Entries in the 'Education' Category

The Integral Method: Present And Future

Dr. Michael LaitmanToday, many people already want to hear about the method of integral education. Just in the last year or two, many people are willing to listen because they are becoming aware that they are like lost children. A lost child is standing and crying, not knowing what to do. They imagine themselves in this form already today and clearly so.

That is why we have to master the method of integral interaction, to understand what it is, how to implement it, and try to realize it between us as much as possible. We do not have common economic, cultural, political and other relations, there is just human relationship. And it opens the way for us.

In addition, as you know, we are trying to access various structures and organizations: schools, educational institutions, businesses, colleges, universities, etc., where the need for it is felt. After all, the crisis in relations between adults, between children is manifested, and it is already obvious how big this problem is. For example, the family institution is disintegrating, divorces and the number of single people are on the rise, and so on. We can already gradually introduce the integral methodology here and there. Moreover, it turns out that our method starts to live from the very first class, from the first presentation. People immediately begin to realize that it has some special power, a special “miracle” even. It is manifested so much that they see that here they can really achieve miraculous changes.

We notice this especially in the groups in the European part of Russia, we see this partially in the United States, we see this in Israel. But of course, it is not enough. We need to expand and try to further this integral methodology into life wherever possible. Gradually, we will learn and will be able to show others that with its help it is possible to save regions, countries, and the whole world from a serious crisis.

We live with this today, trying very much to accelerate the pace of our development in integral education and upbringing to include various regions, countries, even civilizations in this work, for example, Western, Eastern, and Asian. Each region has its own problems. On the one hand, the “heaviest” one is Eastern Europe—really, to this day, it is very difficult to talk to them. It is a bit easier in America; the Americans respect news, business suggestions, all kinds of coaching and training. They are happy to do this, and it might be easier there.

Russians are also used to all kinds of innovations, and in general people are prepared for them. It is easier here, although egoism is serious here as well. Perhaps, due to this increased egoism, which is manifested sooner, it will be easier for us to talk to people. After all, business managers see that the relationships between employees lowers productivity so much that there is nothing they can do. In addition, social issues are bigger here, in the European part.

In general, I think that the situation is a bit different here in this region, Krasnoyarsk, and the whole of Siberia, Russia’s territory beyond the Ural is less egoistic. It is very different from the western part of Russia, and especially from Western Europe and North America. Nature acts in different ways here, and that is why it could be opposite: On the one hand, people do not feel so egoistic yet as to discover that their egoism is to blame for everything, and on the other hand, they may be inclined towards getting closer with each other, and it makes our task easier.

In any case, no matter how it manifests itself, it is important that this region, I think, is favorable for implementing the method of integral education and upbringing. There is a different atmosphere, different relations between people, they are more trusting, it seems to me, more peaceful. So if we do this here together, we will succeed in spite of vast distances.

But first of course, we need to have a good course of integral education and upbringing, and then organize a demonstration classes, and workshops for businesses, in schools, in other institutions, in various forms. Thus, serious work in the entire region is required to do that.

Overall, we are pioneers. We have to develop this method to apply to modern humanity. You know what Baal HaSulam wrote; you know what Rabash wrote. And the rest we have developed over the last decade, especially in the last few years. Kabbalah can be described more clearly every time

The interaction between us, the applicability of this science to the connection between us in every way, it does not exist anywhere else, it was not described earlier. Just knowing the method of my teachers, I develop it further. In principle, I speak of nothing new. What seems like something new is actually the application of their ideas to the current state of humanity.

So, we will have to develop this method together with regard to your region.
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From the Talk before the Convention in Krasnoyarsk 6/1/13

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Who Can Rethink This World?

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Yehuda Elkana, distinguished historian and philosopher of science, former President and Rector of the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary): “We face the following problem: our science, technology, medicine, governance, and economy in our global world have become so advanced and so complex, that we need all the energy to produce carriers of knowledge on the highest level who not only are technically equipped to cope with what is there, but who can also find the appropriate measures for dealing with crisis-like emergencies in ecology, epidemics, famine, and destitution… . In other words we need many ‘experts’ who do more of the same, instead of rethinking the foundations. Yet it is indispensable to find the few thousands of intellectuals all around the globe who will rethink the world, discipline by discipline and problem area by problem area.”

My Comment: Intellectuals who are able to rethink our world are the Kabbalists and no one else! After all, we for the first time in history have reached the insolubility of accumulated problems. And problems are in everything we are engaged with in our world. They cannot be solved through external changes and mechanisms (new technologies, economic or social reforms, wars and revolutions) but through demanding inner changes—the changes of the human himself—changing his attitude towards himself, others, the world, instead of devouring our world (himself, society, nature) to taking care of everyone and everything.

In this case, people will come to the rational use of resources and consumption and to kind communication. This change is possible in a person only by means of Integral Education. The solution to the crisis is in the realization of the project of the implementation of Integral Education.
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The Strongest Aren’t The Toughest But The Most Flexible

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Alain de Benoist, French academic, philosopher): “The Earth is the finite (exhaustible) space. In the end, there cannot be endless material growth in the finite space. Therefore, we must give up the idea of the quantitative growth. All the classical economists argue that growth is a natural phenomenon, considering that natural resources are infinite.

“In our time, a state is powerful if it is able to meet the challenge of time. If growth leads to disaster, then the countries that have implemented a policy of rational economic downturn will be least exposed to it.”

My Comment: There is no need to induce artificial recession; we need to change society gradually and gently by introducing integral education where individual and social changes will bring about changes in all the structures (political, economic, etc.) in a natural (optimal) way.
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Form Your Future Yourself!

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: What can humanity, individual countries, or local companies do to simulate a more successful future?

Answer: In any case, the future will be successful. The problem is how to reach it. It’s better to do this in the kind, gentle, correct way. To do this, there are integral workshops and the method of integral education forming a successful future.

Our future is clearly defined. We cannot build it in a different way. We can only reveal it sooner so it will be friendly, gentle, kind, and quick  for us instead of reaching it the hard, long way, full of suffering.

Comment: It turns out that a person has a clear favorable line of development of events and his fate and if he uses the integral methodology correctly, then he immediately rises from one degree to another.

Answer: Yes. He anticipates in advance the events that must occur because being in connection with others and participating in integral workshops, he is ahead of these events, he forms and builds his future himself. Time will force him to do it.
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From KabTV’s “Through Time” 3/20/13

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Child Cruelty

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Elena Galkina, historian): “Violence among children is multiplying. They have much more opportunities today to immerse into the virtual space, in the TV world, computer games; between the ages 5 to 15, they see approximately 20,000 murders, horror movies, thrillers, a huge amount of blood, and treachery. They conclude that he who is successful is a rapist, a murderer, one who views others as stepping stones, steals, and take bribes.

“A child needs to see an example of a good behavior towards others. Otherwise, as a biological creature, he sees how he should compete and, of course, he will choose this path of crime, violence, and social dominance.

“If we don’t resolve this issue, our society will turn not just into beasts but into a population that will not be able to reproduce because for reproduction even animals and birds require an element of altruism, an element of social cooperation for the common good, and not for the benefit of just oneself through the misery of others. If no attention is given to this, we will be faced with social collapse and the collapse of individuals.”

My Comment: This is the path of the realization of the evil of our nature, and only after recognizing it as evil will we be able to begin our correction as the only inevitable, sensible, and desirable action. The realization of evil can be long and cruel if we persist in remaining in egoism, or it can be fast and easy if we study it as a tendency to realize it as evil in order to rise above it by means of integral education, and then replace it with kindness and love with the help of integral upbringing.
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Education Or Nazism?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: With the dictators who have come to power like Hitler, surely there is a sense that they proceed as educators to save the society.

Answer: Hitler was not a dictator. He rose to power in a democratic election. The people chose him. Therefore, it is impossible to say that he conquered the government through power as was done, let’s say, in Russia or some other countries. Also, Germany was not a nation that could be conquered with the help of military force. It was done through the power of persuasion.

Question: Are you saying that sages who need to rise to power now also must persuade the people?

Answer: They don’t need to persuade, but rather to educate them, to tell a person about the meaning of his life.

Persuasion is only possible when you act on a beastly level. Hitler achieved specifically this: He put pressure on the beastly instincts of the German people. The same thing can be done with any other group of people since all of them are internally convinced that “we are unique,” and this inclination toward uniqueness can be raised to the level of fascism, Nazism, that is, people can be gathered with this and directed against others.

In the integral society, a new paradigm that we advance toward is completely different: General humanity, full integrality, similarity to nature as to a single system, a balance between us and nature when each one is in his place so as to raise humanity, to help everyone to “exit themselves.” This exiting oneself will be felt by each like an acquisition of an absolutely new method of existence in which a person begins to feel life precisely outside of himself and not within himself.

Specifically this is what the sage, the leader of the new world, disseminates and advertises, and so this can be absolutely differentiated from what all leaders and dictators have done before him.
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From KabTV’s “Through Time” 3/17/13

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The Future Of Modern Business

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: In business today, a line of products or services is manufactured for which no one, in fact, has any need. This is the basis of modern business. What will happen in the integral society to a company that, for example, produces a very expensive brand of neckties, and thus lives and grows?

Answer: Their customers will disappear.

When you give people the right education, they themselves will choose what they do. Many of them will invest only in learning and dissemination, which is to say, in studying, for this is not just learning. They are learning to develop a system of integral mutual cooperation that everyone on earth needs to learn.

The future of humanity is automation, 3D printers, etc., so people won’t work in factories. Certainly this will not be overnight, but just give them a chance and tomorrow it will appear, and no one will need special neckties.

Question: The whole problem is in this. Today, businesses exist thanks to manufacturing neckties. It creates jobs there.

Answer: We are very rapidly reaching a time when people will be provided for through totally different systems and they will feel much happier. Who needs this kind of business? People need to be happy.

That is, a businessman will feel happy, not from selling another thousand expensive neckties, but from something completely different. He will go on to organizing integral education networks and will gather people within the networks, will organize universities, and the like. In this he will find himself instead of selling ties. Anyway, this business has no place in the future. One way or another, it will go bankrupt.

What we require is only what is imperative for the right existence on a normal and minimal level: a house, nourishment, clothing, a car, and the like. All this must exist, but in a normal way. A person will not particularly pursue any of this.

So, describe this to yourself: People with integral education would be eager for what? It will be that which is imperative for life and nothing more. All the unnecessary businesses will disappear.

Question: Practical experience proves that a businessman will feel himself to be secure up to the last day and will not be ready to listen to our advice. An unrealistic condition is formed. We need to wait until everything falls apart for him, but then there will no longer be any one to teach. The collectives are freed, and there are no resources.

Answer: So, we will come to a factory like this and offer them a course in integral education for the entire factory.

The entrepreneur will gradually start his factory again and will come out of the crisis with this. So, through the gradual transformation of the factories that are essential for maintaining the normal existence of humanity, we will form a completely new network. Everything superfluous will cease, and all the “superfluous” people will begin to be occupied throughout their entire workday with forming an integral network between them in the likeness of and equal with nature.
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From KabTV’s “Through Time” 3/17/13

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An Exercise That Changes A Person

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: When we speak about the integral network, we are speaking about connections. What are the objects between which this connection is realized?

Answer: First of all, it’s a person since he must attain the state of integrality for himself by striving for it rationally and wisely, by gradually creating it. Together with this, he needs to use the society, even though it still is uncorrected, but is trying to correct itself. Here a very interesting exercise exists. And afterwards, man’s attitude towards the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature is naturally added to the integral society that gradually progresses and corrects itself.

In what way can we get closer to this integral society and use it? Since it doesn’t exist outside of us, we need to create it ourselves.

Thus, when we play in this integral society, when we imagine it to ourselves as if we already exist in it, when we try to unite between us and create a network of mutual relations, then through this game, we invite upon ourselves the general integral force of nature. It operates and influences our attempts: The society or part of it that tries to play in the integral society receives specifically this force. We do this like children who through this try to be grown ups and thus invite upon themselves the bestowal of the upper force, the general integral force of nature. In this way, we invite upon ourselves its influence and change.
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From KabTV’s “ Wisdom of the Crowd” 5/14/13

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Everything Is Resolved Within An Hour

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Do we need to explain to people that they achieve similarity to nature in their unity?

Answer: Yes, we must explain this. Serious people come to us who want to master the integral methodology. They are specialists in their fields: politicians, scientists, doctors, computer programmers, and so forth. They want to know what is going on, why and how we have managed to do this.

We explain to them that integral science is very simple. It is built on conformity with nature. We must be on the same level with it—its energy, information, thought, desire—everything that there is in the natural environment, which, in principle, has created us.

However, how can we rise to its level? It is through our interconnection. That is why we create such a connection between us in which everyone is equal, is in mutual concern, in mutual integration with each other. That is, we create a small, integral, analog system in which there is no big or small. No one puts pressure on the other and everyone works toward common consent.

It is because by nature we are opposite to this common state since everyone is a great individualist, egoist, an opponent of others. However, now, rising above this, we begin to unite. We seem to create a capacitor, a storage device, a sensor, that consists of two parts: our previous state and the one that we have achieved now within the first work hour.

In this internal state, which is accumulated, integrated, between us, we begin to feel our similarity to nature. We call this likeness “inner Light” and seem to venerate it because Light gives us a sense of life.
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From KabTV’s “Through Times” 3/20/13

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Leaders Of The New Century

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: A charismatic leader always gives direction to and encourages people. As a rule, he is quite authoritarian and in some cases even tyrannical. Will this trend be evident in the leaders of the 21st century or will their qualities change due to human evolution?

Answer: Leaders will use all the human and superhuman qualities necessary for and according to the new paradigm to which we are heading. But they must change. They will be educators because humanity needs to be re-educated, and this is the main problem of our time. After all, the masses of unemployed will require re-organization, to be placed in open universities, schools, and to be provided with television programs, scholarships, etc.

Human life will be subject to a strict schedule. The perceived need that will arise in people will lead them to the state that all their life they will be engaged in self-improvement:  public, national, and global, and everyone will have to contribute.

Everyone will have his own responsibilities, changing his egoism to collaboration with others in the shared global, integral society. He will have to achieve a sense of a different existence “outside the body” where I don’t live caring about my animal body, but am occupied with “the human being within me.” This requires very serious, great leaders, meaning educators who understand human psychology and aim their leadership precisely at raising people to a new level.
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From KabTV’s “Through Time” 3/18/13

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