Since our nature is the desire to receive and to be filled (to fill our corporeal desires for food, sex, and family; and our human desires for money, respect, control, and knowledge), our ego revealed in these desires was constantly developing and determining the advancement of humanity since ancient times until the middle of the 20th century. So, we have been constantly changing, and at the same time changing our society, developing technology, industry, and family and social arrangements, and so on.

Starting from the middle of the 20th century, the ego stopped its linear growth and started to grow round, which means to become egoistically global. And so, we discover that nature around us is opposite from us, that is, it is altruistically global (in bestowal). These two systems are now in a conflict.

Our role is to make sure that they will not be in a conflict and will not negate one another; otherwise, humanity will begin to destroy itself by summoning an undesirable negative influence from nature. It is important that humanity becomes more like nature and in harmony with it.

This means that the development of the ego has reached its end. For a long time, it has pushed us forward; we believed that it was the way to change the world and to do whatever we want with it, and now this has come to an end.

Now the world, nature, is turning against us, demanding that we change. So we have to switch from changing our environment to changing ourselves.

This is very difficult and it is impossible to agree to it, but we see that many people in the world have already reached this conclusion.

The integral education method is built to tell, explain, reassure, and convince people that it isn’t difficult to change one’s self under the influence of the environment and the society. If we operate this way, we will create a harmonious society and a life that will open new heights to us.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/22/12

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Baal HaSulam, “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”: Hence, only the members of the Israeli nation were admitted into the required Arvut, and not the nations of the world at all, because they did not participate in it.

This is how the desire to receive began to split. In ancient Babel, one nation lived that later began to split up into separate groups that spread all over the globe since the upper force didn’t hold them together anymore. This dispersion meant that the desires to receive discovered the differences between them. The different desires which belong to different levels like “Syria,” “the trans-Jordan,” “the Land of Israel,” “Egypt,” etc. began to appear. To the extent that they were revealed, we felt ourselves more and more separated until we discovered to what extent we are still connected to each other internally.

Today we are forced to connect since we depend on each other, and we cannot exist without each other. Thus Babel returns and obliges us to rebuild “a tower that reaches Heaven,” but not the egoistic one this time. We don’t challenge Heaven now, but rather rise to bestowal, to love, to equivalence with the Creator. This is called the true “ascent to Heaven.”

Today, in a time of total destruction of the old tower of Babel, we discover how destructive our ego, the source of all our troubles, is and how separated and distant we are from one another. Thus the dispersion of the Babylonians ends—each one wants to live separately without any obligations to others, and at the same time, it turns out that in order to survive we will need a general mutual connection. Because of our dependence on it, we feel that we have to reconnect, but how?

By feeling the necessity to build a new tower of Babel, we build it by correcting ourselves to bestow. Eventually we will become one nation again and will build the “tower that is full of good” and reach Heaven.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/04/12,“The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)”

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Opinion (Martin A. Nowak, Professor of Biology and of Mathematics at Harvard University and Director of Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics): “Martin Nowak, one of the world’s experts on evolution and game theory…turns an important aspect of evolutionary theory on its head to explain why cooperation, not competition, has always been the key to the evolution of complexity. He offers a new explanation for the origin of life and a new theory for the origins of language, biology’s second greatest information revolution after the emergence of genes.”

My Comment: Recently, there is a surge of materials produced by scientists from various countries and areas of expertise about the revision of the driving force of evolution, about its original direction towards integrality. Just today, when this integrality reaches us, humanity, civilization, we began to pay attention to it because before that we had not been able to perceive the world as integral.
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Question: How can we become professionals of integral upbringing? What is it?

Answer: A professional of integral upbringing, firstly, is one who understands evolution, which we have undergone as the egoistic development of a person and humanity. From generation to generation, we have been developing until the point when our usual human egoism ceased to grow.

It has manifested itself almost in everything and now begins to become round; that is, more and more, we feel greater unity, integrality, and globality of all early affairs, absolute dependence of each other, and, in most cases, this is unwanted.

Corporations with global operations and markets understand what profit they have from this. And humankind, countries, governments, various organizations, and anyone in the world suddenly begin to feel constrained and interconnected with everyone.

Today, in order to provide myself with everything necessary, with what I am used to because I have developed to this level and cannot imagine a normal existence below it, as an ordinary citizen of any country, city, or region, I need to be fully connected with the whole world and feel dependent on everyone.

For example, China supplies special elements, rare metals, to all the countries. But what can we do if it no longer wants to supply them. We will have no computers, no phones, nothing. If somewhere the development of oil fields and all kinds of chemical materials is stopped, we will be left with nothing. That is, the world has been divided into sectors, which become so intertwined that it’s impossible today to imagine a normal existence without proper integral work of the entire world.

Billions of people live in cities, in an artificial society, which they have created and which would be very easy to destroy; it’s enough to break a few links and people will no longer be able to exist in the stone jungles they have built.

Our current state, in general, is clear to many, even to the simplest people, because it’s easy to explain from where we get everything and to whom in turn we deliver it. And from this mutual dependence, which emerged in the era of subsistence farming, first in the family, then in the cities, in factories, and then within the nation, now, no one can isolate himself, and this forces us to think differently.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/20/12

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Politics, finances, culture, science and actually everything today is only built on communication, on mutual connection, while a person is not internally matched to these systems. It follows that all of our systems have reached this kind of state, but a person hasn’t and so it is very difficult. We are not able to manage anything correctly. So our economy, arts, science, childrearing, and the rest of our systems are in crisis. In principle, they aspire to be integrally connected, but the person who manages them, is not yet that way. So what can be done with him?

Human ego remains individualistic. We see how a person wants to withdraw, detach himself, be alone, and hide from others. He needs a separate apartment. He is, as if, ready to become connected to others, but only by phone and computer as if they guard his individualism, his immunity. And we don’t need to destroy this, but to at least adjust to those systems in which we already exist.

Nature itself is global and finds itself in complete mutual dependency in all its parts. We created our sciences, and assume physics, chemistry, biology, and zoology are separate investigations of nature; this doesn’t exist in nature. It is unified and everything in it is mutually connected. This means that the approach needs to be general and holistic, but it isn’t.

An identical, general approach needs to be taken for all of common global existence, but it doesn’t exist. Man doesn’t adjust himself to the world he lives in, while from the side of nature, those same systems suddenly changed themselves, without any connection to us, to be integral. Evolution brought us to this state.

We can’t continue to exist in this way; the crisis will continue. Its goal is to invite the need for change within a person.

And a person needs to independently and consciously go through all of these changes. He needs to bring himself to the form of being integral, to be compatible with all the systems: social, political, financial, cultural, etc., and to nature as well.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/20/12

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We have always been egoistically pushed forward by nature; we have always followed it blindly; in other words, we were instinctively pushed forward by our desire to keep fulfilling ourselves, and as it kept manifesting in us, we strove towards wealth, fame, power, knowledge—anything at all.

As a result, we have reached certain satiety, and our egoism has come to a dead end; we cannot even say that it keeps growing. On one hand, there is a certain line of reevaluation of our values: “Is it right to continue to strive towards the attainment of fame, knowledge, wealth, and power? Is this the meaning of our development?”

On the other hand, we see that our dependence on each other forces us to introduce some other international economic formulas, which must take our interdependence into consideration, in other words, if I will suffer, you will also suffer, no matter how egoistic it now appears to be. Even today, I still try to build my happiness on the suppression of others, base my power on being stronger than others, and by collecting more.

However, the same Europe is a bright example of how mutual dependence determines everyone’s destinies today, and it is impossible to just disconnect a country from the EU no matter how much one might want for it to happen. Maybe economists do not fully realize this yet. We cannot disconnect from the entire world.

This dependence exists inside actual nature, inside the inner connections between us. And economics, which only represent our external egoistic relations, can no longer keep describing them the same way it did before: what I give to you, what you give to me, a percentage for a percentage, etc. Industry, international trade, and international relations can no longer continue developing the same way.

We must take the integration of the world into consideration. And if we do not correspond to this integration, we will not be able to understand the way we are supposed to advance in accordance with the world and nature. Today we feel nature’s challenge, its pressure on us with the only purpose of making us gradually begin to change ourselves to become like it. This has never happened before.

If we were to look at it from an ontological perspective, we would see that nature has always pushed us towards egoistic development. And now, on the contrary, it is showing us that egoistic development has come to an end; in other words, we have completed our development of the still, vegetative, and animate levels, when we were instinctively pushed forward by nature; this is why this level of human development is called animate.

But now we must begin developing on the “human” level, when we understand and perceive the surrounding world to the point of changing ourselves to suit it. Neither the world nor nature are forcing us to change instinctively, evoking these desires in us, which forced us to build a society, economy, technology, etc.: This no longer exists today.

Obviously, the next stage of our development is when nature shows itself to us in a new, integral way, the way it really is: Everything is interconnected in it and it is just nature alone. But we, being its components, do not correspond to it, and must come to the same integral form in the structure of our society: in politics, economy, finances—in everything.
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From KabTV’s “Global Crisis – Deficit of Resources” 3/1/12

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Throughout our very short life, the world undergoes great changes. People are totally confused, the earth seems to be turning faster than we can grasp. Could it be that we have lost the way and that we don’t know where we’re headed? Or on the contrary, are we examining the situation we are in as a turning point leading to a new path by which we can rise to a new level?

Of course there is a period of uncertainty in the transition from one level to another, from one state to another, when we are between the two levels, between the stable states, in total confusion. Humanity feels very confused these days.

These are very special times because we are living in a new world. This isn’t the life we have been used to leading for ages, we don’t advance directly as we did from one generation to another. Now there is suddenly a great change in the relations between people, in our attitude to the family, to life, to the place where we live, to our nation. Everything changes completely. Although we don’t perceive it at the moment and assume that we’re still living in the past, it’s over!

When we begin to look for the way we’ve lost, we discover a special new desire that demands that we find the source of life, to discover what we are living for, and why we change. Whether there’s a plan for our life, a goal, and whether it’s possible to discover it in advance. Is it possible to advance towards this goal in the ordinary way like we lived for ages on this planet, unsuspecting where our advancement is leading us? Instinctively we performed different changes and the entire revolutions, and lived that way!

None of us knew what was happening. Although there were many philosophers and fortunetellers, none of them could predict and explain what was occurring.

But today, we really need this. We can’t carry on and live as we used to. We are living in total chaos. We feel that we must discover the secret of life, its plan, and in which direction we are developing, because without it we are losing our foundations. In the past we always developed in the framework of the family, inherited everything from our parents and lived in order to build our family and to pass this on to our children. This is how life went on from one generation to another, in many families around me, and together we all advanced along one familiar paved road. But today we don’t know anything anymore.

Besides, many scientists are openly warning that our situation is very dangerous because we are destroying our planet and have no hope for the future since we’ve depleted all the natural resources and energy sources. The technocratic world that we’ve built in the last 50 years is the result of senseless destructive actions. We are simply killing ourselves by taking what we can from nature and burning everything in it as if there is no tomorrow. Although we’re still living, it’s a hopeless life with no prospects for a better future. And what’s more, we are so blind that it doesn’t even worry us.

In our generation, we discover a very special state and a very special question about the meaning of life that is evoked in us and actually burns within us. There are people who can’t relax and who begin to search by trying different new-age methods from which different studies of mysticism stem. But among these people there are those who ask more serious questions about the meaning of life and who want to reach a realistic, scientific solution. They don’t believe in anything, and don’t count on someone else’s words and stories, but want to discover the process they are about to go through by themselves.

On the one hand, they want to understand the past: to what end did we go through this path, not from the beginning of life on earth, but from the creation of the universe? And not just to discover what has brought us to the point we are at today, but to know how to go on from here: What is going to happen according to nature’s plan from now onward? Is there such a plan and is it possible to discover it, and is it worthwhile to discover it? It all depends on whether we can influence it. Will I be able to aim myself correctly? This is an important question that we will have to answer.
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From the Brazil Convention 5/04/12, Lesson 1

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Question: Suppose we have an integral study group, which needs some guidance, to be told what it will deal with, what process it will go through. What should we start with?

Answer: For the new members there should be talks about the world, about the new trend, about evolution based on the ego, etc. First we have to prepare a serious theoretical basis of the practical perspective of human history, of society, and of ourselves. A person is gradually brought to the question of “what’s next?” Suppose we have explored the modern world, our development, the development of man and all of nature, and where it’s leading us. We don’t even see the lack of free choice, the dynamics of our development, and the collapse of the ego as the engine, as the source of our life and of our advancement. We reach a crisis, what’s next?

Next, of course, there are different goals in nature. We are now at such an intersection in which we have to totally change our attitude towards the world because the ego with which we grew before has suddenly stopped working.

So where is it leading us? It’s leading us to its negation. We see that in all the problems, in depression, drugs, terrorism, and even the crisis in the family and society. The main thing that hurts us most of all is the economic crisis because we, as beasts, need to eat and to supply our basic needs. Here we find ourselves in a state where we will not be able to supply the basic needs, especially in the world that we have created around us, a world that is a huge urban jungle, in which we all have to do something in order to get what we need.

It’s very easy to destroy such a world. It’s so sensitive to the slightest inability to adapt that millions of people can find themselves cut off from food, water, and the supply of energy and other resources. We cannot even imagine how delicate and fragile the world we’ve created is, and if something goes wrong, just a little, it will collapse like a house of cards. All this will collapse and what about us?

As a result of our development, we have brought ourselves to this very unstable state. You can imagine cities around the world with a population of 20 million people, but even in cities with a population of 2 million people, what will happen when these people are cut off from food, electricity, water, or a sewage system?! This is the end!

There is a need for mutual cooperation among countries, without which we cannot manage. No country can provide its own needs by itself any more. So we can see that the world is really very fragile and unsafe. We are showing people all this, explaining the general trend and why nature and the ego have brought us to this point so that we will rise above the ego, because in the present state we are unable to adapt to the global integral nature. How can we be mutually connected to it, meaning being included in its integrality, in its sphere, in harmony, with our ego?

This is why we need guidance by which we can show people that there is another way to develop. When we psychologically change ourselves and people, we will see the world not from an egoistic perspective, but from an integral altruistic perspective. We’ll be able to form a totally different society that will be in harmony with all the natural laws. And then having no choice, a person, the family, the society, the state, civilization, and all of humanity will reach such harmony with nature that we’ll recover all the fragile balance on earth, internally and externally, with the rest of nature. This is possible only if a person changes from an individualist into a person of the universe. This is what we have to bring to people.

Now let’s see how this can be done: Can we leave the individualistic, egoistic perspective of the world? Can we change the egoistic glasses and see everything through integral lenses? What will I gain from that? In other words, I have to take care of everyone. Is it possible? I shouldn’t take myself into account, is that possible? Do I have to totally “leave” myself? What about me and my family, and my relatives? How can we aim at mutual cooperation with others so that we can form a unified society?

What does unified mean? It is when each of us doesn’t feel himself, but only the society, like ants, who only understand their cooperation. None of them has a separate role, a separate goal, size or priority, but all are operated by a collective mind, a program, and meticulously carry out all the orders of the program. Is this possible? This is where nature is leading us. On such a level we will reach total harmony with it.

What do we gain from that? Although it sounds a bit like a fantasy, we are gaining the feeling of eternity, the feeling of infinity, because all our feelings today are within the limited ego, while here we move on to a different feeling, outside ourselves. Then a person doesn’t feel his own beastly body anymore, by rising to the next level, to the next dimension called “human,” which we didn’t feel before. He isn’t in his “animal” anymore, but rises to an upper level. Until today we were actually more developed animals.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #17, 02/28/12

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Why does Nature require me to learn its laws? Is it only in order for me to know how to make fewer mistakes, how to enjoy myself, and how to avoid troubles and problems?

Or perhaps, through troubles and problems, Nature wants to raise me to the level of knowledge and control over myself, to the level of control over the world? This is a completely different level of existence and consciousness.

Apparently, we are confusing the cause and consequence. Today, troubles force us to look for possibilities to ensure our success in the present and in the future. They are the reason, due to which we understand Nature. However, it’s not true in fact. The problems only push us from behind to direct us towards knowledge, and learning about the universal Nature will open for us completely new horizons, a new dimension.

We will feel a new reality, not the one we perceive today in our five sense organs like animals. Ultimately, we just slightly surpass them in intelligence and ingenuity; we can build comfortable houses, cook food, dress, but on the other hand, animals don’t have so much to take care of for their existence.

Our advantage is different: We can rise to the level where we will live not to take care of our corporeal life. On the contrary, taking care of the physical life will lead us to an understanding of general Nature, and from there, we will move forward in another dimension, feeling reality not through our animal nature, but through higher consciousness, through the information program that will be revealed to us. This degree has no relation to the current existence: It’s much higher.

Today, many scientists talk about this like many wise men of past generations. The only question is how can we achieve this? Can we reveal the higher reality? How can we reach the level of universal Nature and feel it the way it is?

First, we need to understand what Nature is. By its actions, we see that it controls us by two forces: pleasure and pain. They are like two reins that constantly force us to pull towards pleasures and escape from the blows.

For example, I assume the most comfortable position possible in the current circumstances. I process a lot of data: the state of health, the shape of a chair, the status of the people around me, etc., and as a result, the body is arranged with the greatest possible comfort. This happens every second of my life—in desires, thoughts and actions. How can I rise above this control?

Exploring Nature, I discover that there is a single unique law acting in it: the law of universal balance. Nature strives for balance and gradually brings all its parts into balance, to calm, to a state of rest. It all leads to the greatest possible order, according to global relationships—from the Big Bang through the connection of cells in highly organized forms of life.

All of Nature lives in balance, and only the human being began to break away from this framework around three and a half thousand years ago. He started to apply his mind to use the others, to rule over them, and this addition violated his balance with Nature.

However, we can compensate for this evil force of development with the good force, which we will reveal in the same Nature. The negative force acts on us instinctively and beyond our control: We have to counterbalance it with the positive force, which we will obtain consciously. And this is possible due to the influence of the environment, because desiring to be better and higher than the rest, I am thus dependent on the society. And besides that, I depend on it to satisfy my basic needs. Thus, I have to use the environment, to establish contact with it, so that it brings me the positive force. And then I will control my life.

Thus, it is not by chance that a human was not created alone, but as a collective being and was placed in the environment of other people. Through them, he can be brought up. Indeed, unlike animals, which don’t require upbringing, a person must learn from the environment many factors in addition to those he was born with. The environment adds the positive force to my egoism, and we can manage our life, our destiny, with ease and comfort.

When we begin to relate appropriately to the existing possibilities, the program of Nature, its initial plan about us will be revealed. Thus, we rise to a new degree of knowledge and consciousness, which lies above our current life. Detached from the corporeal existence, we rise in our desires and thoughts to the eternal flow of information, and we will live in it. No matter what happens to my body, I will live in this stream of consciousness characteristic of Nature and all its developmental levels.

This is the degree of the Human Being (Adam) who is similar (Domeh) to the Creator. After all, the Creator is the great program that exists above us and which we continue to attain, ascending higher and higher.
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From Lectures in Colombia 4/29/12, “Group and Spiritual Development” 

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There is no schedule or exact timeframe set for our development, understanding, persuasion, analysis, and self-correction so that from being egoists we will become altruists, permeated with love and concern for one another. Don’t wait for some time period or change of generations because changes can happen in our generation. Everything depends upon one’s readiness and the extent of his desire to change.

As we have learned from the studies of free will, our desire depends entirely on our environment. We have to work together. A person can’t work on himself by himself and convince himself of something; this never bring any positive results. We have to build an environment, a society, which will influence us, and then everyone will change. So go ahead and build this great environment for all of us! With the help of this environment we will become convinced of the necessity of this path and will quickly wish to change and become connected through mutual guarantee.

As a result, the environment will influence us with such intensity that changes will take on a flying speed. After all, these changes don’t depend on our timeframe.

The still, vegetative, and animal levels of nature evolved over billions of years. This is the process of the egoism’s development. We aren’t responsible for this process; we only actualize it more and more in accordance with our growth.

However, right now the intensity and the speed of development is in our hands. Everything depends upon the environment, and I can artificially build it, constantly improving it so that it will become greater and stronger in its influence over me. Here I need people of the arts, scientists, sociologists, and psychologists. I must use all that exists in humanity in order to create an intense and effective influence. Then we will experience a happy life in this generation and see the good that we’ll leave for our children. 

If we separate human desires within this context, we can then say that they divide into two parts: individual desires that relate to a human being personally, and social desires. A person should limit his individual desires to the point that allows him or her to lead a normal life. However, a person should develop his social desires as much as possible, starting from a small circle of friends and then expand it, until the influence of the environment will help him develop to the level of good relations, responsibility, concern, mutual guarantee, and love for the entire world. 

One has to understand that by exiting one’s egoism and by becoming more concerned with building mutual relationships with the widening circles of humanity, he obtains more wisdom and deeper sensations; he includes everyone within and thereby senses all of reality and all of nature. This way one opens for himself a new reality, world—he lives in it by exiting himself and sensing everyone. This constitutes life on the human level, which nature prepared for us. Through this we realize ourselves correctly here, in this world.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 11, 01/09/12

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