Dr. Anatoly Ulianov: Why did people suddenly start uniting? They could have done that 100 or 200 years ago, to unite and reveal spirituality. But for some reason that didn’t happen. Moreover, people only started talking about group interaction in the 20th century. Forming groups and discussing common questions is an innovation of the 20th century. In the past this kind of thing simply didn’t exist.

Dr. Michael Laitman: Science has existed since ancient times. For example, Aristotle, Plato, and their predecessors wrote about the soul, about perception, and looked for the place where the soul exists. Yet, psychology as a science emerged and developed only in the 20th century.

Why did people wait so many centuries!? Where were these scientists a few thousand years ago, throughout which man did not understand who he is and what he is? There were some attempts to study ourselves before as well, but they were done on such a primitive level that one could only feel ashamed for those people!

They built cities, countries, conquered lands, and ruled them, but they couldn’t know anything about themselves. They discovered new lands, developed technologies and economy, and made revolutions. But what drove them to do that? Why didn’t they have an inner demand or need to find out, “Man, who are you?”

Apparently, this depends on our inner development. This necessity did not arise in us before, and therefore we did not engage in it; we didn’t have this question. If there is no question, then there is nothing to reveal and nothing to work on. I don’t have a 6th finger on my hand, and I don’t feel a need for it. So how can I wish for it to grow on my hand?

We are now entering a specific phase of development where an inner demand to know ourselves is being revealed in us. It is emerging because we have to enter the next level of perception and attainment.

Modern psychology formed 100 years ago and continues to develop to this day. But look at how it’s become part of our lives. Previously, it wasn’t a fashionable hobby even for the aristocrats, not to mention housewives. They couldn’t care less about psychology.

But now the world is becoming integral, interconnected, and interdependent. And the need is emerging to become familiar with psychology—that of the masses, the crowd, the individual, different nations, people of different ages, and the psychology of the family.

We are increasingly connecting a person’s inner state to his perception and attainment of the world, to his worldview. We are starting to feel that the world is a result or function of our inner states.

Parallel to psychology, the same ideas are being developed in physics. Einstein thought that everything in the world is relative, and Hugh Everett thought the same. Yet physics seems like a dry science. We think, “Oh well, engineering, what’s the big deal, really?” But physics is also starting to connect attainment, revelation, experimentation, and the changes happening in the world with the consideration of the researcher’s inner qualities.

If the researcher is moving or changing inside, that changes the world. It turns out that the sensation of time, space, and spatial movements are our inner coordinates, which do not exist outside of us. They can be different for different people. Therefore, our common understanding depends on how we juxtapose them.

Sometimes we envision light as particles and sometimes as waves. Whether something is moving or not depends on the observer. Is the observer standing or moving? What is happening with all of this?

Scientists have come right up to the boundary of the material world, where everything becomes totally smeared and unclear as to where everything is going. This is unclear to physicists and to psychologists, but they are close to understanding that only a new means of integral attainment of the world will lead us to the next level.

We will attain ourselves and the world precisely when we discover it inside of us. Then we will reach the conclusion that it only appears before us like a mirror, as if it exists outside of us, whereas in reality it is all within us and there is nothing on the outside. Everything that is solid, spatial, and global—all the way until outer space—only seems to exist. But in truth, these are just our own sensations.

When psychologists comprehend that, psychology will become the most important science! We will be able to measure our integral force and accordingly measure the attainment of the world’s boundaries and qualities. We will gain control over the functional dependencies between this new, integral organ of perception and what is felt inside of it. This will be the new psychology. It will include all other sciences because man will be placed at the center of this perception.

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).