Andrew Cohen

Bio & resources

If we want to change the world in a significant way, if we're serious about creating a better future for us all, then we have to face the fact that the only way it's going to happen is the only way it's ever happened: through the evolution of consciousness itself. And for the universe to evolve at the level of consciousness, you and I have to be the ones to make sure it happens. We have to be the ones to create the future. What does that mean? Well, it means first of all that we have to wake up to the fact that there's no one else who is going to save us. Even in the twenty-first century, some of us still cling to the hope that there is someone “up there” or “out there,” a kind of divine principle, higher power, or Godhead that is directing the process and is going to intervene and make sure that everything will turn out all right in the end. Of course, many of us have long since outgrown such beliefs, and it may seem utterly obvious to us that we need to save ourselves from self-annihilation. But I wonder how much we have considered the deepest and most profound implications of accepting ultimate responsibility for the future.

To accept responsibility for the future means we know without a doubt that it is on our own shoulders—each and every one of us—to create that future right now. And now means NOW. Those of us at the leading edge have to stop waiting, stop hiding, and stop pretending. We have to be the ones to take this leap—because there literally isn't anyone else to do it. Yes, it is going to take divine intervention, but we have to be the divine interveners. We literally have to choose to be God—which I define as the creative or evolutionary impulse itself. Billions of years ago, something exploded out of nothing. And who but God could have made such an audacious choice—to create an entire universe? That powerful urge to become is now actually beginning to wake up, through the unique capacity for self-reflective awareness that is our human birthright. Through us, God, or the energy and intelligence that is driving this whole process, is just beginning to awaken to itself. So becoming God in an evolving universe means we have to be the ones to carry this process forward at the deepest and highest level, to consciously evolve in the biggest way possible for our collective salvation and transformation.

Spiritually, the enormous challenge for each and every one of us is to look directly into what it actually means to be the one who is going to do this. From the absolute or nondual perspective that emerges in spiritual revelation, there is only ONE. There literally is no other; there is only one without a second. To truly understand conscious evolution, we have to grapple with the profound implications of that absolute fact. I believe we can only consciously evolve to the degree that we have actually realized at the deepest level of our being that we are that one without a second. Facing into the truth of nonduality—that the many is the one and that the one is ultimately who we always are—in an evolutionary context forces a confrontation with any relationship to the life process that is less than whole, complete, and fully committed. To consciously evolve is to surrender unconditionally to the truth that there is no other and at the same time to accept responsibility for what that means in an evolving universe—a cosmos that is slowly but surely becoming aware of itself through you and me. That one without a second is simultaneously awakening to itself as it develops, as it evolves, and it is that one, as you and me, alone, that can now begin to take responsibility for endeavoring to consciously create its own future. That is enlightenment in an evolutionary context: the profound recognition that God is that singular energy and intelligence that initiated the creative process and is just now awakening to itself as we awaken to it. In that revelation, there literally is no other. And therefore, the only question is: Do we have the courage, audacity, and boldness of spirit to be that one without a second, right now, in this world? Our future literally depends on it.