TV Program with Dr. Michael Laitman

“A New Life”

Episode 4

With participation of Oren Levi
January 1, 2012
Petach Tikvah, Israel

Revealing the Pattern of Development

Today we will talk about the single general law of nature, which we are a part of. As we advance, we see that there is a certain pattern to the development. Generation after generation, for the duration of thousands of years there was the appearance and development of the still, vegetative, animate, and human levels of nature.

Our development occurs gradually. From generation to generation, year to year, and even from day to day, we develop more and more, but where are we going? In order to answer this question, we must clarify what this law is that acts upon us?

We see that there exists a sort of a mechanism, which is located above us and develops the whole nature in a particular direction, making it ever more complicated, of higher quality, better formed and interconnected in all of its parts. Whether we want it or not, we are forced to obey the orders of this law, which influences us and makes us develop.

This is one common law. All that exists is under its influence: everything we see on our planet, everything that is born and moves in some direction.

We study the laws of nature using science, and if we want to achieve something, the knowledge of these laws helps us achieve success. We begin to better understand how to avoid the bad and to draw nearer to the good, how to decrease the amount of mistakes and blunders.

That is why if we would know this common law, which includes all of the rest of the laws (physics, chemistry, zoology, biology, botany, astronomy, medicine, psychology, the little bit that we are already aware of and all that we are yet to discover for ourselves), this knowledge will help us succeed.

Science helps us make our life better and more comfortable. Before, a person would work from morning until the night, as it is said “by the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread” (Genesis), but now one person can feed a thousand people with bread thanks to the development of technology, chemistry and the whole of farming industry. The same goes for the clothing industry, construction, education, culture, everything!

It would seem that today, with our current understanding of all of the laws and the strength that we posses, we would be able to set up a splendid, wonderful life for ourselves! Knowing the current state of the world and the characteristics of its population, we see that we produce such a quantity and assortment of products and things, which can provide a normal, poverty-free life for the entire population of the world.

The problem lies only in the fact that the human is egoistic and he cannot manage to correctly use all of that potential, which he is getting from the knowledge of the laws of the nature. We are given abundance, but some are holding great powers in their hands: money, equipment and everything else, while others, as a result of that, are not getting even the bare necessities for life.

So it means that it’s all within human nature, which does not let us create a good, comfortable, calm, confident life on a beautiful, prospering planet. That is why our goal is to understand human nature and understand how we can improve our lives so that we would want to create a good, prosperous life for ourselves and for others.

This is possible through the knowledge of the law, which is only now, in our time, starting to become revealed in nature. This is the law of the global force, which includes the rest of the forces inside of it, and regardless of our desire (because we do not want this), it forces people, countries, and civilizations to be more connected and in need of each other.

Entering a New Era

According to the scientific research, the trend of our development is determined by a general law that develops us and brings us to one form. We will have to achieve connection between us that will allow us to feel that all of humanity is interdependent.

Many scientists agree that this is the overall trend of our development. The reason why we aren’t ready to accept this law is because it conflicts with our nature.

Each person is accustomed to thinking only of himself and doesn’t understand that he is dependent upon others. However, if a person realizes, feels, and sees with his own eyes that he is dependent upon others, his first priority would be to ensure the well-being of others so that they would do the same in turn!

Our problem is that we don’t see how round the world is and the extent to which everything is interconnected. Essentially, this is why we’re in the situation we are today. We are in a state of crisis, which is forcefully tearing us away from the life we’ve become accustomed to in the last few decades.

We are accustomed to working a lot, earning a lot, and spending a lot. We produce useful and useless things just for the sake of selling them. We all try to acquire a safety belt: a bank account, retirement fund, medical insurance, good home, and all the things that provide one with a sense of security that he and his children will be taken care of until the end of their lives. This was our goal.

Now it appears as though our set-up was incorrect! Nature is breaking all of our plans. Now even rich people, let alone the rest of the population, the so-called middle class and the poor, are unable to obtain this dream.

Nature is leading us toward the opposite state where instead of chasing the good life for ourselves alone we would acquire confidence, prosperity, development, and well-being from the connection between us.

We are able to see all this thanks to the general crisis, which is breaking all the rules of the past. We are now entering a new era!

Under an Umbrella of a Single Law

For the first time, instead of myriad different, seemingly chaotic, and unconnected laws of nature, we are beginning to sense that a new, single law is acting upon us. We are all under its umbrella, and together, as a single union, are headed in the same direction.

Never before have such different parts of humanity been in such a similar state. North and South America, Europe and Africa, Asia and Siberia, even Australia and New Zealand, all of them are in the process of decline, in the state of depression, and it doesn’t matter in what society we live, to which civilization or religion we belong, and how our society is structured. Some enormous cloud is descending on our world and starting to envelop all of us together.

We really depend on one another: Scientists are discovering this, and we, too, feel it thanks to the crisis and as a consequence of our interconnection. It turns out that each person is acquainted with everyone else in the world through a chain of four people; there exists a “butterfly effect”; some research shows that a person’s thoughts affect the climate, and that earthquakes and tsunamis are tied to relationships between people and their lifestyles.

This means that all of us are facing a single law that binds us by force, and if we want to have a better life, we need to think about how to come closer to it and not on the contrary, grow farther from it, and how to desire to connect together with everyone in a correct, good, and beautiful aspiration.

Then we will advance together with the laws of nature and not against them since in any case, nature will win! We cannot change the laws of nature; they aren’t like governments that can reshape the laws of society based on mercantile interests.

This law exists above us, just like the laws of physics, chemistry, or biology. We can only study and use them in a correct form. This is why we need to understand this law and to connect to it as much as possible. And this law is the general law of all of nature.

Analysis of the Human Nature

In the course of clarifications, a question arises: “What exactly do we need to change in ourselves in order to acquire a greater similarity to nature?” After all, if we come to harmony and balance with it, we’ll feel comfort, fulfillment, and peace. We’ll stop feeling its pressure that is expressed as problems that grow like a snowball, wars, strife and divorces in families, illnesses, epidemics, tsunamis, and other manifestations of natural cataclysms. Thus, what exactly do we need to change in ourselves?

The search for an answer to this question leads us to the investigation of human nature. Man’s inner nature is desire: the desire to live, to feel good, and to enjoy, in other words, a constant search for fulfillment. And a part of these desires is, to a certain extent, empty. Say, I want to rest, and this means that I wish to fulfill the desire for rest, and if I want to eat, then I desire to fill my desire for food.

Usually I have desires for food, sex, family, money, honor, power, and knowledge. These are the basic desires that include in them all the others. Every desire satisfying the needs of my body for food, family, and procreation, as well as the “human” desires in me for wealth, honor, power, and knowledge are divided into many different other desires and their derivatives. And if I have no choice and I understand that through the help of these desires I should unite with other people in order to become similar to the force of nature (the one law), then I will need to correct each of my desires.

Ultimately, all these desires together are called “the will to enjoy” or “the desire to receive pleasure.” Towards what should I direct them in order to correct them? They need to be directed for the benefit of all. And if I only fill myself, such a desire is called “egoistic.” Therefore, I direct each of my desires towards the common good and I accept only that which will go for the benefit of everyone.

It turns out that we don’t have another choice. If we’re all like one family, then I have to take everyone into consideration and think of everyone as one whole. And the law that obliges me to this is also one. That’s why every one of my desires I need to direct towards everyone. And here is where the problem arises: How can this be achieved?

Even if I myself understand it and scientists confirm it (psychologists, sociologists, and political scientists unanimously declare that this is true and that we don’t have another way out), and from my own life experience I see that there is no other method, even then, my nature always believes otherwise. It believes that I first of all need to receive for myself, to provide for my own needs, and not to worry about others. Perhaps I should care for them, but only so that it will make me feel good.

However, this isn’t enough. After all, I don’t feel this way in relation to my family. In a corrected family, I immediately think of all its members as one person and don’t calculate how to make them feel good so that I would feel good from that.

And this law wishes to oblige us to consider everyone as one, the whole world as one single family, so that we will start getting used to it. So what exactly do we need to do for that? Each of us must care about others and all together we have to build a system of a new integral upbringing that will connect us and through various influences and activities will prove that another way does not exist.

Habit Becomes Second Nature

There is a general law in nature, which actually gives us hope for our coming closer to each other and in our ability to overcome our egos. This law states that one’s habit becomes his second nature.

We see this ourselves. Let’s suppose from my childhood and over the course of my life, I become used to carrying out certain actions in order to reach a positive result or avoid undesirable consequences. Due to these actions that are repeated often, I develop a habit. It becomes the same kind of demand for me as the desire to receive pleasure, since I do not receive pleasure in any other form but this.

A person learns this and these actions become a habit for him. Everything depends only on how the environment obliges him to do something, how many people act in that manner, and to what extent it has support from everything that surrounds him in life.

Therefore, if we create an education system and organize an environment that will offer support to every person, one will be influenced by the mere fact that other people care so much about everyone else. He will find out about it from the media from the positive public opinion it forms.

In addition, everyone will know that we do this on purpose: We play with each other and pretend to be kind, as though we think that we all are one family, like we care about each other as we do about ourselves. We will need to play this game constantly. We will act like we already are corrected. And what will this do for us?

Gradually, due to this habit, public opinion, and the influence of the environment, I will begin to think in this direction and receive an impression from this behavior. I will begin to form a habit, and I will not be able to act in any other way anymore. It will become my nature, as though I was born this way in spite of the fact that I acquired this quality, that I was forced to develop it, and that I agreed due to a lack of any other choice.

Therefore, we need to realize the law “a habit will become second nature.” Everything depends on how much a person is situated under his own pressure and the pressure of his environment in order not to forget about this game and to advance in this manner. And we will play this way like little children.

After all, when children play, they imagine that they are doing something important and building something new. But we know that it’s a game, and it isn’t serious, and that there is nothing real in their actions. They make mistakes, build anew, destroy once again, and again rebuild. However, due to such different games they advance in their development, grow up, and become smarter.

Without games a child would grow up like a savage, a small animal that is just growing bigger. Great institutions using the best minds including psychologists create special developmental systems for children to play with using various materials (such as blocks and clay) and taking into consideration their interests (cars, dolls, and so on). They use various equipment and computer programs for this. And due to this, the children advance in their development.

Physical development is also impossible without games. We call it sports, but sports are also games where we use physical activities to accustom ourselves to achieve results that are beyond the power of the common man who doesn’t exercise, train, and play the sport. We see that athletes achieve great results due to their habit of working on themselves.

We also notice that people who live together for many years develop similar perceptions; they understand each other without words. And all this occurs as a consequence of the habit of living under one roof, seeing and feeling each other involuntarily, and reaching mutual inclusion in each other this way.

In much the same way, whole nations and civilizations were formed some time ago by way of people who were different and foreign to each other interacting together until they developed certain characteristics that became specific to that nation.

This goes to say that the law of habit becoming second nature is particularly necessary to us, so that even through actions that we do not desire and forms of interaction that are unnatural to us, we can acquire qualities that we choose against our own nature. These new qualities already exist in us, and it is due to them that we build ourselves.

Our Goal Is to Reach Harmony with Nature

We were born with only one egoistic desire to enjoy, and all else in life is not important to us. The same goes for a baby, coming out of his mother’s womb; he thinks about himself, he only feels himself and does not feel the world surrounding him. After a few weeks, he begins to open his eyes, hear, gradually activate his organs of perception, and perceive other people. And so he gets what he wants to from life, from his environment (primarily through his mother), in order to fulfill all of his needs.

We need to understand that this egoistic desire given to us at birth was received on purpose so that, with the help of habit becoming second nature, another altruistic form could be built above it: the form of bestowal and unity.

Now, we are in an opposite state; we are separated; each one of us wants to gain at the expense of the other; none of us takes anyone else into account, and additionally, we all are in opposition and disagreement with each other. However, nature has purposefully created such a negative quality in us so that by using the power we have at our disposal, we would build a positive, kind form of connection between us, precisely from this negative quality.

We will build it comprehensively and consciously. In this way, we will arrive at unity having created the image of a human similar to that general law of nature that is directed at bestowal: kind, and loving.

Then we will realize that this law is not bad, that all of those evil forces whose effects we feel in the form of adversity (such as divorce, drug addiction, terrorism, fear of the threat of an atomic war, conflict between countries, diseases, and environmental, economic, and financial crises), which seem to us to be negative impacts from nature, we realize they all are needed so that we can offset them with the forces of bestowal, the forces of our love and our unity. Today, if we perceive the impact of this one law to be negative, it is only because we are opposite to it.

This happens in our daily lives. If it gets cold or hot, I need to understand what to do in order to balance out these anomalies and bring the temperature to a normal state. If I were to submerge under water, I would feel a strong overload of pressure. If I were to ascend high up into the mountains, I would feel a shortage of oxygen, and I would find it difficult to breathe. Then, I would compensate for these deviations in order to balance myself with nature.

What means can we use to come into harmony with nature, which is demonstrating these various adversities? We feel blows coming at us from all over. Humanity feels itself united under the common threat that is befalling it.

We understand that our qualities are opposite to the qualities of nature and we must compensate for this and work opposite to our qualities.

If at the time nature exerts a negative impact upon us, we would overcome ourselves, correct ourselves, and correspond to it according to our abilities, we would perceive such impacts as positive and balanced. Then, environmental problems would be solved, family relationships would be reconciled, connections between countries would be strengthened, the economy would strengthen, and our lives would become happy and comfortable.

We are given these opportunities in order to gradually make changes within ourselves and between us. On this path, we will draw nearer to general nature and feel ourselves in overall harmony with it.

To Not Want to Leave!

We study that nature is one Law that affects all of us as one whole and wants to bring us in balance with it. Then, uniting into one, we will begin to understand the world we live in.

We can come to this connection through a good attitude towards each other, which we do not want but should achieve through a game, using the rule “habit becomes second nature.” How can we accomplish this? This needs to be implemented in the environment that surrounds us, in human society.

Every person has a certain status with respect to society. And we need to build such systems of relations between a person and society in which everyone will feel obliged to society and that the well-being of society depends on him, and his well-being depends on society.

To accomplish this, we need to reorganize the form of human relations that we have developed guided by our ego, and the essence of which is “to everyone according to his egoistic needs.” And so, today this principle does not work, and the current crisis is general and integral.

Thus, we need to create a new form of people’s relations with their environment based on the fact that we all depend on each other. If the environment requires a person to have a good attitude, it should give him examples of correct behavior, like a mother does raising her child.

Society that surrounds us should completely change its effect on each of us. And above all, this refers to the media and education systems. They need to be re-organized immediately, changed in order to give everyone a sense of the need to change the relations between us, as well as our relationship to the environment. After all, the environment is a kind of incubator, where we will develop properly. The temperature, humidity, and oxygen level, all of these parameters are set in the incubator in the optimal range so that healthy chickens hatch quickly and in comfortable conditions.

We must build around ourselves such a beautiful “greenhouse,” an environment, in which we will feel cozy, warm, and pleasant so that we would not want to leave! Like a baby grows in his mother’s womb in complete safety, where everything is created for his normal development, in this way, we should build our environment in which everyone develops properly and comfortably.

By building such an environment for our own benefit and for the benefit of everyone else (each one should care for all the rest), a person eventually builds his big family; we become brothers.

A New Profession: Human

Our attitude towards nature, towards that one law which obliges us to connect with each other into one whole, is manifested within the environment. That’s why our attitude towards the environment, building it on the basis of this law, is more important than the attitude towards Nature itself. The main thing is to build one’s environment.

It’s not for nothing that thousands and millions of people are forced to leave their jobs and become unemployed; we need to open courses for teachers, educators, and facilitators. In fact, in this work, each of us is a teacher, an educator, and an assistant in relation to others. Therefore, everyone will have to go through this learning process and acquire a new “profession,” meaning to become a “Human Being” in a new society. Each of us should rise to a level where we’ll be able to understand what happens in Nature, and what is going on inside of us, what forms of relationships we can build with each other.

According to research, if a person finds himself in an environment where there is mutual influence, he can’t escape. This compels him, envelops him, and unwittingly or not, he changes. We see how the environment raises our children just by examples. The environment educates us, and in our life, we acquire new forms of behavior, relationships, and a new scale of values.

That’s why we don’t even count our desires, be they the desires for food, sex, family, money, power, knowledge, or hundreds of other things. We should look not at how to use these desires, but at their direction (and this is the most important!). In other words, the most important thing is solely my intention in the use of my “I” with all of my desires. I must transform the use of all my abilities for the benefit of society, and then my “I” will turn into “we.” And from the notion of “we,” which is like the gathering of individuals, we will arrive at the concept of “One.” And this “One” is already in balance, in unity with the only Law that governs us.

Then, a person becomes a Human Being, and begins to understand his nature and general Nature. On this path, he studies a lot of inner laws, the laws of psychology and the universe, and he absorbs everything that exists in nature, reaching its highest degree, the degree of that single force that affects us, and in the form which today we perceive as the crisis, it invites us to approach It. This course is designed to teach a person how to become a Human, how to reach the best, safest, and most comfortable, healthy state. Therefore, we should be thankful to this situation that leads us to a new era, to the world full of goodness.

However today, we have not yet begun this process and are not yet aware of it; our lives seem pointless; we are fearful of what awaits our children and grandchildren. So people don’t want to bear children and don’t even understand their place in this world. But everything is just the opposite! In the real sense of this word, “crisis” means a new birth, the threshold of a new humanity. The realization of our greatest hopes lies ahead of us.

We have to begin to realize this single law, and in a very short time, within a few weeks, we’ll feel how much it works, how “habit becomes second nature,” how much we can’t live without showing a good attitude towards each other. And if by chance we forget about it, we must remind each other while we’re together, united, when everyone feels the others, what a warm and desired state this is so that we want to return there again.

Let’s hope that due to our mutual support, we’ll be able to come to this state where a game, a habit, will help us achieve the good nature of love.

Two Forces – One Law

Question: The question about the existence of a single upper force, which controls the entire creation, causes an essential argument between people: Some believe that it exists, and others that it does not. Do you belong to the first, the approach that is inherent to religions?

Answer: No, it does not pertain to religions. I build entirely on the practical evaluation of
nature without any prior assumptions. This approach neither pertains to religion nor faith, nor any other direction, which has historic roots and no other basis.

Question: If we rely on the study of nature, how do we understand “the law that includes all the laws”?

Answer: If we were to supplement this lecture with scientific data from research and experiments, it would be the actual proof, which precedes the questions. There really are many opinions, but we rely on the data from the evaluations of nature and the human 
society.

There used to be a notion that nature is one, and we only scrape some tiny grains of knowledge from it, which do not seem to be related to one another. But now physics, chemistry, biology, zoology, and other sciences are already interconnected. We study the foundations of each one of them, atoms and their different kinds of connections. These foundations are broad, common forces, but at every level of nature: still, vegetative, animate, and human, they operate according to the level.

For example, if the force in the atom attracts and rejects the particles, in an animal body it compresses and expands the lungs, and on the level of the brain it manifests in the form of a contradiction between agreement and doubt. Two opposite tendencies operate, but they are controlled by one force, which balances them, because all of nature strives towards 
balance.

The presence of two forces in nature does not contradict the existence of one law, which controls both forces. Modern science states that we depend on each other, and the manifestation of the crisis on the human level obligates us to realize that we all exist in one system. And this also pertains to nature, but to the “human” nature.

As we study the climate and other processes in the world, we learn that every phenomenon concerns everyone. However, at the given stage we see a purely broken picture because we only perceive a small part of our reality. But because we suffer and experience unpleasant states, we should study them as quickly as possible and thus turn negative forces into positive ones.

From Savage to Human Being

If the term “force of nature” is not completely clear, we can explain the stages of development to a regular person looking for a real good, with empirical evidence. It’s clear to all of us that a positive attitude to one another is good, absence of crime is good, and serenity and safety are also good. If we help each other and everyone will have what the others have, this will be better than our present miserable life! Everyone would agree with this.

Great! Now let’s acknowledge the affect of the environment on us since it can be seen at every given step in life. Any group can manipulate its members through persuasion. A person can be forced to think in a completely opposite way if there are 20-30 people around him who say that black is white. This is a proven fact that can’t be denied.

Therefore, if the environment does in fact influence an individual, we can create an artificial environment where everyone will treat each other well. We will oblige everyone to behave in this manner, and every transgression will be answered with polite criticism at first, and then with stiff denial.

There is no other choice. After all, we wish to live having everything that a human being requires: a home, food, family, health, pension, vacation, and so on. All this in normal proportions and not in the form of many zeros in our bank accounts, meaning in accordance with one’s natural needs.

If you desire this, you have an opportunity to create this environment, where everyone will care for everyone else. And this will happen only by changing our attitude to one another. In addition, even if we treat each other well out of desperation, artificially by accepting the mode of behavior and acting as in good environment, thereby we acquire a habit, which becomes our second nature. We actually become like that!

Until now we were savages, ready to swallow up everything around us. By joining this game, we literally turn ourselves inside out like a glove. And then over the course of some time, everyone will change and from being a savage, everyone will turn into a human being.

As a result, we become a completely new humanity: We reveal additional opportunities. By acquiring balance with nature, I begin to feel it, and then I reveal new abilities in me with the help of which I create progressive mechanisms and turn worlds upside down, literally. I know all the laws of nature because I am similar to nature.

What’s unreal about this? Let’s play and build such relationships. We have no other choice! Everything depends on education, meaning the influence of the environment. We are sufficiently mature, experienced, and intelligent people. We see a threatening future and we provide a piece of advice that lacks any mysticism.

Humanity has no chance of escaping this development, and we are offering a remedy that prevents illness. All the negative impacts of nature are brought about by our incongruence with it. Therefore, any blow that I experience indicates imbalance with nature. For example, if it’s cold, I need to turn on the heat or put on warm clothes; if it’s noisy, I need either to install a noise reduction system or close my ears. In other words, I must carry out some action in response to every phenomenon.

That Loud Word “Nature”

Question: Why is “nature” the most commonly used word during these lessons?

Answer: It is because today we are finding ourselves in a certain sphere, which affects us and forces us to react. We are surrounded from all sides, and we have nowhere to run. Therefore, I call this phenomenon “nature,” and I clearly see one law in it that affects everyone on all the levels: the law of general equilibrium of global and integral systems.

The research of different systems shows that one law aimed at balancing the system is acting in them all. Nature tends to maximize a calmest, most comfortable, and balanced state. Like water seeks to fill the lowest level, so does nature. According to this tendency, instead of being separated, we, too, should unite and be one. Numerous studies conducted by scientists who research human society, proves this fact.

Question: It is clear that ecology and the state of our bodies depend on nature; this is our conceptualization of nature as a determining factor. However, it turns out that nature also controls the economic crisis, unemployment, and bankruptcy?

Answer: Since we are talking about the general education of humanity in an integral and global world, this means that we examine precisely this world. It represents a common system, and the concept “integral” means that all the parts of this system are connected to each other and activated by one law, one force, which directs them to connection and balance. This is what I call nature.

In other words, I don’t mean anything that does not pertain to the still, vegetative, animate, or human levels. I am only saying that all existent laws pertain to the integral global system and are under the control of one law:  the law of equilibrium, homeostasis.

We see this law in physics also: Each body strives for rest, stillness, a static state, and a minimal use of energy. This is how the difference in temperature and pressure reaches balance in order to achieve similarity. There is nothing to argue about here. These are laws of thermodynamics, which are taught in school.

I explain this to humanity so that it has a foundation for perceiving the global world where everyone depends on each other, experiences the effect of one law, and needs to follow it. My task is to bring humanity to this worldview. Thus in addition to upbringing, I also give you knowledge. People need philosophy, psychology, and broad knowledge. This learning process does not end with a short course; it continues for one’s whole life.

Our Urgent Intervention Is Required

Question: The idea of the program of development existing in nature is usually associated with a religious worldview.

Answer: That is not true! I do not associate the program of development with the upper force. If you want to move a phenomenon from state 1 to the more advanced state 2, you need to know both states and the method of advancement. So, it happens. Nature does not make mistakes; it knows exactly how to direct every creature in the best way: towards what? to balance with the environment!

At every stage, nature creates from each type of desire its developed form most suitable for the environment. And there is no need for the upper force here. This is the law of development, and it affects us in the same way.

How can we as a human society move from our current state to the next one, to be balanced with the environment so that we feel well? Here the law of development stops because a human must realize his next balanced form and advance towards it on his own.

That means that we are in a particular crisis because it requires human intervention in the development process. A human being should become wiser and understand the law of nature, the trend of development, and then continue his own development due to the environment. That is, I develop myself through the environment, and nature just awakens the need in me: I cannot remain calm; I feel the crisis but do not see how to get out of it.

Why? because I should know the next state, explore it, understand, and feel that it is missing, and with the help of the environment, play creating nature on my own, which forces me to develop correctly.

Is it possible? Yes, it is! Now, we have to act instead of nature, not to wait until it starts to push us according to its program; we need to understand the program, become armed with the mind to build a system of development, and to advance.