saga daughter died of throat cancer. Srirama Krishna died of cancer. Vivaandanda died of diabetes. So they all had issues and the power to spiritual awakening have the power to impact their physical challenges. Even though there's some very there's some very coherent ways of thinking that a lot of healers speak about which is if the body and mind are in balance, disease cannot stay in the biological system. I don't know who's right. I get a sense that these are two truths. It's kind of both and it's not either or. This is very complex stuff. I don't totally understand myself. So Deepak Chopa for example says he never gets sick. He said he never even gets a cold. I think our physical mortality is part of the overwhelming reality we have to face. No matter how awake we become to our immortal nature of consciousness itself, the biological frame is subject to birth and death no matter what. And there seems to be in that metaphysical equation something poetic just as a poetic truth because remember we've spoken about this before how seductive higher consciousness can be makes us feel like superman superw women the superpower when you're awake to these higher forces. So remember as you and I have discussed before the sharindo because of his awakening to the evolutionary impulse and his evolutionary experiments him and his close disciples believed because of the what they called the descent of the super mind. They brought the super mind down into the world of time and space that he and the mother were physically immortal. And the story goes that when he got sick and died that his closest disciples were angry and felt ripped off and betrayed by him. How dare you die on me, you bastard. It's a true story. So, we have to tread carefully. But there's something to me about the paradox between the immortal nature of the self and its indestructible reality, timeless, formless, eternal nature being indestructible if we know what it is. and the inevitable relative nature of the material existence including our physical form. There's something about the the unbearable. There's a paradox between those two positions that's I find it very full of pos. It's kind of unbearable. And I think whatever that feeling is that makes us feel unbearable about that. I think it's very positive in a way. I haven't thought through it yet, but there's something so deeply related to absolute reality in a way that brings us to our knees in a way that I find very incredibly humbling, incredibly life affirming. So it means we can have it all if we really want it, but we have to be able to let go at the same time. It has a powerful effect on me every time I think about it.