Opinion (Mikhail Khazin): “Almost at the same time, economic growth stopped all over the world. … And the consequences of this condition surfaced.

– The world’s financial elite, which determines all the rules of the global economy, broke up into several groups (after the Strauss-Kahn case in the summer of 2011);

– Since there is not enough money, the policy of withholding money is revived;

– As the liberal idea discredited itself, the alternative options (communism, fascism, militant Islam) are coming back into politics.

“In this situation, only an ideological line can be offered, and we need to prepare for the emergence of new ideas.”

My Comment: Mikhail Khazin recently visited me, and during a few meetings we were discussing the possibility of revealing integral education to the world. I trust his sense as a forecaster and that the time of disclosing of our method of correction will come soon.
[108636]

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In the News (from Of Two Mind.com): “The anti-consumerism Degrowth movement is gaining visibility and adherents in Europe. Degrowth (French: décroissance, Spanish: decrecimiento, Italian: decrescita) recognizes that the mindless expansion of mindless consumption fueled by credit and financialization is qualitatively and quantitatively different from positive growth.

“Degrowth is based on a number of principles:

“1. Consumerism is psychological/spiritual junk food (French: malbouffe) that actively reduces well-being (bien-etre) rather than increases it.

“2. Better rather than more: well-being is increased by everything that cannot be commoditized by a market economy or financialized by a cartel-state financial machine– friendship, family, community, self-cultivation–rather than by acquiring more. The goal of economic and social growth should be better, not more. On a national scale, the cancerous-growth measured by gross domestic product (GDP) should be replaced with gross domestic happiness/ gross nation happiness (GNH).

“3. A recognition that resources are not infinite, despite claims to the contrary. Even if fossil fuels were infinite and low-cost … , fisheries, soil and fresh water are not. … Indeed, all the evidence suggests that access to cheap energy only speeds up the depletion and despoliation of every other resource.

“4. The unsustainability of consumerist consumption dependent on resource depletion and financialization (i.e. the endless expansion of credit and phantom collateral).

“5. The diminishing returns on consumption. Investing in clean air and water, public transit, universally accessible knowledge/information–these forms of consumption yield high returns in public health, affordable mobility, etc. Buying clothing to wear once or twice and then throw away does not. …

“6. The failure of neoliberal capitalism and communism alike in their pursuit of growth at any cost.

“7. We have reached Peak Consumption ….

“The Degrowth movement explicitly questions what John Michael Greer calls the religion of progress (i.e. growth). The civil religion that growth equals progress is akin to the Cargo Cult of Keynesianism, the notion that growth is so essential that expanding debt exponentially to drive diminishing returns of growth is necessary.

“But both the religion of growth and its Cargo Cult enablers are merely superficial facades masking the real force: the expansion of global finance via financialization. Expanding capital, profits and power is the key agenda, and the quasi-religion of growth is just the public-relations narrative that mesmerizes the debt-serfs, political toadies and media sycophants.

“What does Degrowth mean in practical terms? Use the thing until it cannot be repaired.“

My Comment: New movements and parties begin to emerge in various countries and with different governments; their programs are partly similar to the ideas of “Integral Education” (IE) but cannot be realized without it. The future is coming. They will start developing their ideas and find the lack of tools for their implementation, then they will understand the need for IE.
[108934]

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Today, we have gradually attained awareness that our existence is harmful, and we call this a “crisis.” We still don’t think that this is a general crisis encompassing all realms of human existence. We still don’t understand and do not connect all the individual crises within the family, in education, in culture, in science, in relationships, and most importantly the crisis threatens our existence—financial,  economic, and ecological. Yet all of these crises are essentially the same crisis.

In general, the word “crisis” in its translation and in its correct meaning symbolizes birth. In ancient Hebrew and also in Aramaic, the term indicated the same thing, a place upon which a woman gives birth. In ancient times there were special birthing stones upon which a woman would give birth with the help of midwives. This place was called a “Mashber.” This concept is found to symbolize birth in many languages, translated as the “birth of something new.”

This is to say, we should not look at a crisis as it’s seen by everyone who wants to get more and more out of this world, who are meanwhile acting as egoists without any deliberation. You can see that there are many who think that in this crisis something now must be corrected and then everything will be okay as it was the day before yesterday.

But lately there are fewer and fewer people like these and we see all these things happening very rapidly. After five years of the crisis it’s now clear that it is continuing and will not just gradually go away by itself. They are already saying that this will take about twenty years to correct as if it would be possible to correct something using the old methods in spite of everything. It has already become clear that this crisis will not end in another year or the following year.

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, the crisis will continue. It will evolve and deepen. We will yet reach states, which at the present time seem to us as impossible, when people will lose their human visage, becoming like wild animals, taking upon themselves laws, general rules, and norms of behavior that were considered inhuman, beneath the human level throughout the twentieth century. The accepted conventions will be pushed aside by our evolving ego and in general we will gradually descend to the level of the beast.

On the way, there could even be wars. We see how this is happening in the world today, when suddenly for no clear reason these break out in various regions and nations and phenomena begin to appear whose true reasons are not clear to anyone. Essentially these reasons always existed but were buried deep within and were not visibly apparent, or at least not sufficiently prominent to arouse problems, as for example in Syria or Lebanon, and so forth. This is speaking here about the social and political problems.

And in addition to this, there are very deep economic reasons; because the ego is revealed first and foremost in the economic area. This is because the economy reflects the connection between us, who gives to whom, how much and how they receive. Therefore the economy shows us first and foremost how much the system has become uncontrollable. We don’t understand which laws are currently governing us at all because the world is rising to another level. According to its level of development, it has already passed through the egoistic stage and has reached a particular limit. And as Baal HaSulam already hoped at the beginning of the twentieth century, from now on, more and more, we will need to reach the awareness that we must connect.

Essentially all of these conditions also existed in Russia at the time of the socialist revolution. These were all the revelations of the inner development of the human towards a new social order. But in the end, nothing came of it. As you know, Baal HaSulam hoped very much that the revolutions in Russia and Poland would transpire differently, and not just be taking the power into their own hands and establishing a new egoistic order, a new government. World War I was a “trigger,” the first “shot,” the first push toward the fact that the world must begin to change.

Therefore in the wisdom of Kabbalah it is said that if people don’t succeed in understanding that evolution must be through connection above the ego, which is presently leading us towards this connection, the world will then continue to become more and more incomprehensible. This is because the nature that had previously been discovered within each one of us and all of us together had pushed us for thousands of years in an egoistic form. In accord with our ego, we developed science, technology, commerce, and various social relationships; we changed society, we went through a change in form…

But ultimately the ego reached the end of its development and began to “circle” back on itself. Why? This was because nature had developed and exposed the entire ego, expanding it to a state of absolute mutual, global, “round” connection. Accordingly, we must also be “round,” meaning, connected into a single whole, and we are not doing this.

Revealed here is not just some kind of disorder; rather, it’s a fundamental difference between our economic, political, social, and internal mechanism, and everything that exists, that system, that program that nature brings up for us. This is because it began to be discovered not only in a more and more egoistic form, but also in a form of egoistic communication. And yet within this system there are various altruistic connections between us that are beginning to be revealed by which we are becoming completely transformed.

Thus an overlap between the two systems is being formed. Nature, the internal system, is discovered more and more as being altruistic, integral or analog; whereas we came to exist within a system of egoistic mutual connection that we developed over thousands of years. And so, the nature that aroused this egoistic development in us has now changed and continues to change more and more. Essentially, the Creator, the system of integral connection, has begun to be revealed more and more within human society, within civilization.

This state of opposition between the two systems is dangerous and not at all clear to us. Therefore none of today’s leaders, scientists, technologists, political scientists, sociologists, politicians, economists, or financiers, not one of them understands how to manage this system.

This is the greatest problem. We always ruled through the developing ego; we directed it towards various goals and areas. Someone who was more of an egoist, more clever, profited. We tried to do this also in other forms, such as through socialist revolution. But there was no method for connecting the people then, and so in the end the egoists rose to power and began to manage by using socialistic and altruistic slogans but essentially within the same egoistic system. Therefore nothing came of this at all; on the contrary, everything became worse.

And it’s not clear how the world will continue to advance and develop before it is discovered that there is a method of transition from that egoistic system in which all of human civilization is found to an integral altruistic system. So it’s up to us to clarify this and to tell others.
[109846]
From the Preparation for the The Convention In Krasnoyarsk 6/12/13

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Opinion (Wolfgang Schäuble, German finance minister): “‘We must win this battle against youth unemployment,’ Mr. Schäuble warned, ‘or we will lose the battle to hold Europe together.

“From the suburbs of Stockholm to the streets of Athens, ‘however, the battle is being lost one riot at a time. The unrest that recently rocked Sweden reflects a youth unemployment rate of almost 25 per cent, with young immigrants hit hardest. The jobless rate among those under 25 stands at 60 per cent in Greece. It’s 56 per cent in Spain and above 40 per cent in Portugal and Italy.

“And that’s only half the story, since unemployment rates take into account only those young people who are seeking work. Millions more have simply stopped looking, while two-thirds of those with jobs have been reduced to part-time work or temporary contracts.”

My Comment: A whole generation is not working and does not want to. We are faced with terror up to the point of capturing power. Treatment by any means will not help; distributing drugs is also a temporary measure. In any case, only a change of consciousness and as a consequence, the attitude to oneself, society, and the world will let us continue our civilization. It is time to change the human being …
[110019]

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In the News (from Next Big Future): “The Pronutria process is radically more efficient than current agriculture and livestock cultivation, and produces pure nutrition up to 1,000 times more efficiently, with minimal environmental impact and maximal nutrition quality.

“Livestock alone occupy 45 percent of the world’s land surface area and contribute more greenhouse gas emissions than cars, planes, and all other forms of transportation combined. Even with the yield improvements offered by GMO crops, these 10,000-year-old technologies are simply too resource inefficient to meet the world’s growing demand for nutritious food. …

“The central breakthrough in Pronutria’s technology is the discovery that single photosynthetic cells can be optimized to allow for the continuous and ultra-efficient production of essential proteins, lipids, sugars, or vitamins, using only sunlight, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and either fresh or salt water as inputs. “

My Comment: The crisis is happening in countries where the population has enough food and in general do not starve! It is possible to solve all modern problems technologically, but they cannot be solved practically until we correct the human being so that he no longer seeks to suppress others, and on the contrary, yearns to support others as his children.

Before human egoistic nature (his property to suppress others) is changed, the crisis of human confrontation with nature (the property of love and bestowal) will only expand. This crisis, since it is general, will not let us solve any of our problems. For example, while there is general abundance in the world, half of humanity will die of starvation.
[109795]

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In the News (from Euronews): “The International Labour Organisation has painted a grim picture of Europe’s employment future in its annual World of Work report.

“It warned the advanced economies are going to suffer a lost decade of jobs growth and the potential for social unrest in European Union countries is higher than anywhere else.

“What happens depends on what governments do according to the report’s author Raymond Torres: ‘Of course, if nothing is done, there is a risk of a prolonged labour market recession in Europe with a lot of people moving into long-term unemployment or even dropping out of the labour market, which means that they no longer participate.’

“The United Nations agency believes the real employment rate is unlikely to recover until 2018 in the EU and other developed countries – taking into account the growth in the working-age population.”

My Comment: “Leaders” still consider themselves competent to speak about the future, although they cannot do anything and do not understand the present! Everything will be much worse, and it will be impossible to correct anything; an unemployed person should not be considered “disabled,” but someone who needs to learn about a new world.

Unwillingness to recognize that it is necessary to change the human being by means of integral education will lead the world to explosion! The trends of the “Arab Spring” are already visible in many countries of the world. The confrontation with states and nations will lead to global explosion.
[109792]

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Opinion (Yehuda Elkana, distinguished historian and philosopher of science, former President and Rector of the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary): “We face the following problem: our science, technology, medicine, governance, and economy in our global world have become so advanced and so complex, that we need all the energy to produce carriers of knowledge on the highest level who not only are technically equipped to cope with what is there, but who can also find the appropriate measures for dealing with crisis-like emergencies in ecology, epidemics, famine, and destitution… . In other words we need many ‘experts’ who do more of the same, instead of rethinking the foundations. Yet it is indispensable to find the few thousands of intellectuals all around the globe who will rethink the world, discipline by discipline and problem area by problem area.”

My Comment: Intellectuals who are able to rethink our world are the Kabbalists and no one else! After all, we for the first time in history have reached the insolubility of accumulated problems. And problems are in everything we are engaged with in our world. They cannot be solved through external changes and mechanisms (new technologies, economic or social reforms, wars and revolutions) but through demanding inner changes—the changes of the human himself—changing his attitude towards himself, others, the world, instead of devouring our world (himself, society, nature) to taking care of everyone and everything.

In this case, people will come to the rational use of resources and consumption and to kind communication. This change is possible in a person only by means of Integral Education. The solution to the crisis is in the realization of the project of the implementation of Integral Education.
[109740]

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Baal HaSulam, “Peace in the World:” Therefore, we must understand and be very careful when casting a flaw in any item of Creation, saying it is redundant and superfluous, as that would be slander about its Operator.

Humanity is beginning to realize after it has suffered from “clever” theories that required eradicating “extra” for the sake of everyone’s welfare. Once, there was an opinion that our body had “unnecessary” parts. Up until now, we have practiced social regulation by artificial, contrived criteria. In education, culture, economy, politics, trade, in all areas, we resort to unnatural measures and forms of governance. The consequence of this is the distortions that raise the level of our suffering to the world crisis.

In fact, we need to learn the correct development from nature. It is perfect initially and we are its consequence. Our thoughts and feelings also stem from what it has given us. So we just have to imitate it, take its example.

Indeed, many of the latest technologies are based on the knowledge of natural systems and mechanisms in the attempt to reproduce them artificially.

We must do the same thing in society, in our social, economic, trade, and other relations. If we had copied nature on ourselves, we would have gotten rid of all the problems.

It is common knowledge that the Creator did not complete Creation when He created it. And we can see in every corner of reality, in the general and in the particular, that it abides by laws of gradual development, from absence to completion of growth. For this reason, when the fruit tastes bitter at the beginning of its growth, it is not considered a flaw in the fruit, since we all know the reason: the fruit has not yet completed its development.

And so it is in every element of reality: When some element appears bad and harmful to us, it is but a self-testimony of that element, that it is still in the transition phase – in the process of its development. Hence, we cannot decide that it is bad and it is not wise for us to cast a flaw in it.

We can say that the world is evolving and we are discovering more complex things in it or we can say that we ourselves are developing and that is why we see the world in more advanced and complex ways.

Whether we are talking about the world outside or the world inside of us is not important. The final conclusion can be simple: “Don’t touch Nature. Don’t stir it with your “dirty” hands and your stupid mind that is able to see just what is within a millimeter of your nose. You better take care of yourself. You have the globe. So, try to live in peace with it and if not it will not be good for you.”

With our corrupt mind, our “dirty,”—that is, egoistic—hands, we interfere with the matters of the Earth, the wealth and resources of which are limited. They are given to us only to move forward in a balanced way according to nature, not adversely against this universal all-encompassing system.

If we do realize our negative attitude, nature immediately begins to defend itself automatically and we encounter the consequences of our increasing error in its response. This causes great suffering, crisis, and the threat to our very existence: the danger of annihilation.

All this because we do not understand: Nature is perfect, and we just need to learn how to join this system fully in a balanced way.

Question: Does this mean that we need to adopt vegetarianism, naturalism, environmentalism, and other methods of this kind?

Answer: If they had stemmed from deep, thorough studies of nature, I would have agreed with them, without even becoming familiar with them completely. The entire point is in the rational, exploring approach.

The principle is simple: The human being is not prohibited from doing anything that does not disturb the natural balance. Of course, we can eat meat and fish, cut down trees, plant plants, and enjoy life. However, we must always know where the boundary is beyond which there are actions directed against balance, and how well we fit in the system of nature.

How can I check this? It is only through my egoism. Where I use it, there, harm begins. After all, nature is an analog system that is entirely altruistic and based on mutual bestowal. All its parts, similar to the organs of our body, care only about the welfare of the whole. This is the way we should see nature in order to check ourselves. Do we act in a similar manner? Do we seek perfection or not?

This is what it means to act not artificially but naturally, to be in constant love and bestowal, which is the law of nature instead of egoism that seeks its own advantage. Thus, at our level, we can carry out the law of nature, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” the law by which its every part lives.

A predator, devouring prey, never does it for the enjoyment of the suffering of others. He just hunts for food and nothing more. The deeper we understand nature, the more convinced of this we become.

Accordingly, we need to understand what and how much we must receive from nature. There is no problem if we use it only to live with it in balance, in other words, if all our actions are for the good of others, for the benefit of the still, vegetative, and animate nature.

How is this achieved? First, we need to correct our own nature. After all, what the lower levels perform instinctively, we must realize in what is called “above reason,” above egoism, and for this we study the method of integral education.

Question: In nature, the strong eat the weak, and it does not disturb harmony. However, this causes a devastating effect among people.

Answer: Uncorrected egoism acts in us. However, in fact, this law should be carried out differently among people, the strong helping the weak in correction. The wolf eating the sheep brings correction, for example, helping the population get rid of the weak animals. Thus, we must help each other according to the same principle of harmony and balance, only it is not eating, but equal love toward everyone at the human level, commitment for the sake of others.

Question: How can we measure our strength or weakness in this context?

Answer: It is through service to others. Either I serve them or use them.
[109666]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/9/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam

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Opinion (Alain de Benoist, French academic, philosopher): “The Earth is the finite (exhaustible) space. In the end, there cannot be endless material growth in the finite space. Therefore, we must give up the idea of the quantitative growth. All the classical economists argue that growth is a natural phenomenon, considering that natural resources are infinite.

“In our time, a state is powerful if it is able to meet the challenge of time. If growth leads to disaster, then the countries that have implemented a policy of rational economic downturn will be least exposed to it.”

My Comment: There is no need to induce artificial recession; we need to change society gradually and gently by introducing integral education where individual and social changes will bring about changes in all the structures (political, economic, etc.) in a natural (optimal) way.
[109658]

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Question: I would like to thank you in the name of all the friends in the area of Siberia for the great efforts that you are investing in order to participate in conventions, for it’s not at all easy to travel such great distances. Thank you very much for investing so much attention in us.

Answer: This is my obligation. If there are people whom this interests and if the person yearns to change himself and the world, then I must do this. I thank all who accepted the invitation to come to Krasnoyarsk to gather together to make a leap forward, to discover a higher state, and then convey it to others.

We see that the world is in a difficult, unfavorable state and that it constantly wanders to and fro on the threshold of the abyss that is gaping before it in many areas. At present the world is deteriorating economically, politically, militarily, and ecologically and the condition is only becoming more severe. I don’t want to be a prophet of doom, but I already spoke about this ten years ago.

Therefore it’s up to us to try to inject into the world a positive stream in every way possible, a potential, that in spite of it all, we will open the eyes of people and will make it possible to reach the same goal not through suffering but through personal change for the better, with the help of equivalence of form with nature, with the Creator. So I will fly to Siberia because large, fresh new forces are gathering, and this is very important.

This area is very important to me. In my opinion it is prepared to provide freshness, inner potential, vigor, and seriousness to our yearning, as no other place in the world will be prepared to do! In spite of it all, the area of Siberia is so pristine that it will be ready to add all this to us; our world group requires this very much.

Come let us thank in advance all the participants in the convention for having seriously invested so much time preparing for it. I thank them in the name of the whole world because what they are doing is the greatest addition to the global connection between us.

We are happy to join what they are organizing and we will try to be together with them body and soul. I am sure that it will be a wonderful convention and that we will be able to feel what the next stage will be as a result of all that we have done until today. I truly hope that in Krasnoyarsk we will realize what we achieved and felt in the last men’s convention because the people began to go through unfamiliar inner experiences of connection with that which is higher.
[109379]
From the Virtual Lesson 6/2/13

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