The Book “The Brave New World Of Work”

the-brave-new-world-of-work_w Opinion: (Ulrich Beck, the author of The Brave New World of Work): “Those who kick up a fuss only about open unemployment fail to see the really new phenomenon that is drawing ‘ultramodern’ and ‘premodern’ countries closer together: namely, the replacement of standard with non-standard forms of work. Economic growth in today’s world-market conditions is rendering obsolete the idea of classical full employment, lifetime jobs and everything that went with them.

“It is precisely here that the civil labour model offers a key.”
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Pictures From My Lecture In Ashkelon – 10.11.2011

Here are some pictures from my recent lecture in Ashkelon, October 11, 2011.

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Nature Is The Most Cunning Politician

Dr. Michael LaitmanIt all began when the desire to receive that the Creator created was shattered and became egotistic, and its different parts distanced from one another. We started to feel that we exist inside our egoism, each by himself.

This is how we evolved starting from an absolute zero and passing through the still, animate, and vegetative levels of development, whereby we developed instinctively. Eventually, we reached the fourth stage of the development of desire, when we already must develop consciously. The world is entering this stage now.

This process actually started a long time ago, from the first man (Adam Ha Rishon), from ancient Babel, and then developed gradually, making a big leap at the time of the ARI. During all this time our desire connected more closely, and thanks to this connection new and more complex creatures and forms of the still, vegetative, and animate nature came into being. The plus connected with the minus, and the mutual influence among them begot creatures from amoeba to a multitude of different animals.

The more the separate parts connected to one another and increased the cooperation between them, the more evolution advanced. At the first stages of connection, the connection occurred instinctively, under nature’s pressure that pushed evolution forward. And so evolution reached the level of man in which the instinctive connection to certain social forms began: families, tribes, then cities, and states. Today the whole world is connected. That is, we observe a clear tendency towards connection.

Accordingly, the egoistic desire in man also became more intricate and complex. First it was composed of many different desires, but then the different desires connected more closely and penetrated one another. On top of classical science with its clear differentiation into disciplines, the synergy of different scientific areas occurs. Thus, all the laws in physics, chemistry, and biology come together and gradually form a unified picture of nature.

Our thoughts and desires become increasingly intertwined and incorporated into one another, and thanks to this we know the world more deeply. But the truth is that this world does not exist—we are in an ocean of Light! But the more complex my desire to receive becomes, the more I feel the world is revealed to me like it is. It’s like there are all these people around me, in fact, are part of my own desires. Now they only seem to me as strangers, but when we connect, we become “one man with one heart.”

The only intention of nature, be it the surrounding nature or the inner one, in man and his understanding, is directed at an increasingly tighter connection of the shattered desire to receive. We are in a constant process of connection, but today we’ve entered an era when this aspiration has to be conscious and understood by us. Nature is at the last, the fourth, level of its development, and it compels us to know its tendency and to support it. We need to justify, agree with, and follow it.

We cannot continue to develop instinctively like in the past when nature developed our desire and pushed us to perform certain actions. It sent us to discover America and encouraged us to perform many other things. We obeyed our desires, invented, and built.

But this is no longer the case. Today you have a choice: Do you want to do it or not, does it seem important to you or not? If it doesn’t seem important to you, nature begins to teach you indirectly so as not to deprive you of your free will. It’s just like a child who refuses to listen to his parents, and so they are forced to act cunningly and arrange difficulties for the child so that he will come to them by himself and ask for help. This is how nature plays with us, just like with a child, so as not to deprive us of the awareness, the understanding, and the agreement.

Nature pressures us, pushes us forward, and shows us the right direction. Yet it doesn’t compel us to advance. Nature is a very cunning politician, and we can learn a lot from it.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/10/2011, Shamati #85

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The Economic Crisis As A Gate To The New World

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Modern economy measures economic prosperity using real indicators and indexes. Will the economy of the transition period have its own standard, an “index of mutual guarantee?” How will we measure it?

Answer: It will also be measured by money. Money (Kesef in Hebrew) means covering (Kisuf), the screen.

Question: Who will determine this index?

Answer: A single regulatory body that operates according to needs and also according to the level that everyone is able to connect to it in the equivalence of form. It may very well be that it is already possible to write the formula for it now. These things are not that far-fetched.

First, we have to find the right words and to write several articles about the essence of the current economy, about its history and basis, and about the foundation the mutual connection between people is built on. After all, the economy is the expression of our connections, our egoism. But together with it, it is also related to politics and feelings, to advertising and lies of the modern world. Economics is not a precise science because it encompasses human feelings and connections between people.

If the economy didn’t include our sensations, if it only reflected revenues and expenses, we wouldn’t have faced any crisis or had any problems at all. However, as Baal HaSulam writes in the article “Peace in the World,” we cannot measure efforts, success, satisfaction, and human relations by money alone. For example, I don’t want to work with someone even if I make a thousand dollars a day, and I am ready to work with someone else for fifty dollars.

We are not machines, and so the economy is not an accurate science, but rather something in between. We measure what we can, but quite often our ego spoils the “rigid” calculations, and we can’t cope with that.

This is done on purpose. The Creator “trips us up” from the very start: We are created different, and we can’t measure each other by a yardstick. This is where our economic problems stem from.

When will we be able to build the ideal economy? When we are able to measure our desires and passions, all aspects of our inner world. This is why we see that economists are helpless without Kabbalists. Working alone, they only spoil everything.

Therefore, we have to show them that it is possible to create a new measuring system. First, we must write a series of articles about the economy as the reflection of our relationships, including emotional ones. This psychological rationale will enable us to smoothly bring the reader to Kabbalah.

It isn’t by chance that the economic crisis has become a kind of a “gate” to the new world. It reflects the picture of our world in the most comprehensive way, and by that we will feel what we lack in order to survive and save ourselves.

And what we lack is mutual guarantee. What is it? Mutual guarantee makes up for the human factors that the economy fails to take into account. It is impossible to measure them with money, but we can bridge this gap in advance. It isn’t clear why one person has to receive two pounds of fulfillment, the other a pound, while the third a pound and a half. Economics cannot provide an answer to that, but we compensate for its deficiencies with the help of the spiritual power. When we rise above all our desires, which are so different, we fill them with a higher calculation, which will become a defining feature of the future economy.

Thereby, we supplement the financial economy with the economy of Gematria. According to it, if a person exerts maximum according to the attributes he received from the Creator, he is in one system together with everyone else, in end of correction. Whether you like it or not, you won’t be able to calculate anything correctly in any other way. The crisis will be felt until the end of correction, until the emotional compensation based on mutual connection will compensate for all the economic differences by one hundred percent.

One of my neighbors receives more than I do, another receives less, and a third one receives something totally different. Looking at them, I have to compensate for all these differences with my attitude. Thus the material economy and the economy of the screens will complete one another. The two accounts—the corporeal and the spiritual—will become one and will totally complete one another.

This is why humanity will not be able to bear the economic crisis. And it’s not about the fact that it concerns food shortage—this is because the differences between people are revealed here. We see it as the gap between the rich and the poor, but essentially, this is the manifestation of the need to compensate, to reconcile people. We are looking for an opportunity to compensate for our inborn differences so that everyone could stand equal to others. This is what the economic crisis reveals to us.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/2/2011, Shamati #219

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We Are Educators

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: A lot of people in the world advocate cooperation and caring for others. How can we connect to them?

Answer: We don’t connect to them. There are quite a few “good-hearted ” individuals who volunteer in hospitals, help the needy, or establish different charity organizations and funds. They help people and that’s very good. According to Baal HaSulam and sociological surveys, about 10% of humanity are altruists.

Today, however, for the first time in history, we have reached a crucial point in our development, and people need to be taught the laws of the world they are entering. Our goal is not another egoistic sweetening, not help for the poor, or a cosmetic redistribution of resources in their favor.

No, humanity is about to enter a new dimension in which we have to be connected among us globally and integrally. Nature starts giving us hints, as if saying: “This is how you should be from now on—connected organically, as one man with one heart, like all my other parts. Stop developing inside me like cancer.”

No one besides us truly understands what is happening. Therefore, we have to teach people. We are an educational organization whose only goal is to teach the laws of the global world.

The mutual connection is appearing everywhere. We can’t separate, even if we wanted to. The only way to cut off our connection is by war, but that won’t help either because the inner ties between us will not disappear. The war will soon be over, and we will have to resume the connection, only under much more difficult conditions.

Today the crisis destroys all aspects of life. We have to see this situation as a springboard to the next level. The evolution of nature compels us to move on to the new stage.

What will we gain by that? We will gain the new system. By this mutual work, by mutual connection, we will discover nature’s internal force, its internal mechanisms—and will rise to a new level of existence. First we will get rid of all the daily problems, and in addition, we will reach the next dimension.

So there is no other choice: Nature compels us to reach that. This is why we don’t give out gifts for the holidays. We leave that to other organizations. We are only busy with the new, integral education. Just as kindergartens and schools prepare kids for life in our world, we now have to prepare all of humanity to life in the world that has manifested to us in which we are all globally connected.

The upper, single, integral system is coming closer to our human system destroyed by egoism. If they clash, there will be a horrible explosion.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/7/2011, “One Commandment”

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The World Is Awakening

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: People around the world are awakening and starting to talk about unity. Why is this happening?

Answer: It stems from the inner sensation. A person can study for ten years, hear about the importance of unity daily, and yet it’s all in vain. If he doesn’t feel a need, he won’t hear anything.

But suddenly he begins to understand it from inside, naturally. Unexpectedly, he starts to realize that we all are connected together, that we need social justice and equal distribution, and that we all have to reach balance between us and with Nature. Otherwise, our lives are finished.

Today, a few thousand crazy men exhaust the earth’s last resources and with the help of advertising force us to buy whatever they manufacture only in order to add another zero to their bank account. And we follow their directives as humble slaves: We pursue material goods.

Enough of that, everything is collapsing. We are maturing for our will to receive grows on a daily basis, and as it develops, it starts asking: “What do I live for? What is happening to me? Why do I suffer? Why can’t I reach fulfillment?”

Unemployment in the U.S. has grown tremendously; among others, it especially hits young people who have a hard time finding jobs.There is a huge gap between the rich people working on Wall Street and the young generation. At the age of 20-25 a person doesn’t see any future ahead of him. Without a job he or she doesn’t want to get married and give birth to children. What kind of future awaits his children if his own prospects are bleak?

Spontaneous awakening is taking place. People are going out to demonstrations as a result of their inner impulses; they simply cannot sit still in their houses. It’s pure anarchy: A person doesn’t know what will happen to him tomorrow or even in the next second, and this is how he calms himself down and gets rid of negative emotions. His nature obligates him to do that. People start protesting without having a clear view of the situation, without knowing their purpose, or preparing a program. They simply feel bad.

Gradually, the ups and downs of life force them to wise up, and they start comprehending what is actually going on.

The whole world is awakening today. We’ll see what will happen in China, Japan, and India.… The world is becoming “round.” People by nature demand change. Intuitively, they feel that they have to be connected, that they have to be in balance between themselves and with Nature. This is how the general universal Force reveals itself: Subconsciously we suddenly sense that this is exactly what we lack.

And then everybody starts to oppose inequality and demand something: single mothers, retired people, doctors, and teachers. It’s not a coincidence. It’s a general trend, a common demand for balance. Somebody feels good, somebody else feels bad, and we want everybody to get an equal share. The power of unity and a new approach that obligates us to think that way are becoming revealed in our global integral world.

The question is how do we reach this state? Only the wisdom of Kabbalah offers a solution. It explains how to achieve fair distribution, gain balance, and be compensated for the damages caused by our egoism.

Man still wants to be more than everybody else; he wants to achieve, to advance. So, if we all come to a state where everybody receives only essential things, what’s next for us? How can we reimburse people for what they have lost? Kabbalah explains that it’s possible only through spiritual ascent when our corporeal body receives only as much as it needs, and the rest is being used to develop the soul.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/7/2011, “One Commandment”

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 10.16.11

Writings of Rabash One Should Always Sell the Beams of His House
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Chapter “Pekudei (Accounts),” “A Breast Piece and an Ephod,” Item 223, Lesson 10
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Talmud Eser Sefirot Part 6, Chapter 15, Question 187, Lesson 12
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Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah, Item 150, Lesson 66
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Writings of Baal HaSulam Peace in the World,” “Hopes for Peace,” Lesson 7
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