A question I received: When people suffer, they unite. Now that the entire world is suffering, there’s a chance for unity, but won’t this unity dissipate the moment the situation improves?

My Answer: People aren’t uniting because of hunger. Rather, the system we live in is being revealed as a network that lacks the right interconnection. This is why the unity will not take place on the level of the banks, the economy or human relationships. This crisis will drive everyone into a dead-end, and the situation will improve only when people connect with each other. The recognition of evil will continue to grow, and accordingly, people will correct themselves more and more.

Today, the whole world is beginning to work for the Creator. The whole world – which comprises one soul – must ascend up the spiritual degrees all the way to the World of Infinity. In the past, only a small group of people wet through this path of ascent to the World of Infinity, but today, the whole world must go through it.

This is called, “the coming of the Messiah,” and the dissemination of the wisdom of Kabbalah to the whole world is called, “the horn of the Messiah.” There is a law that states: the general and the particular are equal. Therefore, the whole world will undergo all the same processes as the group.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: We Have to Reveal the Magnificence of the System We’re In
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Kabbalah Today Article: Echoes of the Future
Baal HaSulam Article: “Messiah’s Horn”

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A question I received: You are saying that the egoism of the young generation cannot be stopped: an 11-year old child can stab another child. Where is this going? What will happen in ten to fifteen years, when these 10-year-old children will be 20 years old?

My Answer: First of all, children don’t feel obligated to follow our laws because they cannot be punished. They cannot be brought to court because of their age. So what will happen? As a child grows older, the protective force grows in him, as well as fear, the need to live in the world as a grown-up. So, one thing that would help is if we treated them like grown-ups.

But in truth, our laws are not suitable for children. There should be legal regulations for every age group, and they should be separate for boys and for girls. We should know what to demand of them and how to punish them. They should see what the right form of behavior is according to the system of reward and punishment.

A child should know this – this is a true system of upbringing. It is a system that can work against the cruel animalistic nature of human beings and is able to form or create a real person. For each action, there should be a corresponding reaction. This is how a mother raises an infant: she gives him incentive for one thing and punishment for another.

This is how we have to mold the “clay.” And children will understand this, since they are “clay” that contains the desire to receive pleasure. We can influence this desire by telling it: if you take on this form, you will receive something sweet, and if you take on a different form, you will feel bitterness. This is how we can create a human being.

However, if we permit him to do anything he wants to and suggest negative forms of behavior, such as the ones children learn from cruel, disgusting games where people kill each other, and if this is what they see on the TV and the Internet and there is no punishment for this from the society, then what will be the result of this kind of upbringing? An adorable infant will grow to become a miserable child.

So, we must first educate the parents about the process of creating a system of upbringing for their children. Otherwise, the next generation will surely be even worse than the previous one.
(From the lesson on Baal HaSulam’s article, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose,” on 02.17.2009)

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We are nothing but a desire to receive that is being controlled by pleasure. This desire (we) goes from one state to another under the influence of two forces: attraction and repulsion. Thus, there are only two components in the entire creation: a desire for pleasure, and a pleasure that sets it in motion. They exist on all levels and stages – in solids, crystals, liquids, biological and chemical elements, and in all inanimate and animate matter. The foundation of everything is a desire to receive pleasure, and the fulfillment that is opposite to it.

A question arises: If all that exists is only the desire to receive and its fulfillment, then it would seem that the system is static. So why is there motion in it from the very beginning? After all, the Creator initially created the desire to receive with the help of the force of bestowal. Hence, this system should reach equilibrium and stop changing upon reaching a balance between the two forces. So why is there no such stop, but only permanent motion?

The answer is that it is because there is one more force at work in this system. The force operating in the creation includes two components: the Creator wants to give pleasure to the desire He created, and in addition, He also wants to bring this desire to equivalence to Himself. Hence. the desire has a feeling of pleasure, and inside of this feeling, it reveals another feeling – the sensation of the Giver.

This is the reason for our questions, “What for? Why?” And these questions just won’t allow us to sit back and enjoy life. Otherwise, we would reach a balance and be like animals. Everything would be fine and good, and all of Nature would stop upon reaching the point of balance.

However, the goal of creation is to bring the entire creation, including the still, vegetative, animate and human levels, to equivalence with the Creator. For this reason, motion is incorporated in everything. But who or what sets everything in motion? It is not the desire to enjoy and receive pleasure, but the feeling of the Giver, which is revealed inside the pleasure.
(From the lesson on Baal HaSulam’s article, “The Freedom,” on 03.06.2009)

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In the News (from National Geographic): Today many scientists say there is no conflict between their faith and their work, and few scientists seem to think much about religion in their research. In a 1997 survey in the science journal Nature, 40 percent of U.S. scientists said they believe in God. “In the last few years astronomy has come together so that we’re now able to tell a coherent story” of how the universe began, said Joel Primack, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “This story does not contradict God, but instead enlarges [the idea of] God.”

In the News (from The Stanford Review ): Students and staff packed Memorial Auditorium [at Stanford University] to hear Dr. Francis Collins, the renowned head of the Human Genome Project and author of The Language of God discuss his views on science, faith, and the ease with which the two can be reconciled. According to Collins, “naturalism has its limits.” Collins cited pointers to God in nature such as the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics,” and the precise tuning of physical constants during the Big Bang. Examples of such improbability suggest that there is a creator God. There is an obvious way to reconcile [faith and science], Collins shows, through a rejection of extremes, and the embracing of “harmony in the middle.”

My Comment: The study of Kabbalah enables people to change their intention from “for one’s own sake,” where one perceives our world, to the intention of “for the sake of one’s neighbor,” where one perceives the Upper World. By uniting with one’s “neighbors” through the intention “for the sake of one’s neighbor,” one discovers that others are a part of him and that everything in existence consists of two parts – myself and the Upper Force. See the section on “Perception.”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: We Will Evolve to Acquire Power Over All of Nature
Laitman.com Post: All of Evolution Is Aimed at Making Us Attain the Upper Level of Consciousness
Talk: “Perception of Reality”
Baal HaSulam Article: “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah”

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Today bankers and industrialists alike are saying that we lack the proper connection between us. We have natural resources and industries, we’ve printed enough money, we have the desire – we have everything! We lack only one thing: the ability to establish a working connection between all of these things.

Everything has suddenly stopped working, even though there is plenty of everything in the world: airplanes, cars, factories, banks, food, you name it. So why doesn’t the system work? It doesn’t work because we don’t know how to connect all the components! But weren’t we able to do this before?

Yes, we were, but now it’s as though someone on the “outside” has pressed a button, and the former connection stopped working. Now, a new connection is needed. It is like a game of Monopoly, where the rules of the game have changed, and we must learn the new rules. It is a new program, which is being revealed today in the form of a universal connection.

All of humanity will soon feel numb, frozen, and the standstill will keep increasing until the last bit of air escapes from the tires and the whole machine stops completely. This will go on until we find the right connection.

The right connection means that we should behave like a global society, a “small village” where everyone cares for everyone else. And this is only possible through love for your neighbor. So, until we follow the program of “love your neighbor as yourself,” we cannot put the system into working order. We can go to war with each other or do anything else – nothing will help. The problem is that the connection between us is broken, and there is nothing left for us to do but unite by rising above our egoism. This is the only thing that will help.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Fear and Suspicion Will Vanish If Everyone In the World Will Unite
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Interview: “Why All Values Have Depreciated”
Brochure: “Lecture in Arosa”
Baal HaSulam Article: “Peace in the World”

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A question I received: You said it is up to us to inform people of the Kabbalistic method, the laws of development and the solution to the crisis, because then G-20 leaders, including the American President, Barack Obama, and the Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, may finally see that there is no solution to the crisis except following the laws of Nature and explaining these laws to people. You talked beautifully about these issues with the Russian economist M. Khazin, but you did not say anything specific. Everything discussed was general, with the exception of your advice that we must focus on upbringing. However, you didn’t say anything specific or direct regarding what needs to be done to change the situation today, tomorrow, and in the future.

A brief retrospective: The planet’s resources have been depleted. There is not enough drinking water, there is global warming, bad ecology, deterioration of our health due to a wide use of hazardous toxic products, overpopulation on the planet, and we only have enough energy resources to provide for the earth’s population for just 29 more years. People have no time to adjust to the changes that are occurring at breakneck speed. Conflicts are now unavoidable.

My Answer: By “upbringing” I mean creating the “glue” between people, which will allow them to reach harmony with Nature. This will, in turn, make us successful and will regenerate new life.

Additional Comment: I have repeatedly stated that as soon as we begin to act in the proper direction, Nature will immediately react to our changes by treating us positively on all levels of our existence. We don’t have to wait until we will completely reeducate ourselves and others to start thinking globally. Let’s just begin, and we will soon find ourselves in Nature’s favorable surroundings, because we’ll no longer be in conflict with it.

(In the photo above, taken in Alaska in1994, I am on one of the planet’s disappearing ancient glaciers.)

Related Material:
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A Teleconference between the Kabbalist M. Laitman and the Russian economist, publicist, and political scientist M. Khazin – December 29, 2008

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Mary, a well-known, small-town moonshiner, decided to expand her enterprise and drive her competitor, Jane the moonshiner, out of business. In order to achieve this, Mary started selling moonshine to her customers in town on credit. Drinkers started coming from all over town, and the volume of sales skyrocketed, since after all, it was on credit!

But Mary was no fool – she kept receipts of every sale including the customer’s full legal name, driver’s license or passport number, and the payment due date. Her customers were also required to sign a contractual agreement.

To make things even better, Mary’s nephew was working for a bank at the time. As soon as he saw the pile of futures, he immediately got Mary a loan at the bank. Mary stocked up on sugar, and her business took off!

The bank had no problems giving her a loan, because the loan was securely guaranteed – if Mary couldn’t repay, her customers would have to pay up. But suddenly, the bank got an even better idea: they sorted the receipts according to their payment due date, issued bonds, and sold them to foreigners. Thus, the bank issued alcohol bonds guaranteed by the receipts, and brought in a flow of international capital. Happy foreigners started selling these bonds to one another, and their price went up. Nobody knew what the bonds represented, but since they were guaranteed by the bank and their value kept rising, people wanted to have them.

This would have continued, but since the bonds had almost matured, the bank was reminded that it was time to collect the money from either Mary or her customers. Obviously, her customers, the drunks, couldn’t pay, so Mary had to declare bankruptcy. Even the store that supplied Mary with sugar went out of business because of the sudden drop in sales. The cost of alcohol bonds on the stock exchange dropped by 95%, and the bank needed immediate rescuing at the expense of the non-drinkers.

Related Material:
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Kabbalah Today Article: Navigating Through the Financial Storm

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Two questions I received on the relationship between egoism and reproduction:

Question: Do people reproduce because they have too much egoism in their soul?

My Answer: When there is too much egoism in one’s soul, it’s difficult to correct it. It’s much easier to correct it by separating it into pieces, and then to correct every piece separately. This is why the population increases. It decreases, however, because this egoism brings suffering to people. This is the cycle of the universe.

Question: Why don’t people want to reproduce? Is it because they have corrected (eliminated) the egoism within them, or is it because they have too much egoism which brings them suffering?

My Answer: The lack of the desire to reproduce is the extreme form of egoism.

Related Material:
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Our friends from Sweden report that a TV channel in Goteborg, Sweden began broadcasting the film, “The Way to Yourself.” An audience of 600,000 read the following text in the television program:

“The Way to Yourself,” a documentary film by Semion Vinokur. In this film, Professor Michael Laitman explains that all our society and economic problems have just one cause – egoism. The film looks at why it is so difficult for us to understand and love one another, and how to accomplish this. The television program is organized by the Kabbalah group in Sweden.

The quality of the broadcast is very high. The program’s opening night was preceded by an interview with Kabbalah students Thomas and Mikhael by the local mass-media. The film is broadcast in the evening, four times per week, at the best viewing time for the television audience.

In addition, they will be showing the lesson series “Kabbalah Revealed” by Tony Kosinec from Canada. We hope this series will have a big audience and will help people to properly assess the situation that humanity has found itself in at the end of the 20th century.

My Comment: I would like to thank all those who advance this project, and who translate and edit the materials with so much responsibility and love!

Related Material:
Kabbalah Website in Swedish

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In the News (from The Wall Street Journal): “Unemployed Lose Fallback Options” The growing ranks of unemployed Americans are turning to the traditional fallbacks – retail, restaurants, customer service – to ride out a rough economy. In many cases, that desperation means that even educated workers must trade down to jobs below their potential and with lower pay.

My Comment: This reminds me of something the Russian poet, M.V. Issakovsky, once wrote:
“Now any trade is respected, it doesn’t matter which – A man is honored simply by having a job.”

If a person harmoniously blends into the global system, where we are all interconnected as parts of a body, if he performs his function, then it is a blessing for everyone. And he should then receive the appreciation of the whole of humanity!

Related Material:
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