We talk a lot about the things we want to achieve, attain, and reveal. But we have merited this aspiration because the entire world needs it. How can we help the world?

Everything around us is filled with the upper Light that permeates us, but we don’t feel it yet because of our egoism; great abundance exists in the world. There is everything! Only our egoism does not allow us to share with others, expand it in a way that would make everyone happy. Thus in the end everyone suffers.

Let us think about what we can offer to the world, how we imagine a corrected society where everything already operates according to the laws of mutual bestowal, love, and participation, when everyone understands that they are connected into one common system, and it cannot be that some are happy and others are not.

This interconnection manifests between us to such extent that we automatically behave this way. We reveal that we are an integral system. We only think about reciprocity. A person who thinks about others no longer needs anything else. As Baal HaSulam writes, everyone thinks about everyone else. I am certain that my friends are thinking about me, and this is why I cannot even think about myself. And this forces me to think about others.

The Creator pushes us towards this kind of unity, this kind of society. We hope to come to this is in a good way—through dissemination, education, and upbringing instead of having suffering, blows, and different cataclysms and catastrophes push us towards it.

Let us use the simplest example, a small town with a population of 50 thousand people: Ten thousand are working at the largest enterprise in the city. Right now they only spend half a workday working; there is no work.

Ten thousand people are elderly and retired. Ten thousand are children. And another twenty thousand people are in the service field, they work in all the city’s systems.

The problem is that the big factory, where ten thousand workers, engineers, and other professionals work, is closing. And for this reason the main source of income in the city is being reduced twofold since the revenue brought to the city by the factory circulates in all the fields of service.

This is a common problem, which today appears in many places in the world.

And now imagine, what we can offer to the population if we were to introduce our system of integral upbringing and education.

For example, we can begin with the employees of the plant since half of their workday is becoming free. How can we come to the other people in the city: the homemakers, children, the elderly, and those who are employed in municipal services since their workload, together with their salaries, are also naturally being diminished?

What kind of changes would happen in the city if we were to gradually introduce new social relations between people, spouses, within families, the household, on the street, the parks, in service, cleaning, delivery, in all the city and municipal jobs?

How can people who create integral relations save and cut their spending in a way that they are not able to feel it? Can this be done?

How can the double drop in the main city revenue be compensated in a way that a person practically does not feel it when he offsets it with new social relations, relationships between people?

Imagine how a town like this needs to live.

We must bring all of this in order, we must discuss and gradually incorporate all these problems into a system, and solve them because this really is a problem. And today it is already arising in many places.

If we are able to express this in a realistic way and imagine it together with scientists, sociologists, and political scientists with calculations and numbers, this will bring us closer to realizing these ideas.

But naturally, in general, nothing can be solved without integral upbringing. And this is the main thing.

Moreover, we must not forget that no problem can be solved without the influence of the Surrounding Light. We must still take into consideration that no matter what our undertakings are like, no matter what kind of wonderful ideas that great people and great minds propose – nothing will work without us hoping, knowing, and working in a way that will attract the Light, and then it will do it.
[76595]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/24/12, Workshop 3

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I would like to talk about the condition Nature sets before us: We have to reach absolute love between all seven billion people in the world. Is this condition really indisputable? Are we capable of fulfilling it? Is it really so that if we achieve at least partial success, if we advance in this direction, we will see, time after time, that it’s all for our benefit, that it changes us, our environment, and all of life for the better?

The essence of every person’s nature is concern for themselves. A person is incapable of thinking about something else. If we examine and study all of our actions, we’ll see that we need energy in order to carry them out. Even for the simplest motion, like when I shift my hand from place to place, I need to expend energy. However, this energy can appear and be at my service only on condition that by using it, I will achieve some benefit for myself.

Accordingly, we have the following condition: Any internal shifts within atoms or molecules, any bodily motion, any movement in my feelings and reason, all require that I see the beneficial state that will be result from this process. This is how I relate to everything in my life.

Certain actions, I perform instinctively. For example, whenever I’m sitting in a chair, I don’t think about what position to sit in. During a conversation, I don’t ponder my vocal inflections. In the majority of cases and actions, everything is carried out according to an internal calculation. Within me there nestles an egoistic desire to feel well and experience a pleasant sense of well-being. This I see as the desired outcome of all of my actions.

The hope for a good feeling operates constantly and secures me in a given state. Wherever I may be going, whatever I’m doing or saying, no matter how I carry myself, all of this is merely in order to obtain the best possible means for a good state.

I want to eat, sleep, or party. I am required to work in order to provide for myself. All that I do is only to bring me benefit. In essence, my entire life is about how to reach the greatest profit with the minimum suffering and maximum pleasure in order to fill myself with whatever I can.

With what should I fill myself? This depends on my upbringing, the influence of my environment, the scale of values that I received, and from habit that becomes second nature. What I was taught is what I learn to live with, even if it’s unnatural. This is how I live, doing many things in my life not because I wanted this initially, but because society, parents, and educators taught me and accustomed me to it. As a result, I act mechanically, not needing the power of thought.

There are other things in life, too. These things I am forced to do, and they require internal effort, the kind where I convince myself that it’s worth it. Let’s say an alarm rings, and I get up even though I want to sleep. Perhaps I have a difficult and uninteresting job, but still I know that after an exhausting day of work, I will come back to my family and into the warm, homey atmosphere where I can rest and experience good feelings. However, I have to pay for these feelings, and this is why I’m slaving away.

All of my actions, all contacts with some people and distancing from others ultimately are designed to create a more pleasant atmosphere for me. So, I’m always concerned about how I can feel better.

This is the nature of each of us, and it pertains to the “animate” degree. Essentially, the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature always aspire toward feeling better, toward an ever better state. It seems to all creatures that this state will be balanced, that in it they won’t feel pressure or be pulled in some different direction, but will be in harmony with what they imagine to be a better life.

So, it turns out that all my life I observe the “law of feeling better.” This is the condition on which we exist, and our egoistic nature constantly directs us toward it.
[75593]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 13, 01/11/12 

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There is no schedule or exact timeframe set for our development, understanding, persuasion, analysis, and self-correction so that from being egoists we will become altruists, permeated with love and concern for one another. Don’t wait for some time period or change of generations because changes can happen in our generation. Everything depends upon one’s readiness and the extent of his desire to change.

As we have learned from the studies of free will, our desire depends entirely on our environment. We have to work together. A person can’t work on himself by himself and convince himself of something; this never bring any positive results. We have to build an environment, a society, which will influence us, and then everyone will change. So go ahead and build this great environment for all of us! With the help of this environment we will become convinced of the necessity of this path and will quickly wish to change and become connected through mutual guarantee.

As a result, the environment will influence us with such intensity that changes will take on a flying speed. After all, these changes don’t depend on our timeframe.

The still, vegetative, and animal levels of nature evolved over billions of years. This is the process of the egoism’s development. We aren’t responsible for this process; we only actualize it more and more in accordance with our growth.

However, right now the intensity and the speed of development is in our hands. Everything depends upon the environment, and I can artificially build it, constantly improving it so that it will become greater and stronger in its influence over me. Here I need people of the arts, scientists, sociologists, and psychologists. I must use all that exists in humanity in order to create an intense and effective influence. Then we will experience a happy life in this generation and see the good that we’ll leave for our children. 

If we separate human desires within this context, we can then say that they divide into two parts: individual desires that relate to a human being personally, and social desires. A person should limit his individual desires to the point that allows him or her to lead a normal life. However, a person should develop his social desires as much as possible, starting from a small circle of friends and then expand it, until the influence of the environment will help him develop to the level of good relations, responsibility, concern, mutual guarantee, and love for the entire world. 

One has to understand that by exiting one’s egoism and by becoming more concerned with building mutual relationships with the widening circles of humanity, he obtains more wisdom and deeper sensations; he includes everyone within and thereby senses all of reality and all of nature. This way one opens for himself a new reality, world—he lives in it by exiting himself and sensing everyone. This constitutes life on the human level, which nature prepared for us. Through this we realize ourselves correctly here, in this world.
[75203]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 11, 01/09/12

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Question: Is it possible for us to change the world right now with sufficient speed and effectiveness?

Answer: To change the world means to explain how it is currently and how it should be. By correcting myself and beginning to be an integral part in this entire space within this system, I thereby change the world. When I explain to the entire world what is happening to it and how we need to change in order to bring the world into balance, I am altering it.

Basically, I am providing explanations so that people would change themselves. There is no coercion in it. I cannot force them, I can’t come up with some new society, stick them in there, and then the world would become better, by no means.

We are at a stage where there can be no other change. Nature has always driven us forward. We thought that we were changing the world, but in reality, we were simply pushed toward happiness with a “stick.” We were always trying to do something, and ultimately, we have come to such a state where we improve the world only by improving ourselves with our awareness, with a rational understanding of nature, and with our connection and balance with it.
[75583]
From KabTV’s “Foundations of the Integral Society” 2/26/12 

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Question: If there are two scenarios for the development of the ego: One, when the ego becomes a total war, and two, when the ego commits us to learn and to develop in a systemic manner, then couldn’t there be another scenario when the ego will make us fall into a stupor, will turn us into zombies?

Answer: No. The issue is that the development of the ego in an integral society takes into account its rise to the next level, where it becomes greater. That is, the ego continues to develop.

What we see today in society is the suspension of the ego. It doesn’t grow any further, it doesn’t want to grow. Why should I grow more if what I get are only problems? When a person has problems, he doesn’t want anything. It’s better to divert the mind through reading a book or to go to sleep so as to not feel anything. He doesn’t want anything else because he just wants to hide from the problems, not to see or know anything. Thus, if you don’t give the ego the correct answer, it will begin to extinguish and you will become a vegetable.

When you enter an integral environment and together with everyone, begin to develop not your own personal ego but the general one, you receive completely new opportunities of fulfillment, together with everyone. Our general ego, “WE,” begins to develop. Then the constant opportunities to grow, meaning to receive constant fulfillment, vitality, will appear to you.

However, currently there exist only two opportunities given to us from nature: Our ego can either subside, lower its level, which is what happens with the unemployed and with those who suffer and go into depression, or we can develop and fill it in connection with others.
[74952]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/22/12, Preliminary Lesson

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Question: What is the role of family and state in the new society? Will there be a need for them at all?

Answer: Let’s imagine the final picture that nature leads us to. Nature is leading us to a state where we have a normal family life. The family is the foundation, and at the animate level, it doesn’t change. We need to have a family, home, and children; all that is necessary. With regard to work, the main work for everyone will be mandatory integral upbringing. All of humanity will be involved with this.

The future family will be where the children will receive education through a virtual network, with no tests, with no pressure. But in order to receive integral upbringing, they will meet together in groups. Groups must exist. We don’t need the frontal education at all, where the unfortunate children sit facing the teacher, forced to listen, and he or she stands before them like a policeman and guards them. This is not right.

After all, today’s education is an inheritance from times when there was a need to turn farmers into industry workers. Thus, people were collected from the fields and were given a number of skills: a little reading and writing, a little arithmetic, so that they could work next to a machine. And from this began our school system, which has completely discredited itself today, but is very difficult to change.

The new school will be built on completely different principles. First of all, it needs to be taken into account that the parents will spend a lot of time at home with their children. The big problem has been that the woman was not able to stay at home with the children. She must know what they are learning and how to help them. She needs spare time for this since she must simultaneously learn in school, in university, in order to be a teacher for her children, and even more than that, an educator for her children and husband. She needs to educate the entire family. This is the real problem.

Perhaps my remarks sound a little scrappy, but it’s in order for you to understand what a critical change, transformation of the family we are talking about. It’s about building a huge system of completely new relations. Nature will force us to reach this in any case because through the crisis, it will throw us from our jobs, and we will find ourselves at home. And so we will be forced to change the society in order to bring it in balance with nature.

In any case, integral education and upbringing will bring about an integral education that will be realized through a virtual network, while integral upbringing will take place in the framework of group activities, where the children will gather in small groups of 10 children with a teacher (educator) who knows how to turn them into one whole. They need to learn how to interact integrally. They need to be psychologists themselves: to understand, criticize, and justify each other. Children who receive integral education feel people, understand them, know their nature, their weaknesses, and at the same time, participate with them.

This is not simple, but today we stand at the threshold of a substantial change. It’s unavoidable, otherwise we will simply destroy this world.
[74949]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/22/12, Preliminary Lesson

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Question: Are there people who have already reached the fourth level of development, the level of Man? Could it be that these are certain leaders in the world?

Answer: Unfortunately, the leaders are very far from that because only the greatest egoist can be a leader in our world. This is because our world is egoistic, and so in order to climb to the top, you need to be the greatest egoist with a very big desire.

There are nearly two million people around the world who study the method of the integral upbringing in the framework of the ARI Institute. Many other different organizations and circles are engaged in that as well.

I hope that the year 2012 will be a special year because many changes are about to take place now, and we see that the speed of these changes is increasing, particularly in terms of understanding and adapting the integral system to humanity. So we will see great changes, and I hope they will be for the better.
[74955]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/22/12, Preliminary Lesson

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Question: How is the ego different from high self-confidence?

Answer: Actually the ego isn’t bad. It’s nature’s central force that develops all of matter and moves everything forward. The point is that nowadays, when we are opposite to nature, it becomes negative.

Until our time it wasn’t negative. We advanced, developed science, technology, life, and social and political structures. All this was very positive for us. The more desire a person had, the higher he was: a scientist, an inventor, a poet, no matter what, but he moved the development forward.

Now however, it’s the opposite. The ego has become Pharaoh and everything has stopped; nothing is developing anymore, but rather is only decreasing. Because nature has become integral, the ego is turning into an obstacle. It should also become integral.

If some organ in the body begins to think only about itself, it becomes a malignant tumor that swallows and destroys everything around it. This is exactly what is happening in our society these days, with our planet, with the environment.

We, on the contrary, have to be in a mutual integral connection, just as our body is. When all parts of society, like the parts of the body, come together into one integral bundle, they must learn to cooperate. Otherwise they will destroy themselves just like a malignant tumor.
[74858]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/22/12, Preliminary Lesson

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Question: When we were little, our parents taught us to treat each other well. And today we need an environment, which will continue the same thought. But you also say that we need to treat nature as a whole well. What does this mean?

Answer: Shouldn’t we protect the still, vegetative, and animate nature? Shouldn’t we love it? Loving nature means that I don’t live in it to use it as much as I can. “Let us blow up a mountain, let us dessicate the sea; let us do whatever benefits us. …” No, we must have a balanced attitude towards everything.

Ecologists are being defeated, but we will succeed because we say: “Nature is in balance. So let us first experiment on ourselves is what this means. Let us feel between us what it is like to be in balance, to protect all of nature, and to take from it only what we need for existence.” Animals act in a similar way naturally.

This is part of integral education. It will of course help people to also have the right attitude towards the natural environment. It is impossible to only teach people to treat each other well; they also need to be taught to have a kind and proper attitude towards nature, to the actual notion of “nature.”

After all we are in the process of development, and someone drives and pushes us. Where does this come from? What kinds of forces are developing us? Where does my tomorrow lie? I might not be familiar with it, but there are people who reveal it and perceive it. We see before us a step-by-step, causal process; we see that nature evolves consistently and every detail in it depends on other details. Einstein had really wanted to learn the common, universal formula of nature; science is familiar with this tenet, science is aware of the reciprocal influences of all parts of nature on each other.

And we are not an exception. And therefore, as we learn to unite, this unity also includes nature as a whole, together with its all-encompassing law, which develops us and everything else. Human society is not the only thing to develop, vegetative, as well as animate nature also develop, only much slower. The entire universe is in the state of development. Where is it directed? We do not know, but the fact remains: The universe is expanding, experiencing different processes, and none of them are accidental, even though we cannot yet understand them. As we advance, we learn that a great law of nature is concealed here.

In the end, we see that all the laws are obviously woven together into one, even though the connection between biology, zoology, botany, mineralogy, man, stars, and other things escapes us. We are not able to see the nets that connect everything, but essentially everything is a single Nature, and it does not divide into separate segments. And this is why we must have a holistic, wholesome approach to it. In addition, we also are its inseparable part. Life itself dictates it to us: Study facts and not someone’s assumptions.

It is like two directions exist:

• You can form a good attitude towards the human society and then justify the devastation of Earth for the sake of current welfare;
• Or conversely, you can prioritize environmental protection and neglect people.

Instead, I say: “No, the approach must be wholesome, ‘round,’ one. A single attitude towards everything is required of us. After all, man is a part of nature, and thus he must have an equal attitude towards society, family, and nature as a whole. We must attain balance among all parts. Balance is what is inherent in nature, and thus we observe its universal law.”

It is also balanced by the mutual influence and movement of the planet, stars, and the galaxy. Also, any interference with the earth’s nature is reflected in its various parts. So we need to understand our place in the system and build a corresponding attitude.
[75200]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 11, 1/9/12

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Question: Do all people potentially have an additional sense, the sense of integral connection with others, or not?

Answer: No one has this sense. It’s born when we begin to connect. It happens in a group with the guidance of an educator who teaches us how to be connected, and suddenly we feel that we are parts of one system. It’s just like a body in which every organ (the heart, lungs, kidneys, and liver) operate in a different manner, but together they all operate for the benefit of the one integral connection so that the whole body will exist.

Then in the collective group that becomes closely connected, there’s the feeling of one whole: a new thought, a new sensation. The heart and mind appear, which relate to us, bonded with each other in this connection.

This internal feeling evokes an opportunity in a person to perceive the integral nature. We are egoists; we cannot feel it as one whole. But in this way by tuning ourselves, we become a kind of oscillating circuit, detector that can perceive the integral nature and its fluctuations. The fluctuations we perceive in this sense are a new kind of knowledge, a new feeling of the upper world, of the next, fourth level called “Adam” (human).

It’s then that we begin to feel that the world is not only the still, the vegetative and the animate. It’s also the world of knowledge, the world in which the present, past, and future are connected above time. We begin to feel it as infinite, eternal, whole, and in harmony with all its parts.

When a person reaches this level, he begins to feel his body as less important because this knowledge, these desires, these thoughts are no longer connected to our beastly body. If your desires and thoughts are only about your beastly body, then they are really connected to it. But if they come to the connection with others, then they are outside of the body—between you and all others. And then you as if begin to “come out of yourselves” into this space, into the “upper nature.” Essentially, this is what has been prepared for us.

There are many scientific articles about this topic. My ideas have scientific basis. Very serious scientists write about this. These concepts are not very close to us in our daily life, but if a person comes to an integral group and studies in it, he begins to feel these things very quickly. This is materialistic psychology, and there is no mysticism here. It’s simply feeing oneself in connection with others, and today nature is pushing us towards this very firmly.
[74860]
From the Vilnius Convention 3/22/12, Preliminary Lesson

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