As a young man, Andrew Cohen, founder of What Is Enlightenment? magazine, traveled to India, where he explored Eastern spiritual traditions. After a life-changing epiphany at age 30, Cohen developed a philosophy of "evolutionary enlightenment," based on his belief that people have the capacity to change themselves and the world through a shift in consciousness.Cohen embraces his reputation as an "uncompromising" teacher, and says that former students who criticize his approach (such as his own mother, Luna Tarlo, who wrote "Mother of God" about her experience as a disciple) are people who'd found themselves, under his tutelage, "in deeper water than they were prepared for." Others, including Ken Wilber -- who (fondly) referred to Cohen as a "rude boy of enlightenment -- praise his work.
Cohen offers teachings on "evolutionary enlightenment" at talks and spiritual retreats around the world. He spoke with Beliefnet recently about his work, what he believes is wrong with New Age spirituality, and whether he thinks one needs to be intelligent in order to reach enlightenment.
For those who aren't familiar with your work, how would you describe yourself?
I'm a spiritual teacher, first and foremost. I teach what I call "evolutionary enlightenment."
Traditionally, in the pre-modern or ancient notion of enlightenment, the spiritual experience or revelation called enlightenment was considered to be the end of the path. Someone who was supposedly an enlightened human being was no longer developing. They had reached some kind of final end point.
I'm saying that kind of awakening really is the beginning of awakening to the fact that we're part of a developmental process. We're part of the evolutionary process where human beings, I believe, ultimately, will function at the level of consciousness and recognize that we are that very process that started 14 billion years ago with the Big Bang. That we are that very evolutionary process that has the capacity to become conscious of itself.
The traditional notion of enlightenment was the attainment of a state of consciousness that freed us from the world, it freed us from the time process. In the traditional notion of enlightenment one was trying to experience nirvana or achieve a nirvanic state or enter into a nirvanic realm which would free one from the experience of embodiment. It would free from one from being embedded in the world process.
Well, now. that sounds pretty good!
Well, it all depends how you look at it. I mean, if you feel that life is hell, that life is suffering, that life is misery, then, yes. I guess then it would be the highest pleasure and the highest release would be to escape from the world process. But if that's the way we're looking at it, that's obviously based on a fundamental conviction that life is not a good thing, that there's something fundamentally wrong.
So, with "evolutionary enlightenment" you remain fully engaged in the world?
Well, it's based on the discovery and the recognition that who we are at the level of consciousness is not separate from the same energy and intelligence that initiated this whole process 14 billion years ago. Human beings have this capacity to begin to discover that who we are at the deepest level is not separate from the energy and the intelligence that initiated the whole process.
Would you assign any word to that intelligence? Would you call it God?
Absolutely, of course. In other words, who is it that could have created the universe? The only name that comes to mind is God. I can't imagine anybody else would have had the audacity or the courage to do such a crazy thing. And when a human being begins to become aware at the level of consciousness that that's what we are, we are that process becoming aware of itself.
Okay. So we're sort of-
God becoming aware of himself or herself, which is quite a leap.
So we all have this divine potential inside of us that we can tap into?
Well, divine potential is one way to look at it, and the answer is definitely yes. The degree to which we identify with the ego, with the separate identity, with our personal history and separate identity related to that, it becomes difficult to perceive and to understand these things. But when we are able to step beyond a compulsive identification with ego, with the personality and with our historical identity, we can begin to glimpse and directly experience ourself as what I call in my own teaching work "the authentic self."
The authentic self is the very part of us that feels compelled to evolve at the level of consciousness itself. It's the spiritual impulse. At a certain point in many individuals' lives people find themselves compelled to seek for some kind of depth within themselves, within life itself. Something within themselves compels them to search and to seek for greater depth and greater understanding. So that mysterious impulse we can call an evolutionary impulse.
The authentic self is the expression and the manifestation at the level of consciousness of that initial creative impulse. The creative impulse was what the Big Bang is. We experience this impulse at the gross physical level as sexual desire, as a procreative impulse; but at the highest level, at the level of consciousness, we experience it as the urge to evolve at the level of consciousness itself. We want to evolve, we want to become more conscious, we want to awaken.
Do you consider yourself enlightened?
Do I consider myself. Well, that's a trick question. If I say I'm enlightened it's not politically correct. And then if I say I'm not, then... why should anyone listen to me speak about it? So what I like to do is basically let everybody make up their own minds [laughs]. Ever since I started teaching I realized that saying I was enlightened didn't serve me and saying I wasn't didn't either. So, I thought it was better maybe just to let everyone else make up their own mind.
What do you consider your spiritual credentials, so to speak?
Hmm. My spiritual credentials. That's an interesting question. I don't have a degree from the enlightenment university [laughs].
You know, in some of the Theravadan Buddhist schools from Burma you can go to some monasteries and if you have certain kinds of experiences they'll literally will give you a diploma. You can put it up on the wall. No, it's true. It's kind of funny, but anyway...
It's a hard thing to answer. I mean, there's a whole personal journey behind what it is that I'm doing, but I don't know if we really have the time to go into it. I find it's not the most important thing anyway.
Would you call yourself a guru?
Well, I have been accused of such crimes. Definitely, yes.
I don't have a problem with that word, because guru means dispeller of darkness, bringer of light. The truth is, I have to admit, even though it's politically very incorrect to say so, I do serve that function in the lives of many people.
So, guilty as charged?
Guilty as charged. But you're not allowed to say things like that in postmodern secular America. Because if you do, you're [considered] either crazy or a charlatan or both [laughs]. Because what happened in the seventies and the eighties a lot of gurus came over from the East from different traditions and people would say, "Well, they're enlightened which means they're perfect." So then we found that many of them seemed to have difficulties around some basic human instincts [laughs]; that they didn't seem to be able to handle living in the West. And then everybody said, "Oh well, I guess they're not enlightened." And then, that was the end of enlightenment.
You distance yourself from the "New Age" label...
Absolutely, absolutely.
How do you see your message being different from the message of other thinkers who consider themselves New Age?
