Question: There are people with a very strong desire to control, to manage others. How should one cooperate with them during the process of integral upbringing?

Answer: I think that if they get a correct understanding of the laws of nature, the proper education in the right environment, they will not be able to use this to the detriment of society. Along with this, if they are wonderful organizers, if they gather people into integral groups where they complement each other as parts of one society, then we certainly need people like this.

Look, how many people can actually be managers? There are very few, at most 5%.

I would like it very much if 5% were managers in our collective, but there is a total of only 0.5%. Wherever you look, it’s always the same people because everyone else can only carry things out; very few can create.

So, it’s necessary to educate these people correctly. If we can form a common collective team and constantly work with them, giving them the right guidance and ideology, then after a while, they will finally become directors for the entire greater collective.

Comment: During the process of integral interaction, it’s necessary to be as open as possible, to rise above our ego, to detach from it, and to connect with others. A model of behavior like this is contrary to the spirit of leadership. Leaders can’t enter a group like this; they are on the sidelines all the time.

Answer: And they don’t need it! They look at a group from a different level. They organize it, have concern for it, and relate to the group as to their children.

In this there is a difference between traditional education with which they are familiar and integral education. If they treat their group, the society that they organize, as their children, they must be separated from them and look at them “from on high,” with a caring and organizing eye. Then, this is good.

This is completely a distinct and separate group of people who are being educated as organizers.
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From a Talk on Integral Education 4/4/13

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Question: During the process of integral education for married couples, very interesting processes happen. In the beginning, a new feeling of closeness, euphoria develops between the husband and wife. But after two to three months, they feel anger or even hatred for one another.

Answer: They need to discuss this problem. After all, mutual repulsion is the most natural subject because our egoism grows. Through our attempts to connect we develop our ego, and it begins to grow specifically against the unity. This is a new ego, which didn’t exist previously—it hadn’t manifested in people in any form. And it’s being revealed now.

Today, each couple needs to learn how to work with their shared ego. Each one needs to understand his partner since in each of them manifests the ego and the anger towards the spouse, and they need to help each other through their mutual connection.

When a couple dances, the right side of one of the partners is facing the left side of the other partner and vice versa. This is how we need to help, to complement each other, and then we will have a harmonic dance. And if you annoy me, then all right, let’s both of us rise above that. If from my side comes rigidness, then from the other side needs to come tenderness. This is how it happens: The right hand against the left, and in this way we complement each other. After all, embracing is also similar to this.

A person is built in such a way that he constantly interacts with others not by the same but rather opposite attributes. Then the “convex” part fits into the “concave” part and contact is made; that is, the male and female parts as if connect with each other. The contact can be only between the plus and minus since the pluses and minuses repel one another. This is something that has to be learned.
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From a Talk on Integral Education 4/4/13

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Question: People who are seriously involved in the integral method feel a need for a similar society because they cannot manage these things individually. They want to communicate with others more. Is it possible to do this virtually?

Answer: In order to solve integral problems, we need to feel, hear, and as if “smell” the person. We are similar to animals and perceive a person in his physical dimension. Thus virtual communication is not enough.

It’s certainly possible that one day there will be virtual connection that will create the illusion of everyone’s presence but, until then, it’s not possible. We need to ensure that people will feel complete communication. This is the way we have to create even an interior space and all that helps people, until it doesn’t matter to them where and how. And afterwards they will also feel this at a distance, just like a mother feels her child.
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From a Talk on Integral Education 4/4/13

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Suppose I hurt someone. Can he love me in return instead of feeling resentment and hate towards me? For what? Maybe I am bigger and smarter. Or maybe he loves me since by the blows I want to bring him to the good, to something special and sublime?

For example, I pressure my little son to study so that he will grow smarter and become a “great man.” He may not like that now since he may want to play, but I oblige him to study.

In response he doesn’t love me, but hates me. However, later as a result of my blows he grows smarter and thanks to the study develops internally. I force him to develop, and with time he understands that I do it for his own good. Yes, I pressure him and force him to follow the hard way, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t love him, as he previously thought. No, I do it this way because I want what is best for him and I suffer even more than he does because of my toughness, but I simply have no other choice.

So, the Creator has no other choice either: This is the only way He can create the created being. Only then, as he develops, he will turn to the Creator not because of the blows or the pleasures that come from Him, but in a different purposeful manner, understanding that the Creator awakens him to exert and to ascend, to reach eternal, perfect life, to come to eternal understanding, and to reach a new, special level.

When he reaches that he already has two types of nature:

1. The feelings of pleasure and suffering that come from the Creator.
2. And above them, a new love that he feels for the Creator, instead of the hate he felt before.

This is how the created being becomes independent of his initial nature and receives a second nature.

In this world I sometimes also want people to love me, not because I am nice and good, but that they will love me just as I am, even if I treat them badly. I want you to love me and to appreciate me, although I treat you toughly and I cause you pain. I want to you to love me not because of how I treat you and others, but because of who I am.

It’s somewhat like the game that the Creator plays with us when He establishes direct relations with us and at the same time allows us to focus on another “direct line.” It’s like the relationship we see between parents and children, when the parents love the children although they cause them great troubles and worries. It says: “Love will cover all the sins.”

Thus we can understand the game that the Creator plays with us. All our work involves transcending the body that feels only pleasure or pain, establishing the right attitude towards our Teacher, who teaches us to transcend our “animal,” and appreciating His essence: Why does He do that and for whom? He does it only for our sake.

It says that He suffers more than we do since He has to conceal Himself and to put our “animal” part through different sufferings. He does that so that we will transcend this level and become human beings, sublime, eminent, mature, and developed. He wants us to appreciate His attitude according to its essence and not according to how He evokes us to transcend the “animal,” ignoring the pleasures and the sufferings that He intentionally sends us, and see everything with regards to the goal.

In Kabbalistic terms it means that we perform a restriction (Tzimtzum) on the “animal” feeling of pleasure or pain and aim only at the goal, that is, we perform Zivug de Hakaa (coupling by striking) above all the corporeal pleasures in order to be only in mutual bestowal with the Creator, regardless of all my “animal” pleasures and sufferings. This is already a different, higher level, in which I establish my connection with the Creator according to how much we both think about this connection, about the unique goal, about the special state.

Coming back to the example of the father and son: When the son already understands why the father treats him toughly and forces him to study, he transcends the sufferings and rises to a new level of relationship with his father, as they both worry about his success. Thanks to this they are in unity, in adhesion, and in a common intention; they are connected and understand one another. This is already a spiritual level, the unity of spirit, despite the pain and the limitations that the son has experienced by his father on the corporeal level.

These two levels are essential since otherwise the father and son will not be able to establish a real, personal, inner connection between them. Without the spiritual connection they will be connected only by what they receive from one another, which is on the “animal level,” where the created being is undoubtedly operated by the Creator and remains dependent forever. This example clearly explains the basis of our connection with the Creator.
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From a Talk On Preparation for the Congress in New Jersey, 5/10/2013

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Question: In integral education, we assign couples to systematically do unity exercises. A little later, when they come together, we discover that all couples understand the assignment differently.

Answer: Very well! Let them discuss it and complement one another. This will be very interesting because now every one of them will be able to understand other people on the street and anywhere else. They will become top psychologists.

Comment: But this is where it stops, people restrain themselves, for we teach them that it is forbidden to share personal experiences.

Answer: There is nothing personal here. A person rises above himself.

What is personal in going to the doctor and telling him that my stomach hurts and that my stool is loose, excuse me for saying this. And here I say: “I am incredibly irritated and I hate him.” It’s the same thing, but on a different level. What is unnatural and personal, human about this?

A person has received all of this from nature. Only when it comes to the corporeal level, he received problems with food intolerance, and here he also has received the same problems with “food intolerance,” but on the spiritual level, and is unable to tolerate another person. Here it’s not a piece of meat that he is unable to tolerate, but his partner. It’s the same thing! And we must very naturally turn ourselves inside out in every case.

This is why we rise above ourselves and learn about us, this is the real self analysis. This is exactly what we need to reach, otherwise we will not know how to connect between ourselves. All of us need to be this kind of psychologist, and even more than a regular psychologist.

We begin to discover that we and the society are a single organized system: how to enter it, how to build it, and how to be interconnected. We must feel where nature has allocated a niche for every one of us, how we have to communicate with one another.

Here we cannot do without at least gradually beginning to open up to other people.
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From a Talk on Integral Upbringing, 04/04/2013

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Question: Sometimes, a strong group begins to block a person who is a leader and an organizer as it tries to make him equal to everyone else. What should we do in such a case?

Answer: In the past, people used to say: “If the head stands out, it should be taken off.”

A group cannot and should not allow someone’s head to be above the others. Everyone is equal, in everything! The group is all about commonality, and there should be no doubts here.

If you see that there is a person with special qualities in your group—a person who has special skills such as working under pressure, patience, desire, and so forth—give him something to do outside the group. Test him through that, and then take him out of the group. Let him engage in something external that is detached from the group so that there would be no gossip or trouble in the group. However, as long as a person is in the group, he must not stand out. It is also a kind of a test to see if he has the will power to constantly restrain himself so that the group will be homogeneous.

Speak to him separately: “Although you stand out, look and learn from the others. This is your mission. You have to behave like the others and under no circumstances be above them. This is the only way you can express yourself. This is not the place to spill your heart out.” Thus, he will train himself.

Question: When should he be taken out of the group if he cannot be equal to everyone, but still tries to be?

Answer: The group cannot tolerate any such attempts. If he can control himself, leave him in the group, but let him develop his organizational skills. However, if he has no organizational skills but just likes to make noise, then he gradually will get used to not standing out in the group. There are people who cannot accept this and who think, like children: “How can I sit together with others?” Such people should be taken out of the group.
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From a Talk on Integral Education 4/4/13 

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Question: How should we work with the integral education teachers who, being leaders by nature, begin to focus their listeners on themselves, without even noticing?

Answer: This is unavoidable no matter how much we try since those who listen to them, sitting in front of them, are usually on a lower level. If there are organizers among them, similar in qualities, they will get closer to the teacher, not as students but as assistants, and then they should be noted. Just like a professor notes a talented student and gives him additional tasks, the same should be here. We have to find people in the group whom we can make our assistants.

Of course, the group will worship, praise, and note its teacher to some extent since he also leads them to a different way of life.

Why do I say “worship?” We imagine the Creator as the source of goodness, as the source of something that is sublime, so we begin to see the person who shows us how we suddenly can feel good and live better as having descended from the godly level. It is natural.

On the other hand, we must follow the course of the training since there are always problems. However, if our teachers keep learning constant self-control in our workshops, there will be no deviations.
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From a Talk on Integral Education 4/4/13 

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Question: Is it necessary for those who are engaged in the method of integral upbringing to have a certain image and possess specific knowledge, or is their ability to correctly unite with others the only thing that matters?

Answer: In the nearest future, all of humanity will become unemployed. Even now, if we wanted to limit ourselves with what’s necessary for life instead of producing numerous useless things just to buy them and then throw them away; if we lived in harmony with nature and created a normal, balanced society, we would figure out that there is no need for us to work at all.

There is a huge amount of resources to satisfy everyone’s needs. If distributed among everyone, it will be sufficient for life.

No matter what, we are approaching this state. We see that, with each year, unemployment grows and the need for working people drops. Society will feed the unemployed, dress them, build apartments for them, and so on. However, on what will these people be spending their time? They will be “tuning up” communities and all civilization, thus making it integral.

This explains why the method of integral upbringing speaks not only of the ways to attract people to groups and conduct seminars on city parks’ green meadows, but also focuses on the fact that people will be working as reformers of the world. It is a very serious job that will take all of their time.

They will be in charge of a correct distribution of social labor products among everyone and serving each other. All these processes will be saturated with the right social relationships. Before anything else, we must teach people this method from the point of view of the integral laws of nature that maintain correct collaboration on the still, vegetative, and animate levels. It is the sole responsibility of humans to embrace this nature and treat it like an essential integral element.

Explanation of the peculiarities will take a long time. They must be explained in detail with concrete evolutionary, historical, and psychological examples. Moreover, we have to continue developing people culturally since even harmonious feelings that are built in accordance with the rule of “golden section” still need a good tune up so that they are oriented toward unity and a more profound mutual understanding. We have to be on the same wavelength and understand great scientists, poets, writers, musicians, and so forth.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that we need to make sages of everyone and expect them to be similar to the great medieval writers, poets, musicians, doctors, and scientists who managed to combine these great features in one person. At the same time, everyone will have to advance in numerous fields such as drawing, dancing, music, science, and so on since it broadens people internally. They begin to better understand the world and acquire a chance to connect with others. They become much more developed and rich, thus having more in common with others. They will have more topics to discuss, more common points of interest, and a bigger desire to share their opinions.

It’s not about a narrow existence when one earns, buys, and throws away or, in the morning, takes a child to kindergarten and, in the evening, rushes back home, having the same scenario repeated every single day.

We must turn people into Humans. For the last one hundred years (since Charlie Chaplin’s movies showed the mass production conveyer-belts and through to today) people have practically turned into robots. Consequently, we are facing an enormous amount of work which is not only about bringing people up but also about educating them.

There is no sense in gathering people for seminars and persuading them to say beautiful words while holding each other’s hands as if they were little children. First, we must bring up a human being within them; that is, to “deify” them and raise them to the level of a Man. Adam derives from “similar to the Creator,” alike with nature.

So, just conducting seminars is not enough. It should be a very serious job throughout the entire day. Partially, people will spend time attending to themselves and to others and taking care of everyone around. For example, our youth study for half a day and, for the rest of the day, they participate in creating special educational materials.
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From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 4/4/2013

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Question: How would you describe the healthcare system in the future integral society?

Answer: I think that in the future integral society, medicine per se won’t exist.

The origin of all diseases is the breach of our social relationships. Once they are restored and corrected, a person automatically will become healthy. The moment that his time comes, he will lie down to sleep and not wake up in absolute serenity, without feeling any problem about this. Everything will be very smooth.

We need to understand that there is nothing destructive in our world except the ego. All other actions, influences, characteristics, negative events, everything that seems to us or that we witness, all of that are the manifestations of our the incongruity between our ego and the integral nature, which can be measured only relative to the integral link between us and nothing else.

If I now want to eat two lunches instead of one, I am not considered an egoist. Or if I want to sleep a couple hours more, this also is not the ego.

An egoist is someone who rejects his correct connection with others, and with this, rejects everyone from a correct connection with himself, thereby violating the natural map of interrelationships.
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From KabTV’s “The Medicine of the Future” 4/7/13

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Question: How do groups of people who suffer from different illnesses and engage in the integral method differ from groups of alcoholics anonymous, or people who want to stop smoking, or who are trying to lose weight?

Answer: The integral groups work in order to connect. They work on the one most important thing for us: To attain the upper nature, the uppermost point of creation. Alcoholics anonymous, on the other hand, work only in order to kick the habit.

People who engage in the integral method don’t gather in order to be healthy but so they can feel healthy and feel a new life internally in their health. This is how you should attract them since you will not be able to attract people by simply telling them that they will be healthy. To this, they will say: “I am healthy anyway.”

Here, you attract them by saying: “You will begin to feel a totally different, integral life.” When a person transcends himself, he begins to connect with others, and then he feels life outside his body since he actually begins to exist outside his corporeal shell. He cooperates with others more and thus, suddenly, begins to feel that there is something else besides his own life.
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From KabTV’s “The Medicine of the Future” 4/7/13

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