Andrew Cohen - N° 19 - LAST TEACHINGS - Dec. 24 _ Feb. 25

Well, I see that there's the ego and what the soul is is deeper than the ego. It's still only relatively real. I believe it appears that we are I believe it appears that we have an individual soul purpose until we discover cosmic purpose. And when we discover cosmic purpose, our soul purpose becomes not so important anymore. is still there but we don't feel it very strongly because our heart and our attention is on bigger bigger dimensions of reality. So our soul purpose is there from the very beginning but it's all about me and the evolution of my soul and my soul's purpose. But when you wake up and you realize your soul is part of a larger developmental process involves the whole cosmos becoming conscious and your soul is a tiny part of a much bigger process and the process is a singularity a cosmic singularity. You begin to feel the singularity has a certain feeling quality of being itself that's infinitely greater and infinitely more important than your personal soul. Then you start identifying more with the your cosmic you could say the cosmic dimension of the soul rather than the personal dimension. So the personal dimension is still still there but you recognize it to be not so apparently relevant as it was when you couldn't when you hadn't awoke into a cosmic purpose yet. Because when people talk about the soul's purpose they get very narcissistic. my soul, my experience, my feeling, my precious ego, my suffering, my this and that. So when people when you identify with the soul, it makes you feel very precious, very very important. So whereas I think it's a step on the evolutionary path. So it's it's a good place not to get stuck for too long. It's the soul is relatively real. It's not absolutely real, but it's more real than the ego is. From the this enlightenment perspective, the ego is completely unreal. The soul is relatively real. The self is absolutely real. Because if if you've been living in your ego your whole life, you have a soul awakening, you feel like you're connecting much more deeply to yourself and to truth, to reality. But if you have a if you go from having a soul level self awakening to a cosmic awakening to yourself as the whole cosmos awakening to itself. It's a huge leap. The self you awaken to is infinitely bigger in fewer infinitely more profound and meaningful. So now from the vantage point of the of your the vehicle which is the body, mind and personality, you're cognizing all the totality of reality. That's a balancing act. It's a paradox between the relative nature of your body, your mind and your personality and all the karmas involved in that and the and the infinite evolutionary karmic potential of the evolution of the whole cosmos or the multiple cosmos we don't know. It's stepping into a whole different level of cognition and consciousness about reality. It's inconceivable to the mind. You start living a much bigger life. So your personal st soul still exists. It still has its own vibration. But your attention is on something much bigger, which includes the personal soul, but it also transcends it. That's what it means to be in the world but not of it. If you awaken to your cosmoscentric identity, you're in the world. You realize that you're in the world for very different reasons than most people are. Reasons that you didn't even know about till you woke up. A lot of people call it cosmic consciousness. But it's very exciting. The enorm the enormity of the picture is very exciting and it's infinitely rewarding and infinitely compelling and a source of an infinite source of meaning and purpose. in which you feel your role here is potentially very significant beyond this mere human birth. this precious human birth. It's just one. This is just one birth. And you start seeing the you start glimpsing having glimpses of the whole play of karma through many lifetimes. You start feeling it as an in imminent reality beyond thought. You starts becoming very real to you as you start becoming more aware of the the complexity of the whole process. It's producing the experience you're having right now. So you end up in a state of wonder. So awakening to your soul's purpose in a personal sense is part of the journey, but it also can become an ego trip if you stay there too long. Get the idea? Well, it's like I say, this is new territory, right? New information. I've never thought about the whole before. I'm only used to thinking about myself, right? If you're in the habit of thinking about yourself all the time, learning how to think about the whole universe as yourself comes in a new a new perspective. It's a new way to think. It's inconceivable. My capacity to teach and to share is is all a result of my guru's grace. I was with him for three weeks. At the end of the three weeks, I was already I was already a master when I left and I didn't earn it and I didn't cultivate mastery. I didn't do the hard spiritual work that people have to put into to become spiritual masters or to attain mastery. It was bestowed upon me by a miracle. I didn't I didn't earn it in this life. But suddenly it was just a case and my friends including Murray over here were started treating me very differently. I didn't know what was happening. It was a miracle and it is a miracle. It was un unearned. Then I had to accept it. He said, "I want you to accept this gift. I want you to take responsibility for it." So I didn't really feel I had a choice. But I didn't know what was happening. I knew I was accepting the burden of something that was too big for me to understand. I felt I felt it at a level of experience, but my ego didn't know how to take responsibility for it because it was too big. So, I just said, "Okay, that must be soul's purpose." No, it's predestined. If there wasn't some form of predestiny involved, I wouldn't have been able to do what I what I could do overnight. It'd be like if you were a didn't know how to play an instrument and the next day you were like playing at a level of an expert. What happened? Where is that coming from? And then you realize in some cases it comes from the soul of the universe. If you want to use these words, doesn't come from me. doesn't come from my personality. Doesn't come from my learned experience. Comes from a deeper source. That's why it's powerful. And when we start reaching deeper into into life into consciousness into human potential the evolutionary purpose we start discovering as I was explaining different dimensions of this potential that we had no idea existed. We start living a very big life for very big reasons. We didn't even realize how big it was before. When we awaken these other dimensions, we it's like, "Oh my goodness, I had no idea." And you realize it's a very different movie than you had any idea about. And at that point, you have to have the courage not to resist and to go forth or to get scared of reach recoil. The suit is too big, it's too terrifying. Because if you're going to accept this kind of karma, you have to be willing to be seen in public means you don't have a private life anymore. Personal life that's finished. But now you're living for the truth. In all our human imperfection, we're still living for the truth anyway. Still have the courage to take that risk. Paula It's really big and it doesn't get smaller. And then as I was explaining here over the last few days, so I've been repeating this point, the miracle and the mystery is that consciousness, what I call consciousness delights in its own self-recognition. So consciousness itself there is a vibration consciousness itself there's a quality in consciousness itself there's a momentum in consciousness itself that wants to be seen what I'm calling consciousness which is another word for the infinite wants you whoever you are to see it to know it to be it part of nature it's a part of part of how nature functions. It's a miraculous quality of inherent in consciousness itself. And apparently so it seems to me consciousness wants delights in it own self condition wants to be seen wants to be recognized by you. You personally you are me personally and I'm just telling you this is my experience. I can't prove it. But when you experience all these things, you realize there's a much deeper game going on here than the one most of us are playing. Different rules, different goals. So we So what you begin to find is that as a as a personal vehicle, as a body, mind as a separate body, mind, and personality. So relative self exists as the body, the mind, and the personality. It's a relative vehicle. The body, mind and personality is living between two worlds between relative reality where the body, mind and personality abide and absolute reality which occurs in this transcendental space. We have to hold if you if you're going to awaken to that degree, you have to hold them a balance or the integration of these two dimensions. hold these two truths with an elegant awareness. That's the challenge. If we materialize the spiritual process for any reason and we need to be supported, we need to live. We need to eat. But if we make it into a product, we can fall prey to corruption. you can lose touch with the thing itself. I don't know what the perfect relationship to money is. I I I don't have the solution. But uh my guru used to say he said uh cuz he was a powerfully re spontaneously realized uncompromising crazy character. He noticed a lot of westerners were coming to him where he called him. He looked at me and said they're professional teachers Andrew. So when he said they're professional, he was winking. That to him was the sign of where they were where they were coming from. Didn't mean they didn't have anything to offer. It's like from his point of view that meant there was some problem, a fundamental problem. I don't know the answer to the question because we have to live also want to do the best we can. But how much is it how much is the consciousness cost? How much does consciousness cost? What I have noticed is that if you if you give a course for example, let's say you give a course and you char like a weekend course and if you charge $150 for a weekend course, six hours a day versus charging $3,000 for the weekend course. People the people that pay the $3,000 are going to be a lot more serious and have much bigger expectations than people that are paying $250 or whatever it is because because money is our highest value in Western culture, right? So they charge more money. People think it's more valuable. You want to be trying to be an exemplar because we're all imperfect. We're all imperfect. Nobody's perfect. Nobody's We're all kind We're all hypocrites on some level. So within that unbearable truth, we have to try and do well anyway. relationship to money and sex and power. Those are three danger zones. Relationship to money, relationship to sex, relationship to power. That's where everybody gets tripped up. I started teaching in 1986 and it was very powerful. I started teaching in a small town in England in southwest England and after about a week there was like 30 people coming which at that time seemed like a lot of people later on there was many more so at a certain point I start opened my eyes I was meditating and I realized people were so affected by the transmission that I realized they believe almost anything I said I I wasn't going to I didn't want to fool anybody. But I was suddenly aware how much power I had. I realized this is dangerous, man. Better know what you're talking about. So, it's money, sex, and power. At the same time, you want to be strong and authoritative in your yourself. And you also have to remember that everybody's crazy. There's an American spiritual teacher named Lamasury Das. He's another American Jewish guy like me. And he said one thing he's learned is that he keeps saying everybody's crazy. So everybody's crazy means most people are not emotionally trustworthy. You have to protect yourself from people that are not emotionally trustworthy. Be careful. Because the world is a dangerous place and everybody means well, but they're not often in control of themselves. And if you have a lot of power, people are going to want to take you down. So, it's a hard road to to travel. And the more you embrace your own spiritual power, the more alone you have to be willing to be.