In the News (from Technology Review): “The world of game theory is currently on fire. In May, Freeman Dyson at Princeton University and William Press at the University of Texas announced that they had discovered a previously unknown strategy for the game of prisoner’s dilemma which guarantees one player a better outcome than the other.

“That’s a monumental surprise. Theorists have studied Prisoner’s Dilemma for decades, using it as a model for the emergence of co-operation in nature. This work has had a profound impact on disciplines such as economics, evolutionary biology and, of course, game theory itself. The new result will have impact in all these areas and more. …

“Until now, everyone thought the best strategy in iterative prisoner’s dilemma was to copy your opponents behaviour in the previous round. This tit-for-tat approach guarantees that you both spend the same time in jail.

“So the news that there are other strategies that allow one player to not only beat the other but to determine their time in jail is nothing short of revolutionary. …

The new approach is called the zero determinant strategy (because it involves the process of setting a mathematical object called a determinant to zero).

It turns out that the tit-for-tat approach is a special case of the zero determinant strategy: the player using this strategy determines that the other player’s time in jail is equal to theirs. But there are a whole set of other strategies that make the other player spend far more time in jail (or far less if you’re feeling generous).

The one caveat is that the other player must be unaware that they are being manipulated. If they discover the ruse, they can play a strategy that results in the maximum jail time for both players: ie both suffer.”

My Comment: Recently, more and more discoveries are happening in the field of human interaction. This should lead us to the realization of our absolute integrality as a unified system in which there is no individual freedom in thoughts, feelings, and actions. And only dissolving oneself in everyone makes one free. For the time being this seems incredible, but we will outgrow this inertia and the limitations of our understanding of the great unity of nature.
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We must definitely establish the force of the connection among us in society and on such a level that people will feel the connection between them and it will obligate them to get closer. Only then will they be able to resemble the upper force of nature and to be led by it differently. We have to soften the domination of nature.

If we don’t acknowledge that nature operates and influences us wisely, we will get nowhere. We have to agree with existing studies; we have no choice. We can place ourselves above nature and simply suffer because it hits us with all its might or we can understand that there is a plan here and an upper natural force that leads us to integration, and we have to consciously get closer to this force. If we refuse to accept nature’s plan and mind, the force of development, then we humiliate ourselves to the point where we totally rule out the option of attaining who we are, where we come from, and where we are headed, etc. This is not a wise approach at all.
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From KabTV’s “The Integral World: The Formula of Integral Society,” 7/1/12

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Question: In the integral society there is a kind of “abstract” goal which is beautiful and perfect and that everyone loves. Won’t we be stepping on the same rakes the utopians once stepped on?

Answer: What does the whole problem come down to? Only a change in human nature.

If that is possible, the integral society will change from utopia to reality. If it is impossible, then it will remain a utopia and it is better to stay away from such a society.

First we have to find out whether we can evoke a certain force upon us, a certain attribute that will create certain conditions so that every person’s nature will change from an egoistic one to an altruistic one. This can be fulfilled by consistent, gradual change of small groups of people and then of increasingly larger groups. But on the whole this process should include all of humanity.

Can a person who was created as a total egoist who only thinks about himself and nothing else (this is the way we are programmed) change his program? And what is more, can he change it so that the object who receives the pleasure is not me thanks to everything that surrounds me, but rather that my pleasure will be the wellbeing of all those around me, brought about by me.

The pleasure remains. It has to be since it is part of our nature, only the character of the filling changes. On the account of what? A mother, for example, is filled thanks to the fact that she gives her child everything—this is natural love. Can we attain this state when we feel natural love for people who are total strangers, who are opposite to us and distant, when I feel that they are an inseparable part of me just like a child is for his mother? Can we find such a force?

If we find it, we will be able to conduct such an experiment and see that it is so.
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From KabTV’s “The Integral World: The Formula of Integral Society,” 7/1/12

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Question: Which connectable parts should be highlighted in man and in nature? Is it possible to deal with the division of the whole into parts in order to focus our efforts on them?

Answer: First we have to see nature as a totally integral system in which everything is mutually connected. There is no particle, atom, force, or field that is not connected into one system, no matter whether it is on the still nature level or on the vegetative, animate, or speaking levels, or whether it is conscious or not. It mustn’t be divided into parts.

We divide it into parts because we cannot understand and grasp all of it, just as we divide all of nature into different sciences. There is no physics, chemistry, biology, zoology or all the other sciences. It is more convenient for us to study nature this way—in some concrete discoveries. It only displays the weakness of our recognition and of our awareness.

Nature itself is totally integral and no part in it can highlighted. It is mutually connected.

But we can attain it as egoistic parts that are detached from one another intermittently. Then we can reconnect them gradually by building the original mosaic. But this is only relative to us, since nature itself is integral. By creating this mosaic, we gradually discover not just the particles that compose it but the elements that connect, thus forming the general picture. So at the same time this picture receives its next upper existence. It is just as if we could put our body together from different organs and systems and it would begin to function and life would be appear in it.

We must understand that by getting closer to the integration in our recognition of nature we eventually attain the life in it, which can be called the only upper force in nature. It has a plan for our development, its beginning and its end. But we can only approach it if we constantly aspire for integrality.

We will start to feel it gradually, gradually guess, and then more and more clearly reveal it. And I think that we will begin to discover it not after we assemble all of nature’s parts into one picture, but even as we get closer, we begin to get a foretaste of the completed picture.

We see that as we get closer we begin to perceive the integrality and we will gradually attain its upper thought, not in the absolute revealed state, but in stages.
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From KabTV’s “The Integral World: The Formula of Integral Society” 7/1/12

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Question: Where is the borderline between suppression of material desires and gaining spiritual ones?

Answer: We do not suppress our desires! We only discuss them and immediately assign more weight, greatness to the next, higher level of desires, the ones that drive us to unity and integrity, since they are far more important, better, higher, superior, and valued than our egoistic inclinations. It’s so even if our egoistic desires are seemingly of a positive kind, such as wanting to listen to a certain type of music, or read some kind of literature, or go to the ballet, or watch a football match, or go to a men’s club, or eat a special type of food—whatever it might be.

In other words, at this phase, with the help of the group I must receive a very serious and strong impression that these collective integral global standards are of a next level. They are not one step up, but incomparably more advanced than our aforementioned animal instinctive desires that nature automatically aroused within us and we, like slaves, tried to realize them quickly.
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From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 3/1/12

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Question: A person comes to an integral group from the “outside.” He already has certain worries related to the material world, conflicts, problems with children, and so on. How can one transition from his routine predicaments to integration?

Answer: Everything has to be discussed in the group. However, it should be done specifically in the attempts to rise above corporeal problems. Various problems related to gender or character, to anything that might transpire between us have to be raised and discussed. We are a research group; we scrutinize ourselves. This is why we have to be ultimately sincere and interested in detaching from our animal “I” and rising above it into our integral “I,” which gradually is turning into “we.” So, there is nothing we should hide from one another.

At the same time, we shouldn’t concentrate on, dig into these issues too much: your personality against mine, somebody’s attractiveness, or animal, hormonal, drives… We have to discuss these things in brief in order to help each and everybody rise above them and keep ourselves specifically in this state while we continue understanding and sensing them in our animal body, as we know that they don’t exist at the next level.

We’ll constantly be “hanging” in the gap between our internal layers as if between the sky and the earth. This state will emerge in us and bother us for a long period of time: We’ll constantly be getting urges upwards and downwards. This is what our work is all about.

Within the inner states that we go through, we have to test our internal baggage of doubts, impressions, and aspirations in order to firmly position ourselves on the ground, to fly up as a balloon from earth to the “ceiling,” leaving behind our egoistic properties, ambitions, desires, and impulses. I am still aware of all of my problems, but internally I want to identify myself with the “ceiling,” meaning with my next step.
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From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 3/1/12

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Question: Let’s say that a woman, whose missing husband is still on a “spree,” managed to rise to the integral level with the help of the group. Will her problem be resolved by itself or will she just regard it from a different perspective?

Answer: You should understand that the world is the way we draw it in our minds. We cannot ascertain objectively what, in fact, is real and what is actually going on. Everything is subjective. It’s all about how we sense and imagine it.

As soon as the woman begins to understand that her husband needs more social interaction and she is willing and able to give him a replacement that is of a higher and better level, his family, social, and economic problems will cease to exist. He will stop burning money with his friends in a pub or at a football stadium since he will have a new, contented attitude toward the world he lives in and to his family.

But we have to fulfill him somehow. We have to show him what we offer, that it is a replacement.

For dozens of years, world governments have been investing in massive team sports since an enormous number of fans unite around them. It distracts them and gives them a chance to unite, according to their affiliation with various sport teams. Such unity bears an egoistic nature since they need an opponent in order to unite. Governments realize that they should distract people by providing them with outlets and letting them experience warmth from belonging to various groups, clubs, etc.

However, we must gradually show people that connecting around something that is against something or someone is flawed; it destroys society. We see that there is no room for friendliness in sports. Competition only leads to drugs, sales, and buying players. There is nothing to it except financial cunning, “Give me another couple of billion, and I’ll make a team for you that will defeat everyone out there.” This scenario really cannot serve as a foundation for those who aspire to unity. Who exactly am I supporting? Are a couple of Africans or South Americans bought for money and brought to my favorite team supposed to defend my city or my country?

The same egoists do not want to look at all this because it really is not what they want to see in their passions.

We can raise the level of awareness of people to where they won’t abide such an attitude to sports. When we become a member of a club in order to unite with others, we generate a sordid type of connection. We beat our neighbors in order to somehow satisfy our dormant herd mentality that comes from ancient times, instead of one that leads us forward.

Therefore, there must be a serious explanation. We are quite capable of providing this explanation using humor and satire and showing how it is constructed, from football to beer to any teams or sports clubs, no matter if it is a local or national team, from the primal, underdeveloped nature of man, from his need to unite. And then, little by little, we can bring him to another level
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From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 3/1/12

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Laughter during the discussions in integral groups is a good state that brings people to the understanding of the fact that we are all animals. We can open up completely to everyone. I did not make myself this way, nature did, and if you have a problem with it, then this problem is in you because you fail to understand that we are all nothing but animals. The only thing I should be ashamed of is that I am not fully using my opportunity to ascend toward the integral state, the things that are in my power on the “human” level, and everything else is not “I.”

In general, “human” is the spirit above the “animal” because it lacks a corporeal manifestation. The human in us is our inner content. For this reason, for as long as my inner content, called human, does not prevail, process, and include all my animal instincts, functions, desires, and thoughts, I must, somehow, slightly restrain them.

However, overall, I must reveal and examine them in a group because I do not have another instrument. The group is a lab where we can open ourselves up completely, like an infant laying before his mother. Who is he and what is he? It’s just a piece of flesh, but she does everything she needs to do with him for his proper growth and functioning. The same must happen in the group.

When we have a sober and sane understanding of it, and have an adult attitude toward what is happening to us and what we need to do with ourselves, then we already are in a state where nature is working with us, guiding, growing, and developing us down the path of evolution. So, this is necessary.

I think that a person can open up in the group completely, and, naturally, the group needs to be ready for this. If they constantly interact this way between them, they will achieve it. Shame will disappear. There is no state of “shame!” You must only be ashamed of one thing: failing to rise and raise others. Internal reconstruction of the entire scale of the importance of thoughts, feelings, desires, and revaluation of values, it all happens very fast.
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From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 3/5/12

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Question: There are discussions in a courtroom-style format in integral groups. What are we to arrive at as a group at the end of this kind of trial?

Answer: The trial should be based much more strictly, precisely, and more clearly differentiated so that later you can categorize it as a trial record that you understand what happened, what we have now, and what will happen.

Every person would evaluate the group and himself from the “human” level and the level of his egoism, that is, from the perspective of a number of roles such as the judge, the defense, the jury, and an observer, a listener, and the victim, the injured side.

There are many roles in every one of us because every person consists of everyone else. For example, there are five parts role-played in a group. This means that every person must find these five levels within him, and, on every level, he must feel how he regards this situation as he separates from everyone else.

Then, he reaches the conclusion that, in general, there is no one to judge and nothing to judge. He understands who can judge and who can justify, and everything we do only has the right to exist when it pursues a single goal: a connection.

When a person is able to softly change ranges—like a regulator, to go from one level to another—then he really becomes internally soft and integral. He activates absolutely all of his qualities, beginning with the lowest, animal qualities, and ending with the highest qualities, which are originating only in him, and, this way, he advances.
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From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 3/5/12

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In groups of integral learning, people experience serious changes during the course of discussions. It’s possible to tell just by looking at them, the wild development they are undergoing. After all, the material they are studying is not just simple material. When we work with it, we evoke the forces of nature concealed in us. When we speak of the next level, the forces of this level, this field, interact with us and constantly evoke strong reactions and turbulent changes. People undergo very serious inner processes.

And when they separate, they feel how much they lack this kind of communication. This is why it’s necessary to keep this virtual connection they manage to create between them. This is very important because it’s similar to parting with something great, something that gradually becomes somewhat more important than life itself.

When groups begin to live this inner life, they connect to a new source, the next level of existence. And then this separation from the group might be perceived as something very dramatic by a person, and we must also think about dampening the process of his separation or giving him a replacement, otherwise the person will feel like he is dying.
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From a Talk on Integral Upbringing 3/5/12

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