Question: What will happen to family businesses tomorrow? We see in Europe that bakeries which existed for four hundred years have gone through all the crises and continued operating until now.

Answer: Family businesses will exist as long as there is a family, because the family is the foundation of human society. I don’t think it will disappear. Now we are going through a difficult stage of family disintegration, but family businesses, both major companies and small private enterprises, are the basis of the system.

On whom else can you rely? Whom can you trust? It is the relatives and close people to whom you already are willing to give and help. That is why the family business will continue to be an indicator of stability.

Women can also join it because they strengthen businesses even further. The woman is the key to its existence.
[109165]
From KabTV’s “Through Times” 3/20/13

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Question: In the workshop on the subject of integral unity for married couples, the question was asked: “What do women want from men?” And one of the women said: “I want my husband to survive through all my states.” What does that mean?

Answer: A woman expects fulfillment from a man. She relates to a man as to her source of mental, spiritual, and psychological fulfillment. In some way, she begins to grasp the world through her husband, through the man. It’s specifically what she is waiting for and wants. Without that she doesn’t feel that she is connected to the world, to life as it should be. It’s as if she has no base point, a point of support.

Psychologically, a woman wants to be next to a man who will be as a source of inner fulfillment. For this she is ready to give everything material, everything external, in order to receive from him what she is not able to create herself, meaning mental, spiritual, and psychological fulfillment.

While the man, on the contrary, doesn’t need mental, spiritual, or psychological fulfillment from the woman. He needs support on the regular corporeal level. And thus they come in contact with each other. This is the way nature created us.
[107116]
From a Talk on Integral Education 4/4/13

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In the News (from NaturalNews): “An unusual scientific experiment involving the hormone oxytocin sheds new light on the dynamics of relationship. Known as the ‘trust hormone,’ oxytocin is usually associated with childbirth, lactation and bonding. Researchers are now studying the influence oxytocin has on happiness and contentment as well as harmony in partnerships.

“Created in the hypothalamus region of the brain, oxytocin is responsible for a sense of love, connectedness and kindness. Research has also found the hormone to be involved in feelings of fulfillment and well-being.

“Another study shows how an oxytocin nasal spray can help reduce conflict within marriage. Researchers at the University of Zurich observed 47 couples ranging in age from 20 to 50 who were either married or cohabiting for at least a year. Each couple chose an issue where they disagreed. The participants then self-administered a five spray dose of either oxytocin or a placebo. The couples were left alone to discuss the contentious topic while the researchers filmed the interaction. Saliva samples were also taken throughout the experiment to gauge nervous system activity.

“Compared to those who received the placebo, women who were given the oxytocin spray had a significant drop in nervous system activity whereas in men, it rose. Women became more sociable; men demonstrated heightened positive behavior.

“Kavita Vedhara, a professor of health psychology at Nottingham University, comments on the outcome of the study:

“‘What they have shown is that oxytocin appears to reduce women’s emotional and physiological arousal following verbal conflict, but that the drug has the opposite effect on men, increasing both their emotional and physiological arousal. It is not clear if the increased emotion in men was always positive, but it was certainly associated with more positive behaviors during the conflict situation.’”

My Comment: Undoubtedly, it’s possible to produce lots of various hormones that will turn us into zombies with a happy smile for any occasion. But nature aims at correcting egoism that has been deliberately created in us, not at providing pain relief for it. In the end, this experiment will reveal its special terrible consequences, and still nature will prevail and force us to re-educate ourselves in a sober state by means of the Integral Upbringing.
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Question: According to the method of integral upbringing, men and women should have a warm, good, and kind relationship. But in experience we see that the woman is never satisfied and is always pressuring the man. What is the right way to work with this state?

Answer: During workshops, it’s necessary to discuss how men and women properly complement one another on different levels. I think that as a consequence of integral upbringing, they will reach a level of mutual understanding when they will no longer separate things into “this is your responsibility and this is mine.” Gradually, people will mutually begin to combine and redistribute responsibilities and mutual help, and then everyone will clearly see how easy it is to do it.

There is no place here for demands. Demands appear when one of the sides lacks understanding of what its part is and what it ought to do.

Personally, even though I, in general, understand human nature, I had problems with my wife until we started doing 40 minute morning walks, during which we calmly discussed all our issues. Talking during walks helped us better understand one another. In addition, we have an agreement not to argue and not to demand anything from one another. We are constantly moving above our natural qualities and, in this way we reach the proper understanding of any circumstances.

However, the problem is that people do not have time for this. I think that, during the workshops, we need to teach people how to find time for this type of communication. Let us hope that people will have enough free time for this in the near future. But we will still need to organize them.

Even my teacher compelled all of his students to spend at least fifteen minutes a day calmly discussing the method and the conditions of their mutual development with their wives. This is very serious, social work. If we also did this with children, if we were to hold round tables in our families, the world would be a different place.
[107111]
From a Talk About Integral Upbringing 4/4/13

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Question: During the process of integral education for married couples, very interesting processes happen. In the beginning, a new feeling of closeness, euphoria develops between the husband and wife. But after two to three months, they feel anger or even hatred for one another.

Answer: They need to discuss this problem. After all, mutual repulsion is the most natural subject because our egoism grows. Through our attempts to connect we develop our ego, and it begins to grow specifically against the unity. This is a new ego, which didn’t exist previously—it hadn’t manifested in people in any form. And it’s being revealed now.

Today, each couple needs to learn how to work with their shared ego. Each one needs to understand his partner since in each of them manifests the ego and the anger towards the spouse, and they need to help each other through their mutual connection.

When a couple dances, the right side of one of the partners is facing the left side of the other partner and vice versa. This is how we need to help, to complement each other, and then we will have a harmonic dance. And if you annoy me, then all right, let’s both of us rise above that. If from my side comes rigidness, then from the other side needs to come tenderness. This is how it happens: The right hand against the left, and in this way we complement each other. After all, embracing is also similar to this.

A person is built in such a way that he constantly interacts with others not by the same but rather opposite attributes. Then the “convex” part fits into the “concave” part and contact is made; that is, the male and female parts as if connect with each other. The contact can be only between the plus and minus since the pluses and minuses repel one another. This is something that has to be learned.
[106999]
From a Talk on Integral Education 4/4/13

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Question: In integral education, we assign couples to systematically do unity exercises. A little later, when they come together, we discover that all couples understand the assignment differently.

Answer: Very well! Let them discuss it and complement one another. This will be very interesting because now every one of them will be able to understand other people on the street and anywhere else. They will become top psychologists.

Comment: But this is where it stops, people restrain themselves, for we teach them that it is forbidden to share personal experiences.

Answer: There is nothing personal here. A person rises above himself.

What is personal in going to the doctor and telling him that my stomach hurts and that my stool is loose, excuse me for saying this. And here I say: “I am incredibly irritated and I hate him.” It’s the same thing, but on a different level. What is unnatural and personal, human about this?

A person has received all of this from nature. Only when it comes to the corporeal level, he received problems with food intolerance, and here he also has received the same problems with “food intolerance,” but on the spiritual level, and is unable to tolerate another person. Here it’s not a piece of meat that he is unable to tolerate, but his partner. It’s the same thing! And we must very naturally turn ourselves inside out in every case.

This is why we rise above ourselves and learn about us, this is the real self analysis. This is exactly what we need to reach, otherwise we will not know how to connect between ourselves. All of us need to be this kind of psychologist, and even more than a regular psychologist.

We begin to discover that we and the society are a single organized system: how to enter it, how to build it, and how to be interconnected. We must feel where nature has allocated a niche for every one of us, how we have to communicate with one another.

Here we cannot do without at least gradually beginning to open up to other people.
[106996]
From a Talk on Integral Upbringing, 04/04/2013

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Question: Today people feel the gap between real life and their psychological well-being. I remember our grandparents didn’t experience this discrepancy. Meanwhile, for a contemporary person (even if he has a family) a good psychological atmosphere is separated from the material well-being. Is there a way to demonstrate that these things are nevertheless connected?

Answer: It doesn’t matter if they are strangers to each other or a family. They still have to attend the same seminars, listen to the same explanations, thus rising above their egoism.

Before, our egoism was not as big as it is now! Once upon a time there lived “a husband and wife”; they had a “hen” (meaning a household, a home, a vegetable garden, etc). A husband worked, his wife took care of the home. It was an old-fashioned household arrangement. The family life revolved around the home, community, children, and so on.

Today, it’s nothing like that. At this time, we all work for somebody else, for some society, for something unintelligible. In the morning, we take our kids to kindergartens, then we rush to our jobs, and after we are done for the day, we head to supermarkets…. From there, we run back home, quickly warm food, feed everybody as soon as possible, wash the kids, and go to bed. The next day, we repeat the same pattern.

Is it similar in any way to the previous way that family life was set up? Before, people used to have a home, a household. Today, we only call it a household. Everybody has individual possessions; even spouses have separate bank accounts.

So, we have to teach people at our seminars to rise above their egoism and unite beyond it. Otherwise, family will cease to exist since our egoism cuts us off from others, pushes us aside, while we take no action in response. And the state officials cannot do anything here. Two egoists cannot be forced to stay in one territory.

Why do I need a family? I go to work and earn my own money; I don’t need anyone! If I need to, in the evening I can bring home whoever I want. I can go to a supermarket, buy ready-made foods, warm them in microwave, and eat them for dinner. The whole arrangement serves the purpose of allowing everybody to live separately. Manufacturers of consumer goods get maximum benefits if there is only one person in the household since two single people will buy more of everything: refrigerators, TV sets, and washing machines.…
[105212]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” 4/2/13

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Question: How does the world of business need to be linked to family based on laws of the integrality of nature?

Answer: We are presently in such a transition where the masses still aren’t incorporated in integral education. Thus, in the meantime, it is hard for us to talk about this subject. However, let’s imagine that tomorrow during the afternoon break, we were to hold a workshop at the factory where a few married couples would take part. They would share ideas about how to solve various problems and help each another solve problems that they face.

The issue is that there are things that, in principle, we cannot change in ourselves, but we can change our attitude toward them. We ask the participants in the discussion to change their approach, to be more tolerant, understanding, compassionate, cooperative, and so forth.

This is the first goal that we need to attain in family workshops. Through discussing all kinds of questions together, people begin to understand that these kinds of problems exist for everyone, and this calms them, reduces the heat of passion by half. When I see that the same thing happens to everyone, then I relax: “What can be done? Everyone lives like that.”

Secondly, people really give each other very interesting advice.

During the discussions, each one suddenly begins to listen to what he hadn’t listened to previously. When both of them, the husband and wife, rise and together express their opinions, then a stronger connection is created between them. They begin to feel the strength as a couple facing all the others. This unites them, gives them a very strong feeling of identification! Afterward, they become something completely different.

Thus, events like these are very helpful, especially as they rise. At the beginning in the workshops, it is possible to talk about all kinds of different things, except for problems that are of a severe nature, like drugs or adultery. In reference to these kinds of problems that are difficult to solve, one needs to approach carefully and over time. However, in the end, finding their solution is also possible through the connection in the integral way.

Integral workshops change people and bring them together.

Question: Is it worthwhile to work together with your wife in the same place of business or to be partners in a business?

Answer: If it is the couple’s personal business, then it’s worthwhile.

As to working at the same company, what happens is that, when people begin to participate in the integral connection, their personal relationships are eliminated and above that, collective relationships begin to rise because they have a space for emotions that are completely different—not flat or linear. Thus, I don’t see any problem with that.
[101467]
From KabTV’s “Professional Secrets” 2/8/13

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Question: You speak about self-annulment as a means for growing and advancing. However, don’t concessions during an argument usually show that I am weak?

Answer: I certainly don’t concede because of weakness, but because I want to advance in my marital relationship with and in life in general.

In this way, I develop myself and approach a positive state. I gain by that since, by that, I expand and feel life more finely.

I give my spouse a cup of tea, but I don’t lose it, rather, I receive a cup that is twice as big. After all, by that, I acquire her desires, her aspirations, her dreams, and their fillings!

I enjoy the pleasure that she receives just like a mother enjoys the pleasure she gives her baby. We all know that a mother enjoys the sweet she brings her baby much more than the baby does.

Thanks to my concessions, I acquire new vessels, opportunities to feel pleasure. You may ask why people go to stadiums to cheer their favorite team if they can watch the game quietly at home on TV.

But in the stadium you are surrounded by thousands of people and so you enjoy the collective excitement, the incorporation. It expands your vessels of perception, your senses. You become as big as the thousands around you who are cheering and jumping.

I’m sure you agree that it isn’t the same as staying at home, lying on the couch, and watching a football game on TV.

Question: What will concessions at home bring to my success?

Answer: If you come home from work hungry, sit down to have dinner and your child asks you for a piece of what’s on your plate, you give it to him gladly, it isn’t a concession.

After all, you are acting according to your will. Must a mother go against her will in order to take care of her baby? If it were so, we would have to place a policeman next to every mother to make sure that the child doesn’t die of hunger.

So, such actions are not called self-annulment. However, if your wife asks you to do something and you feel reluctant, that is a different thing. In the first case, the self-annulment brings you pleasure, and in the second case, it is a burden.

There is no need to teach people how to concede to their beloved children. It happens naturally.

However, you must learn how to concede to your spouse so as to not act instinctively, but rather, to begin managing your own development by yourself.

Question: But if I concede, it means that I am not in control, but my wife is.

Answer: You will perceive it in a totally different manner. It all depends on how important you feel it is. If a baby were less important to a mother than herself, she would refuse to take care of him and would think about herself. However, because nature has made the baby more important to her than herself, the mother is ready to do anything for him.

Now, we must think about how to force ourselves to concede and to accept the desire of our spouse above our own desires. In order to do that, the reward that you get should be greater so that it will tilt the scale.

Suppose she says, “If you wash the dishes now instead of me, we will go together to where you wanted to go.” Then, you concede, wash the dishes, and you go out together. This means that the goal justifies the means. If that is so, we must increase the goal so that it will be the justification for our actions.

We need an environment that will value the goal and show us the advantages of advancing in this direction. Besides that, we also will see that we can avoid different problems that constantly trouble us if we follow this path.

All these claims should form such a connection that I will not be able to break the commitment to fulfill this. There must be constant social pressure that will sustain me and remind me that it is worthwhile to act this way.

Thus, I advance in every aspect: Internally, I develop my personality and improve my relationship with the environment, at work, and with the entire world. The main thing in this entire process is the influence of the environment since a person finds it hard to even lift a finger when his wife asks for it.

If he did something for himself, he wouldn’t encounter such problems. He would be ready to serve himself. However, to serve someone else and to accept the will of another is already a big problem. However, he must think right away about what he does this for and what he gains. The gain should be mutual. So, let’s agree and constantly act one with regard to the other. I am for you, and you are for me.
[101008]
From a “Talk About New Life” 7/25/12

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Question: What are actually the mutual concessions in the family that have to be established above our inner resistance? Is it something unusual?

Answer: We establish concessions on the basis of our understanding that we cannot change our character and that I don’t intend to correct or to break my partner. I don’t ask her to change in any way. We only base our relationship on mutual agreement and on mutual concessions.

I check to what extent I can concede and accept my partner’s opinion, although basically, according to my ego, I would not agree to that. But I understand that without concessions I will never be able to make any connections in the family or anywhere else. So I concede to some extent in order to create the “shared space” between us.

But I don’t annul myself or my partner, I concede but it doesn’t mean that I surrender. I have ascended above myself, but I did not erase myself. I understand that I don’t agree with my partner and at the same time I know that I have to accept her wishes, habits, and opinions above my desires, habits, and opinions.

It turns out that I keep my opinion and she keeps hers. But I consciously allow her to control me. On her part she does the same. It isn’t easy, but at the same time each of us doubles himself and we connect into one whole. I include everything that is in my wife, both the positive and the negative sides, and she also includes everything there is in me, both the positive and the negative sides.

Each one is ready to give up his own claims in order to accept his partner as superior, as the dearest friend. Thus each of us includes the other and this leads to a connection between us and even adhesion, which means a total incorporation of desires.

It is about gradual learning when a couple understands that they have reached a new era in their family relations, a new dimension of the perception of a relationship, of the other, of society, and of the world. A person begins to look at the world differently. He sees life and the secret of their existence.

Without this mutual incorporation, not a single living cell, a plant, an animal, or man will be able to evolve; life can go on only if each one allows the other to enter his space.

Here a person discovers the secret of life! He begins to feel how everything loves and breathes, how everything develops. He begins to develop only thanks to his concessions to others.

By himself he was a dead cell, but now he begins to absorb the whole world and becomes everything, at the same time everyone keeps his own boundaries without breaking or annulling them. It is a very important moment since people often regard concessions in the opposite sense, as giving up their desire and taking the risk of being immediately swallowed by someone else like a snake that swallows its prey.
[100887]
From a Talk About a New Life 7/25/13

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