Integral Upbringing

A Series of Talks between Michael Laitman and Psychologist Anatoly Ulianov

Talk No. 8
December 15, 2012

Radiance from the Future

Question: In the general course on integral upbringing it is said that any action should begin with an overall integral picture set as a goal before a person. Most likely, a psychology course is no exception. It follows, then, that we should start any activity precisely with that? What is the best way to do it?

Answer: It’s important to note that this isn’t just advice but a fundamental necessity. A person should always be pursuing a goal and stay focused on it so that his every movement, expression, or engagement in certain games or discussions, everything would be directed towards the same goal.

Then he or she will truly strive towards it and develop a strong desire for it. He will see that everything has to be aimed at its achievement. That’s on one hand.

On the other hand, since there exists one unified field in nature within which we’re all interconnected, when we set a certain objective for ourselves and conceptually imagine our future state, it’s as if we summon upon ourselves the “attractive” forces from this future state, forces that propel us forward. It’s as if they stem from the object that we aspire towards and act upon us.

This is a purely psychological phenomenon: We understand that generally speaking, this doesn’t exist. Possibly even our notion of the future doesn’t correspond to its actual image: In the process of our advancement we gradually change, and consequently, our vision of the future changes too.

Similarly, we say to a child: “You will grow up and become this or that—just keep studying. You’ll see what will happen.” He gradually grows and begins to understand that while earlier he imagined that he is a driver of a giant dump truck, right now different goals appear as desirable. We paint certain images of the future for him so that he would develop them further into different, higher goals.

Similarly, we need to constantly imagine this picture towards which we, like a child, need to grow so it would beckon us forward. Then we won’t be pushed from behind by negative forces of nature, by crises, but on the contrary, we’ll move forward propelled by positive forces. In doing so, we will shorten the path and it will be pleasant for us.

This is why we need a vision of a bright, good future, which is supported by our environment, elevated in the eyes of society through mass media, and so on. Then a person will acquire enormous strength and inspiration. Meanwhile, society will encourage everyone who strives towards the goal.

We need to develop a broad psychological foundation that will draw a person in like a stream and carry him, and then he would gladly be swimming along with the current.

Question: When I am teaching a course on integral psychology, should I introduce an element of integrality into every regularity being explained?

Answer: Yes, because movement towards the goal assumes that on every segment of the path you are gradually achieving, approaching it closer. That is, if the goal represents a particular collection of some new qualities, then any step towards it assumes a mastery of these qualities, and you need to control that. You need to perform an analysis and observe: Did I move towards it, or did I suddenly deviate somewhere.

A sideward deviation is very dangerous. If you don’t notice your digression at the very beginning, this tiny deviation will grow into an enormous transgression, and you will never reach the goal because you will continue to diverge from it.

A United Team

Question: Any group dynamic goes through several stages. The first mandatory stage is a security phase. Before a person opens up, he or she needs to feel that they are in a safe space where nobody will hurt or humiliate them.

Answer: More importantly, this space needs to possess the quality known as mutual guarantee.

In order to reach the goal, we need the support of everybody else, like, for example, in a good attack team or in the army, when they go on a reconnaissance mission and everyone feels confident in the fact that others will always back them up. You charge forward because for you the sensation of “I” already disappears and instead there’s a sensation of “we.” This sensation is so strong that it doesn’t even matter to you whether to live or die—the most important thing is to implement the common idea.

When people are united through a shared idea, they lose individual interests, while the common, the collective, begins to influence them in such a way that for the sake of executing their common goal, their shared idea, they no longer care in what form it’ll be attained for them personally.

If we reach such a state in unification of society, a person rises precisely onto the degree called “Adam.” That is, we need to have a goal that will always stand in front of us. It needs to be for us—not for a person that we work with and not for the group, but for us. Otherwise, if we don’t start striving towards this goal, nature will very painfully, through tremendous suffering, push us towards it with its coercive forces. One way or another, in the final state, we will have to reach this form of communication between us, this kind of unity.

This Cruel, Cruel World

 Question: Suppose we gathered people into a group for integral upbringing, and they have to go through several stages: to get to know each other and to start feeling secure. In Russia, the latter phase takes half the time allotted for education because people don’t trust each other. They have a tremendous experience with environment’s negative impact on a person. It takes time for a person to relax, to believe that nobody wishes them any harm. What should this time be filled with?

Answer: It’s very difficult to work with people who keep returning into the coarse, cruel world. They relax a little within the group, but for them it’s like a game that allows them to take a “pill” and calm down for some time. And afterwards, when they come back to the cruel world, everything vanishes.

They realize that they come to the group only in order to relax but not to become different. They cannot allow themselves to be different because then they will be defenseless in this world; they’ll end up like small furry bunnies amidst wolves and foxes. Therefore, this is a big problem.

The group needs to create its own micro-climate and be relatively big in order to hold a person inside its framework. A person should feel its support, whether at home or at work: through phone-calls, text messages, and so on. That is, people should constantly remain in a state of mutual guarantee, must support each other, and care after the micro-climate that appears whenever we shape ourselves into a small society.

In reality this society could be artificial. What’s the difference? We feel good within it. In a certain sense, it’s a psychological refuge.

As far asRussiais concerned, I believe that everything can be changed very quickly over there because people are internally ready for it. They aren’t split into social classes; they were simply artificially divided. Their so-called Socialist past, when freedom and equality were at least on the agenda, still finds its strength and manifests itself within them.

Therefore, if it were possible to remove the terrible external negativity that erupts forth from the mass media and especially from this so-called culture, then I think that it could be achieved quickly.  People have accumulated such negative potential that they would gladly embrace something completely different.

All for One and One for All!

Question: Could you shed more light on the concept of “mutual guarantee”? What do you mean by it?

Answer: The purpose of creation of the universe is to bring it to homeostasis. The endpoint of the development of any given subsystem is to balance all systems. It follows from the research of the still, vegetative, and animal nature: all these levels strive towards equilibrium.

Why does the wind blow? The pressure in one place is higher than in another. Any unbalanced physical parameters ultimately strive for balancing, for averaging out, for mutual interconnection and permeation. All levels of nature are supported by each other: plants, minerals, animals, and so on; they all exist in constant mutual circulation.

The last degree of nature called “Adam” or Man (the overall joint image) needs to incorporate all the previous levels into itself. Human beings have to reach such a collective state, reciprocity in connection, where precisely they will be the ones who’ll be determining the entire correct global structure of nature, its harmony. A person needs to attain this through understanding, realization, and study of this picture.

We need to study the integral systems in which everything is interconnected: beginning, end, middle, and center. There’s no single thing that would determine something, but everyone and everything determines all the rest. It’s like a holographic picture, and our universe, as well as practically any of its fragments, including ourselves, are arranged according to this principle.

This is why our final state is characterized by the fact that everyone is responsible for everyone else. All for one and one for all! And this applies to the entire humanity.

This picture, of course, seems like a fantasy, completely opposite to our reality of today. Our desire or reason simply don’t function in that direction. But nature will compel us to that. Starting with our time and going forward, we are entering a crisis that’s determined precisely by our lack of balance, our incorrect interconnection with each other.

Therefore, starting with a small group, with this vision of the future, we are obliged to constantly set this condition before ourselves. Regardless of how we name this future system, even if it’s “communism,” nevertheless it’s the most stable system intended by nature. And it will be attained since this is the state of equilibrium.

Now a question arises: “How do we present it to people? What does mutual guarantee mean?”

Even now, we see from the example of the EU, which is not able to unite, that the absence of integral upbringing and education doesn’t allow them to correctly view the situation they’re in. They constantly choose egoistic, linear solutions instead of “round” ones. They constantly relate to themselves as a discrete and not an analog system. Therein lies their problem. This is why all of their resolutions won’t lead anywhere.

This will be a very lengthy disintegration, maybe even a world war. Or, perhaps, as a result of suffering they will gradually come to a right decision because there are people already who talk about the necessity of absolutely complete unity.

But can complete unity of 27 countries be reached?! Even if you limit them to ten countries, it still is an enormous division along all parameters. Therefore, upbringing is necessary.

Upbringing, its foundation and expected goal, is what we call an integral mutual interaction or universal guarantee, when we vouch for and are responsible for one another and create our society precisely in this manner. Fears disappear. Concerns disappear. I know exactly what I need to do in society. I am absolutely confident that I will receive the same thing as everyone else. I am confident that I will have everything that is necessary for life.

In this manner we neutralize any problems that might arise in some social perturbations. Surely, this is an ideal picture, so we need to come to it gradually.

Above the Level of Death

Integral upbringing strips a person of practically everything that characterizes our modern society. What remains is only their normal, peaceful, and regular existence (we call it the beastly level, but not with disdain as this is the level on which our physical body exists). At this point a person devotes all of his or her resources only to master the next degree, that of “Adam,” the degree of universal mutual guarantee, ascent, and unity. It is precisely in our unity that we reveal the next level of our existence: the attainment of eternity and perfection.

And this is possible since by breaking away from our animal body and attaining the complete picture of nature, its mechanism, dynamics, and the forces that permeate it from beginning to end, this entire process, a person connects to and associates himself with this process and already simply lives on that level. It’s as if he or she breaks away from their own body (we cannot imagine this state yet) and associates himself with the attained common unification and exists within it to such extent that even if his body dies, he doesn’t feel death. It’s as if this is the death of his beloved pet animal who lives next to him. He doesn’t feel that his “self” loses something thereby.

Since our body represents merely the sum of our desires and our notion of self, if we no longer associate ourselves with it, it’s as if we live detached from it. This is also a psychological problem, but it can be overcome in the course of integral upbringing.

We need to lead our students towards this gradually since the problem of death, despite the constant attempts to “bottle it up,” nevertheless drives a human being. In any task that we set before ourselves, we subconsciously include this element and are compelled to address it. Any decision that we make: to have children, to support a family, to appear a certain way in the eyes of society, and so on, anything presupposes an element of inclusion of the self into something outside of ourselves since in this manner it’s as if we continue on.

Conformity Is Not a Bad Thing At All

Question: Materialistic psychology discusses the psychological concept of conformity, when a person submits to the opinion of the majority. From the point of view of psychologists, conformity is a bad thing, while nonconformity is good. Perhaps from the perspective of integrality, conformity is a very positive thing?

Answer: First of all, a person’s subordination to society and their surrounding environment is a law of nature. In other words, there is no truth or falsehood, no good or evil, nothing—there is only the directives of the environment, and I obey them, I am brought up within them. What the environment proclaims to be good or evil, right or wrong, I accept as such.

We can convince ourselves that salty tastes sweet, no problem! If the environment starts referring to salt as being sweet, ultimately I will start consuming salty candy. It alters our inner physiological parameters to such an extent that we change completely.

We cannot say whether it’s good or bad. We are simply stating a fact. After all, can I really say anything bad about acceleration of free fall or other physical parameters? This is what exists. The way we apply this is another story. But saying that it’s bad and we should therefore change and distort a person—this actually is bad. Our task is to correctly apply the laws of nature with the aim of achieving our similarity, compatibility, and harmony with it.

Question: It turns out that a social-psychological law like conformity is a big plus that helps us to unite?…

Answer: We are able to change a person precisely by virtue of the surrounding environment. Mass media, society, and upbringing, it all constitutes the surrounding environment. We selectively influence a person from the outside in order to transform him or her. This is our only tool of influence on a person.

Who Will Save the Drowning?

Question: In the mid-1960’s, there was an incident in Paris when a person drowned in a pool in front of 150 eyewitnesses because nobody came to the rescue. Had there been only one person there, he or she would have saved him, but now it’s as if the responsibility was diluted among 150 people. Hence the law that the more people there are, the less responsibility each of them has personally. How can we make this law integral?

Answer: What does “mutual guarantee” mean? I am responsible for everyone. The general and the particular are equal in their power and influence—this is what the law of global guarantee implies.

If within the final integral system (and we take it as a starting point of any explanation) even one tiny particle is missing—me, you, or him—it won’t be able to function. It won’t be able to operate at the full 100%. It will break down not by 99% or 50%, but by the entire 100% because an integral system implies the participation of absolutely everybody.

Ultimately, the law is such that one is equal to all, one is important for everyone. There isn’t anyone who could wiggle out of this, opt not to participate.

In the integral education we present a simple example: We (all of humanity) are in one big boat. If I drill a hole under myself in the bottom of the boat, everybody drowns. I may say: “I’m sorry, friends, this is my personal business. I want to drown. Or I want to take a bath. That’s it. This has nothing to do with you. What right do you have to enter my territory and admonish me or order me around?!”

If we exist within the framework of one law of nature—in the same boat, like in Noah’s Ark. If someone drills a hole there, we will all drown.

So it follows that responsibility cannot be distributed among everyone. For each person it is the same responsibility as for everyone else! That’s why each person who stands around the pool and sees that someone is drowning must imagine that if I don’t take any action, then no one will. And then everyone would plunge into the water.

The Uniqueness of the Integral System

Question: When I encounter the law of mutual guarantee and see it in action, I immediately begin to monitor others so that they won’t drill a hole in the boat, and I purely egoistically point out that they shouldn’t be doing this.

Answer: With a corrected, altruistic approach, I act differently. I say to myself: “They are all ideal, I can be absolutely sure of them. I only have to monitor myself so I complete them correctly.”

If I behave correctly within the integral scheme, the entire scheme will be correct. It’s a reverse implication of the same law, where each is responsible for all. If, while existing within an integral system, I behave correctly, I oblige the entire integral system to do so as well. If someone breaks the law, the entire system fails.

Engineering has examples of various systems, among them an integral one. There is a discrete system with a strictly defined beginning and end, where all the working parts communicate with each other through impulses. And then there is a system which gets aroused by a signal it receives, then calms down, comes to a state of balance, and only after that can one measure its output as a solution to a problem. This is the so-called integral, analog system.

A disturbance and, naturally, an averaging, a calming down take place in such systems. You wouldn’t be able to observe any results until everything calms down and arrives to a common denominator, to a solution.

At first, when you give a signal, you, say, bring an egoistic environment into a perturbed state. Then correction takes place: Gradually, a balance between absolutely all parts of the system is achieved; the system calms down. And then you measure the potential that results from its connection. If we talk about the human society, then the achieved result is accepted by everyone uniformly, equally, and kindly; everyone tries to uphold this very state because it is the most comfortable for everyone.

A Heterogeneous Pyramid

Question: Suppose a person agrees with the integral methodology of his or her personal correction, where can they receive guarantee and proof that everything else will be corrected too?

Answer: There are people who can understand the necessity of such  a society:

• There are people who arrive at this through suffering as they see that suffering isn’t leading towards anything good;
• There are those who study nature and see from practice, from what they attain through natural sciences, that evidently this is the ultimate goal of nature.

There are different people, so accordingly, all of humanity is divided into a pyramid. At the top of the pyramid are those who simply understand, feel, and sense an inner need for it. These people are created this way. They can be called idealists—they are this way by nature, they’re ready for it.

There are people who arrive at this from a scientific point of view. They agree with it as with a real necessity given to us by nature in which we exist and of which we are a result.

There are those who can foresee the result in advance. Although they don’t like it or see anything attractive in it, they understand that otherwise we’ll be driven towards it through suffering, what’s referred to as “being pushed to happiness.”

And then there are simply people who suffer greatly in our world. There is an enormous number of them. They fight for their existence and live on the level of an ordinary, one may even say animal, life. They don’t have anything other than work and worries, and they keep hauling their life in this manner. It’s sufficient to simply explain to them how to gradually arrange it so they can transfer all of their concerns about themselves onto society, taking upon themselves the care for the integral society.

One can understand in practice that when humanity eliminates excessive abundance and arrives to this common denominator, tremendous forces are awakened naturally. And we can really come to harmony, but only under the influence of the environment.

We see with an example of Europe how a large number of Europeans—scientists, political scientists, sociologists, and psychologists—begin to realize that breaking the integrality is very difficult; that it’s equivalent to going against a pre-set process, set both by nature and at this point, by them themselves. It’s very difficult for them to part with their money, like, say, it’s hard for the Germans to give 500 billion dollars or Euros to Greeks. Yet they see that otherwise it’ll end up costing more. To get your money back is not the same as simply printing it! Here we’re starting to invoke upon ourselves an enormous amount of negative forces. Protectionism is simply dangerous.

When we begin to see the inexorability of this process and gradually explain it to people, it’s impossible to disagree with it—life will oblige us to agree.

We don’t think that we should rage forward and intensively elucidate the essence of the process on every street corner and square. We need to introduce the gradual education and upbringing of a person, objectively explain what events are ahead of us, what frameworks, matrices, templates, we need to enter, starting with the current state and ending with the one we need to reach.

To gradually prepare the public opinion towards this means to significantly soften the entire path that we need to go through. After all, we will go through it either coercively, by evolutionary forces that will severely press us to the point of extinction, the way it was with the dinosaurs, or we can convert all of it into a pleasant, consciously realized transformation of a person from the animate level to that of “Adam” or “Man.”

A Necessity Arising From the Essence of Development

We have an enormous work to do with explaining to the masses and preparing educators out of majority of the population. The people who are walking out into the streets today who have nothing to do or occupy themselves with still need to be provided for somehow. Otherwise they, hungry, will tear you apart. In any case, a need arises for a certain support. Yet, even if you offer them some kind of financial aid, you will create an army disposed against you.

So why don’t we proceed differently instead? Let’s use virtual networks, television, mass media, and various clubs to add to this everything that we’ve been talking about. Why not make integral upbringing mandatory so that after a few months people will begin to understand the kind of world they are living in?

Who should I protest against? This is an objective law of nature.

Are jobs disappearing? Well, they weren’t needed in the first place; we simply manufactured unnecessary goods.

We pumped all of the earth’s resources out of it, we polluted its surface, produced unnecessary toys, and then discarded them, poisoning the environment. Just look at what is happening with all the rivers—it’s impossible to drink the water. Look at what’s happening with the earth, at the amount of pesticides and chemicals in it.

Should we continue on like this? What for? We can reduce all this down to reasonable limits and instead give a person an occupation, the kind that nature has prepared for him.

We weren’t like this before, we didn’t manufacture large quantities of unnecessary things. The last, 20th century made us this way only so that we would realize the evil of our egoism and where it’s driving us towards. Right now we simply need to realize that we can’t continue like this any more, we are in a state of crisis.

Therefore the necessity, the demand, for integral education is starting to emerge from within, from the very essence of our development.

Comment: You are saying that we need to give up excesses, work less, and spend more time on upbringing….

Answer: This will happen automatically.

The Powerlessness of Billionaires and Governments

Question: One of the Russian millionaires proclaimed that if a person wants to live adequately, then instead of working eight hours a day he or she should work twelve. So people who have the power and resources are heading in a completely different direction.

Answer: Business owners will not be able to do this anymore because they won’t be able to sell goods produced by workers who are engaged in manufacturing for twelve or even eight hours a day. Nobody will buy them! There is acrisis, people come out into the streets, and purchasing power is falling. They will be laying off people and won’t expand their operations further. There is no and will be no need for that.

Question: What will ultimately compel a person to pay for integral education courses?

Answer: The government must do this. We will have to work only to furnish ourselves with all necessities, and everything else will have to be directed towards upbringing, towards rising to the next degree. This is a law of nature.

Look at what’s happening in the Arab countries. 100,000 people are marching onto the streets and the government cannot do a thing. What will these governments do? They have nowhere even to run, they’re killed right on the spot. Even a billionaire, where will he run to? Right now there isn’t a place in the world where one could escape to. All transactions, banks, and enterprises, everything is in the open. Today, any person stands before everyone as if naked. Everyone sees everything, everything is photographed everywhere—it’s no longer the way it used to be.

Suppose you will escape somewhere into the tundra, will live with some old lady in some little hut. Is this your future? Here is the catch.

Look at all the rulers of the Arab countries. They have armies, money, and power—everything. And where do they end up? And because of what? How many people are heading out onto the streets? They can no longer quell them because a different time has come. Governments don’t have the ability to do as they wish even with the help of the army and secret police. It’s impossible!

And how did the Soviet Union fall apart? This is entirely incomprehensible. Where is the army, the KGB, and the enormous masses of people that were engaged in preserving the regime? Suddenly it was gone. Somehow, it’s not even clear how, it disappeared. Who is to blame? Nobody, only time and the development of society.

And the same thing here. It is expected that within the next year about 500 million jobs will be eliminated. Do you understand what mass of people this amounts to around the whole world? They’ll simply force their governments to unleash a nuclear war because there won’t be another way left.

We need to explain to these millions about what nature is demanding from us. We need to provide them with necessities, while they will receive satisfaction from integral upbringing. It’s simply a necessity that stems from objective laws of nature.

Question: So in the integral education groups we can discuss what’s happening in the Arab countries, can’t we?

Answer: Not only in Arab countries, but everywhere. We can bring these events as examples: Look at how this isn’t helping; see what’s happening with dictators, with the suppression of people. And what could happen with the others? Berlusconi left already. What will happen in Spain? In all countries? Hence the conclusion that on the whole, the number of disgruntled people is growing, even if they live on unemployment.

In America unemployed people are standing in lines for free lunches. Many cannot feed themselves to the end of the month. There are problems with financial aid, with healthcare—with everything. Everything is coming apart at the seams. It’s impossible to just continue printing money.

Soon it will resound in China because China is a manufacturer of goods. Who will buy them now in America, which is its core market? Literally all countries are drawn into this process, and in all the countries much of the workforce is being let go.

Can you imagine if 100-200 million is laid off in China? Today they are living in cities with populations numbering in the millions. You won’t be able to drive them back into villages. You can’t once again turn them into uneducated peasants satisfied with a cup of rice a day. In China, in one factory alone up to 50 thousand people are working away. This is a terrifying problem.

There is no other choice. To prevent the unleashing of wars and annihilation of “excess” people, we need to show that integral upbringing is in harmony with nature and that precisely this is our salvation and the correct path. Even after a war you will remain in ruin and will have to do the same thing nevertheless, except now suffering will urge you towards it.

A Baby Stroller that Fell from Heaven

Question: There was an incident when in a group psychotherapy discussion one woman said that she cannot allow herself to bear a child because she won’t be able to support it, to afford to even buy a baby stroller, to which one man replied: “You give birth to that baby, and you’ll see that someone will bring you the baby stroller, they’ll give it to you and all will be well.”

In an integral society, while a person is pursuing his correction, sooner or later he will arrive at a point where nature will supply him with everything. How can this be explained to a person? Should a woman be thinking about a baby stroller before she bears a child, or should she first give birth and then see what happens?

Answer: The fact of the matter is that we cannot tell a person about the system that exists above him. We strive towards it—it is the system of “Adam.” In many techniques and practices people take advantage of the fact that they aspire towards its level and attempt to draw the forces from the future upon themselves. But to tell a person that they need to act in a certain way, to aspire towards it, and they will see that it works, it is all unsubstantiated at a given moment, and this is why it is difficult for us to work with this.

To the extent that a person includes himself into the integrality of society that creates a field of mutual guarantee around him, to that extent he can act in this manner because he feels himself in the arms of society. But for that he needs to connect to it, to actively participate in it, and to perceive this society as perfect. And then naturally he will evoke the forces of nature and the movements from society, which will indeed bring him a “baby stroller.”

But to talk about the fact that we exist in this single unified field, that we evoke it, and that correspondingly, it reacts to us… Certainly, psychologists and sociologists can talk about this. That really is something that we can understand and sense exists: This is our collective mind, our collective desire, our subconscious influence on each other, the common opinion. But we still need to work carefully with it because we are dealing with people who aren’t capable of immediately perceiving these subtle matters.

Therefore to simply say “Just give birth and you’ll receive a stroller…”  Where from, exactly? What are you basing this on? With this you will simply discredit yourself in the eyes of others as an impractical person, someone who is detached from reality. I don’t think that this is the right approach.

First and foremost, we need upbringing, and the practical application comes a little later. We need to lead people to the point where they are able to see what your basis is and they can begin to suggest solutions on their own. Don’t impose certain behavior on them. They will see for themselves based on your explanations that here it will probably work out.

And this is what is referred to as “educate your child according to his ways,” that is, make it so that a person will probe and feel out his own path. You educate him or her, and thus they choose their path correctly.

Escaping From the “Cage” of Stereotypes

Question: The majority of people aren’t capable of expressing their thoughts and desires. They simply have a collection of some prescribed clichés. A person doesn’t think about self-expression and instead is concerned with avoiding saying something inappropriate.

In the course of integral education, can we talk about how important one’s inner self-expression is since whatever one feels, thinks, and sees is more critical than the collection of stereotypes and clichés?

Answer: I approach the world seeing that everyone has blinders on: People are unsociable, they don’t want and are afraid to open up because they will immediately receive a negative reaction.

In this regard, we need to leave them alone. Let every person live “inside himself” just the way that they are. We don’t need to break him, don’t need to drag him, kicking and screaming, out of his “cage.” He doesn’t want to come out, yet you open the door, break it down, and drag him out of there, while the miserable fellow digs in his heels and refuses to leave.

This is not good. Through this you invoke resistance, and people stop trusting you. You barge into a person’s private life making it neither lighter nor better, just more difficult. This person spent their entire life hiding, he or she knows that opening up means making oneself vulnerable. And here you are, pressuring them.

What needs to be done? We need to create a common integral level above the person, above us, and then we will be able to peacefully ascend onto it. I remain as myself with my own qualities, but at the same time I connect with the others on this common level. I can talk about general love, general interaction, and universal mutual guarantee because in this case they are not egoistic and personal to me. We are not touching egoism yet.

It is as if you’re taking them on an adventure on a magic helicopter and they participate in this game. They agree to ascend, agree to play, agree to interact. This isn’t forcing them to open up and allowing themselves to be vulnerable; it doesn’t pose a threat to their narrow inner egoism.

Allow them to gradually feel this state through, to exist and linger in it for some time. Let them warm up in it a little, to thaw, “squeeze,” and “probe” each other, to understand that this is possible. Then, from within this state, they will begin to influence themselves on their own and you will see that they’re different.

They will suddenly discover that they don’t need to take care of this “cage” in which they exist and in which they constantly hid from the others; it stopped being important to them. But this is something that they’ll decide on their own.

Question: In that case what should we talk to a person about?

Answer: About the goal, about what’s ahead of us. We need to exalt the goal so that goodness beckons us forward instead of evil pushing us from behind. Precisely this!

A person develops when you feed them, when you take care of them. Then he becomes “plump,” like a child, and grows. He requires the kindest possible impressions.

Harmony with Oneself

Question: Can we discuss everyday life problems in the integral education course, connecting them each time to integrality?

Answer: If we’re saying that the general and the particular are equal, it means that we can tie this to family. Very much so! In other words, you immediately transform from a classroom, a group, into a family and establish integral conditions within in.

At the same time, nobody probes into another’s private world. What we’re doing is creating a family, something common above us where you and me are we. Then we automatically connect children to it and they, too, become part of this integral system. Completely new relationships within a family arise.

The most important thing is not to pressure anyone because normal, correct development requires an inner harmony between a person and their inborn qualities. I shouldn’t conceal, destroy, and diminish them, or anything else of that nature. I need to reach such a state where, conversely, my inborn qualities will blossom in me completely.

We don’t understand why we should preserve all our negative qualities: deception, envy, jealousy, hatred, a hundred types of fears, and so on. But they all have their resolution, their realization precisely in this final state. As a person develops, he gradually sees that these qualities are necessary for him, that he applies them, except in the opposite form, when these fears force him to be integral and bring him “outside of himself,” instead of pushing him inward.