June 17, 2012
When God Falls Out of the Sky
In the second decade of the 21st century, God is no longer “up there” ready to save us. Until very recently, that creative principle was something that we would ask for help from. But I believe we have reached a time in history when God, which I would describe as the energy and intelligence that initiated the creative process, is now completely dependent upon us—upon sentient life forms that have evolved to the point where they are blessed with the extraordinary gifts of complex cognition, self-awareness, and freedom of choice. At this critical juncture, our own future and the future of our planet will be determined by the conscious choices that we human beings make, rather than by the whim of a higher power or according to some predestined plan.
The mythical god has fallen out of the sky, and as more and more of us awaken to this fact, it begins to dawn on us that the future is literally in our own hands. Our power and our impact have never been greater. It has even been suggested that at this point in the evolutionary process, what Darwin called “natural selection” has been superseded by human choice. The decisions that we are making, either consciously or unconsciously, have become the primary force directing our planet’s future. Indeed, we have become gods. In pre-modern times, gods were revered as supreme beings who had the power to create and destroy life. Who has that power now? We do. We can create life in a laboratory. And we have at our fingertips the power to destroy all life on earth. Our unique capacity to innovate and our drive to create have brought forth unimagined potentials and simultaneously have carried us to the very brink of self-destruction. Because our technological development has outpaced our spiritual and moral development, we find ourselves in an environmental crisis of unparalleled proportions. And there is nobody “up there” who can help us now, no supernatural power guiding everything from on high, no God that is separate from our very own consciousness.
For the human being who begins to realize this, the implications on a personal level are profound and overwhelming. When we awaken to the infinite panorama of evolution, in fact, we realize ourselves to be nothing less than the very leading edge of a fourteen billion year cosmic process. A cosmic process that gave rise to the vast matter and energy that created galaxies, planets, and stars. That process created the conditions that made it possible for biological life to emerge around four billion years ago. And then, from biological life, around 50,000 years ago mind burst forth as the dramatic beginning of human consciousness and culture. Now, the energy and intelligence that initiated that process and has been driving it all along is dependent upon you and me. Indeed, our responsibility for where evolution is going, at the level of our shared culture, is much bigger than most of us are aware of. We tend to not be very conscious of the enormous context in which our own choices and actions are occurring.
For the mature human being in the second decade of the twenty-first century, this is what I see as being the ultimate purpose of higher spiritual development in a nutshell: to liberate the miraculous power of human choice from being unconsciously trapped in a cultural epidemic of narcissism, materialism, and existential apathy. Our moral, spiritual, and cultural evolution—if not our very survival—really do depend on it. God has indeed fallen out of the sky. Now it’s up to each and every one of us to realize that the energy and intelligence that created the universe and is creating it right now is depending upon us to take the next step.
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This post was originally published on Andrew Coheh’s BigThink.com blog, The Evolution of Enlightenment
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Andrew Cohen is a spiritual teacher, cultural visionary, founder of EnlightenNext, and the author of 
It would seem to me that given that evolution is likely going on all over this vast Universe, we can’t be sure that we are on the cutting edge of anything more than the rather small portion of which we are aware. And that the creative energy and intelligence that brought us here remains a source to be drawn upon and a backdrop against which our efforts are evaluated, in an evolutionary sense, and that the fate of the Universe has not likely been yielded to the twisted timber of humanity alone. When we do well we thrive, along with the other beings that we share our planet with; when we do poorly we suffer, but we learn. It seems to me that the fate of the Universe is secure; our own suffering, and the suffering of all that matters to us, is at stake.
Nothing left to say. You said it all. Great article!!
Suffering is not necessary anymore; I feel that we can learn in a joyful mode and in a more expansive consciousness;
The christian mode of guilt for beeing happy is over now;
It may be time to see clearly our responsability in any choice we make consciously…. and mine is for a great part – excempted of suffering.
cheers.
Danielle
Individually we may be alright, but the living systmes on which we depend are suffering, and sooner or later their suffering will become ours. The longer it takes us to learn to live responsibly, the greater the suffering we will cuase.
My Long Trek
Happy birthday to me, you and you
For we were all born the same instant
Some fourteen billion years ago
In a sky entirely nonexistent.
Like you, I was but a tiny string
Of energy, oscillating, resonating.
Pushed by a colossal force
Of unimaginable strength
Forever outward bound into oblivion
Into a destiny unknown
With but just one instruction
Love!
Love I did, love I do
Finding kindred sizes and shapes.
I hugged you hard, squishing your bones
Until we turned into one.
One body, one soul.
Body I know, soul I do not.
Incarnated into rocks and energy
Water and gases filling the universe
Still following my only directive
Go, keep going, go with love.
Oops, I said
Accidentally spilling some carbon into water
Nitrogen into hydrogen and to amino acid.
Totally unintentional
Creating the building block
Of a true change to creation.
Sorry I said to whomever
Intended me to do nothing
Or do something else
Sorry, I gave life to life.
My present body still
Nothing but strings, albeit trillions
Squished into shapes many
Types diverse, colors exquisite
My art has no limits
Design ultimate.
I am one with you
The rock, the tree, bird and the sea
You the cement tower and the train.
We just look different
Pay no attention
Still are all strings of love.
You say rocks have no senses
Stars are dead gases unable to speak
Or is it that we can’t understand
We don’t care to understand.
Only difference I can find
Is that I can and do ask why?
Rivers and the trees do not.
May be they are right
I am wrong for asking
Why love?
Beautiful, Sunil, and extremely well expressed.
The Creation, the Oneness, the Evolutionary Impulse, the LOVE, everything included in a short poem.
Loved it. Well done. Thank You.
Gershon.
Your words are appreciated, Gershon.
Beside the fact that, mostly due to the unprecedented possibilities of communication between the different peoples on this planet, we have a better understanding of the universe, including the spiritual world, I don’t think that God has fallen out of the sky. It / he / she is still there, still part of us and us still part of it. However, we do have a better understanding of our purpose and of the unlimited possibilities that we have to transcend into this collective consciousness and to unite in an undestructible loving entity that may indeed save the world.
First let me say that I think you do great work Andrew in bringing enlightenment to your audience.
However when to quote you ” … we awaken to the infinite panorama of evolution, in fact, we realize ourselves to be nothing less than the leading edge of a fourteen billion year process” you bring in a finite view of the age of the cosmos. Do you indeed believe that the cosmos is only fourteen billion years old ??
If indeed the cosmos is only fourteen billion years old, what is then “Infinity”?
The notion that “mind” burst forth 200,000 years ago is an unsubstantiated postulate.
Are we talking about the mind of the lower self, the personality ! Or are we talking about the “Infinite Mind”.
If we are indeed part of the the “Infinite mind”, ( and I totally agree we are) ) then we were present long before 200,000 years ago.
I totally agree that it is imperative that we awaken from the illusion that we are separate from others, from nature, the earth and what we call “god”.
We are the creators and we always have choice. Even thinking we have no choice is a choice.
Dear Lars,
I don’t see any contradiction.
Time (as in 200,000 years ago) is linked to the process, where the (material) cosmos and later personal mind comes into the picture.
Infinite (sic!) Mind has no time and hence »had not been there long before«.
And I agree, we are part of both (in a kind of emerging, non-dualistic way).
Love you
Hans
Indeed, Andrew, there is no “God up there separate from our very own consciousness” and the “implications on the personal level are profound and overwhelming”, but I feel there is room in your overall comment for a subtle distinction that may help with a deeper understanding of “why” is it so profound and overwhelming to the personal self. If I may…
When one begins to create conscious reciprocity and union with “the energy and intelligence that created the universe and is creating it right now”, it is disclosed as a more powerful, more intelligent “Other”; because one is still DUAL to the deeper, wider and higher dimensions of ONESELF, that duality APPEARS to disclose itself in experiential revelation as something ‘other’ than what one IS. Indeed, one will experience the “push and pull” of energetic impulses that can make one feel as if a puppet if they are not as fearlessly willing as they need to be, or feel that something like “destiny” has them accomplishing things beyond their will. The sense of it can be overwhelmingly positive and perplexing simultaneously.
But in my own direct experience, it was the ongoing contemplation of this “Other” that created greater identification and union with It as not-other than myself. And it was a most startling revelation when I finally “woke up” from the dream of separation, so to speak, that it was undeniable that “I” was Spirit consciously waking up to itself through me, as me; or I should say, WAKING UP AS ALL OF US. It was with patience, fortitude, humility and fearlessness that I overcame separation, and via the most devoted desire, the necessity of identifying with the “energy and intelligence” revealed that it always had been, and always will be, UP TO US.
When the entire trajectory of evolutionary unfolding – the complete continuum of space-time – is made conscious, and all the pain and bliss of involution and evolutionary complexity is alive as not-other than yourself, you will feel the joyful burden that is Spirit as it manifests in, and as, your awareness. It will be undeniable that it was always “up to you,” because you have become the only One there IS.
We are the fabric of the Kosmos, and everything is OUR RESPONSIBILITY. If you haven’t begun to break down the barriers that keep you from realizing that, BEGIN NOW.
With Light and Love,
Linda Nada
The image of God ‘s falling out of the sky brings up this whole notion of the authority, the illusory supremacy of the one who knows and the one who does not know, the illusion of superiority , the whole old-brain structure of hierarchy that human thoughts have “created” or rather INVENTED for its own petty securities either in the field of economy, political or in the field of religion culminated in the Father up there and even in the field of so-called spiritual with a price to be won called enlightenment.
If the invented God falls out of the sky, is it for little gods on earth to go on tyrannizing people in the name of … some goodies they would have if they follow ? is it for the greedy and gullible ones to go on inventing their endless crutches in the forms of a cunning politician, a record breaker saint or activist , a bullied guru, a ‘spiritual ‘’guide’ , a messenger of god , a high priest and the magician avatar ….
If God falls out of sky , then all forms of manipulations and dominion must end . And may be there will be at least real sharing , real cooperation not in the name of anything in particular , but the Spirit of cooperation which is not from you nor me , not for your utopia nor mine but for ours world .
Postmodernism is rampant with an hypocrisy that represents the “big” challenge to moving into the next stage of humanity’s development, namely, it wants to deny the perspective of others while staunchly standing in a perspective…it is a perspective denying perspective failing to see that it’s denying anything. This is a perspective that is hypocritical and blind to its own motivation! A twisted state of affairs, indeed!
Be careful how deeply you hold your own perspective and deny others theirs. Make effort at not falling prey to your own perspective, for it can be as dogmatic as any religious belief system that makes the “other” its adversary, a sinner, an infidel.
If you want your perspective honored, then you must honor others’ perspectives with just as much devotion that you have for your own. You can “integrate” perspectives while understanding that perspectives change and grow and show development, because perspectives apply to the ever-changing landscape of manifestation, not to Ultimate Reality, because it never enters the stream of time, is never born, is Uncreated, and enlightenment is the permanent acquisition in, and as, awareness that Reality is Ultimate Truth, perspectives are relative truth. And the “relative”, because it develops in time, does not have an end point, an ultimate view, only perspectives.
Denial of HIERARCHY is only a perspective…not Ultimate Knowledge.
Nada, we certainly have different interpretations of Andrew’s message. I must disagree with your statement “If you want your perspective honored, then you must honor others’ perspectives with just as much devotion that you have for your own.” That statement is more politically correct than spiritual. To do that, one would have to give as much importance to the others’ perspectives of god or being as he does his own, and then his own perspective would no longer hold a place of imminence in his own spiritual life, thus maintaining the duality we are working so hard to transcend. We should recognize whatever level of soul the other person is experiencing and respect that, but we have to move on.
Hello Doris and thanks for your response.
First, my comment wasn’t directed at Andrew Cohen and I’m more than certain that he recognizes of what I speak. And, if I’m speaking to Andrew I address him directly. My intention was more broadly based at some of the other comments made here and at the particular (and peculiar) expression of those identified with postmodernism as “my truth is THE Truth.” I was attempting to bring to light that “perspectives” co-arise with unconscious and conscious motivations, and that any such arising, no matter how subtle, is not Ultimate Truth.
That said, I have to disagree with you in your reading of my comment as “more politically correct than spiritual.” It is my “perspective” that all is Spirit in Being, and all is simultaneously compelled to Become Spirit in actuality, so any expression, whether modern, post-modern, etc., is a perspective born of involution and evolution of Spirit realizing itself in, and thru, us, hence; the more perspectives, or levels of consciousness, one includes in their awareness, thus differentiating and transcending those levels, the more enlightened, or nondual, one becomes. This is my perspective because this is what I’ve cultivated as my own awareness.
To be an integrally aware person means one holds no prejudice against other levels/perspectives, but instead, one has cultivated differentiation, and value distinctions, by including the enduring insights of those perspectives so that there are no unconscious motivations working at keeping levels fragmented and separate. If I or you or anyone holds a prejudice against any other level of consciousness, be it archaic, magic, mythic, rational, or post-rational,etc., then that has its effect not only in “my” awareness, but in consciousness itself. So the ability to take multiple perspectives via value distinctions means that I am NOT an agent that keeps Spirit from realizing itself through me. Understand? This is an important point and I direct it straight at post-modernism because I witness, in every aspect of life, the rather disturbing issue of which I was addressing above.
I welcome any response to any points I have made,
Thanks again,
Linda Nada
Thanks for clarifying that, Linda. I think we agree on that point, but it really wasn’t how it came out in your first post. I am an editor of law books and I think that a lot of times people don’t realize that they are not making themselves clear. But I’m glad we agree on your initial point.
I am a scientist. Science has to do with cause and effect. Can effects
have qualities that are not found in their causes? Logic says no. So
called enlightenment says yes. Yes I can be an individual but God can
not. Yes to be an individual means to be separate. Speculation about the Absolute Truth, on my part, can go on for zillions of lifetimes, at Einstein
squared (if you get my drift) without myself even beginning to touch That
which is beyond time and space. It is easy to claim that one has realized
That which is beyond time and space, but it ain’t necessarily so.
To accept a definition of God as only impersonal, as in “is one, is light, is love”, is folly, is foolish, is all to common, even when it is claimed as en-
lightment. It is a great example of claiming an effect to have an aspect
that its cause does not. I ask us to consider that perhaps God is, at once,
both personal and impersonal.
I know a sage, that is teaching me about who I am, beyond time and space, within time and space. He teaches that I am eternally the same person, wherever I am, but that I can definitely have a misconception about who I am, within time and space. He teaches that time and space are correlative phenomena, that the Supreme Person can easlily play with, as a child plays with a ball. (since I am from the Hoosier State, as in
Indiana, US, my teacher allows me to envision a child playing with a basketball)(to use the same metaphor, God is like Larry Bird and the lover
of God, is like, well myself, as a basketball player :>)).
The point is, to tango takes two. To share love, takes two. Either mater-
ially, or otherwise. Bliss can be shared by two persons, who know who they are. Beware of my speculations. Selah………………………
The Universe is no result of evolution, it is the product of the Divine Essence, God, reality in action.
God, the Divine Essence of all that has life and not life, It does not sit nor stand, it is neither up or down, it does not reside in space for it is space.
The Divine Essence is Dark Energy and Energy is Intelligence and intelligence is motion, and motion is Time, so the Divine Essence, God, it has no beginning nor an ending, it is the verification of infinity, a Divine Intelligence that is in perpetual motion of going and coming and coming and going.
The Divine Essence has no need to create, by its mere presence all things are visible and invisible To Be and Not Be.
All things carnal, is because of the choices made in the process of living life.
All Life is Divine, but living that life become what you choose for it to be while in the process of living.
The Divine Essence, God, It does not create, by its Divine presence, it produce what is to be visible and not visible, having no instruction for life and nor for the way you live it.
We all suffer or not, by the consequence from our life living action, which is based upon your decision and not the Divine Essence, God, which has no decision to make, just action to display.
Hoteph
Osiris
Chief Elder
Divine Santuary Of KaBa.
Can you hear the thud
our God has fallen from the sky
landed smack into you and me
a fools game not to have seen it all along
can you handle the pleasure and the pain
of knowing it’s useless to projectile all that blame…
to avoid is the void seen in every nightmare…
the dream letting go into that vast void
free falling unraveling loose from a gossamer veil
finding the answer was falling together
floating to a gentler landing
once thud shed free of humanities immature crud
no longer a cranky lonely super stud
but bridegroom to wholeness,
true holiness flooding blessings to blood…
Carol 7-13-12
In my opinion,it would be more appropriate to replace the word “falls out” in the title with “when God descends from beyond the sky”.
By doing this we begin to welcome him in the most respectable and majestic way. After all God is the almighty authority and so the least each one of us can do is to honour his incarnation in the most humble way.
Namaste
Harish
Is no one aware, of what goes on outside of thier safety zone (country, etc). Count your blessings.
There is still suffering, violence, murder, and most definetly WAR. Nothing has changed from the beginning of time, just the method and madness, believing we have evolved to a higher point, how egotistical mankind is.
If you took the time to read, and understand the words within the book, you would then realize what the Author is trying to convey. Go on, I encourage you to try it. Read it, understand, and pray.