The Integration of Radical and Evolutionary Awakening - Jon Eden Khan

There are two primary kinds of awakening that unfold on the path.

The first we can call radical awakening, which is awakening to the one Absolute Reality that transcends, embraces, and is arising as the whole multidimensional universe.

The second we can call evolutionary awakening, which is awakening to different levels of our own being, and then into wider and wider fields of the multidimensional universe.

Radical awakening reveals the ultimate Source-Reality that has been variously named in our global wisdom traditions, God, Brahman, Dharmakaya, Paramshiva, the Self, Primordial Consciousness, Allah, etc.

Evolutionary awakening allows us to awaken to and integrate the different levels of our being, from body to personality to soul to spirit and beyond into the cosmos.

Just as we describe human experience in 1st person, 2nd person, and 3rd person domains – namely the I (1st person), the you / we (2nd person), or the it / its (3rd person), so also do pathways along both of these forms of awakening tend to prioritise either 1st person (I / consciousness), 2nd, person (you / we), or 3rd person (it / its) approaches.

For example, in the domain of radical awakening we have:

And in the domain of evolutionary awakening, we have:

The Phases of the Absolute’s Expression

When the Absolute expresses itself as the manifest universe, it does so through different phases of expression. This is like H20 that can express itself as a gas, liquid and solid whilst never changing its fundamental essence.

The true nature of the Absolute is the nondual Ground of Being that is arising moment to moment as all creation.

When the Absolute arises to express as the universe, the first phase of its expression is unmanifest formlessness. This is the dark divinity prior to all separation.

The second phase of the Absolute’s expression is the subtle fields of light, energy, sound, and information that pervade the subtle planes of experience.

The third phase of the Absolute’s expression is dense matter, nature, and the material world of form.

Understanding these different layers of the Absolute’s expression is helpful because the different levels of our being that we awaken to on the path of evolutionary awakening participate in those different phases of the absolute’s expression. This can be seen in the table below.

The Levels of Our Being and the Phases of the Absolute

When the Absolute arises as a person, it does so by first expressing its Life, which participates in its ever-present nondual reality.

That Life then polarises into spirit and matter, which at their root level both participate in the dark formless first phase of the Absolute. Cosmologically, these are the black hole at the core of a galaxy that provides the central point of power around which it revolves, and the dark matter halo that provides its body.

Between these two the soul blazes forth into being, which participates in the subtle fields of light, energy, and sound. Cosmologically, this is symbolised by the sun.

And the soul then emanates a stream of its consciousness down into the personality, which is clothed by dense and subtle expressions of matter, with the personality consciousness participating in the dense phase of the Absolute’s expression. Cosmologically, this is symbolised by a planet.

The Path of Return

On the path of return, as the process of evolutionary awakening unfolds, the individual is first identified as a personality and run by the energy of creative intelligence.

Eventually through crisis they come to their soul and a deeper love and wisdom start to touch their path. They start to realise themselves as the being of light and essential innocence they are as a soul and take the path of soul initiation.

Later, once soul has landed to some degree in their being, a new call comes to journey deeper. Now to the dark that is prior to the light of soul. For some, this takes them into the mysteries of dark matter, which is the source and root of all matter as it expresses on all levels of our being, subtle and dense. For others, they are drawn into the mysteries of dark spirit, which is the root of all identity at the different levels of our being.

Eventually, the being must integrate both expressions of the dark while standing as the soul between them. When they can do that, it opens them to the nondual Life at the core of the soul that is the essence of both spirit and matter. And they realise this nondual Life is the primordial energy of the absolute.

The Integration of Radical and Evolutionary Awakening

Radical awakening is available at all stages of the path before this because all it requires is for the being to recognise the true nature of the consciousness that is always present.

When the being can add to that an awakening as the nondual Life that is the essence of all spirit, soul, personality, and matter, then they have integrated radical and evolutionary awakening in the realisation of Reality as it truly is.

Both utterly beyond realisation and evolution, arising spontaneously as all creation, and ecstatically breaking forth as the life force of its own self-expression through every moment, now arising as a human who knows they are that point in evolution where reality recognises itself, and can now create from there.

No longer as an individual seeking God, but now as God creating.