For thousands of years, teachers of spiritual realization have taught that consciousness is one. The quintessential enlightenment experience that is spoken of is a taste of the vast oneness of consciousness, sublime and stark. But traditional paths to that realization involve retreating from the world -- the rest of that same consciousness -- into a personal space. What?!? If consciousness is one, why do we limit our search for enlightenment experience to the inward perspective? Here we have embedded the duality of consciousness: consciousness is one, yet we are many; consciousness is undifferentiated, yet we are individual. The inward enlightenment experience relies on the holographic nature of consciousness -- that the whole can be perceived in the one -- and one critical assumption: that individuated awareness is without value.
In postmodern culture, the pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme: the individual reigns supreme. This applies equally to materialists as to spiritualists. The postmodern materialist seeks the attachments of the world because of the value of pleasurable individual experience, regardless of the morality with which those ends are pursued. That is, one can be honest and caring and completely self-serving. While the postmodern spiritual pursuit differs from the material only in the value memes they choose to embrace, preferring the transcendent over the physical, but still serving the ends of individual experience. Both judge good by the value it brings the individual. Truth is then defined by the value of the experience that it brings, be it nondual, psychic, or scientific.
There are those who might contest that choosing to do good in the world, to make a contribution, is another category altogether. But it isn't. The nobility of the experience doesn't matter; one can choose to to do good in the world, but one cannot separate the fact that -- even having experienced profound interior experience -- one is still an individual acting in the world with motive. And until one learns to bring the egolessness of the nondual individual experience into an egoless collective, that motive cannot be free from entanglements of egoic motive. Which means that the individual is not liberated from ego -- is not enlightened. Individual enlightenment no longer exists: it is an anachronism of an idealized past.
Now we now turn our attention to the collective to find the evolving edge of enlightenment. Krishnamurti said that the world can only be changed by a simultaneous inward and outward revolution, because both become conditioned, static, left to their own inertia.
Outward action, when accomplished, is over, is static; and if the relationship between individuals, which is society, is not the outcome of inward revolution, then the social structure, being static, absorbs the individual, and therefore makes him equally static, repetitive. Realizing this, realizing the extraordinary significance of what I have said, which is a fact, there can be no question of agreement or disagreement. It is a fact that society is always crystallizing and absorbing the individual; and that constant, creative revolution can only be in the individual, not in society, not in the outer. That is, creative revolution can take place only in individual relationship, which is society
J. Krishanmurti, Bombay, 1948
This inward revolution takes place through constant confrontation of the ego by choosing to live from the integrity and pure motive that spring from pure consciousness. The outward revolution is brought about by bringing this egolessness, this nonduality, this authenticity and integrity into the world. Not as a lone voice crying in the wilderness, but coming together with others who bring the same purity of intent to the desire to create a new future. This new approach to enlightenment is beginning to emerge as teachers and seekers attempt to integrate the interior and exterior experiences and transcend the duality of inward vs. outward engagement. Andrew Cohen is a strong proponent of collective enlightenment:
[The] real challenge of enlightenment is egoless engagement in an intersubjective, creative context. That, to me, is the call of the future. That's the new enlightenment I am endeavoring to bring into being. This new enlightenment is not an individual attainment; it is a collective emergence. And it occurs when all individuals involved awaken simultaneously to what I call the Authentic Self, which is the evolutionary impulse itself, the energy and intelligence that created the universe, experienced directly in the human heart and mind. In that awakening, there is no difference between the deepest spiritual revelation of oneness and a fully embodied, conscious engagement with the life process itself. The timeless paradox of enlightenment enters the stream of time in a collective or intersubjective context and becomes the ground for a higher evolutionary or developmental process.
Andrew Cohen, What Is Enlightenment, 36
If we, as Krishnamurti, "realize the urgency of an inward revolution, which alone can bring about a radical transformation of the outer, of society," then an honest integration of our spiritual, rational and social impulses must take place on an individual and a collective level. The best chance for finding revolutionary answers to new problems and timeless questions is in bringing our individual revolutions together without the self-involvement of ego, to come together with nothing but the desire to live the evolving consciousness. So how do we come together in such a fashion and what do we do once we're there? More on that to come.
