Andrew Cohen is saying, "There has never been a better time to be enlightened" - and I long for this to be true. When I was a child, it was easy to feel left behind. I was born too late to shoot arrows beside Arjuna, meditate under the Bodhi tree with the Buddha, or sit on an olive covered hillside in Galilee hearing the Sermon on the Mount. There is a pervasive sense, even in advanced spiritual circles, that we are looking over our shoulders at the epochs when humans were closer to God or to their souls or to the promise of moksha. So it's heartening to hear a teacher who insists, with passion and a clear voice, that we haven't been left behind. Andrew has the pulse of modern life at his fingertips. His diagnosis of the demands and distractions of our noisy, busy world shows the accuracy of a skilled diagnostician. But long ago, when I spent many hours a day diagnosing patients, I learned that none of them would take any advice until they understood, quiet basically, what the first step to healing needed to be. That first step was always the same: "You are going to get better". Reassurance is medicine, even if it can't be bottled, and Andrew touched me with a deep sense of reassurance: "Don't worry. There's a place for the seeker. The universe has collaborated to bring you here, to this moment, so that you can wake up.
The journey of a thousand miles doesn't begin with the first step. It begins with the assurance that you can take the first step. Many lack that assurance, for all kinds of reasons. Some feel unworthy to seek beyond the limited territory of the known; some feel trapped behind walls or inwardly blocked; some feel paralysed by timidity, fear, doubt and scepticism in all their dubious colouring. When Andrew asks, "Why do some people develop a passion for spirituality while others don't", the answer he gives agrees perfectly with my own perspective: they haven't awakened to the evolutionary impulse within.
There's an adage about the spark that is enough to burn a whole forest. It means that a glimpse of your authentic Self will be so appealing that you cannot help but follow where your own growth leads. We know that this is a natural tendency. Children are eager to pass through every stage of development. Being five years old holds no allure when over the next horizon you can be six and then seven and eight. This automatic process has a magic hidden inside it that few realise. As a child develops, he doesn't have to lose who he is today in order to become who he will be tomorrow. Children happily remain who they are, while at a deeper level the future is unfolding the next stage of their growth.
We lose touch with that magic once we grow up and, as William Wordsworth said, "the world is too much with us; late and soon...The means is simple: reconnect with the evolutionary impulse. That impulse began beyond space and time, in the domain of pure consciousness. It manifested in physical form and thus became shrouded by the mask of materialism. The human mind became distracted by the dance of maya. For all these reasons, the evolutionary impulse needed to be revealed again and described in detail.
[The above passage is written by Deepak Chopra (extracted from the Foreword to Andrew Cohen's 'Evolutionary Enlightenment'. It was published in The Times of India dated 27th February, 2012].
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There's an adage about the spark that is enough to burn a whole forest. It means that a glimpse of your authentic Self will be so appealing that you cannot help but follow where your own growth leads. We know that this is a natural tendency. Children are eager to pass through every stage of development. Being five years old holds no allure when over the next horizon you can be six and then seven and eight. This automatic process has a magic hidden inside it that few realise. As a child develops, he doesn't have to lose who he is today in order to become who he will be tomorrow. Children happily remain who they are, while at a deeper level the future is unfolding the next stage of their growth.
We lose touch with that magic once we grow up and, as William Wordsworth said, "the world is too much with us; late and soon...The means is simple: reconnect with the evolutionary impulse. That impulse began beyond space and time, in the domain of pure consciousness. It manifested in physical form and thus became shrouded by the mask of materialism. The human mind became distracted by the dance of maya. For all these reasons, the evolutionary impulse needed to be revealed again and described in detail.
[The above passage is written by Deepak Chopra (extracted from the Foreword to Andrew Cohen's 'Evolutionary Enlightenment'. It was published in The Times of India dated 27th February, 2012].
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