Entries in the 'Crisis' Category

Perpetual Gain

Laitman_420_02Egoism, which is rooted in our nature, is the reason for our suffering. Since nature is inescapable, people attempt to limit the use of egoism by reaching all sorts of  agreements, realizing that otherwise egoism will lead to confrontation and war. Countries make all possible efforts to sign treaties while at the same time they realize such treaties won’t radically change the situation, yet they understand that it is necessary to counter-oppose the power and the egoism, to curb it by force.

If only people knew that it is possible to correct our nature, that evil reveals itself through us specifically so that it could be corrected and bring us to something great and supreme! If only we knew that we can escape hardship, rise above death, and attain eternal and perfect life!

This is the knowledge that we try to bring to others, since merely understanding it will bring humanity tremendous relief. No one knows how much time it will take since nowadays time accelerates exponentially. This is why we have to keep working and not despair; we will see the fruit of our work in the nearest future.

We have to explain to the people why everything happens (for our correction), what the goal is (eternal and perfect life), and the good path to it (how to realize the goal with the Light’s help). Then people will understand what real life is, that it’s not just something we perceive at a given moment in our limited egoistic desires.

We sense transition from one Partzuf to another as death and the loss of everything there is. But if we perceived the world through the desire to bestow, this transition wouldn’t be felt as a loss since we would sense a larger, general system. Upon losing one’s Partzuf, a person still stays within the system and enters a new Partzuf. If one connects other people to his desire, he feels the eternal flow in everything that he undergoes.

Today, we don’t perceive eternity and it seems a disaster for us to lose our Partzuf and the ten Sefirot that we envision as “this life.” We don’t know anything except it.

It’s not so hard to explain this. Any person gains so much from listening to this information that he would want to know more. Ultimately, everybody dreams of eternity and perfection.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/25/10, Article “The Peace”

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Life On A Blazing Volcano

Laitman_188A question I received: First there was an earthquake in China, then a plane crash, and now everyone is talking about the volcano erupting in Iceland which left all of Europe covered in volcanic ash. There’s a feeling that we’ve entered a streak of global catastrophes.

My Answer:
Tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions are natural phenomena. However, everything that happens depends on human beings or, rather, on our alignment with the Creator, on our balance with nature. Since we’re becoming more and more egoistic, we’re interrupting the balance of nature’s forces more and more. This is why we feel the negative influence of nature in us and on us.

The consequences of the spiritual imbalance of forces that we create are unknown. Our opposition to nature, the Creator, is revealed on all levels (inanimate, vegetative, animate, and speaking) of nature. An eruption can occur anywhere since we’re living on a burning volcano. Our entire planet is a fire ball covered by a thin layer of the Earth’s crust; there’s a blazing volcano within.

These occurrences are a slight hint at the fact that we’re not taking care of our home, the Earth. Human beings need to bring the forces of nature into balance. The science of Kabbalah discloses to us how to do this.

However, at the present time, humanity doesn’t want to realize that everything that’s happening is a consequence of our own qualities and that everything depends on us. If our imbalance with nature intensifies, more serious problems will occur.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/19/10, Article “The Freedom”

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Solution Of The Crisis: Recognition That We Are One

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from The Guardian): Scientists have learned that selection of a sexual partner depends not on the person, but on the preferences of the species in general. “People are usually attracted to partners with similar facial features to their own, but after a brief but stressful experience, men’s preferences changed to include a wider variety of women, the study found…Lass-Hennemann speculates that stress might increase men’s tendency to “outbreed,” or reproduce with more genetically dissimilar women, with the potential benefit that any children born from the relationship might be better equipped to cope with a stressful environment.”

My Comment: We see that our actions are controlled not by our individual consciousness, but by the consciousness of our biological species. This biological consciousness gives us commands directed towards benefiting the whole organism. In other words, the world is structured so that on the level of biology we obey the laws of Upper Governance as methodically as robots would. Yet we don’t have such programs on the level of social connections, thus we use primitive egoistic programs of our physical body in interactions with other people.

However, these programs are not directed toward survival of the species as a whole, or even us as people. They are directed only towards survival of our biological body and raising the level of its physiological comfort. When we take the same biological mechanism protecting our body, and apply it to interactions with other people, then that protection system prevents us from getting closer with the other person.

At the end of the 20th century, the use of this biological protection mechanism toward social interaction evolved into an egoistic problem for all of humanity. The reason is that we (the human species) are approaching a new level of self-organization that we must move toward in the 21st century. Therefore, if we will not mindfully overcome the forces of repulsion among us, the transition will arrive in a dramatic way.

The Global Crisis Is Not Fiction


A question I received: Don’t you think that the crisis was invented by a small group of people who profited from it, while the world keeps turning around as before?

My Answer: It’s exactly the opposite. The financial crisis signifies the beginning of the global crisis in all spheres of human activity: family, education, science, arts, ecology, finances, and so on. This is why it requires a global solution: changing our attitude toward the reason and purpose of our existence from living in order to consume to consuming in order to live, and attaining the highest form of existence.

Our world manifests itself as a single whole. In such a system, all the parts are equal and dependent, and solutions have to be unified, joint, and directed toward the purpose of our world’s creation. The global nature of the world that is being revealed now compels us to become a unified society.

Manifestation of the crisis and suffering is nothing but the manifestation of incongruence between our society and unified Nature.

A question I received: What is the solution to the crisis?

My Answer: We do not know how to resolve global problems. Our mind is created to be ‘discrete,” to solve something within specific limits, concretely. Now that our society became a global village, we witness manifestations of complete interdependence and connectedness in the society, and the world becomes unpredictable to us.

We don’t know how to make calculations in this system with its unlimited number of variables, with the unlimited number of free and freely connected elements that this interconnected, global system presents. As a result, we treat life as fate, without planning or trying to examine it. The inability to perceive is accepted as a fact.

If a person comes down from the pedestal where he put himself above nature, and admits that he is under Nature’s rule, our power over nature will be revealed as a fatal illusion. Will we stop the destruction of the planet and will we manage to restore it?

The current crisis represents the search for the essence of humanity’s existence. The solution lies in humanity’s defining the purpose of its existence.

Obama’s Economic Consultant Says, “Wake Up, Gentlemen”


In the News (from The Wall Street Journal): “Paul Volcker: Think More Boldly” Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker chastised the largely private-sector group for the timidity of its proposals:

“My overall impression is that you have not come anywhere near close enough to responding with necessary vigor or structural changes to the crisis that we have had. Every day I hear financial leaders saying that they are necessary and desirable, they are wonderful and they are God’s work. Has there been one financial leader to stand out and say that maybe this is excessive and that maybe we should get together privately to think about some restraint?

Wake up, gentlemen. I can only say that your response is inadequate. I wish that somebody would give me some shred of neutral evidence about the relationship between financial innovation recently and the growth of the economy, just one shred of information. I am getting a bit wound up here.

I found myself sitting next to one of the inventors of financial engineering. I didn’t know him, but I knew who he was and that he had won a Nobel Prize, and I nudged him and asked what all the financial engineering does for the economy and what it does for productivity. Much to my surprise, he leaned over and whispered in my ear that it does nothing—and this was from a leader in the world of financial engineering…”

My Comment: Mr. Volcker is stating the truth (a liberty he can allow himself due to being a “former” chairman). The crisis continues because it is not being corrected by the creation of improved connections in our global society.

Kabbalah forecasts further downfall until people recognize the root of the crisis – the human egoism, and until people will be forced to rise above it for the sake of survival.

The only question is: how much suffering and how many world wars will we all have to go through in order to recognize the necessity of building the right relationships in our interconnected, global world.

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From 55 BC Comes The Timely Wisdom Of Cicero


“The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation doesn’t want to go bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero, 55 BC – Roman author, orator, and politician

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The Crisis Will Put Everything Into Place


A question I received: Based on the fact that they follow to the letter the latest political decisions concerning the financial market and its regulation, and after having received a few billion Euros from the French government, the bank, “Societe Generale” will distribute primes of up to one billion Euros to its traders! As you say, “as long as the printing facilities are operational.”

But isn’t considering any particular case just about acknowledging the illusion of the separation of the bodies, when in fact, we all want to reach the same goal? After all, anyone can, in his own way, “equate,” more or less on “love,” but few on “specialties” like banking or financial practices. Even a perfect financial system would not be very exciting, would it?

My Answer: The crisis will put everything into place. The alternative is war and other calamities. There is no other way. Relief is possible only through the explanation of how to correct ourselves.

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Is Barack Obama Delivering The Promised Change?

Where to Defend a DissertationTwo questions I received on Barack Obama’s presidency:

Question: Barack Obama’s recent speech in Cairo stressed the basic message of all major religions: Love your neighbor as yourself. He spoke of the need for nations to cooperate on every level. This was the philosophy with which he came into office and which he continues to espouse. What is your opinion about the appearance of an American President with this kind of thinking at this point in the global crisis? Do you think the world is ready to begin this conversation?

My Answer: I don’t believe a word he or anyone else says.

Question: On numerous occasions you have posted remarks on “Obama.” My question to you is, in your opinion, how do you see the “change” in America, and President Obama’s new approach to the Muslim world and Israel?

My Answer: For the short term, this has helped America eliminate other nations’ hatred of it. But that’s all. In my opinion, this person is not yet the correct instrument of the Creator.

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The Next Chapter In The World Crisis Book

Laitman_2009-05-28_8354_wMore stories in the news which give evidence to the continuing and worsening world crisis:

Drought Is Spreading in the World
In the News (from Jo Abbess): “Big Dry: Global Drought Update”

August 13, 2009: This spring, northern China experienced its worst drought in 50 years, The drought also left 3.5 million people and 1.66 million livestock with no access to drinking water.

August 6, 2009: Mexican authorities facing a drought-weakened sugar crop.

August 11, 2009: “Serious Drought in Africa Drives Cattle into Wildlife Parks.”

August 06, 2009: Drought expected to cut Ugandan tea output.

August 13, 2009 [India]: Drought fears rise, soybean crop on brink.

August 11, 2009: Russia may have to face a food crisis next winter. Whole fields of fodder and cereal crops have been withered by scorching sun.

Japan’s unemployment rate hits record high
In the News: (from The Telegraph): “Japan’s unemployment rate hits record high” – The jobless rate rose to a worse than expected 5.7pc in July, up from 5.4pc in June, the government said. Deflation also deepened last month with core consumer prices dropping 2.2pc a year earlier – the fastest pace on record.

Alan Greenspan: ‘This will happen again’
In the News (from BBC): “Market crisis ‘will happen again’” – The world will suffer another financial crisis, former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan has told the BBC. “It’s human nature, unless somebody can find a way to change human nature, we will have more crises and none of them will look like this because no two crises have anything in common, except human nature.”

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The Same Law Rules The Whole Of Nature

In the News (from Physorg.com): “Dead Ahead: Similar Early Warning Signals of Change in Climate, Ecosystems, Financial Markets, Human Health” What do abrupt changes in ocean circulation and Earth’s climate, shifts in wildlife populations and ecosystems, the global finance market and its system-wide crashes,  asthma attacks and epileptic seizures have in common? – According to a paper published this week in the journal Nature, they all share generic early-warning signals that indicate a critical threshold of change dead ahead. “It’s increasingly clear that many complex systems have critical thresholds–‘tipping points’–at which these systems shift abruptly from one state to another,” write the authors.

My Comment: After all, the Law is the same for the whole of Nature including all of human civilization. This is just the first of the discoveries of the global and integral dependency of all Nature’s parts.

When it obliges us to unite into one integral system, then negative changes will stop and everything will come to harmony, even the “irreversible” changes in the Earth’s climate.

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