Dr. Anatoly Ulianov: A friend of mine who works as a tour guide in India started having difficulties at work because the tourists say she is in nirvana, does not react adequately, and cannot explain anything properly. Won’t the children entering this integral system become like angels, detached from reality?

Dr. Michael Laitman: No. I would not call this state angelic. The schizophrenic, painful, and incorrect division of the world into parts is explained by the fact that a person does not correct himself.

He is not working with his egoism to rise above it and perceive two levels of attitude to life. He is not prepared for this and is not in a collective that can create a new sense together with him.

Your friend is an unfortunate woman who is risking losing her normal, egoistic, earthly approach to life and ending up in a bad, inadequate state. Our upbringing is not based on the Indian method, which destroys or reduces egoism, but on developing it, as strange as it may sound. We are saying that everything is built upon the juxtaposition of opposites.

The world is not a struggle of opposites, but rather their proper combination. Dialectics is right in saying that the world consists of two opposites, but it is mistaken in thinking that one of them should be destroyed.

One of them should be raised above the other and the two of them should be used correctly, like dumbbells. This is a dipole. Within the tension between the plus and the minus, we can find the quality that connects them. With its help we will discover the true, integral world. It is integral; it does not destroy any of its parts.

I understand this woman’s state, but I cannot offer her any counsel. This does not happen to our children. On the contrary, every day a healthy egoism is expressed in them even more, and they become coarser, tougher. However, they understand where their egoism comes from.

At the same time, we conduct practical and theoretical studies with them in order to make this egoism clearer, understand it, separate from it, and research it from aside, studying both one’s own egoism and that of others. Everyone changes places in order to become included in one another: Right now I am like you, you are like him, and so on.

I have to know all my friends, come out of myself, and play the role of each of them. This enables us to become integrally included in one another, and this mutual inclusion gradually creates a new entity—integral perception, which does not include “me” but only “we.”

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).

The picture of the mutual universal dependence is starting to be revealed in our world only now, but in fact, we were always that way. I hope that this revelation will happen in the near future, if not in our generation, then in the next, or the one after it. Judging by the speed of the movement towards the expression of this integration, we can suppose that it will become clear very soon.

The whole world has to reach the understanding that the desirable state is the correct perception of reality, meaning one that isn’t distorted as in this world, where we exist in a small fragment of the entire universe. Everyone will reach this understanding, voluntarily or involuntarily.

In this world, we exist in an uncertain state where our perception is fragmentary and very hazy. There are certain vague, internal foretastes: something exists, existed, and will exist. There are riddles and answers. Fortunetellers’ forecasts come true, and everyone says there is destiny and life after death.

We have to understand that the true state will be revealed when we become similar to the integral nature, when we become the same single whole as Nature and connect all of Nature’s other parts through ourselves.

Then we will discover that all of its parts were always connected. It was only in man’s egoism that he perceived everything as divided, thus ruining everything inside of him. But outside of us, Nature is absolutely ideal, seamless, and perfect. By revealing this, we become the same as it, thus rising to its level of perfection and eternity.

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).

The collective has a special quality: When separate people unite into “one whole,” they reveal the unity of their opposites.

This holds within it a completely new quality, since none of the individuals have unity within them. This new quality is formed among them, or above them, and each member of the collective participates in creating it. If a person doesn’t make efforts and doesn’t give of himself to this unity, then he doesn’t exist in it.

It turns out that every person tunes into this unity and acquires it to the fullest extent without it splitting into parts. And thanks to one’s contribution to this common field, common desire or aspiration, through the integration each person begins to sense unity and a new level of perception.

Perception through integration is completely opposite to the egoistic, individual perception. A person who has it feels and perceives the world in a slightly different way.

As he becomes included in others, it’s as if he consists of them. He feels them within him and experiences the common unity. He also feels the world within him, and the perception of the world depends on his qualities, inclinations, state, mood, attitude toward the world, and toward himself. That is, he suddenly starts to understand that the world doesn’t exist on the outside, but within him.

This happens completely naturally, a result of the uniting his friends’ opposite qualities within him. Together, they form one common desire that becomes the platform upon which he feels a new, integral world, while at the same time becoming an integral vessel himself, an organ of perception.

A person already understands that the world does not exist externally. But when he begins to see the world’s total dependence on him, a psychological shift occurs in him.

However, the world depended on him even before that. It’s just that he was immersed in his individualism and could not perceive reality as anything but existing outside of him. Yet, this was a false picture of the world.

Now, having come out of individualism into the integral perception of the world, he understands that everything was that way before as well, and that perception occurs only in this way. We perceive the world inside of us, in our qualities. Under the influence of society or the environment, we gain the abilities to change these qualities, to somehow alter them. Now a person does not see the world only through the quality that seems to him as his own, but also through all the other, external qualities, which he now perceives as his own.

If we take a child—as opposed to an adult who has a load of impressions and perceptions from his previous life—and completely isolate him, the child will feel the world within him. Everything depends on which impressions a person receives during his life.

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).

Dr. Anatoly Ulianov: When we talk about perception of reality, I don’t really understand what you mean and there are many questions left.

Dr. Michael Laitman: Give me a summary of what you know about the perception of reality from the standpoint of psychology, and I will tell you what I know from the standpoint of my profession.

Dr. Ulianov: This is an entire field in general psychology and over the last century, great discoveries have been made in it, especially during combat in the Second World War and its aftermath. As strange as it may seem, this was precisely the time when great discoveries such as Kurt Lewin’s theory were made. Lewin’s theory is about the psychological force field. Lewin was no less of a genius than Freud, but most people ignore his theory and continue to live as they always have.

The discovery he made is that a person’s perception is determined by his necessity, that it is not closed off within the person, but that perception is a system that consists of both a person and the environment. Accordingly, the necessity of the pressure is formed precisely in an environment, which changes a person’s perception of the external world.

We‘ve said that when children unite in a group the right way, something emerges that enables a child to perceive fundamentally new information, which he could never discover on his own. What is that information, what is so special about this force field, and how does this mechanism work?

Dr. Laitman: Are you talking about the possibility of integral perception of information?

Dr. Ulianov: Yes.

A Person and the Environment

Dr. Laitman: In fact, there is individual and integral perception. Individual perception is also integral, but unconsciously. There is also integral information that is perceived consciously, which enables one to attune and expand the boundaries of perception. As a perceiving object, I can attune and form myself under the influence of a surrounding environment that I chose in advance, by encountering and coming in contact with it, thus entering an integral connection with it.

This happens in life as well. If I want to be a computer programmer, I have to go to a programming workshop that is staffed by good programmers. I have to listen to them praising their mastery, caring for it, and admiring good workmanship. That way they will evoke my desire or aspiration to this profession. Then I will be able to expand the boundaries of my perception, I will acquire specific sensations and a sensitivity for things that I completely didn’t feel before.

Everything depends on the environment. If you leave a baby in the forest, it will grow up an animal. Depending on the environment you place it in, that is what it will become. This points to the fact that a person can be formed and regulated.
It’s not that he will become different. We have already noticed a while ago that we are a product of the environment. But how to change ourselves under the influence of the environment is, of course, a very interesting question. We look ahead, research it, and form groups of children to elucidate it.

We are looking for possibilities to unite children by shared qualities, specific abilities, or a natural inclination toward something specific. Or vice versa, we can create groups out of completely opposite individuals who will unite with each other to create a diverse collective. The research can be very interesting.

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).

When a person builds the right intention over the egoism, he discovers that nothing is forbidden, that Nature is infinitely good in everything it does to him and in the way it leads us.

Dr. Anatoly Ulianov: What is the right intention?

Dr. Michael Laitman: Integrality, the right interconnection. When I include another person’s desires into my own, and he does the same, then we are treating each other the right way.

We are both egoists, but above our egoism we build a reciprocal interface so that I perceive his egoism as mine and he perceives my egoism as his. It turns out that we are both working on our common egoism. That is, we spin simultaneously like two wheels, without any resistance to one another.

Suppose he has 50 pounds of egoism and I have 100. His egoism is against me and mine is against him. But if above this egoism we build our mutual action and become included in one another, then we begin to perceive the system that raises us above the level of our interlinked egoism; we feel integration, love, and connection. Our mutual attainment corresponds to the common egoism that we use to connect with one another.

Our intentions can be measured in units of our inner efforts. Of course, this is difficult to do today. We still cannot measure a person’s ethical and moral efforts. But in principle, this can be measured.

We are building a new layer of a person’s existence, a new dimension. Let’s call it “spiritual.” This is the future of humanity where everything that is on the earthly level will become the foundation for the superstructure that we have to create.

When egoism grows to its maximum level and we fully realize it, we will relocate to that superstructure with our thoughts and feelings and will stop feeling our existence on the earthly level completely. It will simply disappear from our sensations. My “I” will exist only in the spiritual superstructure, and I will associate myself only with this layer.

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).