The Evolution of Enlightenment Pt 3 - Andrew Cohen

so I now I want to explain a little bit about what what this experience is all about so as I as I was saying before the universe was created as far as we know there was no time and there was no space there was a big void of course the void wasn't completely empty people say there absolutely nothing existed and we can't say absolutely nothing exist because the potential for everything that does exist had to exist in this empty void otherwise everything does exist now including you and me wouldn't be able to be here so the so the way it's described then is we could say the unmanifest the unmanifest or the uncreated potential for everything that exists now existed in that void or in that emptiness and then when there was that leap from formlessness to form from timelessness to time from being to becoming from nothing to something uh a a process you know a a process was initiated and then the potential for every the that existed in the unmanifest state began to began to take form began to began to become manifest um and and just very briefly it's important to understand and I'm sure most of you are already aware of this that we that the big discovery of evolution especially from the perspective of of Consciousness or interiority is the fact that we seem to be going somewhere you know that in the in the in you know the early Greeks and and people in the East you know a lot of very uh brilliant people in the East today still don't really believe haven't really caught up with the discoveries of Western science and they don't really believe that we're going anywhere in the East and also in you know in also in the west it used to be believed that time went in Cycles so Cycles meant Cycles mean circles it would be almost be like if you on a mar around and you going around and around the same Circle and you always come back to the beginning it starts all over again and so for example in in the East they they believe that time went in Cycles or circles and and you and once you went went through the the the predictable cular cyclical pattern you came that back to the beginning and it started all over again that's why in eastern Enlightenment the people who realized they said well I don't want to keep going through this birth and death and birth and death and birth and death I've been through this rig moral hundreds of millions of times I want out I want free it's like being in a bad marriage so so what so they say I want to be free from the time process free from the creative process free from free from all I want to get out of here I don't other because I see this is being trapped in being in prison but of course we've discovered and now we know that in fact the the creative process doesn't go in Cycles or circles but it's it's going more or less in a straight line me if you stand back far enough from the process you'll actually see that it's going somewhere and how do we know that it's going somewhere well because if you go back um uh because if we if you go back six billion years ago uh um the the the universe would not be in the shapee that it's in now we have to see that uh that there was a lead from energy to light to matter and matter had to go through uh a lot of uh you know stars and planets had to collide into each other to make more more complex compounds that would make it possible for Life eventually to emerge and unless a lot of these a lot of these processes occurred the conditions that would make it possible for a life to emerge wouldn't have happened but when the conditions in which made it possible for life to emerge occurred then guess what happened life emerged and then what is so extraordinary about life well is the capacity for interiority Consciousness is interior is consciousness means is is the experience of the Interior so in other words I'm looking at you look you're looking at me but but what we're sharing is our Interior right now so right so an an integral philosophy tells us that for every exterior there's an interior and so what's what's the most extraordinary thing about life is this capacity for interior for interiority in the creative process itself be just emerged In This Very Dynamic and extraordinary way and then and then as the great uh as the great um Jesuit priest T shardan pointed out as as life forms become more complex as the as the brain gains a greater capacity complexity simultaneously the capacity for the experience of interiority expands uh uh in accordance with that and the greater degree of complexity more and more interiority and so and so why this is so important is because when you start to realize that your experience of inter interiority which is your experience of Consciousness cognition you could say emotion also but your experience of Consciousness and cognition emotion all of the all of your interior experience and you notice your experience of interiority can at times be very small and contracted and other times it can open up and become very very expanded and the more your experience of interiority expands it seem you seem to be able to include or become cognizant of or more and more aware of more and more of the cosmos right so when your when your experience of interiority is contracted into your you know just uh into your ego you don't seem to be about one doesn't seem to be aware of very much except that but when your experience of interiority expands it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger slowly but surely eventually there is there are moments in at times when it seems the one begins to cognize the entire Cosmos right and once again if you weren't here if if if if a sensient life form that H that had the capacity for this kind of for that kind of expansion of consciousness and cognition didn't exist then the energy and intelligence that initiated the entire creative process wouldn't have the capacity to Bear witness to itself it would exist but it wouldn't be able to Bear witness to itself which would mean God he would not be able to Bear witness to his or her own creation you follow what I'm saying in other words we he or she created the universe but something changes something very big dramatic awesome unimaginable happens when the capacity to Bear witness to the entire process emerges from within the process itself and that's really what God is so there's no really external God right in the old in the old sense of what that means but as human beings as highly evolved sensient beings gain the capacity to Bear witness to the Crea process then what happens is the energy and intelligence that's driving the process and initiated begins to become aware of itself become self-aware that's when whatever we want to call God actually emerges and becomes actual actually tangible now why this is so important right now is is because um is because we all know that there is something greater than than uh than highly evolved human intelligence that's going to that's going to uh that's necessary to uh for us to find the inspiration to take the step the next the next step and to do whatever it is that we have to do okay what is going to be the source of our inspiration right so either the source of our inspiration is going to be merely the impulse to survive what I was speaking about before but when you awaken to this to this to this Godlike uh energy and this Godlike intelligence and your source of inspiration comes from the process itself then you what you you literally feel yourself in touch with awake to and being driven by and anim animated by the same energy and intelligence that initiated the creative process and that's what's driving you that's what's turning you on that's what that's what gets you up out of bed every day that's why you're alive and so then you what you discover is kind of a source of meaning and purpose and purposefulness that transcends the relative circumstances of your own personal life and transcends the relative circumstances of our of our Global and cultural predicament uh and you there's a sense of really being um uh driven by the cosmos itself or the same energy and intelligence that that is creating it and this is what's called uh uh a a phrase or a term for this is called it's called like a cosmocentric level of awareness