I am passionately committed to creating a revolution in consciousness and culture. The primary focus of my life and work is the endeavor to catalyze a leap in consciousness itself among a group of individuals who have devoted their lives to this evolutionary experiment. And because the evolution of consciousness is deeply connected with cultural evolution, I’m also trying to influence the leading edge of culture, through media and live forums, in order to create a context that can support this newly emerging level of human development.

When I began my teaching career, I was focused on the enlightenment of the individual, on personal spiritual transformation. But I soon began to realize that something was occurring in those who gathered around me that revealed a capacity in consciousness that far transcended the individual. Time after time, my students would leap beyond the boundaries of ego, and miraculously find access to an enlightened state of consciousness, collectively. I recognized that I was witnessing a new potential that had great significance not only for those involved but for the evolution of consciousness itself. This is what I now call Evolutionary Enlightenment: where the revelation of nonduality emerges not merely in the subjective inner experience of one person’s meditative state but in the intersubjective consciousness of many people who are fully engaged in the life-process.

This is a new form and expression of enlightenment that depends upon the individual in order to emerge but radically transcends the individual in its implications. Indeed, the more I have learned about evolution, the more I am convinced that this is the logical next step in the trajectory of our development as a species. Those of us at the leading edge in Western culture have reached a very high level of individuation and personal freedom, but in the process we seem to have lost touch with a larger sense of purpose and connectedness. We’ve reached a dead end, and in order to move to the next stage in our collective evolution, we need to find a way to come together. We need to take a leap beyond individuality to a higher unity in which we can find enlightened solutions to the many desperate global crises that confront us. This, as I understand it, is the purpose of spiritual practice in our time: to awaken to a higher consciousness individually and collectively, and then begin to engage with it in order to create the future. The goal of the work I’m doing with my students is to cultivate this revolution in consciousness in real time with real people.
    
Simultaneously, I’m trying to create a cultural revolution—which is a revolution in thinking. Profound change in the world only happens when thinking changes, and in the work my students and I have been doing for many years with What Is Enlightenment? magazine and, more recently, with our Voices from the Edge speakers series, we’re endeavoring to communicate with our audiences in ways that are going to compel people to think more deeply. We seek out those individuals who challenge us to stretch beyond familiar mindsets in order to meet the overwhelming demands of our time. And as we learn from this ever-expanding network of leading thinkers, we simultaneously try to create an enlightened context in which their voices and visions will be amplified. It is my firm conviction that through the practice of sincere inquiry, of honest dialogue together, we can discover new perspectives that will enable all of us to make much greater sense of our shared human experience.

It’s urgent that we begin to define a new moral, philosophical, and spiritual context that will, in its depth and breadth of vision, be able to embrace the multidimensional nature of the human predicament in all its complexity at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Some bold pathfinders are already well along in that endeavor. But the most important part of this project, I feel, is actually being willing to transform ourselves, as individuals coming together for a higher purpose, so that more and more of us will be able to directly intuit the contours and parameters of this new context from the evolving edge of consciousness itself.

Andrew Cohen

Andrew Cohen has been a teacher of enlightenment since 1986. He is the author of numerous books on spiritual life, including Living Enlightenment and Embracing Heaven & Earth, and founder of the award-winning magazine What Is Enlightenment? For more information about Andrew Cohen and his teachings, please call 800-376-3210 or visit www.andrewcohen.org.