In the News (from Reuters): “People in Europe drink more alcohol than in any other part of the world, downing the equivalent of 12.5 litres of pure alcohol a year or almost three glasses of wine a day, according to report by the World Health Organisation and the European Commission. …

“In a breakdown of drinking by sub-region, the heaviest drinkers were in central-eastern and eastern Europe – consuming 14.5 litres of pure alcohol per adult per year compared to 12.4 litres in central-western and western Europe, 11.2 litres in southern Europe and 10.4 litres in Nordic countries.”

My Comment: Humanity will certainly plunge into any means that help to disconnect from reality, especially those who are ruined and unemployed, and only the quick organization of the courses in integral education and upbringing will help not only to prevent falling, but also to raise people to the next level of development, a “Human Being,” to what the crisis pushes us.
[81219]

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Opinion (John Perkins, Chief Economist at a major international consulting firm, advised the World Bank, United Nations, IMF, U.S. Treasury Department, Fortune 500 corporations, the author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man): “My job as an economic hit man during the 1970s was to enslave nations that had resources our corporations coveted by burdening them with debts they could never repay. We then demanded that they sell those resources cheap, without social or environmental regulations, to our corporations.

“It was an incredibly successful strategy. In essence it created the world’s first truly global empire and the first one that was not built primarily through military occupations. It also transformed geo-politics. The power of elected officials was usurped by those who sit at the top of the multinational corporations (the ‘corporatocracy’).

“This success led to the realization that similar strategies could be applied in the United States in order to emasculate a population that was exerting its democratic rights in ways that threatened the corporatocracy… .

“By 1980, the Reagan administration understood that its most effective weapon to protect corporations against labor movements was debt. Borrowers were deceived into believing that they were paying low interest rates when in fact balloon payments, adjustable rate mortgages, and other technically complex packages resulted in higher overall rates that made it increasingly difficult to break the shackles of debt. …

“We have finally realized that we are serfs of a system that reflects the feudal Middle Ages. Modern-day lords of the castle, the corporatocracy had convinced us – we who live outside the walls and supply all the food and conveniences for them – that if we didn’t pay our “debts” and service their every desire we would be raped and pillaged by soldiers from neighboring castles. But we are no longer buying their lies.

“Across this planet, we have marched into the courtyards of those castles with the message that we are no longer blind. We will not be hoodwinked by their false promises or by their fear tactics. The Occupy movement spans seven continents. Participation expands at seemingly exponential rates, online as well as at the front lines. …

“The corporatoctacy are striking back. They are writing new laws forbidding us to assemble in places like Wall Street. They are attempting to censor the Internet (as they did in Egypt). They will come up with schemes we can’t even imagine.

“Each time they do this we must utilize their energy to inspire and empower us further. Coming from a place where we know we are right, we will employ the aikido of love, compassion, and cooperation to keep expanding our energy, our resolve, and our creative responses.”

My Comment: The method of enslavement will vary, but it will not disappear until human egoistic nature is corrected. That is why all the occupy movements will yield nothing and fade. Salvation is in the education of people, in their correction through the hidden force of nature: It created egoism and it can also correct it.

Enslavement comes from its historic and spiritual source: the Pharaoh who had Jews as slaves. The Pharaoh represents the entire universal egoism, that is why it wanted to beat even death through mummification. Thus a person is a slave of his egoism and remains its slave until he begins to correct himself through the method of integral upbringing.

So today, the current crisis is the time of freeing oneself from the Pharaoh-egoism with the whole world.
[81186]

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Question: How will the connection in the integral environment ensure that a person will at least have enough to eat?

Answer: Suppose people are detached from one another, don’t want to communicate, and have a sad and empty look in their eyes. Put them in a circle next to one another so that they will touch each other’s knees, like kids, and put their hands on each other’s shoulders or knees, and they will begin feeling one another.

You will see how they begin to trigger some collective field, and suddenly, from the inside, signs of life will begin to appear in them. All this is because they are becoming similar to the general integral system, by triggering the power of this system on themselves, not linearly, but integrally, in a circle, and this power gradually begins to operate in them, spinning as if in a ring, like a current in a conductor that creates a field.

Thus, people begin to wake up since all of them together inside the circle are now equal to the global system with which nature is now presenting us. They receive powers, desires, a mind, and new attributes that are based on cooperation, on integrality.

They gradually begin to feel the world and to see it through an integral attribute that is cleared to them through this collective power. Each of them stops feeling his “self” and begins to feel the general “we,” the united “self” where there is no “me,” no “you,” and no “him,” but only one “self” that exists among everyone and through which they see everything.

Then, totally new conditions, attributes, powers, and options on a new level appear on the internal level, and from that, they grow. They cut themselves off from the past since it means falling back into the emptiness and the sadness.

Today, a person can be a member of the integral society and only through it, receive the power, ideas, goals, and values, and act in order to attain them. If he isn’t enclosed within the integral society, he has no power source and no desire, and he cannot work and won’t be able to operate.

It is the same with the entire world. Of course, all countries will gradually come to this. Especially now, when millions of unemployed people will be on the streets, the middle class gradually will disappear and thus lose its uniqueness. If we don’t work with them, a terrible future awaits these people.
[81110]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/23/12

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Question: What exactly does our connection come down to?

Answer: Our connection is based on the fact that we are all part of one society and we want to make it a better, more just, kind, and compassionate society that listens carefully to every individual.

I want everyone to feel good! No one should be dispossessed of his assets and we shouldn’t take money from the rich. No one can neglect any of the weaker strata of society: the poor, the elderly, or women. One should not profit at the expense of another.

This is possible only if we first establish a fair society based on equality. From this perspective, we will treat everyone like in a family where there are children, elderly, and parents with many responsibilities, obligations, and problems. However, if we all sit at around the table, we understand what the child needs, what medicines grandpa needs, and what the household expenses should be. Now we look at what is left and we divide the rest among us and live on it.

If we could act and solve all the problems in society in such a loving attitude towards everyone, no one would complain about why we acted the way we did. Everyone would see that it is all done fairly since a baby has certain needs and an elderly has other needs. This means that we first have to attain connection like in a good family.

Then even if we don’t have great resources, they will suffice and no one will suffer and feel deprived, which is the main complaint people usually express as they feel that they don’t have what the others have and what is more, it is at my expense.
[81126]
From the Workshop in Toronto 6/20/12

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Question: How can a person overcome growing indifference? Today even people who have creative jobs lose interest in everything, not to mention other people. Take a tile-setter, for example, he can hardly lay one tile; he sits next to it all day and cannot continue. How can we create the necessary motivation if it doesn’t exist?

Answer: There is nothing we can do. You cannot show a person that something is vital for him. He cannot force himself.

Our desire has stopped its linear development, and is now becoming “round” together with the desires of others growing into one integral system. If you don’t practically take a person “by the hand” and lead him into this integral system, he will not be able to do anything because he will not fill the new filling, the integral system that is individually developing inside him.

These are two totally different systems: an individual, linear one and a discreet, analog one. We are entering an integral analog level now and this is a problem; general lethargy and detachment are growing. We are facing today what started in the 50’s as a youth revolution but is now in the form of a much more serious crisis.

The lack of desire is a lack of energy since the desire is the basis for our whole existence. If in the past we could overcome the indifference by the fear of hunger or punishment, today even this doesn’t work anymore. A person cannot do anything by himself, even if you threaten to kill him!

This is the limit when humanity needs a new group psychology.
[81039]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” 5/23/12

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In the News (from NewScientist): “The financial crisis of 2007-2008 was a perfect storm of greed and stupidity – and raging hormones may have been at its root. As neuroscientist John Coates argues in The Hour Between Dog and Wolf, hormones such as testosterone affect bankers’ behaviour in ways that mean that financial boom and bust is almost unavoidable.

“Turning to neuroscience after years as a trader with Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, Coates has run experiments on the trading floor, documenting how traders’ testosterone levels soar in winning times. Testosterone boosts aggression and self-confidence, aiding males in violent competition. But it also tempts traders and banking executives ‘puffed up with self-importance’ to take ridiculous risks. Boom turns to bust.

Then it is time for hormonal hangover, as testosterone’s cousin, cortisol, fills bankers with anxiety and a sense of imminent danger. After a crisis, Coates suggests, the financial industry becomes a ‘clinical population’ of the psychologically battered, who shun even safe trades.

“If Coates is right – and the evidence he presents is compelling – then the financial crises that so frequently plague capitalism find their roots in human biology, which amplifies both the euphoria of bubbles and the depression of their aftermath. What follows is a simple conclusion – less testosterone would make for stabler markets.

“Time to castrate the bankers? The idea would probably receive widespread support, but Coates suggests another way – encourage more women and older men, and fewer young males, into the financial industry.”

My Comment: The basis for the development of all parts of nature is its purpose: to bring all its components into balance. This striving for balance causes our evolution, and that is why our development is inevitable.

It is possible to change its nature only through realizing the character of our development and its purpose; in this case, we find the force that develops us and understand how we can influence it and not try to interfere in the direction of development (for example, to reverse rivers), but only to join the movement consciously, to experience it as the path of the Light, pleasant and necessary, but not as the path of suffering, bitter and meaningless.
[81075]

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In the News (from Rueters): “Behind every suicide in crisis-stricken countries such as Greece there are up to 20 more people desperate enough to have tried to end their own lives.

“And behind those attempted suicides, experts say there are thousands of hidden cases of mental illness, like depression, alcohol abuse and anxiety disorder, that never make the news, but have large and potentially long-lasting human costs. …

“In Greece, suicide rates are already rising rapidly, albeit from a low starting point. Suicides rose by 17 percent between 2007 and 2009, and by 40 percent in the first half of 2011 compared with the same period in 2010, according to a report in the Lancet medical journal last year. …

“The risk, according to some public health experts, is that if and when Greece’s economic woes are over, a legacy of mental illness could remain in a generation of young people damaged by too many years of life without hope.

“’Austerity can turn a crisis into an epidemic,’ said David Stuckler, a sociologist at Britain’s Cambridge University who has been studying the health impacts of biting budget cuts in Europe as the euro crisis lurches on. …

“Youth unemployment in Greece is more than 50 percent and evidence of peoples’ disaffection is becoming more visible. …

“According to a paper prepared for the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2011, the economic consequences of mental health problems – mainly in the form of lost productivity – are estimated to average between 3 and 4 percent of gross national product in European Union countries.

And because mental disorders often start in young adulthood, the loss of productivity can be long-lasting, experts say.”

My Comment: There are no suicides in Africa although people die from hunger there; however, Scandinavia has the highest suicide rate. This suggests that employment or income cannot explain depression: It comes from inner emptiness, from the new level of revealed desires that cannot be satisfied in our world. They can be satisfied only by corresponding fulfillment—the feeling of the next level of existence. Humanity is in search of Kabbalistic knowledge, knowledge about the true picture of the world in which we live that gives us an answer about the meaning of life, and no income can shut up that void. And poverty is just a catalyst.
[81001]

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The situation in Europe continues to deteriorate. The same is happening in America and all over the world, but in some countries the crisis has really been revealed and in other countries they are still hoping that it will pass over them.

This stems from the lack of understanding that the world has “become round” and no one can escape the results. The situation is much worse that it is described in the media, and indeed, why should the masses be told about the problems if there is no solution? It is better that they don’t know the truth. Similarly we spare a terminally ill patient so as not to add to the suffering. What is more, it is simply too dangerous to tell people about what is really happening. The truth holds unbearable stress, riots and other problems that are prevented by keeping quiet.

But the problem will not go away, and it will be revealed sharply in Europe with which America is interconnected. In the meantime, unpleasantness in one place becomes an advantage in other place—for example, the capital is drained from the old world to the US, but we don’t understand that eventually it will backlash and hit the Americans, so the situation will certainly not be pleasant.

Consequently, it will be easier for us to work with people; we will be able to open more courses, and our groups all over the world will feel how firmly they represent the principle of the correction of the world and of man, and how deeply they understand what is happening. This is what people are lacking since the biggest problem is that they don’t know what they are up against and what is happening to them. It is as if someone is sabotaging me and I find out whom.

In the meantime, we are moving to the preparation stage and we should hasten it. In a couple of months the courses will be ready and we will be able to start working.
[81052]
From the 1^st part Daily Kabbalah Lesson  6/20/12 in Toronto, “Messiah’s Shofar”

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We are living in a special, very sensitive time when the course of events is quickly accelerating and several directions of development open up before us. It is obvious that the nation of Israel is a factor that may guide humanity in one direction or another; moreover, these vectors have a life-changing significance for both the nation itself and the world as a whole.

Everything the sages have written has come true over the course of history until the present day—it happens in its own time and in a specific order. And today, the nation of Israel must fulfill its purpose according to the principle of the three lines. On one hand, it advances by using the egoistic desire that every person has, but on the other hand, it realizes the altruistic desire. This way it combines the egoism, which all of us have plenty of, with the call for mutual help, which has always been inherent to it. When these two aspirations are applied correctly, the nation will unite into a “middle line,” in the middle. Then it will establish the right kind of mutual relations in its own environment, and is able to refer properly to the world.

Today, regrettably, the nation of Israel is not very close to the realization of this special path. However, making changes rests specifically on it. If it will really act this way and hand this method of mutual interaction to the entire world, it will become the so-called “light for the nations,” and then everyone will necessarily feel that there is a wonderful way to come out of the crisis and ascend. A prophet has written: “Everyone will know Me, from the small to the big.” In other words, the upper Force, the one that is good and does good, will be revealed in our world.

Naturally, “Torah will come out of Zion, and the Creator’s word from Jerusalem.” However, it is also necessary to consider the role of large foreign communities that influence the state of Israel and its government. Frankly, I think that the nation of Israel would be interested in a strong increase in this influence and of it becoming closer and more mutual.

Today we cannot feel it much. Naturally, Jews from France or the US are concerned for Israel and help it a lot, however, they are not represented enough in the country, they do not have a strong enough connection with the nation for it to really feel their presence. Their articles and appeals are not published in the newspapers, and even though people know that they exist and that they come for urgent actions and gatherings, they act against assimilation and anti-Semitism for the benefit of the people, in social, women’s, and youth organizations, and the people still do not feel that they are among them. And the problem is not their physical presence, but the perception, which is transmitted through mass media, the current events.

This is very important. I assume that this connection needs to be strengthened and maintained. Separation really weakens the Jewish people; after all, it was created out of love. Its foundation was laid by Abraham, literally “the father of the people” (Ab ha-am), who has laid the foundation of love, mercy, and mutual unity for it. When the people fail to maintain this connection, they lose their strength, they become so weak that anything can be done to them. And on the contrary, examples from history, such as the war of the Maccabees, show that by uniting, the nation attains true success, no matter what problems it is facing.
[80964]
From the Introductory Lecture 6/5/12, “The Influence of the Media”

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Opinion (Takeshi Fujimaki, former adviser to billionaire investor George Soros): “‘Japan is likely to default before Europe does, which could be in the next five years,’ the president of Fujimaki Japan, an investment advising company in Tokyo, said in an interview yesterday [June 14]. Japanese should hold foreign-currency products, such as those denominated in the greenback, Swiss franc, sterling, Australian and Canadian dollars, Fujimaki said.

“Should the Japanese government default, the yen may weaken to 400-500 per dollar, and the yields on benchmark 10-year bonds could surge above 80 percent, according to Fujimaki. …

“Japan’s public borrowings, the world’s biggest, will balloon to 245.6 percent of its annual economic output in 2014, up from 67.3 percent in 1984, an estimate by the International Monetary Fund shows. …

“‘There’s no way out of Japan’s crisis,’ Fujimaki said. ‘The only option left for Japan is either default or print money into hyper-inflation.’”

My Comment: There is a way out of the crisis for every country and the entire world if we understand its cause—the hyper-egoism of managers—if we begin to transform the world community from antagonistic to fraternal, and if we start to transfer the economy from over-consumption to reasonable consumption through a realistic reduction of infrastructure. Otherwise, the crisis will bring us to this through the destruction of the entire infrastructure.
[80913]

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