What is How Life Really Works?

How Life Really Works answers the simple yet profound question: “What is life all about and what do I need to know to navigate it successfully?”

How Life Really Works is a controversial manuscript, 30 years in the making, and is timely advice for those who realise ‘things are not as they seem’. How Life Really Works provides powerful principles and strategies for making sense of life in a senseless world. This book is not for the faint-hearted. — Michael Haupt, Author

So what is this game of life all about?

For the past twenty years and more, I’ve been asking that same question. And since we’re living in the Information Age, I’ve come across thousands, even hundreds of thousands, who claim to have the answers. We live in a society where information abounds: Radio, television, newspapers, magazines, periodicals, the Internet and other electronic media, satellite communications, and all manner of religions, ‘-isms’ and governments. However, the information age does not equal the age of truth. Increasing information does not necessarily mean a greater understanding of reality.

And let’s face it – the system we’re living in is broken.  Here’s a hilarious video from Seth Godin who talks about the essential broken-ness of things. He also takes a stab at explaining why all this broken junk continues to exist.

Why is everything broken?

Today’s society is not led by a desire for honesty, but rather by powerful economic and socio-political forces bent on maintaining whatever status quo suits them.

Those in power generally use unscrupulous methods to remain there, and likewise with the economically powerful, who frequently use fraudulent means to maintain their positions.  But you know this already.

Today, ideas compete for money and power more than ever before. Integrity is usually never even considered.  There is truth in the adage “Money talks.”

The straight facts:

Propaganda is the dissemination of information aimed at influencing the opinions or behaviours of people.

Fact #1: If you currently base your beliefs on what you hear from the mainstream media (TV, radio, newspapers, magazines), at least half of everything you think you know is untrue. You’ve been lied to about almost everything that you have been told by the popular media. That same media you trusted to provide unbiased news and information.

Fact #2: You have been lied to about the reasons for social change over the past six or more generations. The reasons are not, as most would assume, for the improvement and advancement of society. Rather, we have been conned into accepting a new social agenda designed to undermine and destroy society. The sad reality is that social re-engineering is working, and working well.

Fact #3: You have been lied to about facts relating to specific situations, both current and historical. 9/11 is just one of numerous examples. Propagandists are at work, just as they were in World War 2 to cause the majority to accept fabricated statements as fact.

How much longer will you stand for this?

The lies are so pervasive that you cannot see them any more, even when they stand right in front of you in all their murky glory. Everyone knows it. You know it!

Many people, when confronted with reality and honesty, would rather remain in their shell of denial than admit what they see before them.

And in case you do not realize the extent to which you have been lied to, here are sobering words from someone who understood the true meaning of the word propaganda:

“Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country. Our minds are molded, our tastes are formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.” – Edward Bernays (nephew of Sigmund Freud), Propaganda – 1928

All of the opinions you hold, all of the principles you have steadfastly accepted as true, everything you have believed in passionately, have been influenced by someone you have never even heard of! And that someone definitely does not have your interests at heart.

Very few realize how most issues of “conventional wisdom” are scientifically implanted in the public consciousness. We are not talking about some crazy conspiracy theory with embedded chips or electro-magnetic brainwashing or aliens living in your head. It is good old propaganda: thousands of media clips each day and every day, broadcast over the airwaves and printed in our newspapers.

These accepted beliefs and “conventional wisdom” are entrenched by millions of dollars in paid advertising, and are ALL wrong! We must not confuse the technocratic age with true progress. The challenge is now how to filter reality from lies. We have become so numbed by the incessant lies, it is difficult to know how to distinguish between what is true or false, who to believe or where to turn!

But now, at last, all of the corporate, religious and government lies we have been forced to accept are exposed, in this unique, controversial Life Manual.

The lies are exposed one by one, with all the proof you will ever need. The strategies to avoid these lies are proven to work with any individual or family, in any nation, from salaried employees to independent entrepreneurs.

How did How Life Really Works come to be?

Needless to say, suggesting we have been conned into playing an insidious game which is destroying our lives, our futures, our fellowship, our spirituality, and our true natures, will meet with non-receptive minds. Consequently, in exasperation one night I resolved that my book would be futile – a waste of my time and energy and that I would stop writing my thoughts.

A few years later I stumbled across a small brown book which I’d owned for 20 years and never read, entitled Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects by Alexandra David-Néel and Lama Yongden (1967). Within the first eight pages I read about the hesitation of the Buddha, before beginning His Mission:

I have discovered a profound truth, difficult to perceive, difficult to understand, accessible only to the wise. Human beings busy themselves in the vortex of the world and find their pleasure. It will be difficult for men to understand the law of the concatenation of causes and effects, the suppression of the samskaras (ideas that one forms which depend upon ignorance).

Of what use to reveal to men that which I have discovered at the price of laborious efforts? Why should I do so? – This doctrine cannot be understood by those filled by desire and hatred … it is mysterious, deep; hidden from the vulgar mind. If I proclaim it and men are unable to understand it, the only result will be fatigue and annoyance for me.

Brahma Sahampati exhorts the Buddha to conquer his hesitation:

May the Venerable One preach the Doctrine! There are beings whose spiritual eyes are hardly darkened by light dust, these will understand the Doctrine. In the land of Magadha a false doctrine has prevailed up to the present, elaborated by men whose minds were contaminated (by ignorance). Now open to them the gate of Immortality (literally, of the deathless).

Arise, O Victorious One ! Travel through-out the world, O Chief of Pilgrims (beings who wander in the round of successive births and deaths). There are some who will understand Thee.

The Buddha insisted strongly on the necessity of examining the propositions put forward by him, and of understanding them personally before accepting them as true. The ancient texts leave no doubt on this point:

Do not believe on the strength of traditions even if they have been held in honour for many generations and in many places; do not believe anything because many people speak of it; do not believe on the strength of sages of old times; do not believe that which you have yourselves imagined, thinking that a god has inspired you. Believe nothing which depends only on the authority of your masters or of priests. After investigation, believe that which you have yourselves tested and found reasonable, and which is for your good and that of others.

Doubt is an incitement to research, and research is the path to true knowledge.

“Why are these teachings secret? Does that mean I can’t write and tell about them?”

“No, Alexandra, these teachings are not called ‘secret’ because it is forbidden to talk about them. They are ‘secret’ because so few who hear them understand.”  — End of extract from Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects.

After reading this, I felt shivers down my spine.  Immediately I began writing, yet from a completely different perspective from my previous attempts.

This site, and the book is the result of this inspiration. I ask that you take the Buddha’s suggestion – “investigate, believe what is reasonable and for your good and that of others.”

I was asked – but there no words: it was a straight mental instantaneous communication – ‘What had I done to benefit or advance the human race? – The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying – Sogyal Rinpoche

I have determined that writing this book is my responsibility.  This is what I will have done to benefit the human race. I hope you gain much insight from it.

If you've enjoyed what you've read so far, you'll certainly enjoy my big-picture thinking in the booklet The 2012 Manifesto. You can read more about it here or just click on the big-ass Download button below and I'll take you straight to the download page.