WILBER: And it has a passionate, desireless desire to change the realm of manifestation.

COHEN: Right. And it's like an unceasing explosion; it's a power that is inherently creative, and it also feels immortal because its very nature is immortal, but in a completely different way than the Self Absolute. And so these are the two different expressions of our immortal nature as consciousness or spirit.

WILBER: And the immortal God impulse that is creatively working with the manifest side of the world also finds that it runs up against itself. In other words, that infinite power runs up against the density of its own material manifestation.

COHEN: Yes. It's constantly striving to push beyond what it has already created—and that is its ongoing battle.

WILBER: So this infinite power of ours is running into our own density.

COHEN: Absolutely, constantly.

WILBER: And that's the tension of evolution.

THE EXUBERANT YES

COHEN: As we were saying earlier, when the mortal self considers what it would actually be like to live forever, something about that possibility is felt to be deeply and inherently wrong. Interestingly enough, most mortal selves find the notion of living unendingly quite unbearable. Just think about it for a minute. Would Andrew or Ken or anyone else really want to live forever as Andrew, Ken, or anyone else? The idea is actually quite terrifying, isn't it? But how does the authentic self, the conscious evolutionary impulse alive in us, feel about living forever? It was, after all, that same creative impulse that initiated this whole process fourteen billion years ago. In other words, from the perspective of the authentic self, the universe is our creation. We did it; we created all this. We were the ones who decided to do this. Of course, we forget that . . . but who else could it have been?!

The universe is the project of the authentic self, of the creative impulse. And the degree to which we awaken to the authentic self is the degree to which we awaken to that God impulse, which is none other than our own passion to move this process forward. Now, that part of myself and that part of yourself never think about what it would be like to live forever, because that part of the self doesn't have the capacity to think of itself as being separate from the ongoing creative process. It's only aware of this unbridled passion to create, to move forward ceaselessly. On the other hand, the ego, or mortal self, has an inherent fear of death and dissolution. We don't want to die. Our worst fear is dying. But from the perspective of the authentic self, or the part of you that is one with the evolutionary impulse, which is what I call God, we're just getting started.

From God's perspective, the fourteen billion years it's taken to get to this point is just the beginning—we're really just getting rolling. It's as if we're running a marathon and we're maybe halfway through the first mile, if that. We're just warming up! But when the mortal self considers the infinite nature of the evolutionary process, it finds it absolutely unbearable to think of having to be at it for that long. And what's so interesting about this is that the ego is presented with this contradiction: “Oh, I thought I wanted to live forever, but I really don't.” Just as we feel the relief of going to sleep at night after a long and busy day, even death can be felt to be a relief and a release from the experience of incarnation. It's like we need a rest in which we go through a process of regeneration before we get back in the fray.

From God's perspective, the infinite nature of this process is not frightening or overwhelming, or a process for which we need any rest. And this is why I have come up with a new definition of the bodhisattva ideal. The traditional declaration of the bodhisattva is, “I vow to postpone my own nirvana until all other sentient beings reach nirvana,” which is the point at which we all get released from the ordeal of the evolutionary process. But in the new version, it changes to “I vow to participate in this process forever because that is who I am.” It is the most frightening thing for a human being to say yes to that, because what that really means is, “I vow to be conscious for eternity.” And that is unbearable. It's ultimately frightening. It challenges our humanity at a soul level. And it's a new way to look at this whole notion of the bodhisattva ideal in an evolutionary context.

WILBER: It's true that we as human beings indeed have this chance—to consciously engage with the evolutionary process—for the first time in fourteen billion years, and this really has only occurred in the last microsecond of this whole evolutionary unfolding. So, on the one hand, we have the Christ figure who is fully aware of how deeply you can suffer when you're awake to both your natures—your infinite, eternal, timeless Self and your finite, suffering, existential, dread-and-angst self. The cross is a perfect expression of the suffering that is caused by the intersection of those two. On the other hand, there's the Eastern, nondual, tantric version of all this, which is: I vow to be both nirvana and samsara for as long as they both last. And that's the kind of vow you're talking about, which is basically a commitment to not withdraw from either.

COHEN: But there's another dimension to it. Don't you think that as the energy, the intelligence that initiated the evolutionary process awakens to itself in us, the very direction of this process literally depends on our willingness to take responsibility for it? In other words, unless we are unconditionally willing to say, “Yes, I will do this with all of my heart, and all of my soul, and all of my being, for eternity,” ultimately, the process won't be able to continue to develop. It seems we're at this crossing-over point. Up until now, the evolutionary process has been occurring more or less unconsciously. But in beginning to become conscious of itself, it's becoming more and more dependent upon us to take it to higher and higher levels.

WILBER: I agree. And there are two different phases of it. One is the phase of promising not to withdraw from the finite realm. And that is the Mahayana or bodhisattva vow, which is basically, “I vow not to get off the wheel of samsara but to help it as best I can,” because essentially nirvana and samsara are not two.

But there is an extraordinary deepening of that realization with tantra or Vajrayana, which is a realization not just that I won't get off the wheel of samsara, but that samsara itself, the entire finite realm, is an ecstatic expression of my very own infinite selfless Self or True Nature. The best parts of tantra went further and played with luminosity. All of a sudden samsara becomes a sparkling ornament and manifestation, or radiant joyous expression and taste, of what you always already are. And so now it's not, “I promise not to withdraw.” It's, “I will fully enter that, and I will enter even the lowest domains of samsara as expressions of nirvana itself.” In this there's a little intimation of what you're talking about. And this comes to an even fuller flowering with an understanding of the evolutionary nature of spirit, which happened with the great idealists, and then Sri Aurobindo, among others.

I think that's close to what you're describing, which really has only come into fruition on the planet, East and West, in the last thirty years. It's God realization as the positive, absolute commitment to an exuberant embrace of the manifest realm, and the promise to carry it forward forever, as endlessly unfolding dimensions of your own deepest Divinity and Spirit-in-action.

COHEN: The beautiful thing about this is that it overwhelms the ego in the most absolute way. I mean, the traditional notion of ego death in the face of unmanifest emptiness, or the void, is one thing. That's when so many people declare, “I'm so afraid of the unknown.” But what about taking on the manifest realm forever? That pulls the rug out from under the ego and its fear of the dark! It's an instantly tangible, absolute confrontation that is profound, ever-new, and relentless. It shakes us awake to what we really have to step into now, and it destroys the split between the world and the spirit in a way that's essential at this time. Any spirituality that is merely a personal matter is completely undercut in this new way of thinking.

WILBER: Like I said, there were beautiful early intimations of this in the Mahayana and the Vajrayana turnings of the wheel. The Heart Sutra is a very static simple form, but it's still extremely beautiful: “That which is emptiness is non-other than form; that which is form is non-other than emptiness.” But then we discovered that form is evolving. Therefore, that which is evolving is none other than spirit. That which is spirit is none other than that which is evolving. That's the Heart Sutra in its updated evolutionary form. So all of a sudden, emptiness becomes the exuberant manifestation of its own evolving form, and that's what you're calling God, or the God impulse, which is to enter into that with an exuberant yes that is so actually immortal that it completely undoes the immortality project of the ego.

I think the form that you're expressing it in is exactly right. A thousand years from now they'll have a slightly different form. But that intersection between the infinite and the finite—that's the seed. It was the cross for Christ, it was the basis for Mahayana, and it was much stronger in tantra and is even stronger in the present-day nondual evolutionary panentheism, which is what we're speaking about. It's that extraordinary intersection between the infinite and the finite that is where all the action is. It's such a friction point—and once you get on the other side of it, you can't go back.

COHEN: Because now you know who you are, and there's no escape clause anymore. It's kind of like a permanent crucifixion.

WILBER: Yes, and liberation simultaneously!

[ back to table of contents ]

1 | 2 | 3