In the News (from the Mirror): “The daily grind is leaving stressed-out couples with just 30 minutes of quality time together each day.

“A survey found 30% of people thought their relationships suffered as a result.

“And 89% felt they would get on better if they saw each other more, by having dinner or going out, for example.

“Eatwelshlamb.co.uk, which carried out the poll, said: ‘We encourage couples to make sure there is at least time for a meaningful conversation.’”

My Comment: Nature will force us to restore order in our lives. Through penalties, we will find out that there is no way other than balance with nature. Through suffering, we will realize that we need to comply with the law of nature, rather than invent our own. It is a pity that humanity learns by long and bitter experience.
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Question: There was a psychological experiment in training sessions for couples: A person was supposed to give the most pleasure to their partner with a single touch of the hand. There were three options: The first option was to try to please the other. The second was to touch hands without intention. And the third option was to receive the most pleasure from touching the other person.

The experiments concluded that the person receives the most pleasure by pleasing their partner, and when another tries to please him, it feels very unpleasant. What is this phenomenon? Is this something that has to do with integrality, egoism?

Answer: First of all it doesn’t matter who is sitting before me: whether it’s a woman, a man, a child an elderly person, a girl, an old woman, or even an animal—I should completely separate myself from any difference between us. I have to imagine an object before me with whom I have to establish contact.

Moreover, this contact is above our animal existence where I absolutely don’t care who and what the other person is in terms of their animalistic essence. Only one thing matters: What their current position in relation to me is, what they generate from themselves despite their nature.

It’s not contact between two animal objects, but two desires that want to integrate, give pure and abstract pleasure and fulfillment to one another. In other words, regardless of what and who you are, I come from a feeling of only wishing you good. In this case, when we rise above our animal inclination, our beastly state, the conditions set by nature, and begin to interact between us, this is where the experiment begins.

Either I wish to receive pleasure from an object (there is just an “object” before me), or I wish to convey my good attitude to this object, to fulfill it, wanting it to feel it, even if it’s through touch. By abstracting ourselves from our own ego, we want to suppress our sensations so as to make them neutral, meaning turn them into abstractly-egoistic, abstractly-altruistic, and abstractly-neutral states.

This is the beginning of our experiment, the primary purpose of which is a state whereby we rise above age, sexual, racial, national, and other differences and start contacting the essence. You are a desire and an intention (mind), and I am the same. This is how our mind and desires for integration can interact between them, independent from our external shell. This is what we try to do.

This is the initial direction for working in the group, especially a mixed group. At first we work a little with mixed groups, but then, once the people begin to understand that the opposite sex impedes them from concentrating on the level above our world, above our natural qualities, we can separate them. People will no longer have preconceived opinions regarding our actions towards them, and then we will divide them into a men’s and a women’s group.

And afterwards, once they are able to rise above it and work on purely integral level, we can once again combine them. But this is not a simple moment and requires many months of serious effort.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #10, 12/16/11

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Question: When we record a group video training session and then have the group watch it, people start pointing a finger at each other, laughing, and so on. When we discuss a person, should everyone be their own judge or should other people judge them?

Answer: If people are not yet ready to see themselves from an abstract perspective, objectively, and do not understand that we are all little animals, then you need to show them complete strangers, even a group they do not know, and train them this way, use others to form an objective view.

You can assign numbers to the participants in the video and then discuss every one of them in order, talking about how to advance them towards unity, towards mutual guarantee.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #10, 12/16/11

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Question: Feedback is very significant in psychology. I might have an idea of what is happening to a person, so I ask him: “How do you feel? What do you like?” This dialogue helps me learn about him or her. Can elements of dialogue be included in groups of integral education, or integrality actually operates there?

Answer: In our groups, individual development is connected to integral because the individual level is being adjusted to the integral one.

There is no individual level. My individual development depends on how integrated I am with the others, how much I complete them. At the same time I must understand and feel how I complete every one of them. In other words, I sense people and our community, I constantly feel and measure where I can add something to make it perfect, and I try to complete it with my participation, with my desire and thoughts. The essence of every participant, the general total power of their desire and thoughts suddenly begin to manifest in relation to me, and I become the group’s balancing element.

This is the way every person feels during the process of common studies. Moreover, the state of the group does not matter; what matters is how a person perceives it. The group can be in totally different states, but a person understands it one way or another and constantly changes himself according to it.

In other words, there is an opportunity here for constant inner movement. A person goes through so many changes that he becomes a general integral element of the entire group. He is obligated to constantly change as he feels all the nuances of the changes in the group. He is like its collecting element. And every person in the group is like this.

Moreover, this absolutely does not depend on the objective state of the group. We cannot speak about objectivity here because every person sees the environment only through his subjective prism.

This way we make every person equal to this small common society. The person and the entire group come to such unification when every person becomes equal to everyone. Inside him a person gradually accumulates a certain volume, a sum of different changes, sensations, and thoughts, which exist in everyone. This way we reach a state when the general and the particular are equal, and reach complete group unity. When every person becomes equal to everyone, all the “singles” add up to a single whole.

And this one single whole already exist as if outside of them. This is the final accord of all the transformations they undergo together and individually.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #10, 12/16/11

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Question: Your students are very open people who treat each other with a lot of care. But the people whom we will invite to learn will only reach this state in the future.

Answer: Our groups are groups of people who willingly strive towards integral interaction. But if we are speaking about the masses whom we will be lucky enough to involve in integral interaction, these people will not come very willingly, that is, not in full consciousness, but instead, it will happen to the extent of the social or personal need. Of course, there will be very big imbalances and an ascent.

This is why the first stage of their development, which includes the preliminary study of the material, training, and the understanding of everyone’s inner psychological process, will take a long time.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #10, 12/16/11

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Question: If in the beginning of the 20th century neurotic symptoms were expressed as sexual deviations, now they are rather expressed as hypochondria, a fear of getting a disease. How can I work with the fear that I may become ill? What attitude should I have?

Answer: I should explain the meaning of a disease.

A disease is a dysfunction in the harmony of an organism. When systems work out of harmony with one another then various problems begin to appear. This is a disease.

If we achieve harmony then it establishes itself and governs on all levels including the physiological one.

This is exactly the way we can cure ourselves from serious chronic and even untreatable illnesses.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #11, 12/16/11

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Question: Men’s work on integral unity takes 7-8 hours a day. Is a woman supposed to spend as much 
time studying?

Answer: Women have much fewer problems than men because their work begins when they join work 
around the men’s group.

Before that, their work is in theoretical studies, and there cannot be any ties there. This includes discussions, role playing, and dedicating a lot of time to the upbringing of children from the integral perspective, and so on, but not on the relationships between women, which they will feel is a just violation of their nature.

A woman’s group begins to observe the men and their mutual work only once they are ready and the men’s group is sufficiently trained in theory and is already undergoing practical integration among themselves. We gradually begin to teach them the foundations of the help needed from their part to attain the next state: the state of unity, harmony, and the perception of nature on the next level of “Adam” (“Man”), which we can reach through this kind of unity.

The men’s group attains unity with their own strength, as a man attains fulfillment and food.

The women’s group helps them with it, inspires, pushes them, and serves as a very powerful tool for men without which they cannot unite. The women must influence men very carefully without disturbing their sensation of uniting, they must give the men a feeling that they are expecting it from them, they value them, inspire them, and treat them like a mother to a child.

Every woman can relate to men this way, and the men feel the woman’s influence. This is why the women’s group takes on the fundamental role in moving the men’s group towards unity, by influencing it with its inspiration and expectation, like a mother: “What do I expect from my child.” And the child feels that the mother is expecting a certain result from him.

All this needs to be done carefully and gently to avoid causing the feeling of indifference in men or a negative reaction. Everything must be done very delicately, to a certain extent, and always measured.

When both groups look at themselves objectively from aside, they feel that they need each other. I admit to the women’s group that I need its support and influence, its inspiration, its expectation of something of me. This will inspire, support me, and rouse me toward achieving a result.

In general, there is a huge range of influences of mutual feelings and expectations. If all of this is done through indirect contact, from afar, through “induction” from the women’s group to the men’s group, then a result of proper mutual interaction is achieved.

And as a result, the men’s group attains unity with the help of the women’s group. And this unity is passed on to the women’s group.

But these groups do not merge, do not mix; they keep existing as two “circles”: the external – women’s, and the internal – men’s.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #10, 12/16/11

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Question: You have mentioned that we need to paint a fine, comfortable life in our imagination which we would wish for our children, like a fairy tale, the farthest possible state from our reality, a state of utopia?

Answer: I have omitted many details in my explanation, and I only said that we need to try to imagine this state. But we have not yet discussed the things that are characteristic of that “utopian” kind of life. This is a kind of society where everyone is on the same level of prosperity, every person receives everything he needs for a normal life, cares for others and has the opportunity to fully participate in the life of society.

At the same time we will be able to fully fulfill all human passions. There is a reason we have qualities like competition, envy, fervor, fame, and power. This remains the same but we find a new way to use them for the good of mankind. We’ll have to work with our qualities in a new and very interesting way. How will I be able to use envy, passion, glory, authoritativeness, vast knowledge, and cunningness for benefit and not harm? These are very interesting objectives, which can become fun activities for every person.

No one is saying that we need to remain on a level where every person is only guaranteed food, reproduction, family, shelter, safety, health, and education. We’ll be able to continue raising the level of life around the world, while still keeping balance with nature. And then the blows of nature will stop, and we’ll be able to provide for us all the abundance we want. No one thinks that we need to limit ourselves and only live the life of the physical body, settling for the minimal requirements. This is just our nearest objective: lifting everyone above the poverty line.

It would be interesting to build a model of a new court, which would evaluate human behavior—is a person’s behavior correct or not: what he thinks, wants, does, and how he should live. In other words, this is a part of the same environment where the person is brought up intended only for special cases where we evaluate all these deviations from the rule, and now in our society, we’ll now create a model of this kind of trial.

The reaction of society will help a person judge whether his behavior is correct and whether the society agrees with him. This is because everything must head in one direction meaning that when his intentions are for the benefit of the environment, he and his children merit respect and good treatment, which manifests in different forms, signs of distinction, etc. And when he does not behave well, social pressure will influence him so he will change his attitude and feel comfortable as a result of it. But this is not done by oppressing or imprisoning the person, only through disapproval expressed by friends, relatives, and social stigma.

It is also necessary to figure out what people need in order to feel fulfillment in life. There needs to be a service via a computer network, which collects every person’s requests in relation to his personality and habits and whereby all the needs of the people will be satisfied. Every person will be able to receive his “consumer basket.” He will not need to worry about providing for himself; society will take care of that.

This entire system has many factors that need to be taken into consideration when governing a society. Will the current and experienced systems continue to exist or we will need to create new systems which will be under the constant influence of the same environment and social control? All these things are very interesting. But in any case, we will need to learn how to perfect ourselves and our environment. This is the foundation of everything.

This way we are always building the environment and using it to build ourselves. And the environment must always be somewhat more creative and advanced than me, and then it will influence me, and I will achieve more advanced states. I will always think about what my teacher should be like so that he will be able to educate me in a good and proper manner. What should his image be like so I would be able to learn proper behavior from him? How will this image affect me? How do I shape this image so I can see it before me without losing connection with it thereby allowing it to shape me as an individual? Essentially, this image is “I,” but on a higher level because this is the way I imagine something more exalted. And then I strive to become like it, similar in qualities to the image I have created.

“Similarity” stands for correspondence in qualities according to, “Be as merciful as He is,” which means that I want to feel the same mercy, participation, and love for Him that He feels for me, like a teacher feels for his student. This is called similarity in qualities.

This image is factually a combination of qualities I imagine to be ideal, but they are not a fantasy, they are just a bit better than my qualities. I check to see the manifestation of my bad qualities, which is the degree of my realization of evil and my desire to correct the layer, the section, which has now been revealed in me. And then I see this section in its opposite form in relation to my environment or the image of my teacher. And the image of my teacher and my environment are the same thing.

Question: It seems that my first step is to check my attitude on a scale in relation to my neighbor: whether it benefits him. What do we do next, what is our next step?

Answer: Evaluate how you would like to see yourself if you were to correct your attitude towards others. In other words, you imagine yourself on the plus one level, a more advanced degree of your attitude, for the good of your neighbor and the environment. This is referred to as the “image of the teacher” or the “image of the environment” (the society). This is the way to choose the best environment every time. But now start admiring these qualities and strive to acquire the same principles and values.

Question: How?

Answer: Imagine better qualities every time.

Comment: But then I imagine something that does not exist in me because if these qualities were in me, I would not need to invent them.

Answer: Try to strive towards them every time.

Question: How?

Answer: When you are able to imagine better qualities than you have, you are ready to advance; you just don’t know how to do it. Ask the environment to either shame or praise you. And when you are in the best environment possible, it will give you confidence that you are able to attain the qualities you are now imagining.

After all, how do you manage to feel bad? It is because you are you in a particular environment. I am in a circle of certain people. This circle is called “integral upbringing.” I feel and reveal people and all my faults in this circle, and I also feel what I need to correct in me. This means that I am in the state of realization of my evil in relation to the environment. And then the environment shows my next degree with its attitude; it’s as if I would connect with these people in the tightest and most internal way possible and in absolute similarity in qualities if not for the evil I have just revealed in me.

Question: So I need to imagine my own corrected qualities, or will the society show them to me?

Answer: It is the same thing, how else can you imagine them? Where will the realization of evil come from? It comes to you by being in a society; you need a certain scale. You are able to understand that you treat them incorrectly, in an evil way. What is the right attitude? It’s when you feel your society so close to you that you are ready to connect with them on the inside. I am not talking about a physical embrace but similarity in qualities.

Comment: Then I would treat them well, not like I treat them now.

Answer: They also treat you differently. You compare their attitude with yours and understand how bad you are.

Comment: Not everyone treats me well there; we are not yet in the Garden of Eden.

Answer: Everything depends on where you see the evil, and this is called realization of evil. The realization of your evil happens in relation to them. There needs to be a certain scale, which should be targeted.

Question: This means that I measure according to the way a part of people treat me in different circumstances. Is this my criteria of goodness?

Answer: Yes, it is also your personal criteria. In other words, you determine the society’s good attitude towards you, and also your bad attitude towards it. And then the difference between the society’s attitude toward you and your attitude toward the society is the realization of evil.

This makes you feel bad. By virtue of their influence on you, you feel as if you are inferior to them. If they express a positive reaction toward you, they give you a positive grade. The society treats you well and it tells you that its good attitude toward you is the highest grade; it is the actual goodness. And this has a greater value in comparison to your attitude toward your environment. That is, you are on a lower level, and it makes you feel the corruption of your ego. This pushes you to achieve similarity to the environment.

It turns out that on one hand, you feel that your ego is corrupt, but on the other hand, you don’t have a choice, you are being pushed towards coming closer to the qualities of these people, to become like them. And the environment influences you through examples like these, and you start to become more and more like it out of hopelessness. It’s similar to the way children learn by following the example of their teacher.

For example, my grandson just went to kindergarten where my student works. Now when I talk to my grandson, I see his teacher’s personality manifest through him. You don’t need anything else to understand a person. And when I later saw my student, I told him that I had no idea he was such a character. Of course he was surprised that I know such things about him. And I told him that I see these character traits in my grandson. This is how the environment brings up a person.

However, a person must also use his strengths in order to be more closely connected to the environment. But this is not just his personal strength. Together we must influence every person to strengthen his connection with everyone else, to make him come more often. It turns out that there will be changes in every one of us to the degree of the natural connection.

The main thing is to always test the common inner attitude in a society, to make sure it’s always directed towards unity, interconnectedness, mutual feelings, and love. And then the person will change, regardless of whether he wants to or not. Naturally none of us wish to change, we know human nature. And every one of us knows it, but hopelessness still makes a person enter the system, which changes him against his initial desire (the egoistic nature). But it doesn’t break him; it only changes the use of his ego in him to make it constructive for the benefit of his neighbor, environment, and mankind as a whole. And then every person who goes through this educational system, changes and builds a new world in this way.
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From KabTV’s “ A New Life” Episode 8, 1/5/12

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Question: An embryo in a mother’s womb turns as a result of the activation of physiological instincts. But how does a psychological change happen? How does this mechanism work?

Answer: First of all, when an embryo is being born, there is pressure from both the mother’s side (the pushing forces, the so-called labor pains) and the side of the embryo. It also helps this process in a certain way and advances.

Birth is a very serious complicated process, I would even say that it is somewhat tragic and threatening to both the mother and the child. Likewise, there must be some very serious pushing forces in our case, and nature has taken care of it by pushing us with different crises: family, identity, social, economic, ecological, and so on—through everything we do, that is, everything that makes up our womb.

In our current world, everything is gradually being set against us. These are the pushing forces—birthing contractions.

They are not yet as strong as they could be, but their culmination is near. We observe this in all the crises, and now on the development of the last economic crisis, which is literally threatening our lives. So, on one hand, we are already approaching the final stage, we are close to being born.

On the other hand, we do not feel comfortable inside in our current state. We plunge into drugs, depression, and different problems. We do not feel calm or comfortable on the inside. It is not just the world around us that is like that, but we are not able to find peace within. Nothing would change even if the world simply became indifferent for a moment: There are many conflicts and pressures inside us, which we want to escape but are unable to.

If we integrate and gather these inner conflicts and pressures into one single force between us, we will then add our own efforts to the maternal pushes, and of course will be born on a new level, that of “Man” or “Adam.” All this can be alleviated without “midwives” and “obstetricians,” but by using the helpful powers of society: social opinion, social influence, and pressure.

This happens when together we gather into this one unified image that has to be born, while on the outside our society works on integrating, connecting, discussing, explaining, and identifying all these forces around us. Then a person begins to understand this process inside him. This also pertains to upbringing, when we discuss our actions, history, purpose, and the purpose of all the conflicts; when we examine not just their cause, but their meaning: to bring us to a state where we all are like a single embryo in one mother-nature, which is pushing us outside of it onto the next level. Nature wishes to birth this embryo, and it needs to help nature to do this.

Helping nature is fundamental for us. Nature divides our birth either into a tragic or into a good and easy birth, which is called coming out with the maternal waters. What are “waters?” The water is an alleviating action. When we willingly aspire to this, we can easily cross the “Rubicon”—a natural, spiritual, and a psychological change.

Question: Does a person make his contribution to the spiritual birth process, like in the case of an embryo, by actively participating in the group of integral education?

Answer: Of course it has to be a group because the group represents the embryo! One person is not an embryo (he cannot be born); an embryo is specifically an integral connection between people when we prepare them for birth.

First small groups form, then bigger ones, then many groups appear. When they begin to understand each other, they become like one person in a group, and in relation to other groups every group also represents a single individual. This way they come together: like cells into organs and organs into a single body.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” #9, 12/15/11

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The environment determines what inclinations are more developed in a person (pertaining to the animal body or to the level of man), how we use them, and which of them we develop to a greater or lesser degree.

If parents place a child into an environment where, say, science is valued above everything else, then it’s no surprise that the child too gets imbued with its importance and begins to understand that development in that direction is an extremely important and honorable pursuit. And even though until then he had only rudimentary inclinations for science, say, he merely wanted to learn some interesting things from life (which basically is a commonly shared desire), under the influence of the environment, these abilities developed in him in a special way.

In other words, the surrounding environment can alter the balance of my inclinations within me and to develop some of them more than others.

I experienced this myself. My parents really wanted me to develop my abilities to the fullest, as best as possible, and for that reason they signed me up for various athletic clubs. I was a runner, doing the 500-meter dash. Later they sent me to a music school, and there I made my acquaintance with classical music, which to this day I esteem, love, and understand more than all the other types of music.

But my parents didn’t really place special importance on theatre, for example, and therefore I didn’t develop in that direction. But science and technology were very important both to my parents and to me. I had a natural inner impulse to engage in science. And I remember that I myself went to join children’s clubs where much attention was paid to the study of physics, astronomy, and other sciences. I gave all my strength and knowledge to this.

In other words, a child develops under the influence of the environment: the influence of parents, the surrounding environment, the place where the child lives, and the opportunities that it offers. Ultimately, all this develops a person in a diverse way; moreover, part of his inclinations develop more, some less, while others get suppressed altogether.

The environment in which a person is born and develops throughout their childhood exercises, restricts, and forms their free choice. And a person continues his life like this. I wouldn’t even say that we have free choice in this. Maybe there is some, but even whatever is there we take from our environment. It’s a matter of fashion or friends who happen to be near a person as if by accident and instill certain values into him.

We also need to acknowledge the importance of the experience we accumulated in all our previous lives, of the so-called reincarnations from which we receive Reshimot (informational genes). Going from incarnation to incarnation, a person carries over with him his entire accumulated potential of development. In other words, after being born, a person doesn’t only develop through the influence of an increasingly modern society, but inside a human being new inclinations appear from generation to generation, which we call the informational genes (Reshimot), and he or she develops under their influence. This is especially felt in our time.

If we look at children, we see that they quickly grasp anything modern much better than we do; it’s as though they were born already prepared for it, having made the necessary clarifications and possessing the qualities that help them perceive the modern world. After all, look at how skillfully they manage with computers, mobile phones, and other innovations! But with us everything is different. If I ever need to figure out some new technology, I rely more on my children. It’s as if they already have an approach to it, they seem to have an inborn ability to sense the nature of these new things and understand how to work with them completely naturally. It’s as if these are “indigo children” or aliens from another planet!

Taking these children as an example, we can see that evidently, there exist informational genes, Reshimot, that evolve and are passed down from generation to generation. We call this process reincarnation, but in reality, there is nothing mystical about it.

As we are discovering today, we are all connected to each other, and between us there exists a certain common field, akin to a gravitational or electromagnetic field. This is a field of thoughts and desires that ties us all together above time and distance. We exist within this field and in this manner transfer to each other, or from generation to generation, the information acquired by us. Therefore, it’s not surprising that our physical bodies, existing within this field, detect new information, and so a new generation immediately becomes prepared to correctly enter a new epoch.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 3, 12/29/11

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