Evolutionary Enlightenment: A New Path to Spiritual Awakening
Part of this book is inspiring – standing in the tradition of Sri Aurobindo and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (who in their turn built on Blavatsky, though without acknowledgement), he unites a vision of personal spirituality with one of universal evolution.
This is perhaps a very ‘male’ book: lots of metaphysics, little practical method. Also, it assumes an ultimately selfish aim to spiritual practice, even if the result is not as selfish:
When we embark on the spiritual quest, most of us, understandably, are pursuing freedom or enlightenment for our own sake. This is why we begin by asking, What do I really want? What is more important to me than anything else? But once your intention has become clear, and you sincerely pursue that one-pointed aspiration, a profound shift occurs. Over time, as your soul develops and matures through the practice of the first three tenets, you will see the quality of that intention evolve. And as you embrace the fourth tenet, and learn to see yourself as a very small part of a very big process, your relationship to the spiritual path becomes dramatically recontextualized. You discover that it’s not about you. (p. 158, ch. Cosmic Consciousce)
It is a strange spiritual path where the result is different from the cause. It’s roughly at this point in the book (about 2/3rds in) that Cohen lost me. Still, there were parts of the book I loved and I also thought I’d share some similarities to Tibetan Buddhist tradition that won’t be immediately obvious to the casual reader. Since they’re not referenced, and not the best known parts of that tradition, they are easily missed.
First off: we’re asked to imagine the beginning of all being. This is reminiscent of a meditation exercise in which a Buddhist will be asked to find the beginning of consciousness. Imagining that: “You cannot go any deeper into yourself than the unmanifest dimension. There is nowhere else to go. Everything begins and ends in that primordial emptiness, which is why mystics call it the ground of Being.” (pp 9, 10, ch. Before the Beginning)
More interesting to me is the second Buddhist reference (I’m ignoring the obviously more Hindu elements in his book):
When you think objectively about how much work went into creating your own capacity to have the experience you are having in this very moment – fourteen billion years of hard work - then it might even begin to strike you as immoral to spend too much time sitting around and worrying about the fears and desires of your personal ego. Surely the purpose of all that cosmic effort and creativity and positivity – from nothing to energy to light to matter to life to consciousness to you - could not possibly have been just for that. When you awaken to the evolutionary process and its endless creativity, and you discover how profound and complex the structure of our universe is, you start to recognize and appreciate, at a soul level, what a precious gift it is to be here. (p. 37, ch. A Big Yes)
The precious human rebirth is a meditation topic in the Tibetan Buddhist Lam Rim. It’s where you realize just how lucky you are to be human, be reasonably healthy, live in a time when the Buddha’s teachings are accessible, live in a place where the Buddha’s teachings are accessible, have leisure time to practice etc. This meditation is meant to motivate us to become active practitioners and use our life well.
See the similarity? Of course Andrew Cohen’s version is not sectarian: it’s not about Buddha, but about spiritual progress in general. It’s also updated to our time. He goes into this theme more explicitly in the chapter ‘The Postmodern Predicament’:
Think about it for a moment: if you are reading a book like this, the likelihood is that you are among the luckiest people who have ever been born. To begin with, you are one of those privileged to have received a high degree of education. People like you and me have access to information that wasn’t available until very recently – about the life process, about our psychological development, the natural history of our planet, and the evolution of the expanding cosmos. Besides this wealth of knowledge, we also have a degree of material wealth, comfort, security, and leisure time that is historically unprecedented. The standard of living that we take for granted, kings and queens of old could not have imagined. And on top of all this, we enjoy a degree of freedom that is unparalleled – personal, political, religious, and philosophical. There have never been human beings who have had the extraordinary liberty we have to experiment with our own lives – to think in whatever way we want, to do almost anything we want, to say anything we want, to go anywhere we want, to be whatever we want. (p. 78, Ch. The Postmodern Predicament)
I quote that paragraph in full because it really is amazing, the luxury of our everyday lives. It’s easy to forget, especially with stories of economic crisis abounding on TV. Sure, the crisis is there, but for most of us it doesn’t mean we’re homeless, or lose our internet connection, or our kids won’t go to school etc. It’s RELATIVE poverty some of my readers here have to face, not absolute poverty. Even if you did lose your job, you probably still have heating in your car, radio, tv, the ability to drive for miles without having to bother (or hire) another human being or buy an animal (say a horse and cart). We tend to forget that, because it’s beyond our experience.
This is an anti-traditionalist book: Andrew Cohen has issues with the kind of spirituality that leads away from this world into seclusion and experiencing ‘the now’. However, it’s not clear to me what the alternative is he offers. But let’s get back to his own words:
This awakened passion for evolutionary transformation is not reasonable. It demands change, right now, and it will not wait, because God is always desperate to grow. God is infinite in the unmanifest realm. But in the manifest realm God is not infinite – God can only know him- or herself to the extent to which conscious beings are actually able to awaken to their own absolute nature. (p. 52, Ch. The Universe Project)
There are layers of cultural conditioning, values and assumptions about how things should be that color our perspectives without us even knowing it. And many people believe that within our psyches we also carry the unresolved stories of previous lifetimes. All these factors play a part in the complex web of motives and impulses that makes up your sense of self. All this is you. And yet it is possible to take responsibility for all of these dimensions of who you are, through the transformative recognition that you are always the one who is choosing. (p. 71, Ch. Enlightening the Choosing Faculty)
When you awaken to the truth that your human experience of consciousness and cognition, your personal presence here on this small planet, is part of an infinitely bigger process than you had ever imagined, you may notice an uncomfortable and perhaps unfamiliar sensation stirring within you – a sense of obligation.
But if we choose – consciously or unconsciously – to live a life of mediocrity, then we are also making a statement. Because we are not flourishing, what we are saying, whether we intend it or not, is that the evolutionary process is not flourishing. (Ch. The Moral Imperative)
As long as we remain invested in the ego’s need to manipulate reality, we will find that we keep making the same mistakes, over and over and over again, because we are deliberately avoiding aspects of the way things are. It’s not a mystery: if we are trying to get somewhere, but we cover our eyes to avoid seeing the obstacles that lie in our path, it’s no wonder we keep tripping over them.…(p. 139) But the point is that when you choose to avoid, you lose touch with your own soul. Emotionally, you become disconnected from your own deeper dimensions. It’s as if there is a wall, a barrier, between you and your own authenticity. And far too many of us get accustomed to living that way.…(p. 141) When you remove the protective shield of avoidance and self-protection, there is an intensity and vulnerability to the human experience. And the complexity of life hits you more directly. … It demands that you be emotionally willing to bear a degree of reality – both in regard to yourself and to life itself – that you may have been unwilling to tolerate before.
- Evolutionary Enlightenment: A New Path to Spiritual Awakening
- Hardcover: 240 pages
- Publisher: Select Books; 1ST edition (2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1590792092
- ISBN-13: 978-1590792094
- Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1 inches
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