Section 1:13 Isn’t discussion of the human condition going to be unbearably confronting?

QUESTION: ‘You say it’s going to be exciting but I find all this talk about the human condition—about how I’m living in an alienated, angry and egocentric state and about how in denial we all are—makes me uncomfortable. How are we supposed to endure and cope with all this discussion about our corrupted ‘human condition’, let alone have it make us gloriously happy like we’re ‘drunk with fire’?’

ANSWER: Yes, this is a very important aspect I haven’t yet discussed, which is that understanding of the human condition inevitably brings with it exposure of, and thus confrontation with, our immensely upset, or what used to be called ‘corrupted’, human condition. We can’t very well have the truth about humans and not have that truth apply to ourselves—so, yes, how are we to cope with all that exposure, and not only cope but have it make us gloriously happy?

If we return to the Adam Stork analogy, if Adam could have explained why he had to carry out his search for knowledge when he was first criticised for doing so he would never have become upset—he would never have become defensively angry, egocentric and alienated. Or if he had found the explanation for why he had to search for knowledge after only a few days of carrying out that search he would have accumulated very little anger, egocentricity and alienation to have to heal with understanding. But humans have had a fully developed conscious, self-managing mind for some two million years and we have only now found the understanding of why we became upset, which means there is now an absolute mountain of accumulated anger, unsatisfied ego, and denial in us humans to have to heal with this understanding.

The problem now is not that we can’t compassionately understand and heal all our upset—because with understanding of the human condition found we now can—the problem is the immense amount of upset in us that we have to suddenly heal with understanding. It is obviously far too much to have to suddenly face and rehabilitate. Alvin Toffler’s famous 1970 book Future Shock was actually an intuitive anticipation of this time when understanding of the human condition would emerge and humans would suddenly be faced with, as Toffler wrote, ‘the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time’ (p.4 of 505). One reader of my books described the problem very succinctly when he wrote to us that ‘Diving into a sea of truth [in your books] where everything is completely transparent…one can’t but ask “How will anybody cope with this!? How in the world can I ask anybody to cross such darkness to reach light?!”’ (Enrico, WTM records, 24 Feb. 2011).

At the end of my brief description of the explanation of the human condition in Section 1:7 I said that you can know that this explanation of the human condition is true by its ability to make sense of human behaviour. While the ability of these understandings to make the world around you and your own life ‘transparent’ (as the reader said it does) confirms the immense truthfulness of these understandings, such complete transparency does bring with it the problem of how are we to cope with having so much upset in us suddenly exposed.

After two million years there is of course now going to be an immense amount of upset in the human race. Certainly, we have learnt to restrain and conceal a great deal of that upset; we have learnt to, as we say, ‘civilise it’, not let it show—humans don’t normally attack someone now the moment they become angry. Adult humans now exhibit a great deal of self-control, but underneath our manufactured facade of restrained civility, even manufactured happiness, lies volcanic anger and immense frustrated egocentricity, which shows itself in all the ferocious atrocities and vengeful bloodshed we humans commit, and—to a lesser degree—in our smaller, everyday disputes. Also, unable to explain our upset, we have had to employ a great deal of denial or block-out of any condemning thoughts, ideas and truths about our upset state, which means we have become extremely alienated or dissociated or split-off or blocked-out from our true situation.

In regard to how alienated we have become, the truth is we have had to avoid almost all deep, penetrating, truthful thinking because almost all thinking at a deeper level brought us into contact with the unbearable issue of our seemingly highly imperfect human condition: ‘There’s a tree with lovely autumn leaves; isn’t it amazing how beautiful nature can be, I wonder why some things are beautiful while others are not—I wonder why I’m not beautiful inside... aaahhhhh!!!!’ William Wordsworth certainly wasn’t exaggerating when he wrote, ‘To me the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears’ (Intimations of Immortality, 1807), for it is true that even the plainest flower can remind us of the unbearably depressing issue of our ‘fallen’ condition. Yes, as the Australian comedian Rod Quantock once said, ‘Thinking can get you into terrible downwards spirals of doubt’ (‘Sayings of the Week’, Sydney Morning Herald, 5 July 1986). The Nobel Laureate Albert Camus wasn’t overstating the issue either when he wrote that ‘Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined’ (An Absurd Reasoning, 1955, in The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, p.4 of 224). And nor was the British philosopher and mathematician and Nobel Prize winner for Literature Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) when he said, ‘Many people would sooner die than think’ (quoted in Antony Flew’s Thinking About Thinking, 1975). The reality is, we humans have become immensely superficial and artificial, living on the absolute surface, the meniscus, of existence in terms of what we are prepared to look at and feel. We are a deeply, deeply alienated species, profoundly split-off from the real world and from our true selves, as the great Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing acknowledged: ‘Our alienation goes to the roots…We are born into a world where alienation awaits us. We are potentially men, but are in an alienated state [p.12 of 156] …the ordinary person is a shrivelled, desiccated fragment of what a person can be. As adults, we have forgotten most of our childhood, not only its contents but its flavour; as men of the world, we hardly know of the existence of the inner world [p.22] …The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one’s mind, is the condition of the normal man [p.24] …between us and It [our true self or soul] there is a veil which is more like fifty feet of solid concrete. Deus absconditus. Or we have absconded [p.118] …The outer divorced from any illumination from the inner is in a state of darkness. We are in an age of darkness. The state of outer darkness is a state of sin—i.e. alienation or estrangement from the inner light [p.116]’ (The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise, 1967). ‘We are dead, but think we are alive. We are asleep, but think we are awake. We are dreaming, but take our dreams to be reality. We are the halt, lame, blind, deaf, the sick. But we are doubly unconscious. We are so ill that we no longer feel ill, as in many terminal illnesses. We are mad, but have no insight [into the fact of our madness]’ (Self and Others, 1961, p.38 of 192). For two million years our only psychological defence has been denial, which is what creates alienation, so it is little wonder at all that we are as deeply alienated as Laing described. In fact, the depth of our alienation is an exact measure of how incredibly courageous and heroic the human race has been—because it is evidence of how extraordinarily difficult it has been to keep going under the duress of the human condition.

Although the 1980s New Age Movement, which wasn’t based on explanation of the human condition, was one of the many false starts to the human-condition-ameliorated, TRANSFORMED new world, it did recognise exactly the form that human-condition-liberated new world would take. One of the founders of that New Age Movement, the American author Marilyn Ferguson, acknowledged how deadening our species’ psychotic, neurotic, alienated existence that living in denial of the human condition has made us, and how desperate we have become to ‘resolve’ the ‘inner conflict’ of that condition and by so doing end that terrible alienation forever—when she wrote, ‘Maybe [the French Jesuit priest, scientist and philosopher] Teilhard de Chardin was right; maybe we are moving toward an omega point [a final unification of our split selves]—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).

So when understanding of our fundamental goodness was finally found there was going to be a very great deal of anger, egocentricity and denial/​falseness/​dishonesty/​alienation that would suddenly be revealed. The truth about ourselves unavoidably and necessarily exposes the extent of our angry, egocentric and alienated condition. The truth destroys the lies, our pretences, delusions and denials, as it must, otherwise it wouldn’t be the truth. We have been living in near total denial of our corrupted condition as our only means of coping with it, but the arrival of the truth about our corrupted state exposes and destroys all that denial.

We have already seen some of this fearful transparency that understanding of the human condition unavoidably brings when the process of Resignation that adolescents go through to living in denial of the human condition was exposed, and when the Environment or Green Movement was exposed as a selfish and destructive cause rather than the selfless and constructive one its supporters deluded themselves it was. Throughout this presentation you will be reading page after page after page of exposing, confronting truth; ‘diving into a sea of truth where everything is completely transparent’ was how the aforementioned reader of my books described it. In fact, this entire presentation represents an absolute avalanche of liberating but at the same time naked truth, and all that naked truth is overwhelming; indeed, as I already mentioned in Section 1:4, it is so overwhelming it can produce what we in the WTM call the ‘deaf effect’, where the listener or reader finds it difficult taking in the words that are being said or written. I mentioned the reader who admitted that ‘When I first read your books all I saw were a lot of black marks on white paper.’ Too much truth can be psychologically deafening, too much for our mind to cope with.

Unavoidably and necessarily, when understanding of the human condition arrives the extent of our upset state is suddenly revealed. Truth day is honesty day, exposure day, transparency day, revelation day—in fact, the long-feared so-called ‘judgment day’ referred to in the Bible (Matt. 10:15, 11:22, 24, 12:36; Mark 6:11; 2 Pet. 2:9, 3:7; 1 John 4:17). Although ‘judgment day’ is actually a day of compassionate understanding, not a day of condemnation—as a Turkish poet once said, judgment day is ‘Not the day of judgment but the day of understanding’ (Merle Severy, ‘The World of Süleyman the Magnificent’, National Geographic, Nov. 1987)—it is, nevertheless, a day when we face fearful exposure of the extent of our species’ by now extremely upset condition. The paradox of being wonderfully liberated but at the same time agonisingly exposed was captured by the prophet Isaiah when he said that the liberation that ‘gives you relief from suffering and turmoil and cruel bondage…will come with vengeance; with divine retribution…to save you. Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped…Your nakedness will be exposed’ (Bible, Isa. 14:3; 35:4, 5; 47:3). Also referring to ‘the Day of Reckoning’ (The Koran, ch.56) and ‘the Last Judgement’ (ibid. ch.69), the prophet Muhammad provided a very similar description of the paradox of being liberated and at the same time fearfully exposed when he said, ‘when the Trumpet is blown with a single blast and the earth and the mountains are lifted up and crushed with a single blow, Then, on that day, the Terror shall come to pass, and heaven shall be split…On that day you shall be exposed, not one secret of yours concealed’ (ibid. ch.69).

John Lennon, exasperated by all the denial/​dishonesty/​falseness/​delusion/​pretence/​artificiality/​superficiality in human life, desperately pleaded for honesty in his song, Just Gimme Some Truth: ‘All I want is the truth, just gimme some truth. I’ve had enough of reading things by neurotic…politicians…I’m sick to death of seeing things from tight-lipped…​chauvinists…​I’ve had enough of watching scenes of schizophrenic…prima-donnas…I’m sick and tired of hearing things from uptight…hypocrites…All I want is the truth now, just gimme some truth NOW’ (1971). Yes, we are all ‘sick and tired of’ the dishonest denial the world has been drowning in—we have all completely had enough of the human condition and are all desperate to be free of it, but wishing for the truth is one thing, coping with it when it actually arrives is quite another.

So the second part of your question is also very legitimate: ‘How is having our ‘nakedness’ ‘exposed’ supposed to suddenly make us gloriously happy and excited, gloriously ‘drunk with fire’, as Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony said it would?’

The answer to this problem of exposure is that, yes, this information that explains the human condition is unavoidably and necessarily extremely exposing of everyone’s now immensely upset, corrupted condition, but all that means is that we shouldn’t, and in fact don’t have to, overly confront and study it. All we need to do is study the understanding sufficiently to verify to our own satisfaction that it has explained the human condition, and then avoid studying it more deeply. Instead, as described earlier in Section 1:9, we can leave all our upsets behind as dealt with and redirect our efforts to living in support of these understandings and to repairing the world.

Once you have investigated these understandings sufficiently to know that they have explained the human condition you don’t need to know more than that. You don’t need to know all the truth it reveals about human existence, or about how it reveals and explains everything about your own particular upset life. In fact, if you study this information beyond what your particular level of soundness and security of self can cope with you risk becoming overly self-confronted and exposed and depressed. As emphasised, the human race has been coping this far by maintaining extreme levels of denial of many, many truths, so obviously the human race can’t hope to confront and dismantle all those denials overnight. As I said in Section 1:9, that process will take generations, but that doesn’t mean we can’t support the truth while this digestion and healing takes place—as long as we don’t overly confront the truth during this absorption process. According to each person’s level of upset there will be a limit to how much truth each person can cope with—there will be a limit to how much they can listen to, read about and study these human-condition-confronting understandings—but that doesn’t mean all people can’t immediately live in support of the truth.

While we each should investigate these understandings of the human condition sufficiently to verify to our own satisfaction that they are the liberating understandings of the human condition that the whole human race has been searching for, we shouldn’t investigate them to the extent that we start to become overly exposed and confronted by the truths they are revealing.

If you do become overly confronted by what is being presented your natural reaction will be to try to attack and deny it in order to protect yourself—in effect, you will try to put all your denials back in place. You will become defensive and angry and retaliatory toward the information, and the consequence of such a response will be to sabotage the efforts of all the humans who have ever lived to bring the human race to this dreamed of moment of its liberation. We in the WTM have endured years and years of this furiously angry, defensive reaction towards this information, attacks that were ultimately fruitless because this information is true and it won’t be intimidated or oppressed: it is too precious to allow that. The effect of overly studying this information, studying it more than your degree of security of self can cope with, can be both dangerous to you and dangerous to the human race, and no one should want, nor risk, either of those outcomes.

Having lived without any real understanding of the world it is natural to want to keep studying these explanations that finally make sense of the world around you, but this can lead to becoming overly confronted by the extent of your own corrupted state. The more intelligent and/or more educated in the old human-condition-avoiding, denial-based world, who pride themselves on supposedly being able to think and study new ideas, will initially be especially tempted to study these understandings beyond what their varying levels of security of self can cope with, but it won’t be long before everyone learns that such an approach is both psychologically dangerous to themselves, and irresponsible in terms of the human race.

When Christ spoke of a time when ‘the meek…inherit the earth’ (Matt. 5:5), and when ‘many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first’ (Matt. 19:30, 20:16; Mark 10:31; Luke 13:30), he was anticipating this time when understanding of the human condition would arrive and instead of the more intelligent and intellectual leading the way, as has been the case in almost every human situation, the more innocent and sound, the more soulful and instinctual, the less upset or corrupted will do so. As the story of Adam Stork reveals, throughout the two million year battle to find understanding our instinctive self or soul was repressed because of its unjust condemnation of our intellect, but when understanding of the human condition is finally found this process is reversed, soul becomes sought-after. Our innocent, upset-free, original instinctive self or soul—soundness—has to lead us back home to soundness. It makes sense. Again, Christ gave the perfect description of this new situation when he said, ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone’ (Ps. 118:22; Matt. 21:42; Mark 12:10; Luke 20:17; Acts 4:11; 1 Pet. 2:7). The pre-eminent philosopher Sir Laurens van der Post referred to this biblical analogy when he too anticipated this new situation: ‘It is part of the great secret which Christ tried to pass on to us when He spoke of the “stone which the builders rejected” becoming the cornerstone of the building to come. The cornerstone of this new building of a war-less, non-racial world, too, I believe, must be…those [more innocent, instinctual] aspects of life which we have despised and rejected for so long’ (The Dark Eye in Africa, 1955, p.155 of 159).

Initially, it will be difficult accepting this advice to only investigate the truth to the degree you are sound enough to do so, but with honesty you will see it is a proposition that can be reasonably understood and accepted. It makes sense that the more secure in self, the least alienated, have to develop these understandings of the human condition. In the old human-condition-avoiding, denial-based world, academia limited those who could be involved in the pursuit of knowledge to the more intelligent, those with a high IQ (intelligence quotient). For instance, to enter university you had to pass entrance exams that basically tested your IQ. Obviously, to have the most appropriate people studying complex subjects like higher mathematics and physics you needed people with the highest IQ. If you didn’t have an adequate IQ you would make little progress in studying such subjects. In the new human-condition-resolved, human-condition-confronting world we similarly need the most appropriate people to study its information, which are those with a high SQ, soul or soundness quotient. If you don’t have an adequate SQ you simply won’t be able to make any progress with the information involved. With the explanation of the human condition we can now understand that everyone is necessarily variously upset/​unsound but that upset/​unsoundness is not something bad, just as in the old denial-based world those who lacked IQ weren’t considered bad people, just not as able to think as effectively about complex subjects. Upset is a heroic, good state, not a bad, evil, sinful state, because it is a product of humanity’s heroic search for knowledge.

So everyone has to measure and limit how much they can study these human-condition-confronting understandings against how much self-confrontation they can cope with. Thankfully and most importantly, no one has to overly confront their old upset self—everyone can leave that behind as dealt with and simply live for the new world and all its potential.

The main thing to remember is once you know that this information has explained the human condition then you know that all the upset in the world and all the upset within you is also now explained and defended—which means you can, as described earlier in Section 1:9, put the issue of all your upsets or corruptions in a ‘suitcase’, attach a label to it saying ‘Everything in here is now explained and defended’, and simply leave it behind as dealt with as you set out free and unencumbered into the new, human-condition-free world. You can join the Sunshine Army on the Sunshine Highway to the World In Sunshine. Again, Bono anticipated this TRANSFORMED way of living where we leave the issue of all our upsets behind as dealt with when he wrote and sang: ‘I’ve conquered my past / The future is here at last / I stand at the entrance to a new world I can see / The ruins to the right of me / Will soon have lost sight of me.’ And what did that other extraordinarily prophetic/​truthful songwriter of our times, Bob Dylan, say? ‘The present now will later be past…For the times they are a-changin’.’ And Cat Stevens similarly foresaw the time when ‘Yesterday has past, now let’s all start the living for the one that’s going to last.’

Once you know this information is true, that the upset state of the human condition is defended at the fundamental level, you can leave the issue of your own and the world’s corruption behind as effectively dealt with and preoccupy yourself with disseminating this information throughout the world and to a fresh generation, and preoccupy yourself with supporting all the projects that must be undertaken now to free and rehabilitate the world from the destructive effects of two million years of living under the duress of the human condition.

Now that we have the truth up all that matters is that it is kept alive and that it is disseminated to the world’s population, because it alone can heal the human race and save the world. All everyone must do now is support the truth about the human condition and it will achieve everything everyone has ever dreamed of. If we look after this information it in turn will look after the world. That is the mantra of the new world that understanding of the human condition brings about.

The relief of being able to leave the issue of our upset state behind as dealt with, and the excitement of knowing a human-condition-free new world is coming and that we can all fully participate in bringing that about, is so absolutely incredibly relieving and exciting it will TRANSFORM all humans. From being a human-condition oppressed and depressed alienated person all humans can, and will now be, TRANSFORMED into Redeemed, Liberated from the Human Condition, Exhilarated, Ecstatic, Enthralled-with-Existence, Transfigured, Empowered, World-Transforming Lifeforces.

In fact, it shouldn’t be necessary to talk about the whole issue of the human condition any more than what is going to be done in these presentations about the human condition. Humanity moves on to an entirely new existence now. We get the truth up, and we move on.