In the News (from Lettera): “Expenses are being cut back on everything (health, school education, social assistance), but not on the military needs. The crisis prompts reducing military spending; moreover, it is possible to join forces to cut costs.

“But no country is going to reduce military spending, even when there are no drugs in hospitals or a supply of blood for transfusions. The EU pays the salary of members of the armed forces, the number of whom is three times greater than in the USA – $ 360 billion a year. The US military spending is $ 711 billion.

“The creation of a unified European army would save more than 100 billion euros, but the military industry is one of the most corrupt; each year, $ 20 billion is spent on bribes. If EU leaders showed rigidity in relation to the military industry, the voters would not have voted against a unified Europe.”

My Comment: Everything is tied to one problem—our egoism. It must be corrected at its root instead of wasting time on investigations because the Hydra’s heads always grow in new places! There is only one remedy against egoism: the force of bestowal, which can be attracted through integral workshops. You can try it and make sure!
[103023]

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Opinion (Dani Rodrik, Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and a leading scholar of globalization and economic development): “Nothing endangers globalization more than the yawning governance gap – the dangerous disparity between the national scope of political accountability and the global nature of markets for goods, capital, and many services – that has opened up in recent decades. When markets transcend national regulation, as with today’s globalization of finance, market failure, instability, and crisis is the result. But pushing rule-making onto supranational bureaucracies, such as the World Trade Organization or the European Commission, can result in a democratic deficit and a loss of legitimacy.

“How can this governance gap be closed? One option is to re-establish national democratic control over global markets. This is difficult and smacks of protectionism, but it is neither impossible nor necessarily inimical to healthy globalization. As I argue in my book The Globalization Paradox, expanding the scope for national governments to maintain regulatory diversity and rebuild frayed social bargains would enhance the functioning of the global economy. …

“But the trouble is not just that these global institutions remain weak. It is also that they are inter-governmental bodies – a collection of member states rather than agents of global citizens. Because their accountability to national electorates is indirect and uncertain, they do not generate the political allegiance – and hence legitimacy – that truly representative institutions require. Indeed, the travails of the European Union have revealed the limits of transnational political community-building, even among a comparatively limited and similar set of countries.

“Ultimately, the buck stops with national parliaments and executives. During the financial crisis, it was national governments that bailed out banks and firms, recapitalized the financial system, guaranteed debts, eased liquidity, primed the fiscal pump, and paid the unemployment and welfare checks – and took the blame for everything that went wrong. In the memorable words of outgoing Bank of England Governor Mervyn King, global banks are ‘international in life, but national in death.’

“But perhaps there is another path, one that accepts the authority of national governments, but aims to reorient national interests in a more global direction. Progress along such a path requires ‘national’ citizens to begin viewing themselves increasingly as ‘global citizens,’ with interests that extend beyond their state’s borders.”

My Comment: Since national governments depend on their citizens, integral education will lead to an understanding of global connection and responsibility, causing pressure on national governments.
[102967]

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Question: Fewer women than men are involved in the current political-economic mess of the modern world. What can they do for the general health of society?

Answer: Women can obligate the men to connect, to be in mutual reciprocity, and to unite into one whole. Then life in a country and the world will work out. If women can connect, they will be able to bring the men to the same state.

On the one hand, it’s much more difficult for a woman, but on the other hand, what’s important is to start. The moment a woman decides “to go for it,” she will dive into the current and strive persistently in the right direction.

For men it is the opposite: It’s easy for them to jump into the water, but it’s very difficult for them to swim since they encounter endless obstacles on the way that need to be corrected. So let’s ask the women to set an example for us and to give us the power we need in order to connect.

On the whole, only the connection between everyone is the key to our success in every area. It isn’t by chance that we say that behind every successful man there is a woman. The women should push the men to connect and to unite. There are no other means.
[102179]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 3/7/13, ”Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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Opinion (Sergey Karaganov, Dean of the Faculty of World Economy and International HSE National Research University, founder of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, chairman of the editorial board of Russia in Global Affairs): “In the world, there are two groups of people who support the reduction of nuclear weapons:

“Those who understand the immorality of deterrence because punishing someone with nuclear weapons means destroying millions of lives. …

“Those who want to make the world safer to be freer in using conventional weapons. …

“Now the chance of accidental nuclear war is diminished. Nuclear weapons are sent to us by the Almighty to save humankind because if not for nuclear weapons, confrontation and the Cold War would have ended in World War III. …

“This does not happen just because any large-scale change in power, which could lead to the escalation of an armed conflict, is excluded. And the priority of the current generation of politicians is formed in such a way as to prevent such an outcome. …

“If there were no nuclear deterrent, we would have lived in a more terrible world. Without nuclear weapons, millions of Europeans would be brutally destroying each other for centuries.”

My Comment: It is correct for the time being, but everything depends on the “boiling point.” According to Kabbalah, if we do not start restructuring towards the next level of our existence, to a society of equality, unity, mutual guarantee, then the 3^rd and 4^th nuclear world wars will surely break out.
[101239]

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In the News (from Rethinking Europe): “International Congress “Rethinking Europe with(out) Religion” 20.2-23.2.2013, Vienna. The International Congress ‘Rethinking Europe with(out) Religion’ reflects on the religious and political transformation processes in European contemporary societies in the context of a growing pluralism. It investigates the political role that religion can play for the unification process of Europe in times of crisis. ‘Rethinking Europe’ is more than an economic challenge. It means searching for ‘a soul for Europe’ (J. Delors). However, it is highly controversial if religion(s) can contribute anything at all to Europe and if so what this contribution may look like.”

My Comment: This is what Kabbalah says. By Kabbalistic definition “Religion is love for one’s neighbor!” Everything else, all the religions and beliefs, are invented by man to evade observing this only law of nature. If Europe accepts this religion, it will survive and prosper; otherwise, it will be lost!
[101234]

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Opinion (Dani Rodrik, Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government): “There was a time when we economists steered clear of politics. We viewed our job as describing how market economies work, when they fail, and how well-designed policies can enhance efficiency. We analyzed trade-offs between competing objectives (say, equity versus efficiency), and prescribed policies to meet desired economic outcomes, including redistribution. …

“Frustrated by the reality that much of our advice went unheeded (so many free-market solutions still waiting to be taken up!), we turned our analytical toolkit on the behavior of politicians and bureaucrats themselves. We began to examine political behavior using the same conceptual framework that we use for consumer and producer decisions in a market economy. Politicians became income-maximizing suppliers of policy favors; citizens became rent-seeking lobbies and special interests; and political systems became marketplaces in which votes and political influence are traded for economic benefits. …

“Why are so many industries closed off to real competition? Because politicians are in the pockets of the incumbents who reap the rents. Why do governments erect barriers to international trade? Because the beneficiaries of trade protection are concentrated and politically influential, while consumers are diffuse and disorganized. Why do political elites block reforms that would spur economic growth and development? Because growth and development would undermine their hold on political power. Why are there financial crises? Because banks capture the policymaking process so that they can take excessive risks at the expense of the general public. …

“If politicians’ behavior is determined by the vested interests to which they are beholden, economists’ advocacy of policy reforms is bound to fall on deaf ears.”

My Comment: Fortunately, nothing will be left of the past egoistic economy in the age of its collapse; so, there is no point in trying to identify all the secrets of clans of the elite and how to work with them. The crisis will clean everything! What will be left of people and the world will take a new form: the necessary fulfillment of the material things and infinite fulfillment in the revelation of the meaning of life. This state can be reached through education, that is, changing a person. In an effort to soften the landing of the world to the new conditions, we have to consider integral education, proposed by Kabbalah.
[100957]

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Question: People today still hope that their governments will solve the economic problems…

Answer: The governments won’t solve anything, and it doesn’t matter whom we vote for. After all, it doesn’t depend on a prime minister or a president. No matter who it is, he has nowhere to get the money for the wellbeing of his people. We have entered a round global system in which everyone is connected to each other and dependent on one another. Still, many believe in the approach of isolation and that they will be able to survive on their own. But, in fact, this approach only brings them closer to total collapse.

Today every country that tries to act only in its own interests is destroying itself. It was possible once when there were those who dominated others, but today everything has changed and even the US is facing resistance against its global ambitions. Today the old system of man’s dominating man and nation dominating nation is collapsing. It doesn’t work since the new law of nature is already active internally. Everything is now mutually connected and no matter what I do for others, my attitude comes back to me as a boomerang increased several times.

Question: But still, I don’t actually see that I am part of a general whole yet, I am changing…

Answer: Do you want the Creator to reveal to you now the whole plan of creation and by that lower you to the “animal” level? Suppose I show you that we all depend on one another, and that if I intend to eat breakfast without caring that others have breakfast too, I would be poisoned and might even die. This would deprive me of my freewill and I would be like an animal, like a dog, who knows in advance by what something smells like whether it can be eaten or not. In that case, I would not be able to be a human being any more.

Things have to be different here. We are not animals; we can’t be connected on the corporeal level of emotion and knowledge since it isn’t the human level. Suppose someone gives me a million dollars, should I take it or not? If I feel that by that I would be causing myself harm, I will not take the money. But it would be an egoistic decision “within reason” and I wouldn’t grow by that, since I have to resemble the Creator.

It says, “And they shall all know me from the smallest to the greatest.” This means that everyone will know what the pure attribute of bestowal is; they will know it in their hearts and act accordingly; this is what we are advancing towards. If the benefit of the connection were revealed it wouldn’t be hard for us to connect egoistically. But no, we shouldn’t connect on the basis of knowledge but in faith above reason, which is opposite from knowing. I don’t see that the connection is in my benefit in advance.

This is called “labor pains,” when two opposite forces are active in me. It’s the only way we can advance. Otherwise, without fulfilling our mission, we would remain on the “animal” level. So we must understand where to get the powers to discover for ourselves first of all, and then for others; it is a qualitatively different knowledge of the facts about the egoistic desires “moving against the wind,” which allow me to be born into a new dimension.

We felt it during the Arava Convention to some extent when we had the chance to break through upward, to rise above the body and above anything that has to do with it, to break away from it. It’s a psychological problem but still this idea can be conveyed to people. We all have the right potential that only needs to be brought to life, to be brought out, so that this discernment will float upwards.
[100771]
From the 4^th Part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/17/13, “A Speech for the Completion of The Zohar”

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Opinion (Slavoj Žižek, Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic, professor at the European Graduate School): “The idea is that, in a complex economic situation like today’s, the majority of the people are not qualified to decide – they are unaware of the catastrophic consequences that would ensue if their demands were to be met.

“This line of argument is not new. In a TV interview a couple of years ago, the sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf linked the growing distrust for democracy to the fact that, after every revolutionary change, the road to new prosperity leads through a ‘valley of tears.’ After the breakdown of socialism, one cannot directly pass to the abundance of a successful market economy: limited, but real, socialist welfare and security have to be dismantled, and these first steps are necessarily painful. The same goes for Western Europe, where the passage from the post-second world war welfare state to the new global economy involves painful renunciations, less security, less guaranteed social care. For Dahrendorf, the problem is encapsulated by the simple fact that this painful passage through the ‘valley of tears’ lasts longer than the average period between elections, so that the temptation is great to postpone the difficult changes for the short-term electoral gains.

“For him, the paradigm here is the disappointment of the large strata of post-communist nations with the economic results of the new democratic order: in the glorious days of 1989, they equated democracy with the abundance of western consumerist societies; and 20 years later, with the abundance still missing, they now blame democracy itself. …

“What is new today is that, with the financial crisis that began in 2008, this same distrust of democracy – once constrained to the third world or post-communist developing countries – is gaining ground in the developed west itself: what was a decade or two ago patronising advice to others now concerns ourselves.

“The least one can say is that this crisis offers proof that it is not the people but experts themselves who do not know what they are doing. In Western Europe we are effectively witnessing a growing inability of the ruling elite – they know less and less how to rule. Look at how Europe is dealing with the Greek crisis: putting pressure on Greece to repay debts, but at the same time ruining its economy through imposed austerity measures and thereby making sure that the Greek debt will never be repaid. …

“And therein resides the true message of the ‘irrational’ popular protests all around Europe: The protesters know very well what they don’t know; they don’t pretend to have fast and easy answers; but what their instinct is telling them is nonetheless true – that those in power also don’t know it. In Europe today, the blind are leading the blind.

My Comment: The process of growing should break out in the leading countries to force management to recognize its inability to understand and control what is happening. At the same time, more people will recognize the need to change their attitude towards themselves and the world, feeling the necessity to change not the world, its management, system, but to change the human being first, by way of the widespread implementation of a short course (2-3 months) in integral education, to raise awareness of the general population to the level where nature forces us to rise. After that, it is possible to introduce gradual reforms at all levels and systems of society.
[100665]

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Baal HaSulam, “The Peace”: Anyone can see how a large society such as the state of Russia… second to none in wealth in raw materials…and practically abolished private property altogether, where each worries only about the wellbeing of society…instead of rising and exceeding the achievements of the capitalist countries, they have sunk even lower… that all this precious and exalted work, namely bestowal upon others, which they have begun to perform, needs to be for the Creator and not for humanity…

Question: What is the addition of “for the Creator” that they were lacking?

Answer: It is not enough to work for the sake of the society so that it will be rich, beautiful, and good. It is not enough to evoke people to be beautiful and strong so that they can take pride in their achievements before the whole world. Even that didn’t help, although it is very important for the Russians, and they have an innate need to prove to everyone that they are the best. On the whole it exists in every nation, but especially in the Russian nation.

Oppression didn’t help either: hunger, terror, and murders designed to force the people to work for the society where a person didn’t see any profit in his pocket and that he didn’t bring home more than others. One worked hard and exerted himself and another didn’t work so hard, but they both received the same wages. So where can a person get the “fuel” to work harder? No means of oppression will help and not even national pride. What haven’t they tried during the decades of the Soviet Union? It all led to nothing in the end.

If I don’t focus my efforts on bestowal upon the Creator, and get the “fuel” to work against the ego, I have no other sources. Even if I fear that I may be killed, I cannot work without reason. I am basically a “machine” that needs fuel, a filling. Let me be paid for my exertion, or at least given food and a place to sleep, like a salve. But to give up my ego of my own free will? A creature like me cannot do that “by definition.”

But the Soviet leaders believed that it was possible, they didn’t understand Marx who put things simply: In order to achieve such an ascent, there has to be an advanced developed society that has reached technological progress in other fields. If such a society practices what we call “integral education,” then a few people who are connected to the initial idea by their point in the heart can lead everyone else. There is no other way but that. At least some of the people have to aim at “for the Creator.”

But the communists had nothing in common and nothing to do with this, and so they couldn’t hold on to the direction they decided on, despite all their natural treasures…
[100552]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/15/13, “The Peace”

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Today the trend that has accompanied us throughout the ages of our development is coming to an end. The ego forced us to climb down from the trees and to start human evolution. We have been through many phases and many forms of life: slavery, fictitious freedom, the Middle Ages, and capitalism. We have constantly worked in order to make a profit, to succeed, and to advance. But today our “partnership” with the ego is coming to an end.

There are several reasons for that and one of them is that the ego itself doesn’t feel satisfied any more. We receive all the goodness, but it doesn’t fulfill us. Even the wealthy increasingly feel they are as if left with nothing, since filling without the deficiency for it brings no pleasure.

On the whole, the elite treat the world as their own property and build a “whole world” for themselves. Through the media, they confuse us, convincing us we should work from morning to night, follow new fashion trends, buy products and services, and then work again. There is constant confusion, wars, and riots like the “Arab spring.” Why? So they can quietly dominate the world and make billions in profits for themselves. This is a never-ending job of governments and other channels controlled by a small handful of people.

However, they already are beginning to feel that they are losing control. According to the laws of egoistic evolution, the world in its current form is coming to an end, facing a global crisis. No one wanted this including the elites who are interested in maintaining and indefinitely continuing the consumerist society. But this doesn’t work.

Now we have to decide where we are headed. So on the one hand, Marx’s books are being reopened, and on the other hand, the wisdom of Kabbalah is revealed.

Today there are talks about a different use of the desire to receive. The next phase is building a united society in which people work about an hour a week because we don’t need everything that we are currently producing. Today unity is the essential model for human society. Without it we will not even be able to receive our daily bread. If we don’t connect, we will not have the basic necessities. But humanity doesn’t know how to connect, although this is what it is required to do. As a result, when faced with a seemingly impossible task, it is going toward annihilation, seeing no way out.

This is exactly where we take the wisdom of Kabbalah out of its hiding place and “wave” it on the background of Marx’s Das Kapital, hoping that we will be heard.

Question: What proof can we bring?

Answer: We have two ways to prove this:

• There is rational proof, as it says, “It is the wise who sees the future.” We can convince people that our approach is true and efficient basing it on examples, without waiting for greater trouble.
• Or, instead, the proof can come in the form of disasters.

On our part, we try to reach people before the blows do, but it isn’t easy. We don’t control the media. The elite have built an army of economists and financial experts and other experts whose goal is to confuse people and to cultivate the great lie. This is all so that the people who are at the top of the pyramid will be able to rule. Rule what? Today, even they don’t know exactly. It is not under their control at all…
[100549]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/15/13, “The Peace”

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