LOVE, WISDOM & THE PATH TO SPIRITUAL AWAKENING:

A dialogue with Swami Shankarananda and Andrew Cohen in New York City, Saturday, June 11, 3:30-5:30pm

Andrew Cohen, founder of EnlightenNext, and Swami Shankarananda, founder of Melbourne,
 Australia’s Shiva Mediation Center, will engage in a dialogue that explores the similarities and differences between 
their two outlooks on spiritual enlightenment.

Cohen and Shankarananda are spiritual teachers and authors focused on examining perennial spiritual questions
 and reinterpreting them for the contemporary world. Both are New York-born Jews who found their own spiritual 
awakening through encounters with Indian Yogis, and both are veterans of the East-meets-West movements of the 
1970s and 1980s. However, Cohen and Shankarananda have taken two distinct approaches to the spiritual path;
 Cohen’s work redefines enlightenment in the context of evolution, while Shankarananda updates the ancient Hindu 
school of Kashmir Shaivism for the contemporary spiritual student.

On Saturday, June 11th, 2011, Cohen and Shankarananda will explore the contours of their different yet complementary approaches to higher awakening, including their thoughts about the nature of consciousness and the relationship between love and wisdom on the spiritual path.

The dialogue, planned to run from 3:30-5:30pm with a vegetarian reception to follow, will be at the Subud Chelsea Center in New York City. For more information, visit the EnlightenNext New York homepage.

About the Speakers

Andrew Cohen is best known for his original teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment, which redefines spiritual
 awakening to align with our ever-expanding appreciation for the processes of evolution. After a transformative 
meeting with the renowned Advaita Vedanta master H.W.L. Poonja in 1986, Cohen began teaching internationally.
 He founded the award-winning magazine EnlightenNext as a forum for serious spiritual and philosophical inquiry, has
 penned several books, and has developed a number of courses in Evolutionary Enlightenment. His new book by the 
same title will be released in September, 2011.

Swami Shankarananda’s foremost contribution to contemporary spirituality is the Shiva Process, a form of self-inquiry 
that integrates Kashmir Shaivism, which he calls “a philosophy of consciousness,” with western psychology.
 After leaving a career as an English professor at Indiana University in 1970 to pursue the spiritual path,
 Shankarananda met the great Indian sage Baba Muktananda and soon became one of his top western students,
opening the first American Siddha Yoga ashram in 1974. Since that time he has run ashrams in Ann Arbor, New
York, and Los Angeles, eventually starting the Shiva Meditation Center in Melbourne, where he has become one of 
the most popular meditation teachers in Australia. Shankarananda has also published several popular books, 
including Happy for No Good Reason and Consciousness is Everything.

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Andrew Cohen is a spiritual teacher and founder of the award-winning EnlightenNext magazine. Click to learn more about his new book Evolutionary Enlightenment: A New Path to Spiritual Awakening.