Question: During the second half of the twentieth century, the so-called “body-oriented psychotherapy” became popular. This refers to people who mainly perceive the world through tactile sensations. According to the integral method, once we rise to the new level, we separate from our bodies. Then, what about the people who have become accustomed to touching one another throughout their lives? What about them?

Answer: Tactile sensations naturally serve as an auxiliary element of initial contact because every person perceives certain influences through them. It is necessary to sit people in a circle where they touch each other’s knees or elbows and sometimes even hold hands and hug.

We try to sit men and women separately in different circles to annul various disturbances and give them the ability to touch freely, and so on. In other words, physical contact is very significant in the initial stage of the integral method.

For beginners, it is still very important to directly feel the people they are with. I do not think that, in the beginning, people can go online and via virtual channels begin to contact each for a virtual roundtable. It is difficult, although possible.

Question: The so-called “caressing” of a child is considered to be the model state of upbringing. As a psychotherapist, I know that there are many people who have not received enough caressing and touching in their childhood. Will the integral connection allow people to receive this sensation?

Answer: I do not know. I have not felt my students express any other need than the need to feel the next inner influence, the inner unity though tactile sensations such as holding hands and hugging each other in a circle. Nothing is leading toward caressing because all aspirations are initially directed toward inner unity.

Question: Should children be caressed?

Answer: Yes. Regrettably, we do not educate people. We do not prepare them for being parents. They do not understand this.

Question: Once a person rises above the level of the body, unites and acquires integral perception, will he be able to compensate for a lack of upbringing?

Answer: He absolutely will be able to compensate for the lack of anything! In general, once we create an integral atmosphere in the society, all the people instinctively and internally will understand the correct kind of attitude toward children, adults, and the elderly. All this already will have come into balance.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 05/25/12

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Question: Group psychotherapy has a notion of a group as a model of the world, an integral circle. When a person provides the circle with a certain model of behavior or an opinion and receives a reaction to it, he sort of completes the integrality of the picture, which he does not see without these people. Overall, this is the main work in group psychotherapy. Do we use this in the method of integral upbringing?

Answer: We also use this.

Today it is a custom to work collectively, because one person cannot do this. Only special people, geniuses, can work alone, but in general, we already see that the group initiates brainstorming.

But something different is happening here.

When we operate on the level of a soccer team, a research team, or a team of doctors, etc., we collect their common opinion at meetings where they gather and reach a certain common denominator. In a team of doctors, this averaged option is considered to be the most reliable for diagnosing a patient, and in a team of physicists it is used for research for scientific advancement. And these meetings, conferences, and consultations are repeated on the next stage.

In the method of integral upbringing, when we absorb information from one another in opposition to each other in conjunction with matching their opinions, we each develop one another and reach a certain common and already higher denominator. In other words, we do not simply add everything everyone has in the middle of a round table, but every one of us becomes enriched from everyone else by connecting randomly with one another.

At the end, let us say that I become like my nine partners, I become composed of all ten of us. The same happens with everyone else, but everyone keeps his foundation; in other words, I remain myself, but I acquire the knowledge, the sensations, and the attainment of another nine people. I already begin to look through them.

And here we really develop a very serious interaction between us. Every one of us increases his individual power, opinion, knowledge, sensations, etc. ten times.

All of this is regular group work in which there are several reciprocal methods of interaction when we share with a group, and then, when we divide into groups, strict interactions happen between us when we seem to strike sparks between us and force ourselves to reach certain acute states. We use all this.

But the integral method uses other methods, because we are not interested in attaining the maximum realization of desires and the mind on our animate, corporate, egoistic level. We are interested in ascending to the next state.

We gather, sit together, interact, and discuss problems with unity, connection, and different attitudes.

But the main thing is that there is an inner movement towards connection and unity in our discussions instead of mutual enrichment according to the principle of “I will take from everyone else.” Even though this also exists: I want to take from everyone else the strength to advance forward, the goal of unity, because each one of them has an individual movement towards this goal and I need all the strength.

And thus, everyone benefits from everyone else; in other words, instead of ten, we get 100 people since every person consists of ten. We increase our common aspiration towards unity by ten.

And besides, with all sorts of cross-conversations, phrases, and talks, inside them there is the most important thing: I open my mouth and listen, I open my ears and I hear, only with a single purpose of uniting with them on the inside into a single whole. Most important is when there is an enormous pressure to create something common outside of each one of us, inside our common information, for this unity to be above us, to create a community, which would keep us inside it like drops of water, which merge into a single common drop that can no longer be divided. This is the kind of state we want to reach.

When we try to do this and we conduct our desires through our conversations, we rouse the inner force of nature, which integrally holds together the entire universe. If we do this, it turns out that we form ourselves under the influence of this force of nature.

We begin to rouse the power that always developed us evolutionarily and pushed us forward. Now it no longer pushes us from behind with suffering, as it did before, but we direct ourselves towards it, and obligate it to pull us forward.

There are people, who do not wish to study, and they always get pushed “with a stick from behind.” There are people who follow the program. And there are people who go ahead of the program, they want more and more.

We want to advance fast, strive ahead on our own, and obligate nature to do this. This is practically the essence of the entire method.

In other words, we consciously use the same force of nature, and in this way we run ahead of the train. But this helps us rid ourselves of suffering that pushes us from behind and this accelerates our development. When we rouse this force of nature, and it influences us, we see how we pass these stages, we begin to learn this program, see the influence of this force, and become acquainted with it.

We suddenly enter the part of nature, where this entire enormous mechanism exists: forces, fields, systems of governance of our world, etc. We see what makes the atoms and the molecules spin, what makes everything connect, and how we operate throughout our entire journey, how I am now able to move my arms, since all this comes from there! Natural forces rouse us, and this is the way we operate.

In other words, we rise to the level of decision-making, the level, where the system of governance operates, and we begin to rouse it, begin acquainting ourselves with it, and become its active participants. Practically, we no longer pay attention to what happens with us on our level in this world. This world seems to fade in our sensations because we already exist on the level of forces, and not their consequences. And this is why this becomes most important to us; we already exist in it. It is like adapting to the next level, the next dimension.

This is where mankind needs to rise. This state is called “Adam,” “Man,” which practically does not exist in our world. In our world, we are merely rational animals because we service our corporeal, animal part.

In reality, the integral method is very simple and very practical. Today we really need to realize it.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” #33, 5/25/12

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Opinion (Dr. Peggy Drexler, Author, Research Psychologist, Gender Scholar): “A 2010 Federal Reserve survey – done every three years – found a staggering 40 percent drop in household net worth. With the economy continuing to struggle in the areas that hit people hardest  – home and jobs – the next survey is unlikely to show an appreciable drop in pain, possibly not for years to come. …

“As families struggle financially, they often change.

“Anxiety and depression take seats at the dinner table. Children – with their receptors to parental mood always running wide open – will sense the change in household tone. They will pick up on even the subtle shifts in the rhythms of daily routines.

Worse, they may see the loss of homes, changes in schools and friends, even verbal and physical abuse as the family fault lines crack under the unrelenting stress of getting through the month.

“Children pushed into poverty by a recession, the report says, are three times more likely to be poor themselves than those who managed to stay more affluent. ‘In short,’ say the authors, ‘the conditions of today will give rise to the next generation of poor Americans.’

“The recession has also had its way with the trust and expectations of young adults — particularly the younger end of the Millennials. …

“They are forced to assume that ‘everything that came before them was a mirage – that it was built on unsafe foundations.’

“People will find their way back to confidence. But especially for those growing up under the weight of its fearsome uncertainties, it will be with us for generations to come.”

My Comment: Integral upbringing obliges our creating public dining rooms, clubs, athletic fields, voluntary childcare, and a cultural mass leisure, and so on. It is about creating an environment that will raise up the people of the future, and not grow the lumpenproletariat. The problem is not in the means, but in the desire to organize that our egoism stops.
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Question: How is the course of integral education different from the nice and simple concepts about altruism used by cheap psychology and New Age?

Answer: The main function of the course is to try to prove to a person that we can only save the world by connection. We have the method of connection that we believe to be the right one. Practical work will prove the advantage of this method compared to other methods that seem to be using the same concepts.

On the surface, it may seem the same, but there is a difference, just like when we compare two violinists, one who is a famous virtuoso and the other one plays on a street corner. We offer a new “game,” so let’s see who will succeed.

Expertise is the inner quality of the art. So the concepts may seem identical. There are doctors who are specialists that people come to from all over the world. One may wonder why they do that if there is a doctor in a clinic near a person’s home. People pay a lot of money so that a famous doctor will examine them.

Both are doctors, but it is a matter of art. One has an inner sense that cannot be sold or passed on to others; it is an inner, natural gift. We too have such an inner power, let’s check! If we succeed time after time, then people will stand in line waiting for us and we will be considered specialists.

Life will prove that, since we are assisting the unity and the connection among the people. We don’t call for riots and breaking shop windows, but for studying and for education. Because according to all the research, the data, and social statistics, we can already see what helps and what doesn’t.

Never has it been possible to attain something good in this world by force. Wherever there were riots and the governments gave in to the pressure of the people and performed some reforms from the top down, it eventually harmed the people. If we examine things, we will see that after lowering prices, the prices rise again and are even higher than they were and suddenly the retirement age increases by two years; it is the same in every area.

How can that be, why is it getting worse exactly in the same place they tried to improve things? It is as if the desired improvement brought about a negative result. But this is the law of nature that people don’t know and we do. All the improvements that are not performed according to this law will become harmful, exactly the opposite of what was intended, from plus to minus.

This is evident from statistical data. If someone doesn’t believe it, he can try to create uprisings and riots again and see what it will lead to in half a year.

It isn’t even a result of the crisis; it is simply a fixed law. Any strong nation that invaded other countries and dominated them was eventually dominated by the same nations, perhaps not immediately, but in a few centuries. France once ruled all of North Africa by making it its colony. Now it turns out that North Africa is coming to France and dominates it.

That’s the way it is everywhere, history always backlashes like a boomerang in response to any forceful action. We should learn from this so that we can at least stop ourselves from illogical actions. We have been blind until now, but if we already know the outcomes, we should change our strategy. There is no choice; we are finding ourselves in such a crisis today, that we cannot make any more mistakes. We must come to the right conclusions.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 6/29/12

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Integral education is a very serious tool that includes the special force that is revealed among us. It is the force of connection that saves us from all the troubles: from hunger, insecurity, health problems, problems with the kids, the break up of the family, etc. A person attends a course of integral education in order to find out how to solve all his problems.

All this happens in five sessions: It’s like buying a Mercedes for ten dollars! Since we are getting ready to acquire the force of the inner connection by which we will be able to attain everything, balance, harmony and connection, this is a real acquisition.

If people working in a certain plant connect, it is worthwhile and profitable even for the owner of the plant, since because of such connection the productivity increases, absenteeism decreases due to the absence of illness, and conflicts and disagreements disappear. It is even good for business.

A person should understand from the start what the plan is and what he gains from it. Then he will be ready to be part of the game. We are grown people dealing with a very serious matter by intending to acquire a special natural force that is concealed within our connection.

It is the most powerful force that is above everything, since all the other forces are separate. By this force of connection, we will be able to solve all our problems.

At the end of each workshop we should sum up things in order to assess our achievements—we’ve achieved connection; we felt how helpful it is; we understood how from this point we can begin to solve problems and deal with different questions, tie them together and approach them integrally.

We can already see how much we can save thanks to our connection: in the municipality, in industry, at home, in the family, and at work. The force of connection allows us to make changes on every level of our life. It is to such an extent that if we begin to organize everything and correct things from the bottom up, then what the government does will not worry us on our level. By the changes from the bottom up, we will force it to manage us differently.

We only need to rise from the bottom up (the Returning Light), which means to connect among us, even for the egoistic goal of attaining a better life. In any case, it will already be connection, which means the correction of the shattering. So gradually, by raising all the people with comprehensive integral education, we will change the general atmosphere in society, and it will spread all over and change our life.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 6/29/12

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We need to persuade the organizations that are our partners in roundtables that their actions are not sufficient and should be supplemented with integral education and upbringing.

Then gradually by giving them integral education and upbringing, together we will organize a united front of correcting nations and people to mutual aid because our actions will be with the right intention in the likeness to nature, in mutual agreement, which will attract a higher force, the Light, the Creator into human actions.

That is why we need to work together with them, gradually leading them to an understanding that without educating, first of all of us, and then bringing up the nation, no action will yield good results. So, our first task is to gradually enter into close contact with these organizations so that they become imbued with the idea of correcting a person, not just performing actions.
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In the News (from The Slatest): “Being spanked, slapped, pushed, or hit as a child, even when these punishments are not a part of full-scale maltreatment, are linked to an increased risk of mental illness in adulthood in a new study published in Pediatrics. …

“Lead author Tracie Afifi recommends that physical punishment not be used on children of any age, and that positive parenting strategies be employed instead. Spanking, and other forms of physical punishment on children, is illegal in 32 countries, not including the United States. The American Academy of Pediatrics, however, officially discourages it. …

“Close to 80 percent of American preschool children are spanked, according to a 2010 University of North Carolina study.”

My Comment: There is no other method of education, except an example, especially when it comes not from adults, but from peers. The environment is always the only effective and positive means of upbringing. Nothing can replace a good example of friends.
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Question: Is it necessary to have intensive studies for a long period of time so that the majority of people could approach the integral level?

Answer: We should not wait until they reach it. We don’t have time.

We see that the so-called “progressive” societies of the world are in a very critical state. Since the world is interconnected, they will naturally influence the entire world with their undesirable extreme fallout; nothing good will come from that.

Here we cannot take a statistically average segment. We should define it according to the most extreme states where the wealth, power, force, and weapons exist because it is the highest level and defines the level of human development.

Today we cannot say, “Humanity has Wall Street and at the same time it has an African village, and their average is modern humanity.” No!

Since Wall Street is working for the entire world, we should take it into account. The African village will feel its influence in any case. If Wall Street disappears, the African village will die from starvation or it will be reduced to ashes if Wall Street wishes so.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #33, 5/25/12

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Question: I’ve been working with psychotherapy and psychology for twenty years and I have a lot of different experiences and so on. In transitioning to the method of integral education, I see all the pluses that you’re talking about. Moreover, we have applied them in practice and they are quite obvious.

But since this is the next qualitatively new degree, then essentially, my entire twenty-year experience is not needed. It turns out that I have to give it up, but I cannot do it, it’s very hard for me to do.

Answer: Why do you think that we don’t need your experience?

After all, it wasn’t in vain that humanity developed for hundreds of millions of years to reach the present state. Obviously, it couldn’t have come to it in one thrust.

I also lived my entire life going through all kinds of states, pursuing disciplines completely remote from this method, searched, suffered, developed, and worked in various fields. I don’t know the full program: Why did I come to it through exactly such a path and didn’t do it 30-40 years ago like my current young students? I don’t envy them, because in everything there is a cause-and-effect basis for each of us. But to talk about the fact that the past could have been different, I think that for a psychologist this is not suitable.

Response: Experience, that’s all great. But it has a reverse side, a trap, in that a person clings on to this experience. It would seem that you’ve already passed these states and the next step is in front of you, and it is beautiful. But you’re standing at the threshold and shuffling your feet, because it’s scary to take this step.

Answer: I agree with you, and I see it in many people.

What can we say then about those who are only now starting out and are pursuing something very distant?! They spent their life on absolutely egoistic, murky, lowly fulfillments… We have to understand that this is how we were created, that only consistent cause-and-effect development is what leads us to realize the need for the next phase of development, and for each it is his or her own.
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From a “Talk On Integral Upbringing” 5/25/12

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Question: Before going skydiving, say, a person needs to prepare his mind for the jump, and there is an instructor who helps him with that. It is precisely the teachers who often push their students toward a decisive step. As far as I understand, coercion is forbidden in the integral method, and a teacher, a person who already exists within the integral sensation, doesn’t have a right to do such things.

Answer: How can I push a student? He must exert an effort by himself, close his eyes, and jump from the plane.

He needs to make an internal effort, to gather himself in such a way as to recognize the need for uniting with others. And only in this unity, when he jumps out of himself, not out of an airplane, into a commonality and integrality, beyond himself and into others, from reception to bestowal, when he makes this inversion, this leap, but at the same time turns himself inside out, only then can he experience it.

Moreover, there is a force in nature that doesn’t push, but helps us make this change, this phase transition. It works only on the condition that we demand its influence and help. This is the so-called MAN (prayer) that needs to be formed in a person, that is, an urgent need to change oneself from receiving, being egoistic like a cancer cell, to giving, being compassionate, emanating, and filling everyone else.

This force is able to change us and it exists in nature. But it doesn’t exist in each of us separately; it appears only when we gather together and in our circle create commonality between us, our common effort directed at change. And then each of us and all of us together undergo this change: We become one common whole. And then, after pulling away from it, we become egoists once gain.

So, this force builds us into one single whole, changing not each of us separately but precisely that entire group of people who support each other and elevate this goal, creating such a common demand that it truly draws to them the force of nature which changes them. But in order for it to influence us, we need to have accumulated a certain potential for it. And then the force holds us. This is the second, the giving force of nature.

Two forces exist in nature: receiving and bestowing. We’ve never used the force of bestowal. Desiring to fulfill ourselves, we’ve always used only the egoistic force and have dealt only with it. And now, we’re gradually losing the desire to work with it and in this manner we’re coming to the revelation of the next force.

In our method, this is known as the two lines, where the left line is the receiving one and the right, giving. Through the help of these two lines, we begin to work in mutual connection and to rise in the new dimension along the rungs of the ladder of attainment, feeling, and fulfillment.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” 5/25/12

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