Entries in the 'Integral Upbringing' Category

A Man Of The World

Dr. Michael LaitmanSince our relationship towards the world and life will completely change, then all of man’s resources—the mind and the heart, desires and thoughts— besides the bare necessity for the existence of his physical body will be thrown out in order to reach harmony with nature. And then we will fully understand its initial plan, its flow, its highest thought, and we will rise to the same level accordingly, meaning, a level higher than birth and death.

We only need to picture what we are talking about. Since if I get to know the whole of nature, then I get to know such a level of it from where I will be looking at myself like at a small temporary element. However, I am already looking from another level, since I rise higher than myself, so to speak. Here, man finds absolutely clear answers to the questions about the meaning of life, existence.

Naturally, this influences his mentality, behavior, and his cultural, social, and public relations. He sees the world and himself differently. He begins to think not based on temporary, defective points of view: I am here today and tomorrow I am not, so if I won’t be here anymore, what do I do?

We can’t even imagine the huge change that happens inside of us, when we begin to see ourselves existing on the infinite time axis. Then, we perceive our body as an accompanying animal.

Inside of us, such a psychological system begins to develop that changes at the root how we relate to others, to ourselves, and towards the world, and so I already begin to relate towards myself and to others from an eternal position. And this changes me completely, raises me, and makes me a serious, man of the world.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” 12/12/11

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How Do You Understand A Japanese Person?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: People populating the planet Earth have different systems of consciousness. The Europeans, for example, have a so-called vertical consciousness, while the Japanese have a horizontal one. How deep do I have to go into this? Do I have to learn to understand the Japanese, or is it enough for me to understand the people who surround me?

Answer: This doesn’t matter at all! I don’t intend to look at the world through the eyes of a Japanese or a Chinese, a Ukrainian or an African. I am not interested in that. The main thing that interests me is to change myself, so that any foreign opinions, desires, and thoughts, would be accepted and absorbed inside of me exactly the same way as my own would. That’s it. And it is not important what kind they are!

Let’s say that I have a child born from a Japanese woman. I see that he has some kind of a specific system of perceiving the world, a point of view toward the world. Well, so what, do I have to push him so that he necessarily accepts my system?! It is impossible!

Different perceptions of the world are the result of a specific switch of brain functions, which has developed and evolved into such a system, which today cannot be destroyed.

The whole of our integral education methodology is based solely on self-knowledge and in no way on suppressing yourself or others! By the means of suppressing, we completely switch ourselves off from the correct evolutionary movement forward towards harmony with nature. Nature does not stand for it!

It seems to us that nature is forcing us, but this is only done so that we would voluntarily make the first move by ourselves. And it will keep forcing us until we find this kind will and we make the first step. However, nature does not show us what step we have to make.

That is why I must try by all of the methods possible to develop my son. As it is said in the Bible: “Educate your child according to his ways”, meaning, according to his inclinations and internal potential given to him by nature.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” 12/12/11

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Liberation From Excess

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: At the very beginning of implementing the program of an integral society we will need to somehow overcome all sorts of disagreements. For instance, how do we convince a person that he can do with an apartment that’s 500 square feet and not 2,000 square feet like his neighbor’s? What kind of arguments can we use?

Answer: As we continue to move toward integration, people will be changing their lifestyle. Every person will need their own room in order to study and not bother others. I think that one room per person is enough, plus a common living room and other auxiliary rooms—that’s a normal living area. We can provide everyone with these conditions, assuming we stop chasing after excess and adopt this standard as the model home.

The same applies to food. It’s very easy to calculate the necessary amount of food for a person. This could be a certain set that complies with one’s habits: national, cultural, and so on, but restricted in terms of assortment, meaning less than 50 kinds of sausage that currently line the supermarket shelves. All this variety is simply pointless. Presently someone is making money off you with this, but once the issue of livelihood is settled, all this excess automatically disappears.

Over the course of the crisis hundreds of millions of people will lose their jobs, and their purchasing power will take a nosedive. This will force dozens of redundant kinds of food off the shelves as no one will be buying them. These cutbacks will happen naturally, and we don’t have to worry about them. The world will naturally sever all the excess from the basic necessities for a normal and healthy life.

Comment: For people who have lived in socialist regimes and experienced the phenomenon of a growing deficit, which forced them to spend tremendous amounts of time and efforts to acquire the bare necessities, this sounds kind of scary because they immediately picture long lines.

Answer: There won’t be any lines. I think that everything will be delivered to people’s homes. You will order what you require, and an organization responsible for food supply will deliver everything to you. Similarly, other organizations will provide apartment repair and other types of services.

These are the necessary types of jobs that will remain with humanity, aside from specific industries, agriculture, and so on. Essentially, we will be spending our time and efforts on what is really necessary.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” 12/12/11

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Integral Education Is A Quick Process

Dr. Michael LaitmanComment: There is no force in society now that is interested in education because it is a very long process, and politicians are elected for four to five years….

Response: Integral education is a very quick process. Until now education has been perceived as the acquisition of knowledge, which really takes many years. But in addition to theoretical knowledge, what is needed nowadays is first and foremost practical application. We are talking about how to convey the idea about the structure of the world in a suitable way for the general population.

The first part of the course will take no more than two or three months. Afterwards, a person will understand that he has to act differently so as not to harm himself. Even after the first week or two, he will already understand that the world isn’t what he thought it was.

A person will see that today’s world is global and integral. He will see that he is mutually connected to the rest of the world and so he must change the principles of his behavior. He will understand that the will of nature motivates history, that evolution has a goal, and that we simply must accept the laws of the integral system. Only a comprehensive connection will allow us to live a good, balanced life.

Besides, a person will change his attitude to unemployment, to employment, and to the consumerist society that has gone too far with its enthusiasm. He will understand that we need sensible balanced consumerism. He will understand that the problem isn’t the fact that there aren’t enough jobs, but that there will be no more jobs. It isn’t that we are reluctant, but that we are simply not mutually connected and so we are opposite from nature. This understanding obliges us.

And so a person already begins to perceive what he has to do both personally and by incorporating with the society. It turns out that it does not depend on the government. He cannot demand like a small child: “Give me the benefits that I lost!” You will not have them, no matter how hard you cry. The government has no hidden ace up its sleeve. Even if you change the government and put it on trial, you will get nothing.

The correction can only come through education. Period!

The world is advancing towards harmony and balance, and this balance has nothing to do with over-production and over-consumption. The integral education is effective in a very short period of time. It helps a person change his attitude towards what is happening and he immediately changes according to the new form.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/29/11, “The Freedom”

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Clarifications, Clarifications, Clarifications…

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Is the perception of reality a social phenomenon on the level of “person-person”, or can we include the perception of nature here, the still, vegetative, and animate?

Answer: No. First of all, we are concerned only with the human society, about the contact between us.

Naturally, the rest of the parts of nature connect to this process. We automatically include the lower stages in ourselves. There are no problems with this, only if we can correctly connect with the person.

Furthermore, it is necessary to understand that if I depend on the environment, then how do I form it for myself? This is the next course, which considers how I build the surrounding society for myself that would transform me into a particular form. In what company, under which influence should I be in order to obtain my next desirable state, my form, to become a correct element of the integral interaction.

Here, I must think this over: “What am I missing? What, specifically, does my nature consist of? What is my desirable state? In what way does the environment influence me? Which qualities of mine does it influence? Possibly, I have qualities inside of me, which it cannot exert influence on, while it influences some of them selectively. Possibly, in this situation, I have to develop myself further, having placed myself under the influence of the environment. How do I control all of this?”

Meaning that from this course, I must find out who I am and what the environment is. I must go through a large number of clarifications, including the practical ones.

After the end of this course, the practical work begins: How do I constantly change myself towards the desired direction with the help of changing the environment?

Question: All of this is related to ontology, to knowledge?

Answer: All of this interflows between each other.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” 12/12/11

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When Freedom Is Worse Than Slavery

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: I have a few acquaintances who live exactly as you described. These are middle-aged people who have created this cocoon for themselves. Are you trying to say that they will not be able to calmly live in their homes due to inner worries and concerns?

Answer: It’s not only an inner worry, but an external one as well. We are coming to a point when the world is freeing itself from excess production, and more than half of the working people today are simply no longer needed as workers. They will find themselves in a state of complete emptiness because they are used to being slaves.

Practically the entire population of our planet lives this way. At six in the morning a person leaves his house, takes his child with him if he has one, drops him off at the kindergarten on the way, heads to work, returns from work, picks up his child, and also swings by the supermarket. In the evening spouses have half an hour to bathe their child, tuck him into bed, eat some kind of pre-cooked meal, and that’s it—the day ends here, and tomorrow it’s the same story all over again.

We are moving towards a state where a lot of people are beginning to have more free time, and the sensation of being lost is growing because they no longer find themselves within a familiar framework, but as if outside any framework altogether. That is a lot worse! This internal sense of freedom is worse than slavery!

And if a person isn’t given an opportunity to obtain gratification from some other source, isn’t given a sensation of boundaries, a framework like at a job, a sensation of some kind of responsibility and servitude that he is used to, then we are going to have enormous problems.

We must understand that in the future it will only take a person two or three hours a day for all his necessities: working, attending to oneself and others, and so on. All the remaining time, at least 20 hours a day, he will be left to his own devices.

To avoid bringing this system out of its equilibrium, sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, all of us need to carefully think through the framework that humanity must acquire in order to feel needed, happy, and completely fulfilled with the inner feelings that gives one a sense of life, and even beyond that.

It isn’t easy when there are no responsibilities, no pressure from above, no need to work hard in order to earn more, to show-off in front of the neighbors, and so on. We are coming to a completely different relationship towards ourselves, society, and life, which comes down to a new upbringing, a new perception of life. This isn’t a simple system at all. But it has to stem from that final outcome that we wish to achieve, and first and foremost from the terms created by nature.

Nature will force us to give up excessive production. The middle class will be essentially eliminated. Those remaining will be the elites who make all the decisions, with a very small number of officials, a huge mass of unemployed, and  10% of the world’s working population engaged in production and servicing of everyone else. These 10% will actually be necessary, but there will simply be no need for all the rest.

In reality, humanity is created in such a way that 90% of its population must be engaged in activities of a completely different nature: in self-improvement, in creating a correct connection between themselves. They are the ones who will create that integral, global, self-contained, and balanced environment that will bring the entire society into equilibrium with nature. Only then will we have a right to exist.

If we leave, let’s say, only those 10% who work in production, the purpose of creation will not be achieved. The purpose of creation is to bring all parts, all levels of nature: the still, vegetative, animate, and human to the attainment of complete harmony among them. Only then will this system achieve a final state of equilibrium.
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Talk on Integral Upbringing 12/11/2011

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The Integral Upbringing Of Spouses

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Seven to eight hours a day we will spend in a group for integral upbringing. Can I come there alone or with my wife?

Answer: I don’t know whether you can do this and decide this for yourself.

The problem is that we first need to prepare spouses, regardless of their habitual connection with each other, to ensure that they are able to exit that connection. We need to treat them like children, and to make sure that these grownup children are not dependent on their habits.

Let’s say you come to a group. You don’t go there together with your wife. At first you both need to be prepared separately, to make a grown man out of you, and of her a grown woman. You must master the integral skills, understand the system of mutual connection: within a society, in a family, the connection with children, both theoretically and in practice, enacting this with other people.

Only after that should people do the real practical work, that is—with their own spouses, only after they have already accumulated some negative and positive potential. Rising above this isn’t that simple because spouses grow habituated towards some elements of each other’s behavior or they have long-established reactions to certain actions of the other.

We have to rise above all this gradually. That is why we first need to bring a person out of his previous state, present him with a new system of mutual relationships, and after that gradually bring him inside this new system.

But we do not disconnect a person from his family. That is, while the spouses continue to function normally as husband and wife within the family, at the same time, we need to be elevating each of them above their selves, but without touching upon their personal relationship.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” 12/12/11

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The Philosophy Of My “I”

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: When you talk about the integral society, you always emphasize that a person rejects his own opinion for the sake of the common idea. Could you focus on this in 
more detail?

Answer: I will say a few words about this. You can say that this is a whole philosophical system.

First of all, a person must understand that he did not create himself. He was born this way. Nature created him the way he is. Partly, he received some qualities from his parents, partly from his environment in the process of growing up, and partly from who knows where, why, and how.

Everything there is in him is not his own, but has passed down to him from some internal genes, which have been realized by the uncountable generations of his ancestors. Specifically, in the creation of a person, the ancestral genes and stem cells of his parents are at work. As it is said in the Bible, “father and mother, and the Creator between them.” The three of them are at work in this process.

Afterwards, a person develops under the influence of the surrounding society, which instills its values onto him. Meaning, that in a person there is nothing of his own.

But where is his personal “I”? It is unclear at all as to what it is. Where does it come from inside of me? Even if we take a small baby, we see that it is simply an automatic machine, a small animal, where the personal “I” is gradually beginning to emerge from somewhere, something independent, structured, personal. However, we do not know what it is.

So then a person separates everything that is not his from this “I,” then he begins to actually feel that it is not a problem to separate from his qualities, which he received from the environment, from education, from his parents, or from who knows where, from the darkness of the centuries.

The most important thing is my “I.” If I only think about how to elevate and realize it, then I don’t care about all of the characteristics and qualities that exist inside of me. Meaning, that they are not mine. If a person positions himself correctly, then he understands that it is not difficult at all to rise above all of this.

It is these “I”s of ours that we have to unite with each other. But leave everything else—because these are only random parameters accompanying us.

Question: So it turns out that the development of this “I” is the objective of the integral education course?

Answer: From the whole of this superficial covering, shell, we must retrieve and develop this nucleus, the original stem cell of each one of us. It can only be developed by means of connecting all of the stem cells together. When we unite them together into one common organism, it will truly be equal and perfect, like nature itself.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” 12/12/11

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Opening The Eyes Of Humanity

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: The method of integral education for adults consists of theoretical and practical parts. I would like you to elaborate on the theoretical part of the course. What information should the package include so it becomes known to every person on Earth?

Answer: The main course is psychology.

However, the most basic course is dedicated to the evolution of humankind and the whole of nature in general. First, it explains the development of the universe, from the Big Bang or from a certain point, which we observe. We do not yet know what happened before.

The evolutionary development was carried out through a consistent, gradual complication of matter, when the elementary particles began to form the basic “building blocks,” and the building blocks formed “buildings:” gases, planets, stars, and other objects, which were gradually formed from these gases.

Then, our Earth and unique solar system were created. We have not found and will not find anything similar in the universe, despite the fact that we constantly discover new planets. This confirms that life, in the form we see it, is really unique.

And we have to solve it: What is this striking aspect in the entire inanimate universe, permeated by a myriad of forces, the idea of development, a certain design? Suddenly, this idea begins to develop not only in still objects, but also in the vegetative, animate, and human nature. It is an exciting and strange phenomenon to turn still matter into vegetative, animate….

A human being is an even less comprehensible phenomenon: How does it differ from the animal; where is this boundary, and why is he special? Of course, we can ascribe much to him, but in principle, we have not found an accurate, clear definition of the difference between man and animal. [Read more →]

Farewell To Egoism

Dr. Michael LaitmanIf a person is brought up in the spirit of mutual guarantee and togetherness, he treats others like they are his own family, like an integral part of himself. Nowadays our world is called an integral system of interaction.

An integral system is a mutually dependent structure. How do we depend on our children? We cannot abide without them; we are instinctively tied to them through care and love. If we hurt them, we’ll eventually harm ourselves since we are concerned about them anyway.

I begin to feel the same way towards all the people of the world. A genuine picture of a complete egoistic interdependence emerges in front of my eyes; a lack of care towards others harms me by hitting me back in a negative way.

We still exist in accordance with egoistic laws that were established in the past when we were selfishly connected: You give to me – I give to you, steal more, gain more at the expense of others, use somebody for your own sake….

Today, the system of egoistic relations comes to an end; a totally new, altruistic, inter-dependent, global, integral system comes to life. If we want to succeed in this world, we have to match this system. But since we still fall short of this new system, we feel our current state to be a crisis. But this crisis is not in the sense we are accustomed to understanding it. “Crisis” is a Greek word that means new birth; that is, crisis is the solution, not the problem.

We have to realize that we are transitioning from one state to another. The sooner we recognize this fact and start acting in unison with the laws of evolution instead of resisting them, the easier and more pleasurable our transition through the changes will be.

We have to become one family. We have to treat others like our own children, parents, our beloved, or adored pets…we have to treat everybody like something that belongs to us. Nature leads us in this direction irrespective of our desires.

It is a sensual cognitive process. We have to create an environment that will explicitly demonstrate this to everybody and thus alter us.

To the extent we manage to change, it will change our family, social, political and industrial relations.  The connection among us will adjust to match our new developmental level.
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