Question: Romania has been shaken by collisions for a week now. In Bucharest they are becoming quite brutal. Our friends there are very worried. Overall, how should we view the suffering that the world experiences?

Answer: We must only disseminate materials about unity. And there are several rules in this regard:

– We do not mix with anyone;
– We are not “for” or “against”;
– As educators, we relate to people very considerately and unsophisticated.

That is how we approach the situation, according to the principle, “Love will cover all sins.” It is necessary to reach consensus, conciliation, unity. This does not mean that everyone calms down and goes home, since in that case we would be against the protestors. No, we are for change. However, in all of history, methods like this have never brought about anything good.

We have live examples before our eyes: Egypt, Tunisia, and other countries. For example, what was the use of the spontaneous disorders in London? This approach does not bring anything good to anyone. And Egypt has become immersed in devastation and is left with nothing. So, disorders won’t help.

That is why we have to release explanatory brochures with materials about mutual guarantee, including our advice: communication, round tables, and integral upbringing.

But first of all, we must concisely describe the current situation: Why is this happening?

And in doing so we do not speak out against the government or anyone else. We are talking about a natural process, a regular phase of our evolution where the world is becoming global and interconnected.

So what should we do? We have to adapt to the new conditions. After all, there is no other way to go. The integral network is already expressing itself. It’s simply that previously we adapted instinctively, whereas now we must reach harmony with the changed world consciously, with our own awareness. This is our new level of development.

Next, we have to explain how to do this: by means of integral upbringing, with the help of a good environment, which will convince every person of the need to unite with others.

Romania is a pretty homogenous country. It is not home to different cultures living side by side—it’s not America or the united Europe, so there it’s easier to talk about unity. This approach will appease the people, will revitalize the country, and will give people work. People will rise in their consciousness and will understand what is happening. They will see for themselves that this is good for them, their children, their country, and people.

As a whole, we are only inviting everyone to unite, and no more than that. There are no hidden “fees,” dirty tricks, or attempts to make money off of someone. On the contrary, let them do everything themselves. Let them organize the learning process and build an environment according to the laws of nature, while collaborating with psychologists.

This is what we have to offer, especially considering that there are many countries standing at the threshold of the same kind of strife.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/22/12, “Introduction to the Study of Ten Sefirot”

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Question: What does a group that enters spirituality look like?

Answer: On the outside there are no special signs. Everyone seems like ordinary people. Inside will be everything we read about in the Kabbalah books. You will see the same faces, but you will treat them differently.

You will feel the internal network of connections among you. This is what creates the place where the spiritual world is revealed. It is as if you’ve received a flashlight, you turn it on, and in that light you begin to see stones, trees, animals, and people: a whole world.

This shining flashlight is your good attitude towards all the others, the mutual guarantee that you feel towards them. In the mutual guarantee that stems from you, you begin to discover the upper system and to see that in it, right there before you, there are trees, animals and people, which you didn’t see before.

But all the inanimate objects, plants, animals and people are not corporeal like in our world, but are spiritual. This is the picture that is revealed to you. They are the same familiar faces, but you discover the internal connection among them.

Many years ago I saw a movie about a diamond theft. The robbers sprayed a special spray and in this mist they began to see the laser beams that activate the alarm if someone crossed the room.

So it is as if you are also spraying a special spray around you, like a cloud of emotional attitude, of sharing, of a sense of connection and mutual guarantee, and in it you discover the laser beams that connect us to one another and see how they pass and tie everyone.

You discover this relationship, and see how it operates and manages everything. You understand what really motivates everyone.

Now, you see that everyone is moving, but you don’t understand which forces are moving them. Then you suddenly begin to feel, both physically and internally, how a hand enters the puppet and begins to move it from one place to another. This is revealing the governance and upper Providence.

Accordingly you learn how to adapt yourself to the system of this Providence, just as the movement of a good horse is adapted to the desires of the rider.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/20/12, Shamati #174

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Question: At the beginning of the 20th century, in Russia in particular, there was a widespread campaign to eliminate illiteracy. What seems perfectly natural today back then was received with hostility. Many people refused to send their children to schools and didn’t wish to learn themselves because they considered it a pointless waste of time. Today a similar situation may arise, when the integral education that we are offering could be perceived as something useless, unnecessary. How can we overcome this resistance?

Answer: I think that today a large number of educators, psychologists, and sociologists understand the brewing problem, except they don’t know how to deal with it. It means that it’s necessary to approach them as broadly as possible with explanations.

Teachers empathize with students, and moreover, at times they suffer even more than their pupils. After all, they are forced to exist under constant negative pressure from children, whose beastly egoism, unrestricted by any boundaries, is directed against the teachers. Every student tries to assert before them his or her own independence and striving for self-affirmation.

I think that teachers and educators need some training on this  to be able to discern in a new methodology at least something for their own benefit, something that would allow them to work with children normally.

The work of an educator today is rather difficult, serious, and I would even say risky. A person is subjected to such conditions, such moral pressure that this work could even be called “harmful.” Forty five minutes of being in the classroom with the children generates a lot of stress and enormous strain on the teacher.

Together with the educators, we need to prepare for them a methodological resource that would help them understand that first and foremost, we are concerned with the atmosphere in the classroom, without even changing the class itself yet.

Students cannot get used to integral discourse yet because right now it’s impossible to discuss anything with anyone—it will lead to shouting, shutting each other up, abuse, swearing, and who knows what else. Now the educator at least sits them down, holds them still in some way, and somehow, out of necessity, pacifies them. Meanwhile the pupils are sitting, all miserably, each in his own place, and they wait for this whole ordeal to come to an end.

A slow, smooth transition is needed here. I think that educators will gradually agree with this. They can already see that the current system is not one that has a right to exist in the new generation.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #5, 12/13/11

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Question: In the process of integral education a person begins to change, and as a consequence, his social environment changes too. Do we have to prepare him or her for that from the very beginning? After all, their previous environment might bombard us with accusations that we are some kind of a sect and that we corrupt people.

Answer: For this we need to precede our practical studies with a large campaign to disseminate the idea of integral education, a campaign that will be and already is based on scientific data, on the direct demands of nature, the surrounding environment, and of our own inner developing nature. After all, we are involuntarily moving towards an integral society anyway.

If we do not correspond to it, things will be bad for us. We have to learn how to be in sync with this new “round” framework that nature is creating around us; nature is driving us into a network of tight interactions. Resistance is useless here.

That’s why we must explain this idea, this opinion, this historical, social, and personal necessity to all of humanity. And afterwards, all our other actions will naturally stream from that and seem correct. People will begin to understand what we are doing and will strive towards it.

If we just demonstrate our actions without explanations, nobody would understand this, and people would greet us with hostility. We would be accused of sectarianism, perhaps of naivety, utopian thinking, and the like.

But if we begin to work with children and gradually instill in them elements of humanism (at least let’s call it that), I doubt that we’ll have any special problems here with society or with parents. And upon showing, after some time, certain positive results, we could then rely on public opinion. That’s why the most fertile soil for our activity is children’s organizations.

But on the other hand, it is the most difficult because access to them is regulated by the state. The government has a right to introduce different programs into schools and to forcefully impose on children whatever is desirable for itself, and not whatever is best for the children. It’s very difficult to fight against this conservative system.

Still, society is fighting, creating private schools and alternative educational methods. In our day, in many countries of the world a child can be educated at home, through the Internet, and take exams remotely. This is already a big plus. This was impossible in the past because laws forbade home schooling.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #5, 12/13/11

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Question: Some people have already started practically implementing the method of integral upbringing. They have gained the first experience and made the first mistakes. I would like to discuss this aspect using an example of a specific situation.

An acquaintance of mine started raising her daughter using this methodology. She breastfed her daughter until the girl was almost two years old. Then she raised her according to the  developmental phases: zero to three, three to six, and from six to nine years. Everything went well until the child started school. The girl stood out from everyone; she was more open, uninhibited, and more positive, and she quickly ran into powerful resistance from the regular environment. Later on schoolteachers joined this opposition as well.

A very serious situation arose, where the mother and child were forced to struggle against the system because the creation of a separate environment, the kind that we spoke about, is currently unfeasible. What would you recommend? How do we help these people?

Answer: If you’re talking about Russia, I have a few examples in this country of working precisely according to the principles of the integral system. This isn’t our system, but they are all very similar.

Their classes are more like extracurricular activities, where a child doesn’t sit in front of blackboard and teacher, but develops through free movement and discussions. He or she grasps the world through examples and not through dry lesson explanations that he has to memorize to pass the test the next day, and forget right after. There are many such examples in Russia, and they are well known there. But all of them are still just little “sheep.”

Undoubtedly, if you breastfeed a child until they’re two years old, as has been instilled in human nature since ancient times, then he or she receives all the necessary nutrients and micro-elements that help them resist all the problems that could exist at that age.

We are afflicted by many illnesses, not because they are particularly virulent, and not because we need to build immunity to them,  but because we don’t receive enough mother’s milk in infancy. Today a baby is separated from the breast practically a week or a month after birth, if it’s even breastfed at all. That’s why all the problems begin precisely with not nursing.

Since the goal of integral upbringing is to establish maximum closeness to nature, in our family, in our domestic order, we need to adhere to the same natural state that we observe in the natural interaction among animals. We don’t have this instinct, but we have to awaken it in ourselves on the basis of scientific information about what existed in previous centuries, instead of considering them anachronistic. That’s first.

Second, an absolute majority of parents are unhappy with scholastic education because of the problems that currently exist in schools, classrooms, and society. A vast majority of children would gladly not go to school and instead would arrange a completely different method of upbringing and education for themselves.

Try to discuss with the children the fact that over the course of the year they will have to learn a little more about the way the world works and the way we and our society’s laws are structured. After all, in the course of 10-12 school years, we are preparing a human being for life. What should he or she know? How should they learn to interact with others? First and foremost, it is necessary for them to be able to help themselves, to help others, and know who to receive help from others. That is, everything is practically built on unification, on correct involvement and interaction with one another. Does school teach that? No!

We are preparing common craftsmen so that they could graduate from some vocational school, acquire some occupation or specialization, and earn a living for themselves. We don’t think about what’s next besides a salary.

Even about earning an income we don’t think much because we don’t morally prepare a person for that. He strives to evade any responsibilities that are related to society, parents, and family; he doesn’t wish to build one.

We need to think about how to transform the school. Our goal shouldn’t be to subordinate a child to the school, to such despotic or old German system, like when peasants became factory workers and nothing more, but to completely transform the school!

Aside from our integral approach, there are many similar methods. I won’t go into their comparative analysis, but they are all alike in that first and foremost, they think about the person, and not about what you need to cram into him, what mass of quickly forgettable knowledge.

That’s why today many are leaning towards their children not attending school at all. There is the Internet, distance learning, and home schooling. And anyway, a mother should stay at home with her children and not be away at work. A father has to provide for the family, and a mother should care for the home and raise children. Then it would be a normal family.

In other words, we should slowly climb down from the tree of the “realization of evil” and return to normal and balanced systems of mutual interactions. And we should stop crippling poor children! First, parents drag their children to kindergarten, then send them off to school, and they come back bruised from the battle for leadership instead of socializing with the collective. It’s not a collective but an endless battle!

We need to transform schools into something completely different, something humanistic. The state in which it exists today has so outlived itself that it’s painful to look at it.

But since a large amount of money has been poured into education, and enormous masses of people involved have a vested interest in it, they will not give it up easily. And they cannot change either. The educational system is the most ossified system. Educators are people who only know their own lesson and aside from it, no other lessons. That is why this is a very big problem.

Transformation needs to begin with the educators. We need to organize humanities courses and, first and foremost, mandatory integral courses for the body of educators with the aim of transforming them. In parallel to that, we should introduce psychologists and integral upbringing specialists into the school, who will then pursue discussions with students.

Furthermore, we need to introduce classes for instructors who would only be a few years older than their future students, and consequently, could easily develop contact with them and exert a positive influence on them. All this needs to be prepared. Without that our future generation will become the lost generation.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” #5, 12/13/11

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Question: Why don’t we appreciate the path we follow? Why don’t we receive pleasure at every moment? Even if it isn’t easy, we’re still in a group, we’re together, and this in itself is happiness.

Answer: Actually, there are two sides to the coin. If you come here for the meals and the friendly atmosphere, then things will end here. Your ego won’t let you be attracted to something else. On the other hand, if you feel bad here, your ego won’t let you come here and instead of coming to the lesson, you’ll stay in bed.

So we need both things, both the joy and the frustration. After all there are many people here who have the left line, meaning who are critical. They ask themselves: What can I really get out of life? I don’t want to be just a Hasid. I want to advance. Hasids on any level are happy with what they have and don’t want anything more. But if I don’t want anything, how will I advance? How will I acquire an additional deficiency?

This is exactly what Abraham asked the Creator: “How shall I know that I will inherit it?” In other words: How will I want spiritual ascent? Abraham’s attribute is Hassidim, the Sefira of Hesed, and so he worried about feeling the deficiency to ascend to heights that seem unattainable.

The Creator answered him: “Know of a surety that your seed will be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and they shall afflict them four hundred years….” But what sufferings are we talking about here? About the sufferings you go through by the “Torah and the Mitzvot,” by the Light. These aren’t just bad feelings that you have. “The Egyptian exile” isn’t a synonym for unemployment, lack of money, or health problems. The Egyptian exile is the feeling of deficiency that comes from the posterior of the Light, when you feel that you lack spirituality, love, and adhesion. These are the kind of sufferings we have to reach, and hard work is required here. [Read more →]

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Nature demands equivalence of form from us, balance. Nature is round” and we must build human society in the same round form as well. It will bring benefit to everyone and will lead us to a good state that is comfortable and balanced in all areas.

If we are united, nature will cooperate with us in everything: education, culture, every day life, home life and family, ecology, our relation to nature and its response to us, and in general in all of our activities. Only by correctly uniting integrally will we be rescued from nature’s disasters in the first stage, and then later, be successful in the second stage when completely new perspectives will open before us.

In this way we will, at least, escape the general, global crisis that we are experiencing today. This crisis was created as a result of our oppositeness to nature, which is an integral system. And this was revealed only in the last one hundred years.

Until then, there wasn’t a global crisis: humanity was developing and prospering. Only in this last stage, we see that nature, as it were, envelops us from all directions. In other words, nature shows itself as an integral network and we are not able to demonstrate this same unity. In this way, humanity is being revealed as opposed to nature, opposite from nature. And we feel our oppositeness as a crisis. This is exactly the problem.

Accordingly, the solution is to attain balance with nature. Our program of integral education is intended precisely for this. After all, in any event, nature will win. It is clear that in comparison to it we are weak, small, and nothing. We see this from the disintegrating of all of our systems that we no longer can cope with, for example, rising unemployment in the Western world.

Question: We can imagine the unemployed person who knows that it is unlikely that he will find a new job because there are many like him. No one prepared him for this kind of situation and he is apparently disappointed with life. In addition to this he doesn’t know what to do with all his free time because no one ever taught him this.

Answer: Actually the so-called free time is the most productive hours, during which he creates a man of himself.

Let’s begin with all of humanity sitting at the desk to learn. Man doesn’t know where to place himself. He is used to working according to the schedule of a working day. So everything will stay that way. We will arrange the order of day and we will commit to implementing it. It is only that now we are speaking about introductory courses whose length are a few hours a day. In this way, we don’t disrupt the established framework and don’t try to change the model that the person is used to. No, we only tell the person that he is receiving a “stipend” or “allowance” (not unemployment compensation), and in parallel to this, he works part-time or doesn’t work at all if his main work is the study.

We must pass a course like this. How long will it take—a few months or years? It doesn’t matter. The most important thing is that from now on, it will be our main task and it has to be treated as a job in every respect. Man learned to behave according to a certain framework, and so he now also needs to come to learn, similar to elderly people who happily go to various courses at the university. In this atmosphere, a person feels that he is being renewed, like in childhood.

Today we can talk about this without hesitation. Until recently the media didn’t take the crisis seriously, and two years ago they even announced that it had ended. And today there is no shortage of disaster forecasts. Thus if we talk about retraining courses, of a continuing education program, then it will be accepted.

Then everyone is accepted to this “university,” with all its familiar characteristics, including examinations. People will be busy during the day, obligations are imposed on them, and they have nowhere to run to since success depends on the study. In this way we need to raise the people.

By the way, the curriculum of the integral education program will include general education subject: history, geography, household financial management and others, and the most important psychology, the science of man.
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From “Lessons About a New World” #1, 12/27/11

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Question: Let’s suppose that I am used to working 8-9 hours a day and I get paid for overtime. My thoughts constantly revolved around my job, pride in my professional achievements, and my income. That was my world. I spent very little time at home. I was really with the family only on weekends and holidays. And then suddenly I was fired and deprived of all the routine that was in my life.

Answer: They revoked it because there is no more money left in the world. In other words, the whole world needs to let out the air from “the inflated balloon” and descend to the level of basic needs.

Let’s say we need to take care of 5 essential things: shelter, food, warmth, safety, and health. This is our mission, to supply this for everyone. There are many in Europe who saved all their lives for their retirement and were sure that in their old age they could live like everyone else, and in the end they barely find money for food and medicines.

So we need to show a person that he will receive a real bonus in return for his participation in the program of integral education that the society offers him. For example, society sends you to work for a three-hour shift and to five hours of classes at the university, and someone else is sent to the university for all eight hours.

As a result, we fill man’s day without touching the framework that he already had. He feels that he is occupied exactly like before. It is good for him to continue in the same vein. It doesn’t matter that the kind of tasks are different or that his many dreams and plans dissipated, he nonetheless sees that the same thing is happening all over the world. The troubles of the many are in themselves a partial consolation especially since he sees also no other options exist.

Accordingly, study and learning become an essential condition for providing his basic needs.

Question: A person who loses his job, doesn’t just lose the income. He loses his identity, his self-esteem, his social position, and friends. He is left isolated from society and feels as though “demons” have burst out of the bottle, opening inner doors within him that previously he didn’t even know existed.

Answer: To avoid this, we advise him to make an honorable living like others. But also, the moment he comes to study the integral education, he will immediately begin to understand his personal situation and the situation of the whole world, and this understanding will become a kind of prop for him.

Now man understands where he is and why everything is happening especially in this way. The education gives him a new vision, a new approach to the world. He becomes a real man (Adam – human/man) in the full sense of the word, educated and oriented toward what is happening. He is not detached from society, he maintains relationships with others, he participates in various activities, and ultimately thrives in society.

After all, a person who loses his job wants to understand himself, to restore himself. He lost his way and wants to clarify what is happening to him. When he sees that it is a part of the developmental process that operates on everyone, and not just him, that will already bring him some relief. Thus our materials need to provide a person with friendly and tender support, which will help lighten his spirits.
[65095]
From “Lessons About A New World” #1 12/1/11

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Question: What action helps us reveal the entrance into spirituality called the “eye of the needle?”

Answer: The eye of the needle is not an entrance even though we call it so. This is our readiness for work, readiness to accept everything that comes from Above.

The needle’s eye is first of all the needle itself. It’s not just a tiny opening. This means that I am ready for everything that the Creator is doing with me since His every action over me is very painful and opposite to my desire to receive pleasure.

Therefore, one has to advance to it very slowly and gradually. A person allows the upper Light a possibility to act to the degree of his readiness, to at least in some external form to come out of himself, from his ego, and to become closer to others.

This is why we are given a group. When you are able in some way to connect to your friends, the Light will act upon you and you will feel that you are capable of tolerating this. This breakaway from oneself elevates the person as he overcomes his ego.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/17/12, The Zohar

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Question: Is the Creator waiting for the right kind of prayer from us?

Answer: You can’t call this waiting. The upper Light exists in a state of absolute rest. This is an unalterable law, like the laws of physics. Movement at a steady pace is the same as being in a state of rest.

The Light doesn’t stop, it’s either revealed or concealed, but its nature remains unchanged. Take for example the nature of physical light, which in a vacuum moves at the constant speed of 300 thousand kilometers per second. Everything depends upon the surroundings where the light is dispersed because we reveal it as a result of matter with which it comes into contact. The degree of similarity between the matter and the light determines the light’s speed because we don’t see the dispersion of light; we only see the way matter reacts to it.

If some action is constant, then in relation to us it’s considered still. That is, the upper Light’s influence is constant and no changes occur in its influence. Everything depends on the desires and how they reveal this influence. If changes occur within the desires, then that determines the speed of the Light’s influence; however, the Light itself remains totally unchanged and its influence is constant!

We say that we have to try to attract the Light. But in reality it’s the opposite of what we imagine. The Light’s influence is constant and we are the result of that influence.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/17/12, Writings of Rabash

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