Andrew Cohen: On Spiritual Intoxication and Conscious Evolution

Spiritual teacher, Andrew Cohen
Editor-in-chief, EnlightenNext magazine.

For the ‘spiritual but not religious’ man or woman who senses there is more to this world than we are taught, or that we necessarily ‘see’ in our wired-together, scientifically-centered, postmodern world, the “evolutionary enlightenment” teachings of Andrew Cohen build a coherent, intellectually and spiritually satisfying kosmo-centric worldview based on leading edge scientific findings and the deep wisdom of the world’s great religious traditions.

In his most recent posting on the Huffington Post, Cohen explores what the enlightenment experience is like, and how it reaches its highest potential (and effectiveness) when it is a shared experience, when personal liberation is shared in what Cohen has called “autonomy in communion."

“In the new enlightenment,” writes Cohen, “in what I call Evolutionary Enlightenment, the goal is individual and collective conscious evolution in real time. That specifically points to the co-creation of new structures in consciousness, psyche and culture.“

"EnlightenNext" magazine.

“It's about creating the future from the inside out,” he notes. “And this process always begins with transformation at the very deepest depths of our own selves -- a transformation that shines out and touches the world around us with the immediacy of its own radiance and potency.”

“In the early stages of our own spiritual development,” Cohen observes, “we are dependent upon the experience of euphoric states to be able to see, feel and know that these higher potentials really do exist. The bliss and ecstasy of those states temporarily breaks the deep and often unconscious shackles of postmodernity: nihilism, cynicism, narcissism and materialism. It frees our awareness to expand in all directions, to embrace not only the outer limits but also the innermost core of our larger body, the entire cosmos.”

Yet, there are, as Cohen notes, inherent limitations to the potential that such individual experiences of spiritual bliss have. While very good, in and of themselves, individually they lack the power to force the next stage in man’s evolutionary process, a noetic evolution of humanity’s individual and collective psyche.

“When many individuals simultaneously know and experience the perfection of the possible,” Cohen writes, “Spirit itself calls us all to its own next step. Indeed, we are compelled to be the future that we see. Under the intoxicating influence of spiritual bliss, all of the individual and collective ego's fears and attachments are rendered null and void."

“But until the individual or individuals have actually taken that next step, until those higher potentials have become a permanent attainment, our ability to see the future that we want to create will always depend upon the experience of spiritual intoxication,” Cohen notes. (See attached video on "Conscious Evolution," below.)

“However, when we do the unthinkable,” Cohen concludes, “when we actually and demonstrably evolve to a higher stage beyond the veiling influence of postmodern existential confusion, we will be able to see that future as easily as we see our own face when we look in the mirror. Seeing that glory will no longer be dependent upon the presence of a higher state because we will already be there. From that point on, we will always only be creating the world that we have already become.”