A Far Distant Howl

Part three of a 6 part interview with Andrew Cohen

Q: What is the path to evolutionary enlightenment and what are the obstacles to it?

A: There is only one obstacle to enlightenment: ego. If we want to be free, if we want to be enlightened, we have to pay the price, and that price is the same as it was five thousand years ago—ego death. In evolutionary enlightenment it is no different: if evolution is actually going to unfold through us, then our attachment to ego has to be transcended. And that is what the path is all about.

Q: Can you explain what you mean by ego?

A: The word “ego” is defined in different ways. In the psychological definition, ego is the self-organizing principle in the psyche. And obviously, this is not the ego we want to transcend, or we're going to be in big trouble! But in the spiritual sense, ego can be simply defined as narcissism, a deeply compulsive fascination with one's own image and sense of oneself as a unique individual. This translates into an unwholesome emotional and psychological enslavement to a profoundly self-centered relationship to life. Narcissism is the postmodern disease, and as long as we are lost in it we will be unavailable, unable to truly respond to the spiritual impulse and its imperative to evolve. Indeed, we are so concerned with the image that we have of ourselves in the mirror of our own awareness that it makes it difficult to have any authentic relationship with the vast and extraordinary life-process we all are a part of. Because of this, too many of us end up spending most of our lives just treading water, not evolving at all. So you see, in this vast context, ego is seen in a very different light than it usually appears: as literally an anti-evolutionary force. And if we have recognized how important our own liberated participation in this whole process is, then we see how essential it is to wrestle this part of our self to the ground and keep it very much under our own control. Why? So that it won't in any way inhibit our availability to participate wholeheartedly in the evolutionary process.

Q: What is the self beyond ego?

A: Well, there are different levels of who you are, of what the self is. The deepest part of you is the self absolute, which abides in and as the unmanifest realm beyond time and form. It can be consciously experienced in meditation and in moments of spontaneous peace and ecstasy. When you experience the self absolute, you experience the part of yourself that has never been born and will never die. It is the ground of being itself, the empty void out of which this whole evolving mass of energy, matter, and consciousness emerged. But this ground, while it is the source of ultimate peace, bliss, and fullness, is not involved in the life process, because it has never become anything, including you.

Then there is what I call the authentic self, which abides between the ground of being and the ego. The Authentic Self is the manifestation and expression of the first cause, or the creative principle, in the awakening human. It is the part of your manifest self that is already free from ego. It's the most wholesome, life-embracing dimension of who you are as an incarnated human being.

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