Dr. Anatoly Ulianov: The Internet has been in existence for several decades by now. In Europe and America, an entire generation has already been raised on it who are now 40 years old. As a psychologist, I encounter these people and I know that they have lost the elementary skills of natural physical communication. Therefore, I feel cautious and am wondering whether man will lose these skills if he becomes immersed in our virtual game system?
Dr. Michael Laitman: Development does not depend on us. In the best case scenario, we are observers, if we are even able to observe and properly assess what is happening, because it depends entirely on the development of our nature.
We have created the internet because our development from within pushed us to do this. We did not create it 100 or 1,000 years ago because our inner, egoistic consciousness and desire did not yet push us to it.
The time has come, so the necessary technological conditions have been created. The need for this kind of communication arose and that’s why it emerged and came about. There is no point going back or trying to go against this flow. On the contrary, I would look ahead. After all, through this system humanity is discovering itself as more connected, and not in the physical sense. Besides, what does a connection through our bodies give us?
Today we are not using this connection to the full extent, except to fulfill our petty egoism, to make a profit or manipulate people.
What if we started using the internet as a good, virtual community, which will then elevate us from the virtual connection to the integral, spiritual one? Then, with people’s spirit and proper communication, they will acquire a completely different sensation of togetherness and of each other. This is impossible without the internet, so I look at all of this as positive.
In general, I don’t see anything negative in humanity or its progress. Of course, this progress could have been much more productive and merciful, but that depends on humanity’s behavior in this process, the extent to which we do not resist it, understand it, and participate in it to the best of our ability.
In my opinion, the exit from the physical contact to the virtual, egoistic contact, followed by the transformation of the egoistic, virtual contact to the altruistic, integral one, will bring us to a completely different state. Gradually, we really will lose the sensation of the still, vegetative, and animate world, and will cross over to a state where everything is determined by energy, information, and our thoughts and desires, instead of the comfort of our animate bodies.
This is the next phase of human development. This is where Nature is pushing us. The phases we have gone through clearly show that humanity has to climb to the level of thoughts, desires, and information where we are all interconnected. This, strictly speaking, is what defines a community as human. The human community is not our bodies, but precisely the inner filling.
The above points were taken from the book The Psychology of the Integral Society by Dr. Michael Laitman and Dr. Anatoly Ulianov. Also available as eBook (PDF, Kindle & ePub formats).
