A question I received: I saw an interesting headline in “The Marker”: “America is turning into something it spent many years fighting – a socialist nation.”

We see that our nature is pushing us to care for one another. America, which does not want its entire economy to collapse, understands that everyone is interconnected, and now it’s also beginning to understand the consequences of capitalism. Is this nature’s way of directing us toward the correct form of coexistence?

My Answer: Absolutely! I am happy that so many news articles on this have been appearing in the press lately. They already show an understanding of the cause of the crisis – man’s incorrect behavior in society. Moreover, some articles even indicate that nature itself is pushing us to correct our social relations.

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Article: “Synergy”

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Questions I received on the economic crisis:

Question: Many of your students live in Russia. What do you think of how the economic crisis is progressing there?

My Answer: Russia will experience the economic crisis harder than Europe, America, or China. Russia will also experience its own crisis of self-love, ambition, separatism, and power. It will recognize that it is a part of the rest of the world, and that it needs to stop being hostile and aggressive. It will realize that it can’t survive any other way. Blaming America for the economic crisis will not solve the problem.

However, Russia can truly have its own “special path” if the people of Russia, with their inherent sensitivity and willingness to sacrifice material things for the sake of spirituality, will recognize the cause of suffering and the opportunity to rise above it. Then the Russian nation will really become special in the world.

By demonstrating to the entire world new social relations – the future of the world, not by order from “above” (from the authorities) but truly by order from above (from the Creator or Nature), by observing the law of love and bestowal, Russia will quickly become the leader in every regard. The choice is in its hands.

Question: Who will suffer most from the economic crisis?

My Answer: America will suffer least – not in terms of numbers, but percentage wise. Then Europe, and finally – Russia and China will suffer the most. There aren’t many consumers of Chinese products and Russian oil and gas.

Question: What will happen if Russia will close itself off from the rest of the world? After all, it has everything in order to be self-sufficient.

My Answer: The fact is that the current crisis is global, and no one can hide from it because everyone is fully integrated in the international economics. This is why political decisions cannot go against the economic decisions, and since there is only one economy, this also forces politics to become one! This has never happened before in the world. There were crises of a purely economic nature, or purely political, or social crises, but the present crisis is universal! This means that no one can separate from the rest of the world.

Question: Does the economic crisis affect only the finances in a direct manner?

My Answer: No, it also affects politics directly. I think that America is leaving the position of a “police officer” in the world. Now everyone will have to engage in this: Iran and Pakistan will advance toward the Caspian Sea, while China – toward Siberia. Islam will simply fill Russia – which is weakly Christian and halfway Islamic. To counterbalance this, Fascism may arise on the wave of patriotism.

Question: What is your organization doing during the period of economic crisis?

My Answer: We want to send our message out to the world – the method of correcting the economic crisis. We must therefore unite with the suffering of the world and share it. Only then will we will be able to correctly speak to the world and it will hear us.

What does it mean to suffer the suffering of others? Even though you personally don’t experience it, you are united with others, fully sharing their misfortune and helping them. This must happen according to the rule, “He who empathizes with the suffering of the masses merits mercy with them.”

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The financial crash should not cause a mass depression. It will open up an opportunity to spend more time with our families. Many restaurants will close down and family dinners – along with conversations at the table – will return to daily life. Communication within the family will help alleviate stress.

Besides, a change of work and some physical exercise won’t hurt as well. But most importantly, there will be time to think about the meaning of life, and whether it really lies in the endless chase to “keep up with the Joneses.”

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Mutual Guarantee (Arvut) is the condition for life, for the existence of any living organism. When all of an organism’s forces and actions are coordinated and aimed at a common goal, then the negative correcting forces (crises and illnesses) do not emerge in the organism, and the system exists in permanent balance (homeostasis).

The current events (the financial crisis, general depression, drugs, breakdown of the family unit, emptiness, aimlessness, the global crisis, the ecological crisis) are revealing to us the single and general reason for everything taking place – that we are all an integral part of Nature, that all of Nature’s parts are interconnected, and hence they must behave accordingly. However, we – humanity – do not behave this way. We are akin to a cancerous tumor in Nature’s single, harmonious organism.

Mankind must realize that it constitutes one whole organism, and the law of the common mutual guarantee – of care for every person and for everyone at once – is the essential condition of our collective survival. The Biblical principles, “Do not do unto others what you don’t wish done unto you” and “Love your neighbor as thyself” are laws that determine the general balance of nature and our society. If we don’t abide by them, we will perish.

Baal HaSulam’s article, “Arvut” (Mutual Guarantee), describes how we can attain balance with Nature using the Kabbalistic source texts. The book, Kabbalah, Science, and the Meaning of Life talks about my meetings with American scientists who research the scientific fields bordering the Upper World.

Related Material:
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Lessons: Article “Arvut”, 17.11.05 – 23.11.05

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Questions I received on the global financial crisis:

Question: Everyone is saying that the financial crisis was caused by the United States, but you say that it’s systematic and is happening because we are in a system of global interconnection. Who’s right?

My Answer: Both opinions are correct, because America – the most developed country in the world – was first to discover this financial crisis, which is global and not just local to the U.S. If it hasn’t reached some countries yet – such as Israel, for example – then it will reach them later on.

Hence, people shouldn’t scold America. In fact, Europe, China, Japan, the Emirates, and even Russia are all prospering thanks to the American economy, because America buys everything from them.

But now it will stop buying, and everyone will understand how good things used to be! You will be able to answer many questions yourself if you accept the fact that the financial crisis and everything else taking place is actually happening in one, single organism.

Question: Why did the financial crisis start with the banks?

My Answer: It’s because the banks are the foundation of the entire American system; they are an example of a free market. But now the government is buying them. Freedom of the market will become limited like it is in Europe.

However, precisely money or wealth is the equivalent of corporeal fulfillment. It “connects” people, helping us faster realize the common basis of the crisis – people’s egoistic attitudes, as well as the fact that it’s necessary to transform these attitudes, for the sake of survival, into ones of care for one another.

Question: But won’t the care for others be selfish and egoistic, just like today employers “care” about the health of their employees?

My Answer: The system of absolute interconnection between everyone in the world, both people and businesses, is being revealed so fast that soon each one of us will literally feel the vibrations of our attitudes to one another – first the national ones, and then the personal ones as well. This analysis of how our luck and safety depends on our attitudes (inner, not outer ones – what we feel in our hearts), will force us to search for the means to correct hatred and transform it to love.

Question: Who has an easier time living through this time of financial crisis?

My Answer: Those who are least connected with the rest of the world. It works just like an organism: when a leg, stomach, or arm are hurt, the pain is felt in the head. 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! Everyone will instinctively try to return to the past, but by doing so they will only slow down the process and receive even greater blows of fate. It’s like trying to sweep an illness under the rug by treating it incorrectly or taking sedatives instead of medication. After all, human society is a live organism!

Question: What kind of currency will remain?

My Answer: The post-crisis world will be radically new. Nevertheless, the United States has accumulated such great scientific and technological potential, and such an exceptional industrial base, that it will remain the world leader – the largest economy in the world. Even though it will fall more than any other country, when it comes to the numbers, people will still have enough to live (compared to others).

Everything will crash, with the exception of the American high-tech industry. The United States will begin real production; it will return to it from abroad, from China. This will cause foreign countries and China to “fall.”

Question: Why is everyone so afraid of the financial crisis? I personally don’t feel afraid.

My Answer: All previous financial crises were different – understandable and not general. However, this one is global; it is happening all over the world and it is unlike any previous financial crisis. There are no known remedies to eliminate it. People are trying to do the same thing they did in previous financial crises – to help the banks, but nothing will help. The situation will force them to reveal the true cause of the financial crisis: that the egoistic attitudes of the parts of a closed system bring about the system’s destruction.

Regardless of how our attempts to explain the true cause of the financial crisis are received, we should not despair and continue fulfilling our duty. We can only accelerate the world’s understanding of the cause of the financial crisis and the method of correction. It takes patience, but the suffering, attempts, and failures will teach people, forcing them to heed what we are saying.

Here’s a concise explanation of the crisis, including its causes and correction:

Part 2 of the book From Chaos to Harmony – Israel’s Role
Brochure: “Lecture in Arosa – The Crisis and Its Solution”

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Dear friends!
The Creator is setting a special task before us today:

1. To unite all of us into one, integral desire for Him.
2. To reveal the goal of creation to the world.

He is inviting us to be the chosen people, His representatives in correcting the world.  We must set an example of the correct society to the world so that He can reveal Himself inside this society.

All of the symptoms of the global crisis clearly show humanity that it’s necessary to unite, and we are the ones who need to present the method of correction to humanity! To the extent that we fulfill this mission, we will attain adhesion with the Creator.

I hope that you understand what kind of exceptional chance each one of you has been given. Let’s not squander it. Let’s get together in one desire for spiritual ascent – upwards, and enlightenment of the world – outwards.

I believe that each and every one of you is unique and I can’t wait to meet you in St. Louis, where we will be provided with the opportunity to reach a new level of unity.

• Congress Registration
• How You Can Contribute to the Congress

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A question I received: The objective of every government is to lull people’s consciousness. That way people will not fall under influence of any kind of extremism. This is why the mass media has to stupefy or brainwash the masses. Clearly, man’s inner resources are not being used in this case, since they become dormant.

In the modern systematic crisis (whose essence can only be seen by Kabbalists), the government is even more eager to lull the people, since it doesn’t know what to do and even admits that it’s helpless! What solution do you propose?

My Answer: Kabbalah offers the only solution that can awaken people to action, without the danger of breaking the fragile balance of forces within the civilization that still manages to hold the world back from complete destruction and chaos.

The most general stages of realizing the solution are the following:
1. The “background mode” of the mass media should be used to give people a subconscious understanding that everyone is connected with everyone and that humanity is a unified whole. In addition, people should be made to understand what is “good” and and what is “bad” – that altruism, recognition that all people are interdependent, and the corresponding actions are good, while egoism and petty pursuit of self benefit are bad, both for the individual and for humanity as a whole.

2. Once this will enter the public consciousness, we will begin motivating people to become conscious and start making altruistic actions. At first the motive will be to solve the obvious, simple, corporeal problems, in order for everyone to see the benefits of the new way of thinking.

3. Even during stages 1 and 2, it is necessary to introduce into the streams of information, thoughts about the existence of a single force, the final goal of universe:

a) At first this should be done in a complex manner, accessible only to the people who think;
b) When the active stage begins, this should be done through simple information that’s clear to the masses, making it obvious that this is the most appealing worldview for every person.

This will give us the opportunity to unite all of humanity in a single impulse to solve our common problem, and at the same time – in the process of solving the problem – the separated souls will combine to create a single system of humanity.

What is special about this proposition? Kabbalah is the only basis with the ability to create an ideological system that satisfies two mutually exclusive criteria:
a) The system must be so powerful that people’s consciousness will not grow disillusioned of it and reject it;
b) The system must stimulate the masses to transform their consciousness.

All the other ideological models satisfy just one of these requirements:
a) Either the system works well to stimulate people’s consciousness, but does not endure (for example, revolutions);
b) Or the system brainwashes people’s consciousness, but by doing so deprives them of the active, creative force that can change the world (for example, religion).

In addition, after going through a specific period of inner changes, man discards the boundaries of the proposed model and from then on, the path of his consciousness becomes unpredictable. Still, Kabbalah helps people build the model of a new world that’s guaranteed to work with all the changes, enabling an individual’s consciousness to develop without any limitations over the course of his entire life.

This is because Kabbalah uses a physical principle that was unknown before it: when the parts of a system are correctly unified, the system gains energy overall. In other words, without altering our material resources (food, water, oil, and so on), we can solve all our problems simply by unifying people altruistically rather than egoistically (see the example of the Wolf, Goat and Cabbage).

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On Sunday, 10-12-08, I gave a virtual lesson on the global crisis.

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News Report (translated from BBC): The head of IMF, Dominic Strauss-Kahn, announced that the world is “on the brink of recession.” He appealed to world leaders to act “quickly, decisively, and together” in order to overcome the global economic problems. On Friday the President of the United States, George Bush, is expected to speak to the American public about the economic situation of the US. What are we to expect?

My Comment: Relax, the world will never be the same as it once was. Accept it and don’t try to bring it back! Through our egoistic natural development (and no one’s to blame – such is the implacable dialectic of nature), we have reached the revelation of the integral, global system of human interaction in our world. Moreover, since man is the most egoistic of all creatures, he also incorporates all of the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature, and everything requires its own solution, or the proper regulation (balance).

In this case, we become dependent on everyone else. There is no way back, and there cannot be. The forces of the common and single civilization are now surfacing, and they will make us understand that different laws are at work here – the laws of a single organism. Those who will understand this faster will be able to come out of the collapse quicker. By becoming properly connected to the common system, they will be able to cure themselves economically, socially, morally, and so on.

I am not a prophet, but following Baal HaSulam’s texts, for the past six years I have been speaking and writing books and articles about the crisis. There was no way to prevent it, but there is a means to come out of it. I’ve spoken to important people about this, telling them that it is necessary to institute “global education,” or in other words – “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” because otherwise things will get bad. However, they laughed at my naivety.

Now we have to start the work of explaining the situation to people, and we are running late with this. While people learn how to change things, the blows of fate will keep on coming.

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Two questions I received on the economy and religion:

Question: How can you explain the fact that in the United States, the financial crisis is drawing more people into religion?

My Answer: We observe this kind of reaction throughout all human history. In fact, this is the reason why religion was invented in the first place – to comfort man for the blows of fate that seem to come at him for no good reason. Religion promises people a reward for their suffering in the world to come. Of course, it is difficult to give up on a dream, and people are even willing to kill others who kill their hopes (the way I do).

In contrast, Kabbalah does not tell people to believe in unrealistic things, but rather urges people to change themselves in order to feel “the world to come” while still living in this world. One can enter “that world” only by changing oneself in this world. When one’s animate organism dies, the soul can only return back into this life; there is no “world on the other side.” Hence one will keep reincarnating until one enters the Upper World – the world of bestowal and love, while still living in this world.

Question: One reason why I am not satisfied with any method or religion is that at the end the believer is rewarded in paradise, but in a new status. That is, he does not have the needs, desires and pleasures that he sought in his life. So the person who is tested or being prepared in this life is different from the one who is being rewarded. I feel that this is unfair.

My Answer: Why so? Precisely religion promises you all the pleasures of this world, including sexual pleasures, exquisite heavenly meals accompanied by heavenly music, and so on! If a person can still believe in what religion promises him, then he is not yet ready to come out of the spiritual exile.

Baal HaSulam said that between the religious and the Kabbalistic ways of life and perception, there is a secular, materialistic period. After that, the Kabbalistic, “super-materialistic” period is revealed, because one discovers that materialism is also a religion!

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