Andrew Cohen - N°13 - LAST RETREAT - January 2025

So this is the beginning of the second part of the retreat together. And uh so what we were going to try and do on this part of the retreat is what the evolution of enlightenment is all about. And the practice of this interubjective dialogical process is 100,000 times more difficult than sitting in meditation and asking questions. That's easy. It doesn't take any effort from any of us really. So the goal here is to actualized the mind of the Buddha engaging with himself between us. It's actualizing the promise of enlightenment between us. Now the thing is um this process is very delicate. It's very precious. It's very subtle. It's very difficult. It's very hard to do right. It's hard to get it right. So it requires a level of sobriety and sincerity that's way above average. And it requires us to take the whole notion of the evolution of consciousness very seriously. is most people don't take that the notion of the evolution of consciousness very seriously. Just a sexy phrase, sexy term. It sounds good. So all of you at least are intellectually familiar with the idea that to awaken to enlightened awareness requires us to transcend a small self. But a lot of you on an intellectual level understand this. Whether you actually intend to do it personally or have ever done it is another question. So transcending ego is very difficult, very hard and very few people actually succeed in doing it. So this dialogical process which I developed 30 years ago with my students gives us an opportunity to practice ego transcendence together. Gives us a rare opportunity to see what it's like to be in your body, mind, and personality without being the narcissistic self-centered egoomaniacs that we usually are. to see what would come out of our mouth if we were actually enlightened. What kind of person would you be? What kind of person would I be? Get an opportunity to find out in this process if you take it seriously. So the gift of the awakening to enlightened awareness is the miraculous discovery that enlightenment is self-existing within you already, which I've discussed many times here. something that most people don't really believe, but it's this miraculous discovery that who I really am at the level of the true self and level of the authentic self is already fully liberated here and now. So this process or this practice that we want to try and engage in together gives every everybody an opportunity to have the actual experience of awakening to the part of themselves that's already fully liberated and engaging with it in in short order. And when this process works, that's exactly what happens. So we're trying to give voice to the deepest part of you in a very direct way. Trying to gain access to the perennial wisdom of the authentic self. It's not your wisdom. It's not your ego's wisdom. It doesn't come from your intellect. It doesn't come from your personal memory. It comes from a vast storehouse in the center of the cosmos. I believe it's it's a source of the mind and the Buddha. It's a source of enlightened awareness, source of higher intellectual enlightened knowledge and understanding. It has nothing to do with you personally. Has nothing to do with me personally. Has nothing to do with your ego. It's always already there waiting to be uncovered and ready to inform us about our own higher potentials. I had a vision about this a long time ago. Took me about 10 years to catalyze it with my students. It was the uncovering of a miracle, miraculous possibility and a miracle. It's one that most people still don't have any idea about or understand. But this is the other half of the picture. So the first half of the picture as of enlightenment as I teach it is the awakening to enlightened awareness as a static state of consciousness as a living potential within us. And the second part is actualizing it through action and valition and conscious engagement and activity. So unless enlightenment can can be actualized and activated and it becomes the actor within us and between us. It has no power to do anything important except to give you a good experience. Is that clear? This is very serious. This is why we hear of so many people having these wonderful experiences, but you get to know them and they're just as screwed up as everyone else and nothing dramatic has actually happened. So when enlightenment starts walking and talking, dramatic things start happening. That's how powerful it is. So this practice has the power to enable enlightenment to walk and talk through us as us if we're very serious. But the thing is this is way beyond most people that I meet and I with all due respect it's beyond most of you here in this room so far unless we prove it otherwise because it's just too damn serious and it's too damn hard. These aren't discussion groups for the ego. The ego really has to be put aside for this to work. And it's not that most people can't do it. Anybody can do it if they want to do it. Most people don't care enough to make noble and heroic spiritual effort to do it because putting the ego aside is very difficult. It's hard engage with your own mind and personality to the level of sincerity and seriousness and commitment and risk takingaking that's challenging. There's a big point here. I want you guys to appreciate it before we do the work is that we're what we're going to do now is about becomes possible between us. It's not about you as an individual. This is not about your process in the old enlightenment which is about personal enlightenment. It's all about you, your feelings, your thoughts, your ego and you're transcending your own ego. So your experience and your process we were just doing that we very powerful in this collective work you don't matter anymore. What only matters is what happens between us at that level of the whole group the group consciousness. So you have to get out of the way and you have to care about what's happening between us, not what's happening within yourself. And a lot of people have trouble doing that. So when we practice the dharma, we have a lot of these very spiritually romantic and sexy phrases like becoming a bodhic satta, which is the selfless care for the liberation of all sensient beings for oneself. It sounds very romantic and beautiful. But when we do this kind of work, you have to take that kind of that kind of attitude very seriously because you now what you're caring about is the potential unconsciousness to to awaken to itself through a collective. It's not about your experience. It's not about your enlightenment. It's not about how you feel or what you think personally about anything. So it's you have to begin to care more about consciousness than you do about anything else and even about day and your own liberation. And this doing this kind of practice gives you an opportunity to to get down to business kind of sometime around now. you get and everybody gets to see exactly where you're at when you're doing this p this practice where you actually stand in relationship to the liberation of your authentic self and your true self becomes very obvious because if you're not serious about this whoever you are your ego won't get out of the way and if you're very serious about it your ego will will bow down before you and allow the authentic self to awaken through you. So what hap what happens and what you do and what you don't do is evidence of where you're at spiritually at the level of your soul and it becomes very easy to see in this in this kind of context this kind of practice. So I want all of you to to try to bring a level of sincerity to this that's maybe new for you because as far as my understanding goes the potential in this work has barely begun to reveal itself. So engaging this kind of pro process as part of your overall practice in congruence with the traditional practice of meditation and contemplation superowers the spiritual path towards awakening to enlightened awareness because it is trying to awaken human potential for liberation in the biggest way possible. It's trying to liberate the self the authentic self is the center of the collective consciousness anyway in all of us at the same time. And sometimes it happens. And when it happens, everybody gets very very excited because they realize this the human potential is extraordinary, profound, miraculous, and totally incredible and everything worth fighting for and dying for and living for and giving one's whole life for. When you experience that kind of excitement about what God makes possible through all of us, but since we almost never experience anything like that, we have no idea why we're here, what's the point of living is. When you have this kind of awakening, you really get the whole picture. So if we're going to if we're going to create a collective process where ego is going to be transcended, what's the very thing we need to stop doing at all costs? We have to learn how to speak speak without speaking personally about anything. A lot of people find that very difficult. But when you enter into this circle together, the ego is off limits. If this is going to work, if the group is going to work, nobody can speak from their ego. One person can screw this up for everybody else. That's why I'm trying to be very serious this morning because I care about what happens between us. And I and the thing is, so this is an interesting context here. In most postmodern psychosspiritual processes and practices, even sophisticated ones, even ones that are integrally formed, it's still about the individual most of the time. here. This is not about you personally. I'm just repeating. I'm going to repeat this over and over again till you guys really get the gist. It's not about you. It's about us. It's about us. It's about us. It's about all of us. And that's literally true for the all of us that are here together in a small group context. And ultimately, it's about all of us, for all of humanity, all sensient beings on planet Earth and other planets in the universe. It's the kind of energy we're going to be playing with. So what we have to do here is is create the most perfect environment so that everybody in the group can get liberated at the same time. So this is a different kind of enlightenment than the one we've been talking about for the past week. And I personally don't know the limits of this kind of enlightenment either. I don't know what they are. But it's extraordinary what begins to become possible because we're exploring the human experience from a place beyond ego together. That's the idea to explore the human potential from a place beyond ego together. That's discovering a completely different vantage point or perspective on what it means to be human and what's possible for us as a species. So when we discover that at the same time you go oh my god is there's a whole different way to live to be and to exist that is of a different order of existence. I also believe this is what Sri Orbinda was shooting for when he was talking about supermind also. But very few people get this stuff because a lot of the group work that happens even with real good teachers and teachings. It's still still all about the ego. It's all about my experience and my traumas and my this and that. A lot of the group work is still all about the ego. Trying to get the ego to feel better instead of transcending ego all together so we can engage with our own potential which completely different part of ourel and part of reality. So in the personal enlightenment part of the retreat whether you speak personally or not doesn't really make any difference in the long runs except for you. But in this work we're going to be doing together you really got to let go of your your ego which means transcending the personal. I know I'm repeating myself but I'm doing it for a reason. So I'll tell you exactly what you need to do and it follows very much in line with all the instructions I was giving for personal enlightenment. So first of all we come together because we know that the authentic self which sure been called the psychic being is waiting to burst forth through us. But we know that the psychic being is not a personal entity that has got nothing to do with me personally or you personally. So we need to create this space or the opening of the portal through which the authentic self and the psychic being can emerge. What he calls the psychic being what I call the authentic self. Well, it won't emerge through us until the atmosphere is very pure. The atmosphere has been very purified unless ego is nowhere to be found. It comes and looks as it's safe for me to be here. And if it sees any ego there, it just withdraws. It will will not reveal itself. I'm not not kidding. So unless the atmosphere becomes very pure and egoless, this miracle will not reveal itself to you. So it has to be kind of a deadly sincerity, a deadly seriousness and a dead deadly serious commitment. What we have to do in order to create that possibility is the very opposite of what we're doing most of the time. So for you, so you're sitting down together with other people and you are abiding in you guessed it, not already knowing you go back going back to zero. So you that means you don't know what's going to happen. I don't know what's going to happen. We don't know what's going to happen. I don't know what's going to happen. We don't know what's going to happen. I don't know what's going to happen. We don't know what's going to happen. But we come together in a state of awakened inspired expectation. But that which we cannot see and that which we cannot imagine. So I'm not coming to express my opinion about anything. What your ego mind thinks about anything becomes irrelevant in this context. So what you already know, what you think you already know, what your experience has already been is irrelevant in this context. Anything that's ever happened in the past become irrelevant. So your whole ego's agenda and your whole ego's uh access for knowledge and information is is is dead weight. It doesn't mean anything. The only thing that matters is that you show up empty and positive. Empty means you have no no particular ideas of what should happen or how it's going to happen. You're allowing yourself to sit with an open mind and an open heart with great feeling of expectation. And and if it seems nothing's happening, that's fine. If you want to put this in some kind of mythic context, imagine that there's a supreme being that's waiting to see if it's safe to reveal himself. So create the atmosphere where you are sitting within empty openness that's very positive, full of faith without being attached to any ideas about anything. That's what makes the atmosphere very potent and pregnant with expectation with evolutionary potential. If you create the space bringing this purity to the process, it calls the psychic being. So when the psychic being of the authentic self begins to reveal itself and takes over the conversation, you'll enter into a different world. But you have to let go of the old world completely, which is your your ego world. and all that your personal problems too have got to get out of the way. So you're coming together at the zero point of emptiness together and holding that empty space open between you without anybody knowing what's going to happen. So the facilitator is not there to be a leader because in this context your authentic self should naturally guide all of you when it works. But the facilitator is there to to selfcorrect the group process. So if they speak, please don't interrupt them and let them say what they need to say and don't argue. But now so the facilitator knows more than you do. And even if you think you know more than they do in this context, they're the boss. So whatever they say, just please do it. because they're very sensitive to an ego shows up. So when you're in these groups together, it's very important that um you don't express your opinion in this context. Your opinion about anything is irrelevant. Don't speak from memory. Don't give a lecture. Don't speak from your mind. You never want to stop discriminating. All of your beings is paying attention. But that includes all you discriminating faculties will be there too. Faculties of discrimination will be right there. So the more free you are, the more liberated you are. Your your discriminating faculties should be operating at a higher level of in of awakened intuition. I think if you're awake, I think we first pick things up at level intuition. I felt something. Did you feel something strange when we had that conversation? And then uh if you stay then maybe it'll become clear to you what that was. Maybe an hour later, a day later, a week later, your intellectual discrimination might help you to understand what it was. Even at first it was just an intuition. But if it's pure intuition, for a long time you you don't know whether it was your own paranoia and fear or whether the other person's paranoia and fear. We don't necessarily know. Can we get more information? So, especially at the beginning, I encourage most of you if you have nothing to say, don't say anything. It's perfectly pine to sit in silence as long as you're paying attention. If something comes that wants to be said, then you can say it. But don't force yourself to do anything except be attentive. And uh everybody has to speak at least once in the group. So you have to show up and you have to say something at least once. But if you have nothing to say, don't say anything. Just pay attention. If more is coming, see how the group responds. And the other thing is that you want to what you want to do is you don't want to think ahead. So you want to listen to what's being said. And if you have something to add, you have something to contribute to what's what someone just said, then add it. This is not a point counterpoint. It's not it's an argument trying to build something together. So you listen to what's being said, maybe something to contribute which will build upon what the person just said. That's good. If you have nothing to add, then don't say anything. What we want to shoot for is unself-conscious spontaneous responses. Unself-conscious self-consciousness is dual is duality. Right? I'm aware of myself sitting in front of the group being observed by the group. Everybody's watching me and judging me and I'm worried about what everybody thinks about me and what I need to say next. I'm feeling scared and paranoid, but I won't show it. I was supposed to be a joke but anyway so no duality. So when you want to speak there should be no duality. So if you want if there's a spontaneous arising of a desire to share then do it but you want to be aware of I'm aware of myself as being separate having an experience negotiating should I open my mouth or not forget it just it's all beside the point. Non-duality is the idea. So the expression of non-duality, the what non-duality looks like in action is from spontaneity, authentic spontaneity. If you ever see great improvising musicians, you like jazz. If you ever go see the greatest improvising musicians, it's their the power of their spontaneity. It gives rise to so much euphoria and then they're they're reacted to each other collectively. when they're good, it's there's nothing like it because they start speaking from authentic self, true music. So, this is what the goal here is unself-conscious spontaneity without judgment. And if you get good at it, you'll be able to do it most of the time, even when you're not in a group. And even if you can't do it all the time, you'll at least be able to look like you're doing it. You know, if you express confidence, if you're a confident person and expressing confidence in yourself, it makes other people relax. If you're not afraid, if you're not frightened, if you're not self-conscious, if you're not nervous, other people relax. But if you're self-conscious and nervous and insecure, it starts upsetting people unconsciously and consciously all around you. So if you can express self-confidence as a natural state, it will spontaneously put other people at ease around you. Isn't that beautiful? So we can't keep on thinking that what I think doesn't affect anybody else. How we are affects other people knowingly or unknowingly, consciously or unconsciously. We can either make things better, make things worse through our enlightenment or lack of it around other people. And when we first discovered this power, this energy, this intelligence, the super mind consciousness, it was so powerful and so amazing and so liberating, so full of potential that I was sure I was going to change the whole world very quickly. But guess what? I was wrong. his reality is a little bit more complex than the possibilities we see in our highest moments. So I still see all the potential I always did in this process but I realize it's going to take many years of dedicated spiritual work and practice to truly actualize it. There's no magic. We have to be careful of magical thinking. When I started teaching in 1986 so many people started waking up so quickly. I thought if this doesn't stop, it looked like the whole world would be enlightened soon. It looked like that. Ask people who are with me there then they'll say that's what it looked like. Did it happen? No. So magical thinking is a problem not only for mythic believers, mythic true believers, but also for postmodern true believers. So we want to honor and actualize these potentials without giving into naivity of magical thinking. And I think that as a teacher and this teaching, I think I'm in a good position to help people to do that because I made a lot of those mistakes already in the past. I know what they are. So with this with this uh interubjective non-dual dialogical process, we're learning how to practice the action of enlightenment. Not the being of enlightenment, the action of enlightenment. The action of enlightenment through the projection of your egoless eagleless egoist nature. And either you will succeed in doing that or you won't. But that the idea is you're you're attempting to produce and project your own egoless nature to the best of your ability at this time in your evolution in your evolution as a practitioner of higher consciousness. But this is where the rubber meets the road everybody. You can sit with me in a satsang situation like we have been over the last week. Have all kinds of positive feelings. That's not an necessary reflection on you. When I come here to teach, I have to show up and I have to be I have to be what I'm teaching. That I'm for real. That you can trust me and then you can let go. The only one on the spot the last week was me. That's my job. When you do this dialogical process and you saw whoever you are gets on the spot also. We're all on the spot. How much can we show up as an egoless entity when the need is there and then the time is up. You can't no more time for meditation. No more time to ask another question. Not another time to kind of work on your feelings. In all our imperfection, we have to show up and be ready to to dance and respond fully. Now, that's kind of the idea here. It's it's a practice of active enlightenment. It's being enlightenment and becoming enlightenment. I made this distinction lots of times over the last week. So now we're transitioning from being enlightenment which is meditation practice process meditation contemplation individual collective to this conscious engagement with consciousness itself at an individual collective level. We don't know what's going to happen. It's unpredictable. But as you get better and better at this process, you you can you learn how to have more and more control over it. But it's not magic. As much as my students and I worked on these practices together, we couldn't solve our own problems when we needed to. So my understanding of how this awakening works at this point is it teaches us a new a new way to communicate with each other. A new marvelous way of communicating at a level of higher complexity which reveals to us a different way to be together. But it doesn't reveal to us magical solutions as there are no magical solutions except our own development. Seems obvious when I say it. No magical solution just except our own higher development. So you see the natural step between here and the easy solution. We're the step in between here and there. Do we understand that you and I are the step between here and there. So if you're interested in a magical solution you have to be the bridge. The consciousness itself, the higher consciousness itself in all its glory is not going to solve any problems for you. Consciousness is only consciousness is only consciousness is only consciousness. So it can't save you from yourself. It can't save us from ourselves. We have to be our own saviors. And this higher and greater intuition can help us enormously to be in a position to do that. But it won't do it on its own. Consciousness won't act on its own. The more enlightened we become, the more the consciousness will serve us and help us to do whatever we need to do. But we're the ones who are going to have to do it every step of the way. Every step of the way. You are the only one that there is. You're the creator of the universe. You're the creator of the future. Is what I'm saying making sense to you? Do you understand what I'm saying? There's no there's no magical solutions here to the problem of being human and to liberating the potential of being human. There's no magic solutions. You are the solution. If you can handle that and if you realize, well, I don't know if I'm quite prepared to be the solution. That's the problem. So a teaching like this gives you all the tools you need to be ready to be the solution, but it's not on your ego's time clock. So I very much like this position of being absolutely uncynical and believing in the highest possibility for humanity at the highest level of the metaphysical promise of liberation, enlightenment for all while not avoiding the very real life implications of what that means for all of us and how hard it's going to be. It's being brutally realistic. That's the kind of sincere attitude we need to all cultivate now. Just as I said, the magical thinking, whether it's in a mythic context or in an integral context, protects us from having to deal with the responsibility involved in this process. Understand? And now the time's up. We got to do it. That's how real life works, right? It's only in the fantasy world where like it never gets real. In real life, we don't have an infinite amount of time. Eventually, we're going to die. So as we've been spending a week on the how and now we have a reason to do it which involves the all of the potential for all of humanity. Just remember it's not a game it's a deadly sins. Speak a little about what it means to go beyond the personal. So it means our personal memories and egoing relationship to life in this context no longer becomes a reference point for us. For the short time we're doing this process but suddenly the personal is not a reference point anymore. And then people say well what's the reference point? I say well the nothingness the emptiness is the reference point. You say well there's nothing there. I said well if nothing's there then you just quiet. When something appears, then then you can speak. And if something's meant to appear, then it does appear. That's how I function all the time. I'm just teaching you what works for me. And the thing is, if you get good at these groups, you get good at this, you start becoming a much nicer person. And every all of us will become a nicer person, a more intelligent person, a more compassionate person, a more wise person, a more enlightened person in your quote unquote ordinary life. Cuz this practice aligns you with the deepest dimension of reality. It aligns your body, mind, and soul, your intellect, and personality with the deepest dimension of reality. This will help you to become a whole person who's not neurotic, narcissistic anymore. You'll be very centered in the in your opposite full fully integrated human being naturally on self-consciousness. If you do what I'm telling you to do the way I tell you to do it, your ego will disappear. You don't have to wait for the ego to go anywhere because if you put into practice what I'm saying, ego will disappear. Usually in discussion groups whether they're philosophical discussion groups or psychological discussion groups people show up with an agenda either I want to speak about certain things about myself I want to share with the group personal stuff or if it's philosophical group there certain philosophical ideas people want to explore together but they show up with a baggage which is this agenda what they want to say about themselves or about ideas right so here we're showing showing up without any agenda except to awaken to the authentic self. And we realize to awaken the authentic self, as I've been explaining over the last week, you have to show up without an agenda, which means empty-handed. So if you can just hang out with other people without an agenda, very awake, very aware, very focused, very intentful of intention, but without the intention being connected to any any past idea of what should happen or what happened before, what shouldn't happen again, the authentic self suddenly starts to appear. The ego is gone. Doesn't take any time. Because a lot of people feel very insecure if you show up with other people and nobody knows what to say. People get nervous and self-conscious and start to say I got to say something say blah blah blah blah blah and vomit some ignorance but if everybody's very relaxed and very aware and very attentive focusing on zero with a lot of faith and trust what could happen but nobody knows what's going to happen but there's an expectation something will happen but no one knows what it is and we're letting go of the mind's expectations we're letting go of the mind we're letting go of the mind we're letting go of the mind and we're consciously focusing on zero individually, collectively with enormous trust. The authentic self responds because this space is available. That's what you're waiting for. It works. But we can't bring fear into this. We can't bring any shoods. Now, if people are doing what I'm advocating, whatever someone says will always sound appropriate. But if they're trying to fake it and speaking from ego, it'll sound totally inappropriate. It's like when you're in a classroom, when someone's fingernails go across a blackboard, it's unbearable to the soul. So if people come into a situation like this and not are not serious and start speaking from ego, blah blah blah blah, you'll be feeling being tortured by someone else's ignorance and narcissism and self-centeredness. We can't do that to each other. It's better to say nothing than say something stupid. Do something inappropriate. Just just be quiet. Because what you're bringing up is a fair question because there is it's very nice to have a discussion with between the positive ego and all the other positive egos having a nice time together. Feels very warm and loving and supportive and a good group vibrations. But that's not the that's not the same thing when the authentic self's having a dialogue. So when the authentic self is acting, there's the presence of that with the newness of things. There's a presence of the unknown, the metaphysical freshness. This is the true sign of the authentic self. Nothing's coming from memory. Everything's coming from now. Everything's coming from beyond the mind. So it feels different. A lot of people don't know the difference between the positive ego having a conversation with itself with other positive egos and the authentic self having a conversation with other authentic self. Most people can't tell the difference because they both feel good. They're not the same thing. So here the target is the highest authentic self and the psychic being. That's when there's no memory. There's no past. For those of you who are paying attention to the teaching and how it's unfolding, which should give you confidence that that they're going back to the zero point is the place where the old enlightenment and the new enlightenment come together. So it's the focus of the old enlightenment and the foundation of the new enlightenment is being able to go to zero. It's only if we come from zero does this evolutionary impulse is creative impulse in the universe leap for from nothing to something. Just like the universe was created with a leap from nothing to something from being to be coming from emptiness to form. We can have that experience in our own body mind and personality. When you feel the spontaneous knowledge starts to burst forth in our minds and hearts coming from a deeper source. So that's the thrill. We want to learn how to trust in God more than we trust our ego. So I always show up unprepared. Like I thought I had to speak. I wanted to meditate with all of you for an hour this morning for my own personal pleasure. I thought it'd be a great way to begin the day, but I was I was getting ready. This everything I said today was just exploding in my mind. So I could I couldn't wait to share with all of you. When I give talks, they start self-creating in my mind, but I don't think about them. Just starts forming in my mind. It's not coming from my ego. It comes from a different part of myself. It's taking care of the what the teacher needs to do. It's very weird. So, you can have exactly the same experience if you follow my instructions. And once again, you discover a completely different part of yourself. It's already fully enlightened. right now. Doesn't need any work. Doesn't need any therapy. Doesn't need any forgiveness or anything like that. It's ready now. And when you discover that part of yourself and feel how powerful it is and feel how perfect it is, it awakens an enormous degree of spiritual self-confidence. And remember, the way you gain access to this deepest part of yourself is all is always by going back to zero, which is exactly what we need to do in the traditional enlightenment. Going back to zero. So it's in it's in concert and in alignment with traditional enlightened dharma. It's just adding this evolutionary piece on top of it. And the evolutionary piece works according to similar principles. But this is what we're doing here with evolutionary enlightenment. It's always about giving rise to that which is new. Giving rise to that which is new. This is dynamic creativity. Giving rise to that which is new. giving rise to that which never existed before. Have you heard about my three levels of distinction about the evolutionary impulse? The lowest level is biological, biological urge for procreation, the sexual impulse. You talk about how your body feel is feeling a desire to bear children. That's the evolutionary impulse. The desire to give rise to that which is new, a new a new biological form through your body. Right? But it's a newness. I want to give rise to that which is new, that which never existed before. My body wants sense of craving to to do this. What does it feel like when your body's craving to give rise to that which is new in the form of a new biological form? What does it feel like? It's a pull. It's an ecstatic compulsion, right? Compulsive feeling of a have to plus ecstasy. It's an ecstatic compulsion means I have to slash want to. So the ecstatic part of the have is is ecstatic compulsion. I have slash want to. I have I have to do this. I want to do this and I ecstatically compelled to do so by a force that feels greater than myself. In this case it's the evolutionary impulse operating at the biological level. Right? At the biological level, it works into higher levels also. So, human beings are the only life forms that we're aware of on planet Earth that are compelled to innovate and give rise to that which is new. Human beings who were driven, driven, driven at a species level to innovate and to create that which is new, to give rise to that which is new, to give rise to that which is new, to give rise to that which is new. And if you ever meet creative people, you know, whether artists, musicians, scientists, philosophers, creative people are turned on by life and creative possibility more than most people are because they're connected to the evolutionary impulse. They can experience it vibrating within themselves. You can feel it operating and it turned on by light because of the the connection to the evolutionary impulse. That's the second level. The highest level in my understanding is the mysterious urge towards consciousness itself which is the spiritual impulse. I must become more conscious. I have to become more conscious. Not I would like to become more conscious but I have to become more conscious. I must become more conscious. It becomes an evolutionary ecstatic compulsion. I'm compelled compelled to follow this urge towards greater consciousness. And it's not coming from the ego. It's the highest expression of the evolutionary impulse that's vibrating in the whole universe. So when you want to become more conscious and I want to become more conscious, it's not Andrew or Cena wanting to become more conscious but energy intelligence that created the universe trying to become more conscious to Cena and Andrew, right? If we look at him from an impersonal perspective, the universe trying to become conscious through us and we experience that as an ecstatic compulsion happening through us at all these three levels. So that's why we have the the traditional question of who am I? The Buddha Rama would say I'm the I'm the unborn. I'm the uncreated one without a second. I've never existed in time. I'm birthless and deathless and eternal. The uncreated and that's the being part. The other the becoming part is I'm the energy and intelligence to create it. The universe is creating it right now. I want to get into itself through the body my personality. Cena which is equally real and equally profound equally powerful but it's inherently creative creative creative vibrating with potential for greater life greater consciousness greater complexity greater potential. But remember if you we look at the evolutionary process from a from a distance with great objectivity like this is a chaotic and confusing picture. And so it seems that the creative process needs guidance, even leadership from its progeny. We're the progeny or the children of the evolutionary process. And as we grow up and become mature adults, we realize this evolutionary process is profound, complex, amazing, miraculous, but it's very chaotic and very it meanders all over the place. Makes long turns. So it needs guidance from guess who? Who's ready for the job? And then you look in the mirror and that's when you realize that this the gift of life is not free. That we have to take up our responsibility as co-evolutionaries with the creator of the universe at a certain point when our soul becomes ready for it. And that's when our relationship to life ceases to be personal. becomes cosmic. The bodhic sas cosmic at that point is a it's a cosmic calling can really exist. Then we grow up and become a mature human being, not a child anymore. See how it works? The whole teaching works. You see how it works in concert with the cultural evolution this time in history. Makes it makes perfect sense. The authentic self is not a person. It's an impulse in consciousness. It's it's an energetic force, but it's a force in consciousness itself. It's not a person. It's it's an energetic momentum in consciousness itself reaching towards the future. The accent will be different. Mine is an American accent. Use an Israeli accent. But the authentic self is a singularity. It's the same excitement and the same awareness of this infinite potential and excitement about the potential but it feels the same. It doesn't feel personal. feels the same, looks the same, sounds the same. To give a kind of gross example, but I first thing came to my mind, so forgive me. But if you're making love, right, everybody thinks they're having a very big personal experience when they have love making, right? But for most of us, we're all having the exact same experience, the same kinds of feelings of intensity, right? In those moments of ecstatic love making, is there any difference between the individuals really? What aren't what they're experiencing exactly the same thing? The evolutionary impulse expressing itself as the biological command to procreate. Is there Portuguese love making and American love making and Israeli love making that sounds different, looks different, feels different, is different, or is it basically the same experience? Well, I'm making a point that this you're with your question which is a good question. The authentic self is a singularity. So when you awaken to that singularity, the singularity will light up your positive ego. So your positive ego will become illuminated by the living light of the authentic self, which is a singularity. You have two people lit up by the living light of the authentic self. They're being lit up by the same light. Same thing with the ground of being with the true self. It's one state. It's one It's one state of consciousness. It's not many. It's not unique to any individual. It comes through us. It's a singularity. It's only one. So there's one authentic self. There's one true self. And there's not a variety. That's the whole point. I'm not this body or this mind immortal soul or mind. That's the whole point. That's why when you wake up in your we find each other in this kind of awakening. We find ourselves not we find ourself when you when you find our self together. Very interesting. How can we be one when there's many of us? Right? The answer is difference between from a relative point of view, we look separate. But from the absolute point of view, you realize there was never two. There was always only one. That's the ever fascinating deepest truth. And that discovery of that truth is ever new. Have you ever heard this phrase ever new? That's what they say. The nature of the true self is ever new. Always like the first time. The first time is amazing. The second time I'm familiar with this. Third time. I know what this is. But with consciousness, it's always like the first time. It's always always like the first time. Never gets old. It's always like the first time. We're always like a verge. You're having the first experience. Even if you've been having enlightenment episodes for thousands of years, it's always like the first time. Nothing else in life can give you that feeling. So this awakening to what I'm calling the authentic self with the psychic being is a new emerging potential for the evolution of enlightenment. Really is hard to believe. So I don't know what's possible. I used to think I knew I don't know what's possible with this newly emerging potential, but I know there's a lot there that's yet to be explored. It's potentially a lot possible, but it's not a magic bullet. It's not like uh taking psychedelic drugs, which is so crude an experience compared to what I'm sharing with you. the context we're sitting in the midst of here. Triple gem is one thing. There's three there's three dimensions to it and they all go together to create the most powerful dynamic crucible for consciousness to evolve. You need all three components and it creates this powerful crucible which compels consciousness to evolve within its own context. So if I was sitting here by myself, it wouldn't have the same effect. If you were getting together to talk about the dharma without me being part of it at all, it wouldn't have the same effect. All three dimensions of the triple jump are necessary to be together at the same time generated to full power what's possible. So if you're feeling these dynamic energetic forces at work, they are. If you put the right pieces in place, it it generates these higher states. It's a quickening for all of us. See, cuz I wasn't thinking about this morning before I came. I just said, "Well, I'm looking forward to going meditating with everybody later. It'll be so beautiful. We had such beautiful meditations. I was looking forward to just the pleasure of sitting together." But then as I kept on getting ready to have breakfast and get dressed, all those everything I shared with you this morning came was starting to come forcefully into my frontal self. I wasn't thinking about preparing for this morning. We're all playing our role and we're all playing our part. We're all intending to be here. So our intention is it has a lot to do with what's happening. It's enlightened awareness. It's spontaneous. I believe this is my belief. I can't prove it, but I believe that the empty expectations expectation of what's possible calls this authentic self-consciousness into the present from the future. This is my understanding. So this is what we have to get rid of with all the thinking about what should be, what needs to be, what happened, what didn't, what went wrong. That's all being forgotten. Always going back to before the beginning. So we can always start a new and start a fresh karmafree which would be a metaphor for the enlightened state anyway, right? So if we can do that at a collective level, we could be rebooting up this foundations of human culture with these enlightenment principles in a way that would be truly revolutionary. No. And you can see how this practice goes hand in hand traditional practices of meditation, contemplation and devotion. They fit like a glove together becomes a whole spiritual posture. So one's absolute non-engagement, the other's total engagement.