Although most people don't know it yet, the age
of personal or merely individual enlightenment is over.
In the twenty-first century, the context for deep, authentic,
serious spirituality—which means transformational
spirituality—is evolution, evolution not
only of the individual but beyond the
individual.
It's only relatively recently that we've discovered that we
are part of a vast fourteen-billion-year developmental process
that's unfolding, right now, as ourselves. The
awakening to this evolutionary context shatters the deeply
conditioned notion that we are separate individuated entities
that somehow exist independent of the conditions in which we
find ourselves. The postmodern ego is nothing less than a master
magician, creating the ultimate illusion: individuality! And for
our postmodern selves, the painful experience of psychological
and spiritual alienation has reached its historical apex. In our
pursuit of personal, social, philosophical, and spiritual
freedom, many of us have abandoned our great spiritual
traditions and, as a result, have lost touch with our own
individual and collective soul, unexpectedly ending up quite
alone on the desert island of our own ego. For those of us who
desperately want to move forward, who can't go back to the way
things were before we had seen through the limitations of
familial, tribal, religious, and nationalistic notions of
self—where are we to look?
Those of us who have begun to see through the apparent
solidity of these established structures feel we can no longer
carry on in the old way. And if we are spiritually inclined, but
can no longer tread the beaten path, we find ourselves compelled
to seek for a higher and deeper consciousness. At the beginning
of the twenty-first century, for those human beings at the
leading edge, the passionate pursuit and defense of
individualization has reached a dead end. And because of that,
the very movement toward higher development now calls for a leap
beyond the personal sphere in a way that has simply never
happened before. The pursuit of holiness, the pursuit of
enlightened consciousness, has traditionally been the path of
the heroic and extraordinary individual—the holy
One, the enlightened One. But now the evolutionary imperative of
our time seems to be compelling us to develop beyond what we
could call personal realization to something else altogether: a
profound awakening that transcends the individual.
One night, when I was in my mid-teens, I spontaneously
experienced what's been traditionally called “cosmic
consciousness.” For a brief time, I knew without any doubt
that I was simultaneously the whole universe and its witness. To
know the immensity of the love that is this duality is
physically overwhelming. In my early twenties I became a
dedicated seeker, and when I was thirty I found what I was
looking for. Soon after I began to teach, I made an intriguing
observation: the spiritual experiences that those who had
gathered around me were sharing together seemed to be
of greater significance than any experience of higher
consciousness they had had individually—no matter how
powerful it may have been.
“We were literally sucked into a field of
consciousness so powerful and radically different that the
experience was of being gently yet completely destroyed, one's
identity disappearing, and then finding oneself literally in a
new world.”
It took me a few years to understand what was happening and
to be able to put it into context. But soon it became obvious
that a mutation was occurring. I was bearing witness to the fact
that the mind of enlightenment seemed to be taking a leap beyond
the individual.
“The words that were spoken had infinite depth and
meaning and resonated with a timeless presence. As soon as we
acknowledged this, the presence between us seemed to amplify in
strength and started to look through our eyes with the keenest
interest in its own expression.”
“This new consciousness that emerged between
us is so powerful that I experienced it as almost uncontainable.
I trembled inside. At first there was so much fear of this
overwhelming force, but it demanded a response and it felt
completely impossible to say no to it. The mind expanded rapidly
in all directions, leaving no room for any self-reference or
boundaries between us. A sense of self emerged that was
literally indefinable; it did not seem to have a beginning or
end.”
Evolutionary biologists tell us that it is stress that
causes development, compelling the emergence of new and more
complex forms of life. Evolutionary psychologists tell us that
it is changing life-conditions that miraculously catalyze higher
manifestations of emotional, psychological, and spiritual
potential in the human being. As the feature article in this
issue of What Is Enlightenment? suggests, at the
frontiers of human development, consciousness itself seems to be leaping beyond the confines of individuation, dramatically revealing new, thrilling, and unimagined possibilities of higher integration. In spite of the overwhelming dangers that lie ahead, I can't think of a more thrilling time to be alive.