Opinion: (Olivier Blanchard, the IMF Chief Economist): “We started 2011 in recovery mode, admittedly weak and unbalanced, but nevertheless there was hope.

“Yet, as the year draws to a close, the recovery in many advanced economies is at a standstill, with some investors even exploring the implications of a potential breakup of the Eurozone, and the real possibility that conditions may be worse than we saw in 2008.

“I draw four main lessons from what has happened.

• First, post the 2008–09 crisis, the world economy is pregnant with multiple equilibria—self-fulfilling outcomes of pessimism or optimism, with major macroeconomic implications.
• Second, incomplete or partial policy measures can make things worse.
• Third, financial investors are schizophrenic about fiscal consolidation and growth.
• Fourth, perception moulds reality.

“Put these four factors together, and you can explain why the year ends much worse than it started.

“Is all hope lost? No, but putting the recovery back on track will be harder than it was a year ago. It will take credible but realistic fiscal consolidation plans. It will take liquidity provision to avoid multiple equilibria. It will take plans that are not only announced, but implemented. And it will take much more effective collaboration among all involved.

“I am hopeful it will happen. The alternative is just too unattractive.”
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Question: At the very beginning of implementing the program of an integral society we will need to somehow overcome all sorts of disagreements. For instance, how do we convince a person that he can do with an apartment that’s 500 square feet and not 2,000 square feet like his neighbor’s? What kind of arguments can we use?

Answer: As we continue to move toward integration, people will be changing their lifestyle. Every person will need their own room in order to study and not bother others. I think that one room per person is enough, plus a common living room and other auxiliary rooms—that’s a normal living area. We can provide everyone with these conditions, assuming we stop chasing after excess and adopt this standard as the model home.

The same applies to food. It’s very easy to calculate the necessary amount of food for a person. This could be a certain set that complies with one’s habits: national, cultural, and so on, but restricted in terms of assortment, meaning less than 50 kinds of sausage that currently line the supermarket shelves. All this variety is simply pointless. Presently someone is making money off you with this, but once the issue of livelihood is settled, all this excess automatically disappears.

Over the course of the crisis hundreds of millions of people will lose their jobs, and their purchasing power will take a nosedive. This will force dozens of redundant kinds of food off the shelves as no one will be buying them. These cutbacks will happen naturally, and we don’t have to worry about them. The world will naturally sever all the excess from the basic necessities for a normal and healthy life.

Comment: For people who have lived in socialist regimes and experienced the phenomenon of a growing deficit, which forced them to spend tremendous amounts of time and efforts to acquire the bare necessities, this sounds kind of scary because they immediately picture long lines.

Answer: There won’t be any lines. I think that everything will be delivered to people’s homes. You will order what you require, and an organization responsible for food supply will deliver everything to you. Similarly, other organizations will provide apartment repair and other types of services.

These are the necessary types of jobs that will remain with humanity, aside from specific industries, agriculture, and so on. Essentially, we will be spending our time and efforts on what is really necessary.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” 12/12/11

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Question: You are saying that in the case of a conflict you should first separate the rivals. But the hatred is growing worldwide. If everyone stays in his “corner,” how will people connect?

Answer: First the two rival parties should be separated so that there will be no quarrel. Fighting will certainly not help the connection. When people are hostile to each other, they can’t learn about mutuality, not even theoretically. Imagine that we are fighting passionately, not listening to one another, and meanwhile we first of all need to hear each other at least a little. So, we are separated, each one is placed in his “corner,” and we communicate from a distance.

Suppose we gradually get closer and we go through stage X_I and X_II. Here we have a problem. We have both drawn apart from our initial positions that can’t be bridged, and as a result we are in doubt and don’t know what to do. Usually we come to a dead end.

This phenomenon is well known to diplomats: The two parties get closer, more and more, but suddenly they are thrown backwards. Why? It’s because they have drawn too far from their starting point and have stretched the wires that connect them to the starting point too far. Behind them there are the people, their enemies, and their political rivals, and they all say: “Look how far they’ve gone! How can you make so many concessions?”

Eventually we are both unhappy with the new situation. Each of us remembers the principles he has given up and doesn’t see any point in any further concessions. It’s as if we say to each other: “It isn’t worth it. Imagine what they will do to us at home if we meet midway. They’ll kill us.”

So what should we do? There is only one way out: comprehensive upbringing. You won’t achieve anything until you educate everyone so that they advance towards connection together with you. In this case, when you get closer, you don’t get away from “your side,” but simply go through phases of development, just like me.  Even if we leave the negotiations aside, it won’t send us to different sides; on the contrary, we’ll stay in the same place we managed to reach by our mutual nearing. This is what we get through education.

But in order to reach that, we must first separate the two parties, to build an education system for each of them which suits them, and to draw the ties between these two different camps. Even if both sides are ready to negotiate, there are still the people on both sides and different social sectors. They don’t understand our reasoning, they are still in a different state, and so we can’t approach each other yet. They’ll set us free only for a certain distance, but not more than that.

If you are looking for true correction, you will be able to allow people to come down from the initial position and to advance towards an opposite one only with the help of education.

Question: All this does exist in mutual relations between states, companies, and even in the family. But does the first phase always require total detachment? For example, do the EU countries have to separate and only then look for a solution?

Answer: No. It’s because this case is a bit different: They are already untied, although not so successfully. If you already have a connection, you should be very careful not to break it. Otherwise, you will be going against nature. If the Europeans do that, things will be much worse. So they have to go forward towards integration as much as possible. There is no other way.

But in order to do that, they have to change their principles. After all, nothing is more separated, alienated, and divided than Europe. History has arranged for its people to hate one another very much. Only education can help here.

If the European leaders stall for time and start mass education, the situation will improve. People will immediately begin to develop on the level of consciousness and understanding of the world. But unfortunately, the Europeans don’t see or understand this option yet.
[64692]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/29/2011, “The Freedom”

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Question: I have a few acquaintances who live exactly as you described. These are middle-aged people who have created this cocoon for themselves. Are you trying to say that they will not be able to calmly live in their homes due to inner worries and concerns?

Answer: It’s not only an inner worry, but an external one as well. We are coming to a point when the world is freeing itself from excess production, and more than half of the working people today are simply no longer needed as workers. They will find themselves in a state of complete emptiness because they are used to being slaves.

Practically the entire population of our planet lives this way. At six in the morning a person leaves his house, takes his child with him if he has one, drops him off at the kindergarten on the way, heads to work, returns from work, picks up his child, and also swings by the supermarket. In the evening spouses have half an hour to bathe their child, tuck him into bed, eat some kind of pre-cooked meal, and that’s it—the day ends here, and tomorrow it’s the same story all over again.

We are moving towards a state where a lot of people are beginning to have more free time, and the sensation of being lost is growing because they no longer find themselves within a familiar framework, but as if outside any framework altogether. That is a lot worse! This internal sense of freedom is worse than slavery!

And if a person isn’t given an opportunity to obtain gratification from some other source, isn’t given a sensation of boundaries, a framework like at a job, a sensation of some kind of responsibility and servitude that he is used to, then we are going to have enormous problems.

We must understand that in the future it will only take a person two or three hours a day for all his necessities: working, attending to oneself and others, and so on. All the remaining time, at least 20 hours a day, he will be left to his own devices.

To avoid bringing this system out of its equilibrium, sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, all of us need to carefully think through the framework that humanity must acquire in order to feel needed, happy, and completely fulfilled with the inner feelings that gives one a sense of life, and even beyond that.

It isn’t easy when there are no responsibilities, no pressure from above, no need to work hard in order to earn more, to show-off in front of the neighbors, and so on. We are coming to a completely different relationship towards ourselves, society, and life, which comes down to a new upbringing, a new perception of life. This isn’t a simple system at all. But it has to stem from that final outcome that we wish to achieve, and first and foremost from the terms created by nature.

Nature will force us to give up excessive production. The middle class will be essentially eliminated. Those remaining will be the elites who make all the decisions, with a very small number of officials, a huge mass of unemployed, and  10% of the world’s working population engaged in production and servicing of everyone else. These 10% will actually be necessary, but there will simply be no need for all the rest.

In reality, humanity is created in such a way that 90% of its population must be engaged in activities of a completely different nature: in self-improvement, in creating a correct connection between themselves. They are the ones who will create that integral, global, self-contained, and balanced environment that will bring the entire society into equilibrium with nature. Only then will we have a right to exist.

If we leave, let’s say, only those 10% who work in production, the purpose of creation will not be achieved. The purpose of creation is to bring all parts, all levels of nature: the still, vegetative, animate, and human to the attainment of complete harmony among them. Only then will this system achieve a final state of equilibrium.
[63844]
Talk on Integral Upbringing 12/11/2011

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Question: Many agree with the uniqueness of the Creator, with determinism, with an existence of a script, yet they still attempt to “read” their fate through esotericism, fortune-tellers, and so on. They don’t want to use it, but to adapt to it….

Answer: The thing is that on the basis of all these investigations they don’t feel a need to ask a question about the underlying cause. In general, we have long left behind the exalted science associated with the perception of reality, the philosophy of worldview. Today’s Nobel Prizes are awarded for discoveries that are purely technical, practical, and profitable. In this way, science too is in a state of crisis: For decades now, it hasn’t revealed any fundamental principles laid down in nature.

People have other needs; they are not drawn to exalted matters. Previously, a researcher would strive to get to the very essence of things, to discover the why, not the how. He wasn’t satisfied with a formula describing a newly-observed phenomenon, but sought its logic, its pattern: Where does it spring from? Where is it flowing? And then he would get to the exalted factor: What is the reason that it is created in this particular way? Why is nature arranged specifically thus? We should always ask this question, but unfortunately there is no demand for it today.

Question: That is the reason why they don’t hear us. How do we change that?

Answer: You can’t change that. If people merely seek to add more convenience and comfort to their lives, then they don’t care about the rest. In the grand scheme of things, who cares about science these days? Today, a good scientist is someone who can provide us with superior strength and weapons. We are not drawn at all to understanding the inner essence of things. Such is the outcome of the general crisis, and thus there isn’t yet anybody to turn to.

These days, however, people are starting to feel bad due to this very crisis. No kind of science will help them anymore. In anticipation of a collapse, a person will have to find out who is knocking him down and why. There is no other choice; it will be necessary to discover that because there is nowhere left to run. Formerly some loopholes could be found: “Let’s secure our life, build a sturdier house with heating and air conditioning, let’s ensure that food supplies don’t depend on weather conditions, let’s extract the earth’s treasures from its depths….” We fled from misfortunes with the aid of technology.

In their time, Aristotle and Plato warned against this. They didn’t want to reveal scientific knowledge to the masses because they knew that in such event people would start to use science for personal gain. Why reveal a path that in a few millennia will bring them to a dead end? Better they sense right away that they are in trouble and rush towards the purpose of creation.

The ancient Greek philosophers knew about the science of Kabbalah, so it is no coincidence that they were against the disclosure of scientific knowledge. After all, humanity uses it only to sweeten their sorrows, which are deliberately sent by the Creator so as to bring us towards the purpose of creation. We flaunt and take pride in our achievements while in truth, we’re merely engaged in a never-ending race, which brought us to this crisis all the same. And yet, it was possible to overcome this even two thousand years ago.

Only today, nearing the conclusion of their race, are people finally asking the questions: “Where do these misfortunes come from? What do they mean? When will they end? What should we do?” A person is incapable of simply tolerating suffering—he will have to embark on a search. Today the dead end is already evident, and now, because of the hopelessness, humanity must identify the cause of its misfortunes.

Those in power, however, don’t want to reveal the whole truth about what is taking place. If that were to happen, those endowed with wealth and power would have to share and to reorganize the human society according to the principle of mutual guarantee. This topic is still taboo, no one speaks about it, and therefore, there is no solution to the crisis.

But sooner or later the suffering will melt the ice, and these problems will have to be confronted. And then in seeking out the causes of its misfortunes and ways to salvation, humanity will come to the revelation of the Creator. We are doing this artificially, by gathering in a group and building the necessary conditions according to the Kabbalistic methodology. We too are pressured by misfortunes, but we add our own efforts on top of them in order that they advance us on the way towards the goal. In this manner we are using the positive force, which gives us acceleration, while the rest are accelerated with prods and kicks from behind.
[64066]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/22/11, Baal HaSulam, “The Freedom”

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The term “globalization” is mistakenly interpreted as growing international trade and international exchange of technologies, information, and ideas, as well as people moving from place to another in an open global economy. Some consider this progress, and some see it as a serious threat to the global economy.

But globalization isn’t only about universal exchange, but rather about integration to such an extent that it would bring about total merging and erasing of all borders. Globalization isn’t the expression of economic progress, but rather social progress and the way to a new humanity. The crises we are experiencing are a challenge for all of humanity, an adjustment.

Globalization isn’t competition, but connection, and it will work only if the goal is to reach sensible equal consumption. Otherwise the “involuntary” globalization will lead us to collapse (connection among egotists is bad for them and bad for the world).

Today there is no globalization because there are still barriers between countries and there are no laws that sustain the connection of a whole unified society. Globalization can be realized only together, in mutual guarantee. Otherwise it’s the connection among a pack of capitalist sharks.

The mergers of businesses, the economic interaction outside the political borders, the international tourism, international connections, the number of Internet users, and the different international organizations, all these should not mislead us.

Globalization is a neutral process of our evolution, determined by nature. It’s an inevitable process of interdependence (mutual guarantee) of everyone on everyone, in one integral analog system of humanity and of nature as a whole. This compels us to immediately establish a new form of integral upbringing, in order to prepare humanity for the new world that is getting nearer.
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In the News (from pakalertpress.com): “For the better part of two decades Celente and his Trends Journal have been forecasting political, financial, economic and social trends with an uncanny ability for accuracy.

“In his latest interview Celente discusses a variety of different topics – from Iran and Europe to domestic militarization and the economy – and warns that our worst fears will soon be realized.

“Gerald Celente on Jeff Rense Radio:

“‘This passed (National Defense Authorization Act) the Senate by 93-7. I’m mentioning this because all the pieces are in place now. The economy is going to crash. There is going to be chaos. Economic martial law will be called. Banks will close. And, chaos will ensure. The law is now in place for the military to come in and take over. Fascism has come to America.’

“‘And if anyone thinks that I’m over blowing this, you may recall, for those of you who have been listening to Jeff Rense for the years that I’ve been on, that when Obama got elected I said there was a high probability, in 2009, of a bank holiday because of the disastrous economic conditions.’

“In an interview with Lew Rockwell on November 30, Celente provided a timeline for events, suggesting that things may start heating up as soon as the first quarter of 2012.

“‘And my belief, and this is going to be a Top Trend of 2012, is that, in the new year, they are going to bring down the gavel on the system. They are going to pump it up to soak every last penny from the suckers to spend money on Christmas stuff they don’t need. And after that, after the Christmas holiday’s over, then were going to get the bank holiday… some form, whether its that or not, some form of economic martial law.’

“If our economy buckles, and we strongly believe it is only a matter of time, then you can fully expect that banks will close and chaos will ensue on the streets of America. Given recent legislation and the training exercises involving thousands of US military troops to be used to quell civil unrest, we can only gather that Celente is, yet again, right on target.”

My Comment: The books of prophets, The Book of Zohar, AGRA, Baal HaSulam, and Rabash, all point to our time as the period of transition from the “animate” to “human” level. This switch occurs as a consequence of people’s realization of a unified nature, in which they exist in their aspiration to become similar to it through their unification.

Nowadays, when we have unwillingly started this transition, many in the world feel its flow and necessity. With each passing day there are more and more of such people in the world. They are our only hope that the transition will result in people’s realization and the revolution of our consciousness, rather than through the path of blood, when great suffering will force us to change nonetheless.
[64092]

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Opinion: (Alexander Voin, a mathematician, philosopher, head of the International Institute of Philosophy): “What do we have to do in order to fix the global crisis humanity is in? We are reaching one of the main expressions of the global crisis: the conflict between nations who are separated by different perceptions of good and bad.

“Is it possible to influence the value system? After all, the desire to acquire as much as you can is human nature! But in human nature we also find an awareness of solidarity with other people. Throughout history there were people who were ready to serve the common interests, even at their own expense. Only the relation between the number of these people and the number of people who worry about themselves without any consideration of anything else has changed under the influence of value systems set by society and also under the influence of religions, philosophy, and different circumstances. The scientific—technological progress is one of these circumstances.

“The way towards the desirable change begins here: We have to re-examine our attitude towards scientific—technological progress as the ultimate good. The production of corporeal affluence must cease being humanity’s main goal. Spiritual, moral, and intellectual advancement should be its main focus.”

My Comment: A person can change only by gradually learning about the necessity to follow nature’s plan, which will make him feel satisfied with a balanced corporeal consumption, and beyond that he will only want spiritual fulfillment.
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In the News (from expert.ru): “HSBC Global Research forecasts economic uncertainty on a grand scale for the world economy in the first quarter of 2012. A year ago, politicians and economists were moderately optimistic in their predictions and said the worst is in the past. Now it’s obvious that this point of view was wrong.

“HSBC predicts a full-scale recession for the Euro zone. If China’s economy will continue to slow down, there is a possibility that the world economy will go into recession.

“As a result, HSBC predicts that the world’s GDP in 2012 will grow by 1.9% instead of 2.6%, as per previous forecast issued in October.”

My Comment: The time has expired; integral education and upbringing must be urgently introduced in the world. It will change society so that it becomes similar to integral nature, thus cancelling all these crises.
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In the News (from Business Insider): “Overnight, the threat of further Chinese tightening multiplied as a result of food price inflation. A basket of 18 key vegetables saw their prices increase by 62.4%, year-over-year, in the first 10 days of November.

“But just how likely is Chinese tightening?

“Waverly Advisors feel that it is now a near certainty, based on the political realities within China. The fact that Premier Wen Jiabo chose a supermarket as the location for a press appearance to comment on anti-inflationary measures today indicated how seriously Beijing is taking the potential disruptive impact of rising cost at the cash register.

“But this isn’t just a Chinese problem. 40% of the world’s population, found in China, India, and Brazil, is seeing their food prices skyrocket as a result of price inflation.”

My Comment: This is not the treat of famine, but food riots, unrest, and violence, which will afflict more than half the population of the globe. The only salvation of the world is to introduce integral upbringing immediately and to restructure society to a society of reasonable consumption. Otherwise, humanity will have to advance by the path of suffering.
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