Integral Upbringing

A Series of Talks between Michael Laitman and Psychologist Anatoly Ulianov

Talk No. 10
December 16, 2012

The Special Role of Zealous Egoists

Question: People differ in qualities, and there are people who have a special role. They are the carriers of the method of integral upbringing and education, and they must teach, convey, and tell all of humanity about it.

Answer: True, there are people with high sensitivity and susceptibility toward this specific integral method. About six to ten percent of people in the world strive toward integral interaction. They represent the vast variety of altruistic organizations, fighters for different freedoms. These are not revolutionaries, but fighters for the environment, protection of wildlife, and so forth. This number includes volunteers who help others such as the poor, the hungry, and so on.

However, these are people who simply strive toward this kind of communication, toward integration. As a rule, they do not have a high and deep level of understanding of the integral system. Nature made them this way.

Then, there are people who by nature are very real and very zealous egoists. As we see from our studies, they are not included in the six to ten percent of natural altruists. These are very regular egoists, and the understanding of the need for integration becomes revealed in them because of their desire to understand the meaning of the world, existence, and the law of nature, its plan. They want to know where evolution is taking us, why it is so binding, and so forth.

These are scientific people who wish to delve into the very essence of evolution. They make up the squadron that leads humanity toward the goal. Nature did not make them altruists, but their altruism develops according to their research and realization of the need for this process.

We are trying to find these people in different corners of the world; with the help of a dedicated dissemination system, they come to us. Currently, there are around two million people around the world who are connected with us, despite their origin, religion, nationality, and lifestyle.

They are united by a common aspiration to correctly realize man’s advancement toward the goal, reach it, and change the direction of humanity so that instead of advancing through suffering, it will advance through the realization, meaning intentional, conscious unification. We are trying to find a connection with these people and organize them.

Question: Can these people participate in the creation of the integral upbringing system?

Answer: Absolutely, they are the ones! We are preparing them. We have a course for leaders of integral upbringing and education where we do special training, including working with people, teaching group games, active events, and primarily making an analysis in groups where people gather to discuss themselves, society, and all the problems that can appear between them.

We purposefully cause special problems in these groups. Then, they divide into subgroups such as defendants, prosecutors, critics, judges, jury, and so on, and they discuss these problems. These are very serious discussions.

We really do not invite psychologists to participate since we want people to develop internally, independent from the enormous psychological apparatus and the entire mass of collected information. We want them to regard it from the point of view of an integral goal. With psychologists, everyone works on his own part.

We have plenty of materials regarding this and a lot to work with.

The Group: An Inverted Amplifier

Question: It is pretty clear to people in a regular educational system where they should make an effort. For example, a student in school pays attention during the lesson, takes notes, does homework, makes a lot of voluntary intellectual effort, and sacrifices rest. When the person grows up, he does the same: He works instead of having fun. These efforts are understandable. What are the integral efforts over egoism? Is there a place for volitional efforts?

Answer: In general, there shouldn’t be any. When a person properly positions himself in relation to the group, the environment, he arranges it to have a positive influence over him and for him to have a positive influence over it. Then, this precise interaction works so that a person changes willingly, without noticing it himself. Basically, he makes very little volitional effort to evoke the group’s positive influence.

Indeed, if I make a small effort in the group, and the group, composed in a special way, reacts properly, this proper group set-up organizes and forms a force that influences me. The group’s reaction to my request changes me immediately and correctly. When I exert a little effort and make a small request of the group to change me, I receive a thousand times more than my impulse, and I change. In other words, the group is a special inverted amplifier that comes back at me with such a degree of reverse connection that it forces me to change.

A Fight for Leadership?

Question: When uncorrected egoists gather in a group, there are people among them who dominate, take leadership positions, and begin to appropriate and redistribute the group’s intellectual, emotional, and other resources. What is the right way to work with such phenomenon as leadership in an integral society?

Answer: It means that this is a “community,” not a group! From the start, we establish a set of conditions according to which a community can be called a group, regardless of whether it is big or small. This can be ten people, twenty, thirty, or a million.

A group is a community where no one person stands out. Every person must integrate so much into the group that he becomes absolutely whole with it. His interaction within the group consists of his entering it and taking the place he feels he needs to take to bring it to absolute harmony.

In this way, everyone searches to answer the question: “What can I do to make the group harmonious, homogeneous, to make sure that the relationships between everyone are equal? If I see possible imbalances, I can fix them, make them smoother with my attitude and participation so that there are no differences and no one is bigger or smaller. Only this connection has to exist, reaching such a level of unity where we feel that something absolutely new appears.”

This unity is something new that is born from individualities. And it has the right to exist.

We support this existence. We cherish it. It is like our mutual child. We think about it in such a way that it seems to begin to separate from every one of us and exist outside of us. In the end, this unity pulls us in so much that every one of us loses his own egoistic individuality and acquires an integral individuality within this unity. This integration does not exist without me, and my participation consists of making it whole.

At the same time, everyone receives the influence of the common mass that supports and obligates him or her as if we were in one boat. Here, a little effort really leads to a great result.

Question: What do you do with those who aspire for power and possess leadership qualities?

Answer: This manifestation of the aspiration for power, these leadership qualities, is an aspiration for power over yourself.

Question: How do you make a person who strives to rule the group change his direction? After all, people like this literally can fight to the death?

Answer: It is through discussions. Make a video of your group, then watch it with the objective of bringing everyone to integral, absolute, and harmonious interaction. Discuss who needs to be moved, who needs to be raised, who needs to be eliminated, who needs to be brought closer to whom, and how we create an absolutely integral mechanism so that we will connect like cogwheels and spin in unison, no more and no less? Everyone needs to make an effort in this direction.

Question: Is this the goal?

Answer: You have said that every person goes to work and makes an effort to achieve something. We are attaining this!

Here, we are revealing our own egoistic nature, and here no one can say that we are not egoists. Everyone reveals enormous internal, egoistic resistance. Everyone has this area of work.

We need to help each other in this and understand people who jump ahead. Something is happening with them. They are failing to understand something. They have different moods. We are constantly smoothing things out and integrating between us, without lowering or oppressing anyone else (only one’s self).

We do not point anything out to anyone. We only discuss things externally, and everyone treats everyone else absolutely objectively: There is one object and another object. People are not ashamed of either their negative or positive qualities, understanding that they come from nature. What does not come from nature is that we must bring ourselves to integration through mutual help.

Reeducating Leaders

Question: Usually, leaders are extremely aggressive toward other people. They hit where it hurts the most, but when they receive feedback, they get offended and walk away. And that happens all the time.

Answer: If these people don’t hear about the necessity of integration with others yet and thus continue behaving this way, they have to be put on some kind of probation. That is, they can listen, record, summarize, or draw graphs and tables for many months. They discourse and discuss everything purely theoretically.

They can write a PhD thesis from all their research, but they can’t “push” all of that into themselves; they can’t use it in practice. They have to be somewhere on the side from the practicing group as the latter can already start putting this method, the system of integration, into practice. And they have to be given an opportunity to work with materials, which is what we usually do.

Each group has people like that, and it is necessary to agree with that. Nature created them this way. Usually, I assign them to work with materials.

And they work on it for many months. They dig, invent, compare, systematize, and search for interesting excerpts based on examples or scenes; generally speaking, they do any work related to processing materials. They prepare reports because by examining various companies and social movements outside of us, we get in touch with the world.

While working on these materials, they have to write about connection between all external cases they observe or events they see in the group. We give them group video recordings in which the group discusses its yet unrealized integral ties, exposing all obstacles, imbalance, and disputes between its members. They process all of that, discuss, make conclusions, and so on. This kind of work with materials changes them gradually.

Usually, people like that are highly egoistic and have a stronger sense of shame (we understand that egoism and shame are the same thing); they are more demanding toward others and can’t see themselves from the side. In general, these people are extremely strong, but they totally lack the ability to see themselves objectively, from the side. They simply lack this by nature, but it has to gradually develop in them under the influence of the material.

They work with the material, study, systematize, and then bring it back to us, and the instructors check it. Usually, we get enough people like that and form a separate group out of them. We start working with them by showing materials of the same kind which they work on, and then we proceed with discussions.

And then various nuances appear, and these people start realizing what they lack in order to be inside of the group, get closer to it, and not just be independent judges and stay above everyone else (they immediately put themselves on the level of instructors). Gradually, they realize that they are worse and lower than everyone else in the group because the rest of the people already starts feeling the need for integration, starts seeing and guessing the difference between them, while they don’t. They can only see other people from the side, but not themselves. That is the work.

If a group has people like that (usually, there are not that many of them), these could be future leaders because they can go far with that enormous egoistic charge they posses. But they have a long way to go. They don’t immediately get into an integral interaction. Sometimes it takes years for them to start feeling the need for the group, the need to put themselves under its influence. Otherwise, they won’t be able to reach their new integral life on the level of “Man” and will remain a mechanism that observes from the side but doesn’t change itself. After all, the essence of the method is to change a person himself. And this gradually appears in them as well.

Any kind of coercion against them is forbidden. Realization of one’s own nature should go through a person and occur in him or her without urging, but just under the influence of the “hints,” when you give them materials and the materials work on them.

We distinguish and encourage people like that: “See how special you are.” Yet a group should be more or less homogeneous, and we have to put such people into a separate system so that they do not interfere with everyone else.

You can turn them into your assistants, but make sure that the pride they will feel does not hinder their development. We just have to be quiet in many cases and wait for them to change.

Another Group as an Exercise Machine

Question: When we record a group video training session and then have the group watch it, people start pointing a finger at each other, laughing, and so on. When we discuss a person, should everyone be their own judge or should other people judge them?

Answer: If people are not yet ready to see themselves from an abstract perspective, objectively, and do not understand that we are all little animals, then you need to show them complete strangers, even a group they do not know, and train them this way, use others to form an objective view.

You can assign numbers to the participants in the video and then discuss every one of them in order, talking about how to advance them towards unity, towards mutual guarantee.

A Final Accord

Question: Feedback is very significant in psychology. I might have an idea of what is happening to a person, so I ask him: “How do you feel? What do you like?” This dialogue helps me learn about him or her. Can elements of dialogue be included in groups of integral education, or integrality actually operates there?

Answer: In our groups, individual development is connected to integral because the individual level is being adjusted to the integral one.

There is no individual level. My individual development depends on how integrated I am with the others, how much I complete them. At the same time I must understand and feel how I complete every one of them. In other words, I sense people and our community, I constantly feel and measure where I can add something to make it perfect, and I try to complete it with my participation, with my desire and thoughts. The essence of every participant, the general total power of their desire and thoughts suddenly begin to manifest in relation to me, and I become the group’s balancing element.

This is the way every person feels during the process of common studies. Moreover, the state of the group does not matter; what matters is how a person perceives it. The group can be in totally different states, but a person understands it one way or another and constantly changes himself according to it.

In other words, there is an opportunity here for constant inner movement. A person goes through so many changes that he becomes a general integral element of the entire group. He is obligated to constantly change as he feels all the nuances of the changes in the group. He is like its collecting element. And every person in the group is like this.

Moreover, this absolutely does not depend on the objective state of the group. We cannot speak about objectivity here because every person sees the environment only through his subjective prism.

This way we make every person equal to this small common society. The person and the entire group come to such unification when every person becomes equal to everyone. Inside him a person gradually accumulates a certain volume, a sum of different changes, sensations, and thoughts, which exist in everyone. This way we reach a state when the general and the particular are equal, and reach complete group unity. When every person becomes equal to everyone, all the “singles” add up to a single whole.

And this one single whole already exist as if outside of them. This is the final accord of all the transformations they undergo together and individually.

A Long Journey of Spiritual Development

Question: Your students are very open people who treat each other with a lot of care. But the people whom we will invite to learn will only reach this state in the future.

Answer: Our groups are groups of people who willingly strive towards integral interaction. But if we are speaking about the masses whom we will be lucky enough to involve in integral interaction, these people will not come very willingly, that is, not in full consciousness, but instead, it will happen to the extent of the social or personal need. Of course, there will be very big imbalances and an ascent.

This is why the first stage of their development, which includes the preliminary study of the material, training, and the understanding of everyone’s inner psychological process, will take a long time.

Should Pain Be Endured?

Question: Suppose that during the time of our interaction we are singing, having put our hands on each other’s shoulders, and someone accidentally squeezes my shoulder until I feel pain. Can I tell this person that he is hurting me? Or must I endure it and work with this pain?

Answer: In this specific example, I would say that you need to endure it.

I must understand that this person is expressing himself in this way. I must rise above my feeling so that my kind relationship towards him would result in the neutralization of pain.

We know that all of these are perceptions, and I would not have felt pain if a person close to me would cause me this, for the sake of saving him. Isn’t it so? I would not have felt pain then. I would understand the necessity for this and it would neutralize the pain, meaning that the goal would justify the means.

This is how one needs to come to this. However, since we are still talking about the levels of our development, then in the process of interaction, perhaps, it is possible to somehow tell about one’s feelings.

But in general as people develop, they arrive at such a state, when any relationship, however it may be on the outside, is perceived by them correctly.

Let Us Please Each Other

Question: There was a psychological experiment in training sessions for couples: A person was supposed to give the most pleasure to their partner with a single touch of the hand. There were three options: The first option was to try to please the other. The second was to touch hands without intention. And the third option was to receive the most pleasure from touching the other person.

The experiments concluded that the person receives the most pleasure by pleasing their partner, and when another tries to please him, it feels very unpleasant. What is this phenomenon? Is this something that has to do with integrality, egoism?

Answer: First of all it doesn’t matter who is sitting before me: whether it’s a woman, a man, a child an elderly person, a girl, an old woman, or even an animal—I should completely separate myself from any difference between us. I have to imagine an object before me with whom I have to establish contact.

Moreover, this contact is above our animal existence where I absolutely don’t care who and what the other person is in terms of their animalistic essence. Only one thing matters: What their current position in relation to me is, what they generate from themselves despite their nature.

It’s not contact between two animal objects, but two desires that want to integrate, give pure and abstract pleasure and fulfillment to one another. In other words, regardless of what and who you are, I come from a feeling of only wishing you good. In this case, when we rise above our animal inclination, our beastly state, the conditions set by nature, and begin to interact between us, this is where the experiment begins.

Either I wish to receive pleasure from an object (there is just an “object” before me), or I wish to convey my good attitude to this object, to fulfill it, wanting it to feel it, even if it’s through touch. By abstracting ourselves from our own ego, we want to suppress our sensations so as to make them neutral, meaning turn them into abstractly-egoistic, abstractly-altruistic, and abstractly-neutral states.

This is the beginning of our experiment, the primary purpose of which is a state whereby we rise above age, sexual, racial, national, and other differences and start contacting the essence. You are a desire and an intention (mind), and I am the same. This is how our mind and desires for integration can interact between them, independent from our external shell. This is what we try to do.

This is the initial direction for working in the group, especially a mixed group. At first we work a little with mixed groups, but then, once the people begin to understand that the opposite sex impedes them from concentrating on the level above our world, above our natural qualities, we can separate them. People will no longer have preconceived opinions regarding our actions towards them, and then we will divide them into a men’s and a women’s group.

And afterwards, once they are able to rise above it and work on purely integral level, we can once again combine them. But this is not a simple moment and requires many months of serious effort.

Particular Characteristics of a Woman’s Nature

Question: Since there are men’s and women’s groups in integral upbringing courses, I would like to clarify the nature of women’s groups.

Answer: A woman is a very reserved creature who perceives herself and the world inside her. While between men there is interaction, support, a friendly environment, and readiness to sacrifice for others, this does not exist between women initially, by nature. Every female, every woman, anything female is designed to exist on her own, protect her boundaries, children, household, den, and so on.

This is instilled in them by nature, and this is why we must not deform it. We have no right to break the woman’s nature; on the contrary, we have to develop it harmoniously, and at the same time integrate women with each other. How can you accomplish this?

This can be done by creating a strong men’s group that serves as an example to women and urges them to support the men’s group. The men’s group realizes the importance of the influence of the women’s group and that without the unification of women, they won’t be able to support the men’s group. And the only time the women can identify and connect with the men’s group is when they are to a certain degree connected between them.

When the women have a common external goal, they can organize themselves and exist this way like different women’s organizations. Instead of integrating, every woman should understand and affiliate herself with the external goal: “You have to ‘cling’ to men, exist in them, support them, instead of us, women, doing it between ourselves.” The women’s group can unite in this way.

Then the women exist around the men’s group in the form of very strong support, as an essential part of the existence of the men’s group. This kind of unified women’s environment, which as if represents an external circle in relation to the internal men’s group, is a very powerful union of the male and female origin in nature.

This way these two integral communities interact with each other: Men influence women with their unity, and the women suddenly begin to feel it; this begins to attract them, and they gradually begin to interact and unite for this sake. They lose their natural individuality between them.

Women can unite between them for the sake of helping men to unite (in return they receive the power of unity, this is their only way to “power up” from it). In other words, they lose their purely natural individuality and are able to rise above themselves.

Question: How do you practically realize this?

Answer: Practical realization happens in separate groups, which we prepare and lead towards the goal, studying corresponding materials and the method of integral upbringing. Naturally, when studying in a women’s group, women do not pay attention to each other: Everyone comes and leaves individually. There might be friends among them, but this also ends eventually, things change. This is a women’s nature.

This is actually a very interesting and complicated individuality, a real individual natural egoism in its pure form, and it’s good to observe it. In other words, my “I’ is always inside me and never next to anyone else. And when it happens to be next to somebody else, it is only when we are able to help each other with something in the given situation or somewhat ease our state, and no more than that. We understand this as psychologists who deal with people.

But here the influence of the men’s group plays a great role. By uniting and setting an example, the men’s group evokes in the women the need to influence it together, and then women unite to this extent. Besides, this happens against their will. We see that this is a law of nature. In other words, a strong men’s group shows the women that unity is power and it causes them to rise above their individual “I.”

Question: How does this manifest in practice?

Answer: They can feel as one unified female whole. They can begin to hug like men, which is completely unnatural to them. Women might feel that they need to be together to evoke unity in men, through which they will also attain the inner state of unity for themselves, which they are not able to receive by themselves. They can neither conquer, nor get, nor buy it—there is no other way to acquire it.

Question: Do women and men have slightly different roles in integral unity?

Answer: That is right! These are absolutely different roles!

We do not put pressure either on the men’s or the women’s nature. It is their interaction with each other that gradually brings them to different forms of integration.

The Influence of the Women’s Group on the Men’s Group

Question: Men’s work on integral unity takes 7-8 hours a day. Is a woman supposed to spend as much 
time studying?

Answer: Women have much fewer problems than men because their work begins when they join work 
around the men’s group.

Before that, their work is in theoretical studies, and there cannot be any ties there. This includes discussions, role playing, and dedicating a lot of time to the upbringing of children from the integral perspective, and so on, but not on the relationships between women, which they will feel is a just violation of their nature.

A woman’s group begins to observe the men and their mutual work only once they are ready and the men’s group is sufficiently trained in theory and is already undergoing practical integration among themselves. We gradually begin to teach them the foundations of the help needed from their part to attain the next state: the state of unity, harmony, and the perception of nature on the next level of “Adam” (“Man”), which we can reach through this kind of unity.

The men’s group attains unity with their own strength, as a man attains fulfillment and food.

The women’s group helps them with it, inspires, pushes them, and serves as a very powerful tool for men without which they cannot unite. The women must influence men very carefully without disturbing their sensation of uniting, they must give the men a feeling that they are expecting it from them, they value them, inspire them, and treat them like a mother to a child.

Every woman can relate to men this way, and the men feel the woman’s influence. This is why the women’s group takes on the fundamental role in moving the men’s group towards unity, by influencing it with its inspiration and expectation, like a mother: “What do I expect from my child.” And the child feels that the mother is expecting a certain result from him.

All this needs to be done carefully and gently to avoid causing the feeling of indifference in men or a negative reaction. Everything must be done very delicately, to a certain extent, and always measured.

When both groups look at themselves objectively from aside, they feel that they need each other. I admit to the women’s group that I need its support and influence, its inspiration, its expectation of something of me. This will inspire, support me, and rouse me toward achieving a result.

In general, there is a huge range of influences of mutual feelings and expectations. If all of this is done through indirect contact, from afar, through “induction” from the women’s group to the men’s group, then a result of proper mutual interaction is achieved.

And as a result, the men’s group attains unity with the help of the women’s group. And this unity is passed on to the women’s group.

But these groups do not merge, do not mix; they keep existing as two “circles”: the external – women’s, and the internal – men’s.

The Power of Women’s Support

Question: I played basketball when I was young, and I remember that our team had better results when there were girls sitting on the bench, quietly supporting us. But when guys were sitting, the inspiration wasn’t there. In groups of integral upbringing, how will women observe men: through video cameras?

Answer: From time to time we organize mutual picnics, trips, and meetings. We know each other, but in principle, this knowledge is pointless. I do not need to know anyone’s face.

It is simply the weight of the women, which shows me that it depends on me and waits for the manifestation of my masculine inclination; this is enough. They do not interfere in our work, but just like the players on the field, we must feel this pressure.

I must feel on my back the gaze of the women’s part, which evokes all these actions in me, not pride or any other egoistic impulses, but responsibility for the  expectation that we will enter a new level. This is necessary.

Women are not pushing us towards individual acts of heroism, but specifically towards rising above ourselves and unity. At the same time, each one of us loses himself, but together we attain the form of “Adam.”

The Return to Nature

Question: Who should teach a group of women: a man or a woman?

Answer: A man. A woman cannot be a teacher. She can be his assistant, and also not always. In any case, the image of the teacher, the image of the instructor, the image of the leader—it is a man.

Question: What should practical lessons for women include? Should women discuss men?

Answer: They spend very little time discussing both men and themselves. They study this objectively.

We only try to organize lessons for them and limit the games and joint events, to avoid interfering with their inner part or making them feel forced or obligated. After all, our entire system is integral, it is only built on awareness. Without awareness, a person does not advance. His or her advancement only depends on the degree of their realization of their own desire for inner movement and personal change.

This is why women begin to work inside gradually, only to the extent of their comprehension of the material, and not based on the contact between them. And if they are in group, it is only to discuss the studied material, but never from a personal perspective, like in the men’s group.

Comment: Today we observe a mixing of roles. And what we are talking about now is a well forgotten past.

Answer: No, the modern mixing of roles is artificial. It is not natural, but imposed. And people can be easily stripped of the things done to them today. We see that everything that manifests today is superficial and external. The fact that a woman is becoming manlike in her internal and external states is just a manifestation of the mutating egoism.

I do not think that we should continue playing with it; rather, we should instead return to nature. If we wish to advance towards harmony with nature, under no circumstances should we go in the direction of what our society has done with us.

Women’s Criticism

Question: If a woman possesses a strong and sharp, critical mind and she sees that there is a certain imbalance in the men’s group, can she tell them about it?

Answer: Never. But she can describe and evaluate it. By the way, her evaluations can be very serious, much more serious than men’s.

Women see these things from aside—they see them correctly. There is nothing they can do with themselves, but they have a great ability to see everything that happens to men. And this ability can be used, not by the men’s group, but by educators.

Men should never know about or feel it. They should only feel a positive influence, a state of anticipation of their heroic act, the ascent above themselves.

Question: Then who should women share their criticism with, their girlfriends?

Answer: Women should have an inner desire for things to change between men. They can also do it by discussing it among themselves, but these should be positive discussions, like between “many nannies who have one baby.”

A Loving Upbringing

Question: The creation of the theoretical foundation of our course includes many different aspects: creating programs and writing. Can women participate in this work?

Answer: Women cannot participate in integration either practically or theoretically, but can only assist with it. Some women have a special inner feeling, but I have met only a few of them. Among the huge amount of women that I feel and observe, these women might be one per thousand, no more than that.

Comment: All right, but at home…

Answer: At home a woman has no right to point her husband anywhere. She does not! This represses him. She has to act softly, like a mother with her child. When she plays this role, like a mother with her child, she achieves everything. But pressuring will only lead to fighting and divorce. This is not nurturing.

A husband needs to be nurtured. She wants it. And nurturing can only be done with love.

Comment: Today around 80% of women constantly reproach their husbands, pointing out that they do things incorrectly, spend their energy on the wrong things, and so on.

Answer: This is why today 60-70% of young people do not wish to marry. That is right! Why would I need a family like this? And this either leads to divorce or people completely stop thinking about getting married and even co-habitating without obligations.

We bring them up incorrectly.

Question: What is upbringing in relation to communication between a man and a woman?

Answer: They should not speak to each other about how bad either one of them is. Anything but this. I never speak with my wife about this. We stopped doing this even before we got married, during the first months of dating.

Sometimes it happens that you point something out to your partner because you see that he hurts himself by doing it. Then you gently allude that he is hurting his health. But never do it head-on. What will this give you? Things happen, but this should be an exception, not the rule.

So what should people talk about? Only about pleasant things. The man needs to come home like to his mother who will take care of him and keep him warm. He must feel that his house is his fortress, not his prison. How would he ever go back home? Today we live as we think.

Question: So what is upbringing about?

Answer: If you show your partner that you love him or her, they will indirectly see that their certain actions are undesirable and hurtful, and they will not do these things. If you indirectly show them that you expect something from them, they will feel what they can do for you. But this can only be done with kindness.

Upbringing is only done with kindness. A small child only grows when you give him, fulfill him, and take care of him. The same rule applies if you wish to change or form a person.

Question: Then where is the place for the “lash,” the second line, which must be present?

Answer: This must not exist between a man and a woman. Never.

We have to interact with one another only causing positive feelings in our partner and showing very little upset, only to the extent of a person’s ability to constantly change. If your partner sees that from their perspective the action is correct, but from yours it is not, and you show or display it by suddenly taking a big offense, even if it is not relative to them, it will not help them correct their actions. One should be smart in this regard.

But we see that we absolutely do not educate people in our world. When a person graduates from school, he knows a bit of physics, a bit of math, and that is it. He enters life with no knowledge about human interaction or child upbringing—no knowledge at all. The only subject that was introduced in schools is sex education, which is only necessary to properly complement everything else. This is why our upbringing, if we can even call it that, is very ugly.

Integral upbringing assumes that in a family people give to one another since a family can only be built on mutual concessions. My teacher used to say that love is something that grows out of mutual concessions, when you “move yourself aside” and let the other person enter you, and he does the same to let you enter him. And then it turns out that each partner enters the other, and this mutual segment is called a family, and the sensation of your partner inside you is called love.