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The Meaning of Enlightenment. Part 1: Past, Present, and Future (Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber)

Andrew Cohen, founder of EnlightenNext, is redefining the spiritual ideal of enlightenment for the 21st century. Through his revolutionary philosophy, his award-winning magazine, and his work with thousands of individuals and groups around the world, he is dedicated to creating nothing less than a revolution in consciousness and culture.

For years Andrew and Ken have been engaged in an ongoing dialogue about spirituality in today's world. Known as the "Guru and Pandit" series, this unfolding conversation has often been featured in the pages of EnlightenNext magazine (formerly What is Enlightenment?). In August of 2010 Andrew and Ken held a live event at Boulder Integral, where the two spoke for hours about the history of enlightenment, the relationship between enlightenment and evolution, and the future of spiritual life in this corner of this universe.

Here Andrew and Ken share their overall intentions for the discussion. Ken offers a brief history of enlightenment, then goes on to point out some crucial tweaks to the classical conception of enlightenment that could have only been realized in recent years.


Part 2: Ecstatic Urgency and the Creative Impulse (41:38)
click here: http://integrallife.com/node/85540

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Comment by Michael Grove on July 2, 2012 at 11:03

 

"Evolutionary Enlightenment, and the new culture it promises, is something we can deliberately and consciously bring into being together, if we care deeply enough about the potential it is pointing to. But it is not something that can be simply manufactured through sitting in a circle and practicing a certain technique or generating a particular emotional state. It is an emergent perspective, or state of consciousness, that bursts forth spontaneously and miraculously only when the conditions are right. "Emergent" means that it is something greater than the sum of its parts-a new order of relatedness, a new level of consciousness, a deeper and higher perspective that is always unimaginable until the moment it explodes into existence."  - Andrew Cohen

Comment by Michael Grove on July 2, 2012 at 11:04

"EVOLUTIONARY is a play on the word "REVOLUTIONARY", and I mean it to convey something of the revolutionary nature of evolution as an idea. Evolutionaries are revolutionaries, with all the personal and philosophical commitment that word implies. They are not merely curious bystanders to the evolutionary process, passive believers in the established sciences of evolution, though all certainly value those insights. They are committed activists and advocates - often passionate ones - for the importance of evolution at a cultural level."

Carter Phipps - EVOLUTIONARIES -

Unlocking the Spiritual and Cultural Potential of Science's Greatest Idea.

 

 

Comment by Michael Grove on July 2, 2012 at 11:04
 
As Arianna Huffington has so eloquently and recently stated - 
 
“If you didn’t care at all about people and you just cared about the deficit, this is just a stupid way to go about it. It doesn’t work. Austerity does not lead to deficit reduction. That we are continuing not to look at the facts, to me is stunning. It is the definition of insanity.
 
 
Comment by Michael Grove on May 29, 2013 at 15:10

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the notion that the evolutionary process is ultimately driven by a spiritual impulse is continuing to gain traction, with a growing number of progressive philosophers, scientists, and mystics exploring its implications.

To many, it is simply a compelling philosophy, uniting the revelations of science and spirituality in a way that no other theory can. But others, like Aurobindo before them, are beginning to reach beyond a theoretical discussion to wonder: What might human life and culture look like if we fully took to heart the reality of this view?

Freed from the mythic dogmatisms of premodern religion, transcending the materialistic biases of modern scientific thought, and liberated from the narcissistic self-absorptions of postmodernity, what kind of new world could human beings aligned with the trajectory of a spiritually evolving cosmos actually create?

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