Andrew Cohen

Andrew Cohen is an internationally renowned and influential spiritual teacher, and the founder of Evolutionary Enlightenment. Raised in a secular Jewish family in New York City, he experienced a spontaneous revelation of cosmic consciousness at the age of sixteen, and embarked on a lifelong spiritual journey.

A fateful meeting with the revered master H.W.L Poonja in 1986 sparked a life-changing awakening in him, and he quickly began developing a unique spiritual teaching. Departing radically from a traditional Eastern approach, Evolutionary Enlightenment calls not for transcendence of the world, but for a deep and heroic responsibility for its evolution.

Cohen has become known for his willingness to boldly cast aside the sacred cows of the spiritual world. His teaching work grapples with the challenges of bringing the revelation of enlightenment to a contemporary Western audience, integrating postmodern cultural and scientific understanding with an original and sophisticated non-dual philosophy.

In nearly three decades of teaching work, he has engaged with thousands of seekers worldwide, evolving his teaching in response to direct dialogue with students, teachers, scholars and philosophers. The community that formed around him eventually became known as EnlightenNext, with centres in seven countries.

From 1991 to 2010 he was the editor-in-chief of the award-winning EnlightenNext magazine, a publication that explored the deepest spiritual questions of our time with some of the world’s most noted thought leaders.

In 2013, he was asked to step down from the organisation he founded. EnlightenNext soon folded, and Cohen went on an open-ended sabbatical.

After a long period of introspection and deep enquiry he is now returning to public life, and stepping forward to share an emerging perspective.