Andrew Cohen

The Andrew Cohen Wikipedia page is here

His own site: http://andrewcohen.org

Andrew's course outline:

1. What Is Enlightenment?
2. Context Is Everything
3. Meditation and the Ground of Being
4. The Ego and the Authentic Self
5. The Five Fundamental Tenets of Enlightenment (see below)

(Based on http://www.andrewcohen.org/events/popups/ee-courses.asp )

The Five Fundamental Tenets of Enlightenment

This is the final set of the course material

Copied from http://piratepad.net/2bT3lXDw7i with more info is also here from Andrew's site: http://www.andrewcohen.org/teachings/path.asp

First Tenet: Clarity of Intention

Clarity of Intention is not a feeling - it's an action

You have to want to evolve more than anything else.

"it places your transformation entirely in your own hands"

Second Tenet: The Law of Volitionality

"If you seriously intend to evolve, and you aspire to become spiritually enlightened, you must be willing to take absolute responsibility for your own self.:

..."that simply means you take full responsibility for all the choices you are making consciously and unconsicously."

Fourth Tenet: The Truth of Impersonality

.."compels us to make the effort to see every aspect of our own human life not merely as a personal experience but as an expression of a vast, impersonal, evolving, universal process."

"..The process is alive. And it's you. The process is you.

The Fifth Tenet: For the Sake of the Whole

.."recontextualizes the seeker's relationship to the spiritual path in such a way that the very motive for pursuing enlightenment evolves from one that is fundamentally self-centred to one that is focused upon the evolution of consicousness itself."

.."I want to be free not for my own sake, but for the sake of the whole. What began as a freely made choice has become a choiceless obligation....

"When that pure passion becomes our own passion, human life becomes ennobled - it becomes the holy life, the spiritual life - a life of meaning and value. We discover that we have come home and have found our place in the whole matrix of the Kosmos. We know who we are and why we are here. As long as our fundamental motive is personal and self-centered, life will never deeply make sense. But when we embrace a motive that absolutely transcends the personal, every moment becomes infused with a powerful sense of purpose. That's the death of the ego. All our petty self-concern is radically displaced because we are no longer living for our own sake but are now living for the sake of the whole, consumed by a passion to be utterly free so that nothing will inhibit our ability to participate wholeheartedly in the evolutionary process."

The Six Principles: (three pairs):

Purity of Motive and Integrity in Action

"Purity of motive is an egoless impulse, a wholesome passion to create that which is new. It emerges only to the degree that the ego has been transcended..... Pure motive is not enough. PoM must always be actualized so that it becomes integrity in action. That simply means that the individual consistently follows through on that pure motive. And that takes heroic spirit. For most of us, pure motivation arises in the heart a thousand times before it becomes an act of integrity that is expressed in the world."

Autonomy & Communion

"Autonomy is radical independence and authenticity.... You simply are who you are, ecstatically experiencing your own authenticity spontaneously manifesting itself."

"Communion is the profound revelation of nonduality when it dynamically emerges in a collective context. It is the intoxicating experience of the Authentic Self recognizing itself in others - the many coming together as One in egoless freedom and infinite potential, uninhibited by any sense of separation.

"Usually when an individual experiences powerful autonomy, it is almost always at the expense of communion with others. And in order to experience profound communion, usually the individuals involved have to sacrifice their autonomy. But in Evolutionary Enlightenment, a dynamic field is created where the one and the many are literally the same and yet simultaneously remain distinct and different."

Evolutionary Tension and Natural Hierarchy

"..describe the dynamic nature and structure of a higher collective consciousness beyond ego."

"ET is the experiential quality of the new consciousness that is liberated between individuals who come together in the Authentic Self.... care is felt in the human heart and mind as a powerful wakefulness, a thoroughly positive and wholesome tension that endlessly compels the individual to rise to his or her highest potential in order to create that future. It is the very opposite of inertia, which is the quality of the individual and collective ego, the downward drag of its endless fears and concerns."

"Natural Hierarchy is the structure of human relationship that spontaneously emerges in a living context of intersubjective enlightenment. Enlightenment means beyond ego, intersubjective means between subjects.... therefore the relationship between evolving, enlightened human beings would clearly reflect the ultimate truth of non-difference while simultaneously respecting the differing levels of experience, knowledge and authority.... a hierarchy defined not by the ego's motives of power and control but by the Authentic Self's desire to develop. Natural hierarchy is a delicate and ultimately challengingg principle for most human beings to grasp because it inherently demands that the ego must be transcended, individually and collectively."

For comparison here are some of Craig Hamilton's 'key concepts:

• Being the EI

• Meditation

• Ground of Being

• Evolutionary Detective

• Growth edges

• 4 spheres