Temperament, Astrology, Integrality…

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: In ancient Greece, the birthplace of the foundations of psychology, four types of people were distinguished according to their individual characteristics: sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic, and choleric.

In modern psychology, the branch dealing with diagnostics of individual qualities is very broad. A person wants to know about himself and his properties in order to maximize his potential.

Why don’t we use, let’s say, 16 types of individual properties in the integral methodology, instead of only four?

Answer: Because these are egoistic qualities corresponding to four types of egoism. But there is one more, the fifth one, which all of the other ones come from and which doesn’t have its own shape. Indeed, this corresponds to a four-level structure of human perception and his soul. But all of that is related to egoism.

While egoism was still at work, we really could divide people into these types, and make calculations with respect to their zodiac signs. Up to this day, many magazines publish all kinds of divination.

But we see that this is nothing we can really work with. Why do we relate to a fact that has outlived itself? We have become different people, and we no longer have that. Outwardly, each corresponding temperament manifests itself, of course, but there is nothing we can do with it today.

If before you could pick a pair according to the sign of the zodiac, try to select a couple according to astrology today. Would you get happy marriages from that? No. If you give some advice to a sanguine and other advice to a choleric, would they be happy? No. So why do we need this old classification?

It used to be correct about the older active egoism that was linear, individual, and directed towards self-needs.

But now I no longer have my personal needs. I don’t want anything. They went up to the next level where I feel some need, but can’t tell what it is. I don’t see where to find the source of fulfilling my needs. I get into some kind of sexual perversion or spend time somehow, in order to forget myself. In addition to that, I get into drugs, terror, or something else because I don’t see the source of pleasure.

And it can come to me only through the integral society when I place myself into it. Thus, I must enter the integral society and then in there, in its heart, I’ll find the source of my fulfillment. But today, a person is still not at the level where he realizes that.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/24/12

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