Question: We are born to be happy; we strive for that. However, the system in which we live is egoistic. The “American dream” was overblown in our society. Essentially, it is unattainable since, in order to reach it, we must earn money. In order to earn money, we have to work and, at its root, work is slavery. In other words, we were turned into slaves to become “happy.” However, we are not happy.

Can humanity remove this build-up and be happy without it? How would you describe the state of happiness?

Answer: I think that happiness is feasible only when we reach balance. When people build correct mutual fusion with each other, when they feel they are in the right social environment, all problems will vanish. After our society establishes and promotes homeostasis, people will feel that they as if flow, are in a state of internal and external peace. This condition will instigate a state of bliss in them.

In other words, a sensation of happiness emerges not because we fulfill ourselves egoistically, without thinking about what’s next since besides each of us there are many other egoists who want to be happy at the expense of others.

The sensation of happiness emerges as a result of unity. It stems out of a sense of equilibrium, similar to a healthy organism that is alive when its organs function in balance. By the same token, human society must follow examples of nature and aspire to reach the same state. Then, we’ll realize what the goal of our life is. The sensation that we have while being in this state is happiness.
[106494]
From the TV Program “Medicine of the Future,” 4/7/2013

Related Material:
My Economics Of Happiness
The UN Observes The National Day Of Happiness
Integral Health

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

Question: How is it possible to explain to a person, who all his life has been centered on only himself, why he should be concerned for others? What kind of pleasure will he have when he worries about someone else, and will he be healthier as a result of that?

Answer: You answered your own question: It will make him healthier. He won’t buy health in any other way. He should try!

Why shouldn’t he try to practice? Does he have anything to lose? He will only gain by his acting in as if  he has concern for others. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t believe in it. Let him play! Let’s agree to become children for a month.

Question: How is it possible to rise above the ego with the help of playing?

Answer: Under the influence of the environment. The environment needs to play, needs to show people how much it influences them. A person needs to subdue himself for the environment, to feel it as something higher than himself. He needs to constantly hear that the connection between him and his friends in his small society is the most important thing he has in his life. Together with that, they all cling to this connection as if to a balloon, which lifts them above and gives them the feeling of the upper life.
[106633]
From KabTV’s “The Medicine of the Future” 4/7/13

Related Material:
Who Will Help Us Rise Above the Ego?
Learning To Play
Holding On To One Thought All Day Long

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

Question: There are people with a very strong desire to control, to manage others. How should one cooperate with them during the process of integral upbringing?

Answer: I think that if they get a correct understanding of the laws of nature, the proper education in the right environment, they will not be able to use this to the detriment of society. Along with this, if they are wonderful organizers, if they gather people into integral groups where they complement each other as parts of one society, then we certainly need people like this.

Look, how many people can actually be managers? There are very few, at most 5%.

I would like it very much if 5% were managers in our collective, but there is a total of only 0.5%. Wherever you look, it’s always the same people because everyone else can only carry things out; very few can create.

So, it’s necessary to educate these people correctly. If we can form a common collective team and constantly work with them, giving them the right guidance and ideology, then after a while, they will finally become directors for the entire greater collective.

Comment: During the process of integral interaction, it’s necessary to be as open as possible, to rise above our ego, to detach from it, and to connect with others. A model of behavior like this is contrary to the spirit of leadership. Leaders can’t enter a group like this; they are on the sidelines all the time.

Answer: And they don’t need it! They look at a group from a different level. They organize it, have concern for it, and relate to the group as to their children.

In this there is a difference between traditional education with which they are familiar and integral education. If they treat their group, the society that they organize, as their children, they must be separated from them and look at them “from on high,” with a caring and organizing eye. Then, this is good.

This is completely a distinct and separate group of people who are being educated as organizers.
[106881]
From a Talk on Integral Education 4/4/13

Related Material:
Everyone Is Equal In The Group
A Fight For Leadership?
Reeducating Leaders

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

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

Related Material:
Nothing Personal
How To Avoid Feeling Lonely
Preventing The Family From Becoming A Woman’s Prison

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

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

Related Material:
Nothing Personal
The Need For Communication
We Are So Close That Words Are Not Necessary

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

Question: People who are seriously involved in the integral method feel a need for a similar society because they cannot manage these things individually. They want to communicate with others more. Is it possible to do this virtually?

Answer: In order to solve integral problems, we need to feel, hear, and as if “smell” the person. We are similar to animals and perceive a person in his physical dimension. Thus virtual communication is not enough.

It’s certainly possible that one day there will be virtual connection that will create the illusion of everyone’s presence but, until then, it’s not possible. We need to ensure that people will feel complete communication. This is the way we have to create even an interior space and all that helps people, until it doesn’t matter to them where and how. And afterwards they will also feel this at a distance, just like a mother feels her child.
[106992]
From a Talk on Integral Education 4/4/13

Related Material:
Nothing Personal
We Are So Close That Words Are Not Necessary
Homework For Two

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

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

Related Material:
Homework For Two
We Are So Close That Words Are Not Necessary
Talks About A New Life, Episode 1

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

Question: How should we work with the integral education teachers who, being leaders by nature, begin to focus their listeners on themselves, without even noticing?

Answer: This is unavoidable no matter how much we try since those who listen to them, sitting in front of them, are usually on a lower level. If there are organizers among them, similar in qualities, they will get closer to the teacher, not as students but as assistants, and then they should be noted. Just like a professor notes a talented student and gives him additional tasks, the same should be here. We have to find people in the group whom we can make our assistants.

Of course, the group will worship, praise, and note its teacher to some extent since he also leads them to a different way of life.

Why do I say “worship?” We imagine the Creator as the source of goodness, as the source of something that is sublime, so we begin to see the person who shows us how we suddenly can feel good and live better as having descended from the godly level. It is natural.

On the other hand, we must follow the course of the training since there are always problems. However, if our teachers keep learning constant self-control in our workshops, there will be no deviations.
[106879]
From a Talk on Integral Education 4/4/13 

Related Material:
The Expert Of The Future
An Inspiring Teacher
An Unattractive But Charming Person

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

Question: Is it necessary for those who are engaged in the method of integral upbringing to have a certain image and possess specific knowledge, or is their ability to correctly unite with others the only thing that matters?

Answer: In the nearest future, all of humanity will become unemployed. Even now, if we wanted to limit ourselves with what’s necessary for life instead of producing numerous useless things just to buy them and then throw them away; if we lived in harmony with nature and created a normal, balanced society, we would figure out that there is no need for us to work at all.

There is a huge amount of resources to satisfy everyone’s needs. If distributed among everyone, it will be sufficient for life.

No matter what, we are approaching this state. We see that, with each year, unemployment grows and the need for working people drops. Society will feed the unemployed, dress them, build apartments for them, and so on. However, on what will these people be spending their time? They will be “tuning up” communities and all civilization, thus making it integral.

This explains why the method of integral upbringing speaks not only of the ways to attract people to groups and conduct seminars on city parks’ green meadows, but also focuses on the fact that people will be working as reformers of the world. It is a very serious job that will take all of their time.

They will be in charge of a correct distribution of social labor products among everyone and serving each other. All these processes will be saturated with the right social relationships. Before anything else, we must teach people this method from the point of view of the integral laws of nature that maintain correct collaboration on the still, vegetative, and animate levels. It is the sole responsibility of humans to embrace this nature and treat it like an essential integral element.

Explanation of the peculiarities will take a long time. They must be explained in detail with concrete evolutionary, historical, and psychological examples. Moreover, we have to continue developing people culturally since even harmonious feelings that are built in accordance with the rule of “golden section” still need a good tune up so that they are oriented toward unity and a more profound mutual understanding. We have to be on the same wavelength and understand great scientists, poets, writers, musicians, and so forth.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that we need to make sages of everyone and expect them to be similar to the great medieval writers, poets, musicians, doctors, and scientists who managed to combine these great features in one person. At the same time, everyone will have to advance in numerous fields such as drawing, dancing, music, science, and so on since it broadens people internally. They begin to better understand the world and acquire a chance to connect with others. They become much more developed and rich, thus having more in common with others. They will have more topics to discuss, more common points of interest, and a bigger desire to share their opinions.

It’s not about a narrow existence when one earns, buys, and throws away or, in the morning, takes a child to kindergarten and, in the evening, rushes back home, having the same scenario repeated every single day.

We must turn people into Humans. For the last one hundred years (since Charlie Chaplin’s movies showed the mass production conveyer-belts and through to today) people have practically turned into robots. Consequently, we are facing an enormous amount of work which is not only about bringing people up but also about educating them.

There is no sense in gathering people for seminars and persuading them to say beautiful words while holding each other’s hands as if they were little children. First, we must bring up a human being within them; that is, to “deify” them and raise them to the level of a Man. Adam derives from “similar to the Creator,” alike with nature.

So, just conducting seminars is not enough. It should be a very serious job throughout the entire day. Partially, people will spend time attending to themselves and to others and taking care of everyone around. For example, our youth study for half a day and, for the rest of the day, they participate in creating special educational materials.
[106885]
From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 4/4/2013

Related Material:
No To Unemployment, Yes To The Real Work
A Necessity Arising From The Essence Of Development
To The New World Through A Qualitative Leap

Filed under: Crisis, Education, Integral Upbringing, World - No Comments →

Question: How would you describe the healthcare system in the future integral society?

Answer: I think that in the future integral society, medicine per se won’t exist.

The origin of all diseases is the breach of our social relationships. Once they are restored and corrected, a person automatically will become healthy. The moment that his time comes, he will lie down to sleep and not wake up in absolute serenity, without feeling any problem about this. Everything will be very smooth.

We need to understand that there is nothing destructive in our world except the ego. All other actions, influences, characteristics, negative events, everything that seems to us or that we witness, all of that are the manifestations of our the incongruity between our ego and the integral nature, which can be measured only relative to the integral link between us and nothing else.

If I now want to eat two lunches instead of one, I am not considered an egoist. Or if I want to sleep a couple hours more, this also is not the ego.

An egoist is someone who rejects his correct connection with others, and with this, rejects everyone from a correct connection with himself, thereby violating the natural map of interrelationships.
[106629]
From KabTV’s “The Medicine of the Future” 4/7/13

Related Material:
Integral Health
The Spirit Establishes Health
Relationships With People Affect Health

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