The ecological catastrophe that we face is the result of an endless pursuit of revenue accumulated through selling products and the competition of billion-dollar bank accounts. We had the illusion that this would never end, but now it is over; there are no more consumers left and we have nowhere to move forward.

The crisis manifests itself in education, culture (interrelations), and ongoing difficulties when it comes to satisfying of our immediate needs. Manufacturers still have the potential to develop, but there is almost nobody who is able to buy their goods. Large pools of the population of Western countries who lost their income cannot purchase goods at the same rate they used to. Previously, goods were produced and consumed within a complete monetary-commodities cycle. Now, the cycle is broken.

At some point capitalists arrived at the wrong decision: They started to play with finances alone, separate from products. A large, inflated “bubble” was created adding its contribution to the overall crisis. Because the bubble is devoid of real content, it is blown up with the help of advertising and a game that takes place between various banks and financial systems.

Thus, in all spheres of human activity, in education, culture, interpersonal relationships, people are not able to live as they used. Humanity is helpless.

Let’s take Spain as an example: Young people who received a university education in Europe cannot find jobs; they cannot marry because they have no ability to provide for their families, nor can they make progress in their professions. Everybody wants to put their knowledge into practice, have a family, buy a house, etc., but nobody needs them. People cannot realize themselves; they cannot find a place for themselves anywhere; they cannot lead a normal life. All they have is unemployment and uncertainty.

This is spreading around the world. A person has no solution in a situation where I care only about myself and do not care about the world; if we don’t care about others, we cannot provide others with a means of subsistence. We do not care about each other; therefore, on one hand, we toss out a huge amount of surplus goods, and on the other hand, the surplus does not get to the correct destinations where they are desperately needed. Our ego doesn’t allow us to take care of others. Only if we feel a threat do we begin satisfying their needs.

As another example, let’s look at Africa, which once produced many products and developed remarkably. But then the Europeans began dumping their imports there with slashed prices. This destroyed the local market; Africans stopped producing staple goods; people abandoned their previous jobs and professions. Later on the same companies that artificially lowered prices while introducing their products started to raise them once the local competition was eliminated. As a result, Africans were left without mean, and their impoverished situation persists to this day.

There are very harsh conditions in the world and they are exacerbated by a deepening global crisis. It impacts both developed countries and Third World nations, some of which are only beginning to develop. All of it is caused by human egoism. But we are also already feeling that we are connected: We are all floating in one boat; if someone damages the boat, it affects everyone. We cannot advance. Our egoism works like a boomerang and hits every single one of us.

In Europe, it appears in a very peculiar way. In order to achieve power and success, European nations initiated mutually beneficial connections, and it is impossible to break them apart. Severing them would cause complete obliteration. Consequently, instead of a common market, joint production, and a united society, we witness a dangerous state, which doesn’t allow anybody to move a finger without the consent of others.

We’ve already approached the necessity of taking each other into consideration. Even though European history is filled with wars and conflicts and numerous counts of tragic events, slaughters, and the subjugation of one nation by another…still, today there is no other way for Europeans but to transition to cooperation even though it will yet be originated by hatred and indifference. It’s not enough just to reckon with others; we see that it doesn’t work. It gradually becomes clear that a common market doesn’t tolerate old economic laws that are built on an egoistic foundation. The old system is not functional any more.

Today, both human nature and the environment bring up a new condition: Egoistic compassion doesn’t work; we have to implement love to our neighbors.

It’s hard to pronounce these words. They seem so unrealistic, so far from us. Our hearts reject them.

However, we will continue to approach this state if we manage to attract the compelling force upon us. Today, Nature forces us to gain love for our neighbors since the only alternative to it is death from hunger, disease, and cataclysms. It’s our duty to form an alternate force that would oblige us to move towards mutual love.

What kind of force is that? It is our surroundings that are organized in a way that pushes us to unite even more so than ecology, economics, education, possible lack of food supply, etc. do. Society must be strong enough to sustain our egoistic nature, impose a new type of relations among us, and thus lead us from one edge to another—from hatred to love.
From KabTV’s: “A New Life” Episode 13, 1/11/12

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Opinion (Natalia Shlemova, Moscow State Pedagogical University): “The main problem of the whole system of Russian education, from preschool to higher education, is that it does not teach people to think, does not teach to understand. Due to the absence of such methodology and dialogic structure, the education system is authoritarian, designed for passive acceptance of information by students. It lacks algorithms, mechanisms, and paradigms of understanding, creative awareness, and development of acquired knowledge.

“The collapse of the system of secondary and higher education reflects the final stage of the global crisis of human nature.

“The breakdown of the education system, the core of a developed society, indicates a serious failure in the mental evolution of the human race, while the development of the mental body of the entire humanity is the main task at this stage of its evolution.”

My Comment: The transition to a new stage of development involves the negation of the old, up to a state of being unable to exist in it, as well as a new vision: clear, obvious, not far-fetched, practically perceived, planned, calculated, not revolutionary and violent, but based on necessity. Almost everyone denies what exists, but does not see its replacement. Our dissemination of integral upbringing should become more specific.
[73593]

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Nature will not change. It guided us for thousands of years in the development of our egoism until the point where our egoism became integral. We cannot do anything about it.

It is illustrated by recent events in Europe. There was a multitude of thoughts and agendas on how to divide Europe, European market, and the commonwealth anew—to separate and part ways to make it easier to bear economic problems of each country.

However, it proved impossible, and as a result Europe took the direction toward further integration and deepening of mutual relations. This decision came about literally in a matter of the past few months since no one had wanted it before. It’s simply impossible to separate even a single country. The separation of Greece, Spain, or Portugal from Europe will cost much more; it is by all means more beneficial to maintain the unity. It is being calculated and decided on the highest levels.

It turns out that we have arrived at such a state where we are obligated to be correctly and integrally interconnected. As to how to achieve it, we do not know. But, perhaps, if we do find out how to solve it, we will overcome all the crises: the family, economic, education, societal, governmental, and global crises.

Hence, the problem lies within man: How do we change ourselves to be in homeostasis, in balance with Nature? The fact is that the main law of Nature is the law of balance. Nature constantly gravitates to equilibrium. It’s the law of physics.

The equilibrium is supported by Nature on all levels: the still, vegetative, and animate levels. And only man breaks this law with his excessive egoism: He consumes more than he contributes, pollutes more than nature can reclaim, and so on.

This violation of the law of balance is basically the problem of our crisis today.

How do we reach balance? It can be done only if we begin to correct man himself. Therefore, the problem lies in man—in his correction. Furthermore, this problem is large and global. If we do not desire to be similar to nature, if we don’t want to consume only to the extent to which we contribute, nature will force us toward this through the crises.

We see that every day hundreds of thousands of people become unemployed because we do not need the majority of the production; it was excessive. We were producing absolutely unnecessary things or making them become obsolete sooner so we could produce, sell, and profit more.

Ultimately, if we ourselves do not curtail production to the necessary, reasonable level so as to exist sensibly, nature compels us to do it through the crisis. Unwillingly, we find ourselves unprepared, thrown out onto the street. Thus we see what is happening with the entire humanity.

The world is enveloped in a severe crisis. If we do not take it under control, then within this year we will see what terrible consequences it can still prepare for us. Hundreds of millions of people will lose their jobs, and we’re not ready for it.

What are we to do with them if, say, we come to a state where we indeed do not need any excessive production? With the modern technology people don’t have to work as much. At a maximum, 10% of the population can provide the entire planet with food, clothes, shoes, and everything else that is necessary if they work approximately two hours a day. What will people do with the rest of their time?

Here, we arrive at an interesting conclusion: Man must work, but not manually and not to produce the material product, but to produce the internal and spiritual product. He has to reform himself into an integral part of society and nature. Thus he will generate positive energy and will put himself, society, and nature into balance. Then we will receive from nature the right bestowal and will be interconnected with it correctly.

Many scientific articles cover this topic. Many distinguished experts with whom we established contact are working on it.
[73540]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/22/12, Preliminary Lesson

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As of today, we are still on the level of the animate development. We have passed the still, vegetative, and animate levels of development and have not reached the level of “Human” yet. The level of “Human” is the collective image in which we are all tied together integrally.

What does the integral connection give us? Why does nature push us in that direction by its law of balance, obliging us to connect?

Today we perceive the world through our five senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. If we are connected integrally, we will begin to feel both ourselves and others as if one integral whole, and a new sensation of “we” will appear in us.

This new integral sensation, this new sensor, will enable us to feel the integral nature. We will begin to feel the force of nature, which surrounds, drives, and manages us and which gives rise to all phenomena. It is the force that determines our future, our fate.

We begin to feel the flow of life—the past, the present, and the future—as one flow of information. This is what we can feel when we acquire an integral connection with others. By that a person rises to a level that is higher than his beastly body and begins to feel what exists beyond matter—the forces, the currents that exist outside us, above us.

This is called the level of “Human,” the level of additional information, that which determines our entire life. Nature pushes us towards this level so that we will know the meaning of our life and its purpose. This is what the integral connection between us gives us.

So, we face a very interesting problem that seems to have an easy solution. But although the solution is at hand’s reach, it totally contradicts our ego.

This is why we are concerned with spreading this knowledge that reduces suffering: We want to start feeling this necessity not by suffering but by recognition; we want to understand why everything happens the way it does in advance. When a person begins to see that the world is global, why and how he is interconnected, he already begins to foresee the events and to understand what and how should happen if we act one way or another.

We hope that this method will become the method of making new decisions, and that humanity will be able to come out of the crisis—not only the economic crisis but the general crisis as well.

The crisis is actually the birth of a new state. It is like labor pains, when the baby makes an effort to come out of the womb, into our world. We too are currently going through the same turning point in our awareness, in our understanding of the world and of ourselves.
[73525]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/22/12, Preliminary Lesson

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The fact is that by constantly developing, the ego was pushing us forward. We always wanted something new and were always chasing something. But today the ego has become flat; it has reached its maximum and, most importantly, become global. It has retired into its own shell.

As a result, we have become closed between ourselves and totally dependent on one another. We have created a closed analog system between us in which everyone is so dependent on others that through a chain of four acquaintances each of us is connected to all the people in the world. What’s more, today there is no need to fight: It’s enough to cut off a certain country from the mutual cooperation with other countries, and it will immediately collapse because it cannot exist on its own.

This was never the case before. A country could isolate itself and be independent. It could survive on its own. It had enough resources to produce energy, food, and everything the population needed, and there were no special problems.

But today we cannot do anything if we are not connected to tens of other countries. We have to buy, sell, and exchange goods, to constantly receive, send, and so on. We’ve become global, we’ve become closed. It wouldn’t be a problem if at the same time we were changing ourselves.

So, we have remained the same individualistic egoists while the world has become global and closed. Hence the discrepancy between the two systems.

On one hand, there is a discrete system, in which each of us wants to live alone: “I don’t need a family. I don’t need children. I don’t need anyone. I want to be independent and not depend on anyone.” This is how our ego speaks today. On the other hand, nature shows us the opposite: You are totally dependent on everyone. You cannot exist by yourself. You must be connected to everyone, and not only you, but your society, your state, and the whole world.”

This is the contradiction between the two systems: the general system we are in and our personal, individual, internal, system. This is the crisis since the two systems cannot work together. And this is what we feel.

So how can this problem be solved?
[73547] 
From the Vilnius Convention 3/22/12, Preliminary Lesson  

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In a way, we have always known what to do and where to go. Nature has always pushed us from behind: We wanted to evolve, to do more and to expand, to develop science and technology—everything we could.

Today we don’t want anything. We got stuck, turned silent. Our ego, which throughout history was humanity’s driving force, has ceased to work. It doesn’t evoke any urges or impulses in us, it doesn’t push us forward. We’ve been through many changes in society, we’ve developed, built, created, and made revolutions. Humanity has constantly tried to do something, to move forward. We were searching.

Today there is no search. There is no paradigm of thinking, no accurate, clear plan of what we want and in which direction to develop. This is what characterizes our times.

The main problem is that it applies to everyone. There was never something like this in history. All the countries and continents: Oceania, Asia, North and South America, Europe, the Far East, Japan, China, and Africa, all have all developed in their own way, at their own pace and were not dependent on one another.

Suddenly we’ve become so dependent that this problem has become global. We find ourselves in a world where everything is mutually connected. We don’t want it, but the mutual connection is so strong that it manifests daily and affects virtually each of us. If something happens somewhere in the world, it is surely and immediately reflected on us. We see what is happening in the stock markets in New York, Tokyo, Germany, or Frankfurt, what is happening with the oil or metals.… If there is an earthquake, a hurricane, or a volcano that erupts somewhere, it is reflected on everyone. We are in such a changing world that we cannot even imagine what to do next.

If we draw a simple graph of the development of the ego on a time axis, we will see that we used to develop more or less evenly. Only in the 20th century has our ego grown very sharply. We have made a breakthrough in every aspect of life: in technology, education, and upbringing, in developing the lands and conquering space. Suddenly we find ourselves on a “landing.” We’ve achieved the maximum of our ego, and it doesn’t push us anywhere anymore. We’ve reached this state since the end of the last century.

This is a very serious problem, which great men and great minds are dealing with. But today we are starting to research and understand it, and are beginning to realize what has happened.
[73550] 
From the Vilnius Convention 3/22/12, Preliminary Lesson 

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Today, we will talk about the crisis that affects all of humanity and of its possible solution that the method of integral upbringing affords.

Humanity has entered a difficult period and turned into such a state that it feels completely lost.

At the very least, people who are concerned with society, family, education, upbringing, and public, governmental, and social problems; they cannot find solutions to the problems that arise in every individual, society, and government activities. We find ourselves in a state that we cannot understand.

However, in recent years (70-80 years), scientists have been suspecting what was going on. Starting with the 1920s, the first articles appeared suggesting that the world was entering a completely different area of development, that it was rising to a totally different level: the level of integral development. Many researchers wrote about this. In the 1960s, the famous Club of Rome talked about this, as well as by many researchers and organizations.

And today in the process of the crisis, we came to a very deep state from which we cannot find the way out.

Previously the crisis touched only the problems of raising and educating children. We were unhappy with what was happening, but somehow put up with it, although we saw that the schools did not educate children, that our children suffered from bullying, violence, and abuse at school. But we tolerated that.

Then, we began to notice how people suddenly stopped caring about the family and the family started to disintegrate, which didn’t happen 100 to 200 years ago. Throughout human history, it was accepted that a person lived in a family with his parents and then created his own family; then, his children did, and they were all united in a common home, but now everything is undergoing a critical decline. People began to divorce, children to move away from their parents, people don’t want to get married or raise a family. This is also a crisis because this phenomenon is not natural for us, people.

And what will happen to future generations? We are already facing a demographic problem where the elderly outnumber the young. And who knows who will provide for them in old age. What will happen to you if you do not have children? Who will support you?

People do not even think that one generation supports the other. At least, three generations are necessary: the elderly, the parents, and the children so that they support, educate each other, pass along knowledge, care for the household; the young care for the elderly, and the elderly convey their experience and life values. There is nothing like that.

Then, there are problems with drugs and depression, depression that is so strong that doctors today consider it the number one disease of the century, not only the disease in itself, but also its consequences. The cause, the root, of the majority of the diseases in the world is depression, intense anxiety, detachment, and helplessness.

The latest crisis involves a crisis in science, education, in all things. The crisis in science began from the point that we stopped believing in science. Once, we thought that through science we would reach a good life, conquer space, settle on other planets and have unlimited possibilities ahead. And suddenly, we closed all the space programs; we are no longer interested in space exploration; we do not think that we can find anything there. In the end, everything is slowing down. A person feels depressed; He does not want anything.

The latest crisis is the economic crisis. It is the hardest and  most difficult because it affects all aspects of our lives. Food, healthcare, heating, security, everything depends on the economy. But the economy refuses to work; it no longer works and we don’t know why. Companies close, financial “bubbles” inflated, and all manner of mishandling of money occur. And everything that was supposed to develop well, to our benefit, turns against us.

But what is interesting is that no one can deal with it, neither eminent economists nor politicians, but we are all willing to help them because we will not survive without the economy. It turns out that we do not know what to do. A huge number of high-ranking politicians, heads of states, the G8, G20 get together and can solve nothing. They do not know what to do.
[73554]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/22/12, Preliminary Lesson

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Recently, a new wide-ranging and profoundly deep step of egoistic development has begun. It is based on the relationships that gave rise to industry and international trade. Business owners in industrial countries began to realize that if they outsourced production to China or India, they could save a lot of money on labor costs. Gradually, they transferred their enterprises to the Third World countries, trained local workers, and started operating.

As a result, on one hand, these endeavors significantly increased profits, but on the other hand, Western countries deprived themselves of their prior “content.” Do owners of enterprises care about people who have been recently fired and became unemployed? “Let politicians worry about them; our task is to earn money.”

Consequently, governments were forced to take care of billions of people who couldn’t earn a living. Western countries started to get poorer, their indebtedness grew rapidly, and they started to print money that was not backed by real value. Previously, money was tied to gold and represented real wealth. Not any more. It so happened that flourishing Western nations grew poorer. Poverty is not yet obvious, but processes accumulate and gradually reveal themselves.

The worst thing that happened is that internationally known business people became even richer due to outsourcing to poorer countries; their level of influence upon their governments in Europe and America increased dramatically. Thus, egoistic values (money) crawled to the top of the human pyramid. Those people acquired power over everything. It resulted in the current financial and economic crisis. This is where our egos lead us.

Developed industrial countries lost their social structure, which was totally destroyed by the impoverishment of multiple layers of the society. This situation negatively impacted education and various other types of social relations.

Eventually, we arrived at a general global crisis.  Nowadays, reciprocal interconnection is imperative; “rich” countries mainly consume, whereas poor countries manufacture the goods for consumption. They became inseparably linked into one network. Everything that is produced in Third World countries has to find its buyer in industrially developed countries. But the number of potential buyers constantly decreases since people in Western countries get poorer. As a result, the world crisis spreads and deepens.
From KabTV’s: “A New Life” Episode 13, 1/11/12

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Opinion (A. Gilyarov, professor Moscow State University): “Environmentalists say that the pace and extent of the decline of biological diversity are comparable to those that accompanied the major mass extinctions of the past geologic ages. There are five known extinctions: The first one was over 443 million years ago; the last one took place already in the Cretaceous period about 65 million years ago, when 40% of all animal families and 70% of the species were wiped out within 2.5 million years. All five previous mass extinctions were caused by natural disasters. But the calamities ended, and new generations of organisms began to populate territories. They had room to settle, live, and evolve.

“The current situation is fundamentally different. The causes of this extinction are associated with the extraordinary evolutionary success of only one species – Homo sapiens. Their number does not correspond to their size and the characteristics of their life cycle (late achievement of sexual maturity, low fertility, and so on). However, due to his extraordinary competitiveness, owning to the development of the brain, the human being has surpassed not only all primates, but also all mammals.

“The cause of the crisis of biodiversity is the human destruction of natural habitats of plants and animals in order to cultivate their desired monoculture in the liberated territories. But even if measures to protect the remaining species are taken, they have nowhere to settle!”

My Comment: There is no rational solution; however, if we reach balance with nature in an integral relationship with each other, we will stop being a cancerous tumor, devouring everything around it, and nature will be restored on all the lower levels.
[73512] 

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Opinion (Andrew Roberts, PhD, British historian and journalist): “Nothing is inevitable. It was the first truth I was taught as a Cambridge undergraduate in the 1980s, and it has been italicized and underlined for me by everything I have learnt since. …The whole of human history is testament to the fact that vast sections of mankind can seem to be progressing towards what looks like an established goal, only to get sidetracked into cul-de-sacs, sometimes for decades, occasionally for centuries. So why do we still assume that an eventual return to any significant economic growth in the European Union is inevitable?

“…the leading thinkers of the Whig and Marxist historical determinist school who infected mankind with the concept that we were ‘progressing’ somewhere, moving towards a fixed, positive future point. In economics, that idea is encapsulated in the assumption of economic growth as a kind of manifest destiny, almost the birthright of the species.

“By contrast the EU is giving off the strong historical whiff of an empire plateauing out into long years of relative stagnation… Birth rates, defense expenditures, bond prices, welfare spending versus wealth creation; everything that historians look to in order to gauge the health of empires suggests that Europe’s fire has gone out.”

My Comment: Following the EU, the crisis will spread around the world. All countries will go through their stages of stagnation. What lies ahead is the realization of the need for a different development, not material, which is limited by our planetary possibilities and tiredness from material achievements. The only solution is to develop on a new, non-material dimension: the revelation of the hidden forces of nature, the discovery of the purpose of our existence and its attainment. Humanity simply has no other incentive to exist.
[73400]

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