Evolutionary Enlightenment is the spiritual teaching that has been developed by Andrew Cohen over more than two decades. That teaching has grown to include an evolutionary cosmology that very closely resembles that held collectively by the American Pragmatists, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James and John Dewey. Did Andrew Cohen get his evolutionary view from these great thinkers? Not directly.
Cohen, similar to Peirce, describes the evolution of the universe as beginning from a state of pure emptiness, perfect potentiality prior to manifestation. He goes on to outline a possibility for personal and cultural conscious evolution that is in many ways reminiscent of Peirce, James and Dewey. Cohen wasn’t aware of the work of Peirce or Dewey during the majority of the time that he was outlining and teaching Evolutionary Enlightenment. He was familiar with William James’ work on religious experience, but I don’t believe that Cohen’s evolutionary cosmology would have come from James, although reading James might have helped predispose him to such a perspective.
Cohen’s teaching has had some overt evolutionary perspective from the very start of his teaching career. “Self-realization is evolution” was a statement that he made in some of his earliest writing. One of Cohen’s early influences that did bring an evolutionary perspective to him was the Indian Spiritual Master, Gopi Krishna. Gopi Krishna was a Hindu teacher who taught the awakening of inner human energies known as Kundalini. Gopi Krishna’s teaching was unconventional in that he taught Kundalini in an evolutionary context and claimed that these energies were the energy of evolution. As a young seeker Andrew Cohen was very inspired by Gopi Krishna and his evolutionary view.
Gopi Krishna certainly planted an evolutionary seed in Andrew Cohen’s mind, and yet it is unlikely that he was the source of what was to become a cosmologically based evolutionary spirituality. The influences that brought that out in Andrew Cohen’s Evolutionary Enlightenment came later in his teaching career in the form of three American teachers that all had a strong evolutionary perspective.
The first of these teachers was Michael Murphy. Murphy had been a disciple of the Indian sage Sri Aurobindo and his spiritual successor, The Mother. Aurobindo and the Mother taught in India and developed a profound Evolutionary Spirituality that is one of the most important precursors to the Evolutionary Spirituality that is growing in popularity today. Michael Murphy brought this evolutionary perspective back with him to the United States and, as one of the most prominent figures in the human potential movement, co-founded Esalen a Spiritual center in California known for its blend of Eastern and Western practices.
Another of Andrew Cohen’s evolutionary influences was cosmologist Brian Swimme. Swimme’s view of cosmic evolution was very influenced by the writings of Catholic Priest and Paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin. De Chardin, like Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, is one of the most significant early pioneers of Evolutionary Spirituality. He is perhaps best known for his use of the phrase “Noosphere” to describe the thinking layer of the Earth. His description of the evolution of the cosmos towards some final “Omega Point” is a breathtaking vision of spiritual cosmic evolution.
The last, and perhaps most important, evolutionary influence on Andrew Cohen was his close association with Ken Wilber. It is with Ken Wilber that some connection to the evolutionary perspective of the American Pragmatists can be seen. Wilber was influenced in his work to some degree by all three of the founding Pragmatists, although he praises Charles Sanders Peirce most strongly. The evolutionary philosophy that Andrew Cohen created as part of his teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment reflects many of the evolutionary ideas of Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory, and these ideas in turn reflect many of the ideas of the early Pragmatists.
Brian
/ February 2, 2010In my (not so) humble opinion, Andrew Cohen hijacked the term ‘evolution’ to mean whatever he wants – everything from personal growth to cosmic expansion.
Jeff, you know Andrew much better than I do, so feel free to correct my opinion. In my only encounter with Andrew at a weekend intensive in Chicago a few years ago, I questioned him on his use of the term. He kept twisting my questions into “evolution as just competitive survival of the fittest” and then said “that’s not what I’m talking about.”
OK, if we stop saying “survival of the fittest” and replace it with “natural selection” then evolution clearly includes cooperation too.
I came away thinking that Andrew’s grasp of evolutionary concepts was superficial and that he was just using the term to popularize or legitimize his program to lure in ‘rationalists’ like me.
What am I missing?
Jeff Carreira
/ February 3, 2010Hello Brian, Thank you for this comment it is exactly the kind of question that I want to address around the ideas of Evolutionary Enlightenment and so I will afford it a lengthy reply. I think there are a few things you might be missing. First of all you are limiting your definition of the word evolution to the scientific and particularly the Darwinian definition. The word evolution dates to the 1640’s and was originally derived from the Latin “to unfold.” The word’s original definition was meant to refer to any “process of gradual change.” Darwin generally didn’t use the word evolution (and only once does it appear in the very last pages of On the Origin of Species) because it was generally used in his time in reference to the development of the human embryo and implied more teleology than Darwin felt comfortable with. The English evolutionary philosopher Herbert Spencer was an incredibly popular world thinker decades before Darwin and is actually the originator of the term “survival of the fittest.” Spencer used the word evolution in an explicitly teleological sense in reference to culture, psychology, biology and just about every other subject. So it was actually the later “new-Darwinists” of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that “appropriated” the word evolution to refer more strictly to the idea of natural selection. With all of this said I would contest that Andrew Cohen is using the term evolution in a perfectly appropriate way to refer to any process of gradual change and his teleological emphasis has as much (if not more) historical “legitimacy” as the non-teleological use of the word in the hands of Darwinists. I realize in a mind that sees the world through scientific eyes, the word evolution in the sense of natural selection seems obviously truer than any other possible definition and it is therefore assumed that this definition has effectively delegitimized all other previous definitions, but that is the perspective of scientism that I have discussed previously.
I think the second thing that I would question is your claim against Andrew Cohen’s motives. Because you might see evolution as definitively referring to only “natural selection,” you would see Cohen’s attempt to use the term in a broader sense as an attempt to use a “legitimate” term (evolution) to bring “legitimacy” to Cohen’s broader philosophy. What you might be missing here is your bias against spirituality. Being a scientifically minded person you see Andrew Cohen’s spiritual philosophy as “apriori” illegitimate and therefore in need of legitimization. Cohen’s use of the term in a broader sense is then assumed to be born of ill motive and an attempt to dupe rational people into believing in an obviously irrational idea. What you miss here is that all ideas (especially if they are in any degree novel) are considered or assumed to be wrong by some people, and attempts to refine or prove the worthiness of ideas is often misconstrued as attempts to legitimize illegitimate claims. When Darwin’s idea of natural selection hit America, America’s leading scientist Louis Agassiz was dead set against it. To this religious man Darwin’s ideas were “apriori” wrong and Agassiz and others accused Darwin of using unscientific methods and calling them science. That is because Darwin couldn’t directly observe natural selection in action which is what being “scientific” meant at the time. Instead Darwin did statistical analysis on observations of species to support his conclusions. This method of doing science was revolutionary in its day, but was seen as many as “fuzzy” and representing Darwin’s superficial understanding of what science was.
As you said, I have known and worked with Andrew Cohen for 16 years. He is driven by a spiritual vision and he started his work as a teacher of an eastern approach to enlightenment. He became unsatisfied with that perspective because it taught that one should strive for an inner experience of peace and joy by remaining detached from life and the world. Cohen, perhaps influenced by American Pragmatic roots, could not accept this. He felt that purpose of life was living and that the value of any measure of freedom that we as human beings could win could only be measured in how it improved the way we lived. Later when he was more explicitly introduced to the idea of cosmic evolution he became ablaze with the idea that human beings are ultimately a reflection of a cosmic evolutionary process and that our ability to awaken to that fact could allow us to live in ways that were most beneficial to that process. This is the sense in which he uses the term evolution. It is hardly a new concept. Herbert Spencer was driven by the same thing, so were the American Pragmatists, Alfred North Whitehead, Teilhard De Chardin, Sri Aurobindo, Ken Wilber….etc. All of these people are using the term evolution in a much broader sense than natural selection alone implies. I believe they have the right to use the term that way, and in fact it is arguably a more legitimate use of the word. Andrew Cohen believes deeply (and I fully agree) that our world needs a spiritual orientation that can guide us ethically and morally. The sees that the mythical traditions of the past conflict with our scientific understanding of the world. At the same time he believes that our scientific understanding of the world and the agnostic secular humanism that tends to accompany does not provide an adequate moral foundation. For this reason he is trying to introduce a spiritual perspective that provides a moral foundation while being congruent with science. It is a work in progress. It is an experiment perhaps in the marketplace of ideas. Other spiritual experimenters are trying to show that the great mythical traditions of the past can be retooled for a scientific age. Some are trying to prove that we should simply return to the great traditions of the past as is. Others are trying to demonstrate how secular humanism can provide a perfectly moral foundation for our time. I don’t think we have a clear winner yet and so all experiments remain valid.
I appreciate the “creative friction” between the scientific view of evolution and the spiritual use of the term. I believe that Andrew Cohen probably has a far above average understanding of evolution in the sense of natural selection, but he is hardly an evolutionary scientist. He, like the rest of us, is in the process of refining his ideas about human freedom, spiritual enlightenment and evolution. I welcome the opportunity to sharpen my own understanding through exchanges like this. In fact, it is one of the primary reasons that I invest time in this blog. It is always good to have to defend ideas and or refine or change your mind as you go.
Carl
/ February 3, 2010It would be great if we could see that there is no necessary dichotomy between “scientifically minded” people and a spiritual relationship to life. In my view, any suggestion from either “side” that there is such a conflict is based on a narrow understanding of these topics. Science is simply the systematic investigation of things based on evidence and logic versus speculation without confirmation; while a spiritual perspective is simply an effort to take the biggest possible context into account with a focus on its implications for how we live our lives. What is interesting about “evolution” in particular, is that the scientific understanding of its mechanism, based on principles of variation and selection, is exactly the same understanding that demonstrably accounts for and can be leveraged to produce individual learning and collective or cultural development. In the absence of a fact-based understanding of those principles, speculations about evolution are just that — speculations. Any personal or collective practices aimed at development or evolution will be more effective to the extent that they consciously take demonstrable facts of nature into account in their design and implementation. It is sad if we must continue to see dichotomies, rather than the potential for enormous evolutionary acceleration, in the consideration of science and spirituality.
liesbeth
/ February 3, 2010I am both interested in science and spirituality but for me there is a huge difference. Science is about the knowing and spirituality about the no-knowing. What I always honour in Andrew Cohen is his ability to think and talk beyond conditioned mind. Prove of that is that he can give 500 talks about the same subject, but that it is always original. The most beautiful description of this ability I read with Krisnamurti: the ability to look every day at your wife as if it is the first time. It is all original, even though he found out later that it for example connected with Wilber. I did some early retreats with him where he was finding out on the spot what cultural conditioning was, just as earlier he found out about personal and biological conditionings. It is all original because it comes from a different place and that is what true spirituality is for me.
Carl
/ February 3, 2010Every great scientist whom I have ever known — and I have been privileged to know quite a few — has entered just about every day with an attitude of not-knowing, but wanting to know. Science is a great plunge into the Unknown to unravel it’s infinitely complex spirals and explosions and vibrations. Using scientific methods we can peer more and more deeply into the Known, which paradoxically takes us to Mystery, as Einstein so aptly put it.
Brian
/ February 3, 2010Thanks Jeff for your very authentic response to my comment. I make a pretty darn good straight man – I am your worthy foil !!!
liesbeth
/ February 4, 2010I fully agree that science is about not-knowing and the urge to find out. Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber are examples of the fact that both can merge. But there is a difference between not-knowing and no-knowing. As far as my own definition goes the first one mostly believes that consciousness originates from the mind while no-knowing sees the origin of consciousness much bigger. It is about going beyond the mind to be able to be an expression of this higher knowing. I am convinced that people like Mozart and great scientists are inspired by higher knowing, Just like people have become Enlightened without ever being interested in spirituality. But at the level of definition I think science is about mind and spirituality is about consciousness beyond the mind the will inform us when we are willing to drop all knowing.
Brian
/ February 5, 2010All that said, wouldn’t it be a good idea for the leader of Evolutionary Enlightenment to become an expert/teacher in evolution by means of natural selection?
Jeff Carreira
/ February 5, 2010Brian, I agree that you have avalid point and it is one that Andrew Cohen is certainly pursuing. I think you are asking too much if you ask that he (or I) become an expert on evolution by means of natural selection. For one thing people devote their whole lives to that study to become an expert at it. But more importantly, I still maintain that “natural selection” is part of a field of evolutoinary ideas. At EnlightenNext I think it is important that we become expert -the extent possible – in understanding the field of evolutionary ideas. My colleague Carter Phipps wrote an excellent article outlining in broad strokes the range of these ideas. I think Brian that you might have read it already, but others can find it here. http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/j35/real-evolution-debate-intro.asp
In relation to natural selection I do think that we should continually refine and deepen our understanding. Challenges from and discussion with knowledgable people like yourself (or my friend Carl) who know a great deal about the subject are one of the great ways to sharpen understanding.
So your challenge in the above comment was that you felt that Andrew Cohen (and I) were using the word evolution to mean a great deal more than natural selection. I respond by saying that we were and explaining why I felt that was a legitamate use of the word. So now beyond that you are saying shouldn’t we be more expert in natural selection than we are. I would say yes we should, although I don’t beleive that necessarily invalidates the ides of Evolutionary Enlightenment – it just means that there is more room for further refinement and more subtle distinctions to be made. I think that there is an implicit question in your questions because you feel that perhaps neither of is exactly clear about. I think that if we keep going into specific questions together as we have been – the real differences in our perspectives will get more clear and the I believe that it is in clarifying our real differences that we transcend and include them into a larger view. So I guess we are heading upwards together.
I have some question myself about Natural Selection. I firmly believe that the process of evolution is not blind in the way that many new-Darwinists seem to say, but when I look more deeply into I find that I acctually believe in more ‘blindness’ in the process than I sometimes am aware of and that the neo-darwinisits believe in more directionality than they sometimes state. So there is, I think, a real conversation that is happening here.
liesbeth
/ February 5, 2010I do not know if I get your question right, Brian, but it immediately pointed for me to a very interesting question: what is most successful, or strongest. In cases of reproduction it is very clear and with people like Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Mandela it is very clear that they are able to understand and express that which lives deep in people. But what if someone is a step -or a few steps- ahead. An example of the was the Dutch painter Van Gogh who did not have one buyer in his life but is worth millions now. I am not an expert on the recent developments in the evolutionary enlightenment teaching but they are pushing into the future in a way that not many people can understand. For myself: when I first met Andrew Cohen I was shocked by his idea about biological conditioning, than it took me years to understand all about ego-conditioning, when he started to talk about Ken Wilber I wasn’t able to follow. Once I understood some of it, it was absolutely life-transforming. I am still investigating while others are so much further…it is never possible to understand future steps without earlier ones.
Brian
/ February 5, 2010Jeff, your self effacing humility is amazing. You take my barbs in stride, peer behind them, and find both my intent and my oversteps. You give me the confidence to press on. (Oh no!)
Using the term evolution to mean more than natural selection doesn’t make it any more profound, any more grand, any more amazing than it already is. Instead, tossing it around so liberally just dilutes it, confusing the case. So when talking about personal growth, call it that. When talking about the expanding universe, call it that. And leave evolution on its own sacred ground.
liesbeth
/ February 6, 2010Just to underline my point: There where two answers to Brian’s question. He naturally selected the one that pleased him. He probably did not even look at mine. Natural selection follows the mainstream thought…
Of course Jeff’s survival is more important. But for the discussion itself, I have been studying Dawkins recently, and I am very interested in it. But the line died.
Jeff Carreira
/ February 6, 2010Brian, I am willing to talk Natual Selection. I have done some study of it, but it is a big topic with lots of disagreement. I guess the place I am interested in is what happens when a process ruled by natural selection produces a life form that learns about natural selection. To me that would be one way to think about conscious evolution. We are the life form that has been produced by natural selection and now what do we do with that understanding. How does it help us move forward into the future?
Brian
/ February 7, 2010Clearly what you describe here is what fascinates both of us about evolution by means of natural selection. Only in the past 150 have we been aware of it. Now if we act on it we will create a feedback loop that has never happened before that we know of. Like you, I wonder how to apply it.
Here’s how I applied it today. This weekend I particapated in a rehab therapy session to help a family member. The program was based on AA’s 12 steps which recommends submission to God or a higher power. Rather than saying “I’m Brian and I’m an alcoholic” (I’m not), I said “I’m Brian and I’m an atheist.” I proceeded to describe the reason to be good without God is to contribute to our own favorable evolution. Does getting high and selling drugs do it? No. Does cooperating to raise a child, or organizing to build a city, or harmonizing to make great music do it? Yes. It is a useful moral compass.
liesbeth
/ February 8, 2010I do not think it is possible to help someone who is in AA by saying that there is no Higher Power. The essence of AA is that the mind of an alcoholic will NEVER be able to leave alcoholism behind. So the believe that there is something beyond the mind is essentail to become a healthy person again. The power behind AA is the acceptance that the mind cannot know everything, this can be the point where science and spirituality meet: it is the point of acceptance that we just do not know and that we probably will be never able to know everything. AA is the most beautiful example I have ever seen of people giving over to not knowing, heading towards a new future.
Brian
/ February 8, 2010Great point liesbeth. My advice may only apply before chemical dependency sets in. Yet here are some alternative 12 steps that leave out the higher power. One of them is by BF Skinner. I hope others on the blog will comment because this is a very practical application of philosophy as a necessity during a personal crisis.
http://www.selfcounseling.com/help/alcohol/12steps.html
http://wud1.com/steps/Steps.htm
http://silkworth.net/magazine_newspaper/humanist_jul_aug_1987.html
liesbeth
/ February 8, 2010I admired Dawkins greatly untill I saw him becomming as dogmatic saying there is no God as others say there is. Most people in AA see the Higher Power as the energy that happens between people who decide together to change. Whatever that energy is, it cares about others. There is no selfishness in this kind of love, for example in the care for children and when people are together in danger. If we are able to bring that consciousness in daily life something would change radically.
Jeff Carreira
/ February 9, 2010Brian, There is a point in Liesbeth’s comments (or at least as I read them) that I am interested to pursue. Throughout history the great human motivators have been religion and nationalism. In a Spiral Dynamics context this Religion was tehe great motivator of the blue meme and nationalism of orange. I do not believe that behaviorism or counceling has ever proved to be able to guide and motivate human behavior like these two forces. That is why I do believe we need to take the possibility of a “new religion” seriously. More to come on this I hope.
Brian
/ February 9, 2010yes more please
Liesbeth
/ February 10, 2010Jeff, I would never be able to formulate it like you do, but it is absolutely what it is about. I have been thinking yesterday about a ‘Higher Power’. In our culture it is replaced by role models, like Paris Hilton. I just asked a colleague who is very religious what she would say. She said: ‘well, if it proves in the end that I was wrong, I had at least support in my life, it gave direction in a positive way, I had good relationships with my friends because of it. She has natural care in a social sense.
liesbeth
/ February 10, 2010I have just been reading some of the comments on and parts of Dawkins book ‘The God Delusion. I think his view is not dogmatic, I think we all agree; Dawkins only attacts a supernatural God. He mentiones some critics that connects to what I wrote: People need religion: Dawkins: I am tempted to say “I believe in people . . .”
Religion is one of the glories of human culture:. Dawkins gives many examples like the killing of Inca priests of young girls. Elsewhere he points to recent disasters like the young suicide bomber Muslims…mentioning what horrors religion brings and brought into the world…
Elsewhere he mentions Einstein who said: I believe in Spinoza’s God who is revealed in the orderly harmony of everything that exists, not a God who interferes with human behavior..He gives another beautiful quote from Einstein:
To have a sense that beyond the experiential world there is something that our minds cannot contain, whose beauty and elevation can only be understood indirectly..
Liesbeth
/ February 11, 2010I am still walking around with the ideas that came up in this blog, which means God, religion and nationality. Just now I was reading a chapter in a little book about Hegel from Peter Singer where I found Hegels idea of God and his idea about consciousness evolving …
Robert Whittemore called Hegel a panentheïst which means ‘all in God’. It means that all in the universe is part of God (that connects to Panteïsm), but also that God is more than the Universe because he is the whole and the whole is bigger that the sum of it’s parts (holons). Just like a human being is more than the sum of the parts.
In this idea God is more than all parts of the Universe, but God does not stand apart (we all agree about that). Cells are not identical to men, just like individual parts of the Universe are not identical with God.
Hegel does not see God as eternal or unchangeable, God is the essence which wants to be visible in the world. And once God is visible, the world should evolve to perfection so that God can be more perfect. The forward movement of history is the path of God to perfection.
Hegel’s term ‘idealism’ has a different meaning than we give it, for him it is about ‘ideas’, God is the absolute idea, which means the ultimate truth of the Universe, sum of its parts. History is the necessary path of human consciousness evolving towards absolute knowledge: human minds freeing themselves from imprisonment in self-images towards understanding the inherent universal nature of mind.
We experience reality through structures in consciousness, self-knowledge means that we understand how consciousness constructs reality. Hegel believed that at a certain point reality would not be an ‘unknowable beyond’ but that consciousness would be able to know ‘directly’: Absolute knowledge is attained when the mind realizes that what he seeks, is itself…
Brian
/ February 11, 2010or God as an ideal
liesbeth
/ February 12, 2010The essential difference between our way of seeing is probably the difference between materialists and people who see consciousness first. For the first one God as it is expressed here is useless, for the second, this idea of God is absolutely perfect.
I had one experience of ‘direct seeing’ and at that moment I saw how foolish and unnatural the normal wiggling between all the structures of thinking is; I also have been in experiential groups where we connected in higher consciousness and I can absolutely assure you that the whole of consciousness arising is more than the sum of the individual consciousness together.
I can tell you that someone gave me video’s about Darwin which I watch with as much enthusiasm and awe as when I read about Hegel. For me there is no conflict except what people make of it.
Dov Henis
/ April 9, 2010Natural Selection
Beyond Historical Concepts
Natural selection is E (energy) temporarily constrained in an m (mass) format.
Period.
Dov Henis
(Comments From The 22nd Century)
03.2010 Updated Life Manifest
http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/54.page#5065
Cosmic Evolution Simplified
http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/240/122.page#4427
“Gravity Is The Monotheism Of The Cosmos”
http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/260/122.page#4887
Frank Luke
/ June 13, 2010I can’t think of the I Ching commentary re: fixing what has been spoiled. I mention this in relation to evolution and advancement where the thrust of Western endeavor is toward progress meaning forward.
I wonder if we’ve reached a point in human development where it seems we’re in a period of evaluation of what we have wrought and finding much of so-called progress has gotten us into terrible messes. When the dust settles on this epoch maybe we’ll be calling it a Reformation, of reforming and reconsidering ideas and the whole thrust of civilization.
I listened to the New Dimensions radio program that today featured Dr. Claudio Naranjo who has much to say about this. I recommend checking out his ideas:
YOUR INTUITIVE MIND COULD SAVE THE WORLD with Claudio Naranjo, M.D.
New Dimensions radio program #3347 – 1 Hour – Listen Now!
Claudio Naranjo, M.D., is a pioneer in the exploration of human consciousness and the Human Potential Movement, and is well known for bringing the Enneagram to the United States. He is the author of Healing Civilization (Gateway Books 2010).
Topics explored in this dialogue:
*How climate is related to the emergence of patriarchal attitudes
*Why matriarchy is not the true alternative to patriarchy
*How we can change the consciousness of a world when religions have failed to do so
*How our education system must change so that it fosters our evolution, re-educating teachers to promote more humanism rather than competiton and aggression
*Why unleashing your inner animal may help save the world
Check out (online: New Dimensions radio show > Claudio Naranjo)
cosmicqzee
/ June 7, 2011We are witnessing evolution right now, with the spread of consciousness, but what are we all doing with our consciousness, in this very present moment?
To obtain cosmic consciousness is one stepping stone, it is how we choose to implement this which leads us to another step.
Teilhard De Chardin first mentioned the Noosphere and how exactly has that been explored more in depth? We are all connected and what are we doing with this to move forward?
How is using our consciousness just talking and theorizing productive action? The world as a global community can have as many forums to chat and analyze consciousness and other individual points of view, but what is that changing in the present moment?
We need to meet the world, in the present, as it stands now and start using higher intelligence to build the bridge to a new conscious collective.