Question: There are two basic directions in psychology: whole-group dynamics when everyone participates in the course of activities at the same time and the other where people are first split into pairs or small groups and later join all together again. Does integral education include both of these approaches?

Answer: Sure. The main thing is that people learn the materials and ultimately unite together, and that they come to a common conclusion or understanding that unification can be so multi-faceted.

Question: So, in the end, through every action we should come to a common unity, a common idea?

Answer: Yes. But it can be formulated by different people in different ways since each one has individual sensations. They cannot give identical, cookie-cutter responses by repeating the same phrases over and over. One person feels one way, another person feels differently, but basically, the same model forms within them, it is only expressed in different styles externally.

Comment: When a person starts engaging in some action, he first needs to warm up a little bit, and in the end, it’s important to conclude the process and not just break it off. Yet you once said that we need to make people accustomed to being able to instantaneously “switch on” integrality in any situation.

Answer: But not in the beginning of his or her education. Everything comes with experience. But this is necessary because we need to reach a state where any moment in time could be new for us, and we will always look at the world through integral glasses. This is necessary.
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From KabTV’s “Foundations of the Integral Society” 2/26/12

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Question: How can we and all of humanity learn about the inseparable network that connects us?

Answer: In order to do that we tighten our connection with the people, with the world. This recognition will pass on to them through us. Knowing the general system means knowing the connection among all its parts, and this connection is attained by devoting one’s self to dissemination.

We have to understand the masses: their nature, their character, and their demands and from that to adapt our approach to them. Internally we have to act as grownups playing with children, with the clear intention and knowledge of what we want to achieve by this game.

Question: Do we have to teach people the laws of the integral system in addition to the importance of good mutual relations with others?

Answer: This is called education, and by this an educator differs from a teacher. A teacher presents facts, formulas, graphs, etc.; he teaches the students the results of research. On the other hand, an educator treats the students more cunningly, in a two-faced manner. An educator has two parts, two identities, one that descends to the level of the student in order to connect with him, while the other identity has a clear intention, knowing what he wants to bring the student to. The educator himself is the third identity, and no one knows its level. This means that the role of an educator is on one hand, to see the level of the student, and on the other hand, to know the level to which he can raise the student and to connect the two levels, to teach the student how to move on from one level to another, and to spur him to do so.

An educator has a special role and he needs special preparation to stand in front of an audience. He should know what to give and what to hide, how to play and how to put on different masks, how to sometimes pretend that he doesn’t understand and sometimes to appear strange, cunning, etc., by that you enable the student to go through different states with regard to you, to the material, to the Creator, and to the world. A “student” is someone who is willing to maturely accept all these forms from the educator, knowing that it is all in his favor. On the other hand, a teacher simply teaches students different laws.

About the network that connects us all, of course we explain its laws. We explain the world in which we live, the global crisis that stems from the fact that nature is global, and so there is mutual connection and interdependence among all its parts, and that man is the reason for all that is happening because he is not connected to nature, and that in order to solve the crisis we have to unite. All this, of course, is part of our program.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/8/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: A source of information in a group can either be its moderator or exercises that help clarify certain theses. What is the relationship between these elements in a group of integral education? Should everything be conducted in form of a game or can the instructor be a source of information as well?

Answer: Absolutely! There should be an instructor both in the main, educational lessons and during the practical exercises since everyone, without exception, needs to receive an education.

It doesn’t matter that some people couldn’t bear themselves to listen to a single lesson in school, graduated simply because they were “pushed out,” and went to work in some factory or at the street market. That’s not important!

All people should receive an integral education in its minimum form, in form of laws and memorized rules that they constantly repeat, if that’s their level. They need to repeat all the rules and literally know them by heart until, under the influence of various life’s problems, excesses, and incidents, these rules begin to come to life within them and prove that it is indeed so, that is, until the rules come into action and show them their real applicability.

Indeed, certain segments of the population understand everything on their own level: They wake up, take care of their needs, eat, go to their vegetable garden, and go back to bed again. We should definitely work with them. Accordingly, we need to prepare various kinds of educational materials, starting with simple pictures, like for small children. These people learn more from video clips, motion pictures, and theater or cinema productions that are as simple as TV series. The most important thing is that they learn the integral laws, the main provisions of nature.

There are also those who go further, to whom we can present the theoretical elements of attainment. And they will agree with them on the basis of their logical conclusions.

But overall, this is a multilevel education that needs to adapt to all segments and layers of the population, both on the social and intellectual level, or maybe not even based on their level of development but on the natural predisposition that a person has for comprehension of a given topic (physics, poetry, and so on). Even among domestic workers, there are poets and physicists.

People who are working on group selection have to really take this into consideration. Accordingly, we need to prepare various types of materials, different kinds of lessons, examples, activities, and games. Everything should be very differentiated and customized.
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From KabTV’s “Foundations of the Integral Soceity” 2/26/12   

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Question: There are people who are used to receiving an assignment, working on it at home, and then discussing the completed task in a group, and there are also those who are incapable of doing anything at home but are ready to take up anything in a group. Is it possible to practice both of these approaches in the method of integral education?

Answer: You should adapt to people instead of trying to break them down—this is the problem with today’s education. Of course we need to act in accordance with the individuality of a person.

You won’t be able to change people, and it is not necessary. We need to present the integral method to each type people in their own key, in their form and style.

Question: If in the experimental group for preparing future instructors one person will study at home and another will work only in a group, will that be sufficient?

Answer: No, absolutely not! A person won’t be able to study at home. We can give more theoretical and descriptive homework assignments to a group of such people, but they are required to go through practical exercises together with the entire group.

We need to assign them homework that allows them to prepare themselves for practical exercises. And then they will be coming with an understanding of what they need. They will be in agreement with it in advance, and it will be easier for us to work with them, even with those who initially didn’t seem prepared for that.
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From KabTV’s “Foundations of the Integral Soceity” 2/26/12  

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Question: Could you describe a day of a healthy integral family?

Answer: The alarm clock rings; everyone gets up. The children are going to school as usual. Mother stays home, or together with dad goes to study, to work.

People are working part time jobs in fields that are necessary, although it is not important where they work; it does not matter to them. Each one works as much as he can in a place where society decides it is the most useful and needed for society so as to supply food, clothing, a standard apartment, heating, health, retirement, vacation, medical help, and so on.

The husband and wife are working as needed, but regardless of whether they are working or not, they must study 5-6 hours a day in the group. This is considered as work that completes the job they have. People are studying the method of integral upbringing and education and the system that we all exist in: the worldwide, universal system of the upper mind, force. By learning, they are trying to discover it more and more and realize it through the connection between them.

This is the day and the life of people because they know that through this, they achieve a better mutual connection between them, and in it, they discover an eternal and perfect existence and an enormous, unlimited fulfillment that for them substitutes for absolutely everything.

This world they will feel as a means, as a place of work, until they reach the complete attainment of the system of nature. By this, they will achieve the whole system and they will fit in it by becoming equal with it, equal to the Creator, which is called adhesion with the Creator. They will reach a state where the feeling of this world will disappear, and instead of their biological bodies, they will feel spiritual bodies, meaning the forces that painted this world and themselves on the uncorrected ego.

Essentially, people will do only this. But as long as they are still in the egoistical desires, they will feel their bodies and will need to take care of them. However, it will be clear to them that this is the picture they have to “nourish”now with egoistical fulfillment such as food and other necessities of the body.
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From KabTV’s “Foundations of the Integral Society” 2/19/12 

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Question: Don’t we tend to put greater emphasis on actions than on intentions during the day?

Answer: All our work is based on intentions. Can we bring about real changes in the world only through actions? By disseminating our message we want to change people’s intention. We have to approach them in different ways so that they will absorb it and be inspired, and then their attitude will begin to change.

If there were a wave on which we could convey to them by mind power the knowledge about the integral world, we would do that. But on the other hand, a method that resembles hypnosis or an injection wouldn’t be effective here. People have to understand, to perceive, and to internally analyze what we bring them.

It is impossible to simply “inject” another perspective of the world into a person. He needs to consciously acquire this knowledge, without lies, confusion, or fraud. We have to create the right conditions for him, thanks to which he will reach the desired result by himself and will share our point of view. So even if there were a wave for conveying information mentally, it would only lower a person to the “inanimate” level, while we, on the contrary, have to assist his development. This is the whole problem.

So we should offer a person “food for thought” with which he will agree or argue internally until the right tools will be created in him, the “tools” that enable him to understand the situation. Today by “flowing with the stream of life” a person cannot understand and assess this flow by looking at it from the outside. He doesn’t penetrate the depth of nature in order to understand its laws; he doesn’t know himself and his environment.

We are not talking about the artificial environment people have created for themselves. In that area they are “experts,”  and many feel like a big fish in the sea. But the natural systems that move a person, society, and nature are unknown to them. We have to make that accessible for them so that they will begin to feel the essence of things, so that they will get to know the basic laws of the external nature and the essence of humanity. This is the Creator, even though it is still in an adapted corporeal form.

In the meantime, people have no idea about that. They are living their ordinary lives in an artificial net that they have woven for themselves. This is what the global processes of modernization and urbanization have brought us to. The whole world is living according to these laws today, and so we are facing very hard work: We have to spur the need for ascending in people, to lead them to the level of clarification and of a new feeling, and to guide them to the root so that under the guidance of the artificial mechanisms of civilization, they will see our natural mutual connection that penetrates all levels of nature.

By bringing a person to this thought, we bring him inside, into a totally different system about which he doesn’t know and which he hasn’t taken into account at all. He encounters a problem: He detaches himself from the artificial net and has to solve basic questions by himself: “Who am I and what am I? What is the environment, what is nature?” Here another environment is revealed to him, the system of the upper nature.

This is the reason scientists today are much closer to our message. Soon we will be so close to them that we will actually begin to speak in the same language. On the other hand, in the meantime we cannot have a real conversation with businessmen, industrialists, merchants, politicians, etc.; in their environment the laws of the market exist.

We are really facing a difficult dissemination problem. We have to understand the way a person feels the world, the picture he sees before him, the social services that he uses, his interests, etc. He is living in an artificial blown-up “bubble” and he doesn’t understand what we are talking about.

We, on the other hand, speak about the fact that man is part of nature in which there are clear and definite laws. They resent this idea, “What laws are you talking about, all the laws are written in the constitution.” And so all the problems are “solved” by legislation and adding a few more items to certain laws. This is how the artificial system by which people are hoping to change something grows.

Eventually we have reached a global crisis: Two systems, an artificial one and a natural one, are now one opposite the other. The problem is that the artificial system is beginning to break down as a whole, whereas we want to bring people to the natural system, and this is a big problem. We too are gradually going through this process, so what can we say about humanity?

So don’t hope that intentions will be enough. First, we have to enter the bubble and establish a connection with a person. We descend to his level, to his state, become part of him, and from there we begin to gradually explain that we all depend on the second natural system, on balance and on the right mutual relations with it. In addition, we have to act gently; otherwise, people will not accept our message because they only feel their bubble.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/8/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: In the course of people’s interactions some strong emotions may arise. They can be positive as well as negative. How and where should one realize these emotional states should it happen in the group or elsewhere?

Answer: One can realize his or her emotions however one likes as long as they stem from an integral worldview. If they do stem from an integral worldview, then that person can’t afflict harm to another. That person may speak up or shout out something abrasive when he sees a negative action or a result, but he won’t cause harm to another.

Question: If someone has an outburst and says some hurtful things, is it better to reconcile immediately or to give it some time?

Answer: It’s impossible to smooth everything over immediately by saying let’s shake hands and hug. This has to be clarified. It’s quite possible that each one of us has the right to blow up and the rest have the right to get upset. All of this is correct and normal. This happens with our children whom we love so much, but at times their behavior is so unbearable that we just can’t stand it.  We observe this in animals as well, when a mother will thump a baby on the head or give it a box on the ear.

There is nothing to be ashamed of. Within a specific framework outbursts and hard feelings are acceptable. We have to examine these things since we’re still in the process of perfecting the process of upbringing and we haven’t yet reached its final state.
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From KabTV’s “Foundations of the Integral Soceity” 2/26/12 

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Question: University studies are usually divided into several stages: first, second, third year, and so on. Should the integral education be also divided into formal stages, like in university?

Answer: By all means because a person has to see the stages he goes through. It spurs and motivates him, and it is absolutely essential.

On the other hand, during the studies we should constantly speak about the fact that everything is based on changes, self-transformation, self improvement, and the convergence between us and nature so that human society will also become integral, equal, and closer in its mutual cooperation, like all of nature. So people should understand that this is actually an infinite process, like life itself.

Eventually, a person begins to feel the infinity, the eternity of all of nature and gets closer to it more and more. He begins to feel that he is peaceful like all of nature and is able to bestow upon it his desires and thoughts because he starts getting in contact with it. This contact is felt in a person very clearly: He sees how he influences the world around him, even at the still level, not to speak of the vegetative and animate ones.

Our role is to reach a state when we as if influence nature by our desires, thoughts, and intentions and bring ourselves to absolute balance, to absolute comfort with the world around us. As strange as it may sound, when a person actually feels himself in harmony with everything that exists, the sensation of life and death disappears.

People have a certain discrepancy in their understanding and awareness of what life is. If we offer them an idea about it, it will gradually sink into them, and they will begin to understand that our movement towards balance with nature provides us with something supernatural, and not just some comfortable existence and a chance to multiply.
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From KabTV’s “Foundations of an Integral Society” 2/26/12

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Question: What is the role of religion in the integration process, and is it possible to integrate all the world religions together?

Answer: I began my life as a specialist in biomedical cybernetics. Then I got my PhD in philosophy, became a professor of ontology and theory of knowledge, which is what I’ve been doing for many years. I don’t see any connection between religion and the integration method we’re talking about here.

Generally speaking, religions talk about the need to become integrally connected to others, to live a good life, be kind to others, love one’s neighbor, etc. But in truth, they only talk about it, and nothing ever gets implemented. Moreover, religions are full of various rituals and blind faith, all of which is absent from our method. It addresses the person, all people in the world, because all of humanity is integrated and interconnected.

Therefore, I don’t think there’s room here for religions. It’s everyone’s personal business, because religious persuasion doesn’t hurt or oppose our method in any way. Hence, you can be an adept in any religion and practice integrated upbringing at the same time.
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From the Vilnius Convention 3/22/12, Preliminary Lesson

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Question: How many teachers should there be in an integral study group? Who should they be: men or women?

Answer: There should be at least two or three teachers in an integral study group. They can be both men and women, depending on the group. We should take into account the mentality of the people in the group, their social status, the level of equality in the society they live in, and how they accept this fact. They can claim that in their society everyone is equal, but it may actually not be so.

In Russia, Europe, or America the mentality is totally different, and people have different opinions regarding this question, although it also depends on the social class you are working with. So everything should be taken into account. It may very well be that in certain groups the teachers should be only men and not a man and a woman.

Possibly, an instructor who is employing different games and examples should simultaneously undergo training in education and upbringing, as it is usually done in psychology and psychiatry.

It depends on a case-by-case basis, and it can be so specific that the right people need to be picked for every group. You may purposefully go to a certain business or neighborhood, to public places, clubs, and so on, let a great number of people “pass through you,” and thus form the groups.

You have to create some “inspection body,” meaning experts who would quickly identify different types of people, classify them, and place them into groups. It is a very special occupation.
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From KabTV’s “Foundations of an Integral Society” 2/26/12 

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