Chapter 9:8 The utter magnificence of the Transformed Lifeforce State

To reveal just how magnificent the Transformed Lifeforce Way of Living is, a further contrast can be made between it and Christianity—remembering that Christianity, although human-condition-relieving, was not human-condition-resolving.

It was St Paul who, more than anyone else, introduced the benefits of Christianity to the world, so consideration of his discovery of the beauty of Christianity, his conversion to the faith and his life as a Christian is especially indicative of what the new Transformed Lifeforce Way of Living offers the human race. Acts 8 and 9 of the Bible provide the account of Saul’s (as St Paul was known before his conversion) 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 basically save the human race from unbearable levels of upset.

With an appreciation now of what the human condition is, we can explain and thus understand what happened to Saul. The human condition is a terrifyingly confronting subject and, to cope with that terror, all that the upset human race has been able to do is live in denial of it, try to 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 response relieved our condition but there was, of course, a significant downside—a loathsome life of extreme anger, alienation and egocentricity. So 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 and unworthiness. And that was Saul’s predicament—his anger was very great, but so was the level of self-hatred 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 in himself. We can imagine then that, in a moment of full engagement in his mind with the horror of both sides of his situation, a thought would have occurred to him: ‘If this man, Jesus, is so truthful and sound that he is provoking such anger in me, what would happen if I was to flip the situation around and instead of attacking him I supported him? Wouldn’t I suddenly then 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 would certainly turn my life around, wouldn’t it!’ And, at that moment, as the metaphorical account goes, Saul fell off his donkey and was struck blind for three days; in more direct terms, he was completely overwhelmed by the sudden freedom he was feeling from all the pain of his human-condition-afflicted life. Through his support of Christ, the agonising weight 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); he had become ‘a new creation’ where ‘the old has gone, the new has come!’ (2 Cor. 5:17). Again, 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 appreciating how much upset humans are preoccupied with, and how oppressed they are by the insecurity caused by the human condition, and thus how absolutely incredibly relieving it is to not have to be preoccupied with that condition, is to consider the experience of someone who has had a Near-Death Experience. For instance, as I explained in par. 997, 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 see how, in such cases, the mind would give up worrying, and that all the facades—in particular the denial that they adopted at Resignation—would 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 suddenly discover another seemingly magic world that is all-radiant and magnificent. This is the freedom Saul experienced when he abandoned his struggle with the human condition and deferred to Christ. He was suddenly ‘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 of grandeur for himself, 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. Realising the magnificence of the new way of living that Christianity offered, this ‘way to be saved’ (Acts 16:17) from an effectively dead, resigned, alienated state (Christianity was actually originally called ‘the Way’ (Acts 9:2, 19:9, 23, 22:4, 24:14, 22)), Saul took this 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.

To gain some further insight into the relieving nature of the new Transformed Lifeforce State, where humans’ embattled struggle with the human condition similarly ends, you can, if you haven’t already, watch the affirmations at <www.humancondition.com/​affirmations>. You can especially sense the relief of the Transformed State in Doug Lobban’s affirmation, but all the others are equally powerful. For example, Neil Duns says, ‘The freedom this brings is like nothing humans have ever experienced’; while Stacy Rodger says, ‘This is all that we have ever, ever wanted’; Tony Gowing says, ‘This is like seeing the world for the first time, it’s like waking up from a nightmare, it’s like 100 tonnes being lifted off your shoulders’; and Jοhn Bіggs says, ‘The relief and through-the-roof excitement that flows through your veins is incredible…​It is beyond comprehension how much wonder and fun and excitement and happiness the human race has coming.’

So while leaving your baggage, your ‘suitcase’ of human-condition-embattled strategies and posturing behind by deferring to Christ was a marvellous solution to the problem of the horror of the human condition, as has been emphasised, 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 self or soul, which, in effect, didn’t appreciate our conscious mind’s search for knowledge. As was explained in some detail in chapter 8:15, while supporting the prophet around whom religions were based did ensure the battle to find knowledge continued indirectly through that prophet’s alienation-free, truthful words and sound life (this was the very great benefit of religion compared to the other ways of transcending your upset self), in becoming religious you had personally given up the battle. To use the Adam Stork analogy, you had stopped searching for knowledge and were flying ‘back on course’. As mentioned in par. 937, 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 humans aren’t fundamentally good. In one episode, Ned lends Homer his lawnmower, which Homer ends up wrecking without remorse. But 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; he’s massively angry, egocentric and alienated. If, however, Homer could have explained the situation, he would have said 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 participating in humanity’s heroic battle to find knowledge, so I’m a legend and you’re a worn-out quitter.’

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 incredible freedom from the human condition that Christians experienced when they deferred to Christ. BUT—and, again, this is a very, very important difference—unlike Christianity or any other religion, this freedom does not come at the cost of abandoning the battle because the battle is now won. It is not an act of irresponsibility or weakness to let go of the battle now, it is an act of strength, because with the battle now won the illogical and thus irresponsible and thus weak thing to do would be to continue, or somehow re-engage with, that now-obsolete battle.

So, if we return to the Homer and Ned example and imagine that Ned has taken up the new Transformed Lifeforce Way of Living, Homer would have no grounds to criticise him. 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 censure Homer.

Again, 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. Religion was a weak abandonment of the battle that still had to be fought. With the Transformed Lifeforce Way of Living, however, there is no weakness involved because the battle has been won. In fact, taking up the Transformed Way of Living is the only strong course of action for a human to take now. What is weak or ‘wimpish’ is not taking it up. Again, this is the very important difference—and it is a most profound difference—between religion and the Transformed Lifeforce State.

It is this fact that there is no longer any reason to keep living out the battle to champion the ego that has the potential now to change the world so rapidly from one of conflict and suffering to a world of peace and happiness. The explanations being presented in this book 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 that no one can argue against taking up the Transformed Way of Living, so when everyone does take up that way of living our world will be completely transformed. We are rational creatures, and so when all the logic says there is only one response we can make, namely the Transformed State, then that is the response the human race should take.

And this is not a revolution dogmatically imposed by others upon us, as has pretty much been the case with revolutions in the past; no, this is a revolution based on logic, on understanding, on knowledge, on information. Once someone is given this information there is really only one outcome, and that is that they take up the Transformed Way of Living. Of course, while it is the power of the logic, the rationale, that makes the Transformed Way of Living irresistible, the adoption of this way of living is also made irresistible by the absolutely wonderful transforming effect it has on people. Indeed, before long those still living in the old embattled, have-to-prove-your-worth way of living will feel like they have been caught wearing last year’s fashions! There is such a stark difference between the free, expansive, enthralled-with-life, transformed existence and the old embattled egocentric existence where your mind is narrowly focused and preoccupied working all the angles every second of every day, defensively seeking validation, reinforcement, a ‘win’, that those living in the old way, in the past, will seem like a different species. Compared to the new expansive, all-exciting, free, Transformed State, those still stuck in the old embattled paradigm will be like sad, forgotten ghosts trapped in an obsoleted state.

It is certainly true that people will initially find it difficult absorbing and taking in all these explanations because of the ‘deaf effect’ that was described in chapter 1:4. Indeed, the problem of the ‘deaf effect’ is now especially great because the levels of block-out or alienation have increased so rapidly that, as described in pars 948-949, the ‘attention span’ of ‘students’ is now so ‘brief’ they can focus their minds for ‘only eight minutes’; that if they ‘have to read…a book they all now groan’; that they live in ‘psychic saunas of superficial sensory stimulation’ from their ‘iTunes’ and ‘Facebook profiles’ that have produced ‘a fathomless ocean of online ignorance and trivia that makes what is worthy and timeless more inaccessible than ever’, ‘decapitating our culture, trading in the ideas of some 3000 years of civilization for BuzzFeed’—the result of all of this being that ‘We have a lot of competing noise for our attention these days, and it would be criminal to let that overwhelm our true potential, by masking [the] useful information [in Griffith’s books] with hideous noise.’ Yes, the world is becoming so superficial, so drowning in ‘hideous noise’, that it is rapidly approaching a situation where these deep-thinking-dependent, extremely profound, penetrating, confronting and ‘deafening’ understandings of human existence threaten to ‘overwhelm’ humans’ ‘true potential’ to understand their world, make them ‘deaf’ to this information.

And beyond the ‘deaf effect’, there will also be the initial stage of procrastination, what we in the WTM call the ‘Mexican Standoff’, where people deliberate over the choice that is in front of them, because they don’t want to deny the truth and transforming potential of the explanations, but they also don’t want to let go of their old, now-obsoleted, resigned power, fame, fortune and glory-seeking way of living that they have become habituated to living in. There is also the problem of what we call ‘Pocketing The Win’, where people misuse the information’s ability to make sense of the world and everyone around them to become even more effective winners of power, fame, fortune and glory—with, in the case of scientists, some even re-working the new insights in this book as their own! And there is also the initial temptation to ‘Side With The Angels’, which involves avoiding self-confrontation through deluding yourself you are an unresigned innocent; or even a not fully resigned, relatively innocent ‘Ship At Sea’, someone who bravely refused to pull into port and adopt denial when the storm of unbearable self-confrontation occurred during their adolescence. (You can read more about ‘ships at sea’ in Freedom Essay 30, and about both ‘ships at sea’ and ‘siding with the angels’ in Freedom Essay 60; both essays can be accessed from the WTM homepage.) BUT despite all these problems and procrastinations, all the logic and thus power lies with the new Transformed Lifeforce Way of Living, and since the transformation is so fabulously relieving and wonderful, the expectation is that support and enthusiasm for the Transformed Way of Living will eventually reach a critical mass, at which point a tidal wave of support for this information and the Transformed State it makes possible will sweep the world.

The following are drawings I have made to illustrate the main elements involved in this procrastination—of our ‘judgment day’ fear of exposure of our now fully defended 2-million-year-old, ‘fallen’, soul-corrupted human condition; of our habituated attachment to our now completely obsoleted power, fame, fortune and glory-seeking way of justifying our worth; and the post-procrastination, absolutely fabulous solution provided by the Transformed Lifeforce Way of Living.

So, as emphasised in chapter 2:1, while the scientific establishment has so far failed in its responsibility to recognise these fully accountable, world-saving biological insights into human behaviour, the great hope, indeed expectation, is that by complementing this carefully argued and constructed new presentation of the instinct vs intellect explanation of the human condition and all the other insights that flow from it with deaf-effect-eroding introductory videos and the opportunity to participate in interactive online discussions, support from not only scientists but the general public for this information, and the fabulous transformed life outside of Plato’s dark, horrible, alienating, effectively dead, ‘living tomb’, ‘cave’ of denial that it makes possible, will finally begin in earnest.

Yes, the fact is, there is really nothing stopping interest in this information and the adoption of the Transformed Lifeforce Way of Living sweeping the world, and when that happens life for humans will change from a state of terrible turmoil, confusion and despair to one of immense relief, happiness and togetherness. The world for humans will be transformed from darkness into light. It really will be as if a light in the dark room we have been staggering around in has suddenly been turned on—everything becomes illuminated and lovely. As mentioned in par. 837, humans had this awesome computer put in our heads, our fully conscious, thinking brain, but we weren’t given the program for it and were instead left to wander this planet searching for the program in a terrifying darkness of confusion and bewilderment. Well, from that terrifyingly cold darkness we can now emerge into the warm sunshine of dignifying, redeeming, relieving and transforming understanding.

A further very important difference between religions and the Transformed Lifeforce State is that there is no delusion involved in the Transformed State. To use The Simpsons analogy again: Ned has a ‘goody-goody’, self-satisfied, ‘I-occupy-the-moral-high-ground’ attitude, which drives the still-human-condition-embroiled heroic Homer crazy with frustration because he intuitively knows that Ned is deluding himself in thinking he occupies the moral high ground, that he is the more together, sound person and is on the right track, but Homer can’t explain why Ned’s view of himself is so extremely deluded and dishonest. 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, ultimately self-knowledge, and that Ned had become so upset, so unsound, that he had to abandon that all-important battle and leave it to others, including Homer, to fight. Worse, by effectively condemning those still upset and fighting the battle, Ned was basically siding against those still trying to win that 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 to uphold that position required constantly persuading yourself, and others, that you weren’t being dishonest and deluded in what you were doing. (Indeed, I should say that in recent times, as the plight of the world has become more serious by the day and supporters of the left-wing in politics have had to struggle so much harder to justify, to themselves and others, their patently dishonest, fundamentally irresponsible and counter-productive pseudo idealistic response to that crisis, the resulting shrill fanaticism that has emerged has become all but suffocating of those in the right-wing who have been trying to continue the all-important battle to find understanding of the human condition. Thank goodness the dangerous delusion and resulting fanaticism in left-wing politics has finally been exposed and made redundant by the arrival of understanding of the human condition.)

So 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 Way of Living 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 practising some denial/​dishonesty, but the compassionate full truth about the upset state of the human condition means you aren’t deluded about the fact that you are an upset human. Indeed, 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 briefly mentioned in par. 931, 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 relatively 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]’ (3:7-11). So 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, utterly magnificent country mile, because although it involves living in a deferential state of transition, 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 will, as stated, certainly sweep the world.

So the Transformed Lifeforce Way of Living and World Transformation Movement that promotes it is not a religion; it is a metamorphoser, the proponents of a way of living and a movement that brings about a complete progression—the 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 humans searched for understanding of ourselves, to a state of secure adulthood, where we humans at last achieve understanding of ourselves.

Finally, it should be reiterated that religions aren’t being threatened by the arrival of dignifying understanding of the human condition—they are being fulfilled. The whole purpose of religion was to be the custodian 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). In his Lord’s Prayer, Christ instructed us to pray for the time when ‘Your [Godly, integrated, peaceful] kingdom come, your [integrative] will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ (Matt. 6:10 & Luke 11:2). He also looked forward to the time when ‘another Counsellor to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth [the denial-free, truthful, 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). He similarly said he looked forward to 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, rational, first principle, scientific terms]’ (John 16:25). And again, 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’ (20:12, 21:1, 4). Yes, as Isaiah hoped, there would come a time when humans ‘will beat their swords into ploughshares…​​Nation[s] will…​[not] train for war any more’ (Isa. 2:4). And what did that truth-saying prophet John Lennon ‘imagine’? A time when the human condition is resolved and ‘the world will be as one’, when there will be ‘no heaven [above us and] no hell below us’; when, in essence, there will be a world without the condemning differentiation of good and evil, a world liberated from the insecurity of the human condition and thus the need for religion, where, as Lennon sang, there will be ‘Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too…​all the people living life in peace…​No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man…​all the people sharing all the world’ (Imagine, 1971).

The human race has always hoped and believed that some day, some where, at some time humanity’s heroic search for and accumulation of knowledge would lead to, as Alan Paton hoped, ‘the dawn…​of our emancipation’—the finding of the liberating understanding of the human condition—at which point 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. Out of an overwhelmingly complex and problematic existence a straight forward and totally effective, extremely-rapidly-repairing-of-human-life-and-the-Earth, way of living for humans is now able to emerge.