There are several thousand children of different ages in our international educational organization. We begin this work with children aged 3 and continue through age 18. This is a very wide span.
We know how important the age criterion is for the children’s upbringing and communication with one another. Naturally, this is the first thing we take into consideration when we assemble children from different countries. We try to set up a truly integral camp.
We compose a program that includes many excursions, discussions, songs, and common meals with participating. The children prepare the food, set the tables, and clean up after them. They service themselves completely. They are together 24 hours a day with educators present as well. And they go through the method of unification in a very interesting way.
The most important thing is to let a child feel, “This is how you depend on others and how others depend on you. This is how you perceive the world, why you perceive it as you do, how your attitude toward others changes your perception of the world, and why it is that when you interact with others correctly, you suddenly feel safe, inspired, enthusiastic, and stronger.”
We show children how to build the right interconnections. We give them the appropriate material about human psychology and about our negative qualities. In fact, we practically don’t have any positive qualities. It is written, “A person’s heart is evil from birth.” That is, we are all born egoists. It’s good for children to grasp this correctly, to see real expressions of their personalities, habits, and egoism in relation to each other, and that they are always trying to profit by interacting with others.
So how can we transcend our natural drive? How can we connect with others in order to feel that bestowal, rather than reception, is pleasant and easy? This requires tremendous will power.
But we have to show children that bestowing is very simple, easy, fascinating, and enthralling. This can be a wonderful adventure where we are all so drawn to one another that we rise above ourselves and feel as though we’re flying.
Giving a child the sensation of a new type of communication is very important. It leaves an impression or “informational recording” in him.
If these recordings follow one another with great intensity, at the same time as children recognize their constant descents into egoism, resulting in a descent-ascent-descent sequence, then a child begins to be in control of himself and understand how he can rise to a level where he will always feel safe, in love and friendship, surrounded by good friends.
That is, we show a child the obvious benefit of this kind of communication and unity. The most important thing in this process is to teach him to quickly come out of himself and enter this communication. This is a small, psychological tension that later stops being tension. It becomes habit or second nature once a child does it a certain number of times. And then it becomes easy for him.
When children return home after such a camp, they can set up similar small communities and practice within them. Besides, they stay connected with each other virtually. In the system of our constant studies, they continually perfect their ascent above themselves and their unity.
They really begin to feel something special in this unity, a different psychological state, comfort, and a life that’s special, unbounded by anything, and not confined to narrow boundaries.