Phil Blecker archive · Original teaching website · ContentsHistorical edition · Original wording and dates retained. Old contact addresses, forms and workshop listings are historical.

Preface

Before writing this book, many people were asked to provide questions that they wanted answered by a book: things they were dying to know. It isn't supposed to be my book, but something that can be used by its readers. Unfortunately, most of the questions were unanswerable why questions. And most of the whys boiled down to one simple ``question:''

If God really is love and loves us, why does He allow us to be so tormented?

This is not really even a question, although it is in the form of a question.
It is actually several statements followed by a contradiction:

I have been told that God is love, and that God loves each of us individually and personally.
Love does not hurt the one it loves.
In fact, it should try very hard to avoid hurting others.
I am being hurt most of the time.

God does not love me (us);
God is not a loving God;
or God is a fable told to children.

    I don't understand how to deal with these contradictions: this is where the sense of having a question comes in.
    When a set of beliefs contains a contradiction, the only valid question is, ``Which of these statements is incorrect?'' It may be that they are all wrong; or it could be that only part of one statement is wrong. But proper questioning is to find out where the incorrect assumption is so I can resolve the contradictory beliefs with the facts.
    Because I do not question or even see the individual beliefs, I ask a question that is not a question: ``Why does God allow -- or even worse cause -- suffering?''
    If I can see the hidden beliefs and contradictions behind fake questions like this one, I can see that I have much to learn (or unlearn) before I can even begin to ask answerable questions. Firstly, I need to learn about my current point of view toward loving and living, and then ask whether that viewpoint is accurate.
    Unlike trying to answer why questions, which is impossible, learning to see the false beliefs and contradictions I have accepted as fact is at least possible. And when I reevaluate something previously believed and see it as an illusion, I cease to believe it. So, while it does take a lot of hard work to discover that my current point of view is an illusion, when I do, my lifestyle is adjusted to fit my new point of view effortlessly.
    So lets look at some facts, and see if we can try to understand pain. I live in a physical universe, in a body that can be harmed by many things:

Its environment;	Its activity;
Its nutrition;	Its biology/physiology.

I need to know when the body is being harmed if I want to go on living. The nervous signal that the body is being harmed is unpleasant to me on purpose, to get my attention. In fact, it is sometimes downright painful.
    Since I can be harmed not just physically, but also mentally and emotionally, I have the ability to sense when I am being harmed on those levels as well as physically. So some of the signals that tell me I'm about to be damaged are sensed as unpleasant emotions, not just as physical pain.
    Pain has been provided so I can realize that something in my lifestyle is harming me. Then I can make the necessary adjustments to remove the harm and go on living.
    Yet, somehow, I have made a simple signal about the effects of my lifestyle on the physical form the entire purpose of my life. If I look at these facts and how they contradict my beliefs honestly, I can see that there are other questions that are much more interesting:

Finding the answers to the questions that interest me is not all that difficult. It is hard work to find the questions that actually can be answered while my point of view is full of erroneous beliefs that I am certain I ``know.''
    A question is real when it has an answer. Before we can get any answers, we have to first find questions that are real. This book is an answer to a question that is almost never asked: How did I get from ``A purpose for my life could be to be with, and like, my Creator: Love'' to ``All I want to do with my life is avoid as much pain as possible, and get as much pleasure as I can cram in, before life is taken from me''?
    This question starts by acknowledging where I am, and goes on to ask how I got here and where I can go from here.

    Can I see that this is the only question that could possibly interest a real human being in such a predicament?

Table of Contents
Forward

Science of Man's Conscious Self-Evolution

View from the Real World