News Report (translated from Welt Online): The financial crisis is depriving people of jobs, savings and homes. Meantime, religious institutions the world over are experiencing a surge of new believers. When a person experiences a deep shock, he opens his soul to God.

My Comment: The psychological support of “God, from Above” and the masses of people that believe in it, along with the chance to write off everything taking place as “God’s will,” have always been very appealing to people. However, people will go through this state and outgrow it, egoistically. They will then discover that they have to make their own actions, and then they’ll reveal their hatred for one another, which is killing humanity. They will stand face to face against it, and will clearly see that it is the main cause of this “life that’s worse than death.”

Appealing to God won’t help. Only when we recognize that it’s necessary to correct ourselves will we reveal that God doesn’t want our appeals about improving the world, but only our appeals for correction.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Why Is the Financial Crisis Bringing More People to Religion?
Laitman.com Post: People Are Beginning to Open Their Eyes
Laitman.com Post: The Conditions for Correcting the Soul

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News Report (from Commodity Online): “Food crisis leaves over 1 billion hungry!” The FAO’s hunger report, the State of Food Insecurity in the World 2008, found that the overwhelming majority of the hungry live in the developing world, 65% of them in just seven countries: India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia.

My Comment: With our globally egoistic attitude (mutual hatred) toward one another and the surrounding nature, we will not be able to sustain more than one fifth of humanity. Everyone else will have to die. However, if we correct our egoistic relationships to those of “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” the planet will be able to feed scores more people than are now living.

“Unite or perish” – is the condition of “Mutual Guarantee,” proclaimed by Moses at (against) Mount Sinai (in Hebrew “Sinai” comes from the word “hatred”) to his people: “Either you will unite and be guarantors for one another, as a single whole, or this place, beneath the mountain of your egoism, will be the place of your burial.” Kabbalah explains that everything written in the Torah is meant for us, for our generation. We will have to actualize the whole Biblical tale ourselves!

Question: Several years ago the European countries united into one economic zone. The Latin American countries now want to form a similar union. Under the current conditions, do these unions strengthen these countries or weaken them?

My Comment: If the union is not done at others’ expense, and moreover, if it is done in order to pave the way for future universal unification, then it strengthens them. However, if the unification is private, done in order to set them against others – then it will destroy the people who do it!

In the future, the world will not have to become one country; there may be many countries and nations, each with its respective culture. However, the relationships between them will have to be harmonious and amicable. It’s just as in a body, where all the parts are different, but each one is exactly what the others need.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Specific, Practical Measures to Combat the Crisis
Laitman.com Post: Will Countries Be Able to Work Together to Save the World from the Crisis?
Kabbalah Today Article: Mankind’s Growing Hunger
Lesson on the Article: “One Law”
Baal HaSulam Article: “The Last Generation”

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News Report (from International Herald Tribune): “On both sides of Atlantic, ’08 was a year to forget, poll finds” As 2008 draws to a close, Americans are more inclined than Western Europeans to say Happy New Year, though both groups are rather pessimistic over all, according to a new poll. The survey, conducted by Harris Interactive, shows overwhelming gloom in Europe about the state of the economy, with the French adhering to their reputation: 5 in 6 people surveyed in France expressed pessimism. The average was 7 in 10 for the other European nations surveyed: Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain.

Stereotypes prevailed on the other side of the Atlantic, too, but even the famous American optimism failed to overcome the harsh reality of unrelentingly negative news, as the survey shows the United States divided almost exactly evenly between optimists and pessimists.

My Comment: Let’s see how our opinion changes throughout 2009. For the first time in history, the coming year depends on us. That’s because this is the first time in history that we’re reached the level of being able to correct our nature. All of our history until now was only an evolution or development of egoism, which unceasingly pushed us ahead. But now we have suddenly come to a halt: egoism has reached its full development, and we have revealed our absolute interconnection through its mutilated form of mutual hatred. The only thing that remains is to correct the egoism through force (the path of suffering) or through the Light (the path of Kabbalah). The choice is ours.

A question I received: What will be different about the epoch after the year 2008?

My Answer: We have revealed the breaking of the common soul into many souls, or in other words, we have revealed our egoistic connection with each other. We will feel greater and greater problems, but we will see that they are purposeful – intended to make us realize that egoism is evil, and to finally correct the connection between us.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Forecast for 2009: Let’s Hope for a Moral Revolution
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News Report: (translated from life.pravda.com): The cause of the crisis according to the average citizen: The crisis is happening because people speculate and underestimate the value of honesty. Many products and services are not sold at their actual value. Moreover, many people think they are exempted from following the law. The authorities are lying to the people, and the people are lying to the authorities.

The solution to the crisis according to the average citizen: If we grow up (psychologically) and become responsible, if we understand the consequences of our actions, then there won’t be any crises. After all, the crisis only happened where there was greed, and where people’s desires, needs and wealth were excessive.

My Comment: It’s wonderful to see how quickly suffering elicits the correct thoughts in people. We were created as egoists – inside “the will to receive” – on purpose. When we don’t receive as much as we want, we feel suffering. Hence, egoism brings us to the correct solutions.

With a little more suffering, we will begin to reason correctly: we will realize that the answer isn’t to decrease our egoism, but to completely tear away from it, to ascend above it. And then people will suddenly discover that their opinion is already described in Kabbalah – the science about man’s correction.

Related Material:
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Three questions I received on various spiritual practices:

Question: These days we hear many things about secret societies and their influence in our society – societies like the Knights Templar, Rosicrucians and the Freemasons. What does Kabbalah say about these brotherhoods? Are their teachings in accordance with Kabbalah? Are they a good thing to join? Or are they agents who only follow their ego ?

My Answer: I think of them as childish games. All of the secrecy is just for blowing up their importance.

There is a possibility to influence the Creator and thus to govern the world, and it is available to everyone – to the degree one becomes corrected so as to be good toward everyone.

Question: Is there only one school of Kabbalah or several?

My Answer: There are other groups that study Kabbalah. You can probably find them on the Internet.

Question: I am interested in the issue about the red strings. Some say that they have no relation to Kabbalah. Others say that they protect people from “the evil eye.” I understand that this could be explained as a psychological effect, but I heard that the red strings give one a connection with protective energy (due to being produced in a special ritual setting).

My Answer: They are no more than a psychological effect. Kabbalah forbids this because it is a deceit and distracts a person from the goal for which he and this world were created.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Illuminati’s Coming to Get You… NOT!
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The Kabbalah Experience: Chapter 7 – “Beliefs, Mysticism and The Supernatural”

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A question I received: What stages will we have to go through to get to the end of the crisis?

My Answer:
1. Economists and manufacturers believe that apparently, the crisis is necessary in order to “change” our world: to rid us of excess manufacturing facilities, to shift to new technologies and means of production, to raise the consumers’ qualification when it comes to assimilating the newest forms of production and services. This is why the crisis has to go through the stages that it does: restriction of production, optimization of business, implementation of new technologies, elimination of physically and morally outdated products, cautious growth and assimilation of new products.

2. Kabbalah says that the crisis will change our society: every person will assume his objective, rational place in the integral human society. This will happen by virtue of one’s desire to receive what one needs and to give everything that one can. One will enjoy the well-being of the society and the revelation of the Upper Source of fulfillment, the Creator, which is revealed through “love for one’s neighbor.” The path can be long and difficult, one of wars and famine (this is the natural egoistic development), or it can be quick and pleasant, by means of revealing the Creator and His plan, and by coming closer to Him (the Kabbalistic development).

See the article “Freedom of Will” and others.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Baal HaSulam Describes the Cause of Suffering and Crises In the World
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A question I received: Do the thoughts of someone who’s advancing in spirituality influence the world more than the thoughts of someone whose point in the heart hasn’t awakened yet?

My Answer: Our egoistic desires and thoughts (the heart and mind) don’t have any influence on the world, since they are entirely controlled from Above. So why is it written that all of man’s thoughts and desires affect the world? It’s because the world is influenced by the degree of one’s lack of correction, or one’s discrepancy with the Reshimo that surfaces in him. However, the world isn’t affected by one’s personal aspiration.

In other words, when one has uncorrected desires and thoughts, he influences the world with their lack of correction. However, the only conscious and direct influence we can have is through a desire that matches the Reshimo or the direction of our development. In other words, it’s possible only by realizing the Reshimo correctly.

Indeed, everything depends on the force of the screen, the quality of bestowal – only this influences the world. Thought is the most powerful force in the world. And generally speaking, the greater a force is, the more concealed from us it is. When a person rises spiritually, the power of his thoughts increases. Physical forces operate only in our dimension of time, place, and movement, whereas spiritual forces are not limited by space, time, and place. See Baal HaSulam’s article “Thou Hast Hemmed Me In Behind and Before.”

Related Material:
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From item 40 of the “Introduction to the Book of Zohar,” by Baal HaSulam:

“And I know that it is completely unaccepted in the eyes of some philosophers. They cannot agree that man, whom they think of as low and worthless, is the center of the magnificent creation. But they are like a worm that is born inside a radish and thinks that the world of the Creator is as bitter and as dark as the radish it was born in. But as soon as the shell of the radish [of one’s egoism] breaks and it peeps out [comes out of the egoism, of the intention, “for his own sake,” and enters bestowal and love for others], it wonders [in awe of the Upper World that it revealed] and says: “I thought the whole world was the size of my radish, but now I see before me a grand, beautiful and wondrous world!”

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News Report: (translated from pravda.com): Excerpts from the article “The Crisis of Desires,” by the Ukranian Deputy Minister of Finance and presidential legal advisor, N. Poludenny: The desire and its satisfaction (pleasure) are the basis of man’s energetic-informational nature. We are woven of desires. Our crises will multiply, evolve and intensify until we realize that we must change our perception of the world. First and foremost this means altering the vector of our desires and acquiring the perception of unity between all people in the global system of our world.

Today everyone is talking about restoring trust – trust in the financial system, in the government, and in each other. People presume that this is a matter of an individual’s psychology or the psychology of the masses. In reality, however, trust is a spiritual category, whose root lies in a global spiritual state called “faith.” Confidence and loyalty are derivatives of this state.

These states are impossible as long as people realize their desires with a “minus” sign. And on the contrary, when a person changes the vector of his desire from “receiving for his own sake” to “giving for others’ sake,” he automatically enters the state of confidence, restoring others’ trust in him, and acquiring faith (at the very least, faith in his own abilities).

My Comment: Bravo! Let’s hope that everyone else will soon recognize the reason for the crisis as well! And when they do, people will begin searching for the means (the strength and the method) to correct our nature – and they will reveal Kabbalah.

Related Material:
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News Report (translated from utro.ru): Sociological polls administered by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center show that due to the significant reduction of living standards in Russia, caused by the global financial crisis, there is a great threat of broad public unrest. According to the poll results, over 20% of the population say they are willing to participate in mass protests.

Comment: Only the unification of the government with the people will help both survive. However, the following situations are also possible:

• If things progress egoistically, they will end up with Nazism, which will then be defeated because it opposes Nature’s law of globality, integration, and interconnection.

• If people follow the altruistic path, the crisis will be resolved quickly and will have a favorable outcome.

News Report (translated from lenta.ru): The Russian television has aired a promotional campaign encouraging people to set aside their national differences and adopt the necessary policy of tolerance.

Comment: Otherwise, as the the crisis, hunger and frustration reach their peak, there will be problems among people of different nationalities – and then it’s just a short step from nationalism to Nazism.

And here’s another problem: Some people think that they can wait out the crisis without correcting anything, and once it’s over they’ll get back to selling the national resources. This calms people down and convinces them to keep all the existing governmental structures, or in other words, to keep people on a payroll. However, this crisis will change the world and hence people won’t be able to keep “collecting the rent”!

(The above photo shows me next to the Chilean Parliament and Junta soldiers. By the way, “junta” means “group.”)

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Reflections on the Crisis
Laitman.com Post: Nazism – The Future of Humankind?

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