Question: If I try to become integrated, will I be guaranteed a good life?

Answer: Of course. There is nothing better than obtaining harmony with nature, which evokes all of the forces upon you. If you exist in harmony with these forces then you enter a state of absolute comfort.

We have never experienced such a state before. Our lives consist of running from great suffering toward lesser suffering. We can’t even imagine what a comfortable state means. What it can mean is that I no longer feel my body. Do you understand this? The only reason we feel our bodies is because we’re in pain; otherwise, we wouldn’t feel them.

The state of total comfort takes away a person’s sensation of his body. The body sort of melts away from his perception, as though it no longer exists.

Question: If this is so obvious then why aren’t people grasping this opportunity?

Answer: It is like a small child that doesn’t want to apply any effort, but the effort needs to by applied. We are trying to make this process easier by creating a good environment that will make the process simple, easy, and nice for the person who enters it. However, this requires great resources, as well a supranational organization that has these resources at its disposal.
From a “Talk About Integral Education” 12/16/11

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Opinion (L. Kotelnikova, The Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences): “Modern education is part of the process of creating a new global community, of creating a humane and just world. Achieving this goal requires a review of the educational process, giving everyone an opportunity to understand each other and the world in its chaotic motion towards a certain unity.

“Education should become a process of a person’s continuous development; it must provide an understanding of oneself, one’s environment, and life in society. The main task to be addressed by education in the near future is to learn to live together.”

My Comment: Many educators in the world understand the tasks of modern education and upbringing. We need to include them in the discussions as we create and improve our methods of education.
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Question: Social psychology speaks of the role of “small talk” and states that to have a good relationship with your neighbors, it is sufficient to simply say “hello” during each encounter. If I don’t do this systematically, then in the overall system I become indebted to my neighbors. When this “debt” reaches its maximum, neighbors can simply get rid of me. Can this kind of information help a person build an integral society?

Answer: Of course it can. This information speaks to the fact that we are all integrally connected and therefore need to receive certain signals from each other, at the very least to interact on the level of “hello.” This is a good example.

Question: I can give another example. We spoke about a rather peculiar interaction between relatives. For some reason, a majority of people attempt to build a friendly relationship with, say, their mother-in-law. Obviously, they don’t succeed in that; they are burdened by these ties, which then turn into resentments. In the integral upbringing courses, can we tell people that they shouldn’t try to be friends with their mother-in-law, that this is a different form of interaction?

Answer: People need to be taught a lot in this respect, in particular about what levels of connection one should have. However, I don’t think that we need to operate the way that psychologists do today. If we enter the level of mutual integration, the well-intentioned, simple attitude of people towards each other will involuntarily build the correct connections, where we don’t shun or show off to each other.

It is precisely these sincere mutual interactions that will place us in our corresponding positions relative to each other, akin to connected cogwheels. There are people with whom my connection is tighter, as well as those who are further away from me. I shouldn’t pretend otherwise and insinuate myself into a tight grip with everyone.

Therefore, if I am bound to my spouse through family ties, it doesn’t mean that I have to be similarly connected with her mother and other relatives since all of this is carried out only through him or her and in no other way. If it wasn’t for my spouse, I would possibly have never even known them. It is necessary for us to show these connections directly, to clarify them.

When we draw people towards mutual integrality, they understand that mutual separation or mutual closeness should originate precisely from our state in the overall system. And that is why there shouldn’t be any offense or resentment here.

I greet my neighbors because the fact that living in the same wing of an apartment building or on the same floor obliges me to do so, while I have no obligation to greet the people who live in a neighboring house or even a neighboring wing.

In other words, it is precisely our compatibility with each other and our closeness that determine to what extent I need to expose this mutual connection, this cohesion with others. Thus, if this is recognized by people, they are not obliged to anything. On the contrary, they will naturally, from within, enter any given contact in accordance with the general system, the overall interconnection between everyone.

I do not see a problem in this and I think that all of this will spring from within a person.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #6, 12/14/11

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Question: Whenever you say that people will willingly renounce unnecessary production, I have doubts.

Answer: They won’t renounce it. The environment should influence a person in such a way that he or she would simply stop pursuing that. Just like we are no longer interested in children’s games because we are now grownups and have other interests, the same will happen here. We will involuntarily start pursuing something that is more important to us, more fulfilling.

To the extent that I will change, I will demand more and more refined fulfillments, and that’s why I will no longer be interested in acquiring a cutting-edge car or fashionable clothes from a famous couturier. I will suddenly realize that I am forgetting about all of that, like a scientist who becomes absorbed by his or her work, passion, and feels fulfillment from being occupied by formulas or researching mice, and that’s it! It makes no difference to him or her what to eat or what to wear—that’s how a person deeply submerged in something feels.

In our time it’s trendy to demonstrate a deliberatively dismissive attitude towards fashion (“it makes no difference what to eat or how to dress”), when people of the arts and other circles want to show that all of them are a little bit above our world, so to speak.

There is a certain movement in this, a desire to show that one has other concerns, other interests, and doesn’t care about some tuxedo with a bow-tie. This entire fashion: hole-riddled jeans and so on are hints at allegedly inner aspirations towards something and a contempt for externality. The tattoos, rings, and piercings in various places, these aren’t adornments on a person but attempts to express one’s inner state through this external imagery.

It’s a transitional process when it’s important to really acknowledge the full insignificance and foolishness of these attempts.

Nevertheless, this is a good example of the environment’s influence on a person. All these are offerings to fashion. There is nothing to be done. Until it passes, either as a result of the crisis or as a consequence of an ascent, nothing is going to change.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #6, 12/14/11

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TV Program “Foundations of the Integral Society”
Download: WMV Video|MP3 Audio

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We are witnessing a brand new and fascinating phenomenon: Our society is becoming integral. It’s no longer just about banks and industries establishing partnerships all over the world, exchanging raw materials, merchandise, food and so on. Today even the world’s cultures and education systems are merging into a single, universal blend. All these elements are interconnected and interdependent in every way.

It’s no accident that modern media has made it possible for us to stay abreast of everything that’s happening in the world. In and of itself the knowledge doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but it already makes us dependent on one another. If this dependence exists in a good, tight family, then it’s for the benefit of all, as it gives confidence and pleasure. But if it’s not a good dependence, then the family falls apart.

The problem is we quite simply cannot divorce one another, precisely because we’re united on the global scale. We may hate and reject one another, but we’re entirely dependent on one another at the same time. Nature has imprisoned us on this earth, this tiny surface, and we have nowhere to run from one another.

With each passing day our interdependence grows stronger. When people or nations conflicted in the past, the worst they could do is kill one another. Today, however, if we begin to fight, we will take down the whole world with us, as the modern weapons at our disposal will destroy all living things. It follows that we are entirely dependent on everybody else in all aspects, both good and bad.

This is a big problem because our ego feels no fear and refuses to compromise in any way. The ego grows and develops, but our reason does not evolve with it. As our weapons grow in destructive force, we remain filled with envy, thirst for power, cruelty and the like. This mutual hatred clouds our minds, and if it continues we could easily end up destroying everything.

We see that nature is bringing us to greater mutuality and interdependence, which we cannot escape, like a family that cannot get divorced. So what do we do about it? We must find a solution. And the solution is both clear and unequivocal: to restore peace “in the family,” in our home, between all nations and all people. This mustn’t be done via aggression, but in a way where everyone does their part with complete integrity.

By actualizing this one solution, on which our survival hinges, we will undoubtedly see exactly how to organize everything in the world and the relationships between us with the globe living as one society. We will realize what everybody needs to complement everybody else. We will know how to educate ourselves, the “grown-up children,” and the actual children, the next generation, to make it easier for them to enter into a good, warm, gentle world. We will know how to make sure that no one will be able to stir humanity against itself going forward.

Many scientists are talking about the fact that the world has become round due to its interdependence, that we cannot run away from one another, and that, on the contrary, our interdependence is constantly growing moment by moment, day by day. They warn us of the dangers of adopting policies of protectionism and isolation in an effort to disconnect one nation from another.

The reason is that such attempts oppose the process we’re undergoing from the time we became human to this day. Looking at human history, it’s clear that any attempts to go against the laws of nature have never been successful, and that’s putting it mildly.

This behavior is tantamount to knowing but not observing the laws of physics; the upshot is that I cause immediate harm to myself. All the technology, science, and wisdom we have compiled amounts to us learning to follow the laws of nature. We upgrade our tools of research to discover more of nature’s laws with the aim of using them for our benefit.

The better we know nature’s laws, particularly those that pertain to the environment, society, humanity, and human and social psychology, the better we’ll be able to actualize them in our relationships, and the more we will gain thereby. The only other option is to initiate a “divorce” and all that it entails which means a world war, which could be the end of all mankind on earth.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 1, 12/27/11

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Question: When young people, a man and a woman, are making their plans for the future, they dream about the way they’re going to live. Could spouses discuss the ideal picture of an integral family in an integral education group so that everyone could contribute their own vision to it?

Answer: This is useful even today. When creating an image of an ideal family, we need to understand our egoistic nature and have a completely objective attitude towards it. If I can objectively open up to my group, to “dissect” myself before it, and in addition, the group could also explain to me from its point of view who I am and otherwise, then by understanding the viewpoints, habits, and motivations of one another, all the things given by nature and instilled in us, then we would attempt to rise above that into a completely new system of mutual relationships.

We wouldn’t try to break each other because we are creating something mutual: that which is comfortable and good for us. And all our negative inner egoistic impulses would conversely automatically transform into unification above them.

We begin to see that if this egoism of ours didn’t exist, then we wouldn’t have been able to enter into contact with each other. But thanks to the fact that we build this common superstructure above it, the egoism is actually our partner, friend, and helper, acting seemingly against us while in reality demonstrating that precisely through resistance to it, by turning it inside-out in our mutual relationships, we create a new family, a new anti-egoistic society.

Egoism plays a crucial role in this society because without it, we wouldn’t be able to achieve anything. It is the very fabric of nature intentionally instilled in us. What differentiates a person from an animal? It is precisely the fact that year after year, generation after generation, egoism grows within man. By using egoism, except in the opposite direction, we create mutuality between us: Instead of repelling us, we come closer; instead of rejection and hatred, there is love. Everything is contained in this.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #6, 12/14/11

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Question: What does it mean, “to rise above egoism?” How do you do it: through thoughts?

Answer: To rise means to work with your egoism in a sensible manner. When you are under the influence of society and the society seems to be to your right, while egoism is to the left, you become close to the society and merge with it as you invest yourself in it as much as you can and treat egoism as matter that you must use in order to make a person, to give it a human form.

This is the difference between our method and all the other methods, which are based on the destruction and suppression of egoism, its maximum concealment, leveling. But not here! Here it is easily revealed. And since it is one of the two forces of nature, as I reveal the second force, I begin to see in an absolutely objective manner how both forces can be used, and neither applies to me!

Today I identify myself with my egoism; I exist in it inseparably. But here I sort of come out of it and regard my body, myself, and those around me objectively; I separate every person from their inner egoistic essence. In this way, I start seeing people, not necessarily in their egoistic matter, but outside of their egoistic matter, outside of their egoism, outside of matter, the way they should be if they were to properly use these two forces, the right and the left. The left force is egoism, and the right is the surrounding environment, which demonstrates altruistic qualities to me that are opposite to egoism.

Question: I do not fully understand, what is the right line?

Answer: The right line is power. It is the idea that I need to transform my left line: all my egoistic desires, intentions, everything there is. Let us say I have 600 or 800 of them, it does not matter whatever number becomes revealed, even 10 or 20 different desires and thoughts. Under the influence of the society and the environment, I must transform all my egoistic qualities, desires, and thoughts, which are my egoistic heart and mind, into their opposite: altruistic. It is like putting an altruistic shirt over egoism.

Question: Let us use an example to make it clear. Let us say that I have a new desire to sing. I like singing, but I am bad at it.

Answer: This is not egoism. Egoism is when you wish to use something, which will hurt others and will supposedly benefit you. But even if we use the singing example, if you were to sing in front of your mother who loves you, your singing would please her, despite the quality of your voice and your ability to carry a tune. If you were to sing outside, people might not be very pleased to hear you. Thus everything depends on the degree of participation, love, and connection between you and your listeners.

Question: How do you turn an egoistic action into its opposite?

Answer: Introduce love in the connection between us.

Imagine a scientist, for example, a doctor that operated on a person who had a problem with his voice, and the surgeon gave the patient the ability to speak. Now, this person, completely out of tune and wheezing, sings. Imagine what pleasure the doctor is experiencing hearing the results of his work!

Here everything depends on the connection between the people, and not the correct reproduction. If your actions are making others happy, go ahead do it. All the doors are open before you.

The main thing is to have a proper connection with others when you perceive each other with love. Then your new relationship is in charge. You begin to perfectly and instinctively understand which qualities you can use. Just as before you wanted to instinctively and openly use egoism for your benefit, now you openly and sincerely use it in the opposite direction.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #7, 12/14/11

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Question: What is the meaning of “revealing the design of nature”: Does a person see, hear, or feel something?

Answer: As man becomes similar to the surrounding nature, he begins to treat it in a positive manner and to understand its design, feelings, and thought. He begins to see that nature, which created everyone including him, man who possesses a higher mind and feeling.

By the way, many speak about this, people who are close to nature, who grew up and developed in it, for example the Bedouins in Israel who live in the desert. They perceive nature, its breath.

I have spoken with many people, who have spent many years in the desert, the tundra, and the jungle with apes. They told me of amazing sensations, when the perception of nature, its design, and its mind suddenly begin to communicate with the person, and he begins to perceive that he exists inside mother nature, inside an enormous wise system. He suddenly begins to speak, communicate with it, reveal its matrix, its plan, and identify with it, and a certain union between man and nature appears which raises him to the next level of development.

The understanding of the common design of nature and the ascent to its next level, the level of controlling our own lives, is the purpose of the modern stage of development.

Question: In other words, we see certain new relationships and they become more obvious, more natural. But nature itself remains the same? Or does it also change?

Answer: I am not speaking about the still, vegetative, and animate nature. I am speaking about nature, which bares itself before man, reveals itself, and he discovers a certain enormous common universal feeling, mind, and design. Man reveals this.

When he connects to this, he begins to feel that he is on the next level of development. In other words he gains the understanding of all processes, the view of the world from beginning to end, its design: Why our Universe developed, where it came from, what there was before the Big Bang, what happened after (since our Universe has obviously existed for a certain amount of time), and the perception of the Universe, how we perceive it outside of our five physical senses, through a universal mind, a higher heart and mind. As man attains this, he begins to understand that his entire lengthy historic process of development was in order to reach this level.

Many sciences speak of this. Terminal problems, which appear in every science come from the fact that further development of sciences is directed specifically in this area. Consequently, scientists will not be able to reveal anything without upbringing, without being transformed through an integrated relationship with nature. This is why all our sciences are in a crisis.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #7, 12/14/11

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Today we need to prepare people for the new world the same way that we prepare kids for our world. We should realize that we have to play against our egoism in the same way a little child plays. We are required to artificially evoke this new world in our imagination.

Obviously, we’re deceiving ourselves in this way. Yes, I lie to myself because my egoistic nature forces me to snatch for myself anything I can lay my hands on. But I must be different because otherwise I will not rise to the next level, the level of an integral human being, Adam. I can only rise to it with the help of my environment, which I myself need to create.

So it follows that ultimately I have to examine: “What exactly is this new type of humanity? What can bring me to it? What sort of environment, influence, can shape me into anything? How can I create this environment for myself so that I will change?”

It turns out that, in a way, I elevate myself. I grow through that. In the process I become aware of all the forces of nature that I need to change and use in order to change myself.

By building this new society, a person reaches the highest level of nature. I begin to attain the entire mechanism of my development and understand the full depth of the engine that works in the evolutionary process. I step onto the level of the creator who alters one’s own self.

Can you only imagine what a superb psychologist a person becomes for himself! This is why I believe that this science is the most necessary one in our current state.

From this it becomes clear that we need to teach people about psychology of an individual human being and of society, about freedom of will, and to tell them about the forces that act on us and through which we can influence ourselves. In other words, we ourselves are building the society that is going to change us.

We should study and examine ourselves very well, our inner qualities, both personal and social, through all kinds of connections based on mentalities, habits, and lifestyles. And accordingly, we have to build an integral external influence on humanity as a whole and on each of its civilizations, nations, cultures, and so on.

This is an enormous undertaking, but it is the work of making a true human out of us, and therefore this is noble work. We will create a human being from an animal.

The task we are facing is enormous. The efforts of a tremendous amount of people are required here, and first and foremost of those who are testing all these processes on themselves, who study them, raise objections, discuss, and simultaneously attempt to do something. All of humanity should participate in this, absolutely everyone, young and old! Every person needs to be engaged in this process for a very long time.

If we desire to rise to the next level of our development, the level of the integral image of “Adam,” we need to give ourselves to this pursuit completely and to tend to our beastly, physical state only to whatever extent is actually necessary so that this animal could exist comfortably and not interfere with our creation of Adam out of ourselves.

This shows us why the current condition of humanity is leading us towards that against our will, as well as the reason for the crisis and the enormous amount of the unemployed.

Before long armies of billions of the unemployed will appear and as a result, only the most necessary enterprises such as manufacturing of foodstuffs, clothes, construction, and so on will remain, and only to the extent and quantity required for a normal existence. Only a certain number of people will work in these enterprises, or perhaps everyone a little bit of time. But all of them, regardless of whether they’re working or free from work, will have to pursue integral education.

With that humanity is freeing tremendous egoistic resources that previously were busy manufacturing unnecessary things. They will all be gradually transitioned precisely towards building the next stage: the creation of an integral society.

We won’t be able to avoid it. We need to progressively make our way towards this because only movement in that direction will smooth out our current threatening state, which leads us toward a world war.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #6, 12/14/11

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