Andrew Cohen: An Eternal Evolutionary Vow

thank you very much I just had one question on on your take um this life that you're living now in right okay obviously your mortal self here do you do you believe or what's your thought on past lives obviously there there is this energy which is put into this Mortal capsule which we have and as you said you know at some point people who are of a very small minority are lucky enough to be able to have these kinds of conversations that we're having um does that mean that you then do you you feel that you transcend and you're not going to be a part of the Mortal engine that drives that Cosmos anymore or will you always come back and be recycled in a way just you well I think that where the action is is in is is in the material universe so where the most exciting place to be is where the creative action is happening and so you can only participate in the evolutionary process or in the creative process is through form so so so uh in a disembodied State we don't have the power to affect change we you know in whatever form or state we're going to be in without without being attached to a form and a form that can actually engage with the the material Universe we're not going to be able to affect change in the universe so the evolutionary Awakening is realizing that oh I see in the old in the in the in the traditional orientation spiritual enlightenment was about transcending the the the the impermanence of of of physical embodied life and the and and the inevitable pain and and suffering of existence so the evolutionary Awakening is saying well yes you know pain and suffering is an inherent part of of of embod existence but I mean if you think about the lives that most of us lead here I mean we experience so much less pain and less suffering than human beings have experienced for most of for most of for for most of the time that humans have actually existed so we've reduced the amount of suffering to to an enormous degree but but that's a relative point the other point is that we realize that being here you know being here is the whole point because if spirit is the energy and intelligence that initiated the creative process and is driving the creative process that uh that we recognize that Spirit can only awaken to itself through us because because of our high degree of evolution at the level of Consciousness and cognition because Spirit can only awaken to itself to the level development of any particular species so Spirit can awaken can awaken to itself through the consciousness of a butterfly but then spirit's going to have butterfly Consciousness so butterflies can't enact conscious evolution in the name of spirit because they don't have those spiritual or cognitive capacities and the same thing with the snake Spirit can awaken to itself as a snake but it's only going to have snake Consciousness and what about dog Consciousness pretty good right English people love their dogs why do they love their dogs CU they touch their dogs theyd be very affectionate because English people are little you if R the subway right and you touch them oh I'm sorry right English it's a very funny joke but it just say if you just sorry sorry sorry but oops I'm sorry in New York if you just like you don't whatever you know but here it's sorry but if it's your dog you know have to say sorry oh yes hi but so this dog Consciousness and um and so the the Zen the Zen Parable is that the Zen master says to his the Zen master asked his student does a dog have Buddha nature Buddha nature is consciousness so he says does a dog have Buddha nature and the disciple says yes because dogs have the dog does have Buddha nature because dogs have Consciousness and he says can a dog become enlightened and the answer is no because dogs don't have self-reflective awareness they don't have the capacity to be aware of awareness they have awareness dogs have awareness but they don't have the capacity to be aware of awareness so Enlightenment or Awakening to Consciousness can only happen in a highly evolved IED being that has the capacity to be aware of awareness or to be aware of Consciousness so in this highly evolved capacity for self-reflective awareness not only can be aware of awareness but we can suddenly awaken to not only the ground of our being but we can awaken to this entire Cosmic unfolding that has made it possible for us to have the Awakening we're having and the degree to which we awaken to that fact is the degree is the degree to which then we can begin to actually take responsibility for the whole thing at least to some degree to some degree for all of it and so when you realize that you realize where the action is is right here in this body this is where the action is this is the most exciting place to be you know inherent in all the dangers that in all the dangers of the world that we're living in inherent in all the the possibilities of of injury of psychological and physical injury and pain and death in in light of all of that the most exciting place to be is here because Spirit can only affect the world that Spirit created we can only consciously affect that world in and through this form so then we ReDiscover the glory of our of of our own humanity and the sign and the spiritual significance of Being Human and in the in the way that I teach that Discovery is the ultimate remedy for the post-modern predicament which is I'm the luckiest person that's ever been born and I'm miserable and victimized and I don't really know if life is worth living and I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing so when in light of that you realize that you you realize that that Spirits dependent upon you in in in order for the process of of uh Cosmic biological and cultural Evolution to take the next step that suddenly makes you very important it's it's not doesn't it's kind of a you could call it a cosmic form of narcissism if you want to you know as a joke but but it it's but it actually if you take it seriously when you awaken to this moral imperative I was speaking about you know you suddenly begin to take life very seriously so what's the problem so many the postmodern predicament is that so many the luckiest people that have ever been born don't take life they don't know how to take life seriously culture doesn't tell them how to take life seriously they take their psychological experience seriously their emotional experience seriously their biological desire seriously their materialistic desire seriously but they don't take life seriously they don't know how to do it they don't have a they don't culture doesn't tell them how to do it so with this kind of Awakening this kind of perspective it en it shows us how we can how we can take life seriously how to take this life seriously this very life in in the midst of all the complexity of the global predicament we're facing in midst all the complexity of our own personal predicament in midst all of the imperfection that imperfection that we are we can take it all very seriously for the highest reasons and then and the first question was the difference between you know living a spiritual life versus not living you versus not then your whole life when you take it seriously becomes an expression of spirit and action because you realize that's the whole thing that's what you're doing here that's whole point of this existence uh you know without without that life doesn't mean anything otherwise you're just living a materialistic life satisfying narc narcissistic and selfish desires ultimately doesn't mean anything but when you discover that you realize this is where the action is the most exciting place to be is in this world as you are in all our imperfection right now and that's completely enlightening I mean and then you go oh my God this is like the most amazing this is it I'm actually in exactly the right place exactly where I'm supposed to supposed to be now I have to get busy I got to get with it I have to start doing it I have to take it all on you see I have to become a real player and then you have all kinds of challenges you have to F you have to start doing heavy lifting you have to face criticism you have to face your own weakness your own division you know all the challenges really start then because you'll see all the different parts of you that don't want to play the game of life that seriously versus the part of you that does and the battle that's going to go on there and then you actually don't want to just have an internal experience but you actually want to have an effect in the world and then you're going to be doing God's work work you know and then then you want to succeed because if you succeed Spirit succeeds there there is a measurable effect that you have affected the world for the better to some degree and then and and then God is working through you so to speak I mean what else could there possibly be for us to do at this point I can't imagine anything else so there's two possibilities I think either we should be busy finding solutions to the problems that exist they're facing you know the Glo our threats for Global surviv Ral for you know for for poverty you know and tribal Madness in the Middle East and in Africa on one hand we should be busy because these are real problems that aren't going to go away and they're problems that affect all of us and or we should get busy with you know Paving out carving out this new territory that I'm talking about otherwise you know we're just what are we doing we're probably just wasting time in a personal World it doesn't seem like it but when you look impersonally at it all it's very different from the personal psychological ego perspective it's not doesn't look like you're wasting time cuz you're taking care of yourself but from a cosmic perspective you know take you're not we're not here just to take care of ourselves we're here to make a difference why because we're the luckiest people that have ever been born would I give a lecture like this if I was at a small village in Africa no of course not but I'm not in a small village in Africa we're just in we're in central London here huh we're the luckiest people that have ever been born so this so we have a different burden and so yeah we have to get over our over our EG so we can take responsib ability for our tremendous good fortunes and it's a big challenge it's an enormous challenge but then life becomes more than worth living it becomes the only life there is to live and then you're going to want to come back and you want to come back in the midst of the freay and keep going and keep going because how else is God going to create the future unless you do it follow yeah so it's totally exciting it it's very challenging it's viscerally challenging you know it's challenging at a visceral level of the Soul so there's no there's no like escapism in it but it suddenly makes your life makes sense and that's ultimately what we need is is to find a philosophical and spiritual moral philosophical and approach to life that suddenly makes sense out of it all because the postmodern predicament as I was explaining doesn't make any sense you know you have highly developed you know intelligent people that that don't know what they're really doing here and so when we find out absolutely what we're doing then we can discover a kind of conviction and which is going to get us out of the ego and into and into the process and then from then on it's just the future you know and then if we stick with it we're going to be at this for eternity so then the bodh Val you heard in Mahayana Buddhism the bodh satva vows to not accept his or her own complete Enlightenment until all sensient beings become enlightened and only then will he or she accept their own full Enlightenment and then go into Nirvana forever and never have to come back so in I've taken the bodh and re configured it so in the new bodh is even more challenging than than thead traditional bodh because well because because no because now you stay you basically are well no it's similar I guess you you vow to keep returning and returning until all the matter in the universe turns to light light is consciousness so this is this is matter right but this matter is lit up with Consciousness isn't that right it's so so then you could say metaphorically this is just a metaphorical idea I don't really know what it means but so but it's just keep us busy with some kind of amazing idea so you say when all the matter in the universe turns to light which means become Consciousness thei original Mission when God created the material Universe then you could have said the purpose has been served but we are so inconceivably distant from that I mean it's not even within the realm we there's no even worth thinking about so you say so then I vow to come back again and again and again and again because God's totally dependent on me that create the future follow and then that's it there's nothing more to do then we just have to get busy and do it and do it and do it for forever now notice if you say forever for you do you really mean forever you mean like forever because what's been built into our Consciousness you know from our traditional history is that you're supposed to get a vacation you mean I don't get to go to heaven in between and get a little day off you know some few years at the health spa in heaven [Laughter] you see so if you remove that not because you see what I find so intriguing about this idea is that a lot of people I don't want to die you know a lot people I don't want to die there's this instinctive fear of death but then when you introduce people to the notion of like infinite being infinitely engaged with the creative process there's a recoil there's there's a subconscious recoil oh my God that's too much isn't that interesting I find it very interesting because they oh really I don't really want to live forever do I know so you see when you start to say yes to Evolution which is remember the understanding of evolution knowledge of evolution is a very recently emergent dimensions of of reality that we didn't know about so saying yes to Evolution has very powerful spiritual implications for the individual and it involves saying yes to life in ways that we never really have before and then saying yes to also eternity yes to the Future yes taking responsibility for all of it so that means you have we have to kind of become God so to speak either metaphorically and literally and you can see there's a recoil like there's a sole recoil say well I don't know if I want to be that committed to the creation of the universe right so so that you could call that we could call that the ego couldn't we the that's that's any part of the self that would resist God or the absolute nature of God we could call the ego so any part of ourselves that would resist that absolute calling is another word for ego so in an evolutionary context that's what we have to sacrifice and get over so thank you very much everybody thank you [Applause]