Chapter 6:13 Nurturing now becomes a priority

Before progressing to those final chapters it needs to be emphasised that having found the compassionate biological understanding of the upsetting battle that humans have had to wage against the ignorance of our instinctive self as to the fundamental goodness of our conscious self, our species’ preoccupation with that battle can at last end and focus return to the nurturing of our children. Further, now that we have found that very good reason why parents have been unable to nurture their children with anything like the unconditional love children instinctively expect and need, it is no longer necessary to deny the importance of nurturing both in the maturation of our species and in our own lives. Yes, with the arrival of understanding the terrible guilt that parents have felt for not being able to adequately nurture their offspring departs. Parents can now understand that their inability to adequately love their offspring is not their fault, but the product of the ever-accumulating levels of upset in the human race as a whole that resulted from our species’ heroic 2-million-year search for knowledge, specifically for self-knowledge, understanding of why we conscious humans are good and not bad. So yes, we can finally now admit the importance of nurturing and turn our attention back to the nurturing of our offspring—in fact, it now becomes a matter of great urgency that we do both these things.

As stated in par. 564, the nurturing of children is what is required to produce adults who are sound and secure in self. Ultimately, it is only through the nurturing of our offspring that the human race can hope to become healthy—namely psychosis-and-neurosis-free—once again; to, as Ashley Montagu said, put ‘man back upon the road of his evolutionary destiny from which he has gone so far astray’ and restore ‘health and happiness for all humanity’. As will be explained in chapter 9, with understanding of the human condition found all humans can immediately be free of the agony of the human condition by taking up the Transformed Way of Living (which involves adopting a mental attitude where you leave that agony behind as dealt with), but to produce humans who are completely free of psychosis and neurosis and not needing to take up the Transformed Way of Living, they need to be nurtured with unconditional love in their infancy and childhood—a process that will take some generations to achieve while all the accumulated upset within our species subsides.

The initial difficulty then for virtually all parents is that since they are so psychologically upset, especially so alienated from their natural, loving, instinctive true self or soul as a result of humanity’s 2-million-year upsetting search for knowledge, it is simply not possible for them to give their children, or indeed anyone for that matter, unconditional love. HOWEVER, while virtually all parents will have to accept that they will not be able to give their offspring unconditional love, the opportunity now to actually understand the very good reason for why they are unable to do so will bring so much calming, reassuring relief that nurturing won’t be nearly as fraught with guilt and difficulty as it has been. So again, while it will take a number of generations before the majority of parents will be able to generate real, natural, unconditional love, the ability now to understand our species’ upset state, and the realisation now that each and every person no longer has to continue with the upsetting battle to prove their worth (which, as will be explained in chapter 9, is what makes the fabulously exciting new Transformed Way of Living possible), is going to bring enormous relief to all men and women, which will help them immensely with the whole activity of nurturing. Indeed, the overall relief and excitement alone that will now emerge in the human race from the realisation that we have finally ended our 2-million-year struggle against ignorance will mean that children are going to find themselves in, if not an unconditionally loving world, then at least an anxiety-free, truthful, compassionate, happy one. And significantly, since the adult world can finally break the silence of their denial and tell children the truth about their horrifically upset condition, that honesty will also make an immense difference to the psychological wellbeing of children.

Basically, finding understanding of the human condition makes possible a whole new world that is relieved of the horrible frustration and agony of that condition; the terrible siege state where humans couldn’t understand themselves can at last be lifted, and, with its lifting, life can return to every aspect of human existence, including to the impossible situation parents have been in trying to nurture their children. Yet again, we see how important it is that science recognises these denial-free understandings of the human condition to help the public at large become aware of them. The ignoring, and, when pushed, attack and repression, of these answers MUST stop, and they must instead be supported—because through that support this great transition for the human race will be able to begin in earnest. Yes, this end to humanity’s great, heroic but horrifically upsetting battle to find knowledge, ultimately self-knowledge, understanding of the human condition, together with this change from having to live in denial of the importance of nurturing and of our extremely corrupted condition, changes the whole direction of the human race. Rather than plunging towards ever greater levels of upset, especially towards terminal levels of denial/​alienation, suddenly humanity can be heading towards a world free of the human condition.

(Much more will be said in chapters 8:16B, 8:16C and 8:16D about the devastating consequences of parents’ inability to nurture their infants while under the duress of the human condition, and how parents are to cope with the truth about the importance of nurturing.)