Embracing Heaven & Earth: The Liberation Teachings of Andrew Cohen - Softcover

This is not a book of ideas or concepts or commentaries about truths glimpsed through the dark mirror of the mind. It is the living experience of one man, Andrew Cohen. Yet simply and most profoundly, it is a testament to our deepest shared human experience. Andrew's radical message is, as the title of this book implies, that heaven can be brought to earth - and, in fact, that it is our sacred duty to do so. He shows us how to live the glory revealed in our most profound spiritual experiences by harnessing their liberating power as a force for radical transformation and evolution itself. Nothing is required - no special initiation, no complicated techniques, no obscure systems of knowledge. Just being a human being fully immersed in the fundamental predicament of wondering who we are in this cosmos, and what to do on this planet. In this extraordinary book is everything we need to live our earthly lives fueled by the fire of heaven.

So who is Andrew Cohen? He's a revolutionary spiritual teacher whose weapons are a razor-sharp inquiry into what's true and a devastating passion for the transformation of the human race. He is the sworn enemy of ego, a liberator of the human heart. Andrew's consistent stand for freedom - his daring pursuit of the truth in any situation, his demand that we realize and live a love that has no bounds - shows us that victory is possible. He urges us to leap into the fire of our deepest passion, to burn, to care more and more until the whole world explodes in our hearts. His war cry, his love that takes no prisoners, sends a shock wave against the mediocrity and cynicism where ego thrives.

Not unlike revolutionary teachers of the past, Andrew's own search for truth has led him beyond the prevailing wisdom of our time into a dynamic inquiry that truly does embrace both heaven and earth. Over the fifteen years since he began guiding others on the path to Liberation, Andrew has engaged himself in a remarkable apprenticeship to the human condition. He has tirelessly and ceaselessly explored what it is that holds us back from living the truth of what we discover in our deepest spiritual experiences. A rare teaching is the result - what Andrew calls Impersonal Enlightenment. Taking us beyond our blinding self-preoccupation, this teaching of Impersonal Enlightenment brings us to a tangible recognition of our shared human experience, a recognition that urgently demands that we do everything we possibly can to transform the ignorance and division in ourselves and the world. What is radical and revolutionary about Enlightenment, Andrew teaches, is that it is an impersonal force for the evolution of humanity as a whole. This is the context for the teachings in this book.

Here Andrew has crystallized his fundamental teachings into five tenets. These tenets are tools to help us uncover the mystery and mechanics of our own experience. When experienced in depth, they are also revealed to be actual spiritual laws that live already in each of us, waiting for their power to be released. Nothing of what we usually identify as our personal selves - our thoughts, feelings and history - has relevance to these tenets or to the order of being that they reveal. They are perfectly empty of the personal, separate sense of self. They destroy the need for psychology as we know it, revealing our romance with personal drama to be nothing more than a trick of the mind that keeps us from recognizing the glory and deadly seriousness of our lives. These tenets and the other essential teachings presented in this book starve the ego, forcing it to let go of its death grip on our hearts, allowing the awesome fire of our True Self to begin to animate our every breath.

Don't underestimate the power of what is in this book. Andrew dares to present a radical psychology of Liberation that takes us far beyond who and what we recognize ourselves to be. While the mind can appreciate the perfect logic of these compelling words, they are not simply words but experience captured in black and white. They are a direct current into the unknown depth of human being. Sincere contemplation of these teachings - an attentive dialogue between your experience and these words - will provide access to an astonishing self-knowledge. Pay attention to what moves in you, listen for th e call that dares to take you beyond the established territory of the known. Something far greater is happening here, an explosion in creation itself, a potential for human being that ends the strife-filled world that we know. Beyond desire, beyond the personal, an unknown potential that is Life unbridled awaits us. It waits for you on the pages of this book. author of Mother Daughter Revolution

The last five chapters endeavor to bring to light the true meaning and significance of nonduality. They attempt to reveal the deeply mysterious relationship and simultaneous nondifference between heaven and earth, between Enlightenment and the human experience.