By Corina Andronache
I am pleased to introduce to you, Andrew Cohen, “a truly remarkable spiritual teacher on the cutting edge of evolutionary thinking and action. He is playing an invaluable leadership role in the emergence of evolutionary spirituality: an integrity-based, deeply meaningful approach to life grounded in our best scientific understanding of cosmic, earth, biological, and human history. Andrew’s writings and teachings are destined to make a real difference in the world.” - Michel Dowd, author of Thank God for EvolutionCorina: What is Evolutionary Enlightenment?
Andrew: Evolutionary Enlightenment is a new spiritual path and practice that is culturally relevant for our time. It brings together the perennial mystical insight that the ultimate nature of reality is Oneness and the scientific discovery that we’re part of an evolutionary process that is going somewhere. In Evolutionary Enlightenment, we win our spiritual liberation through the experiential recognition that who we really are is not separate from the primordial energy and intelligence that created the universe. We experience that energy and intelligence as what I call the evolutionary impulse—the life-positive, perpetually creative inspiration that compels human beings to strive to give rise to new potentials. The realization that “I AM” the energy and intelligence that created the universe and not merely a psychological ego is the fundamental insight that liberates the self in the new evolutionary spirituality.
Corina: Why do you describe Evolutionary Enlightenment as being "culturally relevant?”
Andrew: The pervasiveness of mythical and magical thinking in the great religious traditions presents an enormous challenge for the highly educated person at the beginning of the 21st Century. Also most forms of mysticism, both East and West, throughout the ages have primarily been about transcending the world, about “being in the world but not of it.” The new Enlightenment that I speak about is based upon an evolutionary worldview. Science has taught us that the entire universe is one ongoing creative process that had a beginning in time almost 14 billion years ago. This new worldview reveals to us that our uniquely human, highly evolved capacity for consciousness and complex thinking is the very leading edge of that creative process. As Julian Huxley famously said "Man is nothing but evolution become conscious of itself." A new culturally relevant mysticism is being born based upon this profound revelation: that you and I really are the energy and intelligence that created the universe awakening to itself in human form. The moral, philosophical, and spiritual implications of that truth are deeply relevant for human beings searching for meaning and purpose in the twenty-first century. Read More
