Joel Pitney is an Associate Editor for EnlightenNext magazine. Follow him on Twitter @JoelPitney.
An Interview with Jean M. Twenge
There’s a plague sweeping our planet: Millions of individuals who grew up in the self-reflective afterglow of the 1960s are now hopelessly stuck on themselves. But it doesn’t have to be this way, says Dr. Jean Twenge, shining light on the difference between narcissism and true self-esteem.
Next up in our Spiritual Masters Series is the great “non-teacher,” Jiddu Krishnamurti. This south Indian native was adopted at the age of 11 by Dr. Annie Besant, then President of the Theosophical Society, and groomed to be what she called the next “World Teacher,” a role that he would ultimately renounce in 1929. Though he travelled and lectured around the world about his post-traditional Dharma of transformation to hundreds of thousands of people, he explicitly said that he was not a Guru and said that seekers were better to look within themselves for the truth than to a teacher. Nevertheless, his teachings inspired millions and he is known as one of the most significant spiritual and philosophical minds of the 20th century. Continue reading…
We all need courage and inspiration when walking the path of spiritual transformation. We all need authentic examples of the greater possibilities and potentials that await us on the other side of spiritual commitment and sacrifice. Few individuals have done more to exemplify and inspire greatness than Indian teacher Swami Sivananda. In the mid-twentieth century, he became one of India’s most respected luminaries, and was part of the Bengali Renaissance. His uncompromising message of spiritual self-actualization motivated hundreds of thousands in his homeland and abroad. Among his students, many of whom became significant figures in their own lifetimes, were the great philosopher-mystic Swami Krishnananda, the world-traveling saint Swami Chidananda Maharaj, the great yogis Swami Vishnudevananda and Swami Satchidananda, and the list goes on.
To read more about the extraordinary life of Swami Sivananda, and listen to his words of inspiration, click the image or link below:
View our post about Swami Sivananda on the EnlightenNext Editors’ Blog »
One of the best testaments to the life and work of any individual is the quality of the human beings they’ve inspired. And it may be impossible to identify a more illumined and radiant legacy than that of the great 20th century Indian Guru Swami Sivananda, founder of the Divine Life Society in the holy himalayan city of Rishikesh. Counted among Sivananada’s deeply Enlightened students were the great philosopher mystic Swami Krishnananda, the world-traveling saint Swami Chidananda Maharaj, the great yogis Swami Vishnudevananda and Swami Satchidananda, and the list goes on. On March 26th, Andrew Cohen will be speaking to one of the few remaining human beings to have known and served Swami Sivananda, the current President of the Divine Life Society, Swami Vimilananda. The interview will be one among many during the “Awakening to Your Highest Self” virtual celebration of Cohen’s 25th anniversary as a teacher. Continue reading…
In addition to the many spiritual masters who will be featured in the “Awakening to Your Highest Self” virtual celebration on March 26th, EnlightenNext founder Andrew Cohen will also be interviewing a handful of people who fall into the category of “cultural visionaries” about the great men and women who inspired them.
One such visionary is “Spiral Wizard” Don Beck. Beck is famous for perfecting and applying a model for understanding personal and cultural change called “Spiral Dynamics.” His work and his character have been deeply influence by his mentor, the great 20th century psychologist Clare W. Graves, with whom he worked very closely during the last 12 years of Graves’ life.
To get a sense of Beck’s work, which was profoundly influenced by Graves, check out this comprehensive interview we did with Beck in EnlightenNext magazine. He gives a full overview of his and Graves’ work.
Click here to read the article.
Click here to register for the free online celebration, “Awakening to Your Highest Self: Tales of Transformation from 25 Spiritual Luminaries.”
One of the most fascinating stories of spiritual mentorship that we’ll be hearing about during Andrew Cohen’s March 26th broadcast, “Awakening to Your Hightest Self: Tales of Transformation from 25 Spiritual Luminaries,” is that of human potential pioneer Jean Houston. After a chance encounter with the great French Jesuit Priest and evolutionary mystic Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in Central Park in 1951 when she was only 14, Houston began a relationship with de Chardin that shaped the rest of her life.
To get a sense of Teilhard’s cosmic theology, here’s an excerpt from The Divine Milieu: An Essay on the Interior Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1965):
Where are the roots of our being? In the first place they plunge back and down into the unfathomable past. How great is the mystery of the first cells which were one day animated by the breath of our souls! How impossible to decipher the welding of successive influences in which we are forever incorporated! In each one of us, through matter, the whole history of the world is in part reflected. And however autonomous our soul, it is indebted to an inheritance worked upon from all sides—before ever it came into being—by the totality of the energies of the earth: it meets and rejoins life at a determined level. Then, hardly has it entered actively into the universe at that particular point than it feels, in its turn, besieged and penetrated by the flow of cosmic influences which have to be ordered and assimilated. Let us look around us: the waves come from all sides and from the farthest horizon. Through every cleft the world we perceive floods us with its riches—food for the body, nourishment for the eyes, harmony of sounds and fullness of the heart, unknown phenomena and new truths, all these treasures, all these stimuli, all these calls, coming to us from the four corners of the world, cross our consciousness at every moment. What is their role within us? What will their effect be, even if we welcome them passively or indistinctly, like bad workmen? They will merge into the most intimate life of our soul and either develop it or poison it. We only have to look at ourselves for one moment to realise this, and either feel delight or anxiety. If even the most humble and most material of our foods is capable of deeply influencing our most spiritual faculties, what can be said of the infinitely more penetrating energies conveyed to us by the music of tones, of notes, of words, of ideas? We have not, in us, a body which takes its nourishment independently of our soul. Everything that the body has admitted and has begun to transform must be transfigured by the soul in its turn. The soul does this, no doubt, in its own way and with its own dignity. But it cannot escape from this universal contact nor from that unremitting labour. And that is how the characteristic power of understanding and loving, which will form its immaterial individuality, is gradually perfected in it for its own good and at its own risk. We hardly know in what proportions and under what guise our natural faculties will pass over in the final act of the vision of God. But it can hardly be doubted that, with God’s help, it is here below that we give ourselves the eyes and the heart which a final transfiguration will make the organs of a power of adoration, and of a capacity for beatification, particular to each individual man and woman among us.
Click here to register for the free online celebration, “Awakening to Your Highest Self: Tales of Transformation from 25 Spiritual Luminaries.”
The next in our series of posts on spiritual masters features attorney and international nuclear disarmament advocate Jonathan Granoff. Granoff will be one of 25 different religious and cultural visionaries who will be speaking with Andrew Cohen about their own spiritual teachers during the “Awakening to Your Highest Self” virtual celebration on Saturday, March 26th.
Granoff’s teacher is the great Sri Lankan Sufi mystic, Bawa Muhaiyaddeen–one of the 20th century’s greatest spiritual masters. Continue reading…
The first in our series of posts about contemporary spiritual masters is India’s Swami Chidanand Saraswati. I had the honor of meeting Swamiji at the Parmarth Niketan Ashram (of which he is the President) in the sacred himalayan city of Rishikesh in early 2010. I was at the Ashram accompanying EnlightenNext founder Andrew Cohen (my own spiritual teacher), who had been invited by the Swami to participate in his annual Yoga Conference.
As you’ll see in the following video, Continue reading…
Many of us have had the good fortune to meet genuine spiritual masters and teachers as we’ve pursued the path to higher development—extraordinary men and women who have the ability to awaken us to the Absolute, revealing possibilities that were previously unimaginable and opening our eyes to eternity. On March 25th, 1986, EnlightenNext founder Andrew Cohen experienced a profound spiritual awakening through his close relationship with his teacher, the acclaimed master of Advaita Vedanta, H.W.L. Poonja, and shortly thereafter became a teacher himself.
Ever since that life-changing encounter, Continue reading…
The issue of cultural evolution is still a controversial one. Have human beings really evolved in the last several millennia? Pointing to the violence of the two world wars and the environmental destruction caused by industrial civilization, some suggest that humanity has not progressed in the last couple of centuries but may have even stepped backwards.
But statistics tell a different story. At least that’s the message of the following clip from a recent BBC show, The Joy of Stats. In it, Professor Hans Rosling charts over a hundred thousand points of data and comes up with a unique presentation that is one of the most inspiring, original, and eye-opening four minutes that we have ever seen.
