Entries in the 'Crisis' Category

The Global Financial Crisis Has Begun

laitman_220Opinion (Vesti): “We increasingly hear about the approach of the next global financial crisis. But the truth is that this crisis has already begun. We already see declines in the global stock markets.

“Most of the declines have happened in the nations that are known as emerging markets. For most of them the economy has not developed so the world doesn’t know about them. In recent years, the developing nations have received access to cheap dollar loans. But now, when the dollar has become stronger, the borrowers are forced to borrow more and more in the local currency to serve the dollar-denominated debts. And this is even though the prices of many products that are exported by these nations are dropping.

“Exactly the same reasons caused a crisis in Latin America in the 80s and the financial crisis in Asia in the 90s. Now just about all the global stock markets will drop significantly, in comparison to the peaks of this year or the past year. But in the meantime they are all still far from collapse. In much of the developing world the situation is completely different.

“There are 23 nations in which the stock markets have collapsed: Malaysia, Brazil, Egypt, China, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Bulgaria, Greece, Poland, Serbia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand. And this is only the beginning, for the crisis must soon move from the developing nations to the developed nations.

“The central banks have lost control over the situation, and little time remains until global collapse. In the Autumn of 2015 we can expect to see a series of shocks. The global financial crisis has already begun and in the coming months it will become clear how great its dimensions are.”

Comment: There is a means in the hands of the Kabbalists, and this is unity. Only this will take our world out to its next state. Because the world was created on top of the shattering of a single system called Adam, and only the restoration of this system, its correction, will bring our world to a stable and good state.

The wisdom of Kabbalah speaks specifically about realizing the method of the correction of our world. The problem is that there is no need to correct the world and the financial system, but the individual and society. Nobody wants this and nobody believes that the matter is possible.

We must overcome the psychological obstacle; it is possible to overcome it through the influence of the Upper Light ,which corrects, called the “light of Torah” or simply “Torah” or “The Light that Reforms.” But it is necessary to ask it to have an influence. The request appears as a result of suffering and hopelessness or as a result of the influence of the environment, which is what we ourselves create. That is how we choose either the way of suffering or the way of Torah.
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Formula For A Happy Life

laitman_565_01Question: What does Putin want from Israel?

Answer: It doesn’t matter what he wants. It is said: “The hearts of ministers and kings are in the Creator’s hands.” Do not think of politicians as an independent power. Not one of them understands exactly what is going on in the world, neither Putin, nor Obama, nor anybody else.

Unfortunately, the same can be said about the Israeli government. Everything is in the Creator’s hands, not Obama’s, Putin’s, or Netanyahu’s. Thank God! Otherwise, the world would have already collapsed.

The world needs to be balanced; it has to attain a state where people clearly see what the system of relations among them really looks like. Only when our relations will be revealed to us, will we learn how to correct them. Only unity can lead us to correction. Politics, economics, industry, all kinds of international trade liaisons are useless. The only thing that can really help is a new type of education that will lead humanity to global unity.

Until now, the world connected through trade, economy, military, and security,but now we see that the connecting threads are temporary; they come and go. The prior world was built on the foundation of egoism. Now, it vanishes.

Question: What kind of unity does Israel have to offer to the world?

Answer: Israel will have to offer unity among and inside the nations. It’s the kind of unity that emerges above our egos. Our selfishness will teach us to rise above it and unite.

Israel is obligated to transfer the methodology of unity to the world since there is no other force that can do it rather than us. If Israel fulfills its mission, it will be the major country in the world; it will govern over and bring benevolence to other nations. It will spread the methodology of correction, unity, and love.

Our world is egoistic since all of us are born with a selfish nature. We have to implement a special methodology, a formula, that allows us to connect beyond the egoism that burns in every individual, each country, and among nations.

The people of Israel possess the methodology. The Jewish people used it three and a half thousand years ago. They still retain “records,” the internal data of the state of unity they have been through.

At some point, the Jewish people managed to implement unity. They constituted a single unity whose major value was connectedness. The Jewish people lived in unity for about fifteen hundred years, starting with Abraham until the destruction of the Temple.

Thousands of years ago, we fell from this height, from the state of unity that connected us above our egoism. Inside every person there is an ego, but there also is a force that helps us rise above it, beyond a constantly growing and renewing personal and overall egoism.

All of us make efforts to rise above our egoism and connect with each other beyond it. Should we succeed, we will reveal a new reality called the Upper world.

The common state we are trying to build together is called Adam (Man). Inside Adam, we will disclose a new spirit called the soul, the Upper Light, or the Creator. The world advances towards the state for which it was created.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 8/6/15

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One Law Of Love For The Whole World

laitman_944Question: Why would we start fighting with and killing each other if every country will be able to produce everything it needs and no longer needs foreign lands and workers?

Answer: Why do you fight with your wife? Usually it’s because of some silly thing that has no significance. Countries will fight with each other the same way, because our egoism, the hatred that lives within a person, will not allow us to live in peace and friendship.

A person is built with an evil and egoistic nature. Therefore, we will see that although we no longer depend on each other on one hand, we will want to destroy each other nonetheless. And the only solution is to unite above all the personality differences, so that “love covers all transgressions.”

Question: So what will happen to 2,000 nations, which the world will be divided into?

Answer: All these 2,000 nations will accept one law that will force us to unite above all national differences. And only a special education will make this possible because it will raise people above our egoism.

Question: How will a person living in one of these 2,000 countries feel?

Answer: A person will feel that there are two parts in him. One part is his natural evil inclination, the blazing egoism inside him, which he despises. And in the other part, he wishes to be above the egoism, above his instinctive egoistic tendencies, and above them to unite with others.

In this manner we will achieve a peaceful, happy, and prosperous life. We will feel that we are in the “Garden of Eden,” where an infernal fire blazes underneath the earth. One cannot be without the other.
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From KabTV’s “A New Life” 8/6/15

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Ynet: “What Does The Pension Fund Of Shoshi From Hadera Have To Do With The Bad Investment Of Li Ming From Shanghai?”

This article about the global crisis many countries are undergoing and about the sharp declines we see in stock markets around the world was published in my column on Ynet August 27, 2015.

“What Does The Pension Fund Of Shoshi From Hadera Have To Do With The Bad Investment Of Li Ming From Shanghai?”

“The sharp declines in the stock markets around the world remind us all of how strongly we are all mutually interdependent. Only when we acknowledge the laws of the global human system will we be able to lead a good life.

“Volatility in the stock markets intensified, further sharp declines in global equity markets and subsequent rise, have reached Israel. There is no better example than the financial markets to demonstrate the mutual interdependence between people, states, nations, and markets all over the world, which has become one global village.

“The world is becoming increasingly more connected. This is the reason that the financial collapse and the economic slowdown in China is not a local event but an event with emerging global implications. Seemingly, the Israeli economy should not be affected by the fall of the markets in China, and yet it happened. What is the connection between the pension fund of Shoshi from Hadera and the bad investment of Li Ming from Shanghai?

“This global drama shows us how the system can not be balanced—unless the parts are assembled and well connected. Until then, the system will continue to be sensitive, and every minor explosion will destabilize it all.

“We Are All in the Same Boat

“The wisdom of Kabbalah is the wisdom of connection. It studies the connections between people and the connections in nature since the beginning of time. According to this wisdom, we can balance our relations in mutual interdependence only if we acknowledge the laws of the global human system. All the systems of life between us, including the financial markets, are included in these systems.

“We didn’t need such laws in the past, so the wisdom of Kabbalah was concealed and very few engaged in it. The need for this wisdom and knowledge has become relevant only when the world became global and our mutual interdependence completed. Today when the connection between us is growing stronger, it obliges us to learn the laws of the new globally connected world. We have no other choice. Learning the laws according to the method of connection will allow us to create the right social order in the whole human society.

“When a person knows how to connect correctly, realizing that we all depend on one another, the result will be a good life for all of us. This is the uniqueness of the wisdom of Kabbalah, which the world needs today more than anything else.

“The solution to the crisis in the stock market, the crisis of the pension fund of Shoshi from Hadera, and other upcoming crises is not in the traditional financial means, but in establishing a good, balanced, corrected connection between us. We have to learn how to establish the right and balanced relationships and thus reach a good and peaceful life.
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Where Can We Find A Safe Place?

laitman_600_02Question: Why do you think that feudalism, capitalism, and communism are the same level of development?

Answer: Because it is an egoistic development that gradually transformed from one paradigm to another but always aspired for the same goal, for maximum egoistic filling.

If we don’t focus our life on the one pleasure of being filled, on knowledge, on respect, wealth, or power, but rather, begin to connect and to unite like nature in order to build an integral society, this society will be able to find totally new forms of the right and safe existence.

When we correct our nature from a linear to an integral one, from an egoistic to an altruistic one, when each of us feels that he is an integral part of humanity, we will also feel humanity and all of nature differently. Our sensory perception will be totally different, and we will feel that we exist on another level, in another dimension.

Although our efforts seem insufficient for all of humanity, we hope that they will be successful a little before conflicts break out between all parts of humanity, as the crisis can be very deep, including world wars, natural disasters and ecological problems. We live on very small and fragile planet and it can be fatal for us.

This is the reason that we try to explain to people that there is a totally different method of relating to life.
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From KabTV’s “The Last Generation” 8/12/15

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Suffering Due To A Meaningless Life

Laitman_180Opinion (Viktor Frankl, book):  “Every era generates a unique neurosis. At the beginning of the 20th century people considered that lack of sexual satisfaction to be the source of all our troubles. Now, however, at the beginning of the 21st century we are troubled by something else, by our disappointment from life.

“If before a person suffered of an inferiority complex, today he suffers from a feeling of emptiness, a feeling of living a meaningless life.

“An American student wrote that all his friends and relatives in America, young people his age, are trying to understand what they live for in the first place. The disappointment from life also affects people who belong to the older generation, who have successful careers and are considered to be successful people. Now we see more and more clearly that the feeling that life has no meaning is penetrating every aspect of our life. Our animal instincts don’t tell a person what he needs, and traditions don’t teach him what to do anymore, and so not knowing what he needs and how he should live, a person cannot understand what he wants.

“Among the causes of death of American students, after car accidents ranks suicide. 85% of the students who were interviewed did not find any meaning in life. 93% of the students were healthy both physically and mentally and lived at a high standard of living, had good relations with their parents, engaged in social activities and excelled in their studies. A person naturally aspires to determine and to fulfill his goal in life, which is an aspiration for a meaning in life. The aspiration for a meaning in life is not a dream and not self-deception but self-programming that determines a person’s future. This motivation is a unique human attribute. A person thinks about it when all his corporeal needs are fulfilled, which means that the aspiration for a meaning in life is an independent motivation and not the outcome of other needs.

“A person always aspires to exceed the limits of his own personality and is attracted to something greater, whether a goal he has to fulfill or a love of another person. A person opens up either because of his own interest or because of love. The more he dedicates himself to his work or to love of others the more human he is, thus being closer to himself. In fact, a person can discover himself only when he forgets himself, and as a result of self denial.”

My Comment: True fulfillment of the meaning of life is in attaining the source, the Creator. Only then does a person feel that he is filled with the meaning of the eternal, perfect universe. This inclination is embedded in us by nature, by the Creator, and so we have to discover its essence and the method of fulfillment, the wisdom of Kabbalah.
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Towards The Next Level With Minimal Losses

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: I can understand that egoism is the reason for the crisis, but I don’t see the connection to how we can ascend to some degree as a result. What are the signs that we have to ascend to a new level now and not continue to advance linearly?

Answer:  You can make up whatever you want: different rules and especially social and economic ones. Politicians do whatever they believe to be right, and economists manage everything the way they think things should be, but all this leads to nothing.

We can learn something only if we listen to those who understand the plan of our evolution and its goal, which others cannot see because it isn’t in our ego, not in our nature, not in our thinking, and not in our feelings. The people who feel and attain it have to try to explain it to everyone and the rest of humanity will follow them like small children who follow those who know what is going on. There is no other way. It is like a herd that follows one shepherd who brings the herd to the well or back home. That’s the way it will also be in this case.

Although very few people understand the next phase, all of humanity has to follow them in order to be saved and to reach the right state with minimal losses.
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From KabTV’s “The Last Generation” 8/12/15

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Two Views Of The State The World Is In

laitman_202_0Question: If humanity experienced periods of cultural, scientific, economic, and social advancement in the past, like the Renaissance period for example, or even the 20th century, is it intentionally sinking to the bottom now? The level of education is dropping: people don’t read books anymore, they watch primitive TV programs, and participate in shallow entertainment programs for the masses.  Many countries have lost the hope of reaching the level of more advanced states, not to speak of the developed countries.

Answer: Personally I look at all this a bit differently. The point is that the law of denial is working here. Before we ascend to the next level there is always a negation, a denial, of the previous level. We have to fully acknowledge the worthlessness of the current stage and stop aspiring for its ideals, goals, and values. Only then do we begin to understand the next level, which in our case is a special level of development, since we have to totally change our attitude to our life.

If in the past we changed one social development to another, like the regime of slavery to the feudal regime, and then feudalism to capitalism, etc., it all advanced in one direction, in one channel. Now we experience a totally different state. We rise to a new qualitative level where all our nature works in a different direction, not according to the straight line we advanced along, but in a totally different direction.

We will use our nature not in order to enjoy increasingly greater achievements but so that these achievements will be totally different. Here a person has to reach a level where he is not interested in life inside life but in life above life. That’s the main thing.

Therefore, the alienation everyone feels towards everyone is coercive, no one controls it: not the banks, not businessmen, and not the government. The actual law of nature controls it and it brings a person to a feeling of absolute indifference regarding his previous values.

Gradually we begin to prefer totally different things that cannot be attained by linear egoism, but on a level above it. In order to do so we have to be connected above our animal needs so that we will provide ourselves with all the basic necessities but only in order to exist with dignity. As for our impulses, our ideals will be much higher and only the minimal care for our physical body will sustain us in this world, while our true internal human essence will not come down to wanting to satisfy our body but to wanting to attain the next level of the development of society and the universe. Then we will discover a new society and a new universe.

In that case, we totally change our attitude towards our life, and so the previous level is dead. And not only is the previous level dead, but all our previous history from the time the first elementary particle was created until today is dead.

This means that our attitude towards history is dead and there is a totally new attitude towards the world, towards life. There is the attainment of its internal structure, the attainment of the internal plan of the creation, the attainment of the force that manages everything! You can call it the Creator, God, it makes no difference, but this is where we are headed.

Therefore, the alienation, the frustration, the inertia, and the fall of humanity to a passive lifestyle is simply necessary. I see it as a great move and a big step forward.
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From KabTV’s “The Last Generation” 8/12/15

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On The Threshold Of Discovering The Goal Of Evolution

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: People are gradually beginning to understand that there is a crisis in our world. They feel it in their lives, and they try to find an answer to the questions: “What is to be done about it? How can one respond to it? How long will it continue?” Is there some kind of rule or lawfulness according to which the crisis will continue to develop further? What can be realistically used as a solution, and what can be offered as a solution to these problems?

Answer: The idea is that we are found within nature, in a particular network of forces, that is developed to the degree of the development of the ego, meaning to the degree of the development of desire on all levels of nature.

In the beginning, these were small desires of elementary particles. After that, the particles became more consolidated until they created a gigantic structure, like our planet Earth, upon which developed conditions for biological life for the vegetative, animate, and human levels. This was the result of the evolution of desire within matter, the desire to receive, enjoy, be fulfilled, and to use material that is found in some kind of contact with us. On this basis a connection between the elementary particles, molecules, atoms and all kinds of biological parts took place, and from the grouping of animals, a beastly society gradually gathered, and from humans, a human society gathered. This means that everything evolved as a result of the evolution of the ego.

Accordingly, our desires also developed: from the beastly desires of the body (food, sex, family), the social desires emerged (wealth, respect, control), because our ego became social. After that, a desire for information developed. Our history reveals that we have gone through these stages on an axis of evolutionary development and we always understood how to act. Our egoistic development instinctively pushed us somewhere: the exploitation of more visible and hidden resources, and the realization of the craving for food, sex, family, wealth, honor, and knowledge.

But after tens of thousands of years of development, suddenly we reached an unexpected situation where the linear and even the exponential laws of egoistic development stopped working. Humanity always developed linearly, and suddenly in the past 100-150 years, this became exponential and has reached some kind of saturation, a summit. We are now at this summit.

On this level, very interesting phenomena are happening since suddenly our ego has stopped working. In the past, the more effort that we invested, the more we developed intellectually and the more we succeeded. The stronger we were, the more confident we felt. But now, not one of these simple linear relationships work. If in previous centuries, a person with a big ego profited more from its use, this is not so anymore, since our normal egoistic development has exhausted itself. It follows that we are moving towards a completely different paradigm, another dependence. The question is towards what kind of a paradigm are we moving? We still don’t know.

Scientists now are beginning to assume and imagine that our continued evolution doesn’t depend on individual ego, rather evolution depends on the mutual connection and coordination between us. Today this is derived from communication, which developed rapidly, is integral and encompasses all of human society, all of civilization, but we are using it linearly, thinking about what one can get from it.

This means that we are found in a transitional stage of the linear ego to a mutual integral connection, and it could even be towards altruism. And gradually we perceive towards what we are going. These perceptions began to be discovered in the middle of the 20th century, from the time of the Club of Rome, who published all kinds of work of economists, philosophers, and other scientists. But the problem is that even though work has been done, and the scientists are more or less aware of this, nobody hears them. And even though we see the futility of the egoistic arousal that continues in both people and in larger organizations, the inertia still exists in all of this and there is nowhere to escape from it.

And in spite of it all, since we continue to work in society, where instead of linear laws, spherical, integral laws are beginning to work, we see how our society is beginning to undergo heavy pressure and find itself in an ugly form. From this is derived the stratification of society, in which its upper part, a few thousand people in the world, concentrate the wealth and control in their hands, whereas the rest of the masses are falling below. An immense gap has been created between the uppermost stratum, composed of a few thousand people, and the lowest stratum, which includes the remaining billions of people.

On the one hand, this certainly must lead to a great explosion. On the other hand, all the wealth that has been accumulated will not be worth anything. The hierarchy of the development of desires (food, sex, family, wealth, honor, knowledge) includes a level in which it is possible to use wealth for the needs of the next level of development. And when humanity begins to overtake this level and complete it, there will no longer be any need for wealth, for the next level begins to appear, it will lead towards the attainment of the meaning of existence.

The scientists who study creation are suddenly beginning to study its holography, multiple universes, and reach the conclusion that planet Earth and our entire universe are finite. We are beginning to understand that we have always been playing some kind of game with money, armies, and wars. And essentially a big process is now taking place in which we are elements within it. Moreover, we don’t determine its development, course or flow, and especially not its goal. We are in a stage where we must discover the true evolutionary goal of our own development. This will bring us to disillusionment and a new vision of the world. We need to look at ourselves and at everything that is happening from the side and investigate all of nature in its coming development.

This means that behind the physical desires (food, sex, family) and the social desires (wealth, honor, knowledge), a new desire is developing for attaining the true meaning of our existence. This is the desire that must dominate us and towards which we are moving. So today, humanity is gradually discovering the crisis, and I hope that we will design the correct vision of it for ourselves, for then we won’t come to deviations on the way, and we will understand that life continues only on this path.
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From KabTV’s “The Last Generation” 8/12/15

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Twin Crack-Ups Set To Implode The World Economy And Financial System

laitman_220Opinion (Egon von Greyerz Interview): “No major nation in the West can repay its debts…. So we will see twin $200 trillion debt and $1.5 quadrillion derivatives implosions.

“That will lead to the most historic wealth destruction ever in global stock, with bond and property markets declining at least 75 – 95 percent. World trade will also contract dramatically and we will see massive hardship across the globe….the Social Security safety net that people in the West have been used to will disappear. Eventually the total money printing will be in the hundreds of trillions and possibly even quadrillions of dollars. That will be the final phase of taking the value of today’s paper money to its intrinsic value, which is zero. Virtually all paper currencies are already down 97 – 99 percent against gold in the last 100 years since the Fed was founded. So there is only 2 – 3 percent left that has yet to disappear.”

My Comment: Just as I always say, the system of management of our world, of our ego, is entirely the same on all levels of nature (still, vegetative, animate, and speaking), and so the crisis is being revealed in our world simultaneously in all areas, from ecology to our lives. A higher management conducts all the parts of nature, beginning with the human, the highest, smartest, and most sensitive creature towards whom is directed all of the activity and influence of this management, to all the strata and parts of nature. Since everything depends upon humans, it is up to them to bring our entire world, all of the systems, into balance. But as long as we haven’t started to do this, then the general collapse, the Armageddon, will approach us. The collapse is coming not to annihilate us but to force us to bring nature into balance.
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