When people think about the future, at least in many of the progressive circles that I move in, do you know what they think about? Gloom and doom. Generally, our collective future is imagined in relationship to many of the truly overwhelming global challenges that we’re facing, like climate change, environmental degradation, overpopulation, the threat of terrorism, and of course, the financial crisis. The question on a lot of people’s minds is, are we going to make it? What will happen to us if the planet really heats up and the polar icecaps melt and the oceans rise? What will happen to the biosphere when our increasing population growth becomes unsustainable? What can we do to prevent radical Islamist terrorists from eventually acquiring nuclear weapons? How will our financial system be able to survive an economic collapse in the Euro zone?

If only we could come together locally and globally to solve these enormous problems, we imagine, the future would appear to be much brighter than it looks right now. But I wonder . . . 

Imagine for a moment that in fact we were able to come to terms with and triumph over these global crises. Imagine a world utterly free from these pressing problems. And then imagine your own life and the lives of your extended family, friends, and acquaintances. Would it really be different? Would the deeper existential and spiritual challenges of the human experience be affected? I doubt it. We tend to think that once issues of survival and basic necessity are met, then all will be well. But it’s simply not true. 

I just got back from a lecture tour through northern Europe, where I was speaking to some of the luckiest people on the planet today. The standard of living in Sweden, Denmark, and Holland is truly a marvel and testament to human progress and prosperity. The promise of the Western Enlightenment has reached its zenith in these countries where the rights, freedoms, and privileges of the individual are historically unprecedented. Yet in spite of this, in my experience it is clear that in general the most fortunate among us are still quite lost when it comes to knowing what the next step is. In Scandinavia, it seems to me the majority of individuals are living the “good life” with shockingly little sense of their own good fortune. I go there every year and my consistent impression is that most people tend to be very busy with not much more than their personal lives.  

As we endeavor to find solutions to the very important issues threatening our collective survival, we also simultaneously need to be concerned about the future of our shared culture. Highly educated, thoughtful, sensitive men and women are gradually becoming more and more aware of the fact nobody seems to know how human life is supposed to be lived in this second decade of the 21^st century. That means the very structures that make up our shared culture, like our values, beliefs, customs, and even personal aspirations, seem ever-more-oddly out of step with the reality of the fact that time is moving faster and faster and that we live in an era of exponential change. Indeed, it seems the world we live in is changing more quickly than our outdated worldviews can keep up with. And that is creating cultural stagnation, both seen and unseen. 

Most of our shared modern and postmodern values tell us that in spite of our unprecedented prosperity, the human experience is still essentially about competition, survival, and ideally, attaining wealth and comfort. But could that possibly still be true for those of us who’ve rarely missed a meal or seriously worried whether we were going to have a roof over our heads? I think not. And yet, in so many ways, we haven’t caught up with our own good fortune. Most importantly, it hasn’t dawned on us yet that even if the larger global challenges that we’re facing were solved, we would still find ourselves in a cultural cul-de-sac in our personal and social lives. 

Of course, it’s critical that we face and respond to the overwhelming and very real challenges that threaten our survival. But to me it’s equally critical that we ask, “Where are we going?” Once all of our survival needs have been met, what’s the purpose, if there is any, of the human experience? In Scandinavia, for example, free time, the greatest gift of modernity, is now readily available to the multitudes. And yet most, it seems, aren’t sure exactly what to do with it. Should I go to the gym, go for a walk in the park, read a book, or go to the pub? Once we’ve acquired enough life experience to understand that romantic love, child-rearing, material abundance, and even creative fulfillment don’t necessarily solve the deepest questions of human meaning, what’s the next step? That’s what I believe more of us need to be concerned about. What’s the next step for you and me at the level of shared meaning and purpose? Who are we, why are we here, and most importantly, how should we make deeper sense out of the experience we’re having right now and will be having five, ten, or twenty years from now?

I certainly wouldn’t want to find myself in the painfully ironic position of waking up fifty years from now, and finding that as a result of technological innovation, we were on the other side of the biggest threats of the 21^st century, and yet had still no idea about what we were supposed to be doing with our lives besides having a pleasant ride.

_________________________________________________________________

Join Andrew Cohen for a free series of monthly broadcasts. The next one is on June 2nd, and will feature a dialogue with Ken Wilber. Register here. 

This article was originally posted on Andrew Cohen’s BigThink.com blog, “The Evolution of Enlightenment.”

Walking with my Mother, Luna, in Rishikesh shortly after my awakening in 1986:

Having dinner with my Mother, wife, and students in New York City several weeks ago:

Andrew Cohen: It’s rare for an individual to realize that he or she is literally on the edge of unknown territory. Most human beings are born and die within a preexistent cultural context that they don’t necessarily feel is up to them to define. But at this particular time in history, for new evolutionary stages, structures, and potentials to emerge, it requires heroic individuals who are willing to bear the emotional, psychological, philosophical, and spiritual overwhelm of realizing that they have to be real pioneers. Where we’re going now is uncharted territory. More and more people at this edge are working very hard to lay down these new structures, but the truth is that there’s no panel of experts or ascended masters who have already figured this out for us. This is something we’re all working through and need to work through together, with other individuals that have that same pioneering spirit and have awakened to the conviction that this needs to happen and we’re the ones who have to do it. This adds a certain kind of weight, gravitas, and, of course, excitement and thrill to the endeavor of spiritual transformation and evolution at this particular time.

Ken Wilber: Absolutely! That’s one of the things that makes being on an evolutionary edge so “good news/bad news.” On the one hand, it’s a pioneering edge; it’s being at a place that has more perspectives than previous positions, that sees more and embraces more and understands more. But it’s also a situation where, as you say, these things haven’t been figured out; they are all being tested as we go along. People are still trying to work into what the exact meaning is of a truly evolutionary enlightenment, a truly integral enlightenment. And there’s no book that gives us the final answer. It’s all being done right now in the hearts and minds of those individuals who are treading the path. That’s where the book is being written. And that also means that it can be very, very hard on individuals who are moving along this new path. And, as you say, there is no final tribunal, no court of judges or enlightened masters that have gone down this path before. We’re all making it up as we go along, but we’re grounded in our understanding, in our growth, in our inner development and realization.

The Guru & Pandit: Virtual Series

In each issue of EnlightenNext magazine, the dialogues between spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen (the Guru) and integral philosopher Ken Wilber (the Pandit) delivered mind-expanding investigations that consistently broke new ground. Now we’re pleased to announce that the Guru and the Pandit are back: In partnership with Integral Life, we’ll be hosting four new dialogues between Cohen and Wilber in 2012—live and online, as a series of audio conversations broadcast for free to thousands of listeners worldwide. Learn more and register »

A Guide to Freedom

Andrew Cohen just launched a brand new meditation audio called A Guide to Freedom: Discovering the True Purpose of Meditation. It’s a 90-minute audio, recorded from a recent retreat, in which Andrew guides you step-by-step on an experiential journey into the timeless depths of enlightened consciousness.

>>Click here to purchase and download now.

As we approach Earth Day, I’ve had some interesting thoughts about the science vs. religion, materialism vs. spirituality debate. Being a spiritual teacher myself, I generally tend to feel more aligned with mystical and religious sensibilities, because they assert that the spiritual dimension of life is the highest and most profound experience a human being can have. I share that conviction, and feel that it is the essential foundation for a life of meaning and purpose. That being said, when it comes to telling us how to relate to some of our biggest global challenges, I wonder if the most spiritually enlightened among us might be missing the boat right now.

Men and women of great spiritual commitment, whether they are realized Himalayan yogis, high Buddhist Lamas, wise and revered Rabbis, beloved Christian Priests, or ecstatic Sufi mystics, tend to emanate both a powerful positivity and an uplifting compassion. And it is their spiritual conviction—based upon either strong faith or direct mystical experience—that has made them, throughout human history, such important pillars of both solace and inspiration.

No matter what the tradition, their message to the multitudes tends to be that the world is mired in ignorance, whether that ignorance be called “lack of faith,” “materialism,” “delusion,” “egotism,” or just the absence of spiritual sensitivity. Mystics and yogis tell us that if we follow their prescription, sooner or later we will awaken from our ignorance to a higher, timeless dimension of consciousness in the here and now. And almost all of the traditional religions tell us that if we embrace their faith wholeheartedly, we will experience salvation and go to a better world when we die. 

But do we really need to transcend this world—through higher consciousness or life after death—to find a source of authentic faith and inspiration? Recently, I was told about three important new books that make very bold and provocative statements about the human experiment: they state unequivocally through extensive research that life conditions in our world are improving dramatically in just about every domain for more people than ever before in history. In fact, they tell us that our future looks brighter than we can imagine. Harvard psychologist and bestselling author Steven Pinker recently published an extraordinary tome, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence is Declining, that goes into exhaustive detail, arguing:

Believe it or not—and I know that most people do not—violence has declined over long stretches of time, and today we may be living in the most peaceable era in our species’ existence. The decline, to be sure, has not been smooth; it has not brought violence down to zero; and it is not guaranteed to continue. But it is an unmistakable development, visible on scales from millennia to years, from the waging of wars to the spanking of children.

In his 2005 book, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, Dr. Matt Ridley (former editor of The Economist) describes how life conditions on the planet have improved dramatically over the past 50 years:

In 2005 [as compared to 1955], the average human being on Planet Earth earned nearly three times as much money (corrected for inflation), ate one-third more calories of food, buried one-third as many of her children and could expect to live one-third longer. She was less likely to die as a result of war, murder, childbirth, accidents, tornadoes, flooding, famine, whooping cough, tuberculosis, malaria, diphtheria, typhus, typhoid, measles, smallpox, scurvy or polio. She was less likely, at any given age, to get cancer, heart disease or stroke. She was more likely to be literate and to have finished school. She was more likely to own a telephone, a flush toilet, a refrigerator and a bicycle. All this during a half- century when the world population has more than doubled, so that far from being rationed by population pressure, the goods and services available to the people of the world have expanded. It is, by any standard, an astonishing human achievement.

And finally, in their 2012 book, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think, Peter Diamandes and Steven Kotler make a compelling argument for how the extraordinary speed of technological development will affect our future for the better in ways that we can as-of-yet barely imagine. Making a case that we’re already well on our way, they point out that, “Right now a Masai warrior with a cell phone has better mobile phone capabilities than the president of the United States did twenty-five years ago.”

Ironically, enlightened masters and religious faiths—those traditional sources of moral courage and spiritual inspiration—with rare exceptions, almost universally tell us the opposite story: things are going from bad to worse. And with climate change, continued environmental degradation, and the very real potential for war in the Middle East, to name just a few of our looming planetary crises, they would appear to have a strong case. The remedy to our personal and collective challenges, they tell us, are the mystical truths realized through their spiritual practices or the mythical truths realized through accepting their faith. In the best cases, they say these realizations can spiritually empower us to roll up our sleeves and fight the good fight to save ourselves and our planet.

If the prophets of progress coming to us from fields as diverse as economics, psychology, and technological innovation are right, then we may have a non-metaphysical, non-faith-based source of hope and possibility for salvation in our midst. And this “good news” is based upon our own extraordinary achievements. This is not to deny (as all of the above authors have acknowledged in their work) that we have enormous problems to solve and unexpected disasters to face. It’s just that if they’re right, we have good reason to feel a lot better about ourselves and our collective future.

What if our mystics, enlightened ones, and great religious traditions incorporated the “good news” of progress into their perennial teachings of timeless wisdom? Maybe then they could inspire us not to fear the future, but to be even more deeply, spiritually motivated to create a better future—and in so doing, become unapologetically positive about our role as evolving human beings at this time in history.

_________________________________________________________________

Join me for a monthly series of free broadcasts exploring “The Art & Science of Stillness,” Evolutionary Enlightenment, and the evolution of consciousness and culture.

This article was originally posted on Andrew Cohen’s BigThink.com blog, “The Evolution of Enlightenment.”

I’m a 56-year-old Jewish Baby Boomer from Manhattan who became a spiritual seeker in my early twenties. Typical of so many of my generation, I looked for Enlightenment in the East, not the West. I traveled to India in 1984, and three years later, in a brief encounter with an extraordinary teacher, I found what I was looking for. Shortly thereafter, I started teaching myself and have been traveling the world doing just that ever since.

In the decades since, the East has been coming to the West, and vice versa. I recently returned from a teaching trip to India supported by the Times of India Foundation where I was launching the Indian edition of my new book, Evolutionary Enlightenment. I was speaking at schools, colleges, conference centers, bookstores, and ashrams. One thing became clear almost immediately after I arrived. The great surge of modernization in that ancient land is generating enormous stress for the multitudes who are striving to cash in on the new opportunities for prosperity. I could feel it most strongly when speaking to young people. They are under overwhelming pressure from their families to excel and conform: do well in school, get a good job, get married, have kids, send them to college, and—best case scenario—move to the USA so they can do it all in the promised land. Three decades earlier, I had come to India to find my soul. Now young Indians want to come to America to find material success.

The most revealing incident happened at my first talk at a college in Mumbai: I noticed that the title had been changed from “Spiritual Self-Confidence” to “Self-Confidence.” I was surprised—India has always seemed to me to be the one place in the world where no one has a problem with the word “spiritual.” When I inquired as to why it had been removed, the organizers informed me that if they used the word “spiritual” in the title, young people wouldn’t come. “Spirituality is for grandparents,” I was told.

So, in my talks, which many young Indians did attend, I found myself in the odd position of explaining to them that India’s great gift to the world has been her rich spirituality and that her greatest luminaries have been powerfully enlightened men and women who all, in one way or another, courageously bucked the status quo in pursuit of their own higher development. I emphasized how rare and challenging it is to become a truly independent agent in this world. That was why, in every talk I explained how, unknowingly, we are all conditioned—by our families, culture, and the times in which we’re living—to see the world in the way we do. That was why I asked them, “Do you ever think for yourself about the meaning of your life? Are you thinking your own thoughts, in the way that your culture’s greatest luminaries have done?”

Shortly after arriving back from India, I led a week-long retreat in the Mojave desert in southern California. People came from all over the world, including Australia and Europe. But what was most intriguing to me was that two Asian women familiar with my work came all the way from Taiwan to spend that week with me exploring the depths of meditative stillness and the secrets of consciousness. The world really is getting smaller and more integrated and more incredible every day, I marveled. If fifty years ago you were to tell somebody that Americans would teach Enlightenment in India and that Asian seekers would come to California to learn about what the Buddha taught from an American Jew, they would never have believed you. I can hardly believe it myself.

_________________________________________

This article was originally posted on Andrew Cohen’s BigThink.com blog, “The Evolution of Enlightenment.”

The Guru & Pandit Virtual Series

On June 2nd, 2012, Andrew Cohen & Ken Wilber will lead the first of a new four-part series of webcasts together. Building off the decade-plus-long dialogue in the pages of EnlightenNext magazine, the two are bringing their inquiry into the virtual sphere with a series of free broadcasts that will allow you to join them in exploring the leading edge of consciousness and culture (including Q&A).

>>Click here to register now.