Question: Water in Russia is almost free. In other words, it is an unlimited public resource. However, recently, a water pipe burst somewhere in Russia, and mineral water prices rose tenfold immediately. Water has become a limited resource.

Why should men change and not increase the price of water by a factor of ten times its previous price if it has become a limited resource? Is it really possible to change the nature of people?

Answer: No, that is absolutely impossible. It can be achieved only through a gradual reconstruction of our consciousness, when we enter a completely different force, an environment where we completely depend on one another.

Let’s move away from the sellers and shortages and take a different look at the problem. Imagine that we exist on Earth in a limited number, and we all are interconnected. How can we build a society where all of us would have a reasonable and sufficient level of existence regarding healthcare, heat, food, clothing, shelter, safety, and so on? How can we achieve this without taking our interconnection into consideration?

Question: Theoretically, everyone understands this, but prices of water are rising in the city of Uryupinsk where the pipe has burst.

Answer: This is natural. We cannot jump over this stage. In this case, we must provide mankind or that very same Uryupinsk with integral upbringing. We must change the system of human relations within it to the point of making a person realize that his advancement toward happiness depends on his being going hand-in-hand with others. There is no other way for us to enter the integration of the world that now is being offered to us.

Question: Let us say that I arrive in Uryupinsk ten years after the introduction of integral upbringing there. Suddenly, a water pipe bursts, but the cost of water remains the same. What needs to happen to the city for this to happen? What will make life in this city turn upside down?

Answer: Life is overturned because people always think about themselves and providing for themselves in a way that problems will not separate people. First of all, everyone must be ruled and controlled by constant balance and integration. The bursting of a pipe is a common problem, a common disaster, and we pay for it together.

Question: How does a storeowner need to change in order not to rewrite price tags?

Answer: I do not think that this is up to the storeowners. When we speak of a society where everything is interconnected, we refer to a society of reasonable consumption.

The thing is that I am speaking of a distant future, not something that will happen in ten years. We must go from one type of society to another.

We must build it so that all the people within it are mutually balanced, which means that they would have absolutely equal rights and equal benefits, that they would reasonably consume what they need without producing absolutely unnecessary types of goods, embellishments, and things just because someone wants to profit from them.

There will be practically no advertising. We produce a necessary amount of goods, products, and everything else in the exact quantities that a person needs to exist normally on the corporeal level. Right now, we are speaking about satisfying our fundamental, basic needs.

Question: I remember that this is the way it was in the Soviet Union, but sailors would bring in suitcases of jeans and sell them at insane prices.

Answer: The thing is that, in the past, we were forced and limited in every way by the government. We were completely unprepared for the change of this paradigm.

Today, practically in all the countries in the world, we live in a society that is in a state of depression, a society that understands that this path of development leads to a dead end. A society of unlimited consumption that constantly sucks everything it can from the ground and contaminates it cannot exist.

The main thing is that nature is showing us that today we are becoming integrally connected. If we were to take any integral system, be it a mechanical, electrical, or absolutely any system, all the elements in it are completely interconnected. They mutually define one another and take care of the operation of the entire system. This is an analog system where the entrance and the exit are the same. Everything is built on the balance inside the system.

How can we see our future in this analog, integral system? Every part must feel that it is a part of a common organism. When a pipe bursts somewhere, it must be the first to plug the hole. In other words, all the parts together strive toward this. This is a common problem, and the entire system experiences it. It is not just a problem of someplace, somewhere.

Question: We are painting a desirable picture.

Answer: It is a necessary one because nature demands this of us, and it will continue pushing us toward this with a stick! What will we do with this challenge that nature is throwing us?

If we begin to penetrate the system, we will begin to see certain ins and outs, and a gradual coming together. This, of course, will take many, lengthy years, but this is evolution. Moreover, the interesting thing is that, if we only were to begin to move in this direction, we already would be in search of balance with nature. We would begin being in balance and homeostasis with it, and thus, would evoke positive forces over us.
[77432]
From KabTV’s “Global Crisis: The Deficit of Resources” 3/1/12

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Today, the happiness of man depends on his relationship with the environment, on whether he finds his proper place in society. And so we see that gradually a person leaves the little family unit.

At first all of life was connected with family, not only women, but men as well. The husband would leave to some factory in the morning to return in the evening to his wife, children, and the household, and all of life was revolved around it.

But this pastoral idyll ended. We left our homes for the wide world, began travelling and experiencing the world. On the other hand, thanks to modern means of communication, this world has begun entering our homes. As a result, we all ended up being interconnected through industrial, economic, and financial relationships. The circle closed, and all of us, both men and women who want to connect, must unite and through this connection, return to the familial connection, but on a new level.

For this to happen, everyone should examine: where we live, in what state, in what kind of world do we find ourselves, why do certain processes take place in the world, and what do we need to do? In what way does nature move us forward, giving us no opportunity to resist? Then, we will see that we need to establish tighter connections through media and specialized education.

In the end, we who once headed for the world, freed from home and family ties, will return back home free and independent. Once again, we return to a more quiet and slower-paced life, in connection with each other, but in a different form. Each of us will remain free, and based on this freedom, understanding, and vision of the future, we will establish for ourselves a connection between all people around the Earth and within each family.

Man suddenly sees that family offers meaning; there are great benefits and a better life in a family. Then, he will find a partner close to him in this new spirit that he has acquired based on integral education, and he will re-build the family. [Read more →]

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Today we are facing a serious economic crisis that will help us discover that by our unrestricted yearning for wealth, control, and technological advancement, we have confused ourselves and placed ourselves in a trap. We run around like a hamster on a wheel feeling that we constantly have to manufacture more and more products for which there is actually no real need.

But nature, compressing us into one ring, shows us that we have to start living like one harmonious family that needs only the normal basic necessities and no excesses. This means that we will have to reach the level of rational, sensible consumption. Of course, a person needs clothing, food, medical care, security and a job. But he doesn’t have to follow every advertisement, which for the sake of someone else’s gain convinces him that he really needs meaningless products, by constantly offering him new things and igniting his appetite.

There must be an end to this chase, and we are already starting to feel that global production is slowing down. As a result, many people are losing their jobs and are being thrown into the streets. The number of unemployed is in the millions and is growing day by day throughout the world. This trend will continue.

I believe that the crisis will be reflected in the family causing an opposite process. After all, women will begin to gradually return to the home. Men too, will spend more time at home. Life at home will be more balanced and the mad chase in which we wish to swallow the whole world will stop.

Then we will feel the desire to live in a family again, not like in the past, but in a more balanced, tranquil way. A person will start dealing with his internal development! He will live a balanced life with nature.

First we must reach a balance among us in our relationships by forming better connections in society. We must do that or we will simply not survive. The external harmony will change us internally and make us more tranquil and patient and teach us how to build our families based on such connections so that “love will cover all sins.”

Then we’ll be able to be more tolerant and learn to live in a family where everyone is free, but at the same time internally connected to a spouse. We’ll want to have children in such a family and will learn how to treat them and give them the right education according to the spirit of this new humanity.

It may well be that not everyone has understood this yet, but the old world no longer exists. In the new world we’ll be filled, not by running around from one place to another chasing money, status, and fashion. We’ll feel what lies behind all this emptiness and the filling that is on a higher, perfect, sublime level giving us a sense of upper harmony.

We’ll begin to feel a more internal reality, the harmony that exists in nature, and all thanks to the fact that we connect with others in mutual concern and mutual guarantee.

None of us has ever felt what true fulfillment is! Have we ever succeeded to fill ourselves in the chase after wealth, honor, control, and knowledge? Did you ever stop and say, “Now I am happy and I don’t need anything else”? There was never such a moment. We only keep on running, but we can’t fill ourselves.

Now we are about to rise to the next level of existence and to find out: what can a person enjoy, what can he be filled by? We’ll be filled by reaching the right connections among us because in the right connections and the ties among us we will reveal the wholeness of nature. This is the feeling of love that no one has known until now. I will enjoy my good attitude toward others and my love of others, and my desire to bestow upon them. If everyone treats others this way, everyone will be filled with this feeling of love.

Very little is needed in order to achieve this—only to learn how to do it! We have everything that we need: the method and the system of the integral education that can teach everyone. It’s an ancient method that has existed for ages, but it’s revealed only in our times because the world has reached such a state that it has become crucial for its existence.
[77043]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode19, 2/2/12

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In the News (from DiscoveryNews): “The human population is growing at such a staggering rate that we are organizing ourselves more like ant supercolonies, with new research finding that we have more in common now with some ants than we do with our closest living animal kingdom relatives.

“The new study, published in the journal Behavioral Ecology, points out that both humans and ants (termites, too) live in societies that may consist of up to a million plus members.

“’As a result, modern humans have more in common with some ants than we do with our closest relatives the chimpanzees,’ Mark Moffett, author of the study, told Discovery News. ‘With a maximum size of about 100, no chimpanzee group has to deal with issues of public health, infrastructure, distribution of goods and services, market economies, mass transit problems, assembly lines and complex teamwork, agriculture and animal domestication, warfare and slavery.’

“’Ants have developed behaviors addressing all of these problems,’ added Moffett, a research associate at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. He pointed out that only humans and ants have developed full-blown warfare.”

My Comment: We were given the mind in order, not to be guided by egoistic nature like ants, but to become conscious of the evil of egoism, to rise above it, and to change ourselves, and thus reach the level of the ruler, the Creator, His eternity and perfection.
[78083]

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The movie “There’s no Tomorrow”

(“There is no Tomorrow” is a half-hour long movie about the depletion of natural resources and energy and about the impossible limitless life in a limited planet. Inspired by the capitalist caricatures of the 40′s, the movie is an introduction to the energy dilemmas we are facing today).

My Comment: Our problem is that although the message in this film is true, it isn’t the whole truth. Nature has its own plan according to which it develops us, not to live modestly, but to understand the meaning of our life. So our wandering and wondering in the endless search for the right way to live on earth brought us to a general crisis, to a crisis in every aspect of our life, even if we could multiply beyond the earth’s carrying capacity.

The crisis is in us because we’ve developed until we reached the question about the meaning of life, and it doesn’t exist in our current existence! All the problems we encounter in everything that we do are called the “general crisis,” it is our own crisis, as we consume ourselves and nature, living in order to “live.”

Nature pushes us out of the crises to “turn on our brain,” so that we will think about that and discover the next level of our development, in another dimension, in the attribute of bestowal, above our current feelings and mind. We will discover another space instead of the earth and our bodies, which are felt in the attribute of receiving (the ego); we will discover a field of forces of bestowal, the dimension of the quantum state!
[78020]

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I spend my whole life taking care of myself, both internally and instinctively and consciously, intentionally, and deliberately. In this case, how do I change my nature to the complete opposite? How can I learn to love my neighbor? After all, to love my neighbor means to think only about him, to place my entire body at his service, all of my means, abilities, and generally everything that I have. And to do that to such extent that I won’t have anything left except for this point of desire to bestow to him and to relentlessly care for him so that he would feel as good as possible.

This is how a mother cares for her child. Nature itself directs her to tirelessly care for the little one, and the only thing that interests her in life is that these few pounds of flesh feel good. She thinks only about how to settle him comfortably, what to feed him, when to change the diaper, and on the whole, what to do with him so that he would feel even better. No other care exists for her.

How can we follow her example so that we would treat all of humanity in the same manner, with the same devotion? It’s unrealistic!

But could Nature actually set impossible conditions before us? Why, then, did we come to a completely opposite state? Why are we wholly immersed in self-concern? Moreover, although animals constantly care about themselves as well, people, in addition to that, want to profit at the expense of others, to use them, to impose their power and opinions on them, to bend them to their will. A person delights in towering over others. What is more, he enjoys when they feel a little worse than him, when he is in a more advantageous state compared to them. A person constantly evaluates him or herself relative to those around him, and only through that does he establish the extent of his satisfaction.

If egoism led me to the point where I want to feel like I’m above everyone and where I need them only in order to sense my own superiority, then how can I change this nature and transition to an opposite state? Perhaps it’s worthwhile for me to imagine a utopian situation in which I care about my neighbor and receive pleasure from that, like a mother who cares for her baby? Suppose I would love others the same way that she does and I would constantly be caring for them, then, maybe, I would feel absolute self-realization in this?

However, I don’t see any means for achieving that. What would oblige me to that?

In fact, humanity pondered this for thousands of years. Throughout history many books have been written, many attempts were made to implement something similar: to build a good environment, to form corresponding organizations. Even hundreds of years ago, utopians attempted to create the conditions for good and kind relations between people in different corners of the world. However they didn’t succeed in implementing these initiatives.

In the course of our development, we were becoming more intelligent and getting to know human nature better and better, and now we understand that we’re incapable of rising above our own nature. Maybe that’s even a good thing. Maybe it will give us something special. But building such a society is impossible: a utopian idea indeed.

And this is why in our societies we restrict ourselves to laws of conduct so as not to harm our neighbor too much. We have lawyers, accountants, sociologists, psychologists, politicians, and so on, and they normalize social laws. We unite with each other, but only in order to receive services. For example, a municipality cares about order in the city, about garbage cleanup and other services like kindergartens, schools, cultural centers, and so on. We’re willing to reckon with the needs of everyone, and in this case, of course, it’s worthwhile to unite. After all, thanks to that each person pays a relatively small sum for a broad range of services. These things are clear to us since through them we receive a real, calculable benefit.

But when it comes to changing people’s attitudes in the realm of feelings and emotions so that a person would take his neighbor into consideration out of the calling of his own heart, this is something that we can’t do.

And here we come to an understanding of that special state of crisis that we’re in today. It’s a very strange crisis, and in its essence, it pertains to the relationships between us. Using all the same previously attempted egoistic formations, we sought to build a more comfortable society for everyone, taking common interests into account one way or another. We understand that an excess of disgruntled people will lead to clashes and irreconcilable conflicts, and this threatens to provoke civil wars. Throughout all the ages, we’ve been aware that our egoism needs to be reined in well so that we wouldn’t devour each other.

However, all of these calculations were constructed under an “egoistic umbrella”: We understood that such is our nature and that we need to restrain ourselves within certain boundaries. Even if our world shimmers with egoistic facets, it still requires a single mechanism in order to prevent the outbreaks that threaten to destroy all our achievements. This is how humanity came to create the World Bank, the UN, and other international organizations, how we came to closer communications and more complete accounting of interests.

In particular, during the last century we realized that it’s necessary to take each other into consideration more. The two World Wars have showed us that nobody wins in unbridled warfare—on the contrary, everyone suffers a loss as a result and everyone pays a dear price for it.

That’s why humanity created all kinds of communities and communication channels. There are even “red buttons” in Moscow and Washington for establishing emergency contact in case of a global threat. A certain form of trust exists here simply because it’s clear to all involved parties that nobody would come out of a conflict squeaky-clean and profitably. Thus, realizing that there is no alternative, armed with an accumulated basis, we can now establish certain interactions and communication.

On one hand, it’s still an egoistic approach, but on the other hand, such turn of events still leads to closeness between us. Even though we increasingly hate and want to kill others, it’s becoming clear that they’re just as strong, and thus it’s worthwhile for us to take each other into consideration.
[75590]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” #13, 1/11/12

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We have always been egoistically pushed forward by nature; we have always followed it blindly; in other words, we were instinctively pushed forward by our desire to keep fulfilling ourselves, and as it kept manifesting in us, we strove towards wealth, fame, power, knowledge—anything at all.

As a result, we have reached certain satiety, and our egoism has come to a dead end; we cannot even say that it keeps growing. On one hand, there is a certain line of reevaluation of our values: “Is it right to continue to strive towards the attainment of fame, knowledge, wealth, and power? Is this the meaning of our development?”

On the other hand, we see that our dependence on each other forces us to introduce some other international economic formulas, which must take our interdependence into consideration, in other words, if I will suffer, you will also suffer, no matter how egoistic it now appears to be. Even today, I still try to build my happiness on the suppression of others, base my power on being stronger than others, and by collecting more.

However, the same Europe is a bright example of how mutual dependence determines everyone’s destinies today, and it is impossible to just disconnect a country from the EU no matter how much one might want for it to happen. Maybe economists do not fully realize this yet. We cannot disconnect from the entire world.

This dependence exists inside actual nature, inside the inner connections between us. And economics, which only represent our external egoistic relations, can no longer keep describing them the same way it did before: what I give to you, what you give to me, a percentage for a percentage, etc. Industry, international trade, and international relations can no longer continue developing the same way.

We must take the integration of the world into consideration. And if we do not correspond to this integration, we will not be able to understand the way we are supposed to advance in accordance with the world and nature. Today we feel nature’s challenge, its pressure on us with the only purpose of making us gradually begin to change ourselves to become like it. This has never happened before.

If we were to look at it from an ontological perspective, we would see that nature has always pushed us towards egoistic development. And now, on the contrary, it is showing us that egoistic development has come to an end; in other words, we have completed our development of the still, vegetative, and animate levels, when we were instinctively pushed forward by nature; this is why this level of human development is called animate.

But now we must begin developing on the “human” level, when we understand and perceive the surrounding world to the point of changing ourselves to suit it. Neither the world nor nature are forcing us to change instinctively, evoking these desires in us, which forced us to build a society, economy, technology, etc.: This no longer exists today.

Obviously, the next stage of our development is when nature shows itself to us in a new, integral way, the way it really is: Everything is interconnected in it and it is just nature alone. But we, being its components, do not correspond to it, and must come to the same integral form in the structure of our society: in politics, economy, finances—in everything.
[77435]
From KabTV’s “Global Crisis – Deficit of Resources” 3/1/12

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Question: What part of the population needs to participate in integral upbringing in order to change the consciousness of the entire society?

Answer: I think that once 20-30% of the population becomes inspired by the anti-crisis idea—I would even call it the idea of our salvation from a critical state—this would automatically spread to the others and they will also become interested, understand, and comprehend the need to study the integral method. Moreover, as businesses and demand for certain services continue to fall as a consequence of the exhaustion of the population’s material abilities, people will understand that they really need to think about a certain transition.

If there serious explanatory work is being done among the population regarding the crisis, its causes, course, and consequences and the ways to solve it on the regional, city, state, and world scales—people will really listen. This is why, when people will be offered a method of further integral education as a means of exiting the crisis, people will take it rather seriously.

It is necessary to organize interesting discussions, to invite different people with directly opposing views, where they will try to figure things out during the debate.
[77713]
From KabTV’s “Experimental City – Solution to the Crisis” 3/2/12

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Opinion (Michelle M. Duguid, Washington University, and Jack A. Goncalo, Cornell University): “Height is an oft used metaphor for power: Powerful people ‘feel like the big man on campus’ and ‘people look up to them.’ Development psychologists have suggested that a  metaphorical association between power and height may take root very early as, for instance, children are confronted with taller parents who have power over them and during adolescence taller children use their strength to physically coerce smaller children. This association continues to be reinforced as taller people earn higher salaries are more likely to be found in higher status occupations to emerge as leaders and to win presidential elections.
“This stream of research suggests that social perceivers judge the tall as more powerful than their shorter peers. For instance, when people expand themselves to take up more space, observers assume they are dominant, whereas when they constrict themselves, they are perceived by others as submissive. …

“In sum, there is strong evidence of a well learned positive association between power and height. An obvious prediction based on this research is that observers might use a target’s height to infer its power; not an unreasonable assumption given the robust correlation between height and power in naturalistic settings.”

“Here, we consider a more counterintuitive implication of the power-height association; that the psychological experience of power may cause individuals to actually feel taller than an objective measurement would indicate they really are.”

My Comment: In our egoistic world everything is measured quantitatively, the measure of egoism being “how much you get” (height, weight, distance, time, salary, etc.), while in the spiritual altruistic world, everything is measured qualitatively—the measure of bestowal. The difference is that receiving in our world is in the desire of a person himself while in the spiritual world it’s in the desires of others. Accordingly, there are no earthly sensations in the upper world, and that’s why the feeling of the gradual “disappearance of the body” is achieved there.
[77073]

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Opinion: (Dr. Alexei Yablokov, member of Russian Academy of Sciences, Center for Environmental and Ecological Policy): “The key implication of Professor V. Vernadsky’s biosphere concept is that the Earth is a peculiar living organism, in which the slightest fluctuations in its thinnest layers can trigger severe geological consequences.

“Later, British scientist James Lovelock also spoke about the Earth as a living creature. He stated a concept called “Gaia theory” or “Gaia principle” (“Gaia” stands for ancient Greek Goddess of Earth.)

The Earth (Gaia) might “cut off” humanity as a dangerous cancerous tumor. The population of Earth does everything to force it to get rid of us: over usage of irreplaceable natural resources, over-extraction of land, wood and water, pollution of the biosphere by chemical and radioactive substances….

“Ecologists’ approach to our planet’s resources takes into consideration long-term consequences, rather than merely present-day day “benefits.” As for economists, they look only 10 years ahead. Politicians’ thinking is limited to the time interval between two election cycles (4 – 6 years.) Discrepancies in calculation of time cause contradictions of various points of view. Politicians cannot agree with ecologists’ argument that “20 years from now it will be much worse,” since the main thing for them is to get their voters’ approval in the nearest future.

“Consumption-based society has to understand that at some point its development will exhaust itself. Common people give their votes to politicians who make ecologically dangerous decisions to attract voters. The only way to eliminate the environmental menace is to spread ecological information and knowledge as widely as possible. The worst thing that can happen to us is missing “the point of no return.”

“Ecologically oriented thinking should lead people to act conscientiously, to keep the environment safe and, to find our place in the magnificent biosphere we live in. Ecology is a science about keeping our home safe and sound. So far, the vast majority of earth inhabitants have not realized that the entire planet is our home.”

My Comment: For dozens of years, ecologists have been appealing to us, but since politicians and financiers are the ones who delineate our life, nothing ever changes. They will never invest in any endeavors that don’t bring immediate visible political or economic results. Is there a way out of the loop? The answer is to educate all layers of our society paying particular attention to widening the horizons of common people, since the upper layers of society will never voluntarily allow integral upbringing, because their goal is to keep the masses in front of TV sets.
[76469]

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