Andrew Cohen defies any kind of cliché about spiritual teachers. A self-described “vocal critic of the extreme individualism characterizing much of contemporary spirituality,” Cohen’s “Evolutionary Enlightenment” teachings pose that spiritual evolution happens not by transcending but rather by passionately engaging with the modern world. He practices what he preaches as a musician, speaker on the lecture circuit, founder of the nonprofit EnlightenNext and editor of the quarterly publication What is Enlightenment?.
“We’re living in the twenty-first century,” Cohen explains on his website, AndrewCohen.org. “We’re not in ancient India, or in biblical Israel, or even — dare I say it — in the sixties, anymore. And we need to find out what spirituality, and its ultimate goal, enlightenment, means for our time.” We caught up with Cohen just before he embarked on his autumn series of retreats in the U.S. and Europe, for the latest field notes from the frontlines.
You’ve met tens of thousands of people in search of enlightenment. Do you see us, the spiritual seekers, as separate individuals, archetypes, or just versions of the same being?
All individuals are different on one level, but I’m also learning to appreciate that all individuals are products of their own time and culture. We express and see the world through the values we have grown up with. And more and more, I am seeing individuals as expressions of stages of development that are cultural structures.
I teach about the evolution of consciousness and culture, and I am trying to get people interested in a perspective that emphasizes the whole notion of verticality. What does it mean for our interiors to evolve, or rise to a higher level of emotional, philosophical, psychological and spiritual development? How can we see the experience we are having this very moment from a higher perspective?
I try to get people to think about life in relationship to time in a different way than we are used to. I want my life, my future, and my relationship to time to be a development. Six months from now, a year from now, five years from now, I want my perspective and my whole self to be more evolved, to have achieved a higher stage of development. An evolutionary worldview is a different way to think about life. Rather than trying to attain peace of mind, to reach that spiritual goal of feeling better or more connected, what would it mean to consciously participate in a spiritual process of ever-unfolding wholeness?
What do you think of the prophecies surrounding 2012?
[Chuckling] I don’t believe in 2012. All throughout history, people have said the end of the world was coming on certain dates. On principle, I think this demonstrates the human capacity for superstition. While the Mayan calendar accurately predicted an interesting astronomical event for that year, there’s nothing unique about 2012 in a way that will affect us. Obviously, we have enormous problems that humans have created, but the date is insignificant.
Can you comment on the depiction of the guru in Western culture — I’m thinking of the recent film, The Love Guru, with Mike Meyers as an Indian sage, and humorous cartoon characters like Mr. Natural from the ’60s comic strip. Why is the guru so often presented as a comic figure?
There are lots of good reasons for it. The whole notion of human perfection and in this sense, spiritual perfection, is part of it. Gurus in the East are thought of as God. This individual realizes a higher, transcendent state of consciousness and awareness in which they access that understanding all spiritual seekers are looking for. In Eastern traditions there is a very powerful notion of hierarchy and authority. People who have reached this higher level of development are to be obeyed, they are to be worshipped, adored and respected — and in the extreme, treated as god incarnate.
So when these individuals started coming to the West in the 1960s, they came to postmodern America — the age of the individual — and no one was supposed to be higher than anyone else. Some of these elite, deeply realized teachers came, and temporarily the idea that these individuals were perfect human beings — that they were above human foibles — was initially accepted. But many of these teachers couldn’t handle the freedoms they had in the West and so fell to earth in ways that were extremely disillusioning. Their sexual transgressions and their manipulation of power trashed the whole notion of a guru as reaching a higher level of development. This created an air of cynicism against spiritual hierarchy and any notion of verticality and evolutionary consciousness.
And there is still a lot of cynicism about spiritual attainment, when there isn’t cynicism about financial or physical attainment. You can be a business or sports guru, and that is considered very respectable. We’ll admit that there are people who know more about these areas and that they can guide us. But if you are a spiritual guru, there is a suspicion you must be some kind of megalomaniacal, pathological lunatic. We don’t think there can be an individual who knows more about our spiritual quest, who understands deeper and more subtle dimensions of human interiors. So I understand why there is so much cynicism about it, but I think we should go back and explore the relationship of spiritual development in a vertical context. This is what offers us so much potential in our quest to become whole beings.
In your teaching, do you connect the quest for evolutionary consciousness with the new movement of sustainability?
On the one hand they are related: the more we evolve, the more our values develop and we realize that our survival depends on sustainable living. Human beings are capable of so much good, it would be a tragedy if we failed. But the impulse to survive is distinctly different from the impulse to evolve to a higher cognitive level.
The evolutionary impulse is the highest expression of the spiritual impulse. In a traditional worldview, the spiritual impulse is usually expressed by an aspiration to conform to an expectation. But the evolutionary impulse, in a postmodern secular cultural context, is one that says, “I must become more conscious.” It doesn’t say, “I would like to become more conscious.” It says, “I have to! I must!”
It’s a feeling of being compelled. As humans, we might first locate that impulse in the sexual urge to procreate, but we can also experience it in the uniquely human drive to create and innovate. Being around inspired individuals who are deeply creative and passionate about creating something new — whether it’s art, philosophy, engineering, politics — shows you this intense compulsion. I always think of their drive to create as an ecstatic urgency. It’s a miraculous sense of “I must become more conscious!” Morally, ethically, psychologically, spiritually, emotionally — I have to do that.
What about an impulse for destruction — to create nothing out of something? Eventually everything in nature dies.
That’s the other fundamental force in nature: the force of inertia, and human beings are very good at that one, the impulse toward destruction and self-annihilation. But spiritual evolution is about overriding the impulse for destruction. Humans experience these two forces emotionally — we can feel extremely inspired and connected to an infinite source of energy, but at other times we can feel an irrational desire to resist the best part of ourselves and to do absolutely nothing at all.
In nature, and also in the human psyche, we transcend inertia by becoming more aligned with the evolutionary creative impulse, what I call “the new enlightenment.” It’s all about identifying with the inherent creative impulse in the universe, this urge to create and innovate. Post-postmodern enlightenment will be based on awakening to this evolutionary impulse, which is an internally realized, internally revealed experience of the best part of each and every one of us.