Laughter during the discussions in integral groups is a good state that brings people to the understanding of the fact that we are all animals. We can open up completely to everyone. I did not make myself this way, nature did, and if you have a problem with it, then this problem is in you because you fail to understand that we are all nothing but animals. The only thing I should be ashamed of is that I am not fully using my opportunity to ascend toward the integral state, the things that are in my power on the “human” level, and everything else is not “I.”

In general, “human” is the spirit above the “animal” because it lacks a corporeal manifestation. The human in us is our inner content. For this reason, for as long as my inner content, called human, does not prevail, process, and include all my animal instincts, functions, desires, and thoughts, I must, somehow, slightly restrain them.

However, overall, I must reveal and examine them in a group because I do not have another instrument. The group is a lab where we can open ourselves up completely, like an infant laying before his mother. Who is he and what is he? It’s just a piece of flesh, but she does everything she needs to do with him for his proper growth and functioning. The same must happen in the group.

When we have a sober and sane understanding of it, and have an adult attitude toward what is happening to us and what we need to do with ourselves, then we already are in a state where nature is working with us, guiding, growing, and developing us down the path of evolution. So, this is necessary.

I think that a person can open up in the group completely, and, naturally, the group needs to be ready for this. If they constantly interact this way between them, they will achieve it. Shame will disappear. There is no state of “shame!” You must only be ashamed of one thing: failing to rise and raise others. Internal reconstruction of the entire scale of the importance of thoughts, feelings, desires, and revaluation of values, it all happens very fast.
[88808]
From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 3/5/12

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Question: There are discussions in a courtroom-style format in integral groups. What are we to arrive at as a group at the end of this kind of trial?

Answer: The trial should be based much more strictly, precisely, and more clearly differentiated so that later you can categorize it as a trial record that you understand what happened, what we have now, and what will happen.

Every person would evaluate the group and himself from the “human” level and the level of his egoism, that is, from the perspective of a number of roles such as the judge, the defense, the jury, and an observer, a listener, and the victim, the injured side.

There are many roles in every one of us because every person consists of everyone else. For example, there are five parts role-played in a group. This means that every person must find these five levels within him, and, on every level, he must feel how he regards this situation as he separates from everyone else.

Then, he reaches the conclusion that, in general, there is no one to judge and nothing to judge. He understands who can judge and who can justify, and everything we do only has the right to exist when it pursues a single goal: a connection.

When a person is able to softly change ranges—like a regulator, to go from one level to another—then he really becomes internally soft and integral. He activates absolutely all of his qualities, beginning with the lowest, animal qualities, and ending with the highest qualities, which are originating only in him, and, this way, he advances.
[88805]
From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 3/5/12

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In groups of integral learning, people experience serious changes during the course of discussions. It’s possible to tell just by looking at them, the wild development they are undergoing. After all, the material they are studying is not just simple material. When we work with it, we evoke the forces of nature concealed in us. When we speak of the next level, the forces of this level, this field, interact with us and constantly evoke strong reactions and turbulent changes. People undergo very serious inner processes.

And when they separate, they feel how much they lack this kind of communication. This is why it’s necessary to keep this virtual connection they manage to create between them. This is very important because it’s similar to parting with something great, something that gradually becomes somewhat more important than life itself.

When groups begin to live this inner life, they connect to a new source, the next level of existence. And then this separation from the group might be perceived as something very dramatic by a person, and we must also think about dampening the process of his separation or giving him a replacement, otherwise the person will feel like he is dying.
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From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 3/5/12

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Question: I have noticed that there is a lot of laughter and jokes during the discussions in integral groups. How serious should these classes be? Should we somehow fight the laughter?

Answer: No. We need to give the emotions an opportunity to come out, rise above us, laugh at ourselves, and understand where they come from. We are dealing with the origin of the second level “Man” above the “animal” level in us. And this is why these two levels have an equal right to exist. Under no circumstances should we suppress the animal level. The egoistic level remains, it flows beneath us, and it’s always in the process of growth. And accordingly, we grow and rise above it. We’re not able to grow without the growth of egoism in us.

It’s hard to determine how much people are developing egoistically during the first encounters in an integral group. However, later, different excesses and contradictions will start appearing in them. And working with it now becomes very interesting, since the purpose is to develop our integral interaction through this. This will happen later.

But for now, laughter, exclamations, a variety of very deep inner outbursts, represent the inability to express our sensations. All of this is the need to ascend: either a negative one, which comes from egoism, or a not yet resolved or realized altruistic level. But this is a good thing. The main thing is to let it all come out.
[88701]
From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 3/5/12

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Question: Every aspect of a person’s life should be examined via the dynamics of development from the levels of still, vegetative, and animate nature and the exit to a new level called “human.” How do you see this dynamics in the developed integral relations between a man and a woman?

Answer: First of all we have to understand that a couple, a man and a woman, have to participate together in studying integral education, to go over the same materials, to experience the same processes, to understand and to internalize the method of mutual incorporation. Just like couples in the animate world, a male and a female, offspring, a flock, etc. mutually understand each other instinctively, so do we have to make people understand what it means to be in harmony with nature and between them. This means between the two partners, between them and their children, between the couple and their parents and other relatives.

We put great emphasis on the fact that people have to complete one another, like in the group. On the whole, it’s a mutual group, and if each member understands his weakness and how he completes someone else, then we can see an interesting harmony in nature, which we can’t find between a man and a woman in any other way. This means that they don’t “enter” each other’s frameworks, but complete these frameworks so that eventually there is a very interesting border by which they connect with pleasure.

An amusing field is created of the “Yin and Yang” type, in which the completion is harmonious and wise. All this happens so that they can organize a small personal group of their own. Since their goal is to create a general collective harmony, they make up a stable group since all the other groups can change. We emphasize the fact that they should study together and read the same material, at least a little, 15 minutes a day, if they have the time. They shouldn’t misuse this opportunity to study together. People should have time to rest from one another and from their group. They have to process the material and to be by themselves a little.

But in order to do that, they have to go over the material together. It really brings people closer to one another. What’s more, it’s very helpful for the study and in how to relate to a child so that he will be included in the integral system. Later the division of different tasks is fulfilled when each one understands his part and there are no conflicts over it with others.

On the whole, people are trying to think about the integral society, although the entire society around them isn’t integral yet. Still, if they try to behave integrally, and to divide the tasks and the opportunities as much as they can, they actually begin to feel that something is created between them, like a child that grows from them, something that is average and collective that made up that human being who later split into Adam and Eve.
[88577]
From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 3/5/12

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We consider it to be egoism only when people in the group repel one another rather than when a person is trying to achieve the most comfortable, advantageous, and winning position in an ordinary society. The latter is a regular everyday egoism.

Here we mean the societal egoism when a desirable state is set precisely in the group, when the goal is to become closer and rise above one’s natural properties and desires, when one has to rise above himself and enter into the common integral desire where a person will not be “I,” but rather “we” and his “I” will be annulled and suppressed staying somewhere at the bottom, while “we” will be cultivated. In such a state one’s inner opposition with this aspiration is called the egoism.

That is, egoism is a force that opposes the group unification.
[88381]
From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 3/4/12

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Question: How can we organize the right kind of interaction within a family unit so that the family would not literally become a woman’s prison?

Answer: A woman does not feel the need to leave her house for weeks when she feels like she is in a good, proper environment.  When, besides having articles, materials, lessons, lectures, theater, and other programs already adapted to the new society, she knows that her children go to a normal educational institution and return home unhurt with no signs of violence on their bodies; when she knows that her husband works and also studies in a virtual group; when she can be present virtually at his studies and even show it to the children; when at the same time she communicates with other women regarding all the integral matters; when children also receive integral education and upbringing according to their level in school, in that case, the woman absorbs everything through this, then this is enough for her.

It also is necessary to organize picnics, outings into nature, and have meals together. However, even at these meals, men and women sit separately, but there, women have an opportunity to communicate, to feel like they belong to a large society. In other words, this way, we need to give women an opportunity to be part of the things that men do.
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From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 3/4/12

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Question: When we began to work with the text in the group of the integral education, we began to see a great gap between the perceptions and the feelings of the men and those of the women. It was as if the women were disconnected from the process while the men took an active part in the debate. How should we organize this process correctly?

Answer: It is a very natural process. The point is that women have a totally different technique to connect among them. They can unite in order to support the men generally, but it is support and not incorporation. This means their ego and working on it is totally different from the men’s group. The men’s work on the ego is direct, and I would say naïve and childish in a way.

For the women it is much more difficult; it is as if it is folded internally several times. Their egoistic accounts are much more complicated than the men’s. It is very hard for them to incorporate among them. There are always the personal motives left—this is a woman’s nature. It is by no means worse or better than the men’s, since we are talking about nature and there is nothing good or bad about it. It is simply nature and it is different in women.

I can’t imagine how an unprepared group of men and women can start working on the general overcoming of the interpersonal egoistic urges in order to connect mutually in one desire.

Coming from the field of human nature I can say that if we prepare a separate group of men, we will give the women a chance to watch them and on that basis we will be able to work with the women. Then we will see how they are shaped as a helpmate to the men’s group, surrounding it.

The female attitude to men will be expressed as an attitude to children who need help and who have to be pushed, surrounded and taken care of so that they will do their job. Just as a mother helps her son by showing him everything and he grows and becomes a man—it is the same here.

So women are not included in the men’s group, but make a positive background thanks to which the men have a strong mental support, without which they cannot work.

At the same time, the men’s group needs to feel that they are responsible for humanity, or for the family, or for the society in which the two sexes exist, not to mention other classifications in society.

The men’s group studies, and the women’s group helps the men’s group by supporting them and understanding their goals. They understand, but they cannot be totally emotionally incorporated in it.

Women cannot be incorporated among them like men. Their nature doesn’t allow them to do so. They have a totally different role.

So there must be two groups so that they will understand one another, cooperate, and help each other so that each group will feel the great role without which the other group cannot do anything. They are opposite in their attributes but connected to the goal. That is, the goal is achieved together.

Imagine the goal as a birth of a child for which there have to be two: a man and a woman, which together, exactly in the cooperation, in the connection, in the mutual bestowal and mutual love, give birth to this new attribute, to the new level. Thus the male part and the female pat in the group have to cooperate.

When you separate the men and the women you get rid of many problems, since in a mixed group there are always different attractions between people that spoil the general background.

Suddenly there are hormonal, sexual attractions and people think that they have found one another. Women feel that they have finally found a man who understands them, while everyone else, including their husbands don’t understand them. This means that there are such fantasies that have nothing to do with real life, since we ascend above life and build our unity above it.
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From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 3/4/12

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Question: There are two types of traditional family. The first type is the so-called polite, nice family where it is customary to restrain yourself, your feelings, emotions, and thoughts. In order to maintain peace in the family, a person does not express everything he thinks. The other type is a family where people express their emotions, feelings, and things they are not happy about. The woman constantly points out the man’s faults; she pecks at him and nags all the time.

What is the right way to act? Should people restrain themselves or not, express themselves or direct the couple’s energy up toward integrality?

Answer: I think that these questions must be solved in a group. A group of integral upbringing that takes care of a person’s participation in social communities must  also examine these matters. In a group like this, people have daily opportunities to correct their attitudes and relationships with one another.

I think that the answer is very simple. People should allow themselves to be more honest and to open up to the extent of their advancement in integral upbringing, and they will continue to open up as they continue to mutually complete one another. When I feel that my partner does not complete me, he does not understand me yet and I do not understand him. I do not know how to open up. I do not know how to act in these situations.

We remain somewhat neutral, but as soon as we are able to introduce into our mutual contact any of our inner resources—such as desires, needs, thoughts, and habits—we do it. It is necessary to make a person feel that integral interaction is most important.

As soon as it becomes a possibility on any level, you immediately include your desires, thoughts, needs, weaknesses, and anything in him. The main thing is to give him the objective to unite, and that is it. Then, a person becomes his own psychologist.
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From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 5/3/12

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