Andrew Z. Cohen

Wikipedia defines "mysticism" as "the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, or levels of being, or aspects of reality, beyond normal human perception, including experience of and even communion with a supreme being."

When people think about the future, at least in many of the progressive circles that I move in, do you know what they think about? Gloom and doom. Generally, our collective future is imagined in relationship to...

The world really is getting smaller.

I'm a 56-year-old Jewish Baby Boomer from Manhattan who became a spiritual seeker in my early 20s. Typical of so many of my generation, I looked for Enlightenment in the East, not the West. I traveled to India in 1984, and three years later,...

I've had some interesting thoughts about the science vs. religion, materialism vs. spirituality debate. Being a spiritual teacher myself, I generally tend to feel more aligned with mystical and religious sensibilities, because they assert that the spiritual dimension of life is the...

I just got back from a jam-packed teaching and speaking tour of India, supported in part by the Speaking Tree. As a 56-year-old western spiritual teacher who originally came to Mother India in 1984 seeking for Enlightenment, I find myself in an interesting position when I return: now I come...

God is Love. How many times have we heard the word "love" being used to define that which is ultimately indefinable? I suppose it is because that's the only word that can even bring us close to grasping the ungraspable. When we use "love" to define that which is transcendent,...

Have you ever considered for yourself what love actually is? Or do you assume you know what love is, based on what others may have said about this all-important topic? Because I'm a spiritual teacher, I'm asked about love all the time, and what I always find interesting is that...

Like many people, I had my most powerful experience of romantic love during my adolescence. I was 16 years old, and living in Rome at the time. I met a young Italian woman two years my senior and soon fell head over heels into...

It's time to think about those we love. Even more importantly, it's time to consider what it means to truly love another. Have you ever deeply thought about what love is? Have you ever considered where it comes from and why we feel drawn to be with certain people over...

On Jan. 29, I gave a talk at Alex and Allyson Grey's Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (CoSM) in upstate New York. I based the talk on an interesting story that I had heard on NPR earlier that morning while I was brushing my teeth about some new scientific...

Today is Martin Luther King's birthday. This great soul was a visionary. What is a visionary? Visionaries are those rare and inspired individuals who see great promise and imminent potentials for human consciousness and culture that most of us haven't even begun to imagine yet.

They see far beyond...

On Jan. 1, I gave my annual New Year's Address. The post below is edited from that talk. Enjoy!

A very warm Happy New Year to everybody!

As we begin this new year, I want to share my reflections on what this day means to me, and to help all...

Meditation is a metaphor for enlightenment.

Rightly understood, meditation and enlightenment are one and the same. Meditation is the experience of a particular state of consciousness that has certain qualities, which are also the qualities of enlightenment itself. This is why meditation can be understood as a metaphor for enlightenment....

Why do some of us seek for higher truths? Why is it that certain individuals are driven blindly, madly, and passionately to transcend their own limitations? Why do we, at times, feel compelled to improve ourselves, not only for our own sake but for the sake of a higher cause...

When you take the perennial meditative journey to the depths of your own self, you discover what it was like before the beginning.

You come to rest in the timeless empty void before the universe was born, which the mystics call the ground of being. When you taste the profound...

For most of us, spiritual evolution does not occur simply as a result of one flash of insight or revelation. On the contrary, it usually requires inspired intention and consistent, diligent effort. And the way this is achieved is through the greatest gift that evolution has given us: the power...

Many of us have had spiritual experiences in which we momentarily glimpse an indescribable glory, a greater purpose and a higher potential for human life. But because those of us at the leading edge live in a culture of such extreme narcissism and secular materialism, we have no context for...

When time began, for an unknown reason, something came from nothing. Suddenly, an impulse emerged -- the impulse to become, to create, to evolve. One could call it the God impulse. This urge to take form gradually became the whole universe, eventually including you and me as we are right...

In many spiritual circles, everybody likes to talk about intuition. "Follow your heart," "Listen to your inner guide," teachers tell us. But I always get a little nervous when I hear that kind of advice because it all depends on who you're talking to. To take a very extreme example,...

Enlightenment means consciousness beyond ego and evolution means development in time. So Evolutionary Enlightenment means the development in time of consciousness beyond ego. The path, in the context of evolutionary enlightenment, is, at least in theory, quite simple. It is a journey from identification with ego to identification with the...