Andrew Cohen - N° 12 - LAST TEACHINGS - Dec. 24 _ Feb. 25

So my guru was HWL Punja Pi which is a disciple of Ramana and then I was very influenced by Srirainda's dharma which is about creating the future of the world creating paradise on earth creating utopia he was a visionary and interestingly enough Ramina and Sriraindo disagreed with each other they didn't agree about the nature of mosha the nature of reality they were both fully enlightened but they had a disagreement about about what it's all about for Ramen it's all about having nothing knowing nothing and being no one zero doing being nobody doing nothing for Shriara binda who was a revolutionary is by creating utopian future inspired by god consciousness a vision of utopia and I think it's very interesting that two of India's modern greatest realizers Shrior bind and Raman Maharshi fully realized universally respected as the highest realizers in modern history disagreed about moka is that interesting that means not all mosha is the same most people don't believe that how can there be different enlightenments? There can be. The world's a bit complicated place the truth is not so simple like people think it is or want it to be. It's more complex. But most people don't want to think. They just tell me the truth. Give it to me. Give me the mantra. I gave a retreat in Bangalore a few years ago. There was a beautiful sea couple there after I was finished teaching. They were doing some kind of sad together. I said, "What are you doing?" They said, "Oh, we're doing the sa we learned from him suru." I said, "Do you know what you're doing? Do you know what it means?" They said, "No, but we believe in it." I said, "Okay, how can it help you if you don't know what you're doing and why you're doing it? Arabindo called the old vanta. The old vanta means the vision of moxas the sadu living alone in a cave in Himalayas. It's the old vision of enlightenment. Ramen is an expression of the old enlightenment. A be the most highest most beautiful expression of the old enlightenment. Having nothing, knowing nothing and being no one. Sri Arbindo called this the refu he called that position the refusal of the aesthetic and the aesthetic is someone who's given up the world. So he called the sad's refusal to engage with the world. He called it the refusal of the aesthetic because he felt that in this new evolutionary attitude we need to embrace the world like I said before and transform it to our own transformation. Your own liberation is is becomes in tantra a world embracing you. That means your personal transformation from samsara to nirvana becomes the transformation of the whole world. Whereas for raa the liberation is the destruction of the world. The world disappears. It's a big illusion. So they're both right. Everybody's right. It's a different interpretive framework. You understand? It's it's a different kind of interpretation. They're both right. Nobody nobody's more correct than anybody else. But the question becomes that there are two different perspectives on enlightenment. And so my question would be which do you feel is the most relevant perspective for the reality of the world today? Does the world does this world in trouble? It's burning down. Does it need more people to go up to the Himalayas and disappear? Does it need more people to wake up and be enlightened in the world as a transformation everybody's looking for? tantra or the kajim shaveism approach seems more culturally historically relevant for this particular time in history because it seems to me and I agree with you that uh I'm going off to the Himalayas to go spend 10 years in a cave by myself goodbye it feels inappropriate for this time in history whereas the idea is saying I want I I'm going to aspire to become fully enlightened so I can help the world become an expression of the highest Good. And I that can only happen if I if I insist on staying here and demonstrating that actuality for as many people can I can see it. We live in a different time now. We need people who want to be enlightened for the sake of the whole world. People who want I want to be enlightened for the sake of the transformation of the whole world. Not for me, not for my liberation, not for my happiness. I want to be enlightened for the sake of the whole world. It's called a noble aspiration. Moka is not just for me. It's for everybody. That's to me that's the aspiration of a bodhic saff mukta. It's my belief. The universe has a has a heart has a soul to it when you awaken to consciousness. So consciousness cares about its own self-recognition. Consciousness wants you to wake up. Consciousness wants you to wake up. Consciousness wants him to wake up. I'm here just as a facilitator. I can help you. But it's a consciousness. It's not me Andrew that's doing anything. It's a consciousness itself working through me that wants you to wake up. Now, I can't tell you why consciousness wants you to wake up, but I can tell you I have no doubt that it does. This is why the foundation of reality is love. It's care. So consciousness, which is the ground of reality, cares about you, cares about you, cares about him, cares about all of us. I can't tell you why, but I can be sure that it does. Amidst all the craziness of the world, the fear, the pain, the suffering, the violence, the evil underneath it all, there's a very deep caring. In spite of everything, God cares. So consciousness, which is I'm calling God is consciousness, cares about you and cares about me. So that's the part of you that that's trying to figure this out. I call it in my dharma the evolutionary impulse. The evolutionary impulse, the impulse to evolve, the impulse to evolve, the impulse to become conscious. Some people have awakened to the evolutionary impulse. They want to become conscious. Most people don't. Most people don't don't want to become conscious. They have not woken up to the evolutionary impulse. Right? Some people care passionately about the evolutionary impulse. The evolutionary impulse is a vibration. It's the feeling I must become conscious. I have to become conscious. I must become conscious. I have to become conscious. It's not passive. It's very active. I must become conscious. I have to become conscious. I feel desperate for consciousness. That's like Ramina said, a true seeker has to want the moa the way a drowning man wants air. So the evolutionary impulse that's awakened to itself in you wants to wants to know the truth, wants to be liberated and it feels very good. The evolutionary impulse feels purely it's a purely positive vibration. It's the best part of me. It's the best part of each and every one of us. And it should give you a lot of confidence that the confidence that this impulse exists in the universe. Without it, we'd all be do we'd all be lost. Right? It's the God vibration. The God vibration is not passive. It's active. And doing the sad like doing the meditation for example makes us more sensitive to it, more available. So some people are very excited about consciousness, right? So the people that are the most excited about conscious, they're the ones who become the gurus. They're fanatics. Some people, some people are fanatics about music. Some people are fanatics about making money. Some people are fanatics about science. Some people are fanatics about consciousness, right? They become obsessed with consciousness. And if you become obsessed with consciousness, that transforms you. You become a different person. But people who become obsessed with consciousness become dangerous because they don't care. They don't care for all the things that most people care about. They're not trapped in other people's minds. Right? Most people are trapped in other people's minds. So there's no freedom. But if you're a Jim M, you're not trapped in anybody else's mind anymore. Isn't that great? We can become free. So I call it becoming a sovereign soul. sovereign soul. Most people are trapped in each other's minds. But I see so many people being even modern educated people being tortured by this. You should do this and you should do that. You have to do this. You have to. People aren't given time to think for themselves. What's important to me? What's important to me? What do I want to do? When are you going to get married? We have to You have to get a good education. Why do I have to get a good ed education? So I can get a good job so I can get married and have children. Oh, very good. That's what an original idea. [Music] So most of the greatest realizers that mother India has produced resisted that direction. Right. The Buddha himself said, "No, I'm not going to do that." He refused. For example, there's only so many hours in a day, right? If you want to awake until enlightenment, you have to moa, you have to have time to concentrate on nothing. You need time and space to concentrate on nothing. If you have a big family, many obligations, you don't have time to concentrate on nothing because you're busy. You have to be responsible parent, responsible boss, responsible this, responsible that. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. I'm just saying it's a different path. Yeah, sure. It's possible, just a lot harder. It's part of the tradition in India be a household of yogi. Yogi being a household of yogi. So I'm saying of course you can do that but it's just it's more demanding because the thing is that uh like I said mo is like an obsession can can become and we need time for it time to focus on nothing. It's time. I'm not joking. And the nothing is the infinite space that we're speaking about. We we need to be able to give ourselves time to focus on it without feeling guilty or ashamed that we should be doing something more important. So if you meet other people that are yogis also, they'll recognize, oh, that's the most important thing to to concentrate on nothing. Most people say, you're not doing anything. What are you doing? I'm concentrating on nothing. That's a big flip of inner values and we all need to be be supported in that otherwise we'll lose the plot very very easy. That's why when I came to India in 1984, I decided I wasn't going to go home because mother India in all her glory gave me permission to seek for moka. She said, "Of course you of course you want to seek for moa. That's the most important thing." Andrew, I come from New York City. People say, "What do you do? What do you do, man?" They want they look at New Yorkers are very intense. They look right at you. What do you do? They're going to judge you based on what you say. Oh, very interesting. Uh oh. So I all I wanted was to be enlightened. So nothing I said very impressive. They didn't find very impressive. They looked at me like uh-huh. But I came to India 1984. I went and did a retreat in Bgaya, meditation retreat. And I was sitting around afterwards drinking tea with everybody. I said, "I'm never going home, baby. Never go I'm never never going to go back. Never going back. And that and the fact that I knew that I was never going to go back was enough to give me all the confidence I needed to do what I did. It meant no plan B. I used to want to be a jazz musician. And the greatest jazz musicians say, "If you're serious about this, being a musician is a very hard life. If you're serious about this, you want to succeed, you have to have no plan B. So the spiritual life, I believe, is the same thing. If you're serious, you think you can't have a plan B. It's like do or die. Really? You say, "Yeah." And if you look at all the most all the modern gurus in India, they're same thing. Sakura didn't have a plan B. Shri Shankar didn't have a plan B. None of these guys had a plan B. Just need the space, baby. You need the space to do it.