A question I received: Why do you draw a connection between the financial crisis and a “global Kabbalistic revolution?” Isn’t this going a bit too far?

My Answer: There is a state of standalone objects, and there is a state when they unite into a system. That is when new and special laws are revealed – the laws of globalization, communication, interaction, and interdependence.

Standalone individuals in the animal kingdom are egoists, but as soon as they join together, a law is revealed that enables their system to survive. This law obligates them to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the system, for their society. Of course, in the animal kingdom this happens unconsciously; it is embedded in the animals by nature and they follow it blindly. The human level differs by man’s self-awareness. Man must carry out the same laws of nature consciously and willingly.

Hence, as long as we were not united, there was no need to take the system into account, nor to follow Nature’s law of “bestowal and love for one’s neighbor.” However, as soon as a tight interconnection emerged in Ancient Babylon – the first global civilization (global with regard to that time period, in a compact area), then a crisis was immediately revealed – our imbalance with the natural law of the human community, “love thy neighbor as thyself.”

In Babylon, we managed to solve this problem by annulling the very system or civilization. We separated from each other and scattered all over the world. However, today we are connected and there is no place to run. We can try, but by so doing we will only go back to the past. We can’t even imagine what comforts we will lose, because no country in the world today can be self-sufficient. This would be like going back to feudalism. Our development, its forms and pace are predetermined by nature and its integral law. Hence, if we go against it, we will perceive our opposition to it in the form of terrible suffering.

This is why Kabbalah says that the only option we have is to recognize the natural law of the human community, which is “love thy neighbor as thyself.” Of course, this type of relationship can be adopted only when every individual will be corrected from “for the sake of oneself” to “for the sake of others.” This can be done with ease if:

1. The society and the mass media will support and encourage this, and look down on those who do not do this (however, not by means of punishment);
2. People will study Kabbalah (for the masses, superficial familiarity with Kabbalah will suffice) and thereby attract our future state, which already exists.

I think that “procrastination is like death” – in the literal sense of the word.

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A question I received: What can every person do to change the situation in the world?

My Answer: No physical, political, scientific, or social actions can change our world. So if the world can’t be changed, perhaps we can change man. What will this give us?

Physicists are discovering that the results of scientific experiments depend on man’s presence, even though they still don’t know the degree of this influence nor its nature. Kabbalah studies how man’s consciousness and intentions affect reality, and how we can control this influence in order to change reality!

There is an initial, constant and absolute reality – the World of infinity. Besides, there is a reality that we create with our intentions. In our world, we have never before changed our egoistic intentions. We did not know that by changing our intentions from “for our own sake” to “for the sake of others,” we actually change all of reality.

We did not know that we can affect reality to the degree we become similar to the Creator’s quality – “bestowal and love.” Kabbalah tells us how to do this.

At the end of our spiritual development we will be convinced that the only thing we have to change is ourselves (rather than the world). By doing so we won’t just change our world, but all of reality will change from corporeal to spiritual, from life in the body to life in the soul.

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When I speak to economists about the crisis, I find that they and I are interested in different things. They are not interested in the cause of the crisis, and are willing to accept my explanation of it. What interests them is the evolution of the crisis, and what needs to be done here and now – by a bank or a family.

For now, my propositions that what needs to be corrected are the relationships between everyone – both organizations and people around the world, sound naïve to them, because they do not yet see the cause of the crisis – the lack of kind connections between people. These connections must come from the understanding that we are all part of one organism, and we can cure this organism only by mutually caring for all of its parts. That is the only way to solve this global problem and all the crises that are gradually becoming revealed in humanity today. They are being revealed because our egoistic development has brought us to the point where we are all united within a single organism.

With regard to the global crisis, the process has begun, but this is just the beginning. There is a lot to say about it, and we will talk about it much more in the future – its causes, progress, purpose, and possibilities of softening it – “the path of Light” that Kabbalah offers instead of “the path of suffering.”

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A riddle about a wolf, a goat and a cabbage: how do you get them across a river on a boat, without any of them eating each other?

The boat is very small and can only carry one object at a time: either the wolf, the goat, or the cabbage. If you take the wolf, then you will have to leave the goat on shore alone with the cabbage, and the goat will eat the cabbage. And so on.

Due to the primitive egoism of the animals, this simple situation turns into a non-trivial problem for a person with strategic thinking. It seems like such a simple riddle, but you need so much time and energy in order to resolve it!

This is a wonderful illustration of how the modern civilization is built. The simplest problem in our world becomes a difficult riddle due to the same principle. For example, you need to transport something from one place to another. It seems very simple – let’s take a truck and transport it. But what if it’s money, gold or diamonds? Then you need an additional twenty people for security, special buildings, an armored car, weapons and advanced technology. This shows that all the connections inside the meta-system called “human society” are extremely inefficient. 99% of our efforts are spent on the friction inside the mechanism! The system resists any altruistic action inside of it.

Caravans with food for dying people are robbed. Money intended for the poorest countries is stolen on the way there, and so on.

Nonetheless, until recently even the remaining 1% was enough for humanity to keep developing. However, now we see that our civilization is on the verge of extinction. The entire multi-millennial structure has exhausted its margin of reserves and is ready to fall apart like a house of cards.

We’ve got a funny situation here: scientists from the entire world are working to create a car engine, a light bulb, and other products that will be more economic. But what are they doing it for, really? It is all done for the same reason – to satisfy people’s growing egoism. We can’t force people to drive less, so let’s at least give them a more economic engine.

Now imagine that we could slightly change a person’s consciousness and expand his conception of the world’s structure and his place in the universe. Then every person who needs to drive somewhere will ask himself, “How can I do this more economically? Perhaps I can take other people in the car with me, or take a bus?” He won’t think about saving on his personal gasoline, but about saving the global oil reserves that are shared by all humanity.

And it will be this way everywhere! Humanity has a tenfold margin of reserves across all parameters: fuel, food, health, and so on. However, fuel is being used up for pointless trips, almost nothing is being grown in the fields because it’s unprofitable under the free market economy; people are ill and dying because they kill each other using every available means, from thoughts to atomic bombs…

The term “System Crisis,” which is so popular today, means that the crisis is not really about oil or food production or demography. It is a crisis of our perception of who we are and what world we are living in. So let’s start by becoming aware of these vital issues. Then the difficult trip with the wolf, the goat and the cabbage will turn into an easy and pleasant journey!

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A question I received: Why do you keep insisting that the current financial crisis can only be solved by changing the relationships between people?

My Answer: This question has already been answered in a previous blog entry.

Moreover, economists are also saying that the reason for the stock market crisis is people’s loss of trust in banks and companies. After all, the rise and fall of stock prices depends on the rise and fall of people’s expectations of companies and banks.

In addition, people suspect that even in a time of crisis, companies are putting away considerable “revenue” for themselves. The managers of the banks and companies that went bankrupt knew about the upcoming bankruptcy, and they made sure to give themselves and their employees salary raises in order to “stock up” ahead of time. Hence, the present crisis (and there will be other crises as well) is a crisis of people’s trust in banks, businesses, and in the future as a whole. It’s a crisis of trust in the egoistic system of relationships and its ability to continue regulating our life.

This is why Kabbalah views this crisis and humanity’s general state as the beginning of the world’s correction. We must realize that we absolutely depend on one another, and that it is impossible to get rid of this dependence. We are like members of one family who share common joys and woes. We must create an atmosphere of “familial” trust and care on the entire planet – only then will the systematic global crisis subside.

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It is written, “The only people one does not envy are one’s children and one’s students.” I am proud of my students. Hence I am proud to publish texts and clips that my students send to me. The following was sent by my student Tasha Fridkin from New York:

An analysis of the crisis
It is known that the laws of nature work regardless of whether we know about them or not. No one will test the law of gravity by jumping out of the window, since we know the result from our life experience.

However, few people know that besides the laws affecting our physical bodies, there are also laws affecting our souls. We don’t see the souls in our world, and the interactions between them are also concealed from us. Nevertheless, this does not make the laws any less strict – they still inevitably affect us even if we don’t clearly perceive their influence.

According to these laws all of our souls are interconnected into one harmonious and balanced system that is based on the principle of bestowal. Every individual contributes the most he can to the system, taking only the necessary minimum from it.

Humanity, however, has developed differently. It has reached the state where every individual desires to give the minimum and to use everyone else to the maximum to get personal gratification. Moreover, we have even stopped noticing this. Every person wants to win the lotto – to spend a dollar and win a million. But where does this million come from? It comes from a million people who spent one dollar. In other words, every individual wants to snatch from everyone else, for his own self benefit. And this is considered absolutely normal.

But there is an imbalance between our spiritual and corporeal existence. The violation of the spiritual law evokes the apparent and tangible manifestations in our physical world, such as the current financial crisis. This crisis is but a particular manifestation of the general crisis of all the social connections. The financial system is the most vulnerable one, similar to the blood in an organism, connecting and permeating the entire worldwide community. Nothing has changed in any part of the financial system; the crisis is purely psychological. We have revealed our incorrect usage of the connections between us, and as a result we have lost our trust of the system and the entire system has collapsed.

That is to say, we have reached a state where the externality – the structure and principles of our integrated systems, is losing importance compared to the internality – our thoughts and intentions when using these systems.

If every one of us will not change our attitude toward the people around us, adopting attitudes that match the connections between the souls, then we will continue to oppose the laws of nature. Then these laws will affect us more and more negatively. No one can run away from this; there won’t be any place on earth where one can hide, waiting for things to improve.

The world is crumbling. If you want to be saved, then start with yourself – with your attitude to the people around you. No one else is going to save you.

The world is built by every one of us. The world is our common home, and it is built according to the laws of nature. It can either bring us enormous, inconceivable abundance, or – if it is founded on egoism – it will bring us inconceivable suffering, which will nevertheless force us to change.

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News Report (from Project Syndicate): The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon stated, “We all recognize today’s perils: a global financial crisis, a global energy crisis, a global food crisis. … Climate change ever more clearly threatens our planet. …today, we also face a crisis of a different sort – the challenge of global leadership. Nations can no longer protect their interests, or advance the well-being of their people, without the partnership of the rest. Yet I see a danger of nations looking inward rather than toward a shared future. I see a danger of retreating from the progress we have made, particularly in the realm of economic development and fairness in sharing the fruits of global growth.

My Comment: Even if everyone will understand that the source of all the world’s crises, including the climate crisis, is human egoism and its negative influence on Nature, they still won’t find the remedy for the progressing General Crisis. They will not understand how to change man’s nature, and that’s because this is impossible to do in our world, whose entire nature is egoism.

There is a law that states “The general and the particular are equal” (Klal U Prat Shavim). Just like a regular person is brought to Kabbalah by suffering and the question, “What is the meaning of my life?”, so humanity as a whole will be compelled by suffering and crises to come to the question about the meaning of its own existence, which is not wealth, power, fame or knowledge. Then it will find the answer to this question – that the meaning of life is to reveal the Creator.

That is when humanity will reveal the science of Kabbalah, the means to attain this. By definition the science of Kabbalah is “The method of revealing the Creator to the people in this world,” as Baal HaSulam writes in the article “The Essence of the Wisdom of Kabbalah.”

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News Report (from PRNewswire): NEW YORK, Oct. 2 — In the wake of the collapse of major investment banks and the government’s proposed bailout of financial institutions, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is reporting a dramatic upsurge in the number of anti-Semitic statements being posted to Internet discussion boards devoted to finance and the economy.

Hundreds of anti-Semitic posts regarding Lehman Brothers and other institutions affected by the sub prime mortgage crisis have been submitted to discussion boards dealing with finance, with many more arriving by the minute. The messages rail against Jews in general, with some charging that Jews control the government and finance as part of a “Jew world order” and therefore are to blame for the economic turmoil.

My Comment: “Introduction to the Book of Zohar,” items 66-71, (summary):

When the people of Israel make efforts to elevate the soul, then the nations of the world recognize this and value them. But when the people of Israel lower the greatness of spirituality, they cause the nations of the world to prevail over them, to accuse and humiliate them.

Spirituality can only be elevated through the study of Kabbalah. Then the nations of the world acknowledge that Israel is special, because it has the method to correct the world. But when the people of Israel do not engage in elevating the goal of creation, then the nations of the world degrade them, considering them useless and harmful to the world.

Hence, Israel’s fate depends only on the study of Kabbalah, and its entire descent was caused by the neglect of Kabbalah. Woe to them who neglect Kabbalah – their actions cause hunger, poverty, war, violence, pillage, killings and destruction in the world.

The Talmud says, “No calamity comes to the world but for Israel.”

The Tikkuney Zohar says: “Woe to them who cause poverty and ruin and robbery and killings in the whole world.”

But if they will reveal the method of correction to themselves and the world, then all the nations of the world will recognize the importance of Israel and they shall carry out the words: “And the nations of the world shall take Israel, and bring them to their place: and the house of Israel shall posses them in the land of the Lord” ((Isaiah 14:2). And the words of The Book of Zohar will come true: “That through this composition, which is The Book of Zohar, they will be freed from spiritual exile by the Creator’s mercy” (Nasah 124). Amen!

Additional Comment: However, it’s also possible for things to take a different turn. The “patriotic” forces of every country, combined with the middle class that has fallen into poverty, may create a situation similar to Germany in 1929, when people will start demanding a powerful centralized government and compensation for their degraded state. This is how Fascism and Nazism arise.

Baal HaSulam writes about this alternative to the path of Kabbalah in the book “The Future Generation.” Russia is perhaps closest to this than any other country.

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Question: I found some information on Kabbalistic Cosmology on The Alchemy Website. Would you please comment on this?

My Answer: Kabbalah was concealed for millennia so humanity wouldn’t become confused while it was developing egoistically, until it would grow disillusioned in egoistic development. During this period, many amateurs who dabbled in Kabbalah wrote an overabundance of books on it. And in our times it’s even more so – anyone who has the time of day for it (from “self-made experts” to philosophers) are writing anything they feel like about Kabbalah.

I study Kabbalah only from the primary source texts, written by authentic Kabbalists. If you want to know the truth, then all of the authentic Kabbalah, including the primary source texts, can be found on our website.

Question: Are there any innovative articles that explain Kabbalah in the light of mathematical and physical achievements? Perhaps these explanations will help people see Kabbalah in a new way, for example, by seeing how it relates to nuclear forces and particles, the theory of relativity, the numbers theory, chaos theory, and others.

My Answer: No, and I don’t think that this is necessary. People come to Kabbalah through the need of the soul, not through the desire to penetrate into subatomic particles.

Question: In regard to your blog entry, Why Did I Write About Rav Berg and the Kabbalah Centre on This Blog?, how is it known that there is only one true source of Kabbalah?

My Answer: There can’t be several because the Creator is one.

Question: What’s going on with the World Wisdom Council? We have not heard much as of late.

My Answer: To tell you the truth, I also don’t know what’s going on with them. I was interested in this council as long as there were opportunities to disseminate Kabbalah through it by participating in international forums – such as the ones that took place in Germany, Switzerland, and Japan. Today I no longer need this, since the most important thing today is dissemination on the Internet. All the world’s “wise people” are in a crisis!

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The Book of Zohar. Chapter “The First Commandment” (abridged)

189. BERESHEET BARAH ELOKIM (In the beginning the Creator created) is the first commandment, the root and foundation of all creation, called “fear of the Creator” or RESHEET (beginning), as it is written: “Fear of the Creator is the beginning of wisdom.” It is also written, “Fear of the Creator is the beginning of knowledge,” for this fear is called “the beginning.” And it is the gate (the first property) that leads to faith (the property of bestowal). And this Mitzva (law of the universe) is the foundation of the whole world (all other laws are derived from it).

190. There are three types of fear, two of which have no real basis, but one does. If man fears that his children may die, or fears illness or bodily suffering, or fears for his material well-being, this kind of fear (even if constant) is not the basis or root, for only desirable consequences constitute the cause of fear. This is called “the fear of punishment in this world.” But there is also another type of fear: the fear of punishment in the world to come, in hell. These two types of fear – the fear of punishment in this world and in the world to come – do not constitute true fear.

191. The true fear is the fear of the Creator, for He is great and almighty, for He is the Source of everything, and all else is nothing compared to Him. Man should concentrate all his attention on attaining this kind of fear.

192. Rabbi Shimon started to weep, wailing, “Woe if I reveal and woe if I do not reveal: If I reveal the means of attaining fear, the sinners will know how to work for the Creator for their own sake (without exiting their egoism, and hence they won’t correct themselves). And if I do not say how to attain fear of the Creator, it will not reach my friends (those who do wish to exit their egoism). Wherever there is true fear (which allows one to act above one’s egoism, not for his own sake), opposite it and correspondingly below stands an evil fear, which strikes and prosecutes. It is the scourge that whips the sinners (punishing them for their sins. This is why he is afraid to reveal it, for the sinners may learn how to avoid punishment, and punishment constitutes their correction).

193. But he who fears the punishment by whippings, the true fear of the Creator cannot descend upon him. Instead, evil fear overtakes him in the form of fearing punishment by whipping.

194. Therefore, the place that is named “fear of the Creator” is called the beginning of knowledge. This is why this Commandment is included here. And it is the foundation and source of all the other Commandments of the Torah. And whoever observes the Commandment of fear of the Creator, thereby observes all the others. But he who does not observe the Commandment of fear of the Creator, does not observe the other Commandments of the Torah, for this Commandment constitutes the foundation for all the others.

195. Therefore, it is written, “IN THE BEGINNING” (signifying fear) THE CREATOR CREATED THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH. For whoever transgresses FEAR, transgresses all of the Torah’s Commandments (laws of the Upper World, which are based upon bestowal). And his punishment is the evil scourge – the evil fear that whips him. Further in the Torah, the words, “AND THE EARTH WAS UNFORMED AND CHAOTIC, AND DARKNESS WAS UPON THE FACE OF THE DEEP, AND THE SPIRIT OF THE CREATOR” refer to the four punishments of the wicked.

196. WITHOUT FORM refers to strangulation. CHAOTIC refers to stoning – the stones that fall into the great deep to punish the sinners. DARKNESS signifies burning. THE SPIRIT OF THE CREATOR refers to beheading.

197. The spirit of the Creator means beheading, for the scorching wind (Ruach Se’ara) is a flaming sword – punishment for whoever does not observe the Torah and Commandments that are mentioned after the Commandment of fear, called “foundation,” as it includes all the Commandments. This is because after the word BERESHEET (BEGINNING), which signifies fear, and further it is written WITHOUT FORM, CHAOS, DARKNESS and SPIRIT – the four penalties of death.

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