8 Comments so far

1. Krodhakali Das on March 4, 2008 11:54 am

   “Freedom is not a feeling.” This is interesting; it sounds radical but when looked at closely is just confusing and unclear.

   Cohen says freedom is not a “feeling” but instead is a “position.” It can’t be a “feeling” because feelings come and go, and are relative.

   But “positions” are also relative and impermanent. “Taking” a position is an action, which, again, is by nature relative, limited and impermanent. So how can a relative, limited and impermanent action lead to absolute freedom?

   What Cohen has done here is hopelessly mix up and distort the meaning of traditional teachings (which he borrows from freely without attribution) that freedom is not an experience. In nondual traditions, liberation is said to not be an experience because it is not some special feeling which comes or is produced by conditions. Nor is it an object of perception, as are all other experiences. Rather, it is the self-evident nature of reality, which is who you are. As such, it IS experiential. But it is not a “special” experience that needs to be produced, or that depends on actions or conditions. And it can never be an object. Freedom comes from understanding the nature of the reality that you are already experiencing right now as your own nature but that, through ignorance, you are misunderstanding.

   As such, special “profound” experiences have little to do with liberation at all. Nor does taking a “position” or any other action.

   I suppose next we’ll hear about “the position of no position” and get even more confused….

2. Tom on March 4, 2008 12:58 pm

   Ah, Mr. Das. We meet again.

   Yes, I suppose you could argue that assuming a fundamental position of absolute freedom in relation to the ever-changing currents of thought and feeling is also still “relative,” because “taking a position” is an action, and actions come and go. But we’re talking about relative human beings in a universe consisting _of_ action. It’s impossible to _not_ take a position of some kind in relationship to life. Even if you sit on a park bench for two years, like Eckhart Tolle, passively watching the world pass by as a dance of your own Consciousness, you’re still taking a very distinct position (of passivity and nonengagement). The “no position” idea doesn’t work, even though it might sound nice philosophically (up to a point).

   Andrew’s teaching is, as you should know, about _incarnational nonduality_, which strives to make sense of the two fundamental questions of existence: “Who am I?” and “How shall I live?” The description of a traditional nondual realization you gave (i.e., that freedom is our ever-present nature, the true condition of any apparently changing conditions) only relates to the first question. It tells us that we are the always-already liberated Self, inherently Free in this and every moment. We, as that Self, are the ground of all experience, prior to, but not other than, all passing displays in the infinite field of consciousness — including our body-mind’s own ever-changing thoughts and feelings.

   But inherent in that traditional realization is a transcendent bias — a bias toward the unmanifest Ocean of Being — which almost always leads to a position of passivity in relation to the multifaceted, ever-complexifying world of time, space, and life (e.g., Eckhart Tolle on the Vancouver park bench, perhaps the world’s best contemporary example of a traditional nondual state attainment). And if you want to spend your life on a park bench, a Fijian island, or a cave, then that’s fine. You can absorb yourself in that nondual ISness to your little heart’s Self-absorbed content. But if you are, instead, actually interested in wholeheartedly _engaging_ with life, fully and without reservations, in this and every moment for the biggest reasons imaginable (such as the conscious, directed evolution of human culture and consciousness, for the sake of the entire Kosmos), then you have to assume a conscious position of engagement — especially in relation to your own mind and emotions and changing states of consciousness. If you’re just letting everything “be,” who knows what you’ll do, or what thoughts and feelings you’ll act on? All is not equal in the realm of time and space.

   Merely delighting in the timeless ISness or suchness of the nondual Self is very different from leaning forward and saying, “No, I am going to _act_ for the sake of _manifesting_ that Self in the world of time, space, and duality. Now that I know who I am, I’ve decided that _that_ is how I shall live.”

   And I apologize if it wasn’t very clear — hopefully discussing it like this will clarify things — but the point I was trying to get at in my post is that the postmodern ego gets a narcissistic high off of experiential glimpses of nondual Freedom, but the soul is the only part of the _manifest_ individual self that can actually take that ever-present Freedom forward into the world in a stable, wholesome, and deeply grounded way. I didn’t mean to imply that the eternal Self isn’t the ever-present condition of everything arising in every moment. What I was trying to say is that the ego refuses to _act_ in alignment with that Self unless it can “feel” it (according to its own ignorant/limited/memory-based parameters), whereas the soul, once convinced of the ever-present reality of the Self, seems to have no problem acting in alignment with that Self no matter what. But you have to _choose_ which part of the self to give your own allegiance to, because every human being contains both, and some dimensions of the manifest self are much more highly developed than others…

   “The soul is first born into the false self, it is blind; in the true self the soul opens its eyes.”
   –Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Bowl of Saki, April 21

3. Alain on March 5, 2008 11:03 pm

   You rock Tom. I am very much enjoying what you have written.

4. Dori on March 13, 2008 1:46 pm

   “If you’re just letting everything “be,” who knows what you’ll do, or what thoughts and feelings you’ll act on? All is not equal in the realm of time and space.”

   This sounds like a distrust of pure-being. Why can’t we assume that — if there is such a thing as an evolutionary impulse, and that the universe itself is leaning foward — why cant we assume that pure-being is in allignment with actions that progress consciousness?

   Did that make sense? it seems to me that if we are grounded in the “is-ness” of this moment, then all of our thoughts and actions will be for the very best advancement of the kosmos.

5. Steve on April 25, 2008 11:19 pm

   I find it surprising that through all your journey, you’ve for some reason omitted the experience of psychedelics and their often immediate ego death for exploring spirituality. With the right frame of mind, one experience might shift a lot of your paradigms. I think it’s a shame that such a long-standing spiritual tradition (30,000yrs+) has been so viciously marginalized in the past century or so.

6. Tom on April 26, 2008 6:34 pm

   Hi, Dori. I’m sorry for the extreme delay in replying to your comment! I had to push the pause button on everything to help get the new issue of WIE magazine finished, but better late than never…usually.

   You said: “it seems to me that if we are grounded in the ‘is-ness’ of this moment, then all of our thoughts and actions will be for the very best advancement of the kosmos.”

   This is actually the point of debate that led to the founding of “What Is Enlightenment?” magazine by Andrew Cohen back in 1991. His guru, of the Advaita Vedanta school of enlightenment, held that anyone whose consciousness was established in the Ground of Being could express themselves freely without fear of karmic repercussions–i.e., that any actions performed by an “enlightened” person, including lying and cheating, were inherently fine because that person was Free, and this world is ultimately illusory anyway, so what’s the big deal? But if you don’t consider the manifest world to be an “illusion,” then the question of how to best live and act and express oneself becomes all-important, especially for “enlightened” people whose actions naturally have a powerful impact on others.

   Andrew has started emphasizing recently the fact that the realm of unmanifest Being actually has NO RELATIONSHIP to the world of manifest Becoming. It’s true that because the realm of Becoming arises from Being, the realm of Becoming can ultimately be seen as the fulfillment of Being’s infinite potential. But the fact that a human being awakens to the ground of Being does not, in and of itself, guarantee how that awakening will be expressed in the world. It is conscious, willful human beings, forever poised on the razor’s edge between Being and Becoming (or embodying both), who decide–in every moment–what relationship we want to have to life and to the world. Just “going with the flow” doesn’t cut it if you really care about the impact you have on other people, on the world, and ultimately on the evolving Kosmos itself.

7. Tom on April 26, 2008 6:48 pm

   Steve said: “I find it surprising that through all your journey, you’ve for some reason omitted the experience of psychedelics and their often immediate ego death for exploring spirituality.”

   Well, I guess I felt obligated to stand firmly by my sixth-grade D.A.R.E. program diploma and Just Say No. :) That’s not to say that I haven’t been interested in trying psychedelics (particularly LSD and DMT), but I’ve been told by many of my more “experienced” friends and colleagues that I’d enjoy it but it probably wouldn’t have much effect on me, given all the countless “natural” spiritual experiences I’ve already had. More state experiences don’t really interest me, at this point. My life as a student of Andrew Cohen, living at his main residential center in the midst of a swirling vortex of collective enlightened consciousness, is interesting enough. :)

   In any case, you might be interested in this recent article from SciAm, talking about the resurgence in official interest in psychedelic drugs for medical and therapeutic purposes: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=psychedelic-healing

8. Dharan P Deepak on October 5, 2008 1:57 pm

   Freedom is nothing but a state of mind, where there is no Fear. Fear is the only thing that restrict us from everything…