July 29, 2012
Taking God Seriously
It’s a big challenge being a spiritual teacher in a secular culture. What could be more disconcerting than being a religious authority in a world where there is no consensus about whether God actually exists! In traditional cultures at least, there was some agreement as to who God was and where He lived and how He could be reached. But for those of us who live in a post-traditional worldspace, the Creator has long since disappeared from the sky above, and with Him has vanished any sense of that which is higher than, or transcendent to, our earthly existence.
The rational values of the culture that we live in may have freed us from the myths of the past, but unfortunately they have also undermined our capacity to have any faith in the unseen metaphysical domains of our innermost interiors. So any individuals who are bold enough or crazy enough to assume the position of being representatives of that which is transcendent, within this culture of secular relativism and scientific materialism, are putting themselves in a very difficult position indeed.
I remember soon after I became a committed seeker in my early twenties being asked by a casual acquaintance what I “did.” After briefly describing to him my day job, I then proceeded to explain what I was really up to and what I was trying to attain. His puzzled look seemed to go on forever. Then there was the beautiful blonde I’d been flirting with at around that same time. All was going well until we went out to dinner one fateful evening and I inevitably shared my passion for enlightenment and higher consciousness and spoke of how fascinated and compelled I was by all the Eastern masters I was meeting and spending time with. That was the last time I ever saw her.
Awakened men and women are those who have recognized spiritual domains as being more real and true than anything else. But if our shared culture doesn’t have the eyes to see what they see and know what they know, such men and women usually end up being perceived as irrational, self-deceived, and deluded—as representatives of the false. Indeed, authentic holders of timeless spiritual truths are often thought to be hucksters and con artists because they boldly dare to bear witness to the unseen.
In the ancient premodern world, that ultimate context was validated by shared myths and religious beliefs and was empowered by the supercharged energy of awakened consciousness in inspired prophets and seers. Today we no longer have myths to rely on to validate our spiritual illumination. I believe that together we need to create a post-traditional consensus about the great significance and place of Deep Interiority in the human experience that makes sense for our time in history. In order to achieve this, it has to be generated by those of us who have seen beyond the veil of appearances and have experienced those deeper metaphysical domains to such a profound degree that we’re willing to bear witness in public. But to be taken seriously, we must do so in a way that points us not only beyond the myth and superstition of the ancients but also beyond the naïve idealism predominant in so much of New Age thinking. We must be ruthless in our rationality in order to authentically transmit the light of trans-rational Spirit in the twenty-first century. This is an enormous task, but our willingness to take it on will slowly but surely make a profound difference.
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This post was originally published on Andrew Cohen’s BigThink.com blog, The Evolution of Enlightenment
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Image: Michelangelo’s ‘Creation’
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Andrew Cohen is a spiritual teacher, cultural visionary, founder of EnlightenNext, and the author of 
Thank you. I feel as though you are directly speaking to me and Im listening.
Ive shared personal stories of a miracle, mystical experiences & collective consciousness that I’ve experienced with people & have seen how moved they were.
I am writing a book, It is a compilation of stories from 2000 – 2012. It focuses on the development & immersion of interior space.
Through studies on transcendental awareness, , integrating passions of mysticism & consciousness they seem too important to dismiss in this evolving life. .I am expecting to have my book done by the end of August. I would be honored if you can read it , My goal is to reach mainstream.. Your teachings have been walking this path with me & showed up in very cool ways.
Namaste Andrew,
It is good that you have demonstrated honesty and confessed of the negative karma you performed in ignorance and innocence. The fact that an elevated soul like you too became a victim of the evil spirits just goes to show how Maya does not leave anyone alone.
The burden of that negative karma definatlly has to reduce now that you have confessed in front of the merciful souls that are the incognito right hands of that most merciful father,the incorporeal one that everyone is searching for.
Whilst playing his role of a teacher,he is most entertaining and wants us all his children to be intensive effort makers that are not so serious,but full of lightness and easiness.
That day that you long for is not too far now,when people of the whole world will say: “he is the one,he is the one that we have been waiting for!”
Regards
Harish
Hi Andrew,
I have been afraid to speak my truth for the reasons that you put forth. How do we stand true to what we believe and not sounds like a new age nut?! It is a difficult balance and I look forward to reading your book and hopefully become enlightened as to the best way to put my view forward. Thank you for a great post!
“Awakened men and women are those who have recognized spiritual domains as being more real and true than anything else.” Hmmmm.
In my experience of awakening, there is no separation of a “spiritual domain” from anything else or some other “domain”. For me, one “domain” could not be more real or more true than the other, nor could a person be more awake, nor more spiritual, nor more enlightened than another. That would be my mind and ego when it believes in separation.
It is ALL spiritual domain and to believe otherwise is an illusion of separation. That illusion of separation too is a divine experience and is so very blessed. Every blessed nano second and every single worldy manifestation, every seemingly “unenlightened” person or experience is sacred in how it calls us back to Spirit if we overcome the illusion of separation from it. We are IT. We are everything that we see and experience. In that, LOVE is born. No separation. No guru, no method, no teacher, no student, no person to be more awake than, no God in the sky, just what Is. The big, I AM.
In that experience, love and peace and connection with all others is sacred and infinite.
Betsy speaks beautifully of the Absolute…the energy of simple, pure, sweet, immensely creative…Andrew speaks in the Relative…energy where thought, heart and action get filtered through an individual ego remembering oneself as part and parcel of the Absolute…”here” is what we together co-create, transmit together, or so these mere words of my ego are trying to understand as I filter the All and you’al through my vessel.
What a wonder of being…
Surely trans-rational spirituality in the twenty-first century requires that we drop the god talk once and for all.
May I offer this perhaps controversial perspective?
Finally waking up to the fact that there are no absolute or pre-existing rules to follow is the only enlightenment. To realise we are having to make this up in the moment is Nirvana. Samsara is the playground in which the absolute emptiness and ground of being creates itself.
Any god we can imagine other than the one (or ones) we are aware that we are projecting and creating is pure illusion and takes us away from the truh of who and what we are.
To the mythic I ask, if there was a heaven, nirvana, bliss state, astral plane of perfection more meaningful, permanent and stable than the condition the universe is in right now then where is it?
Surely we would have reached it by now. Surely we would be in ‘that’ rather than ‘this’ condition. After all we’ve had an ‘eternity’ before this universe was created to work it out. So it must follow that there can’t possibly exist any pre-determined rules or instructions created by some external or internal, pre-existing, perfect god for us to follow to create a perfect universe full of meaning and purpose.
Why?
Because, how could there be rules and instructions to follow if the perfect universe hasn’t existed before? Otherwise where is it now?
After all, the fact that we exist in this universe only proves that if there were (and are) more universes different to ours, there must be more than one set of rules and instructions. If not, then surely there would be just one universe in existence with one set of rules? And we would be that, here and now. Maybe we are, so nothing more to be done.
As there is unlikely to be any pre-determined, absolute rules to follow, we should view the words of any prophets of god (magic, mythic, rational or integral) purporting to show us the ‘one true’ way with suspicion.
The energy and intelligence of the universe is doing it’s stuff. We are that process. There is no need for ideas of god because there are no genuine questions to answer. Existential questions are creations of the finite mind and simply move us away from what we truly are. An INFINITE being only able to manifest in FINITE forms.
There is no need for ‘why’ question for something that just IS. Only ‘how’ questions to be answered by creative ideas.
There are no meaning questions required for something that is the absolute ground and container for all that IS. It is beyond meaning. Only stories to help us experience a beautiful evolution of becoming, met by creative ideas.
There is an infinite and eternal conflict that is the source of Eros and creativity. A profound, primal anxiety that contracts into itself and instantly expands creating itself as matter (exterior) and awareness (interior) in a process of eternal becoming. It is the conflict within an INFINITE being only able to manifest in FINITE forms involved and entagled in a variety of Atman projects.
We are all transitional expressions of that process. But there is no final destination. No prizes at the end of a rainbow other than relative and finite rewards. How can there be anything else?
So please…no gods required.
Namaste
It is difficult to be thought of as “irrational, self-deceived and delusional.” We care what people think about us because it hurts to be separated by our differences. It’s not easy to let go of our beliefs but you don’t have a choice. You have let go of the concept of God being out there as creator and us being created beings when you have the extraordinary experience of being a part of Him.
As I clicked on the ‘God’ link in your blog and read the definition of God, I wanted to add some food for thought from the mystical level experiences of a traditional belief system. There are those who have had the experience of being spoken to by God and as a result relationships with friends and family members were broken when this experience evolved their belief system and they had to reinterpret the teachings. Another common experience that causes division, that has been happening for Christians since the time when Jesus left, is people receiving the gift of tongues where God speaks through them in different languages.
What I would like to propose, looking at this from an evolutionary viewpoint, is that God is not a separate being but He is a separate person, in the same way that we are separate people, communicating with everyone in many different ways depending on their belief system or where they are in their evolutionary process. He can and does speak words like He did to Moses from a burning bush, but mostly He just enters into our thoughts teaching us and guiding us and may or may not make His presence known. If this is truth and you add it to the post-modern thought, it means that you embrace both that we all part of God’s being, that He is “the energy and intelligence” that we are co-creating with, and He is also a separate person like us who we can have a conversation with.
The post-modern world has understandably thrown out the traditional definition of God because of what unenlightened men have done to Him. There are pastors who teach that if you do not have the gift of tongues, you are not saved. There are others who teach people to have the gift which means they are babbling nonsense and it’s not the higher function that humans have. This has been a very wrong thing to do to people and it has caused great division in Christianity adding to the many religious misguided causes down through the centuries that have resulted in some of the worst atrocities inflicted on human beings in history. Most pastors dogmatically teach that the only truth is in the Bible but the Christian mystic knows that truth is found by integrating teachings that are found in all spiritual and religious teachings.
All mystics have a certainty that the realness of the unseen is as real as the physical mind perceives the physical world but when it comes to their interpretation of the spiritual experiences, what it is begins as an unknown and. That unknowing has to evolve into an understanding of what enlightenment is and what the evolutionary process is. In order to have that, to have dogmatic certainty about what is the truth about God, what we are, what is happening to us, and where it’s all going, requires this inner quiet communication with God which will complete the evolutionary process as you become one with His mind and find what it is in each of the religious and spiritual places, as well as directly from Him that we put together in order to have truth.
Mr. Cohen,
It is also a big challenge being a parent in a secular culture. As parents we feel disconnected from the religious traditions of American culture and yet find no meaningful myths and stories to relate to our children their own transcendent depths. How to respond to my sons inquiry – Is God Real? Where might we find some meaningful myths/stories to inspire our own childrens search?