August 7, 2012
No End
In an evolutionary context, development has no end. That means we can always
develop more, further, higher, and deeper. In Traditional Enlightenment, it’s possible to become “fully enlightened.” In Buddhism, they call it “cessation” or “the end of becoming.” In Evolutionary Enlightenment there is no final resting point—it is about infinite becoming for eternity.
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Andrew Cohen is a spiritual teacher, cultural visionary, founder of EnlightenNext, and the author of 
I think that is the delight and disaster of humanity; self reflexive consciousness. We can all step back and think, feel, experience about our previous thoughts, feelings and experience… Depth upon depth, ‘depthvelopment’. I love the futile and critical opportunity offered so strong, yet held so lightly in evolutionary enlightenment.
Andrew’s “No End” perspective is consistent with/ very similar to
British physicist-philosopher David Deutsch’s “Beginning of Infinity,”
http://beginningofinfinity.com/
In Buddhism, the Heart Sutra makes a thorough statement as to
“cessation” as the purity of Absolute, and further presents that there is NO end to the expression in form. The Bodhisattva vows are expressing
“However innumerable, However inexhaustible, However immeasureable, However endless…”, and therefore, the dissolve into “no resting place”.
Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form. For me, the liberation of Practice is that it is never a done deal, and the thorough surrender unto the NATURAL orientation of the Heart’s Longing to be inside the interCONNECTED matrix of Life….as What Is….
This quote is so important and so wonderful… Please share it with Russ Volckmann, who was a presenter on EnlightenmentConference.com and quoted Andrew differently. It reminds me perhaps of the different evolving understandings of Ken Wilber that have come to be called Wilber 1-2-3-….going into Infinity!
I cant agree with the assessment of buddhist enlightenment as a static state of consciousness. In my experience with Zen and other forms of Mahayana Buddhism great emphasis is placed on what happens after initial enlightenment. Especially in Zen,there are many warnings about becoming complacent with satori. In fact,tone os exhorted to even greater effort exerted to go deeper into the realms of enlightenment,and if you begin to think you are enlightened you have lost hold of it.
Curious as to why you think that there is this difference in viewpoints. Have i mistook the teachings that i have recieved or have you not gone into the subject deep enough to discver these teachings. Or is there another possibility.
But as you well know the Bodhisatwa spirit and oaths to help ALL beings into enligthenment–and SAVE the totality of the ALLNESS—seems to me a further commitment towards further and deeper realizations–so a ENDLESS BEGINNING comes to the fore—its about the division between Hinayana—Mahayana—Tantrayana—and further into SAHAJA–Dog Chen–CHAN—Sufism etc
There is both “cessation” AND “becoming for eternity.” As Ngakpa Chogyam adroitly points out: “It appears as a paradox to a mind full of dualistic experiential agoraphobia. The vastness of intrinsic space encompasses every polarity. Liberated energies arise naturally as the dynamic functions of ubiquitous intelligence and complete openness.
Perhaps without the straight-jacketed concepts of either/or, i.e., “cessation” and “becoming for eternity”, what’s present is free ecstatic energy. Without the recognition of both/and: emptiness or pure open awareness cannot integrate with all “becoming”, and thus we can’t hope to be completely liberated in our emotions for example, and realise them as the wisdom dance of everything that arises. With both/and, the field of energy is unconditioned and refrenceless. There is no cardinal direction because it is simultaneously all directions and no direction.
In reality it’s not possible to divide “cessation” and “eternal becoming” because they are totally interdependent and indivisible. Some separate them in order to understand something about enightenment and unenlightenment, as if enlightenment and unenlightenment were two different things that could truly be separated.
In the ecstatic presence of both/and: there’s a raw tingling; both absolutely and relatively real, relentlessly real as opposed to anal-retentively unreal. There is an inherent capacity not to attempt to manufacture the context in which things get done because their completion is implicit in their inception. It is beginningless and endless enlightenment. it’s the wisdom of equanimity, equality, discriminating awareness, self-accomplishing action, and brilliant pervasive intelligence in all-encompassing space. It’s the discovery of something brilliant – and wonderfully shocking, even in something as mundane as observing the sky and the wind in the trees.”
So how much heat are you getting Andrew from the “old school” realizers about this stance?
In the late 90s I dared to propose what you are saying here on various message boards and got roasted and toasted by those “older and wiser” than I. I certainly had to consider that I had not “gone deep enough” (as was suggested to me) to know what I was talking about. Even when the first Integral message boards opened up, I still got slammed for taking your ontological position.
Then you and Ken had the “Does God Evolve?” conversation in your mag and I finally felt like I was not on an island of one (pardon the pun).
But I would imagine that those who have attachment to the oldest esoteric wisdom teachings are not going to go down without a cat fight over this one? Or are people starting to come around to the idea that when it comes to the evolution of consciousness, there is no rest, no end point. Creation just keeps seeking out novelty. That’s what it does.
i always believe that the entire evolutionary process is about the journey and not the end. in the process you make your choices, have experiences and then just be grateful for all the opportunities.
Always thought that boundaries were arbitrary—commonly consented to
within a culture. Thanks for the affirmation.
Andrew, you say ” it is about infinite becoming for eternity “. That to me means that if it is “infinite” there is no beginning and no end.
Yet, in other postings you indicate that evolution started 14 billion years.
So, what is it ? Becoming with a beginning and end, or infinite Being ?
Is it possible that there is an involution of a fragment of the Infinite into the material space / time and an evolutionary return to the infinite ?
exactamundo!
Andrew’s NO END post reveals the infinite conclusion of a SPECULATOR
The foundation of “infinite becoming” is infinity itself. As Adya puts it: it’s emptiness dancing.
Again, calling on Ngakpa Chogyam for some potential “evolutionary clarity”:
“Now that we have described how emptiness and multiplicity are inseparable, we need to be able to tease these two indistinghishable aspects apart – in order to understand our own dualistic condition. We need to be able to tease them apart; but at the same time undertand that this is, in essence, an impossible operation. So there is BOTH the singular non-duality of emptiness, AND the multiplistic appearances of form.
It is when we construct forms as existing separately from emptiness that we create the illusion of becoming enmeshed in the impossible process of trying to keep them separate. This is yet another form of dualism.
How do we become so enmeshed as such? What is this experience of being enmeshed? We become enmeshed, because we take non-dual multiplistic appearances to be separate from the non-dual singularity of the emptiness from which they arise. If we cease to identify with the singularity of the non-dual ground, and attach to non-dual appearances, as if they were separate from it – we create the illusion of duality.”
“There is BOTH non-duality and the appearance of duality. There is non-duality, because emptiness and form are indivisible. There is the appearance of duality – because it is possible in the field of all possibilities to become mistakenly (overly) identified with tangible manifestations of the intangible.”
“Emptiness is creative in its essence, and continually gives rise to the world of all phenomena. Emptiness, “the great mother” or the “womb of pure potentiality” can be viewed as the creative space from which all phenomena arises. This pure potentiality is the source of inspiration, the source of inchoate activity – action that defies linearity and fixed coordinates. It’s pure spontaneity. The other aspect is to view the phenomenal world as the play of form. It’s the source of compassionate activity – the action that channels energy and glvanises situations for the benefit of everyone and everything, evrywhere.”
“Form is transitory in its nature. It arises out of emptiness. Emptiness gives birth to form, and form – performs – dances. Form embodies the qualities of compassionate activity – if it’s authentic and based on (the realization of) pure open awareness. What arises is spacious passion in passionate space. The dance is our constant field of opportunity. Then every situation holds these inspirational qualities because they are aware of the empty nature of themselves and the world they perceive, as well as being madly in love with our beginningless enlightenment in the endless empty nature of ‘the dance.’”
“Emptiness and ‘the dance’ are not the same thing – it’s simply that they’re not different.
Example: the water element is both anger and clarity, and this is the important point – according to who is perceiving it. It’s not about only intellectual understanding. It’s the existential poetry of being, and of existence. It’s both tragedy and comedy, both samsara and nirvana. We have to go beyond separate and non-separate – this is the “vision” – the realization that our energies themselves are beginningless – and enlightened. They simply reflect each other as the essential glow of phenomena. Everything whispers very lucidly about its perfect luminosity. It’s the way a tomato has of being red in such a luridly provocative manner.” 
In Hinduism, Nataraj is “emptiness dancing.”
Find a photo and you’ll see it. 
Whew! And so it goes…. 
The very term ‘evolutionary’ is indicative of continual change. So, evolutionary enlightment means the enlightment which is incessantly evolving without reaching a final destination. The moment it arriveds at a final point, the evolution ceases. So, there is no end ever. Perhaps it’s the universal law.
What includes both cessation and non-cessation? What is it that’s beyond both cessation and non-cessation? I’ll meet you there – as Rumi quips.
Isn’t becoming fully enlightened or the end of becoming, the same as the ground of being in evolutionary enlightenment. Whenever we return back into the ground of being, we cease to become and we become fully enlightened, but then we choose to become again so we start another developmental process, and that process never existed before that. So we choose to give up being fully enlightened so that we can save more beings through our development. Because being fully enlightened is really only great for us, but it does not touch the world. The world is part of becoming, and by entering into becoming we choose to transform the world.
End of becoming, Enlightenment is heaven on earth.
Going it let end and to become again appears to start again that restllessness.
Pl. explain.
It’s all such a gloriously exciting concept that we are part of something that is, has, and will be evolving forever. I like what Layla (?) said about living our life joyously and responsibly, making choices, experienceing life and being grateful for the opportunities offered (or that just happened to come along). No regrets.
Love,