The loneliness of humans’ alienated state

While humans could not acknowledge the significance of nurturing in human life, how much innocence was lost as a result of insufficient nurturing, and that humans had to repress access to their soul’s true Page 288 of
Print Edition world at resignation, it was impossible for them to see just how great a loss of innocence and how much estrangement from their true selves and the true world had occurred. Now that humans can safely acknowledge alienation, what is revealed is that humans are 2 million years alienated from their soul’s cooperative, all-sensitive, true world. This alienation from their true self and true world is a state of utter exile and aloneness; absolute and desperate loneliness.

Awareness of this extreme loneliness allows us for the first time to understand some previously inexplicable aspects of human nature, such as the mystery of why humans ‘fall in love’. The French physicist Blaise once wrote that ‘The heart has reasons that reason cannot comprehend’ (Pensees, iv, p.277), but we can now comprehend the heart’s reason for falling in love.

Humans have come to live in an extremely lost, dark, forlorn, despairing state. R.D. Laing was spot-on when he said that humans live with ‘fifty feet of solid concrete’ between themselves and the true world of their soul. As a person digests understanding of the human condition this immense loneliness within humans becomes more and more apparent and, with sufficient appreciation of the extent of that loneliness, it becomes possible to fully appreciate why humans ‘fall in love’. The key word is ‘fall’. It is an acknowledgment that humans let go of their immensely lonely, despairing reality and allow themselves to be transported to—escape to—another potential and possibility. Humans let themselves dream of the ideal state where they are no longer estranged from each other, but are together as one. As is explained in my earlier books, and briefly explained in the Plato essay in the section ‘A7’, humans spent some 6 or 7 million years in this wonderful, ‘heavenly’ state of real togetherness before consciousness emerged, so there is a memory within humans of what that state is like which allows them to dream of it. Humans once lived utterly lovingly and cooperatively, and within all humans exists the hope of one day being able to solve the human condition and return to that idyllic state. The lyrics of the song Somewhere written by Stephen Sondheim for the blockbuster 1956 musical and film West Side Story perfectly describe the dream of the heavenly state of true togetherness that humans allow themselves to be transported to when they fall in love: ‘Somewhere / We’ll find a new way of living / We’ll find a way of forgiving / Somewhere // There’s a place for us / A time and place for us / Hold my hand and we’re halfway there / Hold my hand and I’ll take you there / Somehow / Some day / Somewhere!’ The 1928 song, Let’s Fall In Love, Page 289 of
Print Edition written by Cole Porter, also has lyrics that reveal how falling in love is about allowing yourself to dream of the ideal state, of ‘paradise’: ‘Let’s fall in love / Why shouldn’t we fall in love? / Our hearts are made of it / Let’s take a chance / Why be afraid of it / Let’s close our eyes and make our own paradise’. The escape from the horror of a resigned world oppressed and upset by the human condition that falling in love is concerned with achieving is expressed in these lyrics from the 1977 Fleetwood Mac song Sara: ‘Drowning in the sea of love / Where everyone would love to drown’.

Given humans’ immense loneliness we can understand now the saying, ‘love is blind’. It was deliberately blind; humans wanted to be transported away from their desperately lonely reality, they wanted to dream, to delude themselves, to not see their reality. It is explained in detail in Beyond, in the chapter ‘Illustrated Summary of the Development and Resolution of Upset’, and as is summarised in the first section of the next essay, ‘Bringing peace to the war between the sexes’, that youthful neotenous looks such as domed forehead, snubbed nose, large eyes and long healthy hair signalled innocence. It was this image of innocence that could inspire the dream of the ideal, uncorrupted, innocent, truly-together-as-one partnership. As stated in Beyond, the ‘“mystery of women” was that it was only the physical image or object of innocence that men were falling in love with. The illusion was that women were psychologically as well as physically innocent. For their part, women were able to fall in love with the dream of their own “perfection”—of their being truly innocent. Men and women fell in love. We abandoned the reality in favour of the dream. It was the one time in our life when we could romance—when we could be transported to “how it could be”—to heaven’ (p.144 of 203).

The romantic state of falling in love with the image of innocence is apparent in the words of the 1958 song, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, written by Ewan MacColl. It begins, ‘The first time ever I saw your face / I thought the sun rose in your eyes / And the moon and the stars were the gift you gave / to the dark and the endless sky’. The irresistible escape from the depressing state of the human condition implicit in being ‘in love’ also comes through in the most popular jukebox record of all time, Patsy Cline’s version of Willie Nelson’s 1961 song, Crazy. The song begins with the words, ‘Crazy, I’m crazy for feeling so lonely / I’m crazy, crazy for feeling so blue’, and ends with the words, ‘I’m crazy for trying and crazy for crying and I’m crazy for lovin’ you.’ The delusion involved in falling in love is acknowledged in Larry Hart’s lyrics for Page 290 of
Print Edition the 1938 musical, The Boys of Syracuse—‘Falling in love with love / Is falling for make-believe’.

Being able to admit and confront the extent of humans’ loneliness allows us to explain many mysteries. Many, if not all, people have dreams of levitating and/or flying through the air. We can now understand that these dreams represent yearnings for freedom from the horror of humans’ lonely, unhappy, corrupted, alienated state. The advent of spoken language, which made it possible for humans to describe their feelings, is a relatively recent development. Spoken language followed the emergence of consciousness, and our species has only been conscious for some 2 million years. The way our older, pre-consciousness, original instinctive self or soul relates to the world is through associations with the natural world. In this language of our soul, the most powerful metaphor or symbol for the state of freedom in the natural world is undoubtedly flying, exemplified by birds that are able to lift off from the ground and sail around through the air at their will and with the greatest of ease. The saying ‘free as a bird’ says it all.

Interestingly Koko, the first gorilla to learn sign language, employs the sign for ‘bird’ as her swear word. We forget how astonishing it is that some animals, namely birds, seem to be able to defy gravity, jump off the ground and fly around with ease. For such a land-anchored animal as a gorilla, it must seem offensive and Koko has apparently given recognition to that offence in her use of the sign for the animal ‘bird’ as her swear word.

Flying as a metaphor for freedom from the horror of the human condition is well expressed in the song Over the Rainbow, first sung by Judy Garland in the film Wizard of Oz: ‘Somewhere over the rainbow way up high / There’s a land that I heard of once in a lullaby / Somewhere over the rainbow skies are blue / And the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true / Some day I’ll wish upon a star / And wake up where the clouds are far behind me / Where troubles melt like lemon drops / Away above the chimney tops / That’s where you’ll find me / Somewhere over the rainbow bluebirds fly / Birds fly over the rainbow / Why, then, oh, why can’t I? / If happy little bluebirds fly / Beyond the rainbow, why, oh, why can’t I?’ (lyrics E. Y. Harburg, 1939).

Given that the reference to falling in love is to do with the dream of the heavenly state of true togetherness, it is appropriate to demystify the concept of ‘heaven’ a little more. ‘Heaven’ is the metaphysical or religious term for the integrated, cooperative state that humanity Page 291 of
Print Edition once experienced and will experience again now that the human condition is solved. A passage from Sir Laurens van der Post’s writings quoted earlier (when examining Carl Jung’s journey into the unconscious), shows that Sir Laurens recognised this truth of heaven being the human-condition-free, alienation-free, integrated state that humanity will now return to. The quote was: ‘He found himself turning to the child in himself as if instinct, too, was exhorting him to become like the child which the New Testament exhortation makes imperative. In this way he hoped to emerge from darkness into the light of which the Kingdom of Heaven is the supreme image’ (Jung and the Story of Our Time, 1976, p.154 of 275).

As has been mentioned already, a consequence of being able to understand and acknowledge resignation and the immense estrangement from their true self that resigned adult humans are living in and their consequent immense loneliness, is that we can now see where the real propensity for sickness and unhealthiness in humans has emanated from. It becomes clear that resigned humans have only just been managing to hold total despair at bay; any extra despair in their lives tipped them into a state of utter loneliness that expressed itself physically in the flaring up or festering of the normal weaknesses that exist in the human make-up, giving rise to such sicknesses as cancer. Solve the problem of the human condition and humans will be physically well again. In the future we will see elderly humans with faces as free and glowing as a child’s. People will be as healthy as they were before the human condition emerged.

In his poem, Theogony, the 8th century BC Greek poet Hesiod described how healthy humans were in their original innocent state: ‘When gods alike and mortals rose to birth / A golden race the immortals formed on earth / Of many-languaged men: they lived of old / When Saturn reigned in heaven, an age of gold / Like gods they lived, with calm untroubled mind / Free from the toils and anguish of our kind / Nor e’er decrepit age misshaped their frame / The hand’s, the foot’s proportions still the same / Strangers to ill, their lives in feasts flowed by / Wealthy in flocks; dear to the blest on high / Dying they sank in sleep, nor seemed to die / Theirs was each good; the life-sustaining soil / Yielded its copious fruits, unbribed by toil / They with abundant good ’midst quiet lands / All willing shared the gathering of their hands’ (tr. Elton).

Buddhist scripture accurately describes what humans will be like when the ameliorating understanding of the human condition arrives; the time, in the words of the scripture, when humans ‘will with Page 292 of
Print Edition a perfect voice preach the true Dharma, which is auspicious and removes all ill’. Of that future time, which has now begun, the scripture says ‘Human beings are then without any blemishes, moral offences are unknown among them, and they are full of zest and joy. Their bodies are very large and their skin has a fine hue. Their strength is quite extraordinary’ (Maitreyavyakarana, tr. Edward Conze, Buddhist Scriptures, 1959, pp.238-242).