Entries in the 'News' Category

“Occupy” Protesters Find Allies In Ranks Of The Wealthy

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn 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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Crisis And Resolution

Dr. Michael LaitmanThere are disorders taking place everywhere, including menacing cases that become expressed spontaneously and uncontrollably, and no one can predict the outcome of what is happening. Just like the crisis itself, its waves are rolling over everyone and no one is left in peace. The rich are forced to help the poor, while the poor manipulate the rich’s dependence on them….

Every economist in the world has his own opinion about the reasons for the economic crisis that is taking place. But we are forgetting that the crisis is not economic, but pertains to all of civilization: There is not one area of human activity that is not undergoing a crisis.

The crisis is happening in all of the social systems we have created: healthcare, public assistance, marriage and family, education and upbringing…. Undoubtedly, everyone started paying attention to the crisis when it became being expressed in the economic and financial realm because our survival depends on this directly. But to reveal its causes, we have to examine it as a whole, as a crisis of civilization.

The reason for the crisis is just one thing: every day, the world is becoming more interconnected and interdependent from within, by nature, and therefore, every day it is becoming more and more opposite to the external connections and culture that we have imposed on it in the form of separate countries, societies, opposing systems, and so forth. Precisely the difference between the world’s unity, which grows bigger every day, and the culture of separation we have created, is the crisis that is growing worse.

We are incapable of stopping the expression of the world’s inner globality and integrality. This is coming from its original nature, which we are unable to influence.

We also cannot observe the constantly growing opposition between the world’s inner structure, where its unity is being revealed, and the external one, humanity, where its divisions and contradictions are being expressed. This is evoking a multifaceted crisis inside of us.

The only solution to the problem of the developing crisis, our growing opposition to nature, lies in all of humanity’s gradual attainment of unity, mutual guarantee, and balance between humanity and nature, reasonable consumption. However, this contradicts our egoistic nature and therefore it is possible only when the environment exerts a wholesome, positive influence on every person.

For that, it is necessary to form a new social, personal consciousness that can be attained through universal global education and upbringing about the global, integral connection among all people that is being expressed in the world. To achieve this, every country has to decide to form an environment around its society, a setting for educational influence.

Creating a mass media system that involves scientists and experts who explain the new, global world, its new social laws, the need to follow them for the sake of survival, is the educational part. Creating large virtual and non-virtual connections that will pull people in, give them an example of unification and joy in it, is the part of upbringing.

Undoubtedly, by taking the first steps in this direction, we will immediately and clearly feel the crisis receding.
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The Will Of The Integral System

Dr. Michael LaitmanBaal HaSulam, “Peace in the World”: Do not be surprised if I mix together the well-being of a particular collective with the well-being of the whole world, because indeed, we have already come to such a degree that the whole world is considered one collective and one society. Meaning, because each person in the world draws his life’s marrow and his livelihood from all the people in the world, he is coerced to serve and care for the well-being of the whole world.

We have proven above that the total subordination of the individual to the collective is like a small wheel in a machine. He draws his life and his happiness from that collective, and therefore the well-being of the collective and his own well-being are one and the same, and vice-versa. Therefore, to the extent that a person is enslaved to himself, he necessarily becomes enslaved to the collective.

Does this mean we have been enslaved? Will it be necessary to subjugate every person and country to the demands of a specific regulation? Then where is freedom of the individual? Where are equality and justice, if they will coerce others to do something?

The issue here is that a new, all-enveloping system is gradually “dressing” upon our world and we are compelled to submit to it. There is no other way to go. We have to accept this global, integral system that is being revealed everywhere today. We have to help each other do this and even obligate one another because we depend on each other. No one can fence himself off from others and communicate with them “at a distance.” The world has become very small. We are drawing our resources from the same sources, we are all “knitted together.”

The system of global interconnection is imposing mandatory circumstances on us. However, it is not imposing arbitrary rule, but the principle of mutual guarantee. We have to take care of one another and at the same time we have the right to obligate one another to observe this principle. No one can use the advantage of force to impose his own will and laws on another. This is not talking about someone’s personal whims, but the will of the general, integral system that is expressing itself and imputing common obligations to all of us.

Because we are all totally interconnected, we have to get organized according to the universal system that nature is demonstrating to us. If someone does not accept it and does not leave us with any other alternative, we have to take care to ensure that he will nevertheless desire to adapt to the new conditions, if not by his own desire, then against his will.

How? Very simply. We will sever all connections with him, will isolate him, leaving him one-on-one with the global system. Today we don’t need wars or atom bombs. It’s enough to deprive a country of the vital arteries, to close off the channels through which it exports and imports goods and raw materials. We won’t buy its production and won’t trade with it, and the country will fall apart, including its industry, energy, and other systems.

Today not one nation can manage without others or shift to autonomous mode. That is how interconnected everything is. Therefore, we have to explain to societies, countries, and governments what they don’t understand yet: The only way we will survive is by observing the law of mutual guarantee, and in no other way.

Thus, the well-being of the whole world depends on the well-being of every society and every country, and vice versa. All of this leads to far-reaching consequences, which we cannot even imagine. Every person will feel that he depends on everyone in every way. Even when I prepare a cup of hot tea, the whole world participates in it together with me.

This situation is dictating a completely new worldview, a new sensation of the world to us. From here on I am entirely and fully under the power of others, directly dependent on them. And if I am aware of this, like an animal that cannot put food and drink into its own feeder, then the understanding of the system of mutual guarantee allows me to take my place in it like an obedient boy.

That is why it is so important to start educating people today. We all have to open our eyes to where we are.

The path there is not easy. We see this by Europe’s example, which is fighting the financial crisis. It’s leaders are having a very hard time understanding the meaning of what is happening. They blame one another, but in reality no one is guilty. It’s just that until now everyone behaved egoistically, but now we are being deprived of that possibility.

The same thing goes for our group. For the world the issue at stake is material life, whereas for us – it is spiritual life. We have to understand that spiritual life depends on the revelation of the system of mutual guarantee. We will begin to live spiritually only in it and thanks to it when we establish interconnection, harmony, fair distribution, and single-hearted relationships among all of us.

Then, from our degree of spiritual interaction, we will be able to pour this knowledge, this educational method into the world, onto the degree of material interaction, giving the world all of the abundance that will pass through us. With the help of upbringing, we will give people the vessels, while the Lights coming from us will fill them with the sensation of life.

In principle, the world already understands that it really has become “round,” but on the other hand, it still does not feel the entire extent of its interconnections. In the near future we will see with our own eyes that every person opposing mutual guarantee will be subject to very powerful blows. All of the “smart-alecs” who don’t want to create good relationships with others, who don’t aspire in the direction of order, interconnection, and mutuality – be it separate people or entire nations – will experience the negative consequences of their own gambles boomeranging back at them.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/17/11, “Peace in the World”

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Newspaper “Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)” In Hebrew

The first issue of the “Arvut (Mutual Guarantee)” newspaper was published in Hebrew.

America Discovers The Meaning Of Life


America celebrated the Day of Atonement 2011 revealing the true meaning of life. On the Day of Atonement, the Jewish Life Television (JLTV) channel, one of the largest Jewish television channels in North America, aired only three shows, repeating them one after the other:

  • A direct broadcast of the Yom Kippur service at Temple of the Arts in Beverly Hills, California;
  • A special “Kaddish – I am Here” symphony concert performed at Yad Vashem in memory of the victims of the Holocaust;
  • Several episodes of “Authentic Wisdom of Kabbalah,” in which my student Tony Kosinec explains the Path of Pain & Path of Light, and I answer questions about the upper force, evolution, and the study of Kabbalah. The shows also feature clips and music videos inspired by Kabbalah.

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Where’s The Clutch Pedal?

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: People agree with the idea of mutual guarantee, but they don’t know what to do with it. People accept our explanations in good will, but what next?

Answer: This is enough. First you give a person an explanation of the situation with the integral interconnection, informing him of the fact that in our global world it is inadmissible to give in to protectionism and isolationism. “It’s none of my business” is no longer a viable excuse. We are all interconnected like cogwheels whether we want it or not and there is no clutch pedal that could separate us from one another. There is no other way to go: We simply have to take one another into consideration, to understand the essence of mutual unification and the single human system. Only by mastering its laws will we be able to decide what we should do together from here on.

In the past we were separate and I was able to take anything I wanted from you for my own needs. But now, when we are welded together, I do not take away yet another “sack” from you, but simply move it around from one place to another in the common warehouse. And eventually, this will harm me.

We still don’t realize the meaning of “a single system.” If you don’t take all of its parts into consideration, then you cannot act. The world today is demonstrating the general interconnection to us, and this is just the first, smallest, most proximate spiritual level. Without ascending to it, we won’t be able to fix anything in our lives. From one day to the next, the external pressure will grow, the screws will tighten more, and the conditions of this first level will advance clearer, more precise demands to us.

Eventually we will have to get to know the single system, understand it, include it inside ourselves, and adjust ourselves on the inside to its laws. Then we will suddenly see abundance everywhere. As soon as we attain unity, the abundance will come to light. It will become apparent that peace and order reign everywhere, and we have reached peace on the first spiritual degree.

After that the next degree becomes revealed, and we are again faced by disorder, injustice, chaos…. That is how we continually discover our non-conformity to the following level of ascent.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/16/11, “Peace in the World”

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You Won’t Achieve Peace By Waving Your Fists In The Air

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: Yesterday, on October 15th, an event was held in Tel Aviv called “Uniting for change in the world.” During one of the discussions an activist said that he is sorry about how weak the protestors are, “We won’t achieve anything because we let the authorities take apart our tent cities. We have to be more aggressive to be heard….”

Answer: This is the regular egoistic approach. We acted this way throughout all of history. But who said this is fair or just? That kind of struggle won’t lead to any results because any “accomplishment” will be achieved at someone’s expense. What’s required here is general social agreement, compensation via all-enveloping consideration.

In reality, all of the disorders, all the hatred and animosity, all demands of the social protest are intended for us to reveal the upper force. If people try to establish good relationships on the social plane, they will reveal nothing but evil. In the egoistic reality, there is no hope for peace. However, while they are inside of that reality, they cannot imagine or envision anything different.

This is why people are demanding to take money away from the rich. We already know the price of pretty words about fair distribution.

Therefore, we have to remember that we are dealing with “children” who do not understand the ways of the universe, are in no way connected to the forces operating in nature, and do not see the true, final goal. It’s as if I take my disobedient child by the hand and lead him in the right direction. On the way he shouts next to every fast food stand, “I want ice cream! I want potato chips!” So what should I do? I buy him an ice-cream and lead him further since otherwise he would remain in the same place and continue going wild pointlessly.

This depends on who organizes the correction. If we give the instigators freedom to act, their “correction” will lead to disorders and bloodshed, which might have unpredictable consequences, both in separate countries and in the whole world. Besides, they won’t attain what they desire because they are going against the goal of creation. Instead of correcting the interconnection between people, only hatred will become revealed in them, more and more. That means one way or another, we will have to explain the real state of affairs to the world.

As for those who “wave their fists in the air,” their rants will end with the first blow that misses. We were all young and hot-blooded once. Everyone, including the government, understands that at this age it’s necessary to let a person “go wild.” But nothing can be achieved that way.
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From the 5th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/16/11, “Peace in the World”

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Pictures From My Lecture In Ashkelon – 10.11.2011

Here are some pictures from my recent lecture in Ashkelon, October 11, 2011.

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A TV Interview In Miami

Following is a Spanish language recording of the interview I gave in Miami for the independent Spanish TV program “A Mano Limpia.” It is broadcast to nine TV stations in Florida and Puerto Rico as well as via the Internet.

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An Article In The Scientific Magazine In Bulgaria


The scientific magazine Obekti in Bulgaria published an article about Kabbalah as a science. The reporter interviewed me during my trip to Madrid.
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