Teachings with Andrew Cohen
The Elusive Nature of Perfect Clarity

In 1968, in a rare and revealing interview with Playboy magazine, the master filmmaker Stanley Kubrick made some startling and candid admissions about his perspective on life. At one point during the interview, he gave us this striking, and now famous, quote:

“The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent. If we can come to terms with this indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.”

Kubrick inadvertently summarised 20th century existentialism in one short and eloquent paragraph. The existentialists proposed that there is no inherent meaning in anything we see, but that we are each solely responsible for creating meaning. Striving to “live” this meaning authentically gives our existence validity.

In a specific and limited sense, they made an important observation. Within the context of relative reality, there is no perfectly objective perspective in relationship to anything we see. All perspectives are relative. What we see and understand is governed by the senses, the mind, thought, emotion and our own personal and cultural conditioning.

Yet there is a deeper reality that any human being can access when they are prepared to let go of the relative dimension of the mind and the senses. If we go sufficiently deep, we can touch an Absolute dimension of reality that blows apart our relative sense of self, time and space.

When we are convinced beyond any doubt about the ultimate nature of Being, and the evolutionary context of all manifest reality, what emerges is an existential context that has ultimate meaning at its core.

From this point forward, we can at least be absolutely sure of one thing: the Absolute itself. When we dare to go this deep, there is existential relief in the direct experiential cognition of something that is absolutely true – not an object, but a principle.

This recognition can enable us to cultivate a kind of authentic, unshakeable self-confidence that is rooted in the Absolute. Yet simultaneously, we can fully acknowledge the starkly contrasting truth that we will never see anything with absolute objectivity.

There is a healthy tension between these two positions. On the one hand, we have the spiritual self-confidence that emerges from an experiential certainty in that which is absolute. On the other, we have the humility to understand that our view can never be complete.

If we can hold this tension lightly, a kind of liberating clarity can emerge. It becomes possible to hold multiple perspectives without getting lost in one or other relative dimension of experience.

Anchored in spiritual self-confidence, we can learn how to embrace an integral orientation characterised by a tentative “leaning in”, where we are always simultaneously cognitive of, and trying to see beyond, our own limitations.

In this talk, Andrew Cohen explores the elusive nature of perfect clarity, and reveals the delicate interplay between certainty in an absolute principle, and our ever-imperfect perception of manifest reality.

The Elusive Nature of Perfect Clarity

Live Zoom teaching with Andrew Cohen
Cost $0 – $50

Saturday 24th October

8am PDT • 11am EDT • 4pm UK • 5pm CEST • 8.30pm IST

Doors open 15 minutes before