Question: There are societies and public institutions: the police, army, schoolteachers, and so on. There is a deviant institution that is not recognized, but it’s there: It’s the criminal world, living by its own laws.

Does the proposed integral system mean building a new institution?

Answer: No. We propose an integral methodology as the inclusion of all these institutions as necessary elements. Let all these institutions, including the criminal, exist if it is needed in society, and through it, society will clean, protect, or, conversely, change itself. Whatever exists in society, there is a place for—everything. There are cops and robbers. One cannot be without the other.

By the way, the teaching of integral education is successfully carried out in prisons in the United States. Prison authorities are quite happy about this; they accept all our materials and write grateful letters. Imagine receiving a thank-you letter from the warden of a 5000-inmate prison!

Prison management sees inmates gradually become men, not beasts. Typically, people in prisons become brutalized. In a few weeks, the conditions there can make any normal person the same as everyone else there because the environment affects everyone. And here a miracle occurs: The situation suddenly becomes steady, comfortable, and easy. Violence and all kinds of problems disappear.

Therefore, we want to enter into all sectors of society. We are not interested in whether you are a thief or a police officer. We are interested that you pass a course in integral education and become different in your “institution,” in your community. Thus, all the structures from legitimate to criminal will begin to change.

We don’t tell them how to change the institutions. The whole environment will change through the changes within people. Just as human egoism created all kinds of institutions, from legal to criminal, its integral egoism will change all that.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/20/12

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