Question: A modern person has accumulated a wealth of various limitations: He was prevented from expressing his feelings, they were trivialized, and so on. That is why his standard reaction to something new is negative. Initially a battle within a person always takes place between an interest towards something new and a fear of it. How can we maintain a person’s interest despite his fear and resistance?

Answer: When starting to talk about a person, his physiology, psychology, sociology, family relationships, and so on, we need to do it objectively, abstractly, not relative to the person himself. And only afterwards should we gradually include examples: Here is a man, a woman, and children; here is a person as he is, he reacts to himself in a certain way and is composed of certain images of vision, perception, and so on. In other words, we begin to talk about some abstract object and gradually bring that object to the person himself. I think this way we won’t encounter a problem.

The fact of the matter is that a modern person doesn’t know any of this. We hide our nature, we are ashamed of ourselves, ashamed in front of others; we are afraid to show any sort of weakness because we think that others could take advantage of it. I have to show that I stand firm like a wall behind my immutable opinions, which I do not actually have at all.

When we gradually reveal what man, society, and nature in its global and general form are, little by little we get used to the fact that we are the way we are created: It isn’t me, and everything in me works independently from me.

Then what exactly is this “I”? I is only the one who can research what in him or her is created by nature.

Like doctors who aren’t ashamed in front of each other or their patients, or psychologists who can express their own and other people’s feelings without embarrassment, understanding that all of this is an objective reality, we, too, are the way we are. Likewise, we also need to bring a person to such a state.

Everything needs to be based precisely on the fact that the next stage of our development is complete integration of everyone into everything, when all parts of nature get incorporated into a person, a person into them, and people into each other, and together with nature we represent one organic whole.

In such a case there is nothing here that I have to conceal, be embarrassed of, and attempt to hide from others. I must ultimately reach a state where, conversely, I am obliged to fully reveal myself and be connected to everyone.

It’s like an infant who lies in his mother’s arms: He is nothing and nobody, yet she concentrates all of her attention on him, and from the point of view of nature, relative to his mother he has absolutely no barriers, borders, or screens; on the contrary, an absolutely complete connection exists. We too, as a result of our integral education and upbringing, need to reach such a connection in the future.

That is why our flow in teaching, experiencing these courses, in their structure and interconnection (where one course begins and another ends, or a few of them go parallel to each other) needs to be structured precisely so: along the axis of time. Courses should supplement one another and follow either consecutively or overlap with each other so that people gradually develop a correct attitude towards themselves, to other students studying in the group, and towards the whole world.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education,” 12/13/11

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Question: In the courses on integral upbringing and education, we intend to first of all educate people who lost their job. The majority of them is disillusioned with life; many have difficulties with their family, self-actualization, and so on.

The first thing that you may encounter in such a group is resentment, frustration, and aggression. Would people in this state be able to perceive such distant, abstract, and theoretical information? What should we start with in order to find common ground with people?

Answer: We have no other choice. We, people, consist of two halves: heart and mind, and they have to balance each other. Then a person develops harmoniously, sees the world and himself within it. Perhaps he sees both himself and the world as unbalanced, but his worldview becomes more or less correct.

Therefore, first and foremost we have to counterbalance all of today’s problems with knowledge: From where did these problems arise, what is  their origin, their necessity for our continued development, what exactly we need to come to, and so on.

As the first order of business people must necessarily complete an educational course, and not the ones on upbringing, practical work, and game scenarios—they are still far from that. The practical work within such groups begins only when the state of all sorts of problems and crises is balanced. People begin to understand the essence of these problems; they can now discuss, decide, arrive at some kind of an opinion, object, and discern the truth. But it gets discerned when feelings are balanced by knowledge.

If right now we simply take 50 people from the street and start to talk to them about today’s problems, we’ll be confronted with complete lack of understanding of our point of view. Correspondingly, feelings prevail above the mind, and we won’t get anywhere.

This is what happens in today’s world. Without understanding the general system of nature, its development (beginning, middle, and end of this path), and the state of humanity (where we exist in this moment along the axis of time), we evaluate everything only on the basis of our small, worldly egoism that doesn’t allow us to obtain the correct result. Moreover, we make wrong decisions about the future and with that bring ourselves into an even more difficult state. That is why, personally, I have no doubts that first and foremost we need to pursue education.

Precisely with that we begin our interaction with children. We always need to take our natural attitude to children as an example.

Everything begins with explanations. A child develops and feels: I sense this and that. A correct upbringing lies in supplementing a child’s feelings with explanations and with a system of correct attitude towards what he feels and how he perceives everything. This has to be balanced in adults as well. Without this we cannot advance.

Only to the extent that a group adapts this knowledge into itself does it realize and understand the causality and consequences of the feelings, their cause and effect development, and is able to see itself from the side. When a person rises above his self, he can separate his own “I” and see himself and society from the side.

The same way in psychology: You look at a person not as an individual, but from the side, trying to imagine him as a certain psychological object. Then, exploring him, you begin to give him some concrete recommendations, fragmentary explanations without even explaining who and what he is. But in principle, these explanations too are based on some kind of balance between knowledge and feelings. You cannot do without that.

That’s why in the first place we will have to introduce the courses that we spoke about in the last talk. It is a great amount of knowledge.

In the process of study, this knowledge gradually gets absorbed by people, and a person then starts to internally assimilate it along with feelings. At this point we need to start fortifying it with practical exercises that help a person balance knowledge and feelings.

A person can receive an initial sensation of that state by studying the material first-hand. We need to tell him about the origin, evolution, and properties of egoism and to present it completely objectively as a certain existing reality independent from and having nothing to do with us, so that a person could absorb everything in the form in which it exists in nature.

Next in the same course, a brief explanation can be given about how egoism works in a person: how it manifests itself in our world, in connections with family, children, with one’s own self, and so on.

That is, education involves at the very least separation into two parts, when we objectively lay out what is taking place in nature and try to express that in a somewhat dry, scientific language, and afterwards, as a supplement to that, we utilize this. After that is when the practical training begins, where we try to investigate our feelings from the point of view of reason.

A theoretical study is always reason, and we study it, fill ourselves with all kinds of knowledge, data, graphs, formulas, images, discernments of relationships, and so on, while gradually adding a little bit of feelings to that. In other words, studying always proceeds from two directions, “reason and feelings”: feelings in reason and reason in feelings.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education,” 12/13/11

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Question: What are the most important principles that any unemployed person should know so that he’ll be able to manage in the new world?

Answer: First, it is impossible to manage in the new world when each one thinks only about oneself. We have to think about everyone. There is no other choice. This is nature’s law that is being revealed in our times.

Second, every member of society should be concerned about others as organs in one body. In the global world we need not build egoistic systems: media, governments, social systems, health care, education, etc., which today do not care about what happens to others. What we need to be concerned with is how to build a healthy person in a healthy society. All the systems should be focused on this purpose. This means that there must be one general plan.

Only those who understand that we need integrality and mutual guarantee should have the right to lead society. Otherwise, each will continue with his protectionism, which will lead to opposition to and destruction of nature.

We should aspire for this same relationship to exist in the family, children’s education, neighborhoods, cities, nations, and the whole world. This means that we don’t have to develop separate, specific systems for education, culture, and health, but rather we need to work in circles, moving from a small circle to a wider one, and eventually encompassing all of humanity.

We have to organize all international organizations differently, so that this will be their goal and this is what they will aim all their activity at. All the laws in the world should be made as integral laws so that integrality will become the essential law of our existence. The leadership, courts, and systems for human rights should be aimed only at that.

What stems from the integral law influences all spheres of our lives, especially factories, companies, and businesses and whether or not they have the right to exist. If a business doesn’t match the essential production system, it is like a splinter that enters a body and infects and harms the whole body.

It must be taken out and only the healthy, necessary things should be left. This is a totally new perception according to which no one has the right to create something just for the purpose of trying to sell it. On the contrary, the less we produce and the less we sell, the better. This is a totally opposite from our present approach, and according to it everything will change.

Question: It seems this is a very advanced future state that will result from the integral education, when the government can decide if a business is in harmony with nature and therefore should operate?

Answer: In part, it will be the result of conscious change and partly a consequence of natural evolution in which unnecessary industries will shut down on their own.
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From “Lessons About  the New World” 12/1/11

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Baal HaSulam: “The Freedom”: The truer and more developed views are never in the hands of the collective in authority, but rather in the hands of the weakest, that is, in the hands of the indistinguishable minority. This is because every wisdom and everything precious comes into the world in small quantities. Therefore, we are cautioned to preserve the views of all the individuals, due to the collective’s inability to tell wrong from right among them.

All of creation makes up one Partzuf which is divided into five levels of coarseness (Aviut). The Lights are dressed in it in the reverse order: The greatest Light is dressed in the purest vessels, the weakest ones. This is also reflected in the structure of human society: The smallest, weakest Lights are typical of the coarsest forces and the strongest ones, while the greatest Lights are in the upper levels, those that have the greatest forces but are the finest.

The potential of a mechanical collision is negligible compared to the intensity of an atomic explosion in which sublter processes take place. So obviously, in one kilogram of an atom bomb there is much greater energy than in many tons of ordinary explosives. It all depends on the quality of the material, not on the quantity.

So the individual and the general are opposite to each other. But they are within one structure and thus have to complement one another. This way, in whatever relates to the general, one must take after the collective, while in whatever relates to the particular and the picture as a whole, it is namely an individual who examines it, and so one should take after the individual.

This contradiction is only an apparent one. When we understand that it is one form, we immediately see what belongs to what, meaning to what important people have to lower themselves by caring for their people, and to what the people have to lower their heads and listen to the great ones.

First and foremost, we must acknowledge the fact that we are all united by one form (Partzuf). Later we will be able to understand the principles of mutual dependency and its parts and the cooperation between them on the way to the general success.

First we must realize that we are all connected to one whole. No “poverty line” can divide us into upper and lower. No one can look at others indifferently and pretend that it doesn’t concern him. This means that we can’t “break” anyone, on the contrary, everyone should be taken into account and we should understand that we cannot manage without one another. Our success doesn’t depend on oppression but rather on mutual completion.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/8/12, “The Freedom”

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Question: We are presenting a new ideology to humanity: the transition from separation and competition to unity and mutual concern in order to provide for the vital necessities and social needs of every person. This means that we need to offer people a new paradigm of social relationships. What will attract them to it? What will happen to the huge mass of people who will be left without jobs or will be working only part-time?

Answer: They will learn to take part in different activities geared toward gradually acquiring the desire of the human level and its fulfillment.

Question: But they don’t want this….

Answer: They wish to live and enjoy in addition to providing for their basic needs. Every person has a large vessel of desire. Its lower part pertains to the essential needs—let’s call them as a whole “food.” This is the animate degree, the desires that have to do with food, sex, and family.

Above that are the so-called “extras”: desires for wealth, honor, and knowledge, which pertain to the human degree. And here I am told, “You need to fill this whole part with bestowal to the neighbor. Everything you wanted before now needs to be directed to benefit others. Only in this manner will you be able to receive fulfillment in this part of the vessel.

Today people live in order to satisfy their own needs. One’s basic needs will be satisfied, but in all other respects a person will experience emptiness: “My body is satisfied, but now what?” One no longer receives anything extra due to the crisis. This pertains to even those at the top since they too live from the profits that will vanish as the economic bubble deflates.

So from what can I receive pleasure as a human being? I ate and now what? And this is where a replacement of fulfillment will occur. While previously everyone wished to stand out, show how good, strong, and wealthy he was so that others would envy him, now this no longer will be the case. The terrestrial globe is not meant to eternally provide for these games of ours. From now on, fulfillment of the human degree will be achieved by caring for humanity. We can no longer scoop away from each other; now, on the contrary, we need to fill each other.

This is the only solution and it is offered to us by the science of Kabbalah. You can fulfill everyone, yourself included, for the sake of bestowal; and for the sake of reception, you will not be able to fill yourself even a tiny little bit.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/8/12, “The Freedom”

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Our dissemination should be simple: We need to bring humanity to a realization of the fact that the present economy is collapsing due to reasons that are beyond our control, due to objective circumstances. No one is to blame; this stage is implanted in the nature of human society itself, and it is meant to unite us and cause us to create a new integral society that will live according to laws of mutual guarantee.

First we begin to study, and meanwhile our thought process and approach change: From narrow and straight they become complex. And then we begin to understand how to build systems of interaction among people, business partners, systems of government, and so on.

But first of all is learning: an integral education. As Baal HaSulam writes, up to three generations may be required before humanity begins to practically build a new society. That’s how much time is needed for a person to realize the changes and begin to think differently.

But until then, we will live by producing everything that is necessary for our basic needs and gradually advancing to an integral worldview. The crisis will do away with all the overabundance and lower us to the level of producing the vitally necessary goods. It is already clear: Rising unemployment in a single complex world economy gradually takes away profits from everyone, including those at the top. Yachts, diamonds, and huge bank accounts—all this will disappear. Whether we want it or not, the world will come to a different economy.

And we, in turn, need to prepare every person for the upcoming turn of events as much as we can. Of course we need to explore how to build the new economy, but generally it will construct itself. After all, the economy is a replica of the interconnection between people. The financial and economic system is essentially a copy of our egoism. Therefore, by changing ourselves we will automatically begin to change our relationships in all spheres, including the economic.

We don’t need sharp movements. We don’t need to speed up the wave. We don’t need revolutions or methods of force. Everything will occur naturally; it is precisely as Baal HaSulam wrote in “The Works of the Last Generation”: “The concept of collectivism needs to catch up and ripen in the human mind in no less than three full generations of peace and mutual agreement. Thus the world has yet to experience many rotations and experiments before it reaches the final stage. And there is no simpler path for the maturing of ideas than the path of Kabbalah.”
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/8/12, “The Freedom”

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Opinion: (Nikita N. Moiseev, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences): “I hope that in the near future our teachers will have the need for the propaedeutic [preparatory study or instruction] course “Contemporary Understanding of the World.” This is due to the fact that the crisis in the relations between nature and society is growing, and the social demand for education, which is far beyond the narrow professionalism, is increasing as well.

“A modern person must see the world in its entirety. Only the understanding of ​​a general logic of the development of the world in which we live will help overcome the disastrous consequences of the relentlessly approaching crisis and perhaps even avoid it!

“Such a course should precede the studying of social sciences and philosophy, for which it is a necessary introduction. It is particularly necessary to the future experts in the humanities and social sciences, for whom the natural sciences and ecology are on the periphery of their interests.

“Future engineers and physicists also need it because the natural sciences and engineering departments lack the general knowledge about the processes of development of the contemporary world and the processes of cognition, although these professionals will have to solve many problems of modern ecology, politics, and ethics.”

My Comment: The course “Contemporary Understanding of the World” is required by everyone because the very cause of our problems is the lack of understanding of the meaning, reason, process, and purpose of life, which one can grasp only by being familiar with the structure of the world. Such a course is now being created by our organization. We hope that it will be basically completed and offered within half a year.
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Question: It’s easy to imagine introducing integral education in America and other European countries where the country’s culture seems conducive to going through the process of self-knowledge; however, there are societies entrenched in ancient traditions where it appears the implementation of integral education will be difficult. In your opinion, what must happen in order for these people to start “gathering in a circle”?

Answer: Within the next 10-20 years I see such societies changing into something completely different.

Just look at what’s happening in India and China with their secluded way of life in villages far removed from all civilization. Just look at the way people are living: sleeping on a cot in a dormitory in a factory where at least 50,000 people work.

Everything has changed. Now these people are losing their jobs. Where will they go? A person loses his cot in a dorm and that is it, he has lost his corner and has no other place in the world. It is terrible what’s happening in these countries. China and India are enormous lands.

We must understand that changes can occur very sharply and suddenly. I see how fast the Gulf states are changing, the Arab Emirates for example. This is an educated country where the entire population lives at a comfortable level, but their way of life and their clan system is changing very quickly. All of a sudden they are losing the basis for it.

Closed societies still exist here and there; however, they are beginning to include themselves into the general masses that are living a more or less modern life.
From the Fundamentals of Kabbalah Lesson 12/18/11

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Question: These days the tension between the Orthodox and the secular is growing. Your dissemination doesn’t pay enough attention to explaining to the non-religious community the essence of religion, its spiritual roots, etc. How do you help society deal with this “civil war” in a practical way?

Answer: We are busy explaining the next level of development to society in which everyone, every member of society, has to rise above all the differences and to unite by understanding the uniqueness of each individual.

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, we have to put all the differences among us below the unity among us as nature’s law requires us to unite despite and above our differences.

This can only be achieved by gradually educating people to mutual guarantee as each one is given a chance to live according to his own laws and unity is achieved above the different groups in society and above their customs. We should know how to separate the different communities that live according to different laws, as it is done between the Muslim and the Jewish communities.

City planners and public transportation planners have to take this into account. The external media should exhibit mutual respect. In a young state such as Israel, it is simply irresponsible to build cities without taking into account future potential conflicts.
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Question: An important part of the course on integral upbringing pertains to reasonable economics, or economics of rational consumption. What is that, and what is it based on?

Answer: We already spoke about the fact that in an integral society there is no coercion or limitations. That is, there exist certain social boundaries, and from within them you select what you like and what you want. This pertains to food, home, clothes, safety, medical services, education, and so on. The only exception is upbringing, which is required for everyone.

In this regard there is a very clear pressure on everyone, I might even say coercion, though not from the side of human society, but from the side of nature. We simply take these parameters and implement them for our comfortable existence.

When it comes to all the minor needs, then in accordance with our collective development, we will need to arrange debates among ourselves regarding what we consider as necessary and not. By the way, here we have something to learn from the kibbutzim: They had a very interesting way of doing that. Does a person really not need anything of his own, or conversely, does he require his own personal wardrobe?

Naturally, each selects a specific assortment of products that are most suitable and healthiest for him and correspond to his or her tastes. Nobody is going to force anyone to eat the same food, although in principle, all of these things: clothes, objects, apartments, and so on are pretty standardized.

If a person is engaged in intensive inner development, his interest in all the necessary bodily, physical needs is essentially reduced, and he doesn’t seek in that an additional fulfillment, satiation, and some particular flavors or shades. All that becomes absolutely uninteresting and unimportant to him just like for a scientist who is deeply absorbed in his research and can just walk around in a tattered suit because to him it doesn’t hold any significance. He grabs a bite to eat somewhere and that’s good enough—the important thing is that now he can go back to work.

In other words, society will constantly conduct research to determine an optimal level of income, which would be neither excessive nor deficient for any person. In an integral society each person will take all that is necessary for himself either from warehouses, or perhaps a large delivery, distribution, and supply system will be put in place for that purpose.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education,” 12/12/11

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