Entries in the 'Integral Upbringing' Category

Endless Development

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: How long does one need to continue with integral studies, or is it an ongoing process?

Answer: A person needs to develop as long as he lives. Thus, it’s forbidden to stop the process of his  education and upbringing. How is it possible to stop caring about him if he continues to develop?

This process needs to continue his whole life until the moment when a person is not able to participate physically. After all, each one able to participate in this huge system is part of mankind. And if we leave even one person without attention, then this tiny cog wheel will be ejected from this huge mechanism and will disturb its movement. Thus, we teach a person to constantly keep himself in this state in order to be an active part of this huge mechanism of civilization.
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From a Talk on Integral Education 4/4/13

Humanity = 1

Humanity = 1Question: Humanity is an immense network in which humans are somehow connected with each other. If a person studies the method of integral education correctly and works within circles, this will become his lifestyle. How will these integral circles transform into a global network?

Answer: This new social consciousness will begin to be revealed through all the mass media and simply even from hearsay: in factories, in schools, and so forth. The system itself will begin to be discovered here and there from the general connection within society, just like mushrooms appear out of the ground after the rain.

However, for the time being I cannot imagine how this will be locked into one single network. I have gotten used to speaking from practical experience. We haven’t gotten a ready formula yet. Anyway, we will need to unite the groups of ten people into groups of a hundred people, the groups of a hundred people into groups of thousands, and so forth. We will need to work on the connection between them, until the entire group of ten is like one person. And after this, let’s say ten groups of ten will connect into hundreds, and hundreds will connect into thousands, and so forth. Anyway, there must be unifying actions.

This is how I see this process because it is impossible to make some small part of the total integral system if it is not a group of ten. And connection between the groups of ten must be done according to the same method, but in spite of it all, this already will be on another level.

When the groups of ten begin to be connected with each other, there will be a new qualitative result, and the hundreds is a new result that is even more qualitative, and so on, to the ideal state when all of humanity becomes integral, which is to say equal to the potential number one.
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From KabTV’s “The Wisdom of the Crowd” 5/6/13

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Integral Force And Its Expressions

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: There are four fundamental interactions known in physics: strong, weak, electromagnetic, and gravitational. Is it possible to say that these four interactions are the individual expressions of the integral force (interaction)?

Answer: Yes, at the level of inanimate matter these are expressions of the integral force, which summarizes them at the inanimate level. It’s Keter (Malchut) with regard to the rest of the Sefirot.

Question: You are talking about the four levels: matter, energy, information, and interaction (in the spiritual form, meaning in the form of mutual bestowal, love). At what level does the integral force act?

Answer: The integral force, the Creator, is clothed in your single (summarized) integral desire. You built it from your individual egoistic desires by annulling your individual egoistic desires through the aspiration to the mutual guarantee in order to attain the revelation of the Creator in it.
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Balance Between People

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: If a person has a health problem and goes to the doctor, he is given a prescription for a certain medicine and, then for another, then another, and so on. The principle of integrality is based on the fact that illness is the body’s wise, natural response to a person’s wrong doings; if a person changes, he will not have to depend on medication. This principle was used by ancient Chinese medicine that cared about the balance of a person’s body, between a person and nature, between him and other people, and between a person and himself. So how can we come to balance between a person and nature?

Answer: First, people must be taught the principles of integral education. They should know what man, nature, and the balance between man and nature are, what a society is, what the balance between a person and his social environment that surrounds him is, and about the balance with the society, with the family, and with himself.

All this is integral education, and it includes great knowledge. It is enough, however, to teach a person the basis for understanding these categories without going into great depth, so that he will understand what he should do.

After that, we should conduct workshops and training courses in which people will learn what balance with the environment really is. This balance is built on the simple principle of communicating vessels (connected vessels)—in every society, there is mutual penetration when people connect—so, if in one area there is excess temperature, pressure, or other parameters, they penetrate the places where there is a lack of it, according to size, volume, force, and intensity. These processes of mutual penetration take place until absolute balance in every area of society is achieved.

This happens on all levels of nature: mental, psychological, physical, intellectual, and others.

So, all our training is based on the notion of enabling people to come in contact with the world around them in this manner, but first, not with the still matter, the vegetative, and the animate, but with other people.

If a person enters the level of the right balance between himself and others like him, then it naturally automatically balances him individually and in his relationship with his environment. It is because a person’s communication with others is the best and most efficient means for self-correction, for self-change, for self-control with regard to others, and so forth.

Thus, we get the  most accurate picture and the options one has in order to bestow most efficiently on others. So, all our integral education programs are based on mutual cooperation between people and not on a person’s cooperation with nature or with himself in front of the mirror as some kind of inner psychoanalysis. It is attained only between people.
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From KabTV’s “The Medicine of the Future” 4/7/13

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Integrality: New Horizons

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Do people have to be experts in order to solve a certain problem during an integral debate or can people come to a solution when they are correctly connected, fulfilling this integrality?

Answer: To tell you the truth, I don’t think that there are any problems at all except for understanding the integral nature. When a person begins to look at the world from a new level, everything becomes transparent, simple, and clear. He sees all the problems since they appear as a result of lack of connection between two systems: the integral and the linear. As a result, he comes up with different interesting solutions that didn’t exist before, even technical and scientific ones.

I am sure that humanity will greatly benefit by that since we will suddenly begin to feel the inner nature of things. It’s because we have always studied nature not as it is but from our egoistic perspective, and therefore it was in a very limited range of frequencies. But when we exit the boundaries of our body, of our ego, we feel nature outside ourselves, that is, as it really is and not as we perceive it, and so totally new opportunities open up for us. Thus the integral level is new science, new technology, and totally new horizons.

Today we encounter great difficulties at work, like overcoming distances, transmitting energy, and information, and we try to squeeze all that into fibers, cables, and to transfer it over distance. How much fuel do we need to burn to receive minimal efficiency factor? When we look at nature in the general integral form, we see that it has a 100% solution: Nature has no surpluses, there is never a redundant part left over, which disappears somewhere. There is no such thing! So wonderful solutions come up in the integral society.  But we can solve and fulfill everything only integrally.
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From KabTV’s “The Wisdom of the Crowd” 5/6/13

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The Collective Wisdom Of The Group

Dr. Michael Laitman with StudentsQuestion: The system called the “wisdom of the group” now is being realized in a corrupt form. What or who will become its guide, director, leader, when it becomes corrected? How will this leadership appear?

Answer: The collective wisdom of the group will become their guiding leadership. There cannot be any leadership from within the group. It can only come from above them in the form of their educators who are one level above them. The group doesn’t create itself, it must be organized by someone from the outside.

So, a shared intelligence, shared thoughts and feelings, is now created within it, meaning the image of a unified group that advances as a unit by discussing, feeling, and being aware of its integrality. But nonetheless, there is a leader who stands above it. He directs the people, giving them new tasks, supervising everything.

This is because they cannot rise by themselves, they will stray to some side or be swept away somewhere. They might somehow still hold onto their position, but to rise above it, they still need a guide who is on the next level and therefore can give them advice about what to do next. In nature, everything is arranged like a pyramid.
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From KabTV’s “The Wisdom of the Crowd” 5/6/13

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The Major Law Of The Universe

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Why is Kabbalah a hidden science?

Answer: Kabbalah is not a hidden science. It simply waits until everybody feels a need for it. Humanity has to realize that there is nothing else in the world except the general law of balance, the basic law of nature. In order to be happy, healthy (in an absolute sense of the word), and rise above this life, exit to the next level at which one can sense eternity, perfection, and unconditional health, we should follow the law of “love thy neighbor….” It’s the major law of the universe and the ultimate goal of the method called Kabbalah.

However, in order to approach this, humanity has to first realize that natural egoistic aspirations only lead us to death. Soon (maybe even today) people will hear that there is a method capable of bringing them to absolute harmony, which translates into absolute health, success, happiness, peace, benevolence, and well-being.

Question: Is it possible to formulate this law some other way? For example, “don’t treat your neighbor the way you don’t want to be treated.”

Answer: Yes, you can verbalize it this way. In any case, you should put yourself in your neighbors’ shoes and act out of this understanding.

This is called balance that expels all diseases out of us. However, there is another hidden problem here. How can balance eliminate illnesses if we are constantly subject to the influence of an awful environment, both human and ecological? No matter how one tries, one’s illnesses will remain intact. Not only does one have to correct oneself, but one also has to correct oneself relative to society and society itself.

We depend on humanity and the entire civilization depends on each of us. However, if one starts correcting only oneself, he’ll become a “dandelion” who admires everybody and everything around. By all means, he will feel more comfortable and balanced, but still one will never achieve the state of genuine health since other people around him are simply parts of his own organism. One has to correct humankind inside oneself; the rest will happen automatically and will instinctively lead to a state of harmony.

Question: If we correct ourselves with regards to humanity, does it mean that we don’t have to mend humanity on a physical level?

Answer: We have to address humanity and try to deliver the truth to them, thus helping them correct themselves. The world will not improve as long as there are people who don’t understand what the law of general balance means on a moral level.
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From KabTV’s “Medicine of the Future,” 4/7/2013

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The Technology Of The “Wisdom Of The Crowd”: A Unified Image

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: In an integral group everyone needs to humble himself towards all and simultaneously rise above all. What does this mean?

Answer: When we discuss something, uniting between each other, we nourish each other. Suppose that our friend is speaking. So, on one hand, we seemingly try to enter him, to feel him, to be together with him. On the other, when I am speaking, then everyone is included within me.

It follows that when my friend expresses himself, I nullify myself completely and try to absorb everything that he is feeling and thinking, in heart and mind. And when it’s my turn, I bring everything out of myself, and everyone else is included in me in an identical manner. This is the first, smallest precondition.

In addition, people need to understand that they have to rise above the ego and not look at the faces of the others: I don’t like your glasses, I don’t like his nose, I don’t like his hair, and so forth. This is to say, I completely divest myself of the external appearance of the participating in the conversation. We try to gather our emotions, heart, and mind together. And when this shared heart and shared mind, that is, the feelings and thoughts that typify an individual are united, this creates one unified image that is called a “crowd” or a “group”; otherwise this is not even a crowd.

In our world we consider a crowd to be a mob that gathers in the town square to beat someone. It’s very easy to manage an average crowd. This is not so in the integral society. In this group of people, clear protection appears. In fact, no external force can do anything to them because they rise to another level, working at another frequency.

When people create a unified image, all of our usual earthy stereotypes, disturbances, and influences don’t affect them—they have another level of perception.
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From KabTV’s “The Wisdom of the Crowd” 5/6/13

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Transmission Of Thoughts

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: It is known that thoughts can be transmitted over distance. According to scientific research, if 10% of people out of the collective whole think or feel a certain way, then this will spread like a virus to the rest.

Answer: This is in regard to egoistic thoughts. Naturally, it can be made so that people will begin to sense whatever it is that you discuss and think about in your circles, even if they don’t know or hear anything about it. They simply begin to hear.

This is usually what happens with all thoughts—people begin to have a hunch. What we discuss now, they will begin to hear a few months later through different media sources or from people on the street.

This happens due to the fact that we exist in a single system. However, this doesn’t mean people will become interested in what they hear. They will come to it gradually, actively advancing forward. A very long period of their development still needs to take place, and this is actually what we are seeing.

Transmission of thoughts in the world, even if it stems from various egoistic motives, is a natural process that in reality, always has had its place.
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From KabTV’s “The Wisdom of the Crowd” 5/6/13

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Upbringing Or Taming?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: In the process of integral education, the sensitivity of our five senses upsurges. However, a person still has to come back to the real world where he needs certain protection since he continues dealing with various negative situations. How can we teach people to cope with the world they return to after they are done with the integral studies?

Answer: After the course of integral studies, people will relate to this world in a different way and perceive it differently. However, we should not teach people exactly how they should relate to the world around them. Rather, we have to change people. If people acknowledge internal changes, they will regard this world differently.

In general, we are giving wrong advice to our children when we teach them not to beat someone, not to fight, not to curse. It is not an upbringing. It is similar to taming animals. We must change them internally so that it would be impossible for them to beat, curse, or fight. This is why we need to go through internal transformation and ascend to the next level, rather than just follow a system of prohibitions.

This is the mistake of  modern-day education and upbringing that orients people to how they should relate to life and to the world. All we must do is to elevate a person. The rest will come naturally.

The same applies to science and the arts. Practically, there is no need to teach anybody anything. If we feel others as ourselves, our sensors begin opening. All of a sudden, a person understands from within how to produce nice musical sounds, for example. It is the most natural education. All we need is to raise others and have them connect with the rest of nature, contrary to their innate egoism.

Based on this, people “expand,” open up, and become one with the environment. People don’t need anything besides it. In such a case, no one can harm us, nor will we be causing any contradictions or problems to others. People will always feel great since they will stay in harmony with the program of creation. They will never trigger any kind of negative impacts. No matter where we are, there will always be a positive atmosphere and benevolence all around us.
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From a TV Program “Medicine of the Future,” part 3, 4/7/2013

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