I had a conversation that was recorded about the reasons for the financial crisis with Mr. Leonid Makaron, the Director General of the largest Russian media holding company “Pronto Moscow,” Vice President of the “The Russian Periodical Press Publishers Guild,” a professor and scientific adviser of the advertisement and marketing chair at the Moscow State University of Press.

He lives on five continents, stays on top of all the events happening in the world, and is very sensitive to the changes taking place in the world. I meet with him regularly, and our meetings help me feel what’s going on in the world as well as the opinions of people in high positions about it, and then to compare all this with Kabbalah’s opinion. I hope these opinions will soon converge!

Read a transcript of the conversation

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I received many questions on the reason for our suffering and the current crisis. Here’s my answer:

Kabbalah states that there is only one reason for everything that’s happening: man’s failure to observe the law of balance with Nature, or in other words, failure to observe the law of equivalence to the Creator. Precisely this failure to observe balance on the highest level, called “Human,” to have interpersonal relationships according to the principle “Love your neighbor as yourself,” leads to a breach of balance on the lower levels. As a result, the animal and plant kingdoms are dying out, and the balance of forces on the still level of nature are disrupted as well. All of this is an outcome of our egoistic thoughts, desires, and actions.

It’s no accident that the leading financiers have correctly pinpointed the reason for the financial crisis: it is a crisis of moral values, where greed has given rise to an avalanche of irresponsible accumulation. But as we can see, the suffering teaches people, even financiers, to see the reason for their misfortunes. As a result, the great suffering (to the point of hunger and near-extinction) will force us to restructure our egoistic attitude to humanity and the world.

Kabbalah offers us a way to implement these changes voluntarily and pleasantly, before the crises will catch up with us. Otherwise they will only keep mounting, like the plagues of Egypt.

It is difficult to understand how our egoism can influence natural disasters and global warming. But here too, the suffering will help us figure out the reason for what’s happening. The storms all over the world will keep gaining momentum, and the melting glaciers in Greenland will cause tornadoes. When this happens, it will suddenly become clear to us that the reason for these phenomena is our egoism and unfounded hatred for one another. In this way, Nature will teach humans to become “Human,” to observe the law of equivalence and attain balance!

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On November 25, at the Foreign Press Association Media Award in London, Prince Charles stated:

Humanity has a natural tendency to consume and if there are no limits on that tendency we can become obsessed simply with satisfying our desires. The desire grows ever more potent as we consume ever more, even though we achieve very little of the actual satisfaction we desire…

We hear so many people admitting to feeling deeply dissatisfied. This reminds me of that wise observation about Gross National Product made by Robert Kennedy forty years ago, that it “measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile.”

…many do not even realize that we have lost something very precious – what I might best describe as that intuitive sense of our interconnectedness with Nature… I consider our problems today not to be an environmental crisis per se… nor a financial crisis. They all stem from this fundamental crisis in our perception.

…the denial of our real relationship with the universal truths through a deep connection with Nature and her laws has engendered a dangerous alienation. In denying or forgetting the invisible “grammar of harmony” we create cacophony and dissonance.

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Two questions I received on “easy fixes” to the financial crisis:

Question: What you write in The Financial Crisis – an Analysis, is a new way to look at the unfolding crisis, and I appreciate the common sense attitude of the article. However, I take issue with the answer to the fourth question:

“Hence, countries will try to move away from globalization. However, this won’t help them, because then they will stop developing. Without full communication and exchange, they will cease developing and regress to feudalism!”

This country had development, communication and exchange before globalization. Globalization was a bad idea: America stopped developing. We stopped exchanging and took what the foreign recipients of our commerce gave us, and on their terms. We didn’t complain too loudly about industrial chemicals in baby food out of fear that they would stop selling us baby food and refuse our dollars. That’s not communication, it’s supplication.

My Answer: Everything taking place is governed by the law of development, so it isn’t a product of blind fate or a coincidence. We see that whenever something happens in the developed countries, the less developed countries are forced to follow suit.

We can’t change the laws of nature. We exist inside them and it’s our obligation to study and observe them. This is also to our own benefit. Nature has a goal for everything it does, which is to bring man to a special state: the highest level, called “the Creator.”

The development either takes place by means of pressure, which we perceive as suffering, or through man’s conscious understanding and cooperation with Nature. Kabbalah explains what to do to be on the second path.

Question: If the crisis is actually a crisis of people’s trust, then why can’t we stop it by advertising positive forecasts? The mass media should be forbidden from talking about bad news and instead made to tell everyone that everything is good.

My Answer: This won’t improve anything, because the illness will still keep developing until it will reach the point of being irreversible. We must first reveal the evil, and then correct it.

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A question I received: You have said that the current crisis is the first plague of Egypt. When will it end? Do you see an end to the decline and the layoffs?

My Answer: The crisis is not just a decline. Banks have stopped giving out credit loans out of fear that they won’t be returned. This is causing a rise in the unemployment rates, a halt in real estate and auto sales, a slowdown in production and a devaluation of resources. This trend can last for a long time, until people will learn the law of the global interdependence, which obliges us to change our relationships: to make sure that all our actions will have a positive effect on the whole world.

Here’s Hollywood’s depiction of the plagues of Egypt, which are an allegory:

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F21hys4ZLXo]

Of course, we must “translate” what’s written in the Torah into its authentic, spiritual meaning, as Kabbalah explains it!

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Two questions I received on the financial crisis:

Question: What will happen to the American capital market? Is there any chance it will be restored?

My Answer: The restoration will not happen quickly. As we undergo a change in our consciousness, rather than perish humanity will change its entire worldview: instead of caring for their bodies, people will spend their time caring about spiritual fulfillment.

There is no going back or repeating the past. Either we will take “the Path of Suffering” and enter a period of Nature’s blows until we find ourselves on the brink of extinction, while a small part of humanity (which will incorporate all the souls) will attain the spiritual goal of humanity.

Or we will accept the method of Kabbalah and completely restructure our lives in accordance with it. In this case, the planet will nourish us and we will stop being punished through natural and social crises. This is called “the Path of Light.”

We must understand that the banking crisis, which has already been replaced by the economic crisis, will grow into a social crisis – and then into an ecological one (lack of food and water, which can happen within the next ten years), then into a military one (Nazism), and so on, until mankind becomes completely savage. Alternatively, we can correct our egoistic nature using the method of Kabbalah. There is no other method, because all other methods lack the Upper Force, which created us and hence is able to correct us.

Question: Everyone’s talking about the crisis, but it’s hard for me to feel it personally. What can I do share this growing concern?

My Answer: The crisis will catch up to everyone.

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Shari Arison, the famous Israeli-American businesswoman (and the richest Israeli citizen), said the following about the financial crisis:

We are going through a difficult but extremely important period – important for the Jewish people and all of humankind.

We have a very important role, which is to raise the torch and set it afire. We will lead through awareness, humaneness, truth, values, love and peace. We must be united – only then will the turmoil, pain and hatred disperse.

The world today is on the brink of destruction. Anywhere you look there’s chaos, and it starts with something small – the relationships between people. The turmoil, danger and pain permeate all aspects of life: personal, interpersonal, ecological and economic. Today everyone understands this, and it’s a pity that we don’t see the solution.

I stand before you today and say to you: there is a solution, and it lies in our value system. The solution is concealed in the verse, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” We all want to change the collective situation, and we can do it. However, each and every one of us must assume the individual responsibility, the personal obligation.

My Comment: These are beautiful words, but there’s no way to implement them. I only hope that people will soon recognize that egoism is the cause of all their troubles, and then quickly realize that the only method of correcting it is by drawing the forces of Nature from the outside.

It is written: “I created egoism and I gave the Torah for its correction, because the Light that’s in it returns one to the Source.” This Light descends upon a person only during the correct use of Kabbalah – see item 155 of Baal HaSulam’s “Introduction to Talmud Esser Sefirot.”

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News Report: (translated from gazeta.ru): Analysts are eagerly looking for signs that the world’s financial markets are nearing the end of their collapse. Investors all over the world are waiting for the markets to finally hit the “bottom.” They’re hoping that this will be followed by a recovery, and then they will be able win back their losses, or perhaps to gain even more than before.

My Comment: The collapse will not be followed by a recovery. People are very far from understanding the cause of the collapse, because the cause lies deep in the egoistic qualities of our egoism and its opposition to the Creator. Even if the financial crisis will end, it will be replaced by another crisis, whether shortage of food and water or an environmental crisis. “The plagues of Egypt” will continue until we realize their cause – our egoism, called “the Pharaoh” – and annul it.

We must realize that the way out of the crisis is the way out of “Egypt” – out of our egoism. There is no other way.

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News Report (from SafeHaven): Professor Antal E. Fekete of the Gold Standard University Live (also Professor Emeritus, Memorial University of Newfoundland) writes the following in the article “The way to resolve the credit crisis: Recapitalize the banks with gold”: …paper assets are subject to annihilation (e.g., when the bank is consolidated with its counterparts holding the liability side of that asset). Suppose we consolidate the balance sheets of the global banking system. Then all assets will be wiped out with the sole exception of gold. But since the global banking system as it is presently constituted has no gold assets, under any consolidation the banks will be denuded of assets while note and deposit liabilities to the public remain. This is why the regime of irredeemable currency is susceptible to collapse that could be violent, taking place with lightening speed. It can also be seen that trying to save banks from collapsing through consolidation, mergers, takeovers, and shotgun marriages is pouring oil on the fire: it accelerates the meltdown of bank capital, rather than retarding it.

My Comment: The salvation lies in universal and equal unity, in creating a single civilization where every person gives and receives according to the law of a confined system – for the system’s common good. If the banks will unite with this purpose, it will save them from the destruction of the entire banking system.

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UK’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown:
…the world financial crisis can become the accelerator for the creation of a new kind of society, unique in its aspirations.

…together we can seize this moment of profound change to create, for the first time, the age of the truly global society — one where people find that what unites them is far greater that what ever divided them.

These last weeks and months will be studied by generations to come. Historians will look back and say this was no ordinary time but a defining moment: an unprecedented period of global change, a time when one chapter ended and another began – for nations; for continents; for the whole world.

USA’s President-elect Barack Obama:
…our global economic crisis requires a coordinated global response.

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