Question: People are generally not interested in receiving information about forms of interaction, introspection, and development in self-actualization until their life becomes unbearable. Only then do they come to specialists and are willing to engage in internal work.

Does it mean that without the “I can’t live like this” scenario, it’s impossible to convey to people information about the integral method?

Answer: I believe that we must first do massive work with the people through different cinematographic, theatrical, and Internet-based campaigns, which would clearly demonstrate to people those events that, like in the movie, are happening to others, and how they can be solved.

We must show them examples, involve them in this, and through such productions, make them active participants, sympathetic and really involved in these transformations. We need to show them how all of this transpires through the example of the hero of some production, movie, or novel. But they must be serious works, such as Pelevin’s. I think that in this manner, we can create a demand for the integral method. It seems to me that this should precede everything else when it comes to the general population.

If we’re talking about specific people, representatives of culture and science, then we need to try to clothe it in the format and knowledge of whatever they are doing. For people like that, we need to disseminate materials about connection, the human influence on the world, and how it is realized linearly and globally, integrally, what the difference between the two is, and so on. We also have a big problem with children. If we show how integral upbringing transforms a child, we, in fact, create a human being of him or her, and then it would be a shining example for the parents.

There’s a very good example of that in our country. Here in Israel, by the way, a principal can do whatever they want within the framework of the school. He or she is given unlimited power, and they can introduce new disciplines. When school principals learn about our methodology, they agree to implement it because they feel and understand that it should give positive results, at the very least with regard to discipline in the classroom, reduction of violence, and various problems among children.

If they agree, then we put forth a condition that first, the teachers need to master the integral method. We come to the school one or two times a week and conduct courses on integral education and upbringing. Thus, before educating the children, the teachers themselves learn this methodology, and on themselves experience this whole transformation.

Gradually, teachers become our associates, colleagues, and partners, although in general, they are always characterized by conservatism and initially don’t understand the essence of integral methodology. But when they gradually become imbued with it, then they feel how much they benefit from the fact that they can enter a classroom without fear, that a friendly atmosphere during the lesson becomes a normal phenomenon, that academic achievement increases, and children listen to and receive from each other since a lesson is carried out as a conversation between them.

When children share their knowledge with each other, they absorb it much better than when receiving information from the teachers. This, essentially, is how old schools were arranged; children simply discussed all the problems amongst themselves and through that revealed and enriched knowledge.

A very interesting thing happens here. Once you attract the teachers to our side and work with them for some time on integral upbringing, like with children in a circle, they begin to feel for themselves how much the teaching staff has changed, how different the atmosphere in the staff room is, as well as their relationship with the management of the school. They begin to feel that there really is something revolutionary here, something completely new. And then we tell them that it isn’t enough to work with children on this methodology only in the school, they need to feel the same environment at home, that is, we need to work with the parents as well.

Then, during meetings with parents, the teachers start to convince parents that the new methodology is needed to ensure that their children, the most precious thing they have, would become real, new people, good and kind, able to understand the world correctly, interactive in the classroom completing school successfully, receiving good grades, and there wouldn’t be violence, drugs, and all else that unfortunately goes on in schools.  Horrible things occur there, and we only know a small part of it. That pressure, that environment to which our kids are subjected, this is the most salient and vivid manifestation of the most negative human traits.

When we tell parents that for this purpose it’s necessary to create a slightly different atmosphere at home, they agree immediately, especially women. This is enough because a woman “presides” over the household, while a man, as we all know, exerts very little influence on everything that happens in a family. In this manner, we begin to attract mothers to the integral methodology, and eventually encompass essentially the whole population.

Through women, through children’s success, this spreads as if in an open field. Everyone else immediately begins to see, hear, and feel. The chain from a school principal to the parents—this already is an enormous amount of people who become included in re-education.

This should definitely be taken into account.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/20/12

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Opinion (from Psy-Factor): “Three to four-year old children behave as absolute egoists; by the age of seven-eight, they start thinking about others. In children, care for the others is based on the pursuit of equality. At the same time, they develop a preferential concern for the members of their social group.”
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Question: If a town that is introducing integral education has a university, can it be used as an element of the infrastructure for this process?

Answer: I think that here, of course, we need to act through the federal departments in order to receive permission to add integral education as a required subject in institutions of higher learning. Otherwise it would be impossible to enter into any educational system. And when such a directive is received, then accordingly there will be allocated, say, an hour a day during which each student will be required to study this methodology, to take part in it.

This is sufficient for students. I think there won’t be any problems: They absorb everything very quickly and work with books easily. In this manner, integral education will become a mandatory subject.

Question: And for how many hours a day should school age children be engaged in the integral methodology?

Answer: We have extensive experience with schoolchildren. After school, the kids come to our integral upbringing center and spend a few hours there. The atmosphere in the center differs greatly from the one in the school where all the kids have “daggers drawn.” Therefore, a child needs an hour in order to gradually switch from one environment to another. For them, it is a transition from one world to another.

The learning takes place in the form of lessons with games and discussions. I think that children, educators, and the entire school system will be very happy about this because our method radically softens the criminal atmosphere.
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From the “Talk on Integral Education” #23, 3/3/12

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On May 20, 2012, the club “Zappa” in Tel-Aviv held the premiere of the children’s musical “In The Class with Marshmallow,” created by our friends, played by our actors, to the music of my student Arkadi Duchin.

More than 300 people laughed, sympathized, sang songs together with the actors, and most importantly, became closer to each other. We hope these performances will become a good tradition, carrying the spirit of unity to children and grown-ups.

[Show slideshow]

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Today, the happiness of man depends on his relationship with the environment, on whether he finds his proper place in society. And so we see that gradually a person leaves the little family unit.

At first all of life was connected with family, not only women, but men as well. The husband would leave to some factory in the morning to return in the evening to his wife, children, and the household, and all of life was revolved around it.

But this pastoral idyll ended. We left our homes for the wide world, began travelling and experiencing the world. On the other hand, thanks to modern means of communication, this world has begun entering our homes. As a result, we all ended up being interconnected through industrial, economic, and financial relationships. The circle closed, and all of us, both men and women who want to connect, must unite and through this connection, return to the familial connection, but on a new level.

For this to happen, everyone should examine: where we live, in what state, in what kind of world do we find ourselves, why do certain processes take place in the world, and what do we need to do? In what way does nature move us forward, giving us no opportunity to resist? Then, we will see that we need to establish tighter connections through media and specialized education.

In the end, we who once headed for the world, freed from home and family ties, will return back home free and independent. Once again, we return to a more quiet and slower-paced life, in connection with each other, but in a different form. Each of us will remain free, and based on this freedom, understanding, and vision of the future, we will establish for ourselves a connection between all people around the Earth and within each family.

Man suddenly sees that family offers meaning; there are great benefits and a better life in a family. Then, he will find a partner close to him in this new spirit that he has acquired based on integral education, and he will re-build the family. [Read more →]

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A person should be constantly careful because at any moment, as the sages say, he can tip the scale not only in his favor but also in favor of the whole world. But this doesn’t mean that we can’t make mistakes. Today we go through the phase of preparation and of course we may make mistakes.

If you make efforts and make mistakes, it is normal. During the preparation period a person doesn’t correct anything yet, but only prepares his desires for correction. This is also what we teach children. We don’t demand any real work from them, which they are unable to do yet. We don’t assess them according to the results, but according to what they have learned. For example, if we give a child a toy and he takes it apart and breaks it, it is natural for him, and although the toy is broken he still learned something from it. He may discover that there is nothing inside it, or that there is a spring; the child has learned something and this is the main gain.

You don’t even punish a ten-year-old for things that a grown-up may go to jail for. During the phase of preparation a person is not expected to reach any real results. The main thing is to prepare oneself for correction and to advance, even by the corruptions that you summon and discover. This is the principle of learning. This is why traditional teaching in our schools and universities is futile; a person is not allowed to make mistakes. Good grades and high achievements are expected of him and he doesn’t think about the essence of the material, about how to put together the materials that are presented to him ready made. No, he has to get a grade and all the rest doesn’t interest him.

So it isn’t a preparation for something greater any more. The education system produces people who don’t know how to think.

Actually in the preparation phase, in the process of learning, one thing should be expected from a person: to absorb as many good and bad things as possible, to constantly rise and fall. His level of preparations should be assessed and not how much he knows. It doesn’t matter if he breaks something on the way. A person counting on a lucrative profession is not a master of anything. A real master works only for the “sake of art.” The pay doesn’t interest him. A person who really wants to become an expert in a certain field should only connect with the material he will work with, study it, and penetrate it. In order to do this, he has to break the raw materials and sink into this breaking himself, into the depth of the raw material.

This is a totally different method of teaching and educating, a method that is opposite from the current method. There are no grades, because during the preparation there is nothing to give grades for. There is also no reward for the future results because otherwise a person desires the reward.

In the world, however, people prefer something that promises a reward. In the last 30-40 years people have become very limited and cannot find solutions even to small crises. This is because they don’t have a creative approach to learning. The person was not built from the shattering so that he can really be complex and multifaceted.
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From the 3^rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/19/12, The Study of the Ten Sefirot

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In the News (from Daily Mail): “Children are often happier with their online lives than they are with reality, a survey has revealed.

“They say they can be exactly who they want to be – and as soon as something is no longer fun they can simply hit the quit button.

“Around 47 per cent of children said they behaved differently online than they did in their normal lives with many claiming it made them feel more powerful and confident.

“[Psychotherapist Peter Bradley said:] ‘These findings suggest that children see cyberspace as detachable from the real world and a place where they explore parts of their behaviour and personality that they possibly would not show in real life. We can’t allow cyberworlds to be happier places than our real communities, otherwise we are creating a generation of young people not functioning adequately in our society.’

“‘We were alarmed by the number of risks being taken by teenagers whilst online,’ he said. ‘Safe online behaviour is taught in schools, but teenagers seem to be unable to relate the risks to themselves.’”

My Comment: Development cannot be stopped, and thus only by correcting a person can we make cyberspace useful. Everything rests on the integral upbringing.

In general, humanity is in transition to virtual space. It is moving away from the carriers of physical sensations, energy, and information and entering the space of forces and qualities. Matter will gradually lose its firmness in our sensations until it disappears as an illusion.
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Question: What do you have in mind when you talk about life outside the body?

Answer: Even now we are living a life outside our bodies. I live in my feelings, desires, and thoughts received from the environment. They are not mine but obtained by me from the surrounding environment. Of course, they exist within me, but I call them “out of body” because I live by interests received from others who impress upon me and advise what’s worth living for, what to think about, and what to feel.

I don’t even realize that if I lived in a forest, my understanding of the world would be completely different from the one I have right now. It’s as though the environment gives me a different view of the world and forces me to perceive it one way and not another. And indeed, this is a big problem.

Suppose my environment makes me think that being a cannibal, or killing people, or taking advantage of them is normal, while you see life completely differently. You have a completely different attitude to animals, yourself, the world, and family. We live within the model of perception that society instilled in us throughout our development, and accordingly, this is the way we see the world.

When I travel to a different country, sometimes it really strikes me that people think completely differently there and gravitate towards different values. Thus they have another way of looking at things, and they don’t see what I see. They judge people differently than we do. And if we get acquainted with history books or law codes of different countries, we will see just how different we are.

I’m not even talking about cultural differences or specific cuisines. I am interested in a person’s worldview and not in what he likes to fill his stomach with. What’s important is a person’s understanding of historical events, of human life, of good and evil, his or her attitude to reward and punishment, to what one should achieve, and what kind of life one wishes to build for oneself.

Some people are prepared to spend day and night playing cards and enjoy having others serve them, while for others it’s important to make their contributions wherever possible, to take interest in achievements of science, and to reveal something new for themselves. The outlook on such things can fluctuate from one extreme to another.

We see that the problem of society is that we don’t understand each other. What do wives usually complain about to their husbands? “You don’t understand me!” And this is actually the case because we really didn’t receive an upbringing about how to live in a family.

When I was an adolescent, I wasn’t educated about what a woman is. Is it some living creature that exists by my side? Does she have certain demands, a unique personality? What vision of life does a woman have as opposed to a man? A woman is a completely opposite world, not dependent on anyone. Do I understand her? Do I wish to understand her? Do I take her into consideration? Am I capable of doing this?

Since we haven’t received any internal models of what a woman is, what type of mentality she has, and how she sees the world, we don’t have an ability to take her into consideration. A man truly doesn’t understand her, and this is why each of their meetings abound with mutual attacks. They try to get along somehow, yet they aren’t capable to actually understand each other, that is, to become included in one another. And this is a big flaw in our upbringing.

Statistics on divorce rates and on those unwilling to even start a family attest to this. We see a similar situation in child education: We don’t know how to approach a child correctly. We all know that there is an increase in child abuse cases, and it is all because parents don’t understand them.

In regards to my own children, I have sensed just to what extent I don’t understand them, how unprepared I am for being a father. After all, a father is an educator, a creator, someone who shapes the child for their life to come. But I wasn’t able to do that due to the fact that neither the feeling nor understanding of everything that pertains to children was developed in me at all, while it’s absolutely necessary to teach that.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 3, 12/29/11

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Question: There was a series of teenage suicides in Russia. People are lost; they don’t understand what is happening. How can we explain this phenomenon?

Answer: These “epidemics” will be recurrent. Right now it is teenage suicide, then something else, then another thing, and so on. What is this connected to? Teenagers, both boys and girls have a period when they do not fully perceive this life. They see it as something virtual that exists between this world and that one. At this time they are very sensitive to any bumps, which can even end in such a tragic way.

Teenagers do not feel death; they don’t feel the end. They are a bit above our world, somewhere in the air, and this is the way they treat the possibility of ending their life so tragically. Psychologists, sociologists, teachers, and educators know this. This needs to be eradicated as much as possible, teenagers access to the Internet should be limited, and we need to have a very precise government campaign regarding the “safety” of the soul.

I don’t think that these cases will decrease or disappear. On the contrary, their number will continue to grow because our egoism keeps growing and there is no answer to it, and it turns out that the person finds himself lost between the earth and the sky. Moreover, teenagers regard adults as the example of their future lives, and they completely disagree with this kind of life. They don’t even care that this life is financially provided for, they don’t like this life.

This is why many problems await us in the future. They will continue to exist in even darker states until we manage to unravel before them the full palette of the shining upper world that they can reach. This will be the part of the population which suffers most, which is susceptible to drugs, prostitution, and different problems. Now unemployment is adding to these problems, which also lead to very different problems; for example: Universities are closing, which means that the future is also disappearing. Young people do not see anything but hopelessness before them.

Why are there revolutions in North African countries? Many young people, including educated people who have graduated from universities in Europe, are returning home to Tunisia, Libya, Spain, and Italy and don’t know what to do since these countries are on the verge of an enormous crisis. Youth will be the part of the population, which suffers most everywhere; it doesn’t have a future.

The main thing for the other layers of the population is to exist in a relatively comfortable manner, but the youth don’t have this, it’s not enough for them, and they naturally will not settle. We need to think about the way to make them realize that there is a way to enter a different dimension, which will give them absolute fulfillment. If we present our method in the correct manner, people will want to bring it to life because it gives the person an opportunity for balance, an ability to become fulfilled regardless of work and corporeal commodities. Minimal necessities will be enough for them, and they will attain everything else by integrally participating in the environment.
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From KabTV’s “Foundations of the Integral Society” 2/12/12

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In the News (from Radio Netherlands Worldwide): “Western schoolchildren are up to three years behind those in China’s Shanghai and success in Asian education is not just the product of pushy ‘tiger’ parents, an Australian report released Friday [February 17] said.

“The study by independent think-tank The Grattan Institute said East Asia was the centre of high performance in schools with four of the world’s top systems in the region – Hong Kong, South Korea, Shanghai and Singapore. …

“The study said that while many OECD [Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development] countries had substantially increased funding for schools in recent years, this had often produced disappointing results and success was not always the result of spending more money. …

“The report said the best systems focused on a relentless, practical focus on learning and teacher education, mentoring and professional development, rather than greater spending.”

My Comment: Education is inseparable from upbringing, and if there is no upbringing, then education cannot be good. Education means learning the skills to think, and not to know.
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