Andrew Cohen: Spiritual Teacher | Big Think

Andrew Cohen: Spiritual Teacher

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One conversation suddenly gave meaning to the word “God.”

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Andrew Cohen:

Andrew Cohen is an American spiritual teacher, bestselling author, and founder of the global nonprofit EnlightenNext and its award-winning publication, EnlightenNext magazine. His original teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment redefines spiritual awakening within the context of cosmic evolution and highlights a new understanding of God or Spirit as the creative impulse toward change in both self and culture.

His bestselling book, Evolutionary Enlightenment: A New Path to Spiritual Awakening is the product of his 26 years of work and has garnered praise from some of today’s leading spiritual and cultural figures as one of the most important spiritual works of our time. Andrew lives and works at the EnlightenNext headquarters in Western Massachusetts and spends much of his time travelling around the world giving retreats, seminars, and public talks about Evolutionary Enlightenment.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: How did you become a spiritual teacher?

Andrew Cohen: Well, the way I became a spiritual teacher is I first had a spontaneous spiritual revelation when I was 16 years old and why this was- it was interesting is because I was brought up in a secular Jewish household in New York so the word “God” didn’t mean anything to me but I was- when I was 16 I was sitting up late one night having a conversation with my mother. We were living in Rome, Italy, at the time and for some reason that I can’t describe--I don’t know why it happened because what happened had nothing to do with what we were speaking about--the doors of perception suddenly opened and it’s difficult to describe this in words but what happened was I suddenly became aware of the whole universe and I realized that the whole universe was one living being that was aware of itself, the nature of this being was a kind of impersonal absolute love that was physically unbearable to experience; it was absolutely overwhelming. I knew in that moment that there was no such thing as death. It became apparent that no matter which point in space I would ever be at I would always be in the same place and I also knew then that if I pursued what was revealing itself to me, if I pursued this event, that I would have nothing to fear. So that was the beginning the night I was 16 and I didn’t know what to make of it and when I was 22 after wanting to- spending some years wanting to be a musician I- this original experience was haunting me because there was something that happened that needed to be pursued. So when I was 22 I made up my mind to do anything and everything I could to rediscover what had visited me unexpectedly and I became a seeker when I was 22 and I did all the things that seekers do, and when I was 27-1/2 I met a teacher in India that- to whom I described what originally happened to me and he affirmed the original experience. And that- because he was so- such a powerfully awakened individual that catalyzed a reawakening and I became overwhelmed by a powerful surge of consciousness and energy and that was really when the teaching started I- at that- almost overnight. When I would start describing to people what was happening to me they mysteriously and miraculously would become absorbed in the same state of consciousness I was so that’s- and that was 22 years ago.

Question: What philosophies and religions have influenced you?

Andrew Cohen: Well, originally I think I was very influenced by the Eastern notion of enlightenment. That had a very big effect on the way that I thought about spiritual evolution but over the last ten years or so I have become very interested in the whole concept of evolution as it relates to the whole notion of development in time and through time. So while I had been very influenced by Eastern ideas, the teaching of evolutionary enlightenment, which is part of a whole new- the whole new school of thought of evolutionary spirituality, which is very influenced by Western thinking which is based upon the discovery of deep time,

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