Freedom Expanded: Book 1—The Transformation of the Human Race
Part 9:2 The TRANSFORMED LIFEFORCE STATE metamorphoses the human race
It should now be emphasised that the new TRANSFORMED LIFEFORCE STATE is fundamentally different to religion in that it is all about knowledge, not dogma—knowledge that brings about a complete change, in fact a metamorphosis of the human race from an insecure human-condition-afflicted state to an entirely TRANSFORMED human-condition-free state. As explained in Part 3:11G, religions were a means of containing the upset human condition while the search for understanding of that condition was being carried out. The WORLD TRANSFORMATION MOVEMENT is concerned with what happens after that liberating understanding is found, which is the metamorphosis—the complete progression and change of the human race—from a human-condition-afflicted state of psychosis and neurosis to a state free of that terrible condition.
When it comes to the core issue of our immensely upset human condition we no longer have to live in hope and faith that it will one day be able to be resolved, for it now is resolved, and this resolution of the human condition gives the human race the ability to at last understand and ameliorate or heal its upset condition. Dogma can’t heal upset, only understanding can do that. So this is the end of hope and faith that understanding of the human condition would one day be found and the beginning of knowing about the human condition—it is the end of faith and the beginning of knowing. And there is no deity involved, or deference to anyone, no focus on a personality, or worship of any kind.
Best of all, there is no involvement or emphasis on guilt, for guilt has been eliminated forever with the reconciling understanding of the human condition. And it is eliminated in a way that makes humans healthy, not sick. We saw in Part 3:11H how the development of pseudo idealistic causes eliminated guilt using ever increasing degrees of dishonesty/lies/denial/delusion—ultimately, in postmodernism, by simply saying there is no such thing as truth!! Such extreme dishonesty/denial is extreme alienation/separation from the truth, which in turn represents extreme neurosis/mind sickness and psychosis/soul death. Lying/denial as a way of escaping guilt/self-confrontation only leads to even greater sickness, ultimately to total dysfunctionality, complete neurosis and psychosis—Thomas Nagel made this point when, in the quote included in Part 3:11H, he said, ‘The capacity for transcendence brings with it a liability to alienation, and the wish to escape this condition…can lead to even greater absurdity.’ With the arrival of understanding of the human condition we get rid of guilt without having to use dishonesty/delusion/denial/alienation/neurosis/psychosis/sickness/dysfunctionality. In fact, it eliminates neurosis/psychosis/sickness/dysfunctionality. With understanding of the human condition, guilt—the accusation, insinuation, implication that a human is not worthy/good—completely disappears. We can now understand that after a horrifically upsetting two million year heroic battle to overthrow ignorance all humans are naturally variously upset from that great and necessary battle but all humans are equally good. In fact, with understanding of the human condition the concepts of good and bad, superior and inferior, disappear from our conceptualisation of ourselves.
The fundamental differentiation between religion and this new TRANSFORMED LIFEFORCE WAY OF LIVING lies in the fact that where religions were based on deferring to, and living through support of the embodiment of the ideals in the form of the soundness and truth of the prophet around which the religion was founded, this new TRANSFORMED LIFEFORCE WAY OF LIVING is based on deferring to and living through support of first-principle-based understandings of the ideals and of our species’ historically unavoidable lack of compliance with those ideals. So while religion and the human-condition-resolved TRANSFORMED LIFEFORCE WAY OF LIVING both involve letting go living through your corrupted self and deferring to something else, that is where the similarity ends.
To explain more fully the significance of this difference I should begin by describing and explaining St Paul’s human-condition-relieving-but-not-human-condition-resolving discovery of the beauty of Christianity. Acts 8 and 9 of the Bible relate Saul’s (as St Paul was known before his conversion experience) journey to Damascus where he planned to persuade the authorities to destroy the fledgling group of Christians, such was his fury towards the truth about the human condition that Christ, through his sound words and life, had dared to reveal and which this small group were living in courageous support of. However, while riding along on his donkey in a seething, ‘murderous’ (Acts 9:1) rage towards Christ and his followers, Saul had an epiphany, the effect of which was so incredible that it was to change the world and save the human race.
With an appreciation now of what the human condition is, we can explain and understand what happened to Saul. The human condition is a terrifyingly confronting subject and to cope with that terror all the upset human race has been able to do was live in denial of it, try and block out the whole issue of the imperfection in our lives. We attacked, denied and attempted to prove wrong any exposing criticism of our corrupted state. This did relieve our condition but there was of course a significant downside—a life of extreme anger, alienation and egocentricity, very unpleasant behaviours and states. In one sense our retaliation against the threat of exposure of our corrupted condition made us feel even more condemned. Defensive retaliation as a strategy for coping with the human condition, while relieving, also fuelled feelings of self-loathing. That was Saul’s predicament—his anger was very great and so was the level of self-loathing he would have felt deep within himself for being such a brutally angry person. The whole issue of Christ’s soundness that was making him so angry was also, at another level, making him extremely distressed and unhappy about himself. At a moment of full engagement in his mind with the horror of both sides of his situation, a thought occurred to him: ‘If this man Christ is so truthful and sound that he is producing in me such anger, what would happen if I was to flip the situation around and instead of attacking him I supported him? Wouldn’t I suddenly be a force for enormous good—because I would be supporting someone who is the absolute opposite of my immensely corrupted and angry-with-soundness, truth-hating-and-denying self. I would be a force for good in the world, instead of a self-loathing monster. Wow, that’s turning my life around, isn’t it!’ And, at that moment, as the metaphorical account goes, Saul fell off his donkey and was struck blind for three days—basically he was overwhelmed by the sudden freedom he was feeling from all the pain of his human-condition-afflicted life. Through his support of Christ, the agony of the human condition had been lifted from his shoulders and he was able to live again. By siding with Christ, he was able to resurrect the truthful, soulful side of himself; he had been ‘born again’ (John 3:3); ‘he has crossed over from death to life’ (John 5:24). As Christ authoritatively said, ‘I am the resurrection and the life [through me, your soulful true self, can live again]’ (John 11:25).
One way of measuring how much upset humans are preoccupied with, and how oppressed they are by the insecurity caused by the human condition, and thus how incredibly relieving it is to not have to be preoccupied with the human condition, is to consider what happens when someone has a Near-Death Experience. For instance, mountain climbers who survive falls that they were convinced would be fatal (they were saved, perhaps, by landing in a snow drift) often report that during those near-death moments they experienced a state of extraordinary euphoria in which the world suddenly appeared utterly beautiful and radiant and that they were flooded with a feeling of ecstatic enthrallment. With understanding of the horror of the human condition we can appreciate how in such cases the mind gives up worrying, and all facades—in particular the denial that they adopted at Resignation—become meaningless. If death is seemingly imminent, there is no longer any reason to worry or to pretend, at which point the struggle and agony of having to live under the duress of the human condition ceases and the true world of our all-sensitive soul suddenly surfaces. You suddenly discover what it is like to be free of the human condition. You suddenly have access to all the real beauty that exists in the world. You discover another seemingly magic world that is all-radiant and magnificent. This is the freedom that Saul experienced when he abandoned his struggle with the human condition and deferred to Christ. He was ‘born again’ from a state of near death. All his embattled posturing to get a win out of life, all his focus on egocentrically building a castle, an edifice, a representation of glory around himself, all his strategising every minute of every day to try to find a way to compensate for feeling bad about himself, suddenly ceased. To gain some measure of just how relieving the new TRANSFORMED LIFEFORCE STATE that has let go the old human-condition-embroiled, have-to-prove-yourself existence is, watch the Affirmations of the TRANSFORMED LIFEFORCE STATE at <www.humancondition.com/affirmations>, or read Section 3 of Freedom Expanded: Book 2. You can especially sense the relief of the TRANSFORMED STATE in Doug Lobban’s affirmation.
Realising the magnificence of this new way of living, this ‘way to be saved’ (Acts 16:17) from an effectively dead, alienated state (Christianity was actually originally called ‘the Way’ (Acts 9:2, 19:9, 23, 22:4, 24:14, 22)), Saul took his breakthrough, life-saving idea to the four corners of the known world, and was thereafter known as Paul the Apostle, and following his canonisation, St Paul.
Leaving your baggage, your ‘suitcase’ of human-condition-embattled strategies and posturing behind by giving yourself to Christ was a marvellous solution to the problem of the horror of the human condition, but it meant giving up your battle to prove yourself, giving up your particular participation in humanity’s heroic struggle to overthrow the ignorance of our original instinctive state. While supporting the soundness of Christ ensured the battle to find knowledge continued indirectly through him, you personally had given up the battle. To use the Adam Stork analogy, you had stopped searching for knowledge and were flying ‘back on course’.
In The Simpsons cartoon series the character Ned Flanders is a Christian, someone who has deferred to, and lives through, Christ. His neighbour Homer Simpson, on the other hand, is still living out the corrupting battle to overthrow the implication that we humans aren’t fundamentally good. In one episode, Ned lends Homer his lawnmower, which Homer wrecks without remorse. Rather than getting angry or defensive, Ned simply accepts Homer’s behaviour—he is the ‘goody-goody’ while Homer is one upset Adam Stork, living out the battle to the full, massively angry, egocentric and alienated. If Homer could explain the situation he would say to Ned: ‘Listen Ned, you love Christ and he loves you, and you’re a goody-goody, and I’m one upset, corrupted dysfunctional dude, but Ned, I’m still out there doing it, I’m still participating in humanity’s heroic battle, so I’m a legend and you are a wimp.’
The new TRANSFORMED LIFEFORCE STATE, where you leave all your upset baggage behind in favour of supporting these understandings of the human condition, offers a similar all-relieving and all-exciting, ‘near-death-experience’-like, ‘fall-off-your-donkey’, ‘go-blind-for-three-days’-type freedom from the human condition that Christians experienced when they deferred to Christ. But—and this is a very, very important difference—unlike Christianity or any other religion, this does not involve abandoning the battle because the battle is now won. It is not an act of irresponsibility or weakness to let go the battle now, it is an act of strength, because with the battle won the illogical and thus irresponsible and thus weak thing to do would be to continue the battle.
So, if we return to the Homer and Ned example and imagine that Ned had taken up the new TRANSFORMED LIFEFORCE STATE, Homer would have no grounds to criticise Ned. With the battle to find knowledge, ultimately the understanding of the human condition, now won, there is no longer any good reason to keep living out the battle. In this scenario, the tables are turned: Ned would be in the position to criticise Homer.
Religions were a way of avoiding living out your upset when you became overly upset, but it meant giving up directly participating in the battle to find the knowledge needed to save the human race. Religions were a weak abandonment of the battle that still had to be fought. With the TRANSFORMED LIFEFORCE WAY OF LIVING there is no weakness involved because the battle is now won. In fact, taking up the TRANSFORMED LIFEFORCE WAY OF LIVING is the only strong course of action for a human to take now. What is weak is not taking it up. This is a very important difference—and it is a most profound difference—between Religion and the TRANSFORMED LIFEFORCE WAY OF LIVING.
It is this fact that there is no longer any reason to keep living out the battle to champion the ego that causes the world to change so rapidly from a world of conflict and suffering to a world of peace and happiness. As emphasised in the Introduction to this whole presentation, the explanations being presented are all rational, there is no dogma or mysticism or abstract concept involved. As such we can know if what is being presented is accountable and true or not, and since this information does explain the human condition there is no longer any justification for continuing the upsetting battle to champion the ego, so it follows then that no one can argue against taking up the TRANSFORMED WAY OF LIVING, and when everyone then does take up that way of living our world will be completely TRANSFORMED. We are rational creatures, and so when all the rationale, all the logic says there is only one response we can make, namely the TRANSFORMED STATE, then that is the response the human race will take.
This is not a revolution dogmatically imposed by others upon us, as has pretty much always been the case with revolutions in the past, this is a revolution imposed by logic, by understanding, by information. Once someone is given this information there is only one outcome in the end and that is that they take up the TRANSFORMED STATE. Initially people will find it difficult absorbing and taking in these explanations because of the ‘deaf effect’, the historical denials in the human mind to so many of the ideas being put forward, but once enough people have overcome that ‘deafness’, and after that the Mexican Standoff, and their enthusiasm for this fabulous free way of living demonstrates to others that it is worthwhile persevering with the information until they can ‘hear’ it, the tidal wave of support for the information, and with it the TRANSFORMED STATE, will sweep the world.
As I said, Homer has no argument against Ned, ‘no leg to stand on’, when Ned takes up support of this information and its TRANSFORMED LIFEFORCE WAY OF LIVING. In the Third Proposition in the Main Introduction I said that ‘the change that is coming will be so quick and complete it will seem instant, as if one day the human race is living in a state of immense turmoil, confusion and despair and the next day it’s all over, an entirely new peaceful world has emerged’. The world for humans is suddenly TRANSFORMED from darkness into light. It really is as if the light switch in the room in which we have been staggering around in the dark has suddenly been switched on—everything becomes illuminated. As mentioned in the Introduction, we humans had this awesome computer put in our heads, our fully conscious, thinking brain, but we weren’t given the program for it and instead were left to wander this Earth searching for the program in a terrifying darkness of confusion and bewilderment. Well, from that terrifyingly cold darkness we now emerge into the warm sunshine of dignifying, redeeming, relieving and TRANSFORMING understanding.
There is another very important difference between religions and the TRANSFORMED LIFEFORCE STATE, and that is there is no delusion involved in the TRANSFORMED STATE. To use the Homer and Ned analogy again: Ned has a ‘goody-goody’, self-satisfied, ‘I-occupy-the-moral-high-ground’ attitude. This drives the still-human-condition-embroiled Homer crazy with frustration because he intuitively knows Ned is deluding himself in thinking he has the moral high ground, is the more together, sound person and is on the right track, but he can’t explain why Ned is so extremely deluded and totally dishonest in his view of self. Homer can’t explain and thus reveal the truth that real idealism and the truly on-track, moral high ground lay with continuing the upsetting battle to find knowledge, and that Ned had become so upset, so unsound, he had to abandon that all-important battle and leave it to others to have to fight, including Homer. Worse, by effectively condemning those still upset and fighting the battle, Ned was basically siding against those still trying to win the battle, adding substantially to the opposition they had to overcome. In fact, it was the delusion and dishonesty that made giving up the battle particularly dangerous because its maintenance required constantly persuading yourself, and others, that you weren’t being dishonest and deluded in what you were doing. The shrill fanaticism of the idealistic left-wing was suffocating of honesty and freedom.
While religion was by far the least dishonest of all the forms of pseudo idealism that upset humans could take up—because of the honesty involved in acknowledging the truthful, sound life and words of the founding prophet—it still involved substantial dishonesty and delusion. In near total contrast to this situation, the TRANSFORMED LIFEFORCE STATE involves no delusion and virtually no dishonesty. By not fully confronting the extent of the upset within yourself and avoiding looking too deeply into all the truth about the human condition, you are practicing some dishonesty, but the compassionate full truth about the upset state of the human condition means you aren’t deluded about the fact of being an upset human. In fact, you have to recognise and embrace that truth (which you can now safely do because the upset state is defended) to effectively be able to adopt the TRANSFORMED LIFEFORCE STATE.
As was mentioned in Part 3:11G, possibly the best sales pitch ever given for Christianity was one delivered by St Paul, as documented in the Bible in 2 Corinthians: ‘Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone [Moses’ Ten Commandments that were enforced by the threat of punishment], came with glory [because they brought society back from the brink of destruction from excessively upset behaviour]…fading though it was [there was no sustaining positive in having discipline imposed on you], will not the ministry of the Spirit [the positive mental state from being at last aligned with truth and soundness through your support of someone free of upset and alienation] be even more glorious? If the ministry that condemns men [through punishment] is glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness! [that allows you to be part of the ideal state] For what was glorious has no glory now in comparison with the surpassing glory. And if what was fading away came with glory [‘fading’ because it’s hard to maintain attachment to a system merely out of fear of punishment], how much greater is the glory of that which lasts! [compared with the relative ease of maintaining an attachment to a system that makes you feel that you are at last on the side of what is good, ideal and right]’ (2 Cor. 3:7–11).
If Christianity was considered the ‘surpassing glory’ to living in fear of punishment, then the TRANSFORMED LIFEFORCE STATE is the surpassing of all surpassing glories. It is the best solution the upset human race has ever had by an immense, stupendous, incredible, absolutely wonderful degree—because while we are still living in a deferential state, we are only a few generations away from completely eradicating the human condition from the human race—and there is very little dishonesty and no irresponsibility, no weakness, no delusion, no deity, no worship, no focus on a personality, no faith, no dogma, no guilt of any sort involved in the process. What we have now is so relieving and so exciting that when this way of living catches on it is obviously going to sweep the world.
As initially pointed out, the WORLD TRANSFORMATION MOVEMENT is not a religion, we are a metamorphoser, a movement that brings about a complete progression, in fact a metamorphosis of the human race from a horrible human-condition-afflicted state to a completely liberated, human-condition-free state. Humanity is TRANSFORMED from a state of insecure adolescence where we searched for understanding of ourselves, to a state of secure adulthood where we finally achieve understanding of ourselves. Religions were only a way of coping with the horror of the human condition while the search for the liberating understanding of it was being carried out. The WORLD TRANSFORMATION MOVEMENT is concerned with what happens after that liberating understanding is found, which is the metamorphosis, the complete progression and change of humanity from a state of psychosis and neurosis to a state completely free of psychosis and neurosis.
Finally, it should be emphasised that religions aren’t being threatened by the arrival of dignifying understanding of the human condition—rather, they are being fulfilled. The whole objective of religion was to be the custodians of the ideal state while the search for the liberating understanding of humans’ ‘fallen’ condition was underway. Buddha, for instance, looked forward to the arrival of the amelioration of the human condition when he said that ‘In the future they will every one be Buddhas [meaning in the future everyone will be free of psychosis] / And will reach Perfect Enlightenment / In domains in all directions / Each will have the same title [there will be no more distorting alienation] / Simultaneously on wisdom-thrones / They will prove the Supreme Wisdom’ (Buddha [Siddartha Gautama] 560–480 BC, The Lotus Sutra, ch.9; tr. W.E. Soothill, 1987, p.148 of 275). In the Bible Moses similarly anticipated a time when we ‘will be like God, knowing’ (Gen. 3:5). Christ also looked forward to the time when ‘…another Counsellor to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth [first-principle-based, scientific understanding]…will teach you all things and will remind you of everything [all the denial-free truths] I have said to you’ (John 14:16, 17, 26). Christ also said he looked forward to the time when, instead of being restricted to ‘speaking figuratively’, we ‘will no longer use this kind of language but will [be able to] tell you plainly about my Father [be able to explain the world of Integrative Meaning in denial-free, human-condition-reconciled, compassionate, understandable, first principle, scientific terms]’ (John 16:25). The same anticipation of our species’ liberation from the human condition is expressed in Revelations in the Bible where it states that ‘Another book [will be]…opened which is the book of life [the human-condition-explaining and humanity-liberating book]…[and] a new heaven and a new earth [will appear] for the first heaven and the first earth [will have]…passed away…[and the dignifying full truth about our condition] will wipe every tear from…[our] eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain [insecurity, suffering or sickness], for the old order of things has passed away’ (Rev. 20:12, 21:1, 4). The human race has always hoped and believed that, as Tim Macartney-Snape said and Olive Schreiner was quoted as writing at the beginning of this talk, ‘some day, some where, some time’ humanity’s heroic search for and accumulation of knowledge would lead to the finding of understanding of the human condition, at which time every aspect of human life that was seemingly so inexplicable would suddenly make sense, and we can now see how true that hope and belief was. From an overwhelmingly complex and problematic existence a simple and totally effective, extremely-rapidly-repairing-of-human-life-and-the-Earth, way of living for humans emerges.