Andrew Cohen interviewed by Michael Wayne for "Interviews with the Leading Edge"

[Music] you you so Andrew Andrew Cohen I want to thank you for taking the time to do this interview interviews with leading eggs you're a well-known teacher of evolutionary enlightenment you've written numerous books used to be the publisher of enlightened next magazine and the former spiritual leader guru for a community notice enlightened next Fox Hollow so before we go into that and and your four year sabbatical too I'm just interested curious about your own backstory your path to becoming a teacher of evolutionary enlightenment how that came to be well I I was brought up as a secular Jew so the word god never meant anything to me and one night when I was living in Rome with my mother when I was 16 years old we were we stayed up late and we were having a conversation about something I remember we were talking about but I know suddenly there was a there was a very powerful opening in my consciousness and the doors of perception yeah the doors of perception opened very wide and it seemed that the walls of the apartment seemed to disappear and I had an experience of what's called cosmic consciousness and in that moment it became apparent to me that everything that exists and everything that doesn't exist is all one conscious being with that beginning or end the nature of this being was a kind of impersonal absolute love that in that moment I was experiencing it it was it was physically crushing it was overwhelming and I experienced the kind of awe that I've never known before and I was in a state of awe and wonder at the miraculous nature of what was revealing itself to me and I never been so touched by anything in my life oh and this is at the age of sixteen yeah and I didn't know what I didn't know what it meant I didn't know what it was but I knew that what was happening what I was experiencing was more real than anything else I'd ever known so that was my that was my first spiritual initiation and I would want it to become a jazz drummer so I pursued my interests but I I had doubts about whether I had enough talent whether I was really good enough to to succeed and simultaneously this experience was haunting me quite a bit because when I when I when I had this experience at the end of this experience it's the sound a little strange but there were there was a message was if you surrender your life to me and me alone you have nothing to fear so there was a sense of being called mm-hmm and so when I was 22 I became I decided to give up my dreams of becoming a musician and became a full-time seeker and I started reading books reading spiritual books about Buddhism and yoga and things took initiation from an Indian teacher and I learned how to meditate I was studying martial arts and I made up my mind that I was gonna become an enlightened person and it was the only thing in my life that I don't have confidence that I could actually do and the reason for that was because the experience I had when I was a young man was so powerful that when I was reading about the experiences that these spiritual masters were describing in the books I was reading I knew what they were talking about I knew that it was real because I had experienced it myself and I knew somehow I was gonna find my way I was gonna succeed in so I I eventually went to India when I was 27 and four years later I met my guru and I spent three weeks in his company and I asked him the most important questions that I had about the nature of existence and the ultimate nature of reality he answered all my questions he told me when I left his company I was with spent three weeks with him that something very big was gonna happen and when I when I left him I underwent a kind of a metaphysical process over a powerful kind of an explosive made a physical ordeal where I felt like I was being consumed by a presence that felt like love but but it was a kind of love that was so intense that it was well the the intense the feeling experience was was was challenging to endure but the nature of the the nature and the quality of this thing that was happening to me was I knew the nature I was being pulled into it seemed like a vortex that was infinite and my ordinary sense of myself as being a limited individual exists in a particular body a particular mind in a particular place was suddenly be consumed by an in by a presence and a consciousness it seemed infinite and it was literally like I was I could literally feel myself being consumed and I knew in that moment that every everything that I'd ever wanted since I made up my mind that I wanted to be free was actually happening to me and I was both ecstatic and actually quite terrified because it was so overwhelming and so completely terrifying and and in the midst of this experience I suddenly had access to to to a kind of wisdom and a kind of knowledge that I hadn't known before and then I hadn't even earned it was suddenly - it was it was think it seemed it was the gift of the grace of my own teacher they gave me access to this wisdom and so I would just start speaking to people about what had happened to me and what was happening to me in the process I was going through and as I was doing this people seemed to be kid consumed or drawn into the very state of consciousness I was then that was really the beginning and and then I just started the teaching just started happening I didn't really decide to do it just start happening through me and people started responding with it with great great interest with great interest with great awe with Grandma yeah gratitude and that was the beginning and that was in 1986 yeah and and the concept of evolutionary enlightenment was that something you were teaching right from the beginning now that did be I've always been a very philosophically oriented in my thinking mm-hmm I always want to know why and I tended not to take things at face value I'd always question and think about what I was hearing so the issue about the whole point of the evolutionary enlightenment really came into the for 30 years so there was a slow there was a slow developmental process in my thinking it took it took what it took at least 15 years to get to the point where I put in Lightman in the context of evolution that took a long time yeah so since we're talking about this phrase how do you define evolutionary enlightenment well evolutionary enlightenment takes the the traditional Eastern notion of metaphysical enlightenment the enlightenment of the Buddha into the context of of the Western Sciences discovery evolution so I say the evolutionary process started when the universe was created 14 billion years ago as far as we know before before the creative process was initiated there was nothing whatsoever there was no time and there was no space and there was no form nothing existed and then this this creative process was catalyzed and from out of nothing came energy in matter which after about 10 billion years gave rise to life which eventually gave rise to the emergence of mind and so when we when we do from the vantage point of where we are now we look back to the beginning of time the beginning of the creative process we see there's something happening here as the you know energy and matter gave rise to life which gave rise to mind we realize is there's a developmental progression of emergent becoming the universe is giving rise to greater greater complexity and what's what's very important for what's very important for us what's what's most interesting as that is that the this creative process has given rise to consciousness or interior or knowing so this this capacity for consciousness in its capacity for knowing that the creative process gave rise to and is giving rise to as far as we know has reached as its apex in human beings and it's only in conscious human beings that this creative process gains the capacity to bear witness to itself or to awaken to a sulphur to know itself or to see itself and that's because human beings have complex cognition and complex consciousness and specifically we have the capacity to know that we know it to be aware of awareness so so so it's a first for highly evolved sentient being that has the capacity to bear to bear witness to consciousness or to know that you know that capacity makes it possible for us to bear witness to the creative process as a whole to be conscious of it mm-hmm so so when we realized that the energy intelligence that created the universe and is creating the universe gains the capacity to bear witness to itself and cognize itself in and through us as human beings we we in that recognition we begin to regain a Cosmo centric appreciation for the meaning and its significance of our own existence here in this world and so because the because when we realized the magnitude of the implications of that are enormous so to put it in in in theological terms if we if we say that God is the energy and intelligence that created the universe and is creating the universe we could also say that it is only through this highly evolved human capacity for consciousness and cognition that God are the energy and intelligence that created the universe and is creating the universe is able to bear witness to himself or herself mm-hmm this gives enormous significance then to my life and to your life into our lives and it's a different kind of significance than we've ever known before so evolutionary enlightenment as a teaching is based upon this is based upon this discovery of this new cosmos centric identity or self sense and the degree to which we awaken to this and really appreciated significance well we begin then to reorient our relationship to life based upon the significance of their realization it's it's deeply transformative yeah and and there's their eye you know from from just just the ideas flowing around my head there's there's integration of science and philosophy and spirituality just understanding the evolutionary process both scientifically spiritually would you'd say that also well in terms of the the the the the metaphysical philosophy of enlightenment putting enlightenment in an evolutionary context changes the meaning of enlightenment because because when I speak about enlightenment I'm not talking about the Western enlightenment talk about the Eastern enlightenment the enlightenment of the Buddha so so so his awakening took place at a time when there was no understanding of of linear time time was understood to be cyclical or circular or slick cyclical which meant that the time were these these CalPERS or these long periods were predicted where there was it always a predictable outcome by going around in America marry grow and you go through a certain process to come back to the beginning and you start again and go around for the same process and come back to the beginning and start again so the wheel of becoming in Buddhism they called the wheel of becoming so at that time if you realize man I've been through this so many times it's the same old thing you know birth and death and birth and death in the same cycle and and and I've been captured by the illusion of the illusion of one to be part of this same repetitive process that is gonna lead to pain disappointment suffering and death I want to get out of here and so then the the the liberation from being trapped on this merry-go-round that goes around around forever comes back to the beginning starts again was the awakening to what the Buddha called the the deathless or this its awakening to the the that mysterious no place or domain from which the entire universe emerged where there's no time and there's no space and there's no form and nothing and nothing ever happened and where there's no beginning and there's no end there's only emptiness and we can find access to this depth dimension if we enter into very deep and profound states of meditation when we really are able to transcend let go of of mind we can seek deeper and deeper deeper into this mysterious no place and to see this this deeper we sink in the to this mysterious no place we experience a kind of ineffable bliss and freedom that is so extraordinary it's such a state of rapture it's it's a is the ultimate relief and release from being trapped in a mind and a body and a personality so so the in in what I in the way I think about it this this traditional notion of Eastern and Lightner Eastern liberation is about getting out of here it's what it's with the English biologist Rupert Sheldrake referred to as vertical lift off is what releases you it you get out of here and the ultimate idea is you want to get free from the from the prison of time and space and body and mind and form it's the promise if you become fully enlightened you'll never have to return back to earth and never have to return back to having a body you'll be free from all of this but an evolutionary enlightenment we haven't we we come to a very different conclusion because we say well the energy and intelligence that created the universe took about 14 billion years to create a conscious sentient life-form with with enough complex consciousness where where he or she could begin to cognize the entire creative process as we cognize the kintyre creative process we realized that the next that that God or the energy intelligence that created the universe can only take the next step through us as us these these hands this body this mind these hands are not Andrew Collins body mind head but they are the energy and intelligences and the energy intelligence that created the universe's hands awakening to itself through the body mind personality of Andrew Cohen but Andrew Cohen is just a vehicle he's really just a partial temporary appearance here mm-hmm and who's really pulling the levers is this great cosmic who you can call this great cut you cosmic ambition this desire to exist because the the ability the energy the the experience of the energy and intelligence of created the universe is a drive to exist it's an impulse towards existence it's a wanting to exist I want to be here and I to create the future and human beings that I can actually tangibly experience that as the creative drive the creative garage drive to give rise to greater complexity and whatever we happen to do if we're in science in art in music or in spirituality there's a drive there's a creative drive that's driving the human race and when you when you when you really see oh that's what this is all about is is awakening to and giving rise to the deliberate amount Craig Creative past the creative capacities the highest form of happiness that we can experience as an embodied human being is for doing that because people who get very good at what they do whether it's in science or music or spirituality whatever it is they can they lose themselves in the creative process and that and and in that there's oh there's a liberation from it from the endless torments of the separate personality and ego because then you really feel you're at one with the creative process and the creative process is expressing itself dramatically through you and you are contributing you're making a difference you're making the you're making the world that that the energy and intelligence that gave rise to all of this gave rise to you're making it a little just that much better a little better because of your presence here so there's an so that you in evolutionary in line we Lynn Lightman we discover an absolute sense of purpose and then and then it means something to exist and we have a reason to be here we have an absolute reason to be here that makes complete and perfect sense out of why am i why am I here uh-huh and so the big problem is people people don't know why they exist and especially for us for those of us who ever or postmodern and we're very privileged and we're very educated we were very fortunate but most of us suffer from a deep existential lack of knowing well why am I really hearing why is this happening because we know so many people have everything are not happy you can have you can have everything and know everything and still be lost but when we discovered this non relative or absolute sense of purpose and purposefulness then life becomes a sacred obligation so then when we find ourselves here we realized I can't mess this up and I've got to do a very good job and I have to really make a difference mm-hmm I it's my you know as the energy and intelligence that created the creator of the universe is waking up Tamara herself through the body mind form of myself or yourself it's a sense of an obligation to do to do God's work and so then the point the point is really all about live liberating ourselves from from an unenlightened sense of identity to an enlightened sense of identity so we can we can be full full full heartedly and I'll hardly participate here and so we it's like becoming liberated into life mm-hmm so in so in that sense the what I call the old definition of enlightenment which is about being liberated from life no longer makes any sense at least to me doesn't yeah and it sounds like too like personal enlightenment is more about myself my individual good in and not not I don't want to say that a negative turn should evolutionary enlightenment is more about Monnaie ting with the universal the creative impulse of the universe are the evolutionary it's it's it's focused it's focused very much on that that's the all point is so then of course the position of the traditional enlightenment which is really based on being free from the mind free from conditioning it's at least the the aspiration the idea is we want to we want to learn how to do that we want to learn how to develop those capacities but not merely not merely for our own metaphysical and emotional psychological relief but so we can be better actors here in the world mm-hmm so yes so as you say this this that were I saying to the the evolutionary impulse is a creative impulse in that or say in the universe itself as a creative universe and it's it's one process it's all about creative process yeah and if you realize it's got with its basically you the awakening to evolution is realizing that you're part of a process it's going somewhere mm-hmm and so then the so then so and then the next the next step is a part of a process is going somewhere and I can either be dragged along in the wake of this and just struggle and survived the best I can or I can actually I can actually want to be very very much part of the very leading edge of this thing so I can I can be I can in in in our own small but hopefully not completely insignificant way we can help to co-author the universe project we can out to be co-authors with God with the energy intelligence to created Universal where all this is going yeah and that reminds me of two quotes one from Ken Wilber who said that um evolution is spirit in action right and the other from the the former Catholic priest Matthew Fox he said that the first sign of spirit is courage so in a way awakening to the evolutionary impulses is is a courageous act well I don't I wouldn't say that awakening to it takes courage but I think surrendering to it takes surrendering and allowing yourself to be taken by it and committing yourself to the implications which are demanding mm-hmm yeah because but because because when you awaken to this current this current of this motion it it challenges one it challenges ones it challenges our previously held conscious and unconscious convictions about who we are why we're here and how life is supposed to be lived mm-hmm and so what can be very frightening is is when whereas when we're being spiritually compelled in one direction but our habit is going into another it's it's it's it creates quite an existential challenge yeah and so you over the years of teaching evolutionary enlightenment you you started crit you created a community and also the magazine light next and and I'm just it was great magazine I love the magazine but originally was called what is enlightenment I'm wondering was that part of also your own evolution it was completely it was completely about my own evolution because when I can't when I because I was I was always a question or an Enquirer I want to know why so I I picked up a lot of very traditional ideas and then when I became a teacher overnight and then I started teaching and I came to the west I just said I just was feeling something some of the stuff just doesn't make sense how do how do what isn't what does that light enlightenment even mean when you come to go out of a traditional context and go into a postmodern context and so I had so many questions and so I what I wanted to do what I did as I as I put these made these questions into a magnet you know the the the the energy behind asking the questions became the magazine and then with my was a small group of my students you know we would sit around together and enquire and come up with questions and work on them and then and start doing interviews but the questions led to intriguing answers which which also as a teacher I was developing this whole idea of enlightenment not only being a subjective interior experience of a unique individual as what I'd always thought it was it was an inner experience of one unique individual I thought well if this state of consciousness of this is the state of unity consciousness could become the foundation the shared foundation between two individuals are more than the context of relationship and relatedness could be infinity and so that that became the next phase of the teaching was about what it was this was was looking looking at what looking at what if what could happen and how our shared culture the experience of our shared cultural experience of relatedness could change if we could bring this interior experience and make it inside a big subject and make it intersubjective and then the next step is when this is when we realize that this inter subjective infinite ground which is enlightened awareness was actually part of this process is actually going somewhere that was the third unfolding of all that and so when that becomes the ground the the inner subjective ground that you're actually sharing with another human being it changes the context of relationship entirely and in the most extraordinary ways yeah and so so there's a term evolutionary you're one of your students former students Carter v wrote a book evolutionary's and and would you would you define evolutionary someone who awakens to the evolutionary impulse yes to some degree in evolutionary someone who really gets evolution who realizes who's had an awakening it's not just an intellectual understanding but an awakened to the fact that we that we are all part and parcel of a process that had a beginning in time or began with the emergence of time that's going somewhere and is becoming more and more of itself is that it's it's it's it's becoming more complex its complexified that the prostitue process is going somewhere and going somewhere means it's complexify so it's giving rise to greater and greater potentials that didn't exist before which makes it so thrilling and miraculous and so unbelievably exciting because because then you realize you're part of the ultimate adventure mm-hm and so in evolutionary at least in the way I would define it someone who who knows that at the deepest level of their being it's it's it's a it's a kind of awakening yeah because when you when you really when you wake up to that it changes the way you see everything and um and I know that at and in the book the evolutionary see you profile a lot of different people who are do it in all different facets of life and it reminded me of the term that Barbara Marx Hubbard reviews of vocational arousal so in a way that's what barb Barbara has not had this awakening long before any missed it so it's something where you just feel that impulse in you and and where you are in the world is just a vocational arousal or you just well it's it's literally like a religious calling yeah yeah so you had the community and in Lennox and light next at Fox Hollow yeah and and I saw that you've described it at that as it was a creative utopian experiment of commitment and shared aspiration and that you succeeded in profound important ways and for a period of time we were at the very leading edge of spiritual endeavor in the world and then but but it's not there anymore well first one has what made it a utopian experiment well because the the pause the evolutionary impulse is the is the experience of the promise of utopia so I I have to explain this mmm there's this through this the human bacon experience the evolutionary impulse with three different levels of their being so the first level is the easiest one which is the biological level so so too we will so we can experience the evolutionary impulse as sexual impulse the procreative impulse so what is it broke because then that's the end we can experience the vibration and the pulsation of the energy intelligence that created the universe when we experience the sexual impulse was the sexual impulse feel like it feels like ecstasy and urgency ecstatic urgency and and it's ecstatic urgency which says if you follow this ecstatically urgent impulse you will experience utopia so you so the promise of utopia we know what the meaning of the promise of utopian is in the sexual engagement is but it's the promise of a complete fulfillment but so that's at the biological level then it's at the much higher creative levels for human beings there's in all fields of human endeavor if you if you get very if you you know like a a very gifted composer someone like a Mozart is overcome with this with this need to create music and and the this is the same kind of utopian drug war is if I if I do everything I can to give rise to this impulse it's coming through me I will give rise to bits the promise of utopians the same with science yeah and with the birth of democracy with all with all with all with all creative emergence is a promise of utopian the promise of perfection is what everything it's a promise of perfection and that's when you realize that's what the whole creative drive that's what's driving us is the promise of perfection of perfect and total them yeah so so at the spiritual level that we it's just at the highest level is is what's compelling us is the promise of perfect is it's a promise of perfection is a utopian impulse of the evolutionary impulse the nature of the evolutionary impulse is a utopian impulse by its nature in and of itself so so throughout history you know prophets and spiritual leaders who have gathered communities around them these communes were wood especially if there were radical experiments people usually give up the lives they were leading in order to follow the realizer was promising a higher calling you know like like the followers of Jesus you know walked on in their families to be with him because what because of what he was calling them to followers of the Buddha were left their families because of the calling was the promise of utopia so so in in in most of these experiments are you are utopian experiments yeah yeah and actually after I saw that quote I thought about the magazine in light next saying it really was every issue was like a transmission even with I mean reading the articles made it even more of a transmission that's what we were aiming for yeah yeah I never really thought of it like we were we were literally lit up to what it is we were speaking about and we were very much consciously trying to convey and any perspective and the perspective was driven by this consciousness that weren't discussing together yeah so and I did get transmitted through the pages of the magazine but as of now Fox Hollow light Nexus is not in existence or the organization is no we went there we went through a very big crisis that was that was primarily catalyzed by me actually contradicting than some of the very things I've been speaking to you about because be fundamentally what happened was that I as a spiritual teacher I was upholding a mythic teaching structure of mythic hierarchy and part and part of this mythic hierarchy was based upon my own traditionally held belief in my own in I I thought that my awakening was perfect or flawless and have in Buddhism they called the word for this is like you beat your called it on our haunt someone who was fully realized in in Vedanta they call it Jeevan Mukta i-i-i believed these things about myself and i also I had I also in my community I had absolute power and absolute authority so at a certain point after like 20 years 25 years some of my students had grown up who'd grown up with me became you know were adults who needed to be liberated from the the obligations and the traditional guru model and it for many of them they needed to individuate it's like it's like when you have two dividual individuate from your parent in many way in many ways some elder students needed needed needed to fully self actualized learn to do that they needed to be liberated from the very structure that it created all this and at its time I didn't have the eyes to see this that there were very logical developmental needs they had and I perceived their and their need and I need for growth as a threat in the structure that we all created together so instead and and they wanted to address some of these things with me but instead of me responding with curiosity and humility I responded with anger and pride and I felt that they wanted to they were threatening my my position which no one had ever done before and i reaiiy didn't react very well it's a very complex toys a lot of parts that but find another that this this was the reason which led to me agreeing to take some time off so i could do some period of introspection and spiritual practice to understand what happened and it really took me about three or four years it's been yeah it's it's taken me a long time to actually come to terms and then understand what was going on but but to everyone's surprise very shortly after I said that I was gonna take a sabbatical the community start to fall apart all over the world and and many people were surprised how quickly it happened uh-huh and I think still are yeah so so would you say the model of personal alignment the model of evolutionary Lightman bumped up against each other yeah well it wasn't the model of personal enlightenment it has to do it because it has to do with the traditional guru model mmm-hmm the traditional guru model the Guru is seen as being perfect in all-knowing and and and not really and someone and not really possible it's someone like that could have egoic motives shadow or make important mistakes but but but post modernity and integral psychologists taught us everybody has a shadow nobody's mother and and and that even even the great gift of enlightenment enlightened awareness doesn't protect us from these things so so this so going through this great ordeal has helped me to face into a lot of this and and and I'm still in the process of coming to coming to terms with a lot of it but it's also take taking this this experience there was a gift of gift from my guru to me and taking out of a mythological context and bring it more into a postmodern wanted hopefully bring it into a post-postmodern my god yeah and and so and I'm curious to follow up that question but but before that also curious what was so it basically it was almost like four years a sabbatical journey it's been what was what's that been like it's been it's been the hardest thing I've ever experienced I I was in India I mean more than anything else it was it was the experience of suffering of great suffering no great ordeal of suffering and and of realizing I wasn't the person that I thought I was I wasn't if I wasn't the perfect hero that I thought I was and facing into Bish's around pride and you know subsided treating some people was too harshly being unforgiving uh uh in ways because when I'm facing my own imperfection I realized that I I had I had I hadn't made it hard from hard for some of my students yeah yeah and I hadn't known that before uh so it took a lot of like I mentioned courage but but that the willingness to look deep and honestly for yourself yeah locked I'm still in the midst of it yeah I'm very much on the I'm very much in a different place than I was even two years ago yeah so the other part where do you make sure that I said I wanted to ask you about you know this you making post-postmodern what do you think that model evolutionary Lichtman at post-postmodern age away from the mythic gurus structure what might that look like I'm still working on it yeah I'm still working on it so so it's the chapter still to be written it's a chap to be to be ridden it's what the rest of my life is gonna be about but i but there's this many dimensions to it but the most fundamental dimension is that is that were DeMuth ala Jai Singh the gift of enlightened awareness so as I think as I began to say that in the traditional era when a human being had I attained a measure of divinity a measure of holiness they were automatically assumed in their humanity to be perfect beings and and there was a it's part of the projection and it's also part of what you buy into when you step into that role of being of being on the receiving end of that projection and maybe buying into it yourself actually believing in so so how I'm understanding this this next step is is somehow finding finding way to to fully and honor the significance of the depth of the of what enlightenment actually is which is the most profound gift we can given which is the in here which is the higher state of consciousness and knowing that change is absolutely everything and realizing that the that are that we're still all and the nature of which is an experience of perfection and totality and infinity and realizing that as as evolving human beings as of all he has evolving human beings were always gonna be works in progress who are inherently imperfect and inherently flawed and to be able to hold both of those at the same time and and work to integrate them and so that's one that's that's one part of it another part of it is is that traditionally whether it's been when it doesn't matter from which which tradition can be Christianity or in Buddhism when other cultures cultures people who have been most who've been the most serious and the most dedicated usually would take a radical path of leaving the world so they could focus completely on cultivating these spiritual capacities outside and away from the demands of culture and I'm I get more and more more and more the sense that as we moved from postmodern to this post postmodern an integral integral culture will be it seems apparent that the world is the the world that we're living in it really has to be the monastery it has to be because the place we want to affect change is the place where we're gonna be living and so so somehow to somehow to to bring an end to this duality between between places like a monastery a place on the Sun on top of the mountain where we can go to to let go of the world so we can more more deeply and vulnerably awaken to round deepest interiors we have to find to find some way to do that in the very world that we're living in so the world can change as a result of our own awakening as much as possible and for that to happen we have to be able to transmit and to share that which we are knowing and realizing so we have to be here to do that so I haven't really thought about this as deeply as I need to but but moving away from the world into doing that I think we is what is part of what has to change we have to we have to learn how to go that deep here where we already are but in a way that will look different and it's gonna feel different because if you go into a monastery you're going to a place where people are living in a much higher state of consciousness it looks different it feels different so we need to be able to do that here mmm-hmm because it's because cuz what we're talking about is real and it doesn't look different it feels different there's a couple of different context and it has a different fragrance it has it has a different purpose as different meaning and it's much more awake it's much more conscious so we have to find a way to bring that the presence of that kind of depth and that kind of clarity and that kind of purposefulness here where we are and and as people awaken to this evolutionary impulse they're very more present in this in this sense of being here we're bringing the monastery here yeah that's that's what you're ideally yeah ideally ideally but um I'm not just talking about being here now mm-hmm not just talking about being where we already are I'm talking about bringing this this awakened creative motivation that inherently compels us to move forward I'm always more forward and always higher here mm-hmm it's not it's not a resting and being yeah it's like it's like being on the edge of a cool living on the edge of a creative potential mm-hmm because when you're on the very edge of a potential with someone else or with others everybody's much more awake than they are than if they're not and the only way I can usually share this idea with people so if you think if you're in the mid you know affording them if we're in if we were in a time of war and this house was being surrounded and we all enter what we're gonna do so to be a level of attention and when we bring to each other because of life and death so ideally not not as for survival but firfer but for the sake of creative potential the possibility of our emergence we were able to bring that level of attention and intensity of attention and care to what it is that we're sharing it creates a different inner subjective or cultural environment uh-huh so giving rise to that is when I'm very interested in yeah but here not there yeah and it sounds like it or not sounds like but that's what you had in the community of enlightening and and one of the things in in the light next magazine the website and other places the concept of seniors that was discussed the scene of genius at the term that seems of genius said Brian you know coined musician Brian you know and that was something that was discussed again in the magazine you discussed it so I wonder if you could say more because that sounds like that's what this gathering of people awakening to that creative impulse is all about well the whole idea of seniors is the genius genius is arises from scenes or when there's groups of individuals that are awake that are experienced that are experiencing certain currents and culture mm-hmm and they usually gather together in salons like they did in Vienna in coffee shops and in particular and then and and when something's happening like was happening in the 60s then there's when something new starts to emerge then genius emerges from the scene yes mm-hm and I mean that's where the utopian impulse is carrying us and that I mean for a while we were doing that and and for a while and I am or I I urgently want to want to find a way to do it again but in a different and more evolved way there's nothing's more exciting than that than living living on the edge of the possible and other people who are really doing it yeah so so when you say do it again do it in a volved way well how does that differentiate from what well I think there were I think there were certain there was a certain rigidity about how I was seeing people and in the structures of the community were very traditional and held something some people were held back some people were very much developed beautifully in that situation other people had developmental needs that the way I'd set things up was it wasn't able to meet the developmental needs of a lot of people as a result some of them suffered as a result and weren't given the kind of help that they needed so I'd want to do this in a way that would be able to I be able to be able to take more people along mm-hmm on the journey and be able to include more people yeah so so would you say I wasn't privy to to the interactions and things there then but but in helping people trying to help people awaken to the evolutionary impulse do you come up against their shadow your psychological and and do you feel like you were pushing people more than they could at some point at certain points I did definitely yeah and some people got it and some didn't some people got it some people really got it sometimes groups got and really didn't and some other people did and and suffered a lot as a result yeah I mean there was a certain period of time when I was pushing very hard I was I because I felt that that's what I was needed to do to get people to change and some people were rose to the occasion other people couldn't handle it and yeah Safford good idea yeah so so in hindsight would you have done it differently or in hindsight elected hindsight I would've doing that laughing yeah yeah yeah yeah merits of 20/20 hindsight 20/20 exactly well that's why I'm very grateful that I still have time yeah continuing work and to learn from my mistakes yes that's the you know kind of the embodiment of evolutionary enlightenment is how we how we continue self-correcting yeah yeah the self-correcting principle of life you know it feels like the that scene is that helping people in in the new evolution the new evolved way really is is how it'll it'll come to be that's what I'm living for yeah that's what I'm living for yeah so so you ruin an article on your website recently called the Guru learned to drive it was very uh it started out very kind of little musing you've talked about you at the age of 61 recently you had your first driving lesson you know you're being you're kind of laying yourself out you're laying your soul or being transparent so it's it's very admirable like that you're thanking doing that what was the significance of the article and why is it that you did have your first driving lesson at age 61 well because because the the the whole point of the article was was about the death of a mythic ideal of the perfect guru mmm-hmm so so me learning how to drive mice needing to learn how to drive myself around is basically me stepping off the pedestal of the throne and joining name and race like everybody else I was basically the idea behind it and and I was trying to describe how this what it was like in the article I describe what it was like to become such a spiritually empowered human being and what it was like to be treated so differently by so many people and how it was at how empowering the whole system was to really to everybody involved but in the long term for in this particular time in culture and post modernity can't work his base of his base Devon also certain fall sights it just have to be giving up yeah yeah so so would you say a person looking for their own personal evolution that that that model the mythic guru is not would not be the best way to do it I feel it's out it's it's an outdated structure by the time we're living in and almost all all experiments that are working with that model usually end up failing in the long run but they do they just suffer understandable reasons because they're based on ideas that are no longer true yeah yeah so so as we get towards the latter the last stages here of our conversation well I want to go back to see Gnaeus and an innovation and I'm wondering do you feel that innovation is a key component of being attuned to the evolutionary impulse well the well the evolutionary impulse compels us to give rise to that which is new to that which doesn't exist yet it's true so it's reaching for the possible so by living on the edge of the possible and to striving to create the conditions in which that which is possible will emerge and come into being mm-hmm so absolutely yeah so so we look at um we look at our time in time and space right here and in our year 2017 and if we go back 10 20 30 years the level of innovation that has happened do you think that tells us is that some sort of acid showing that innovation evolutionary impulse is awaking in this larger sensing cultural evolution well innovations it did well as as it's been said you know the the capacity to innovate has been slowly been gathering speed from for millennia and now it's now it's it's escalating at at proportions that are that are that are dramatic and it's become exponential innovations become exponential and it's happened it's happening at this point so quickly that we it's almost impossible for us to even keep up with it it's you know it's gone like this and now that's not a vertical curve it seems and so we're living in a very different time in history because of that because things are changing so rapidly I think we I think we're I think we're in a time of change where it's very difficult to know how to how to actually relate to it mm-hmm because the rate of change for so many reasons is creating an existential sense of radical instability even though in many ways our lives are becoming much more convenient and so many things are so much easier to do in so many other ways at an existential and spiritual level there's a sense of of deceit of profound sense of distant disequilibrium but you remember in the past the we if we if we we had children we'd have we'd have some sense of the world that they were gonna be growing up in and that their children would grow up in but now even if we haven't had a child today we haven't we can't even imagine to imagine what the world that they'll be living in 50 years from now it's like so we're living in a very different time in history which creates a lot of existential insecure reasonably and I understand we've loved existential insecurities yeah and going back to Barbara Bach somebody and she has the the line that crises are evolutionary drivers so it seems like well they're evolutionary drivers but they don't always have happy endings oh yeah this is true we know we don't know yeah yeah we don't know yeah and that's where you know with with the help of your teachings your work helping to for people to have a road map and navigating through this complicated world that that gets more perplexing at times and and funny teaching should help people to orient themselves in an existential level it won't necessarily give me answers to the practical questions or the practical challenges but as an existential existential and metaphysical orientation to this time of greater complexity and speed it should help them very very much yeah because what you want to do what the teaching makes you want to do is to get out on the very crest of the wave if you want to be there mm-hmm versus recoiling because it's not too much yeah yeah and and what would you say an individual can do a singular level in order to affect positive change in transformation in the world well from my being a spiritual teacher so from my point of view it would be to do everything they can to change themselves mm-hmm yeah that's and and if there was a world where you know some people talk about like a tipping point where when 5 or 10% of the world or society becomes more evolved awakened to the evolutionary impulse society changes in a bigger way do you do you ever envision what a world like that would look like like that if we get to that well I'm usually thinking on a much smaller scale and I don't think that there's gonna be any grand tipping point where everywhere everybody's gonna flip into anything particular but I but but certain segments of the population can undergo can can can get to a point with this kind of flipper if that happens whether it was it was a radical shift of perspective but we're talking about relatively terms of the population of the whole human race it's we're talking about parts yes yeah so so Andrew where where do you think you're going next well I'm going in the direction of everything we've been speaking about mm-hmm but just a much better more improved version of it and at this particular time in my life as I'm restarting to teach again I'm I'm my spiritual work for me personally has to do with holding a great deal of I feel there's there's things that I can feel that I can't articulate that I want to know and then they're going to come through and so I'm I'm holding an enormous space open to myself to call them in and through mm-hmm because I feel like I'm holding a you know in Zen they call it a con a con I'm gone which is which is finding finding the answer to an unanswerable question and very much has to do with the future into where I'm going what else because I've realized so much and understood so much I feel everything everything I've already already done accomplish has to go to a place that's never been before in order to do that I there's a state of receptivity of myself that I'm working with working with great intensity uh uh uh and I think a lot of the answers are gonna come from there but but the the non metaphysical answer would just be a much better a much better more profound version of what I was yeah and and you're talking about being receptive to to what comes and in the process what what tools do you use for for your own personal process to to see where things comments I meditate mm-hmm I spend a lot of time in introspection and contemplation a lot of time in discussion with my close friends mm-hmm and I'm I'm thinking is I'm I'm I'm I'm always busy with this like I don't have another life this is nothing what I'm doing them this is a full-time it's a full-time aspiration it's a full-time kind of contemplation so I'm constantly busy only with this yeah yeah so and so and I could feel that it's being worked something's being worked and something is being cultivated something's being developed and and it was a result of this great ordeal that's that's recently happened I feel I feel a great focus about taking it to a place that hasn't been before yeah yeah I'm sure great things will come and it said that for these moments of aha moments epiphanies that usually have to be incubated to let it I feel I'm in a great incubation because yeah so good until the honest yeah well we're all we're all very big be interested to see where thank you yeah thank you very much yeah so so if people are interested in knowing your work or reading your writing seeing what you're doing what's the best way to that in my lab my website in Andrew kondakov so andrew calling calm yeah you can see what's going on it'll all be there all right well I thank you thank you very much Sandra [Music] you