Question: The role of the regular family was always that it supported all kinds of social institutions. How are mutual relationships of the integral family established with the society?

Answer: It depends on what level of the society we are speaking about. If we are talking about the typical integral family, then the purpose is for a completely different social culture, that is, for different levels, evaluations, values, a different education for children, a different relation between couples in their work, etc. It all depends.

We are speaking about a completely different world, about a different humanity. It is really a mutual integral cooperation of everyone with everyone, but it usually happens under sponsorship, under protection, with the approval and soft, sensitive guidance of the media. This is the most important thing. According to the media, it is possible to judge if we are close to this goal or far from it, opposite to it. As of today, we are opposed and completely opposite to integrality. And these opposites need to be revealed as society’s wounds, as poisonous decay, which we need to correct.

The past media will begin to gradually disappear for many reasons: from lack of advertising, lack of participation with them, the development of the Internet that replaced them, etc.

To the extent that the media in its usual form will wither away and look for a new field of work and new activities for themselves, they will need to go through major reconstruction and to be completely different, meaning, to be what will influence the entire system in a positive and effective way.
[84813]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 8/7/12

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Question: There are several types of family interrelationships. For example, in Russia, families get together into communities and spend a lot of time together by virtue of common interests and mutual support. While in the West, “my family is my castle,” which is characterized by isolation. What will integral families be like, how will they look like?

Answer: I think that most of the time will not be spent within the family circle, but in a larger, more live communication among people because they will suddenly discover a great source of energy in that: revitalizing, uplifting, constantly improving, and just allowing one to be fulfilled by this world.

That is why integral families will begin to create very serious internal integral connections among each other. Furthermore, they will search for similar people in virtual space.
[84811]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 8/7/12

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Although we need to study, change, and correct ourselves, it’s not all to be done yet because it’s as if nature is raising us up to a new level. It wants to take us out of the state of small, foolish, always squabbling animals, destroying our families and relationships, and having entered a dead end after all of the attempts to build a good life for ourselves. It’s because of the complete destruction and downfall of those attempts and the now growing world of disappointment and desperation that we can begin to rise towards the new world. It’s clear to anyone, even psychologically, that if I look at everything through the eyes of love and co-participation with the feeling that the whole world belongs to me, like a doting mother, if I feel that I am inside of every one, then this will give me a completely new view of the world.

From this, it’s clear that the world starts to look completely different to a person. He receives an integral vision, as if he’s looking at the world through new glasses. And now he sees that only one method, one force, a common system functions in the world. He understands that everyone is connected to each other and completes each other. While the whole of nature, the still, vegetative, and the animate world and people are suddenly being revealed to him as one unified system. He reveals all kinds of connections that exist in nature.

Before, with an egoistic view, it seemed to him that everything was separate from each other, and you didn’t have to worry if you spoiled something. Wishing to receive benefit in one place, one was not afraid to cause harm in another. The important thing for him was to make it good wherever he, himself, was.

Now however, through his new integral glasses, he sees that these places are connected to each other and it’s not possible to act at the expense of another place. It’s because of that type of action that we are now in a crisis, since we think that we must arrange a good life only around ourselves, and everything else will wait.

The absence of an integral vision does not let us put anything in order. We don’t know how to approach the financial systems, economics, technology, ecology, family, or the upbringing of children. And all of that is due to this integral blindness. However, by building new integral relationships within the family, we’ll be able to understand through them how to build up the world, since we’ll see how everything is connected to each other and we’ll receive the instruments for the perception of the new world.
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Talks about The New Life 7/18/12

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Question: What would you wish to young people who are going to have a family so that they could build happy, positive relationships?

Answer: Happiness is based on a correct balance between the desires and feelings and reason and calculation. We cannot cross out anything and build it one-sidedly. That is why, in order to grasp this system, we must understand that a person includes the entire universe, the cosmos. And in order to compare properly, to connect two people, one needs a special computer, giving so many options that I cannot imagine that this is possible.

But the balance of two such complex systems, each of which consists of the heart and mind that are in union and in contradiction with each other, is possible only if we know how it works. And nature drives us to it.

That is why in the process of our development, our evolution, we have come to the state where we are required to stock up on some knowledge. This would not require a lot of time: a dozen or two dozen classes, lessons, and various examples, until we begin to feel what a man is, how he works, moves, how he reacts to everything, what he is made of, and how to resolve conflicts that do not let them grow up ugly. All this can be studied. Only then I would advise to take a serious decision. It is necessary to look at marriage as a serious venture, which can give an echo for a lifetime. So, may it be positive rather than negative.
[84809]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 7/8/2012 

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Question: With respect to the general public, our method should be the means by which they will be provided with basic needs such as food, safety, and health. How does it help them reveal the spiritual world?

Answer: They reveal the spiritual world more passively than we do.

We become connected with the upper one to bring the Light that Reforms and to resemble It. This Light we pass on, carrying the method of correction to people. And they perform only the necessary steps under our direction, not caring about the Light, and this practice of connection is enough to bring it to their environment. The Light will affect and advance them towards the understanding and feeling, and then they will want to receive it themselves to move towards unity and the revelation of the Creator, as it is written: “All shall know Me, young and old.”

Thus, we must carry the method of unity to the people so that they feel good. We cannot explain what “good” actually means; however, the Reforming Light lies in these activities, and due to It, people will move further and further in the interpretation of their benefit until they come to The Good and Who Does Good.

Question: How is it combined with people’s simple needs, for example, for cheaper food?

Answer: We explain how to unite so that food becomes cheaper. Of course, no one wants to unite, but this is the condition if we want to achieve something, and that is why a person pays this price. And then, continuing to act in the same direction, he discovers that unity is a treasure in itself: not as a tool to help you achieve something, but as a state. This is how the Light acts, giving us a new understanding.

So, we explain to people that united together they will have many advantages. Mutual support will instill in them a sense of security; their life will become better, safer, etc. Of course, you have to pay for it by a measure of personal convenience, by a share of your egoism, but it is easy and attractive with overall participation. The strength of the masses does the job. And then, having approached realization, people will see that it really brings them benefits, that the solution to the problems has been found.
There will be no repeating of the scenario of Soviet Russia or Israeli kibbutzim; the script of unity is just for the sake of a better life. After all, today we are engaged in the process, and only through our participation people come together so that it is good and useful for development. Suddenly, they will feel that unity attracts them because therein lies a higher root, a higher state, something that fills them with the spirit of life. So, they will go ahead.

Question: Where do we need to start our explanations to involve them in the process?

Answer: We need to develop an approach that would allow properly explaining to people that unity can greatly improve society, to achieve discounts and mutually beneficial exchange, learning to help each other, instead of paying someone money, etc. Someone will voluntarily take on a children’s club, others will also contribute, and we will be able to live a normal life without money, discounted by the crisis. We will feel the need for and the benefits of reciprocity.

Of course, without the Light that Reforms, not intending to unite seriously, people would “run away” after having used each other. But here, thanks to our leadership, people will feel the need for internal growth. Time after time, they will discover higher desires that require fulfillment, for the time being egoistic. And then, gradually, people will come to the altruistic intention from Lo Lishma to Lishma (not for Her name to Her name).

Thus, everyone goes through the same process; only their starting point lies below our point. We begin with the state of “Yisrael,” with the aspirations “straight to the Creator” (Yashar-El), we have the urge to reveal the spiritual world. And they do not have this attraction, and that is why we have to pull them along, to be what is called the “Light for the nations.” We conduct the Light in the actions of unity, through which we train people. These actions benefit the people, and meanwhile, the Light hidden in them develops people.
[84764]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/5/12, “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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In the News (from The New York Times): “Political scientists are defensive these days because in May the House passed an amendment to a bill eliminating National Science Foundation grants for political scientists. Soon the Senate may vote on similar legislation. Colleagues, especially those who have received N.S.F. grants, will loathe me for saying this, but just this once I’m sympathetic with the anti-intellectual Republicans behind this amendment. Why? The bill incited a national conversation about a subject that has troubled me for decades: the government — disproportionately — supports research that is amenable to statistical analyses and models even though everyone knows the clean equations mask messy realities that contrived data sets and assumptions don’t, and can’t, capture.

“It’s an open secret in my discipline: in terms of accurate political predictions (the field’s benchmark for what counts as science), my colleagues have failed spectacularly and wasted colossal amounts of time and money. The most obvious example may be political scientists’ insistence, during the cold war, that the Soviet Union would persist as a nuclear threat to the United States. In 1993, in the journal International Security, for example, the cold war historian John Lewis Gaddis wrote that the demise of the Soviet Union was ‘of such importance that no approach to the study of international relations claiming both foresight and competence should have failed to see it coming.’ And yet, he noted, ‘None actually did so.’ …

“Alas, little has changed. Did any prominent N.S.F.-financed researchers predict that an organization like Al Qaeda would change global and domestic politics for at least a generation? Nope. Or that the Arab Spring would overthrow leaders in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia? No, again.…

“The political psychologist Philip E. Tetlock began systematically quizzing 284 political experts — most of whom were political science Ph.D.’s — on dozens of basic questions, like whether a country would go to war, leave NATO or change its boundaries or a political leader would remain in office. His book “Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?” won the A.P.S.A.’s prize for the best book published on government, politics or international affairs.

“Professor Tetlock’s main finding? Chimps randomly throwing darts at the possible outcomes would have done almost as well as the experts.

“These results wouldn’t surprise the guru of the scientific method, Karl Popper, whose 1934 book The Logic of Scientific Discovery remains the cornerstone of the scientific method. Yet Mr. Popper himself scoffed at the pretensions of the social sciences: ‘Long-term prophecies can be derived from scientific conditional predictions only if they apply to systems which can be described as well-isolated, stationary, and recurrent. These systems are very rare in nature; and modern society is not one of them.’”

My Comment: Indeed, our time is a time of insight, although, unfortunately, of gradual understanding and often belated. It remains to realize the biggest misconception, “the future is entirely predictable if we know how to build it.”

Humanity is inside the environment called “Nature.” Both Humankind and Nature are systems that have their own laws of behavior and development. Their mutual influence can and should be studied, and most importantly changed, by changing humanity.

This is possible by introducing the methods of “Integral education.” Even the limited application of this method will produce a clear positive response, both in society and in the surrounding Nature, and thus will become a distinct example and proof of the correctness and effectiveness of the “method of managing the future.”
[84786]

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Question: In the middle of the twentieth century, a phenomenon called a “Swedish family” has appeared. Its meaning is now somewhat faded. A Swedish family is, in essence, a relationship, which is not officially registered. In Sweden, such an economic situation was formed that made it not beneficial to officially register a marriage, and many people lived in families without a marriage registration.

Many times, you have talked about the fact that it is very important to observe all of the conditions, customary in a society in order to fully realize the condition that husband and wife are one whole. Why is it so important to register your relationships, even if on a religious basis?

Answer: A human is, after all, a psychological system. And probably, there is no way out here. Since even a religious marriage, even in our society, which is far from religion, still binds you to something. Call it fear, prejudice, whatever you want, in any case the young and the old people do abide by it.

That is why I am for any culture, any religion to take part in marriage. That, nevertheless, gives a wider psychological base, not spiritual, but psychological, and a person is obliged to uphold the requirements of a marriage. In our memory, in the subconscious, there are such dark, hidden places, which remind us that marriage was entered into in front of our relatives, in the presence of a large number of people, that it has been validated in a religious sense, which proves that we are a family, and so on.

I would even give this event much higher publicity, not glamour, so that it would not mean that we are talking about material costs, but publicity. I would show these families on local TV, meaning that I would basically make it much more fundamental, so that there would be as much internal, psychological obstacles as possible against separating.
[84751]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 7/8/12

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Question: Does the family constitute a closed system? How is it possible to correctly use the tension that it creates?

Answer: Nowadays, the family rises from the animal level to the level of the human. If people understand this, then they will need to create a completely new kind of family that comes in contact with each other, and in that creates a correct integral family cell. This cell isn’t based on animal connections, and not on shared money, even not on children, since for this purpose institutions and systems were created, which in principle, take all of this upon themselves.

Today, within a family, people are not able to stay together since the couples are not mutually bound in any way from their shared inner level. The previous level remains far behind: We are no longer materially dependent on each other, we don’t have to be together; I am not tied to the family or the home, not to the children, not to religion, not to my village, not to my work, etc. Today a person is free: He bought a ticket, and flew somewhere, and you don’t even know where. He can disappear until the end of life in some corner of the world. Who knows!

In Moscow there is a popular TV program called, “I Am Looking for You” where people look for each other. This is, in principle, the call of the times. People disappear, leave, and don’t even try to give notice about themselves! A person finds something completely different, and he, as if, discovers a new life.

We must understand, that the family rose from the animal to the human level. If we are on that level, there is no reason for them to be together, to compromise, to connect. They don’t see the benefit or the profit from it and don’t see what form of spirituality they need to create between them or how to give birth to spiritual children and not physical ones, to create that same cell that will be called “spiritual family,” and not just a cell that is connected because of shared property, an apartment, or car, etc. If we don’t bring a person to this, then there won’t be a family. This is absolutely accurate!

We need to teach people to create a spiritual family now, meaning to be mutually connected at the next level, not at the corporeal level where each person can get along on his own.
[84748]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 7/8/12

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Research (Cameron Anderson, psychological scientist of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science): “New research suggests that overall happiness in life is more related to how much you are respected and admired by those around you, not to the status that comes from how much money you have stashed in your bank account. …

“‘One of the reasons why money doesn’t buy happiness is that people quickly adapt to the new level of income or wealth. Lottery winners, for example, are initially happy but then return to their original level of happiness quickly,’ said Anderson.”

My Comment: Our essence is the desire to enjoy, no matter from what it comes, but among all the desires the highest one on the scale of pleasures, the most powerful and long-lasting is approval, respect, honor, fame. That’s why, in the integral community, the whole economy and the calculations will be based upon receiving non-monetary rewards and social approval.

The standard of living will be one and will be determined only by natural characteristics of each individual, and the reward for effort in bestowal to the public will be “paid” by the attitude of society towards a person; thus, competition will be many times more than the desire for material reward. See Baal HaSulam’s article “The Last Generation.”
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Question: How can we convince ourselves that we are waiting for not an ordinary convention, but really there will be something special at this convention?

Answer: First, we have come to the state where the world demands this. The world has long been in a “desperate state,” but all this is just masked, obscured. But no matter how you hide them, the problems have already come out from under this cover. And that is why, while they are still trying to hide something, it no longer helps.

So, on the one hand, we see that the world forces us. And this is the most important thing since Kabbalah was revealed because the world is beginning to come to integral interdependence. But no one, except Kabbalah, has the method of preserving society, peace, family, and oneself in this integral interaction.

That is why Kabbalah was waiting for this moment to be revealed and to become the method of constructing a new society. We have to demonstrate on ourselves how to do this and learn from lectures and workshops how to teach this so that it is very clear and simple.

Every person who comes to the congress, in principle, is a potential distributor who will be able to give lectures, organize workshops and roundtables, etc. At least, if a person is not able to learn everything, he will still be able to absorb something and then finish his studies in our courses. I very much look forward to it.

We have to go through all the states that a person must pass beginning from zero and finishing with full connection with each other.
[84623]
From a Virtual Lesson 7/29/12

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