In the News (from Reuters): “President Barack Obama formally notified Congress on Thursday that he plans a $1.2 trillion increase in the U.S. debt limit prompting Republicans to level election-year charges that deficits are out of control.

“Obama said ‘further borrowing is required to meet existing commitments.’

“The proposed increase would push the debt ceiling to $16.394 trillion.

The move by the Democratic president, who is seeking re-election in November, gives Congress 15 days to vote on a resolution of disapproval under terms of budget control legislation passed last year.

“‘The President’s runaway borrowing threatens the foundation of our economy and the financial future of every hardworking American,’ said Senator Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee.

“‘It brings our nation closer to what the chairs of his own fiscal commission called “the most predictable economic crisis in its history.”’”

Comment: A rabbit is unable to get away when hypnotized by a boa’s eyes. It understands this but tries not to think, desiring to be mesmerized and not hearing about the future, denying the possibility of changing its behavior.
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A monthly magazine Intuition (Hamburg, Germany) published an article about integral and global upbringing. The article is written on the basis of an interview I gave during my trip to Germany.

[Show slideshow]

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A leading news portal in Israel NEWSru has published a report about the World Arvut Convention that took place December 6-8, 2011 in Tel Aviv.

“The Arvut Convention In Tel-Aviv: A Union Of People Determined To Unify The Whole World

“Even without the knowledge of Spanish, French or Turkish one can understand what the participants of the World Arvut Convention, along with almost two million people actively studying Kabbalah around the world, talk about and try to achieve. But the convention wasn’t just a three-day holiday and happy get-together; there were lessons and lectures there. Arvut Olami in Hebrew means global mutual responsibility. The idea is that when each one of us is able to be responsible for his friend, neighbour, and even a stranger, our world will truly become better. While some people see this as utopia, Kabbalists consider it a science.

“Dr. Michael Laitman explains, ‘Mutual guarantee is a strictly accurate method of balancing inner nature with outer one, and it has a huge number of formulas, graphs, numbers, and relationships. It is practical physics, the physics of balance, of our homeostasis with the external world. One the one hand, what Kabbalah says seems to be just another utopia, but on the other, we’ve reached a massive crisis in our economic relationships, the breaking up of the family, divorce, and drug abuse, an all-round crisis. So there is really no other way for humankind other than to transform itself into a society of mutual responsibility.’

[Read more →]

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On Tuesday, Seth Bogner, ARI Institute board member and US Executive Director, met with the staff of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. This meeting was a follow up to the meeting in September with the Deputy Secretary General Dr. Asha Rose Migiro. Mr. Bogner presented the Ari Institute’s Integral Education course for the people of the world. He also delivered our message that the crisis, approached constructively, can be an opportunity for a long-sought social and indeed global transformation.

On January 1, 2012 the Secretary General will begin his second term in which he is making Education a primary theme of his new administration. In his acceptance speech for his second term he underlined the need to “improve our ability to deliver as one” and “do more to connect the dots among the world’s challenges.”

The UN seems to be ready to listen to our message. They have requested our comments on the Secretary General’s educational plan and they have invited our collaboration going forward to help formulate their educational programs. A follow up meeting is already scheduled. While we cannot be sure of the outcome of our collaboration with the UN, we are very hopeful that the fact the UN is willing to listen to us is a big breakthrough we can use to our benefit to spread our message of unity to the world.
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A letter from my student: My friends called me early this morning saying that they heard reports on the radio and television that the Occupy Wall Street movement has been closed down and the police carried out a nightly raid on Zuccotti Park (also known as the Freedom Plaza), “cleaning out” the occupants from the territory.

This made me scared: Could it really be that we’ve been “cut off” from being able to disseminate materials? It turned out that it was true: the protestors were disbanded by the “broom” that was supposed to remove just bums and drug-addicts from the square. But apparently, they went into a rage.

To be frank, the drug-addicts and bums interfered with the movement, despite the cleanliness of the actual “occupants.” They smoked up the park so bad, you could get high just from walking by. We watched the veil of thick, milky white fog above the park. Our women, who were giving out flyers, breathed in so much pot smoke that they left there feeling sick. They were literally nauseous.

Bums and drug-addicts are also people, and everyone likes to eat for free, while the park had enough food for everyone. Everyone could receive three very nice meals a day, even the people just walking around, having nothing to do with the protests. And generally speaking, life in the camp was not bad at all—people feed you, clean up after you, and entertain you, the press interviews you, people bring you free clothing and money, and much more. You can’t see or get anything like it for free anywhere. And most important, you’re together with people! That’s why everyone is there—for the feeling of belonging and unity, the feeling that someone cares about you….

But all of this “communism” ended and the affluent, local residents rejoiced that the “mess” is finally over. Last night the police attacked the camp, and it was not smart to put up any resistance, to say the least. Of course, everyone was offended because they threw out all the belongings of the camp’s inhabitants, including a library of 500 rare, old and new books, tents, our time-tested table which we kept in the library, and much more.

Cleaning is cleaning, and it was thorough, in a police kind of way. They don’t beat around the bush—there wasn’t much time till the morning. If they waited for everyone to finish packing up and leaving, they wouldn’t have seen the end of it, and it’s more difficult to get a dirty job done in broad daylight….

Bloomberg, the city mayor, justified the cleaning by the fact that the occupants created unsanitary conditions in the park, which annoyed the park’s owners and also deprived regular citizens from the opportunity to enjoy the area and the chess games as before because lovers of this ancient intellectual game used to peacefully sit in the park and it was their place for socialization and recreation.

In the afternoon I managed to make my way to Wall Street and look at everything with my own eyes, when people left their workplaces and were on the way home. At 5pm things looked completely different already, compared to the quiet and order that the police had set up in the morning. The park was filled by thousands of people, occupants who returned to the square feeling hurt, offended, and angry.

This mass, consisting of different people that united into a single “body” over the last two months, rang out with outrage and scandal. “This is what a police state looks like! We will overcome!” and so on. These were no longer separate declarations of small groups and half-crazed fanatics, but one loud voice of a wounded creature whose home has been destroyed and who has no one to complain to.

A mass of people also crowded around the park to support the occupants, or just to watch what was happening. TV station and police helicopters hovered above the buildings, illuminating the crowd. The projectors from different sides of the street made the whole event look like a theatrical show unfolding on stage. And the police weren’t very aggressive, as if they’ve done their job and now they can rub their hands together. And at the end of the day, aren’t they the 99%? After an hour on Wall Street and hanging around the crowd, it became clear that “no one was going anywhere.”

The bums and drug-addicts probably won’t come back to the park. But the occupants are already there, along with those sympathizing with them. And we’re not out of the picture either: Today we managed to give out a few hundred flyers. The weather is unusually warm and the park is beautiful, resembling a golden and ruby colored forest… As if the Creator has put up “level 2 decorations” for us, like in a computer game. And I think we’re taking a sharper turn—“the 99% and us. Together!

What will happen on Wall Street and all the cities in America tomorrow is unpredictable for now. But one thing is clear: we HAVE TO UNITE if we want to go through this second level without losses, with the right calculation, and to give everyone who has “occupied” us (and it’s really so) a way to the Light and fulfillment.
Arvut USA!
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The New York Times – http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/nyregion/police-begin-clearing-zuccotti-park-of-protesters.html?pagewanted=1&ref=global-home

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In the News: (from utro.ru): “An intergovernmental group of experts on climate change explained how global warming threatens humanity. According to the report…in the near future, our civilization will face devastating rains and severe droughts. The impact of the climate will be so strong that many regions will become uninhabitable, and after extreme weather, a social explosion is inevitable. The climate change will affect primarily the middle latitudes: Europe, China, and North America.”
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Baal HaSulam, “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)” (abridged version): Why is all of Israel responsible for one another? At first it seems unjust for the Creator to collect another’s debt from you for his sin. And Rabbi Elazar, son of Rabbi Shimon, says all the people in the world are responsible for one another, and each person brings merit or sin to the whole world with his deeds.

This is exactly what we are observing today: The Greeks have amassed debt and the Germans are reaping the sad results; the French are afraid, the Italians are on the verge, and so on. They are nothing but mutual guarantors who are responsible for one another. But how can that be?

The fact is that parts of a single system are inseparable from one another. It is we who draw a deterministic division between them, but in reality, in an integral, analog system, all the parts simultaneously depend on one another. And this system works only if the input, output, and all the inner processes are in balance.

The system has a multitude of mechanisms inside, which are welded together by a single interconnection. When an incoming impulse arrives, the entire system starts uniting and being corrected until it assimilates the disturbance completely. And then it generates an outgoing signal.

Thus, an analog complex is not just a conductor consisting of a chain of blocks (▢▢), similar to a discrete system. Rather, everything in it is welded together and the outgoing signal won’t arrive until the impulse received at the exit is processed completely, until the entire system assimilates it and lifts itself to a new level.

That is how our body works as well. Recently specialists have been creating more and more systems like this because the whole world is gradually taking on qualities of the general, analog structure. All of nature is a “round,” undivided system, and only man with his “square”, fragmentary perception is subjugated by egoism and does not understand the system’s responses.

As a result, humanity has always created linear systems for itself, until the clock struck and now we are seeing more and more clearly that everything around is interconnected and all parts of the universe interact in integral, analog mechanisms, comprising the single system of nature together.

This integral attitude of nature becomes revealed to us gradually. Each of us grew inside of his egoism and it is only today that we are discovering that we are all in one common, integral system.

We have to understand that the changes can only come from us, when every person realizes that he is an integral part of an integral system. That’s because in this system, the particular and the general are equal. Without this, we won’t find out how to treat nature correctly and will always suffer. We still don’t understand that the contradiction between the analog and discrete approaches elicits a big flaw in nature and brings us enormous troubles.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/01/11, Writings of Baal HaSulam “Matan Torah (The Giving of the Torah)”

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The Israeli website Maariv published an interview with the spiritual teacher Thomas Hübl, Germany, with whom we met during his visit to Israel. Here are some excerpts from the article:

“Hübl thinks that Israel can and should become ‘the light for the nations’ because of Kabbalah. ‘I feel deep resonance with Kabbalah,’ he said. ‘Through it, it is possible to realize personal and global work.’

“During the autumn holidays, Hübl conducted a few conversations with Dr. Laitman, which were filmed for Channel 66. ‘This is a special visit,’ says Hübl. ‘I feel that something great and large-scale, something global begins here. In our time, it is nice to act alone, but the way of the group is much more reliable.’

“Hübl believes that in our time the epoch of separation gives way to the era of unity, and this will allow to create a strong social network of mutual support and giving at the international level. He and Dr. Laitman are working on this together.

“‘Our goal is to create a new perspective, a new state of consciousness, which is described in the plural, in the framework of the concept of we, simply because the time has come, and the world is confronted with the crises…’

“‘Ultimately, these are positive crises, urging us to change. However, many stubbornly cling to the past and are not ready to change anything. Suffering arises when we try to preserve the current state and make it a habit. Here is where the problem starts. The existing structures are collapsing, and this brings fear and threat. When a crack appears in the wall, you begin to fear, and at the same time, you see the light, breaking in from the other side…’

“‘People turn the spiritual quest into a hobby, but if they are honest with themselves, they will understand that they must change their priorities. Spirituality is a way of life. The other danger is to immerse oneself too deeply, without opening to the world outside. We are talking about a different level: to go deep inside, but remain open for the world,’ emphasizes Thomas Hübl.

“‘Nowadays,’ adds Dr. Laitman, ‘when the world finds itself in the network of global and integral connections, it becomes clear that the future of humanity lies in uniting into a single whole according to the principle of mutual guarantee.’

“‘Through our centers, located in more than 112 countries, we actively strengthen ties and cooperation with various organizations around the world, including Thomas Hübl’s Academy of Inner Science, as well as UNESCO and the UN to raise the value of unity and connection above all differences and divisions. This international cooperation, aimed at unification, will lead us along the correct path.’”
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Question: An incident occurred in Tel Aviv where a woman saw a homeless man and decided not just to give him money, but to help him for real. She found him a job and took care of him, and then he killed her….

Answer: She took away a life of freedom from the vagabond. He sat on the street to his heart’s content, not worrying about what time of day it is, whether it’s morning, afternoon, or night, and not thinking about what was and what will be. He was above time and space, above all worries.

People will always throw some coins into his purse or give him something to eat…. The homeless are a special breed – they do not want to depend on anyone or anything. This is a wonderful feeling: I don’t care about anything.

“Where do you live?”
“On earth.”
“Do you have to get somewhere or get something done in time?”
“I don’t even have a watch. I don’t care what time it is.”
“But maybe you owe something to someone? Or someone owes you something?”
“Nothing of the sort.”

And now take a look at yourself: You have a million things to get done at the office and thousands of circumstances. People are calling you, expecting things from you, and your family is also demanding its share…. You simply have no idea what it’s like to be homeless. “Without a home” means without boundaries. I wish you could experience this careless sensation at least once in your life.

This is not a weekend or a vacation when you are also burdened with cares as well. A homeless person has everything tidy, he has no cares in his head and no boundaries, as if he is already floating in the clouds of the world to come.

And now someone comes and brings him down to earth, closes him up within four walls and forces him to live by schedule: wake up, wash up, shave, brush your teeth ,get dressed…. What kind of life is that?

We don’t understand these people, yet they live in a sensation that raises them above matter.

Question: How can we help these people?

Answer: To help someone does not mean to indulge yourself like the way people in Israel are who are trying to house Bedouins in apartments. The Bedouins don’t want to live within four walls and end up setting up their tents again right across the newly built neighborhood. Even if you give them a ten room apartment, they still won’t want it since they have their own ideas about what a household is.

When helping someone, you have to follow their desire rather than yours.

Question: So we should’t help people living in these conditions?

Answer: No. A person has everything he needs and he does not need anything more. If he needed housing, he would arrange it. But he does not want it. For him, setting up “his own corner” is already a restriction. It puts pressure on him. He likes sleeping any place that turns up and not worrying about the next moment.

Compared to him, we do not understand what freedom is. We are slaves while he is a master.
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/27/11, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”
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In the News (from Todaynews): “The ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protesters — also known as the ’99 percent’ — have struck a chord with at least a few members of an unexpected audience: America’s rich and privileged.

“United under the banner ‘We are the 1 percent: We stand with the 99 percent,’ a band of entrepreneurs, trust fund babies, professionals and inheritors has taken to the web to share their abhorrence of corporate greed and support for tax code changes that would see them pay a higher share of their considerable wealth.

“Among other things, they’re posting their stories on a Tumblr page created by Wealth for the Common Good and Resource Generation, two groups dedicated to working for ‘fair taxation and just wealth distribution.’

“Farhad A. Ebrahimi, 33, who shares his inherited wealth through a charity that he founded, says he attends the Occupy Boston protest every day. … At the protest, he often wears a homemade T-shirt that reads: ‘I’m a member of the 1 percent and I fully support the 99 percent’ on the front, and, ‘Tax me, I’m good for it,’ on the back.”

My Comment: Thus, we are getting closer to understanding the solution to the question of shifting to a society of equal, reasonable consumption. Their funds should be used to organize a common, worldwide, integral upbringing for everyone, especially the unemployed, which will replace their working hours and have their studies be considered the same as work because there won’t be other work in the future!
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