Andrew Cohen - N°1 - LAST RETREAT - January 2025

If you're seeking for enlightenment, you're seeking to discover what is the nature of God or absolute truth. So because we're pursuing the absolute or the ultimate truth, the absolute or the ultimate truth. So therefore the question is what's the nature of God? If God exists, if God exists, whatever it means is the ultimate truth about the nature of reality. So we're looking for ultimacy. What's the highest truth, the deepest truth, the most absolute truth about the nature of existence that transcends life and death? All true seekers want to know that they're seeking for God consciousness. What is the ultimate truth? I think that whatever God is that the God principle would have to include everything that exists and everything that does not exist. Why this is interesting for those seeking enlightenment is that the sum totality of everything that exists and everything that does not exist can be a direct experience of knowing a direct cognition of of absolute reality itself. So everything that exists and everything that does not exist feels like is like the experience of liberation. God is an experience of knowing and being. It's a vibration. It's a pulsation. It's an absolute vibration. Pulsation in and as some totality of reality, the whole universe. It's a particular kind of feeling and a particular kind of knowing. Feel the totality of reality feels like what God feels like. When you take that shift from feeling how your ego feels your small self about reality and start seeing feeling how God as you feels about reality, you become a different person. You become an enlightened person because now you're feeling the vibration of the sub totality of all of reality. So we're saying that enlightenment is the experience of the vibration, the pulsation, the knowing, the feeling of everything that exists and everything that does not exist. And enlightenment is it's an experience of a certain vibration of consciousness. It's not nothing. Because what we find is the sum totality of reality feels like something is like something very specific. That's that's everything and nothing. That's God. So the way enlightenment works is the fundamental practice that we need to become very good at in terms of attaining enlightened awareness is pronunciation which means letting go of stuff. It looks simple and it is easy but you have to learn how to become very good at it. Most people aren't very good. That's why they're going to therapists. If you let go you're going to be free sometime around now. So let you so you want to practice letting go every opportunity you can because the dharma will come alive within you if you make space inside yourself for it. It's like a flower blooming. It opens itself up and reveals itself to you inside yourself like your heart will open like a flower blooms and the dharma starts revealing itself to you within you. But you have to be available. So if you're worried about other things, you won't notice this happening. You have to be there for it. We have to learn how to practice the attitude of renunciation, which just means letting go of everything that's not necessary. It requires a determination. Oh, this isn't necessary. Let it go. Don't replace it with anything except nothing. When you practice pronunciation, you fill the gap with nothing. So the gap will get bigger and bigger. That's the idea. So in Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism, they make a distinction between what's called relative reality and absolute reality. They say reality has two truths. There's two different dimensions of reality. One is absolute, the other is relative. They're not the same thing. Relative reality is relatively real. Absolute reality is absolutely real. One truth has relative realness, another truth has absolute realness. So in this context, that which is absolutely real has more reality to it than that which is relatively real. So according to the enlighten enlightenment philosophers enlightenment philosophy the realizers begin to understand that most people are not aware of absolute reality. They're only aware of relative reality. Most unenlightened people which is most people are not aware of absolute reality. They're only aware of relative reality but they don't know it. So they think in their ignorance and our we think in our ignorance. And what we experience as being relatively real is absolutely real. That's called samsara or ignorance. And when we have a wakeup experience, when you wake up, you have a spiritual insight, you realize, oh, this is only relatively real. It's not absolutely real. I thought this was absolutely real. But now, because I I've woken up, I'm discovering this is the difference between relative reality and absolute reality. I've been sleepwalking for my whole life. And if I've been sleepwalking for this life, I've probably been sleepwalking for hundreds of lifetimes. I've been asleep because I haven't realized that what's relatively real is not absolutely real. And only if I discover, experience, recognize, and realize that which is absolutely real. Can I see reality clearly? So the quest for enlightenment is simply awakening to this distinction between relative reality and absolute reality. Not as an intellectual distinction, a metaphysical distinction but as a direct experience of knowing. So someone who is enlightened that means they have direct conscious cognition of the absolute dimension of reality and they see everything in relative reality from the vantage point of that which is absolute. That self nature is very different. It's been transformed by the knowledge of that which is absolute. It transforms our self nature. We become a different kind of person. Now you're awake. You see things very differently. The experience of the totality of reality will make you feel happy, joyful, inwardly free and excited to be alive. No longer a prisoner of the moral mind. So in in Buddhism they make a distinction between when they talk about the the nature of reality. They talk about the nature of reality they say reality is made up of form and emptiness. What is the nature of reality? What's the nature of my by my body the tree the stones the clouds the planets the whole universe? The subtotality of all of reality is both form and emptiness. So this is very important. So from an absolute perspective, form and emptiness are one and not two. There's no from an absolute perspective, from absolute cognition, from absolute knowing, there's no difference between form and emptiness. They're exactly they're completely identical. Form is emptiness and emptiness is form. From the absolute position, from the relative position, they're polar opposites, form is not emptiness and emptiness is not form. They're distinct and very different. So if you look at reality from an absolute point of view, everything becomes one. There's one reality, one truth, one fact. When you look at it through a relative lens, you see no there's form and emptiness. These kind of distinctions we have to learn from a very deep place in itself that transcends the mind. These kind of distinctions. So from a relative point of view, form and emptiness are very different. They're opposites. From an absolute point of view, they're the same thing. And if you're going to be free, you need to know this with your heart, with your soul. Now, I am a teacher of what's called evolutionary enlightenment. And evolutionary enlightenment is a combination of the traditional enlightenment of in Vidant Buddhism and what I call the new evolutionary enlightenment of Triorindo. So in the traditional enlightenment, the goal is to awaken to emptiness. The absolute nature of emptiness in the ground of being in order to achieve liberation. Here we want to awaken to the absolute nature of emptiness and also the absolute nature of form. The new enlightenment includes the whole realm of form and existence. So the new enlightenment is not just about transcending the world of form but also simultaneously embracing the world of form. So the old enlightenment we want to be free from the world of form. In the new enlightenment we want to be free from the world of form but also to embrace it, take responsibility for it and to co-create it. That's a bigger aspiration than the old enlightenment. It's much bigger. It's not merely to be free from to be free from and to totally embrace the world of form at the same time. So if you're going to become enlightened in the context of evolutionary enlightenment, there's a lot of work to do. The first thing you have to do is to liberate yourself from your body, your mind, your personality in this crazy world we're living in who the practice has no relationship to body, mind, world, and form which you do with meditations. I have no relationship to the world of form. No relationship to body. No relationship to mind. No relationship to personality. No relationship to world. No relationship to cosmos. No relationship to anything. No relationship is zero. No relationship is zero. Which means nothing. No relationship. No relationship is freedom right now. No relationship is unconditional relationship to freedom right now. No relationship is freedom. And it's an experience. No relationship is the experience of ecstasy and the experience of peace. I've never been born. I've never entered the stream of time. Karma doesn't exist for me. I'm self liberated. I'm a jiva mukta. I'm a Buddha. So no relationship is moka. It's liberation. And it's liberation right now in the present moment. The degree to which you can have the experience of no relationship, you'll know what enlightenment is. No relationship is the experience of absolute freedom. Because there is no relationship in this context. No relationship means zero. I was never born. I've never entered the stream of time. Karma does not exist for me. I'm free. How does that sound, folks? Pretty interesting. I think so. So in evolutionary enlightenment, this is the foundation of liberation is cultivation of the primordial freedom that we experience when we awaken to the ground of being. Cultivation of no relationship to body, mind, world, cosmos. And I want you to understand with all of your heart that no relationship is from the perspective of spiritual understanding to the greatest happiness, the greatest joy. I've never been born. I've never entered the stream of time. Karma means nothing to me. The universe has never happened. I'm the experience of primordial freedom here and now. If you when you see a picture of a lot of the eastern masters, there that's why they're smiling free from karma and fully liberated. So what I'm describing to you is an experience. It's an experience. It's available to you also. And even if you have a little taste of this experience, you'll be convinced. You can just have a little taste of it to realize what I'm saying is true. No fear, no doubt, no desire, no regret, no anger, no resentment, no personal memories, no desire for the future, utter contentment and absolute nothingness. utter contentment and absolute nothingness. This is why when you go deep, when Ram was having his enlightenment which lasted for years and years and years, he wasn't doing anything. He was just sitting still. He sat for years on the mountain. He wasn't doing anything. And he wasn't meditating. He was being meditated by consciousness itself. He wasn't doing a damn thing. So the consciousness of being was so strong in his experience. He was just absorbing his whole body, mind, personality in the feeling of being, the feeling of bliss, of non-doing, of nonbecoming, of nothingness. So you maybe you can maybe we won't have the experience as strong as his was. I doubt it. But you can taste what his experience was. You can know his experience was from your own experience. It's important that you that you understand these distinctions I make from at a certain point from your own experience. You need to work at this. What I call the old enlightenment is the foundation for the new enlightenment. The old enlightenment is essenti is the essential foundation. So without it there's there's no hope. So we all need to get become very good at having no relationship to body, mind, personality, world and cosmos. You need to practice every day. What is it like to have no relationship to body, mind, world, and cosmos? Become an expert. You can only become an expert as you work on it. Unless you're a genius, it's it's not going to happen by itself. You have to give yourself to the process of becoming free. What a nice idea. [laughter] >> [clears throat] >> And the beautiful thing is when you start to wake up to the ground of being in yourself, you start to feel happy for no particular reason. Your problems seem to go from here to here. Not so bad anymore. The problems become smaller, less troublesome. naturally by themselves because you're not preoccupied with them anymore. It's our preoccupation with our problems that makes us crazy. So when you're meditating deeply and not and you choose not to be preoccupied with your personal problems, you seem to get smaller. So what I'm describing to you is a path of joy. It's joyous to practice being inwardly free. And remember everybody in an evolutionary context is that you're doing this practice for eternity. This is not just to liberate you for this lifetime, but you want to be liberated for for eternity, for the infinite future. You want to practice with with a forever intention. I want to liberate myself eternally for eternity so I can be available for this higher work eternally for eternity. That's how we want to think about it. We train ourselves to think about this in a big and very deep way. I want to be available to do this work internally for eternity. So if you're going to really do that, you have to think about it deeply every day. I know a lot of these words sound very outrageous, audacious, unbelievable, but they become believable when your consciousness begins to expand. These kind of distinctions will begin to make sense to you if your consciousness expands and gets bigger. Especially the significance of that which is eternal. When you become conscious of eternity and live your life in relationship to that which is eternal, that's when you begin to live a life of of enlightenment. But you have to do the spiritual work. Otherwise, eternity is just a beautiful concept. It's not it's not your experience. You want eternity to be your experience. access to that which is eternal in your own experience. It's available to all of us if you're available. Then you develop what I call spiritual self-confidence. When you awaken to the consciousness of eternity, you'll begin to develop spiritual self-confidence. You're a true believer then because you know it's not just words. These are dimensions of reality that actually exist. Allow these things to become important to you. Allow these distinctions to become important. Allow these truths to become important to you. If you get touched deeply enough by these truths, at a certain point you begin to live with them. It's the reason that you're living your life is for their for their sake, not for your sake. So, so if we stand back and we observe that God is a very creative guy or woman, God seems to be inclined to create, right? God doesn't meditate all the time. He or she seems to create universes and multiverses, right? Very creative. So God's not just being. The nature of God of the absolute is not just being but also becoming. So God it seems to be a creator. He's both absolutely at rest and totally busy. So in this new enlightenment, if you're going to become fully enlightened in the new enlightenment, you need to awaken to God both as being, which I just been talking about, God is being, which is an experience of peace, to God as becoming, God as the creator of the universe. That's a new kind of enlightenment. That's what it's called evolutionary enlightenment. It's the enlightenment that Sriorinda was speaking about. Awakening to the creative god is the creator principle and awakening to the greater principle in yourself as a as a vibration of pulsation. In evolutionary enlightenment, we call it the authentic self. It's when you feel compelled to give rise to that which is new. And it's an ecstatic compulsion. It's an ecstatic compulsion to create, to become. So the experience of God is not just peace. It's also the desire to exist in time. It's an ecstatic compulsion to create. It's also God. So at evolutionary enlightenment, God has two faces. One face is God as being, as becoming. But these are experiences that need to be cultivated. You have to learn how to awaken to your true self. Awaken to your authentic self. Doesn't just happen by itself. So most people become self-actualized when they discover what their creative capacity is. They find their ability to express it unself-consciously. They experience a kind of self delight and existence. Suddenly to exist is so full of joy and so full of unlimited creative potential unlimited. Now now I know who I am. I know why I'm here to create the future gives me the greatest pleasure. Lets me know why I'm here. I know who I am. What's the postmodern predicament? No purpose. I don't know why I exist. I don't know why I'm here. I don't even know if it's a good idea to be here. So when you discover this creative principle, remember this is a vibration I'm talking about. It's not an idea. It's not a thought. It's a vibration. It's it's the ecstatic urge to create. Comes it comes through you. It doesn't come from your mind. It's not a personal project. It's a cosmic aspiration. So when you feel when you begin to awaken to creator principle as a cosmic aspiration awakening to itself within you. That's also God realization. Now you know what it's like to feel one with the creator of the universe because the creator of the universe begins to vibrate inside you as your own creative aspirations and it feels so liberating. It feels so liberating and then you just want to create more and more and more and more and more and more. This liberates you from your ego. This e ego is creativity. The eagle is aspiration to create. If you read your arbinda, you hear it coming through him all the time. And what I want to say is very interesting. Sriraindu and Ram Maharshi were two of the most recognized fully realized modern spiritual masters of the 20th century but they didn't agree about the nature of enlightenment. Ram did not understand or agree with Shri Binda's evolutionary aspirations. And Sriraindu called Rama a position. He called it the refusal of the aesthetic. Refusal to engage with the world is the position of refusal of the aesthetic. Sriraindu did not agree with the Ram Maharashi's rejection of the world. And I think that's fascinating because the these are two beautiful highly realized geniuses who were fully realized within their own context but they disagreed on fundamental nature of enlightenment itself. That's very interesting. I thought enlightenment was one thing not so easy. So what I've done with this teaching is to embrace both of the both these perspectives, put them together. Enlightenment is about transcending ego, which you already knew, or at least you thought you did, but you probably don't really know what it means. Most people don't know what it means. They understand the words, they don't really know what it means. So now we understand that there's two kinds of enlightenment is a being enlightenment and a becoming enlightenment. One is about no relationship to the world of time, space, world and universe. Another is was about the right relationship to time, space and universe. So there's two enlightenments, two different metaphysics that we have to learn how to take and experience and express. They're very specific and as you'll see if you go deeply into each one you're going to see it's a very different experience but what's fascinating is to repeat what I've been saying it's transcending the ego in two different ways feels very different one is being released from karma from bondage the other is being put on a moving train called it awakening to the psychic being and there's two other dimensions to this teaching which you need to be aware of. One is personal, the other is collective. So one way to think about enlightenment is enlightenment for me and my liberation. That's everybody's thinking about it in tu my liberation doesn't include you my liberation for me it's one way to think about it and then when you discover your liberation you discover an intriguing possibility I discovered an intriguing possibility about 35 years ago and that intriguing possibility is what if we could become enlightened together. So there's my enlightenment and our enlightenment. They're not the same thing. In my enlightenment, you're always going to think about yourself like the Buddha did, like Ramen did. You're just going to be thinking about what you need to do to be free. You should learn how to do that. To hell with everybody else. To hell with everybody else. To hell with everybody else. Let them all go to hell. Let the world go to hell. I don't care because I want to be free. Let it all go. Once again, see, let it all go. Yeah, but I'm deadly serious. You need to practice letting it all go. Letting your mother go, your father go, your sister go, brother go, your lover go, your husband, your wife, your dog, your apartment, your money. Let it all go to hell. See how you feel. So real yogis practice this kind of radical renunciation. That's why they're so free because they don't give a damn about anything except consciousness. They've let go of everything else. And letting go of everything else, they let go of all the illusions, the promise of happiness in anything other than consciousness. So when you let when you let go of the illusion of happiness in anything other than consciousness, you halfway home. I don't give it Chuck M. Trumpet called it CCL. I couldn't care less. It's my enlightenment. I don't care about anything else. I'll see you. I'm going to the top of the mountain. I'll see you in 10 years. Good luck. Just letting everything go. Letting everything go. Letting everything go. So, when you're sitting with me here and you're meditating, you should be practicing this kind of letting everything go. If you can do it, see how free you feel. Having nothing, knowing nothing, being no one, free. This is one kind of enlightenment, the old enlightenment. But the collective enlightenment is an expression of what's called utopian idealism. So utopian idealism is much more difficult than personal enlightenment because it involves other people. So utopian idealism is the spiritual fantasy of the of the enlightened one, the realizer. What if we could all practice evolutionary enlightenment together? We can create utopia. That's that's the fantasy. It's a spiritual fantasy. And all the greatest realizers at a certain point begin to become very fascinated by this possibility. What if we could become enlightened together? What would the world be like then? It's a very compelling idea. But when you think of enlightenment in terms of the wei versus I, the context changes and the implications for you and your desires and your fears and your relationship to your body, mind and personality are directly affected. So you want to think about how does the world look when I am concerned about my enlightenment which was about letting everything go. When I become concerned with our enlightenment, it changes all our priorities very differently. So one isn't better than the other. They're just very different. And you need to understand the difference between them. Follow So the reason I'm asking you to go into silence is that I'm not trying to deprive you of any human contact. I'm trying to show you what it's like to transcend your ego. Not because I don't want you to talk for its own sake, because I want you to awaken to your true self. If you talk talk to your friends, to your lovers, it brings the ego back into the control. The ego wants to be seen. See me. The ego wants to be seen, recognized, acknowledged, respected, honored. The ego doesn't like it when you stop respecting and stop honoring it. Stop paying attention to it. So being quiet means you can start you can learn to let your ego go to hell for a week. So please keep this in mind because I know on these retreats some people find it very difficult to not talk. So it's not that difficult if you really want if you if you have a little selfdisciplined and the reason I'm asking you to be in silence to repeat is to give you an experience of freedom from your own ego. So I'm I'm not trying to deprive you of anything. I'm trying to give you an experience of egoless consciousness. And once you let go of the need to talk, it feels good to be quiet. And what I'm saying here, it's really true that the if you really do let go, your ego will your ego goes into the background. So if you let you stop talking, shut up for a few days and listen to some really great dharma, the ego will start to quiet down. Takes a few days to start to quiet down. And as your ego starts to quiet down, you'll feel you'll feel space inside you. Open up, which is a big relief. You have to give it a little time because the ego always wants to be entertained. So for these few days, please don't seek for ego entertainment. Just let go. And if you're just by yourself, you're being quiet, nothing's happening, that's fine. Let nothing be happening. Just let go into nothing. One of my meditation instructions is is very simple. It goes like this. You just have to pay attention and let go. If you're meditating, that'll keep you busy. So, you should remind yourself if you're getting agitated, pay attention and let go. But I what I want you to have the experience of your ego falling into the background of your experience and you begin to feel this infinite space inside yourself and this infinite freedom begin to reveal itself to you. The ego doesn't want to give up control. Your ego doesn't want to give up control of the vehicle. The vehicle is your body, your mind, your personality is the vehicle. So your ego is in control of it. If you're unconscious, ego will not give up control unless you force it to. The way you force it to is by having no relationship to it, which is just letting go. The way you kill the ego is by stopping to give it attention. The ego is a narcissist. Have you noticed that your ego is a narcissist? Have you noticed it thrives on attention? Your attention, everybody else's attention. So if you stop giving your ego attention, you stop demanding that other people give your ego your attention, it'll calm down. So sooner or later, it'll give up. SS see me, see me, see me. If you stop giving your own ego your attention and stop giving stop forcing other people to give it attention, it will slowly start to quiet down and say, "Nobody's paying attention to me. I think I'll go to sleep. I think I'll take a nap." So when your ego takes a nap, that's beautiful. Then you start to feel very happy. That's enlightened awareness. Then you start to awaken to enlightened awareness when your ego goes to sleep. Because your your tormentor, your torture has taken a nap. And when your torture tormentors take takes a nap, you start to feel released. So you get a taste of what life can be like. And the ego has been put to sleep. So I'm just saying all this to give context for why I'm asking you to be quiet. Just experiment with what I'm asking you to do on its own terms. Then you'll know why. Oh, this makes sense. Be in nature. Just meditate. Meditate. Just be still and quiet. Be still and quiet. Be still and quiet. But it's the only thing you need to do. Not think about anything. Not try and figure anything out. Please don't try and figure anything out. Please don't try and figure anything out. Don't try to understand anything. Hm. What does that mean? Forget it. Don't try and figure anything out. Just be. Give yourself the freedom to be. And the idea with this teaching is I want to help you find your best self and liberate your best self. And if you find your best self and liberate your best self, then you then you get a vision for humanity. I said, "Oh, this is what this is what life could be like for us. And why it's important is because if you have an experience, an ecstatic experience, a very positive experience of the potential of love and liberation for humanity within yourself and with a few other people. You realize what's possible for humanity. You realize there's an actual possibility. It's not just a spiritual fantasy, but it's an actual possibility. We can as a species overcome our ignorance and our stupidity and become beautiful souls who care about each other and care about the planet and care about the future. We can behave with dignity and nobility and grace and honor and higher consciousness. Because the thing the problem today is is we're all getting very cynical because there's so much bad behavior by so many human beings at the same time. We start getting very doubtful whether we human beings can do it right. It makes us feel depressed and cynical and nihilistic. You just don't care anymore. Right? That's like the spiritual poison. So if you have a very positive experience of coming together with other people and unbroken unity and positivity, you realize it's possible. If you're convinced that it's possible, you'll be a true believer in good sense. No matter what anybody else does, you'll know it's possible. So then you know that we can do it if you create the right conditions. It's this this kind of dharma is very empowering because when you begin to see your own life in the context of the human project start to see everything in a very big context and you start to see what you're trying to do might be important [laughter] might be important for everybody else's sake not just for yours because if you feel If you have an awakening, you realize, "Oh, my participation is important." Not just for my sake, but for everybody else's sake. You don't have time to get depressed. You don't have time to have a nervous breakdown. You don't have time for self-hatred. Is everybody needs you to be present, right? No time for me and my pain. >> [snorts] >> Now everything that I'm saying exists in potential. I believe it's our obligation if we can we're committed to the process. If everything I'm saying makes perfect sense to you and it rings absolutely true then then suddenly it exists as a potential in your own consciousness. When you actualize that potential then it becomes real tangible objective then the work then you're doing the work. So I think in my way of thinking that's the kind of the obligation of the true seeker today is to become realized so we can be we can objectify the highest possibilities for other people. We need to become exemplars and proof of our argument. Then there's no escape, right?