by Elizabeth Debold
Today Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber did their first audio internet-based seminar—bringing the much loved Guru and Pandit dialogues from EnlightenNext magazine live into homes around the world. (There were over 600 who signed up for the seminar, hailing from all over the globe—including New Zealand, Dubai, India, and China.) These two pioneering thinkers worked seamlessly together to open up our understanding of Spirit in the four quadrants of Integral Theory, as the three faces of God, from the ground of Being to the creative thrust of Eros, and across the evolutionary trajectory. It was quite a ride!
One of the points that Ken made at the end of the day really struck me. He said that mainstream liberals (those folks who are reviled by the Right for highjacking our media, among other dastardly deeds) make no distinctions about anything that is pointing beyond the material realm. That means that they paint with the same brush (and, trust me, in a dark color) fundamentalism, more contemporary expressions of the religions, and the transrational expressions of spirit. All of it is seen as flakey, misguided, and…well, not to be too Biblical, but almost downright evil. Ken observed that the fact that materialism is the metaphysics of the majority—and that they do not have the perceptual sensitivity to recognize the subtler dimensions of Being—means that the mouthpieces of our culture dismiss higher levels of development as the same as lower, more rigid and superstitious levels.
Ken’s comments made me think about the effect this has had on postmodern spirituality. It’s something that we on the magazine have thought about quite a bit, from many different angles. But I found myself thinking about how many of us postmoderns (those of us born in and after the 1960s) have brought materialism into our search for spirit. Continue reading…
If we are interested in the evolution of consciousness and culture, one habit that we need to break is the tendency to speak about the world as if it exists “out there.” From the perspective that I call evolutionary nonduality, we don’t want to separate our self from the world process because when we do we fall into a false or dualistic way of thinking. We are not separate from the world process. In our own small way, we’re all contributing to where we’re going. The choices we make, the actions we take, what we say, what we don’t say, are all adding to the momentum of the vast cosmic unfolding. When we really embrace the truth that we are not separate from the process that created us, then we need to become very clear about all the ways in which we are actually affecting the process, so that we can begin to more consciously impact its momentum in positive and evolutionary ways.
I am currently attending the 
Calling all consciousness researchers, neo-mystics, and anyone else interested in finding out just how far the conversation between science and spirit has come. The annual Science & Nonduality will be held in San Rafael, California, on October 20-24. The goal of the conference, which brings together a diverse lineup of spiritual teachers, consciousness researchers, psychologists, artists, philosophers, and more, is to explore the implications of nonduality, or oneness, from as many angles as possible. 
When two or more individuals who have awakened to what I call the Evolutionary Impulse, or Authentic Self, come together in deep dialogue and focused conversation, the experience is something akin to thinking aloud with yourself. Why? Because there is only one Authentic Self. The ego can only have a relationship with other separate individuals, but the Authentic Self can only have a relationship with itself. If you awaken to the Authentic Self and another also becomes illuminated by that same Self, you will find that you both experience a strong pull to be together, but what you are drawn to is not the other individual’s unique personality. The Authentic Self isn’t interested in other individuals. 
The last couple of months have been a whirlwind of travel! Recent trips have included a visit to Paris and a conference in the South of France (followed by a surprise birthday tour of the Palace of Versailles with my European students), a book launch event in New York for my friends 
meditation and three weekend retreats—one in California, one at my 
The goal of 
On Monday night, EnlightenNext founder 
Part II — A Higher We: The Real Meaning of Incarnational Nonduality
