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andrew cohen
May 2009 
A question of 51% commitment to the Authentic Self
Jeff
This question was sent to me from someone taking the class currently in Foxhollow. I am posting it here along with my response for everyones benefit. For those of you not familiar with Andrew Cohen's teaching on the idea of achieving 51% I will attempt to state it briefly here. Evolutionary Enlightenment can be stated as being the discovery in one's self of what Andrew calls the Authentic Self and then choosing to live from that perspective as apposed to the perspective of the ego. We all have both Authentic Self and ego within us and the goal of this teaching is that are alegence flips from being fundemetally with ego to fundementally with the Authentic Self. That is the magic 51% mark - when we are more invested in Authentic Self than ego. That means that when push comes to shove and our choices really count we will always choose the Authentic Self. At less than 51% we will always choose ego when our backs are against the wall. I hope that gives you enough understanding to appreciate the following exchange...
Question:
I would like to discuss this 51% thing a little further. It's such a strange concept for me coming from a background of always striving for excellence to think of doing anything less than 110%. I am trying to suspend all other beliefs I have formed from other teachings and my martial arts background, but I think that I misinterperted the meaning behind 51%. I had a thought today and wanted to check in with you to see if this is what you meant.
If I'm 51% inline with the perspective that I am deepening in my meditation, then that means I will lean towards making decisions that are congruent with that perspective because more of me wants that than doesn't? Is that what you meant?
Response:
I think your understanding is sound. You get the concept, but the difficulty with all of this is that it is not usually our understanding of concepts like this that is the source of our confusion, but our knowledge of the place in ourselves that the concepts apply to that makes things challenging. The place in you that has trained to give 110% is still going to need to give 110% if you are even going to have a shot at reaching the 51% that I am talking about. You are thinking of 51% as half effort, but that is not what I mean. At the level of will and intention nothing less than 110% is required. The 51% commitment is at a level deeper than will and intention. It is at the level of self-sense that we were pointing towards in the first class.
Evolutionary Enlightenment is not concerned with the part of yourself that gives 110% in the way that you are describing. That level of commitment is assumed, the teaching won’t work at less than 110% effort and commitment. That is one to understand what “top-down” refers to. The part of you that we want to get to 51% is deeper; it is the part that decided to give 110% in the first place. Another way to think about it is that we are trying to work on our commitment to being alive – period, not our level of commitment to some particular moment under some particular circumstance. When challenged, when for some reason life overwhelms us and we just have to act, we find out where we really stand in relationship to life in general. Is that place - who we are before thought and will and conscious intention are activated – is that place at 51%?
This may or may not help you understand the concept, but in the end understanding the concept isn’t really that important. Your own willingness to not know and to make the effort to find out is much closer to the goal than any particular understanding of any particular concept that you might come to. I think that is why Andrew is continually changing the terms he uses, because as soon as we become overly familiar with our understanding of the concept it can become an obstacle to being openly interested and receptive. Evolutionary Enlightenment is not about getting some place, it is more of an ongoing commitment to going further than we are.
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I was wondering about this too, more in regards to the actual shift in becomming that 51%. Is this a commitment that is made once and for all, or something that we have to continually reinforce? In other words, can we go beyond ego and embrace the authentic self so fully that we never again have to make the decision of who is in the driver’s seat? It would seem that this must be the case….
I know in our class we talked about making that decision over and over again, but this 51% would seem that such a shift would render “making a decision” obsolete, because it would have already been decided. It doesn’t mean that one would ever find a resting place where growth and development ceased, but that the ego would be silenced enough that our relationship to life was always coming from the authentic self.
Thinking that this can be once and for all commitment rather than a continual, ongoing, daily struggle would change things. This is something I’ve been wondering about a lot lately and would appreciate any insights you might have.
hi jeff,
I'm curious about your response to Meghan's quesiton above. My understanding on the 51% is not quite refined at the moment.
Until listening to andrew talk yesterday, I thought the 'authentic' self was the same as what 'awakened' meant in the 'pre-modern view of enlightenment. And that the 51% was what that awakened' state was (i.e. say the Buddha for example was in Zero. vs. minus 1 & we are all aspiring to live in Zero & then participate out of Zero.) The part i didn't get until yesterday is that andrew is saying there is a +1.!
If I understood correctly, what andrew is saying is that the 'zero' state is necessary for the 'authentic self' to emerge but the authentic self is what the +1 is (i.e. the 'future' – the edge of the present' — zero with an active participation in the life process and the very co-creation of consciousenss as it emerges).
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btw. wanted to add:
I've been a bit confused about the 'position of the awakened ones' ( teachers & the teachings of the buddha, the christ, rumi, ramana, poonjaji, gangaji, cathering ingram, wayne liquorman, eckhart tolle etc..) in relation to Andrew's model.
Even when we are told to drop everything else we know, it is natural to want to understand the framweork contextually since it evolves out of what brought many of us to a place of pure receptivity to andrew's teachings in the first place – you know?.
I relaized after the talk yesterday, that the awakened ones in the traditional sense were at the zero place. and andrew is not negating the value of that, but saying that is not the end, but the beginning in most ways. & We need to light a fire under our awakening ..for it to matter contextually. (?)
I asked about the Buddha for example, & he mentioned that the Buddha was at the edge of his time.
& out of that I can easily understand that thousands of years later Consciousness has evolved toward another edge- .. so aspiring to be at the point the Buddha reached isn't necessarily the edge but on the way toward something else. (the buddhas of today).
Our role is manifestation of an evolving consciousness is to emerge in the exploration of What does the present & future look like for an emerging consciousness?
Does that sound in sync or have I intellectualized this way too much? lol
thanks
sr.
I agree with both of the points you are making. In the first, as you say, Evolutionary Enlightenment takes us beyond the pre-modern goal of enlightenment as permanent abidance in the ground of being (or zero) to the authentic self which means unhindered participation in the evolution of consciousness. This new interpretation of the goal of the spiritual path comes about as the world view that we have has changed, particularly because of the modern understanding that we are part of an evolving universe. This is why Andrew has called it “The New Enlightenment”.
As for the great masters of the past, if not for there heroic victories over ignorance we would never be in apposition today to see further than they. As you mentioned Andrew said, the Buddha was at the very edge of his time. He couldn’t have been more enlightened in that time, but if he were alive today there would be enlightened in a much more developed world view and the conclusions he drew about the meaning and significance of enlightenment would be different. If he could have known that life was an evolutionary journey into unknowable heights of wonder, he might not have concluded that getting off the “wheel of suffering” was the goal of enlightenment.