The Forthcoming Stages Until The End Of The Crisis, Explained By Economists And By Kabbalah

Kabbalah's Model of a New WorldA question I received: What stages will we have to go through to get to the end of the crisis?

My Answer:
1. Economists and manufacturers believe that apparently, the crisis is necessary in order to “change” our world: to rid us of excess manufacturing facilities, to shift to new technologies and means of production, to raise the consumers’ qualification when it comes to assimilating the newest forms of production and services. This is why the crisis has to go through the stages that it does: restriction of production, optimization of business, implementation of new technologies, elimination of physically and morally outdated products, cautious growth and assimilation of new products.

2. Kabbalah says that the crisis will change our society: every person will assume his objective, rational place in the integral human society. This will happen by virtue of one’s desire to receive what one needs and to give everything that one can. One will enjoy the well-being of the society and the revelation of the Upper Source of fulfillment, the Creator, which is revealed through “love for one’s neighbor.” The path can be long and difficult, one of wars and famine (this is the natural egoistic development), or it can be quick and pleasant, by means of revealing the Creator and His plan, and by coming closer to Him (the Kabbalistic development).

See the article “Freedom of Will” and others.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Baal HaSulam Describes the Cause of Suffering and Crises In the World
Laitman.com Post: Baal HaSulam Describes the Society of the Future
Laitman.com Post: The Possibilities of Our Development – War or a Peaceful Transition

Thought Is The Most Powerful Force In The World

Attaining Correction With Less BloodshedA question I received: Do the thoughts of someone who’s advancing in spirituality influence the world more than the thoughts of someone whose point in the heart hasn’t awakened yet?

My Answer: Our egoistic desires and thoughts (the heart and mind) don’t have any influence on the world, since they are entirely controlled from Above. So why is it written that all of man’s thoughts and desires affect the world? It’s because the world is influenced by the degree of one’s lack of correction, or one’s discrepancy with the Reshimo that surfaces in him. However, the world isn’t affected by one’s personal aspiration.

In other words, when one has uncorrected desires and thoughts, he influences the world with their lack of correction. However, the only conscious and direct influence we can have is through a desire that matches the Reshimo or the direction of our development. In other words, it’s possible only by realizing the Reshimo correctly.

Indeed, everything depends on the force of the screen, the quality of bestowal – only this influences the world. Thought is the most powerful force in the world. And generally speaking, the greater a force is, the more concealed from us it is. When a person rises spiritually, the power of his thoughts increases. Physical forces operate only in our dimension of time, place, and movement, whereas spiritual forces are not limited by space, time, and place. See Baal HaSulam’s article “Thou Hast Hemmed Me In Behind and Before.”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Evil Eye Is Our Own Egoism
Laitman.com Post: The Only Point of Freedom Is Your Reaction to the Creator

There’s A Grand World Outside Our Bitter Radish

From item 40 of the “Introduction to the Book of Zohar,” by Baal HaSulam:

“And I know that it is completely unaccepted in the eyes of some philosophers. They cannot agree that man, whom they think of as low and worthless, is the center of the magnificent creation. But they are like a worm that is born inside a radish and thinks that the world of the Creator is as bitter and as dark as the radish it was born in. But as soon as the shell of the radish [of one’s egoism] breaks and it peeps out [comes out of the egoism, of the intention, “for his own sake,” and enters bestowal and love for others], it wonders [in awe of the Upper World that it revealed] and says: “I thought the whole world was the size of my radish, but now I see before me a grand, beautiful and wondrous world!”

radish_w