Question:

Answer: Let’s do an experiment; let’s photograph people and start showing them how they behave in different places. Let them see themselves from aside. Do you think this would not cause them to change, even without any social work?

Let us show children their parents’ behavior. This is the strongest factor of influence on the parents! Let us see how they will react to this.

This will change them. If the children at home were to express their disrespect or resentment of their parents’ actions, the parents would not be able to remain in the same state. They would be compelled to fight for the respect of their children. It is an awful catastrophe for parents when their children resent them, when children not only disagree with their parents but also with their actions, with who they are. We need to use this. Carefully and delicately, but necessarily, we must to do it.
[67859]
From “Lessons About a New World” #7, 12/14/11

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Opinion (from

“In 2011, parents wanted to develop in their children the ability to achieve their goals, a sense of responsibility, and the ability to stand up for themselves. In 1998, it was good manners, the ability to behave in society, and to communicate with people. Today, these qualities are not included even in the top five.

“These data suggest that the world has become much tougher, and people more self-centered. We used to say ‘we’ and now ‘I,’ but it is hard to live when you have only ‘I’—you are alone!”

My Comment: Our system of values ​​is a consequence of our growing egoism. It will grow until we realize its deadly properties and begin to seek the means of dealing with it. Then, we will feel the need for a method of correction and begin to exit from the general crisis. We can advance this moment by disseminating the method of mutual guarantee.
[68678]

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Question:

Answer: We take time during discussions and conversations to show examples of correct and incorrect behavior and interactions; we analyze the motives, the different subconscious and conscious incentives, ones that are instinctive and conscious: instinctive being those that come from nature, and instinctively acquired from the environment during the upbringing process when habit becomes second nature.

We try to separate all of this, explain where it comes from, why it comes from the past society in which we grew up, and why we now need to change, and especially why we need to change and reeducate our children.

But if the children continue to be educated in the same environment with the same adults, it will be another several generations until they change. What can we do to change our children now? To do it we are the ones who need to change first.

I think that the interactions between parents and children, love for children, the desire to give them a good new world is a very strong factor of influence on the adults. And it must impel us to make a change so that we do not just play at, but we will actually build a good society for our children.
[67856]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” #7 12/14/2011

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The world treats us more harshly, persistently, seriously, and tenaciously with each passing day.

Kabbalah teaches us that there is a way to optimize and accelerate our development. For that, we have to recognize what’s going on and observe the process as a whole. At each given moment we have to choose how to continue growing.  It is not about being right or wrong, but rather whether our progress complies with the program of nature. The closer we are to the program, the faster we progress. Everything depends on our understanding, grasp, and attainment of, and agreement with the algorithm that nature demands of us.

How do we know about this? Today, we can arrive at this conclusion from our own experience.

Scientists, psychologist, and philosophers repeat in unison that we are developing by two forces: good and evil. Good brings us goodness and evil, evil. We have no doubt about this, since each of us can interpret good and evil.

The impact of a good force is especially felt in childhood when we are cared for, loved, and protected while we are growing. Nature (or the Creator) elicits a good attitude and love in parents, immediate family, and even in the distant environment towards children. It doesn’t matter if the child misbehaves or breaks things. He is excused for doing things that an adult would never be forgiven for. Everyone pampers a child and he uses their good attitude.

As soon as a child grows up, that kind and indulgent attitude stops abruptly. From now on he becomes the one who has to take care of himself and others; he begins to “owe” others and is held responsible for his actions. To make it short, demands replaces love.

Why does this happen? We are not questioning childhood, but why is nature so demanding of adulthood, why does it stop being as kind as it previously was? Why does it start to apply a negative attitude towards us?

It is essential to understand that it has nothing to do with negativity, but rather about giving us incentive to grow. If we develop correctly, then instead of feeling bad influences, we sense benevolence. Thus, we have to realize that the whole of nature, life, and the world treats us according to our compliance with the world. If the world treats us problematically, it means that the problem is rooted in our own incorrect and imbalanced attitudes towards the world. When we adapt to the world, we begin to re-evaluate the forces that we previously considered bad to good.

What is the reason we don’t feel that negative force instigating our self-correction? If we re-connect with that force, life will again seem just like it was in childhood when everyday promised to bring something good.

Everything depends on our preparedness and upbringing. If from our early years we were brought up correctly and trained to ensure that as adults we matured with the understanding of how to correctly interact with the environment to elicit positive responses and how to correctly interact with nature, society, family, and ourselves, then our lives would have continued perfectly, without any problems.

But we do not get correct directives in childhood regarding our adulthood. It is easy to talk about these issues by using the Kabbalists’ words, but what can we do if we are not familiar with the wisdom of Kabbalah? Can we find precise directions by listening to nature’s hints? Can we form the proper attitude to everything that surrounds us? Humanity faces the problem of finding a way to avoid suffering and is trying to discover how to relate to life in order to experience the least amount of distress. Even now we continue to suffer and we will suffer more because we haven’t yet found the answer to this question.

The contradiction between what we want and what we actually possess in reality pushes adults to search further. As a result, throughout history we have developed several approaches to this problem. Baal HaSulam writes about them in his article “The Peace”; pointing out that if we honestly and realistically view nature, humanity, and life,  we will arrive at the same results that the wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us.

The main thing is to not be bribed by our egoism, but rather to rise above it to an objective level at which we do not depend on our existing sensations, inclinations, and notions. If we could rise above ourselves as independent researchers, we would detect some data that is contained in Kabbalah.

This is what the wisdom does: It raises a person up to a level where he can take a look at reality without the prism of his ego. If we could remove these “lenses” of egoism, we would easily attain the wisdom of Kabbalah. According to Baal HaSulam’s article, “The Peace,” this is scientific research with an experimental, experiential, and practical basis that works for everybody without exception and that allows each and everyone to discover the need to bestow to our neighbor.
[60423]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/11/11, “The Peace”

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Question:

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.
[66421]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” #5, 12/13/11

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Question:

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.
[66261]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” #5, 12/13/11

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Question:

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.
[66141]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” #5, 12/13/11

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If all the evidence shows that man is the result of his environment, it follows that organizing all kinds of models of a good and correct society for all humankind is critical.

If we continue to study this issue further, we will see that a person is formed by the influence of his inner qualities, the genes he was born with, the various inclinations he acquires early in life at his parents’ home, and then by the influence of society.

We must therefore focus on kindergartens and the various circles for little children, and then on schools and clubs for older kids. We need to ensure that every person has a wide array of opportunities to reveal his potential and develop into a well-rounded individual.

Even the qualities that don’t appear to be particularly strong or promising in an individual ought to be developed anyway, as that will enrich his inner world, as will teaching him to appreciate music, literature, theater, art, and culture: All these things depend on a person’s environment as well.

People must have a family and bring up children; they must learn how to properly act toward his or her spouse, toward friends, in the company of strangers, and at work. We must teach the person by applicable examples how to behave and how to become a person in the full sense of the word, one that’s appreciated by society, which will in turn allow him to reach success and prosperity himself.

To this end, there are only two factors that aim and correct me every minute: my own natural qualities and the environment’s influence upon them. My ability lies in choosing an environment that would constantly develop me in the right direction, bring me closer to good and advanced states that give the sensation of greater security, confidence, and comfort. This is how we continue to develop.

From this we need to understand the task that lies before us, what we need to do to make sure that our children have a good life  and that the next generation is better off and more confident in its future.

This can only be done if we manage to surround our children with these kinds of teachers and create for them the kind of environment that would influence them to reinforce their good qualities and to transform their negative qualities into positive ones rather than suppress them.
[66622]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 3, 12/29/11

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Question:

Answer: Certainly we should be engaged in the education of adults, but we still have to put the maximum attention on the education of children because changing the adults is very hard. On one hand, they feel the entire corruption of the society where they live, and they would like to change it. However, changing the society means changing a person. It’s very difficult to change a person. By taking care of our children (something which is important to us), we will be changing ourselves as well.

Most of us are someone’s parents. When we are involved in building a completely different society for our children, as it is said, “If not for us, then for our children,” when we take care of the next generation and educate it, we will simultaneously start re-educating ourselves.

Question: Does it mean that the course for adults should include a course for the preparation of educators for the kids as well?

Answer: This is a must! The course should include the topics on interaction between the spouses, interaction of a person with the society, with the boss, with employees, and with the children, as well as child education. A person should be connected with everyone in the integral way.
[66135]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” #5, 12/13/11

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Question:

Answer: I totally disagree with you!

Today’s world and the one we propose are absolutely opposed. We must face the truth! It is actually true. There should not be partial solutions! I cannot create a school half-humanistic and half-egoistic, the way it is today.

When a young child comes to school, he could be beaten and robbed; he could be made into anything, compelled to do anything by force, pressure, influence, and some values. He is forced to be the same as everybody else with the worst examples. He can become attached to smoking and drinking alcohol, not to mention the threat of drugs! School is a school of depravity, a school of vanity! One is driving a car, the other gets there on foot.

All the evils of modern society are manifested in children at school in the cruelest way. We need to fight against this! We should start doing something about this. They are our children!

Since we have become insensitive egoists, we treat children likewise, pushing them away as if saying: “Go to your school. They should deal with you there.”

Instead of raising a child as a normal person and creating a future for him, the next society, we neither create society nor make a person a human being.

It does not matter what will be. That is why we do not want to bear children. We simply exist and go with the flow, which carries us to a huge waterfall, to fall into the abyss.
[66139]
From a “Talk About Integral Education” #5, 12/13/11

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The modern education “molds” everyone according to a fixed template.

Being unique makes a person seem “weird” and the educational system destroys these “eccentricities.” A child comes to school and receives standard material, standard questions, standard problems… and eventually, we get a standard, stenciled form, like mud cakes in the sandbox, regardless of his individual tendencies.

Our education treats a person like a machine that needs to perform certain functions in society and at work. This is reflected in science too: Few scientists become true pioneers. After all, a unique personality is needed for that, a new perspective, a new perception, like Einstein or Friedman.

Today there are millions of scientists and in the past there were no more than a dozen. The point is that today’s scientist is a “technician” who performs a series of experiments until he stumbles upon something new. He doesn’t penetrate the nature of creation, he doesn’t see how things grow from the inside, and doesn’t discover the new layers and new dimensions as a result of a special vision.

No, he simply performs experiments. He tries one thing and then another thing and eventually gets some result. Of course, scientific thinking is required here, but it isn’t discovery in the true sense. These aren’t results of a person’s inner intellectual efforts. Usually they are just statistically predictable successes of repeated lab routine.

Therefore, we must draw a clear line between today’s mass education and the true education that molds the human in us.
[65961]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/10/12, “The Freedom”

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Question:

Answer: It’s because in reality, humanity has not changed. Only now it may come to the realization of evil, and only with our help.

Many critics passionately berate education, but nothing happens. In fact, they simply state that they feel bad, but do not see the real reason. It’s because to see it, they need to be able to compare one with the other. Here, we need the Light that Reforms.

In our world, we reveal only evil, but not its relationship with the good. This is not the realization of evil yet; something else is required as a criterion. Yes, I feel bad, but I cannot detect the reason because to do this we need to attract the Reforming Light.

As a result, people have been talking about the problems of education for at least 50 years, and so far nothing has been fixed. This area consumes huge budgets and resources and involves a vast number of people. Parents suffer, teachers suffer, students suffer—and all are helpless.

In fact, the system itself is rather conservative and unwilling to change. However, even knowing that they need changes, no one can carry them out. There is no clear, accurate, modern program of actions. In contrast, it does not require much to simply destroy what exists. Today, it is clear that it is necessary to raise a child as a human being. To do this there are many different techniques: It seems that we are nearly there, but where are these human beings?

In the end, we cannot manage without the Light that Reforms. But how can a person get it, without having a point in the heart? To do this, he needs to be connected with those who do have it. Therefore, only we can bring a new method of education to the world. Nothing else will help; there must be connection with the Light that acts in desires.
[65955]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/10/12, “The Freedom”

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Question:

Answer: When starting to talk about a person, his physiology, psychology, sociology, family relationships, and so on, we need to do it objectively, abstractly, not relative to the person himself. And only afterwards should we gradually include examples: Here is a man, a woman, and children; here is a person as he is, he reacts to himself in a certain way and is composed of certain images of vision, perception, and so on. In other words, we begin to talk about some abstract object and gradually bring that object to the person himself. I think this way we won’t encounter a problem.

The fact of the matter is that a modern person doesn’t know any of this. We hide our nature, we are ashamed of ourselves, ashamed in front of others; we are afraid to show any sort of weakness because we think that others could take advantage of it. I have to show that I stand firm like a wall behind my immutable opinions, which I do not actually have at all.

When we gradually reveal what man, society, and nature in its global and general form are, little by little we get used to the fact that we are the way we are created: It isn’t me, and everything in me works independently from me.

Then what exactly is this “I”? I is only the one who can research what in him or her is created by nature.

Like doctors who aren’t ashamed in front of each other or their patients, or psychologists who can express their own and other people’s feelings without embarrassment, understanding that all of this is an objective reality, we, too, are the way we are. Likewise, we also need to bring a person to such a state.

Everything needs to be based precisely on the fact that the next stage of our development is complete integration of everyone into everything, when all parts of nature get incorporated into a person, a person into them, and people into each other, and together with nature we represent one organic whole.

In such a case there is nothing here that I have to conceal, be embarrassed of, and attempt to hide from others. I must ultimately reach a state where, conversely, I am obliged to fully reveal myself and be connected to everyone.

It’s like an infant who lies in his mother’s arms: He is nothing and nobody, yet she concentrates all of her attention on him, and from the point of view of nature, relative to his mother he has absolutely no barriers, borders, or screens; on the contrary, an absolutely complete connection exists. We too, as a result of our integral education and upbringing, need to reach such a connection in the future.

That is why our flow in teaching, experiencing these courses, in their structure and interconnection (where one course begins and another ends, or a few of them go parallel to each other) needs to be structured precisely so: along the axis of time. Courses should supplement one another and follow either consecutively or overlap with each other so that people gradually develop a correct attitude towards themselves, to other students studying in the group, and towards the whole world.
[65538]
From a “Talk on Integral Education,” 12/13/11

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Question:

The first thing that you may encounter in such a group is resentment, frustration, and aggression. Would people in this state be able to perceive such distant, abstract, and theoretical information? What should we start with in order to find common ground with people?

Answer: We have no other choice. We, people, consist of two halves: heart and mind, and they have to balance each other. Then a person develops harmoniously, sees the world and himself within it. Perhaps he sees both himself and the world as unbalanced, but his worldview becomes more or less correct.

Therefore, first and foremost we have to counterbalance all of today’s problems with knowledge: From where did these problems arise, what is  their origin, their necessity for our continued development, what exactly we need to come to, and so on.

As the first order of business people must necessarily complete an educational course, and not the ones on upbringing, practical work, and game scenarios—they are still far from that. The practical work within such groups begins only when the state of all sorts of problems and crises is balanced. People begin to understand the essence of these problems; they can now discuss, decide, arrive at some kind of an opinion, object, and discern the truth. But it gets discerned when feelings are balanced by knowledge.

If right now we simply take 50 people from the street and start to talk to them about today’s problems, we’ll be confronted with complete lack of understanding of our point of view. Correspondingly, feelings prevail above the mind, and we won’t get anywhere.

This is what happens in today’s world. Without understanding the general system of nature, its development (beginning, middle, and end of this path), and the state of humanity (where we exist in this moment along the axis of time), we evaluate everything only on the basis of our small, worldly egoism that doesn’t allow us to obtain the correct result. Moreover, we make wrong decisions about the future and with that bring ourselves into an even more difficult state. That is why, personally, I have no doubts that first and foremost we need to pursue education.

Precisely with that we begin our interaction with children. We always need to take our natural attitude to children as an example.

Everything begins with explanations. A child develops and feels: I sense this and that. A correct upbringing lies in supplementing a child’s feelings with explanations and with a system of correct attitude towards what he feels and how he perceives everything. This has to be balanced in adults as well. Without this we cannot advance.

Only to the extent that a group adapts this knowledge into itself does it realize and understand the causality and consequences of the feelings, their cause and effect development, and is able to see itself from the side. When a person rises above his self, he can separate his own “I” and see himself and society from the side.

The same way in psychology: You look at a person not as an individual, but from the side, trying to imagine him as a certain psychological object. Then, exploring him, you begin to give him some concrete recommendations, fragmentary explanations without even explaining who and what he is. But in principle, these explanations too are based on some kind of balance between knowledge and feelings. You cannot do without that.

That’s why in the first place we will have to introduce the courses that we spoke about in the last talk. It is a great amount of knowledge.

In the process of study, this knowledge gradually gets absorbed by people, and a person then starts to internally assimilate it along with feelings. At this point we need to start fortifying it with practical exercises that help a person balance knowledge and feelings.

A person can receive an initial sensation of that state by studying the material first-hand. We need to tell him about the origin, evolution, and properties of egoism and to present it completely objectively as a certain existing reality independent from and having nothing to do with us, so that a person could absorb everything in the form in which it exists in nature.

Next in the same course, a brief explanation can be given about how egoism works in a person: how it manifests itself in our world, in connections with family, children, with one’s own self, and so on.

That is, education involves at the very least separation into two parts, when we objectively lay out what is taking place in nature and try to express that in a somewhat dry, scientific language, and afterwards, as a supplement to that, we utilize this. After that is when the practical training begins, where we try to investigate our feelings from the point of view of reason.

A theoretical study is always reason, and we study it, fill ourselves with all kinds of knowledge, data, graphs, formulas, images, discernments of relationships, and so on, while gradually adding a little bit of feelings to that. In other words, studying always proceeds from two directions, “reason and feelings”: feelings in reason and reason in feelings.
[65541]
From a “Talk on Integral Education,” 12/13/11

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Question:

Answer: I doubt that in the integral society we would fail to reach such a state when everyone would have a family. On the contrary, a person will feel that a family is that primary instrument through which he or she influences the world. That’s one.

Second, we need to understand and realize that nature is designed in such a way that the number of men and women in the general population is going to depend on how we will conduct ourselves with each other. Through our relationships we will, so to speak, introduce our desired quantitative and qualitative inputs into nature, and we will receive precisely the kind of progeny that would create correct connections and units. It depends only on our harmony.

Since today we do not exist in a state of harmony with our own self, between us, and with nature, we give birth to children who struggle to find anything suitable for themselves. We do not imbue them with integrality, and that is why our world is falling apart today.

If we approach this question globally, through that we will instill into our children completely different informational records, new “genes.” They will be born in such a form that their common field of nature, one that drives all of us towards correct development and a particular goal, will gather them in mutual likeness. Each of them will quickly find their second half.
[64859]
From a “Talk on Integral Education,” 12/12/11

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Question:

Answer: The most important part in our studies is to realize, in theory and practice, the integration of all people among themselves, regardless of age or gender: men, women, and children. Studies, psychological trainings, taking this message to the masses and smaller groups, and the creation of brand new means of mass media that would educate a person rather than deform him, all this should be our main and primarily practical course.

The other courses we discussed also include practical studies with children and adults conducted by a psychologist. But the courses mentioned above are the main ones.

Also included as a major component in children’s upbringing are excursions to plants, factories, planetariums, and other places. We introduce children to agriculture and the animal kingdom to show them how nature exists in its pure form and why the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature develop the way they do with respect to one another. The tools we use to this end include educational films, excursions to the woods, the lake, the sea, and so on with explanations and very precise and correct conclusions about integration and interconnection in nature.

Then we continue with studying the human society: how it evolved from the animate part of nature, came out of the caves, came down from the trees, and what it achieved in its development, that is, what we built for ourselves to replace the lairs that were our homes, the enterprises we founded to no longer have to hunt mammoths, and how we established our interconnected, mutual assistance and support. We study the structure of all sorts of medical, financial, industrial, and research institutions, how supply and demand works, and how humanity is connected via all these systems. And, of course, we study the universe.

In our efforts to examine life and the world, we conduct very serious excursions, and not only for children. We see how excursions expand the children’s perspective and turn them into thoughtful adults. After each excursion we require the children to make a report including: where they were, what they saw, and why things work this way or that. That is followed with a discussion. All these things together ensure a very thorough grasp of the material. An excursion itself may happen no more than once per week because it takes time to discuss it, write compositions on the subjects, and so on.

The same applies to adults who are also of the opinion that pastries grow on trees, meaning that they are not familiar with production processes and have no clue as to what humanity does for them. Excursions for adults also lead to integrality and interdependence, which is why the understanding that you exist thanks to the entire world that works for your benefit is crucial from the standpoint of education, moral support, and the feeling of cooperation. If we present this information to the person in this manner, his outlook on everything in the world changes drastically.

The most important part that stems from these excursions is that we then scrutinize whether we need this particular enterprise or not, whether it’s a necessity or an indulgence that we can do without, not at our expense, but simply because we wouldn’t miss it if it were gone. Thus we gradually teach the person to pay more attention to the inner world, and not the external one.
[64966]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” 12/12/11

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Every course in the system of integral upbringing carries a tremendous load of meaning in changing each of us as a personality and as an integral individual within society.

I think that all of these courses should be led by a psychologist, with many examples from our life: What was and what ought to be, how to build a bridge for transitioning from our past states (domestic, spousal, pertaining to housekeeping and children’s upbringing) towards new ones.

Children’s upbringing and the influence of parents on their children are considered separately. We do not tear the family apart, don’t exert any pressure on the parents, and don’t distance them from their children like it was done during the Soviet times when children were sent to boarding schools, or in the Israeli kibbutzim when they were simply taken from their parents and raised separately. Generally speaking, they pursued good goals, but everything came down to exerting force on an individual. It should not be this way.

Under no circumstances do we destroy a family. We simply teach people the correct inclusion into one another. They must merge together internally, connect in such a way that a family becomes a pillar of the integral society and embodies one unit, a single small system that would join together with other such systems.

Comment: How can this be done? How can they be joined?

Answer: If both parents and children complete essentially the same courses, except each according to his age and mentality, then there is no problem in them starting to change involuntarily and discussing these changes in their family circle. Shame and reproaches have no place here because the whole society is obliged to change.

Now we all have to play this game specifically in order to position ourselves under the kind influence of nature. Otherwise nature will force us to do this with its subsequent development showing our contradiction to it, and we will experience that as tremendous suffering.
[64864]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” 12/12/11

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Question:

Answer: That’s because over the years, our evil inclination (egoistic desire) has reached tremendous dimensions. We haven’t corrected it and it still stays at an animal level. Sexual attraction is the most uncomplicated and natural call that is easy to implement. Practically everything revolves around it; it is very easy to create a whole “industry of love” comprised of movies, TV, music, etc.

Never in the past was such an ideal of “love” built. No matter how we perceive old times, people used to be more straightforward and simple. A man married a “suitable” woman from his neighborhood and created a family without involving such “high matters.” The massive glorification of “love” was launched about 150 years ago; before, no “cult” associated with it ever existed.

This cult-like notion of love didn’t arise by chance—after all, a man must be something to enjoy. What could they get fulfilled with? What good could they find in life? This is how an industry of “wholesale love” was created. It uses a simple, powerful and affordable pleasure, which, unlike others, requires almost no investment. Today, it is overused on the Internet and TV without any restrictions.

Moreover, we force-feed our children with side effects of the “sexual revolution.” With the help of media, society overwhelms a child with adult stereotypes that are unnatural for the younger generation. In conjunction with hormones that children intake with food, we violate a natural process of growth and literally force kids to “mutate.” This is only one side of a general crisis.

We consider ourselves to be a rational intelligent society with certain principles and considerable experience; if so, how can we allow such things to happen? In the past, parents tried hard to protect their children from bad influences; they gave them the best they could and cultivated in their kids high spiritual values. What do we do with our children now? Why do we allow contemporary mass media filled with cruelty, cynicism, and filth to interfere with our children’s lives?

Why do we tolerate vulgarity by silently consenting to it?

A child goes to school, watches TV, and browses through the Internet. The environment carves him in a way that he becomes similar to it. Why don’t we at least become concerned about it? Do we have anything more precious than children?

We cannot confine them in four walls; so the channels that pour poison into our children’s ears must be shut down. Let’s at least take care of our offspring since we have already failed the adults. Society should be held responsible for the content that is being offered to our young generation. Unnecessary things should not be imposed on them.

Returning to the topic of women—we shouldn’t compel girls to think that they were born to seduce men and thus have to look accordingly. By doing so, we enhance prostitution and create wrong standards in relationships between genders only because someone earns money from it. This way or the other everything rotates around money.

As long as we allow media to “educate” people that distorts them instead, we cannot expect anything positive from them. At the same time, the situation can be improved solely with the help of mass media, but we should take their activity under control.

Society must be called to order; among other things, it means that media has to be regulated. We are not talking about the freedom of speech, but rather about the freedom of animal appeal. Media should be organized differently and continue working for the sake of public benefit instead of letting advertisement agencies and their affiliates earn more money.

We have to start with mass education; otherwise there is nobody to talk with. People have already been “carved” and perceive the current state of affairs as the only possibility.

Hence, parents carry vague priorities; they indifferently watch their children degrade.

If a particular person—someone older or an adult —was harming my child, I would do everything in my power to stop any contacts between them. But somehow we do not act against the media. On the contrary, we knowingly allow them to enter our house and agree with what they are doing. The same applies to schools.

People simply gave up. We prefer to keep our good moods by abiding with the situation and thinking that everything is fine. Our common trouble is that we are completely (not partially) consoled.

Altering the environment will bring us relief. But first we have to clean it up a bit. So far, while we are being suppressed by our indifference time passes by….
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/28/11, “The Freedom”
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“In contrast, younger babies prefer to see individuals being nice to one another — even when that means that someone is nice to a character who deserves a slap on the wrist.

“So, the researchers [from the University of British Columbia, Canada] set up a series of experiments using puppets to act out scenarios of helping and harming while each of 32 5-month-olds and 32 8-month-olds watched separately. After each experiment, the infants indicated their preference for the puppets’ behaviors by picking their favorite puppet to hold.

“The puppets — a series of cheerful characters, including moose, elephants and a yellow duck — were first shown interacting in either nice or mean ways.

Social calculations

“The findings, reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveal that babies develop a sense of justice between 5 and 8 months of age, Hamlin said.

“’We find that, by eight months, babies have developed nuanced views of reciprocity and can conduct these complex social evaluations much earlier than previously thought,’ she said.

“Although this sense of justice may be learned, Hamlin said, the early age at which it develops suggests that an urge to punish antisocial types may be partially innate.”
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Question:

Answer: We should understand that from now on, nature offers us only two paths of development leading to one goal. The ultimate goal of nature is complete unity of all its parts, including humanity as a part of general nature.

We can reach this state of harmony, equilibrium, and homeostasis in two ways. One of them is the path of suffering, the realization of this necessity in spite of our desires and inner impulses. This path is very difficult, complex, and forced.

In principle, nature developed us in this way all the time. This is the process of evolution, when we are pushed from behind and thus look for comfort. It turns out that we seek a better life by being pushed from behind, make plenty of mistakes, but eventually develop. This is how man, small societies, as well as humanity as a whole developed in the past.

But there is a possibility of development with dignity, when a person is aware beforehand that all nature is moving towards integrality. Now, the first signs of this future integrality become apparent, obliging us to exist in it as part of society, nature, and the universe.

Nature strives for balance because it is the key to its health, safety, and sustainability both in every part of it (for example, in our body) and the whole system.

Let us take this future state as a common goal of all humanity and begin to approach it, at least in different regions of the world, through various international organizations, beliefs, and, most importantly, through education. Education shouldn’t be obtrusive; we should simply tell people about the laws of nature, the laws of the development of human society: behavior, education, family relationships, and child upbringing. We teach people how to live on a fairly modest salary, allowance, or scholarship.

But all this must be taught to people. They do not know how to raise children and how to get along with each other. We see that humanity teaches something completely different: It does not teach or educate its offspring, the future generation, so that it lives well.

We do not think about how to make people happy. We push them into the abyss of capitalist competition, in which they are willing “to eat each other” gladly. But there are no winners in this contest, and in the end, we condemn them to constant stress and problems. As a result, no one sees happiness.

It is essential that psychologists, sociologists, parents, teachers, and people who already understand the problem or can understand it come to a more or less correct conclusion, and with the help of scientists, the public, and the Internet (today it is a considerable force) will be able to show all humanity that this integral education is the key to the healthy society, man, and family. We simply will not survive without it; we will advance with huge losses. Of course, we will achieve the same goal, but it will be a terrible path.
[63707]
Talk on Integral Education 12/11/11

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Question:

Answer: Harmony is easy. It comes from the fact that there are two forces in nature: the force of bestowal (the positive force) and the force of receiving (the negative one), which at different levels (biological, physical, moral, and so on) manifest themselves as balanced systems. If these forces are balanced in the human body, the body is absolutely healthy. If they are balanced in nature, this means it’s in a state of absolute rest. A lack of balance leads to all sorts of movements.

Naturally, imbalance is necessary because it produces life. It’s the constant interaction between two forces within certain limits, the variation of their relation to each other that create life. For example, the expansion and contraction of the chest, heart, and other organs are built on mutual movement of the opposing forces that support and complement each other. Life is what occurs between them, owing to their proper and harmonious interaction.

In our development, we will reach a point when the entire human community will achieve precisely this mode of operation whereby all its parts mutually oscillate. But these oscillations, like breathing, will be interdependent with each other, when the force of bestowal is equal to the force of reception. They will alternately interact with each other: However much we give to nature, so should we receive; however much we receive, so we’ll have to give.

Then, we will live in harmony, homeostasis, meaning a state of mutual support. Nature that brings us to a state of equilibrium between its two main forces, the force of giving and the force of receiving, intends that we come to this. It’s nature’s general trend.

We can do nothing with this general universal law. We can only understand where we go and how to fit voluntarily, knowingly into this external, absolutely binding law. Thus, we’ll feel comfortable not only in the final state to which we will come, but at all stages of development.
[63841]
From a talk on Integral Upbringing, 11.12.2011

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The world situation is changing rapidly, and there is a need to create an integral method of educating adults.

People are at a loss despite the fact that they are receiving unemployment benefits. Currently, they are still available, but what will happen next is unknown. After all, we are talking about hundreds of millions of people who will lose work because the crisis will destroy all the industries that are not vitally important. What will the people who produce what no one needs do?

We see how protest movements are growing due to the Internet, mutual communication, and our mutual influence on each other. All humanity, from ordinary citizens to governments, is interested in taking this process under control and preventing its spontaneous development because modern weapons plus an unpredictable course of events can lead to disastrous results.

In order to prevent all kinds of disasters, civil or even world wars, we need to think in advance about global, integral upbringing of the majority of the population.
[63710]
From a talk on Integral Upbringing 12/11/2011

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Question:

Answer: You take the desires of everyone and fill them as much as you can. That is called love. That is the act of love.

Question: Which desires do I take?

Answer: If you love them, you fill only their necessary desires. You won’t buy unhealthy food for your child. You buy him something tasty, but the main thing is that it is healthy.

Question: But what if he specifically wants fast food?

Answer: If you love, you can’t fill the desires that are bad for him. After all, you wouldn’t give your son a knife to play with if he asked for one. Isn’t that the same thing as fast food?

A true relationship, a real love, hardens you. The pity you feel now is actually egoistic pity; you feel sorry for yourself, not him. If you really had pity for him, you would give only what is healthy for him, only that which benefits his development and nothing else.

The child will get used to this very quickly. If you behave this way from the beginning, he won’t even ask you for things that are harmful.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/26/2011, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”

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I need to create the type of environment and atmosphere around me which will constantly convince me of the fact that being interconnected and compliant with others will lead me to a safer and better life.

You take the formula of total interconnection between all elements in nature and reveal it to people in a way that they can understand. You explain to them that it’s good to care for one another because it is in this way that you become similar to nature that surrounds you. In so doing, you will benefit a great deal because you obtain harmony with nature. Then, all forces of nature, both concealed and revealed, will be benevolent towards us, and we’ll benefit in every way.

Let’s conduct an experiment and see how much we’ll succeed in business and in economics if we start treating each other with more compassion, like members of one family. This is difficult; however, if we begin to convince each other subtly, without any pressure, then surely no one will lose.

I teach my children not to fight, not to provoke others, to be polite, to say please and thank you, to share, and to make friends. I teach them these things because I know that this behavior will provide them with maximum safety. I don’t teach my children to punch people or to steal because first and foremost, I want them to be safe in life. If they are kind to people, they will always find a more or less normal condition to exist in.

Why can’t we establish these interrelations worldwide? We’ve considered all this before—in our visions of utopian societies.

We have to enlighten people about the era we’re entering into. Everyone must understand that we live in the era when everything is interconnected, where everyone is like a part of a single family, and everyone is dependent upon one another. This is the era where we reeducate ourselves to become a global and integral element of society, the era where each person understands his uniqueness, his own unique contribution to the world, and for this reason should feel responsible for his part. Each person has to feel this way in relation to all the others.
[56978]
From the Talk on Global Education 9/7/2011

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Opinion: (Mr. Popov, president of the International Education Association, from ng.ru):

“The main organizers of the pre-school, kindergarten, and school education system were industrial and military leaders. Thus the pre-school-kindergarten-school system was organized to support this idea. It wouldn’t have occurred to anyone to take tiny children away from their parents and put them into daycare; however, the industrial model of those times demanded daycare. And it wouldn’t even occur to today’s parents that this can be done differently. This is why today we’re missing an affordable and developed network of qualified nannies. Children are being put into institutions where they get sick, and then they are all vaccinated. Schools and universities are based on an industrial way of life and are designed to raise a class of disciplined workers.

“Today the world is competing for people who are capable of independent decision-making and action. However, the parents don’t want there to be any changes within the school system. We don’t understand where the world is going. Fifth graders are spending time on the Internet, they’re in a different world, and the schools can’t do anything about it.

“English schools are among those that have the most freedom. Up to 80% of children are studying via the Internet. The whole world is trying to teach children to work independently and find information on their own. After all, children are bored at school, and though they are small it’s still impossible to force them to do something they don’t want or have no interest in doing.

“Teachers are mistaking that there is no alternative to school education. There is an alternative. It’s because of the teachers that the parents today don’t see it. First this alternative is discovered by the children. Some, for example, realize that a better way to study geography is through the Discovery channel. It’s also a lot quicker and more comprehensible.

“The development of the global Internet can lead to a point where everyone could receive knowledge through the Internet. In the U.S., a company called Apple was the first to introduce a school education system through the Internet. There is a growing number of children who are being home schooled and receive a certificate of completion at the end.

“If we wonder what will happen to all the teachers, then we’re not thinking about the children. Our society isn’t discussing what we’re doing with the children. It’s convenient for us to think that schools should be conservative and that kindergartens are a very necessary invention.

“Today, parents don’t want to put their children in schools because they want to protect them from violence and abuse. This attitude toward schools is reaching a large scale. Parents are trying to save their children, never mind giving them knowledge but simply save them from beatings and humiliation.”

My Comment: On the “correct’ school see sections ”Children,” and ”Education.”
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