Those who are going through integral studies need to know that they aren’t assembling together as a regular group for pleasant communication that might not lead to anything: to talk and flee. They gather together in order to connect with each other, and in this connection to realize the next level of their perception, of the communication between them, of their state.

The matter is that everything we are based on in our everyday life comes to us at the level of inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature. Thus, psychologists deal with psychology on the animate level of humans, and we deal with human psychology, the psychology of “turning” people into human beings. Therefore, at the beginning of the studies one needs to explain the task to people so that they’ll understand how serious and special it is, and that it requires a certain inner tension from them.

In our regular life, we are directed through instincts that come to us from our ancestors, from the tribal feeling that existed long before the appearance of cultures, the development of civilization, and long before the technological and social progress. We use these instincts unconsciously, but they constantly direct us, and we can’t rid ourselves of them.

This is the failure of all psychological treatments, since we try to treat human society, the communication between people and of man himself, as part of the society at the same level he is on today. It’s as if we try to change the instincts, the communication between us, and that’s practically impossible.

We place the person in certain narrow limits where there is some kind of correction, and as a result of that it’s more convenient for him to do it this way or that way. He somehow combines within him his instincts, manipulates them a little, and it seems to us that he behaves correctly, according to the desires of society, the family, etc.

But it is not enough to attain the correct behavior from a person today. Thus, lately, psychology has developed in order to realize, to some extent, the way to change a person, the society, a person in society. But the important thing is to discover its initial failure, and rise to the next level.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 2/29/12

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