Andrew Cohen:
What Is the Future of Religion?

Judy Martin interviews Andrew Cohen about his view on the future of religion and the role the religious traditions may, or perhaps may not, be able to play in addressing the developmental needs of our time.

"I want people to wake up. I don't want them to feel better. Feeling better relieves us from a sense of urgency that really brings us to the path in earnest."

Biography

Andrew Cohen, founder of EnlightenNext, is an internationally respected spiritual teacher, cultural critic, and evolutionary philosopher widely recognized as a defining voice in the emerging field of evolutionary spirituality. A life-changing awakening in 1986 brought Cohen to the end of his own search for liberation while simultaneously starting him on an exploration of the meaning and significance of enlightenment for our time.

In 1992, Cohen released the first issue of the award-winning magazine EnlightenNext (formerly What Is Enlightenment?), expanding his own inquiry through the public forum of an international periodical and pioneering an innovative form of spiritual journalism reminiscent of classical Socratic dialogue. In the pages of its forty-plus issues, Cohen has brought together leading thinkers—mystics and materialists, philosophers and psychologists—to call for a higher and wholly contemporary synthesis of the spiritual truths found in the East and the empirical rigor of the West.

Through his writings, his work with colleagues and students around the world, and his collaboration with pioneering thinkers in a variety of disciplines, Cohen is steadily defining a new context for understanding Enlightenment as a human evolutionary imperative. Together with a growing network of "evolutionaries" and integral visionaries, he is helping to define a culture of thought that places spiritual transformation at the center of any vision of transforming the world. Cohen is the author of Embracing Heaven & Earth and Living Enlightenment, among other books, and is currently working on a new release to be published in Spring 2010.

Resources

www.andrewcohen.org
www.enlightennext.org