The objective of the human journey was to solve the human condition

Having lived in deep denial of the human condition it naturally comes as a shock to rediscover it. Living in such denial has meant that the world has seemed meaningless, but with the whole issue of the human condition brought out into the open and resolved, resigned humans can suddenly see that life was not at all meaningless. In fact, they can now see that every human that has ever lived has worked tirelessly towards this day when self-understanding would arrive. Humans have been involved in an immensely purposeful project and world.

In the following quote, Marilyn Ferguson, whose book, The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), helped inspire the New Age Movement of the 1980s, acknowledges the necessary task of reconciling humans’ divided selves and, by so doing, resurrecting our species’ long-repressed instinctive self’s natural sensitivities and cooperative potential. It also acknowledges that, with the damaging effects of ever-increasing levels of alienation in the world, fulfilling this task has become a matter of urgency. Ferguson wrote: ‘Maybe [the theologian, scientist and prophet] Teilhard de Chardin was right; maybe we are moving toward an omega point—Maybe we can finally resolve the planet’s inner conflict between its neurotic self (which we’ve created and which is unreal) and its real self. Our real self knows how to commune, how to create…From everything I’ve seen people really urgently want the kind of new beginning…[that I am] talking about [where humans will live in] cooperation instead of competition’ (New Age mag. Aug. 1982).

As extremely difficult as the much-needed exploration into, and journey out of the human condition is, our freedom from it and all the destruction it has caused can only be achieved via that journey. Humanity’s task is to progress beyond the human condition—and it is the responsibility of those who are relatively free of corruption, Page 293 of
Print Edition those who are relatively innocent and able to confront the human condition, to unlock and then hold open the door to that new world for humans—just as it is the responsibility of those who are no longer innocent to restrain themselves from trying to shut the door to that future. Both the innocent and those whose innocence was sacrificed in humanity’s battle with the human condition have roles in the human-condition-addressing, denial-free new world. As described at the end of Beyond, there is a completely fulfilling and fully participatory role for everyone in the human-condition-ameliorating new world.

The real revolution for the human race is a mental one. As the band Public Enemy sings, ‘Are you ready for the real revolution; the revolution of the mind?’ (from the 1990s song He Got Game).

It has to be emphasised here that what makes it possible to acknowledge both innocents and those who are no longer innocent is the finding of understanding of the human condition. Solving the human condition means ending the historic criticism of humans’ innocence-destroyed, corrupted, upset, divisive, alienated condition. Understanding is compassion. The truth sets us free from criticism. We have been a species in denial but understanding the human condition makes humans free of the human condition, takes humanity beyond the human condition, beyond the unjustly condemning concepts of good and evil. Honesty is possible now and honesty is the essential ingredient needed for the psychological rehabilitation of our species. Honesty is therapy. As Sir Laurens van der Post has written, ‘Truth, however terrible, carried within itself its own strange comfort for the misery it is so often compelled to inflict on behalf of life. Sooner or later it is not pretence but the truth which gives back with both hands what it has taken away with one. Indeed, unaided and alone it will pick up the fragments of the reality it has shattered and piece them together again in the shape of more immediate meaning’ (A Story Like the Wind, 1972, p.174 of 473).

The good news is that now that the human condition has been explained, all humans can confront the dark side of themselves without feeling unbearably condemned. Since the late 1980s, the WTM has been developing the know-how that makes it possible for people to safely renegotiate resignation using the reconciling understanding of the human condition.