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Philosophy and Teaching

Traditional vs. Evolutionary Enlightenment

Cohen began his career as a spiritual teacher after having what he described as a realization of enlightened awareness. He credits his teacher, H.W.L. Poonja, with guiding him into this realization:

Poonjaji, as he was affectionately called, revealed to me the ultimate truth that the deepest part of each and every one of us, which he called the Self, exists prior to all things. Before time and space, I AM. Before the universe was born, there is infinite freedom. Through awakening to that deepest part of myself, which the Buddha called “the deathless” or “the unborn,” I let go of the belief that I was unfree. That meeting changed my life forever and after only three weeks he asked me to become a teacher in my own right.

— Tam Hunt, Evolutionary Spirituality: Andrew Cohen Talks About God

Cohen suggests that attaining this liberated state of consciousness has been considered by the mystics, for thousands of years and in various cultures, as the pinnacle of human achievement: shifting one's identification from the limited sense of self, with its history and problems, to a liberated, enlightened sense of Self, the transcendental, unmanifest, unified field of life, the Ground of Being, beyond all forms and phenomena. Using theological terms, Cohen says that this is the realization of the transcendental aspect of God, and it often goes hand-in-hand with the realization that the world is an illusion. Cohen came to call this kind of enlightenment "traditional enlightenment," and soon departed from this teaching:

This insight liberated my soul, but after I had been teaching for only a short time, I came to understand that the traditional approach only gives us half the picture. In telling us that the world isn’t real, it allows us to let go of our attachment to it, and in that letting go, experience spiritual liberation. But what if we are not convinced that the world is unreal? What are we to do then? This was my predicament as a young teacher. As touched as I had been by awakening to the unborn Self beyond time and space, I had never been able to accept the assertion that the world was an illusion. Not only did I believe that the world was real but I also came to give much greater value to Spirit’s power to affect change in the world than its power to liberate us from it. For this reason, I began to give more importance to spiritual actions than spiritual experiences.

— Tam Hunt, Evolutionary Spirituality: Andrew Cohen Talks About God

Cohen explains, that he eventually discovered a different form of enlightened awareness. Observing his students, he noticed that they would, on occasion, enter into a state in which they would be temporarily liberated from their identification with their ego, or separate sense of self. Significantly, however, this did not occur through shutting off the world and plunging into a transcendental state beyond it, but rather through active engagement with others in the context of the exploration of his teaching. Furthermore, this was no longer an individual experience, but rather a collective experience that occurred simultaneously among all those involved. Cohen came to believe that this shared experience of "enlightened awareness", which he claims to be unique and without precedent, was a new kind of enlightenment. He first called this "Impersonal Enlightenment", to reflect that fact that it was a realization shared between people rather than an individual attainment. As he put it:

Although most people don't know it yet, the age of personal or merely individual enlightenment is over. In the twenty-first century, the context for deep, authentic, serious spirituality—which means transformational spirituality—is evolution, evolution not only of the individual but beyond the individual.

— Andrew Cohen, The New Enlightenment

This evolutionary context in which Cohen started understanding the new enlightenment made him change its name to Evolutionary Enlightenment. This name reflects his belief that coming together in this manner was the next step of the evolution of humanity. Furthermore, the term "evolutionary" also reflected his belief that what was experienced between his students was something he calls "the evolutionary impulse", which he defines as "the same creative impulse that gave rise to the manifest universe 13.7 billion years ago in the Big Bang." Cohen also called this "the Authentic Self," which he equated with creative aspect of God. His teaching activity seems to be focused on guiding groups of people who desire to make this "shared enlightened consciousness" the platform and context for their interaction with each other.

Ego, Narcissism, and the Authentic Self

A fundamental aspect of Cohen's Evolutionary Enlightenment is the distinction between what he sees as two fundamental, yet opposing, aspects of the human psyche: the "Ego" and the "Authentic Self," In his teaching, Ego is defined as "the deeply ingrained, compulsive need to remain separate and superior at all times, in all places, under all circumstances." The authentic self, on the other hand, is defined as "the urge to become more conscious." Cohen emphasizes, that the sense of individuation in itself is not the problem. Instead, he suggests that this highly individuated sense of self characterizing many humans in the 21st century is a very important gift of the long process of the evolution . However, he also asserts that over-identification with this individuated sense of self gives rise to narcissism, which is said to have reached epidemic proportions in the West (especially in the United States). Cohen believes, that the only way for our culture to move to move beyond ego to the next stage of human evolution is through coming together beyond ego.

I believe that for most of us, the only solution to this evolutionary cul-de-sac, the only way to our own higher development, lies in the context of human relationship, relationship based upon a breakthrough to a shared experience and recognition of consciousness beyond ego. Of course, consciousness beyond ego always means the state of enlightenment itself. So what I'm referring to is the shared experience and recognition of enlightened consciousness, where the shadow of ego or separate self-sense is entirely absent. In this experience of intersubjective consciousness beyond ego, a momentous leap occurs. It is a leap from I to We, from extreme individuation to a living context of intersubjective nonduality—a higher We consciousness in which all parties experience simultaneously their own individual and collective transparency while remaining fully and completely themselves.

— Andrew Cohen, The Higher We

Cohen named that expanded, post-individual sense of self that emerges between individuals during such a communion "The Authentic Self." In Cohen's teaching, the Authentic Self is not an individual. Rather, he defines it as a universal principle called the "evolutionary impulse", which is primordial force of energy and intelligence that caused the entire universe to emerge from nothing 13.7 billion years ago, in the Big Bang. He teaches that this universal force expresses itself in human life--and can therefore be located in our experience--in three distinct levels: the physical, the mental and the spiritual.

• On the physical level, humans (as well as animals) experience this evolutionary impulse as the sexual impulse, the desire to procreate;
• On the mental level, we experience it as the uniquely human desire to know, to understand, to innovate and to create;
• On the highest or spiritual level, we experience this impulse as the desire to become more conscious, or, as Cohen sometimes puts it, as the urge to evolve as consciousness itself.

[The evolutionary] impulse...is the same uninhibited YES that burst forth as the big bang, the compels the body to procreate and the mind to innovate. When that impulse expresses itself at the highest level of consciousness, it is experienced as the inspiration that pulls us towards liberation and enlightenment. it is the mysterious drive to become more conscious.

— Andrew Cohen, Evolutionary Enlightenment: A New Path to Spiritual Awakening

Cohen believes that when individuals who are motivated by this highest form of the evolutionary impulse come together with focused intention, new structures in consciousness and culture emerge. Cohen refers to this as "creating the future", and it is the motivating force behind his work.

Cohen's Spiritual Path: The Five Tenets of Evolutionary Enlightenment

Cohen asserts, that in order to create such an enlightened culture motivated by the Authentic Self, a culture in which emergence of higher structures of consciousness and culture is the common goal, the individual members of that culture need to be more aligned with the Authentic Self than with their egos. That, he claims, does not require the annihilation of the ego, but rather the predominance of the Authentic Self. As he metaphorically puts it: at least 51% of one's thinking and action should be motivated by the Authentic Self. In order to assist those who wish to cultivate themselves and achieve this goal, Cohen has developed a spiritual path, the central piece of which are his Five Tenets of Evolutionary Enlightenment. Cohen maintains, that the fives tenets are both the path and the goal: they describe the enlightened state, as well as delineate the path that one needs to take in order to be an expression of enlightenment. Cohen's five tenets are:

• The First Tenet: Clarity of Intention. This tenet of Cohen's Evolutionary Enlightenment states, that spiritual transformation requires that one aspires to align oneself with the evolutionary impulse or authentic self more than one wants anything else in the world. Cohen claims that this tenet is the foundation stone of his teaching and a prerequisite to any real spiritual progress.
• The Second Tenet: The Power of Volition. Cohen's second tenet asserts, that anyone who wants to be enlightened must take responsibility "for nothing less than the evolutionary process, here and now, as ourselves." One does that, he says, by taking responsibility for everything that makes one who one is--such as all of one's actions and choices and all the consequences of what has happened to one.
• The Third Tenet: Face Everything and Avoid Nothing. Cohen explains, that enlightened consciousness is characterized by transparency and clarity, and therefore an enlightened person faces everything and avoids nothing, while an unenlightened person should strive to face everything and avoid nothing in an effort to cultivate enlightened awareness.
• The Fourth Tenet: The Process Perspective. According to Cohen, the goal of this tenet is to see every aspect of one's life not as occurring in a personal context but rather as placed in a vast cosmic process that has been going on for almost 14 billion years. This, he claims, is only possible
• The Fifth Tenet: Cosmic Conscience. The fifth tenet, according to Cohen, is the culmination of his teaching. It indicates, he explains, a pivotal turning point in the aspirant's evolution, when he or she begins to care more about the evolutionary process as a whole than they care about their ego's fears, desires, or concerns. "It represents the essential shift of identity that this teaching rests on", he says: "the shift from ego to Authentic Self."