Question: When I encounter the law of mutual guarantee and see it in action, I immediately begin to monitor others so that they won’t drill a hole in the boat, and I purely egoistically point out that they shouldn’t be doing this.

Answer: With a corrected, altruistic approach, I act differently. I say to myself: “They are all ideal, I can be absolutely sure of them. I only have to monitor myself so I complete them correctly.”

If I behave correctly within the integral scheme, the entire scheme will be correct. It’s a reverse implication of the same law, where each is responsible for all. If, while existing within an integral system, I behave correctly, I oblige the entire integral system to do so as well. If someone breaks the law, the entire system fails.

Engineering has examples of various systems, among them an integral one. There is a discrete system with a strictly defined beginning and end, where all the working parts communicate with each other through impulses. And then there is a system which gets aroused by a signal it receives, then calms down, comes to a state of balance, and only after that can one measure its output as a solution to a problem. This is the so-called integral, analog system.

A disturbance and, naturally, an averaging, a calming down take place in such systems. You wouldn’t be able to observe any results until everything calms down and arrives to a common denominator, to a solution.

At first, when you give a signal, you, say, bring an egoistic environment into a perturbed state. Then correction takes place: Gradually, a balance between absolutely all parts of the system is achieved; the system calms down. And then you measure the potential that results from its connection. If we talk about the human society, then the achieved result is accepted by everyone uniformly, equally, and kindly; everyone tries to uphold this very state because it is the most comfortable for everyone.
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From “Lessons About the New World” #8, 12/15/11

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Question: In the mid-1960’s, there was an incident in Paris when a person drowned in a pool in front of 150 eyewitnesses because nobody came to the rescue. Had there been only one person there, he or she would have saved him, but now it’s as if the responsibility was diluted among 150 people. Hence the law that the more people there are, the less responsibility each of them has personally. How can we make this law integral?

Answer: What does “mutual guarantee” mean? I am responsible for everyone. The general and the particular are equal in their power and influence—this is what the law of global guarantee implies.

If within the final integral system (and we take it as a starting point of any explanation) even one tiny particle is missing—me, you, or him—it won’t be able to function. It won’t be able to operate at the full 100%. It will break down not by 99% or 50%, but by the entire 100% because an integral system implies the participation of absolutely everybody.

Ultimately, the law is such that one is equal to all, one is important for everyone. There isn’t anyone who could wiggle out of this, opt not to participate.

In the integral education we present a simple example: We (all of humanity) are in one big boat. If I drill a hole under myself in the bottom of the boat, everybody drowns. I may say: “I’m sorry, friends, this is my personal business. I want to drown. Or I want to take a bath. That’s it. This has nothing to do with you. What right do you have to enter my territory and admonish me or order me around?!”

If we exist within the framework of one law of nature—in the same boat, like in Noah’s Ark. If someone drills a hole there, we will all drown.

So it follows that responsibility cannot be distributed among everyone. For each person it is the same responsibility as for everyone else! That’s why each person who stands around the pool and sees that someone is drowning must imagine that if I don’t take any action, then no one will. And then everyone would plunge into the water.
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From “Lessons About the New World” #8, 12/15/12

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Question: Materialistic psychology discusses the psychological concept of conformity, when a person submits to the opinion of the majority. From the point of view of psychologists, conformity is a bad thing, while nonconformity is good. Perhaps from the perspective of integrality, conformity is a very positive thing?

Answer: First of all, a person’s subordination to society and their surrounding environment is a law of nature. In other words, there is no truth or falsehood, no good or evil, nothing—there is only the directives of the environment, and I obey them, I am brought up within them. What the environment proclaims to be good or evil, right or wrong, I accept as such.

We can convince ourselves that salty tastes sweet, no problem! If the environment starts referring to salt as being sweet, ultimately I will start consuming salty candy. It alters our inner physiological parameters to such an extent that we change completely.

We cannot say whether it’s good or bad. We are simply stating a fact. After all, can I really say anything bad about acceleration of free fall or other physical parameters? This is what exists. The way we apply this is another story. But saying that it’s bad and we should therefore change and distort a person—this actually is bad. Our task is to correctly apply the laws of nature with the aim of achieving our similarity, compatibility, and harmony with it.

Question: It turns out that a social-psychological law like conformity is a big plus that helps us to unite?…

Answer: We are able to change a person precisely by virtue of the surrounding environment. Mass media, society, and upbringing, it all constitutes the surrounding environment. We selectively influence a person from the outside in order to transform him or her. This is our only tool of influence on a person.
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From “Lessons About the New World” #8, 12/15/12

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Question: We have a life-changing Convention ahead of us. Every moment is important for preparing for the common attack. How can we carry out the attack so it would merit an answer?

Answer: I think that we aren’t getting ready, but have already started the attack and must raise the bar at every second.

We shouldn’t wait for the trip out to the desert to start uniting. The Convention is unification. So why don’t we start it right now? Maybe we should even cancel the trip? Let’s carry out what we planned right here, what difference does it make?

Let’s give some real thought to what we want. All we need is the unity of hearts, here and now, and not in the Arava in a week. Already now, every moment must be used to the maximum for uniting.

If you wait a week, then these days will go by in vain. Every moment is a peak. The Convention is already happening.
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From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/15/12, Talmud Eser Sefirot

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Question: What does it mean to “bring contentment to the creator”?  The Creator is the attribute of bestowal, so to whom am I bringing contentment?

Answer: This is how you imagine your world: in the form of images that you can do something to and get a response from. You don’t feel that the Creator is behind all these figures, and that they are all just figures that He keeps alive and through them presents Himself to you in billions of ways.

The attribute of bestowal is the one who bestows. After all, you are building your attitude towards someone not according to his externality, but rather according to his essence. It seems that he is made of many discernments, but where are they? In the flesh or in some figure? Try to imagine a figure of a person “in the air” without a body. Take all of the spirituality out of him and all of his desires, his passions, and his thoughts, which are actually outside the beastly body. Undress the body and turn to the essence of the person.

Then turn in the same way to the essence of the Creator. The difference between the two is that the essence of the Creator is whole and it includes everything. It manages everyone. This is the general force of nature, the general law of nature, its general mind that is all good and benevolent. The general mind is good and the executing force is benevolent.

We shouldn’t be confused by what we see. It is time to consider the essences. The body does not exist. A person’s essence is truly eternal and I want to connect with it. It may be depicted to me as some “ghost,” but it is actually infinite and limitless. All our essences are the different facets of Malchut of Ein Sof. When we connect, it is as if they all “spread” on it and eventually make it up and create the corrected vessel.

Don’t forget that you should look at the group with internal eyes.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/14/12, “Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”

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Question: How do I recognize the Light’s response to my request?

Answer: First of all, any change is for the good, even if it does not feel very pleasant. Secondly, there are constant changes, only we aren’t able to count them.

The level of our sensitivity is too crude to perceive the changes that happen in me. The counter is on, but only after it reaches 1,000 RPM do I begin to feel this jump into the 1,000-plus interval. And the counter keeps rolling; it reaches 2,000 RPM and I feel another change. I can’t recognize each small, subtle RPM.

But as I ascend the spiritual degrees, I increase my sensitivity, and begin to better distinguish the changes. This means that “the Creator is demanding of the righteous to the hair’s breath.” I distinguish this thin hair, but before I would not even see a big rock.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/14/12, The Zohar

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Question: Why are we always running from the rod that will hit us? Why doesn’t the Creator rule us in a gentler, more encouraging way? The way reality is set up, it makes a person feel not that He is the good that does good, but rather the bad that does bad. Why not teach us by guiding us instead of by the rod?

Answer: Otherwise we will not renounce our egoism.

Question: Why does the Creator have the need to give? Why does He want to give?

Answer: This is His nature!

Question: My perception is that the goal of drawing closer to the Creator so that one may become spiritually one with Him could be construed as the temptation of Eve. The promise of becoming like G-d was a powerful persuasion, and in religious teaching, not something we should desire. Is there truly a conflict here, and if so, is there an explanation for it?

Answer: It’s not to become G-d, but be similar to G-d in the property of love and bestowal.
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Question: Could you shed more light on the concept of “mutual guarantee”? What do you mean by it?

Answer: The purpose of creation of the universe is to bring it to homeostasis. The endpoint of the development of any given subsystem is to balance all systems. It follows from the research of the still, vegetative, and animal nature: all these levels strive towards equilibrium.

Why does the wind blow? The pressure in one place is higher than in another. Any unbalanced physical parameters ultimately strive for balancing, for averaging out, for mutual interconnection and permeation. All levels of nature are supported by each other: plants, minerals, animals, and so on; they all exist in constant mutual circulation.

The last degree of nature called “Adam” or Man (the overall joint image) needs to incorporate all the previous levels into itself. Human beings have to reach such a collective state, reciprocity in connection, where precisely they will be the ones who’ll be determining the entire correct global structure of nature, its harmony. A person needs to attain this through understanding, realization, and study of this picture.

We need to study the integral systems in which everything is interconnected: beginning, end, middle, and center. There’s no single thing that would determine something, but everyone and everything determines all the rest. It’s like a holographic picture, and our universe, as well as practically any of its fragments, including ourselves, are arranged according to this principle.

This is why our final state is characterized by the fact that everyone is responsible for everyone else. All for one and one for all! And this applies to the entire humanity.

This picture, of course, seems like a fantasy, completely opposite to our reality of today. Our desire or reason simply don’t function in that direction. But nature will compel us to that. Starting with our time and going forward, we are entering a crisis that’s determined precisely by our lack of balance, our incorrect interconnection with each other.

Therefore, starting with a small group, with this vision of the future, we are obliged to constantly set this condition before ourselves. Regardless of how we name this future system, even if it’s “communism,” nevertheless it’s the most stable system intended by nature. And it will be attained since this is the state of equilibrium.

Now a question arises: “How do we present it to people? What does mutual guarantee mean?”

Even now, we see from the example of the EU, which is not able to unite, that the absence of integral upbringing and education doesn’t allow them to correctly view the situation they’re in. They constantly choose egoistic, linear solutions instead of “round” ones. They constantly relate to themselves as a discrete and not an analog system. Therein lies their problem. This is why all of their resolutions won’t lead anywhere.

This will be a very lengthy disintegration, maybe even a world war. Or, perhaps, as a result of suffering they will gradually come to a right decision because there are people already who talk about the necessity of absolutely complete unity.

But can complete unity of 27 countries be reached?! Even if you limit them to ten countries, it still is an enormous division along all parameters. Therefore, upbringing is necessary.

Upbringing, its foundation and expected goal, is what we call an integral mutual interaction or universal guarantee, when we vouch for and are responsible for one another and create our society precisely in this manner. Fears disappear. Concerns disappear. I know exactly what I need to do in society. I am absolutely confident that I will receive the same thing as everyone else. I am confident that I will have everything that is necessary for life.

In this manner we neutralize any problems that might arise in some social perturbations. Surely, this is an ideal picture, so we need to come to it gradually.
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From “Lessons About the New World” #8, 12/15/12

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Question: Suppose we gathered people into a group for integral upbringing, and they have to go through several stages: to get to know each other and to start feeling secure. In Russia, the latter phase takes half the time allotted for education because people don’t trust each other. They have a tremendous experience with environment’s negative impact on a person. It takes time for a person to relax, to believe that nobody wishes them any harm. What should this time be filled with?

Answer: It’s very difficult to work with people who keep returning into the coarse, cruel world. They relax a little within the group, but for them it’s like a game that allows them to take a “pill” and calm down for some time. And afterwards, when they come back to the cruel world, everything vanishes.

They realize that they come to the group only in order to relax but not to become different. They cannot allow themselves to be different because then they will be defenseless in this world; they’ll end up like small furry bunnies amidst wolves and foxes. Therefore, this is a big problem.

The group needs to create its own micro-climate and be relatively big in order to hold a person inside its framework. A person should feel its support, whether at home or at work: through phone-calls, text messages, and so on. That is, people should constantly remain in a state of mutual guarantee, must support each other, and care after the micro-climate that appears whenever we shape ourselves into a small society.

In reality this society could be artificial. What’s the difference? We feel good within it. In a certain sense, it’s a psychological refuge.

As far as Russia is concerned, I believe that everything can be changed very quickly over there because people are internally ready for it. They aren’t split into social classes; they were simply artificially divided. Their so-called Socialist past, when freedom and equality were at least on the agenda, still finds its strength and manifests itself within them.

Therefore, if it were possible to remove the terrible external negativity that erupts forth from the mass media and especially from this so-called culture, then I think that it could be achieved quickly.  People have accumulated such negative potential that they would gladly embrace something completely different.
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From “Lessons About the New World” #8, 12/15/12

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Question: In the general course on integral upbringing it is said that any action should begin with an overall integral picture set as a goal before a person. Most likely, a psychology course is no exception. It follows, then, that we should start any activity precisely with that? What is the best way to do it?

Answer: It’s important to note that this isn’t just advice but a fundamental necessity. A person should always be pursuing a goal and stay focused on it so that his every movement, expression, or engagement in certain games or discussions, everything would be directed towards the same goal.

Then he or she will truly strive towards it and develop a strong desire for it. He will see that everything has to be aimed at its achievement. That’s on one hand.

On the other hand, since there exists one unified field in nature within which we’re all interconnected, when we set a certain objective for ourselves and conceptually imagine our future state, it’s as if we summon upon ourselves the “attractive” forces from this future state, forces that propel us forward. It’s as if they stem from the object that we aspire towards and act upon us.

This is a purely psychological phenomenon: We understand that generally speaking, this doesn’t exist. Possibly even our notion of the future doesn’t correspond to its actual image: In the process of our advancement we gradually change, and consequently, our vision of the future changes too.

Similarly, we say to a child: “You will grow up and become this or that—just keep studying. You’ll see what will happen.” He gradually grows and begins to understand that while earlier he imagined that he is a driver of a giant dump truck, right now different goals appear as desirable. We paint certain images of the future for him so that he would develop them further into different, higher goals.

Similarly, we need to constantly imagine this picture towards which we, like a child, need to grow so it would beckon us forward. Then we won’t be pushed from behind by negative forces of nature, by crises, but on the contrary, we’ll move forward propelled by positive forces. In doing so, we will shorten the path and it will be pleasant for us.

This is why we need a vision of a bright, good future, which is supported by our environment, elevated in the eyes of society through mass media, and so on. Then a person will acquire enormous strength and inspiration. Meanwhile, society will encourage everyone who strives towards the goal.

We need to develop a broad psychological foundation that will draw a person in like a stream and carry him, and then he would gladly be swimming along with the current.

Question: When I am teaching a course on integral psychology, should I introduce an element of integrality into every regularity being explained?

Answer: Yes, because movement towards the goal assumes that on every segment of the path you are gradually achieving, approaching it closer. That is, if the goal represents a particular collection of some new qualities, then any step towards it assumes a mastery of these qualities, and you need to control that. You need to perform an analysis and observe: Did I move towards it, or did I suddenly deviate somewhere.

A sideward deviation is very dangerous. If you don’t notice your digression at the very beginning, this tiny deviation will grow into an enormous transgression, and you will never reach the goal because you will continue to diverge from it.
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From “Lessons About the New World” #8, 12/15/12

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