Question: In the 1920’s and 30’s, a famous Soviet psychologist Vygotsky introduced a concept of a “zone of proximal development,” which, among other things, talks about the difference between an ideal “I” and the real “I.” If this zone becomes too big, then at some point contact between the two systems breaks and a person loses touch with reality. Deception and lies appear, which is what happened in Russia. Do you see any danger in the fact that there is too big of a difference between the ideal picture of an integral society and the real state of people?

Answer: Do you understand what a “natural necessity” is? If at that time all these ideas were simply desirable in Russia, in our current state they are absolutely necessary. If back then it was possible to create a capitalist society, and for those living in the demolished, impoverished, and dejected Russia a free, flourishing Western world seemed like paradise on earth, today this is no longer the case. Today, just one single picture appears before all of us: either absolute annihilation or constructive work on a new level.

This is why I emphasize that it is necessary to constantly galvanize this point in a person. Another solution just doesn’t exist.

Likewise, there is no other solution to the current European crisis. They are constantly trying to dodge it, to postpone decision making until future meetings, promising that they will think of something then. But, of course, there’s nothing to think of. Everything is heading G-d knows where because nobody can calculate and foresee the negative consequences of this never-ending story and the ensuing forced destruction.

There is no other way. That’s first.

And second, the rift. I think that here we must engage in serious work and, most importantly, to progressively develop society. We only have a single mechanism of influence on a person: the surrounding environment. Only the surrounding environment, no other possibility exists. Psychologists, sociologists, all that is good, but without the influence of a surrounding society on a personality, it won’t change, it won’t receive from them a purpose that will live within.

If some expert tells me about all this, I hear him or her out, become frightened for a moment, surprised, imbued with a concept, and I am ready to carry this out, to act and strive towards something right there and now. I make promises to myself. But afterwards, without the social, without the surrounding and obligating force I will never actually do it.

I require a society that would uphold this idea and a movement that would oblige me to its implementation by relying on my personal qualities such as envy, jealousy, the desire to elevate and realize myself, and the feeling of shame: Who am I compared to them, how do I appear in the eyes of my children and loved ones. Here we need to utilize all the resources available to us (and they are all egoistic since they exist around egoism) in order to compel a person to progressively penetrate into this consciously recognized necessity of an integral unification with others.

Specialists, psychologists should spearhead this, and behind them, a social wall, the mass media.
[67228]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” #6, 12/14/11

Related Material:
Exalt Personality
Coercion Or Realization?
The Transition To Bestowal As A Natural Process

Filed under: Education, Integral Upbringing, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: Freedom of will, is it one’s voluntary agreement to be a part of integral upbringing to become an integrated human being?

Answer: It is a realization of the necessity and the fact that there’s nothing but this.

Nobody wants this; after all, we’re all egoists. However, when you begin to study and to see where everything is headed, you begin to understand the importance, the necessity, and inevitability of the next state. You also begin to wonder what will happen if you choose to shut your eyes like a small child that denies the existence of something simply because he doesn’t see it.

If I approach this consciously, then I see the terrible suffering on all levels that are befalling to push me to it. This suffering is increasing gradually, not descending as a huge immediate blow. First there is a little prodding, and then it gets stronger and stronger. But, I can already imagine what it would be.

Now we have come to serious prodding. Just look at how many natural disasters, revolutions, and other difficulties we’ve had in the past year. People are even openly discussing the possibility of nuclear war, but they are talking about it too softly.
From a “Talk about the Integrated World” #12

Related Material:
Exalt Personality
The Future Lies In Integration
The Wisdom Of All Wisdoms

Filed under: Crisis, Integral Upbringing, Q&A, World - No Comments →

Question: It is one thing when I’m incidentally telling a person about my system of values while he or she simply listens attentively. It’s an entirely different thing when all of us together are building an ideal picture, like communists who sat around and imagined the ideal future. The problem was that this future proved to be too removed from real life.

Answer: Communists lacked a system for people’s upbringing. And upbringing, especially in Russia during that time, and in today’s Russia too, is an enormous problem because to this day people retained the psychology of slaves. It needs to be slowly restructured to exalt personality. Russia has all the prerequisites for that.

Even though the movement upward towards the human level, toward Adam, assumes a person’s complete dissolution in society, it simultaneously involves his or her growth as a personality. This is the contradiction that they tried to destroy during the Soviet regime because they couldn’t create a system of people’s education and upbringing where a person could be a personality, have their own opinion, and could realize all their potential. They tried to simply make a little screw out of a person: “You don’t have a head, the Party will do your thinking for you; you don’t have anything other than your two hands, so you just work and we will tell you what to do.”

This isn’t the image of Adam towards which we are striving. The attempts to neutralize egoism, to annihilate it, and to artificially implant altruism and self-sacrifice in its place—that is against nature.

Here we are talking about teaching a person to utilize all of his or her egoistic motives and impulses correctly.
[67233]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” #6, 12/14/11

Related Material:
Coercion Or Realization?
Aren’t We Slaves?
For Each The Right Environment

Filed under: Education, Integral Upbringing, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: Let’s say that a man and a woman in a group begin to discuss an integral future, the way they imagine this integral picture…

Answer: In order for them not to fantasize about an ideal picture hinging on material prosperity that they wouldn’t be able to secure for themselves, it is better that they proceed from the principle summarized in a Russian saying, “love makes a cottage a castle”: “Let’s build our own beautiful ‘castle.’”

Question: But “love makes a cottage a castle” is a purely psychological notion.

Answer: Of course! Nothing else is necessary. They will see that they can satisfy themselves with a minimum and at the same time be perfectly happy. They won’t keep destroying themselves in this pursuit of phantom abundance and instead will be able to build their happiness immediately. But for that they need to be very smart. To achieve that, it’s necessary to educate people and seriously pursue their upbringing, to pull them up to a very serious level.

Usually, a lot of the couples get to this point, except that it happens at a very old age. A state of mutual understanding, concessions, and permeation into one another emerges between them. They know each other’s weaknesses and habits; they understand that there are things that we cannot change about another person and thus, it isn’t necessary to try to do that; they begin to love each other’s weaknesses. But all this occurs with age, in other words, though the path of suffering because decades pass before it happens (if they pass without ending in divorce first).

We need to educate people about that.
[67238]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” #6, 12/14/11

Related Material:
Our Friend, Egoism
The Secret Of An Integral Family
Down With Loneliness!

Filed under: Education, Family, Integral Upbringing, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: Let’s assume that after certain preparation, people in a group of ten proceed to verbally build some shared ideal image of an integral future. And afterwards they begin to clarify which of their qualities hinder the realization of this image in reality.

Answer: First of all, I would take not just ten people but, say, a hundred. From this hundred I would select completely different individuals, simply a cross-section of society, top to bottom. I would constantly diversify the questions, answers, and discussions between them. I would give a lot of attention to scientists participating in this forum so that they, from their perspective, would constantly fortify us, regular people, with their conclusions that we have no choice and nature obliges us.

First and foremost, we should act on the premise that there is no other way out: We are obliged to arrive at this state! Otherwise we’ll still get there, but it will happen through the blows.

There are two paths towards the same goal: either through force or through our conscious realization. Moreover, the conscious path is short and comfortable.

The path of force means wars and annihilation. In the end, suffering will have to be so great that I will willingly wish to renounce my egoism. But this is a subconscious development, and moreover, egoism will continuously manifest more and more. In other words, I will have to go through unfathomable lifetimes, not just one life—both within myself, in my parents, and in my children—before humanity will realize, as a result of a few generations of tremendous suffering, that it must change its nature and become integral.

This is a path that awaits us if we proceed under the influence of the coercing force of nature. Scientists need to uncover, to illustrate with examples, with experience that this is in fact a law of nature and there is no way to evade this law.

This law is actualized in us with every passing day with greater and greater force. Its movement is accelerating, so we shouldn’t delay and put it off on our children. No way! In the upcoming few years, our state will fall short of tolerable if we ourselves won’t strive towards this.

On the flip side, these same scientists are saying that as soon as we change the vector of our development to a desirable one (which would be an integral society of the future), we will immediately begin to sense nature’s benevolent relationship towards us on all levels. This includes climate, health, family relationships, financial and psychological issues, and so on.

Positive and negative statistics can be collected here, taking two societies for comparison: one which continues to pressurize itself with its egoism and the other that develops integrally.

It certainly isn’t easy, but if we did that, we would make this discovery. Scientists are revealing these laws in practice even without any such experimental group. We need their help. We need psychologists, sociologists. After all, we develop by putting people of science on the front lines, and here it should be the same way.

We absolutely need to rely on scientific data and correspondingly, to invest financial means specifically into this research that is not yet being done today. This is why we don’t have sufficiently precise data and we cannot operate with numbers.

I know many people who think like us, who understand or are capable of understanding at least a part of the overall idea. The vast majority of them are scientists: biologists, physiologists, sociologists, and psychologists.

But we cannot yet translate this idea into numbers, into something explicitly evident, with which we could approach economists, political scientists, and so on. But among them there is a large number of people who understand that the future lies in absolute integration.

Question: A person performs many destructive acts that literally wreck their life. This is a destruction of oneself, of the children, and of those around him. I can converse with people in the group only in the aspect of psychology so that their connection will become kinder and they will be happier. The same thing can be done by, say, an economist or many other specialists. Is this materialistic knowledge sufficient for building an integral field within a group?

Answer: A person will be convinced, will have grounds to believe that it is necessary to ascend. I see a danger ahead of me, and if I continue to act this way, if the surrounding society stays the same, it will be even worse. It is necessary for me to change myself and society.

People move from place to place, change careers, change everything, all only to transition to a better state. While here we are demonstrating that we don’t have any other choice, we need to simply run away from ourselves. That is why I keep saying that the most important thing is to show a person that this is a challenge of nature from which there is no escape.
[67068]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” #6, 12/14/11

Related Material:
Create Your Own Self
Transitional Process And Fashion
Is It Possible To Befriend A Mother-In-Law?

Filed under: Crisis, Education, Integral Upbringing, Q&A - No Comments →

Question: Let us say that we have gathered a group of people and are teaching them integrated unity. Sometimes several people wish to express their opinion simultaneously. But I interrupt everyone because I want for everyone to listen to me. This is an egoistic action because people are obligated to listen to me. How do you make it altruistic?

Answer: The action itself does not matter. The main thing is to create the right connection between people! Then they will probably interact properly and any of their actions will occur as desired. This becomes realized during the process of education.

At first the entire integrated upbringing course curriculum must be completed: who we are, what we are, what is our freedom of will, and what is the influence of the environment. Practical work begins once a person acquires a certain amount of knowledge.

Question: When two people are interacting, is it possible to show that one person is using his egoism and acting in an integral manner, while another person is acting egoistically?

Answer: This depends on the inner state.

Let us look at a surgeon for example. “He is cutting a person! Is this for real?” Show this image to someone out of our world, who does not understand these actions and he will immediately either stop the surgeon or kill him. And a lot of money is paid for this surgery.

Every medicine is poison, but its proper use makes it a medicine. The symbol of medicine is a biting snake! This means that even subconsciously a person understands and sees that everything negative in nature can be used in a very positive way, and it only depends on us. This is why the view of an unprepared person will not explain anything.

Sometimes parents punish a child by spanking him. Of course sometimes nowadays, they cross the line. But when it is done from the point of view of education, upbringing, when the child needs to be kept from hurting himself, it is best for me to smack him and use this way to prevent him from harming himself. So it is necessary to know this entire system of relationships.

I think that the main problem with modern psychology is that first it needs to introduce upbringing. The psychologist needs to educate his patients. But he has no time for this he only has a little advice. Of course they do make certain adjustments, but not drastic changes.
[67866]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” #7 12/14/2011

Filed under: Education, Integral Upbringing - 1 Comment →

Question: Public opinion is a very powerful educational tool. How can we use this tool in groups in integral upbringing? What do we encourage? How do we bring out the desired behavior which corresponds to integrality?

Answer: We take time during discussions and conversations to show examples of correct and incorrect behavior and interactions; we analyze the motives, the different subconscious and conscious incentives, ones that are instinctive and conscious: instinctive being those that come from nature, and instinctively acquired from the environment during the upbringing process when habit becomes second nature.

We try to separate all of this, explain where it comes from, why it comes from the past society in which we grew up, and why we now need to change, and especially why we need to change and reeducate our children.

But if the children continue to be educated in the same environment with the same adults, it will be another several generations until they change. What can we do to change our children now? To do it we are the ones who need to change first.

I think that the interactions between parents and children, love for children, the desire to give them a good new world is a very strong factor of influence on the adults. And it must impel us to make a change so that we do not just play at, but we will actually build a good society for our children.
[67856]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” #7 12/14/2011

Related Material:
Poison Is Not Always Bad
The Era Of Global Education
Is It Possible To Befriend A Mother-In-Law?

Filed under: Children, Education, Integral Upbringing, Q&A, Society - 1 Comment →

It is not by mere chance that we find ourselves standing opposite each other with nuclear bombs. Everyone hides a few thousand behind his back, in addition to all the types of weapons that fill satellites in space, and which are ready to fire off as soon as there is an order. Not by coincidence do we experience such aggravation and sorrow. All this is meant to bring us to the realization that we have no choice, and if we wish to reach a good life, we need to turn our relationships around completely.

In the middle, between love and hatred that lives among us, is the crisis! This crisis tells us, “You will not be able to survive on this planet if you don’t turn your hatred into love!” That is, if you don’t begin to trust each other in matters that pertain to atomic bombs, banks, and everything else, and if you fail to see this system as round and integral, since that is in fact precisely how it is whether you like it or not.

Understand that you simply have no other choice with the form in which this analog, integral, and completely interconnected system works that is filled with deadly weapons and hatred, you have to turn yourselves around! Otherwise, you will be left without as much as a slice of bread.

It no longer is just some personal problem that we can brush aside. You simply will not be able to provide the most essential things for survival.

The financial crisis is causing millions of protesters to come out to the streets now. The country itself could be very wealthy, such as Germany or the United States, but due to complete indifference toward each other, it will be impossible to provide a normal life for people who are jobless. They will go to the streets and destroy the whole country.

It doesn’t matter how much money and food resources the nation has hidden away. With the lack of sharing between us, we have a world where half of the population is dying of hunger, and half is throwing out more food than would be necessary to feed the other half. And they cannot come to a consensus with each other because they don’t think about each other.

Therefore, we see that we will not make it without reaching universal love. However, this word has already acquired a certain impure connotation, meaning sexual, false, or naive. Therefore, we can talk about complete mutual partnership: penetrating into another person’s desires, understanding what he needs, filling his necessities, and having concern for him. We must achieve this; otherwise, life on earth will come to an end.

If this is the general law of human survival, how can we begin to live in accordance with it? I need to organize all the thousands of desires that I have in order to not use them only for my own sake but to take into account the interests of others in each of my desires.

I need to be connected with the whole world. I don’t need to know what every person looks like, but there should be a feeling in me that we are all together and I am taking care of every person as though I am taking care of myself. I pour myself a cup of tea, and I worry about everyone else also having a cup of tea. And if others have no tea, to the extent that they desire it, I too will not take any tea for myself.

It is like a mother who cannot take care of herself until she feeds her child and ensures that he is full, healthy, and happy. She simply is unable to think about herself while he lacks something. We need to learn to reach this opposite state from the state of complete egoism.
[68668]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 6, 1/3/12

Related Material:
Israeli Bank Governor: “The Situation Is Difficult And Bad
If Love Is So Important, Then What Are We Waiting For?
Introductory Lecture: The Mutual Gaurantee

Filed under: Education, Integral Upbringing, Society, Zohar - No Comments →

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related Material:
Harmony That We Create Ourselves
Getting Acquainted With The Universal Mind
That Loud Word “Nature”

Filed under: Education, Integral Upbringing - No Comments →

Question: Social psychology speaks of the role of “small talk” and states that to have a good relationship with your neighbors, it is sufficient to simply say “hello” during each encounter. If I don’t do this systematically, then in the overall system I become indebted to my neighbors. When this “debt” reaches its maximum, neighbors can simply get rid of me. Can this kind of information help a person build an integral society?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I do not see a problem in this and I think that all of this will spring from within a person.
[67063]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” #6, 12/14/11

Related Material:
Create Your Own Self
Transitional Process And Fashion
The Particulars Of An Integral Reality

Filed under: Education, Family, Integral Upbringing, Q&A - 1 Comment →