We can talk at great length about our interconnection, which in recent times obliges us to make contact with each other at the emotional level. We need to start connecting with each other not only in accordance with ecological laws, manufacturing processes, the banking system, mutual upbringing, and healthcare, but personally. Correspondingly, all the nations need to engage in good relations with each other.

In the process of the evolution of nature, development went through still, vegetative, and animate levels before reaching the level of man. The human civilization developed through the same stages too, leading us to the point where we’re starting to acquire the image of one man. Precisely this state is called Adam, Human.

And here comes a question: How will we achieve this? It’s impossible to exist any other way since our further development requires a good mutual relationship, and without it, we won’t be able to correct the laws of economics, industry, and trade. The world is at a dead end, confused; it doesn’t understand what to do next. People have lost their interconnection altogether because in our time it is a heartfelt, soulful connection that is demanded of us, something that has never existed between us.

We either despised each other, exchanged goods, or collaborated out of hopelessness in manufacturing and trade. But it wasn’t required of an individual or a government to have a good relationship with their partner. However, now we are to required to exert internal, psychological efforts in relation to a stranger, and our development consists of just that.

We can feel that without such relationships, we cannot exist correctly, even in our own home. If I share an apartment with a few people, we find a way to get along provided each of us has their own space. But right now, we are so dependent on each other—each on everyone—that without correct relationships between us, our life becomes simply horrible.

Therefore it’s necessary for us to come to an agreement, and this agreement is called mutual guarantee. In other words, our relationships need to be such that each will feel that his or her life depends on others. That’s how soldiers from the same unit know that their life depends on all the others, and if each one doesn’t support and care for the rest, all of them will lose.

Such systems of mutual dependence exist in nature and technology: They are called integral or analog systems. Within them, all the parts are so interconnected that if any piece fails, the entire mechanism stops working. Evidently, as human society developed, we have grown to the point of reaching this kind of connection.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 5, 1/2/12

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Even though we are different, we still get along somehow like in one family. True, it’s not easy. Let’s say that I have a mom and dad, my wife does too, and each of us has brothers and sisters on both sides, their kids, our kids. We have to take each other into consideration since we’re mutually dependent both in the positive and the negative way. This is why we have no intention of changing and reforming each other.

It’s understandable that if in the past I met a woman who possibly differs from me in her personality, but according to other considerations, we decided to be together, then in this decision to be together, we essentially accepted and agreed without even talking about it that we would be leading a shared life that wouldn’t always go smoothly. We will need to make concessions to each other, to agree with the other’s opinion, either partially or fully, and so on. But we connect with one another, having no other choice, because we want to create a family, to raise our offspring, and to support each other.

Young couples lack this kind of upbringing, which teaches how to get along with each other despite the differences. Even though we think that we choose the most suitable life partner for ourselves freely, in reality, we are still very different. For animals, mating happens instinctively, but people, since their calculations are corrupted, seek something special, perhaps even rare, not realizing that precisely because of that they will have communication difficulties.

The lack of education, understanding, and upbringing related to shared life, as well as the inability to yield to each other lead us to a crisis of the family institution. In our day, more than half the population of the earth, especially young people, are single. They aren’t ready to get married and don’t want to have children because they feel unable to take care of someone.

This crisis has been going on for decades now, and today we are forced to solve analogous problems between countries as well. After all, each of us, at least relative to the neighboring countries, is both giving and receiving, just like in a married couple. This is why it’s also necessary to learn on an international level how to make concessions and to connect above all the differences and disagreements. Yet, we were never taught how to do this either.

So how can this actually be done? What is the technique of making concessions since only through conceding do we demonstrate our good intention?

For lack of any other options, we currently find ourselves in the crisis that teaches us the most pressing things. And people feel this urgency in such a way (and therein lies our hope) that they refuse to accept “divorce” since divorce between countries means war.

I hope that we’ll realize that we don’t have a choice and we need to exercise restraint. This is why we created the UN, a place where supposedly everyone can gather and discuss peaceful cooperation, as well as many other organizations that handle education and healthcare.

For example, in Geneva there are international organizations which I never even realized existed. There is a commission on broadcasting frequencies that ensures that each television and radio station in the world has its own frequency and does not interfere with others. There is a council on manufacturing drugs, medical products, and services, which determines standards in this field. This allows us to understand each other, and thus a doctor, when sending his or her patient for treatment to a different country, is able to explain to their colleague all the nuances of the required procedures.

There are even organizations that monitor flags of every country so that suddenly two identical flags wouldn’t appear. There are standards in every field because we’re becoming so interconnected and close to one another that we need to establish laws to regulate all areas of our interaction.

And just like a parliament of every country that sets laws for the interaction of its citizens, it is done on a global scale today for the entire world too. These kinds of organizations have been in existence for a few decades now, and without them things would be very difficult for us.

But today the problem is not in establishing a place for everyone. The current situation requires us to build some common “roof” that consists of mutual understanding and feeling that we are in the same room, so to speak. In these circumstances it is very difficult for us to be together if we don’t have a good connection between us.

We should feel not only closeness but an interdependence that will necessitate everyone to change their attitude towards others. Whether we want to or not, we are interdependent, connected, and united on different levels: food, clothing, upbringing, culture, technology, energy supplies, water, and even air.

If someone’s industry pollutes the atmosphere, we have nothing to breathe. We are all familiar with the Kyoto Protocols that set limits on emissions of waste byproducts and atmospheric pollution.

I think that it’s worthwhile to provide a list of such international organizations and the issues they work with. Then we’ll feel the scope of our connection. A portion of these organizations is located in Paris, London, and New York, but most of them are in Geneva.

This is very important because it gives people an idea of such mutual dependence that is hard to believe. It is much greater than in a family. In a family, I can stop talking, quarrel, and even distance myself for some time.

But here, this is impossible. It turns out that all the existing countries are already within one single mosaic, and nobody is able to exit it or behave they way they please. We see that any time someone attempts to make some independent motion, it never works out. After some time they come back, or perhaps it doesn’t even go beyond verbal attempts, never coming to any practical actions, because in our time it’s not feasible.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 5, 1/2/12

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Transitions to new developmental levels have always been induced by small crises: Education, social, financial, and other systems gradually started to go out of order. Marriages started to fall apart, slowly but steadily illicit drug use spread and overpowered alcoholism. All of a sudden terrorism came into view.

Humanity’s nervousness reveals itself. It’s a result of weaknesses in all spheres of life, which were built according to egoistic rules that made everybody concentrate solely on themselves: This is yours, this is mine, don’t cross the line! Everyone defends his or her freedom and personal space. Now, Nature destroys boundaries between us, breaks walls, and drags us into some kind of community life that we try to avoid because we’re not yet ready for it.

When our egos were still too small, we were open to everything. At that time, we didn’t care whether we lived as one family in one village. People didn’t lock their doors and were very friendly with each other. A huge family (parents, children, and grandchildren) shared one room and were not at all embarrassed with each other.

Nowadays, thing are different. We are separated by our huge egoism: Everybody wants a separate room, strives to hide behind the computer or telephone, and tends to contact others as little as possible. People don’t unite into families any longer, but rather get together to have sex and then go away.

But suddenly, Nature starts to destroy partitions and by doing so cancels our severance. The current crisis is the biggest of all we’ve experienced so far. We do everything to delay, to misrepresent it, but it manifests on lower levels at which we all are still interconnected.

Currently, there is no such thing as a family crisis since families are simply broken. More than half of families cannot be considered families per se and have no desire to revive and reconstruct themselves. The number of people who don’t wish to marry has reached 70%! Today, it’s normal, a  good family where its members treat each other with love and respect has become an anachronism.

The second major problem is drugs. We comply with this ugly phenomenon; our fight with it is mild and gentle. We realize that it’s a terrible thing which we can’t avoid because the society we live in and this life itself force us to look for ways to escape.

The next problem is how we raise our youth. Currently, demographics are poor, the population doesn’t grow much, and people don’t know how to take care of their children. Parents agree to leave children both overnight and during the day. Children are not attached to their parents any longer; the gap between generations grows. We are about to lose the next generation, but nobody worries too much about it. We say: “What difference does it make whether our children’s upbringing is good or bad; what does it change?” This is how we think, not even remotely realizing the essence of the problem.

It looks like all prior crises were not too big of a blow for us, nor did they trigger our understanding that we have bankrupted ourselves in all aspects of our lives. The developmental process always flows from the small and weak to impacting the big ones. This is similar to the punishment of children, meaning at first we start convincing them and then progress to threatening with bigger trouble. At this point, we all are going through a very serious process; it’s a matter of life and death.

We are going through two serious cycles of discrepancies between us and Nature. Integrality allows us to realize that we are opposite to Nature and contrary to all its systems, meaning that originally we were supposed to be completely interconnected, but we do everything we can to avoid staying united.

We understand that staying together would be good for us, but we don’t know how to achieve this state. Everybody in the world realizes that if people unite for educational, technical, pedagogical and cultural purposes, it will facilitate the whole situation. But how can we act against our ego? We are not capable of doing so!

Here is the problem: If we are unable to unite, we will stay hungry. Very simple! We won’t be able to provide for basic necessities: food, safety, heat, dwelling, and physical health. These are five basic needs that have to be satisfied in order to survive.

At this time, Nature is pressing upon us so much that if we don’t correspond to its requirements, we won’t be able to provide for our five major necessities. Such a notion as ecology is part of our requirement for safety. We will fail to provide food and keep good ecology; both are intertwined since one influences the other.

Worry, fear, and trouble will eventually force humankind to take drastic measures. If we don’t do anything, our resistance and opposition to Nature will lead us to affliction, wars, devastation, and obliteration. At some point, we will re-evaluate our chances to survive and will arrive at the conclusion that we have to unite and reach the fourth level of development—the Human level.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #12, 12/16/11

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Question: We hope that the method of integral upbringing will be disseminated all over the world. How do you see the interaction of the Moscow group with the groups of South America, for example? Does it make sense for them to maintain a relationship with each other?

Answer: If we get rid of the language barrier through simultaneous translation, people will understand each other perfectly. They will understand the feelings, the songs, the dancing, and various expressions. You will see that suddenly they have the same body movements.

When we talk about integration, people begin to express themselves the same way, regardless of who they are. National, ethnic, and racial differences melt away.

For example, natives of South America and Africa, who have completely different dance moves, begin to move synchronously, trying to feel each other. Their dancing no longer resembles modern dancing, where everyone is six feet away from each other and no one sees anyone else while twisting and hopping on their own. On the contrary, they try to stay together, to come into contact, to be closer, maybe even to stop moving, but to feel each other physically, and most importantly, on the inside.

They acquire a completely new body language and, I would say, a new culture, communication, and behavior. But it’s not just a culture; it is a new form of art, the art of dance and expression that comes precisely from the integral sensation.

I hope that this culture emerges and is revealed, and maybe through it humanity will adapt itself to the integral world. This is shocking, and it shows us that we truly are coming closer to a single image of “Adam.”

This is a language that did not exist during the separation of people who lived in ancient Babylon, during their dispersal all over the world (if we accept the legend of the Bible as a fact). It is a language instilled in the foundation of our root even before human beings emerged, and it comes from our spiritual foundation before it materialized.

If we take all the songs, dances, any kind of music, or any other forms of expression of various groups from different continents, we will discover one common denominator in them all. And the differences between them will be very minor.
[72305]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” #11, 12/16/11

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Preparation to the Lesson
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Shamati #4 “The Reason for the Heaviness”
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Chapter “Beresheet (Genesis),” “And the Land Was Unformed (Tohu) and Void (Bohu),” Item 319, Lesson 90
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Talmud Eser Sefirot, Part 7, Item 27, Lesson 12
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“Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 125, Lesson 55
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