Question: There can be a certain accent in any book, such as an accent on anthropology or development, or certain professional or psychological aspects. Considering that the material should be sharp and relevant, what is the best way to prepare a book on the integral method?

Answer: In my opinion, this book should be anticipating the next book or even a series of books that will become a practical guide for the creation of segments of an integral community. Later, these segments will unite into a single integral whole. This is why we need to emphasize the practical aspect, the way the various groups of the population in different situations that we observe in single-industry towns, schools, and family units, all of them solve their problems in their own way by ascending to an integral whole.

Right now, we live in a separated society, a family or a classroom, in a city or a part of it, in a company, and so on. There is tension between people that includes certain external and internal factors. We need to show how we can lead them to internal unity, the perception of the common power, the common thought, the perception of a community, which arises between them.

After all, a family is not just a husband and a wife, children, and grandparents. A family is something that connects them and is the collection of all the attributes and connections that connect them, everything that they wish to elevate and preserve.

How are we supposed to solve all our problems and answer all our questions on the basis of this unity, this alliance, preserving and developing it and acting in its name? At first, we rise to the level of the creation of a single community, and based on it, we begin to answer these questions only so that these answers would strengthen our community, alliance, and unity. Then, we will rise higher and higher in our unity by solving these problems.

We will see a very interesting tendency. Apparently, these problems appear only so that we would connect more and more strongly. This is the main reason for them, and it is not because I am me and you are you.

In reality, things are completely different. They come from the demand of our internal and external nature, which forces us to rise above ourselves, to unite, and thus create something referred to as a single person, a single whole.

This method of solution needs to be spelled out, shown and described. I think that, right now, this is the most necessary and the very first preliminary movement toward an integral community, including integral education and upbringing. Work we prepare will need to be sent to the many specialists who already are speaking about it and assume that this is the next step of human development in regard to the solution of all our problems, especially the economic and financial crisis, unemployment, and so forth.

Obviously, we simultaneously need to show the next step: becoming an integral community that will solve all the global problems. In other words, the reconstruction of our entire social system of civilization where trade, science, culture, finances, economics, family, the education of children and adults, all these things, come together, and nothing can be decided without the community to which we are striving and with which we can use to solve anything.

If we are able to show all this in such a general way, then to acquire responses from political and social scientists, psychologists, physicists, biologists, ecologists, and other specialists, then, in addition to this work, we also will be able to publish the material we receive from them with their support and by working through their comments. Once we unite with the scientists, we will create an Internet community around this book, a forum where we will be able to exchange opinions and solve various problems.

Today, they already are becoming very dynamic. They literally flow one from another and include all the segments of society and their problems, and in this way we will be able to move on to the next step of our work where we already will see in a more practical way how we can apply this idea to the solution of current and future problems. This is the way I see all this.

We are facing two steps. The first step is to gather and prepare all the materials, including our conversations. Then, acquire many reviews, maybe co-write certain articles, comments, and so on, and unite all of it so that it will unite us.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/31/12

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Opinion (From Slon.ru): “Report ‘On the required proportion of altruists in society: a model study’ (the Institute of Management Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow).

“The prosperity of the economy is based on the correct proportions of altruists and egoists. If a society consists only of egoists, it will be ruined: Altruists are needed not only for moral or philosophical, but also for purely financial reasons. In an unfavorable environment, a society of egoists is unsustainable. However, the number of altruists greater than 10% among egoists is also harmful to society. …

“The researchers then altered the conditions of simulation: They made several participants ‘altruists;’ they always voted for the ‘suggestions’ that increased the ‘capital’ of society as a whole. While there were few ‘altruists,’ they acted to the detriment of themselves: Their ‘capital’ decreased, even if the ‘capital of society’ grew as a whole. The more ‘altruists,’ the better the society as a whole. The maximum benefit of society is when all are ‘altruists.’ …

“The researchers then complicated the model and introduced a different type of altruism – targeted support for the poorest in society, where members can go broke. Result: The total number of bankruptcy was reached when there is a minimum of 10% ‘altruists-philanthropists.’ A further increase in the share of ‘altruists’ leads to the state when they need to be protected, and the growth of this demand outstrips the growth of ‘protection,’ which they can provide. If society is too focused on ‘protecting the poor,’ it generally becomes poorer.”

My Comment: That is why up to 10% of altruists (See Baal HaSulam “The Last Generation”) is needed in the world for the egoistic society to prosper until it finds, as today, its final state and turns to the method of integral correction in order to reach a society that consists of altruists.
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Question: When a person encounters a negative situation in life he usually begins to ask questions such as, “What’s going on? Why did it happen to me?” As a result, it “triggers” either inherent religious mechanisms or thoughts about balance or fairness.

Answer: The paradigm is very simple. If I understand that there is one force that manages us and that we operate according to this plan, whether willingly or without choice, we still have to carry it out just as we have done throughout our whole evolution. This means that everything that happens to me is fulfilled according to this plan. Thus the positive or negative events occur only in order to help me and the people around me advance.

After many discussions about these states where I am impressed by others and by how they understand and see their life, I begin to understand that the most negative phenomena lead to the best outcomes when I use them to unite and to rise above myself.

It’s these phenomena that push me out of this life and help me rise in my feelings and my mind to unity, and so they are actually the best and the most desirable. I have to be more thankful for them rather than for those positive feelings that make me relax and not yearn to advance. It’s because in this case my desire is full so why should I rush anywhere.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/30/12

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Question: What exactly do you mean when you say that nature’s plan has changed? How can we explain to ordinary people what exactly has changed?

Answer: We must simply show a person some movies about the interconnection of the people in the world, so that he will have a clear picture of human connections on all levels—not on the scientific cultural levels, which are remote to ordinary people, but on the technological, industrial, and commercial levels—different forms of mutual guarantee.

First, we should show a person the need for connection on the level of basic necessities: He will not be able to take care of himself or his children if he is not well connected integrally with the world. If I depend on others, I have to be in good relations with others, if they feel good, I will feel good too. This means that we have to understand that there is no other way to exist.

So what’s the problem? Why can’t we exist the way we should? Why can’t we lower the exorbitant prices of goods, of transport, of connection? Why can’t we stop the allocation of half our budget to security if we are so closely connected? Why is health care so expensive that we have to sell extra pills? Why have we developed so many redundant and harmful things? Perhaps we have to shake off all this and reach a normal common denominator?!

We have to study nature, to focus all our efforts on that, and accordingly accept the laws of behavior of human society. We must spread the method of the integral society worldwide and thus gradually change our environment, so that it will influence every individual in society.

Our society has to be general, integral, and not divided by borders and nationalities, which actually don’t exist any more. It’s all only symbolic in the era of modern technology, with modern transportation etc. After all, whom do these borders protect, and who needs them? Who wants to conquer whom?! Today millions of immigrants move from place to place!

We have to arrange all this gradually and sensibly. Then in several decades, we will be able to build a totally egalitarian society. We have all the options, especially if we are free of all the unnecessary expenses.

We have to present this to people and gradually let them understand the importance and the need for our connection through TV series, theater plays, songs, teaching materials in schools, courses during work hours in different companies, etc. We have to take the social and the public relations work very seriously. This must simply be the obligation of every member in the group.

This obligation will of course be completed by the importance of the goal and publicity. All the important people and celebrities will have to show how involved and supportive they are by feeling that importance of facing nature’s call. It isn’t some political party or an individual who wants to climb to the top. No one intends to rule or to achieve anything, it’s simply us, the people on this planet who are facing this need.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/29/12

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The problem in our life is that we are in a constant egoistic conflict between us as to who will “devour” the other, throw the other on his back, trample him, bite, steal, and so on. Subconsciously, we constantly are measuring ourselves this way in comparison to others, and so we have to make constant efforts to even falsely hold on to this feeling.

If we don’t feel ourselves as higher than others at least in something, we become depressed and feel powerless. We must revenge, destroy and lead the world to any kind of war if we see that we don’t succeed.

This means that the world is not important to us and neither are other people. All we need is our little, personal, individual, egoistic success. Everyone basically understands this, but it is for this reason that we naturally feel a constant inner tension. This is our biggest problem.

When we think about success, first of all, we think about how we have to trample someone on the way, step over someone who is in my way, and so forth. These may be people, organizations, inner personal problems or whatever, but I constantly have to overcome some obstacles.

It all stems from the fact that our movement forward is based only on an egoistic struggle, on conflicts with each other. This means that I am in a constant struggle by encountering another ego, anther opinion.

No one cares about justice. I just need to win, and all the rest can come later! If I need to change something in order to succeed, let’s say, my perspective, I am ready to do that since winning is now more important to me than changing my perspective. This means that there is an inner calculation, to put it bluntly, “switching a bull for a cow,” to what seems more important at present, but nothing more than that.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/29/12

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Today, we speak about a totally different attitude toward the world, toward people, and toward ourselves, as an integral system, which nature brings us to; it reveals our society in a crisis of relationship and mutual connection.

If we really look at things carefully and analyze this fact, we would discover that by acting against others, I actually act against myself with even much more intensity than my negative influence. I influence the environment, its management, its powers, and opinions, and it comes back to me like a boomerang from the whole system that I currently face.

I am like a gear that is now stuck and stops the movement of the entire mechanism, but the resistance I feel is the general movement of the whole mechanism, and I have to oppose it. Eventually, I feel powerless, empty, and with no motivation in the face of what I see: that I cannot succeed in anything and that the world is increasingly against me in every aspect, especially in the social and ecological aspects. Thus, I don’t succeed in anything.

If we could see this closed system, if it were revealed to us like in a science fiction movie where you suddenly see the whole picture in depth and to what extent we are mutually connected to one another like cogwheels, then, from this picture, we would start to behave differently. We lack the feeling of closeness, of connection, and of integrality. If we had this feeling, we would be forced to change because no one would harm others when he would be affected ten times more negatively. The same ego protects us from that.

If I see a bully on the street, I don’t start fighting with him, but cross the street. In the same way, I don’t try to act against a rich, powerful person because I know he would grind me into dust, and no one would know about it and help me. That is, a person chooses the field in which he can express himself, win, and make a profit, and he doesn’t try to jump above his level since he sees that it is doomed to fail.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/29/12

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In the News (from Mother Nature Network): ““A growing body of psychology research shows that incompetence deprives people of the ability to recognize their own incompetence. To put it bluntly, dumb people are too dumb to know it. Similarly, unfunny people don’t have a good enough sense of humor to tell.

“With more than a decade’s worth of research, David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University, has demonstrated that humans find it ‘intrinsically difficult to get a sense of what we don’t know.’ Whether an individual lacks competence in logical reasoning, emotional intelligence, humor or even chess abilities, the person still tends to rate his or her skills in that area as being above average.

“Dunning and his colleague, Justin Kruger, formerly of Cornell and now at New York University, ‘have done a number of studies where we will give people a test of some area of knowledge like logical reasoning, knowledge about STDs and how to avoid them, emotional intelligence, etcetera. Then we determine their scores, and basically just ask them how well they think they’ve done,’ Dunning said. ‘We ask, “what percentile will your performance fall in?”’

“The results are uniform across all the knowledge domains: People who actually did well on the test tend to feel more confident about their performance than people who didn’t do well, but only slightly. Almost everyone thinks they did better than average. ‘For people at the bottom who are really doing badly — those in the bottom 10th or 15th percentile — they think their work falls in the 60th or 55th percentile, so, above average,’ Dunning told Life’s Little Mysteries. The same pattern emerges in tests of people’s ability to rate the funniness of jokes, the correctness of grammar, or even their own performance in a game of chess. ‘People at the bottom still think they’re outperforming other people.’ …

“If only we knew ourselves better. Dunning believes people’s inability to assess their own knowledge is the cause of many of society’s ills, including climate change denialism. ‘Many people don’t have training in science, and so they may very well misunderstand the science. But because they don’t have the knowledge to evaluate it, they don’t realize how off their evaluations might be,’ he said.

“Along the same lines, people who aren’t talented in a given area tend not to be able to recognize the talents or good ideas of others, from co-workers to politicians. This may impede the democratic process, which relies on citizens having the capacity to identify and support the best candidate or policy.

“The ultimate takeaway of the research is the reminder that you really may not be as great as you think you are.”

My Comment: Kabbalah explains in details how much our egoism blinds us and does not allow us to see the truth. It takes a lot of effort in the group, being against the friends to begin in one’s perception of them to “see” oneself. And by developing the objective perception above egoism, one can “see” the Creator.
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Question: How should we build integral relations in the family? Which attributes and features are typical of man’s behavior and woman’s behavior from the integral perspective? Or perhaps there are no such discernments according to the integral method?

Answer: We have what we were given by nature. No matter how hard I try, I cannot be a woman, not in cleaning, washing, ironing, cooking, or in tidying up the whole house in ten minutes. It would take me five hours, and it would still be untidy. Nature hasn’t given man the same skills, the same attitude, the same movement towards what is called a “home.”

This is a woman’s issue, the female part, the female fate, the female area. A woman should manage the home. She should feel that she is the manager of the home and that it is hers.

A lack of education has created a totally different attitude towards the home and towards the family, but as a whole the concern for the home was given to women by nature. You can observe animals: each male mates and leaves, while the female gives birth to the offspring, takes care of them, licks and feeds them, teaches them how to hunt, how to be grown-ups, and sends them out into the world. We can see that in every species. That’s the way it is determined by nature, except perhaps for certain periods of time like when birds sit on eggs together until they hatch.

When we look at people, everything is organized this way, the man goes hunting while the woman guards the home, and you cannot escape this. The closer we are to nature, the more comfortable and pleasant we will feel and the stronger the agreement between us will be. In any case these attributes are part of us and we cannot suppress them in any way. Even if there are mutations, we still have our instincts, Hollywood, unisex, and other fashionable trends do not change a thing.

Therefore, we should arrange a place for everyone to talk about relative rights and duties, and the relationships between men and women. If we don’t have the right relationship, then there will be no family or anything except a negative population growth. So we have to put an end to this once and for all and not dance to the tune of different political parties that want to reach the government, trying to be so original by demanding rights for different groups.

I am not for limiting rights or for the oppression of any group in favor of the other. I am for learning from nature and being similar to it as much as we can; that’s all.

Second, our deck is arranged so that the man has to be the chief provider, and the woman has to take care of the family and educate the children. There is no way we can escape this! We see that if a woman doesn’t do that, then no one does. The result is that the next generation will be even worse than this generation. This means that we have to make sure that the woman will be free, not busy but actually free.

It isn’t that we lock her up in some domestic monastery or behind a locked door. On the contrary, she should study, go to the university at whatever age, and even all of her life. She should take different courses and constantly enrich her knowledge so that she will be an educational role model for her children and her husband. This means that a mother that feels as the real owner of the home should also feel that she is the backbone of the family from whom the whole family will learn about the world, about the right attitude towards life, about education, and everything else.

After all, a man is always under the influence of a woman. Who doesn’t listen to his wife and is secretly afraid of her? It is because everything comes from the mother; after all, we understand our psychology.

So it is very important that we constantly elevate the woman, educate her, and fill her. Through her, this fulfillment passes on to the rest of society. This means that she should take an active part in her own development and education, and also in the education and teaching of all the members of the family.

If we don’t have this revolution, then we will lose the family, the children, our population, society, etc. We can do all this through the woman. In order to do this, the media has to make a little effort. It should not be a government plan but a global one.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/28/12

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If we could turn on our inner sight (like an x-ray), then we would discover a giant information network, which connects all the inhabitants of the world.

We need to reinforce the unacceptability of strict and one-sided criterion. In the past, there was the globalization of countries, then the globalization of corporations, and now there is the globalization of people in small societies. And as long as we divert our opinions to general questions about politics and economy, we divert ourselves from what’s important, from the integrality of the world.

The economy, is to maintain the life of the living or social body. The more complex the object is, then the amount of the interrelationships in its body are greater, as well is the density of its communication and reciprocal relations. Their knowledge is needed for modern financial management, for support in living, and the results of the lack of this information is the entire reason of our failures and of the crisis.

And in countries that still haven’t developed such connections, they still don’t feel themselves in a crisis, but they will come to it also. And if we invent our own laws, we, as if, erect walls on the way to the natural connections of society, and in the end, we cancel the natural connection and the development.

Without a doubt, all the objections to integration, the organization of all kinds of coalitions and alliances, are against social development and the plan of nature, and thus will bring its participants to their downfall.

At the basis of integration stands the aspiration of the unique upper force of nature which brings everyone to one form, to consolidation, to participation, to unity, to mutual understanding, to upper justice. Thus, the various kinds of private forms of alliances will discover their lack of coordination to the general nature and will force the creators of the alliances, in one way or another, to turn to complete integrality.

Thus, the entire system of new values, the principle and secondary ones, also those of individuals and of the society, will need to be built in coordination with natural priorities, which will bring civilization to harmony and unity.

To clarify the priorities, it is important to hold discussions and forums and to hear public opinion, but not for the purpose of changing the priorities which are determined by nature and were transmitted to us by the Kabbalists, but only in clarifying the level of development of the society and correction of its integral upbringing.
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Opinion (Dr. Peggy Drexler, Author, Research Psychologist, Gender Scholar): “A 2010 Federal Reserve survey – done every three years – found a staggering 40 percent drop in household net worth. With the economy continuing to struggle in the areas that hit people hardest  – home and jobs – the next survey is unlikely to show an appreciable drop in pain, possibly not for years to come. …

“As families struggle financially, they often change.

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Comment: Integral upbringing obliges our creating public dining rooms, clubs, athletic fields, voluntary childcare, and a cultural mass leisure, and so on. It is about creating an environment that will raise up the people of the future, and not grow the lumpenproletariat. The problem is not in the means, but in the desire to organize that our egoism stops.
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