Steve McIntosh on “Evolutionary Enlightenment”
by Tom HustonIntegral philosopher Steve McIntosh weighs in on EnlightenNext founder Andrew Cohen’s new book, Evolutionary Enlightenment: A New Path to Spiritual Awakening…
Andrew Cohen’s important new book, Evolutionary Enlightenment, demonstrates spiritual evolution on every page. Rooted in the venerable soil of Eastern nondual teachings, while simultaneously expressing an emerging new form of evolutionary spirituality, Cohen’s insights provide rich nourishment for the discerning seeker. Evolutionary Enlightenment clarifies what it means to transcend one’s ego and sheds new light on the true nature of the self. Moreover, this deep yet accessible book effectively integrates the science of evolution and the new integral philosophy of development into a livable form of spirituality that will transform all who practice it.
Even though my personal spirituality is rooted more in the Western theistic tradition than the Eastern nondual tradition, I nevertheless find Cohen’s teachings to be compatible with my own sense of spiritual truth. And I am especially grateful for his discussion of cultural evolution in Part IV of the book, with its emphasis on using our spirituality to catalyze the emergence of a higher form of civilization. Cohen himself has evolved considerably since his last book was published ten years ago, and his current teachings now reflect the leading edge of spiritual evolution in our society. Evolutionary Enlightenment is a modern-day masterpiece—a splendid contribution to the new field of evolutionary spirituality.
—Steve McIntosh, author of Evolution’s Purpose, and Integral Consciousness
In spiritual evolution, there are no guarantees. Life is unpredictable. So this path requires both an unconditional commitment to victory and enormous patience. If we are very serious about this endeavor, we have to become the exemplars ourselves. It has to start with our own unconditional commitment to victory, knowing that there are no guarantees. The very fact that there are no guarantees underlines how urgent our commitment is, because we don’t know how much time we each have to do this. We don’t know how long we’re going to be here. So the worst thing we can do is to waste time. Traditional enlightenment is about going beyond time, but Evolutionary Enlightenment is about doing something in time, because evolution can only happen in time. Therefore, don’t waste time. From the perspective of evolution, time is the most precious commodity. Time is all we have to develop. Many of us have been culturally trained to spend an enormous amount of time worrying about our psychological needs and desires, our ego’s fears and concerns. And this is understandable, but the problem is that it robs us of time that could be used to participate in life in a much deeper way. If you have the strength and clarity to look at your own life from this perspective, you won’t want to allow yourself to waste time, because you will realize you are wasting the precious chance you actually have to evolve.
I don’t believe the purpose of life is to just be happy. Why would God take fourteen billion years to produce highly evolved sentient life forms that would ultimately develop the extraordinary capacity for self-reflective awareness, simply in order for them to be able to experience happiness? It’s my conviction that we are here for a reason, that there is a grand and great purpose to our presence in this universe, and that none of us are going to truly find what we are looking for unless we get over our misguided pursuit of personal happiness and connect with that greater sense of purpose—that ultimate reason for being.
