In the News (from Energy Bulletin): “IEA report to the G8” The International Energy Agency reports that energy investment worldwide is plunging in the face of a tougher financing environment, weakening final demand for energy and falling cash flows – which is primarily the result of the global financial crisis and the worst recession since the Second World War.

…There is clear evidence that energy investment in most regions and sectors will drop sharply in 2009. Preliminary data points to sharp falls in the demand for energy, especially in the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) member countries, contributing to the recent sharp decline in the international prices of oil, natural gas and coal…

Falling energy investment will have far-reaching and, depending on how governments respond, potentially grave effects on energy security, climate change and energy poverty.

My Comment: At the same time, we are being told that we have hit  bottom and are on the rise! The lack of solution forces leaders to hide the actual picture. However, the solution can be found only with the revelation of Kabbalah as a method of correction.

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In the News (translated from Finiz.ru): The outcomes of a study looking at the causes of global warming reveal that humanity has no more than a 10% effect on it, and that there is absolutely no relationship between greenhouse emissions and environmental warming.  Is it possible that even here, someone’s huge business and political agenda is getting involved?

My Comment: Absolutely! Climactic fluctuations are normal phenomena but the changes that are now endangering humanity are the result of egoistic relationships between people.

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A question I received: How can someone who feels bad and is suffering from the crisis pass on the message and the method of becoming good? After all, you don’t ask a poor person advice on how to make money!

My Answer: A person who feels bad doesn’t have the method of correction. Otherwise, he would feel good. In fact, the correction of the world depends entirely on how we feel inside.

However, if a person knows that this suffering is related to his lack of correction, the shift from egoism to bestowal, then he has to share this knowledge and feeling with others.

Therefore, it is everyone’s duty and obligation to disseminate this wisdom to everyone.

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A question I received: The world is going through drastic changes lately. Do these changes have an effect on the still and vegetative levels of Nature?

My Answer: What we see is but a small portion of what is going on in the world. In reality, there are various species of plants, fish, birds and animals going extinct. Why is this happening?

The world is whole and integral and all of its parts are interconnected. Therefore, even the smallest change that occurs in this unified, interconnected system causes changes in the whole of Nature’s organism.

This is analogous to a body where a small injury is felt by the whole body, and the body’s vital functions immediately respond by isolating the injured part.

Similarly, the world crisis is a consequence of human activity, since man has the greatest power of all other parts of nature. He incorporates the whole world and is therefore capable of changing it.

The world is built like a pyramid, comprised of the still, vegetative, animate and human levels (from the bottom up). The sum total of all the still objects is equal to one object or representative of the vegetative level; the sum total of all the vegetative objects is equal to just one element of the animate level; and the entire animate level is equal to one person. So just imagine how much greater is the force of the Upper Degree compared to the lower degree, since just one of its elements is greater than everything in the lower degree!

Therefore, one negative thought or one small negative desire of man has a negative – and a thousand times more potent – impact on all the lower degrees.

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In the News (from The New York Times): “Coral Fossils Suggest That Sea Level Can Rise Rapidly” Evidence from fossil coral reefs in Mexico underlines the potential for a sudden jump in sea levels because of global warming. The study, being published Thursday in the journal Nature, suggests that a sudden rise of 6.5 feet to 10 feet occurred within a span of 50 to 100 years about 121,000 years ago, at the end of the last warm interval between ice ages.

My Comment: Any occurrence in Nature has an initial stage where the energy builds up, and then an abrupt change. And the latter is always fatal for humans! However, we can stop the threatening changes taking place in Nature by bringing the whole of Nature to balance. The way to do this is by changing ourselves, by acquiring the quality of bestowal.

Kabbalah says that Nature and the Creator are one and the same. The Gematria (numerical value) of the word Nature (HaTeva) is the same as the Creator (Elokim). In our world, the level of Nature is lower than the level of a “human being.” Therefore, by correcting ourselves, by changing our egoism to bestowal, we will become equivalent to all of Nature or the Creator. We will thereby bring all of nature in our world to balance, making our existence absolutely comfortable and secure!

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A question I received: You said it is up to us to inform people of the Kabbalistic method, the laws of development and the solution to the crisis, because then G-20 leaders, including the American President, Barack Obama, and the Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, may finally see that there is no solution to the crisis except following the laws of Nature and explaining these laws to people. You talked beautifully about these issues with the Russian economist M. Khazin, but you did not say anything specific. Everything discussed was general, with the exception of your advice that we must focus on upbringing. However, you didn’t say anything specific or direct regarding what needs to be done to change the situation today, tomorrow, and in the future.

A brief retrospective: The planet’s resources have been depleted. There is not enough drinking water, there is global warming, bad ecology, deterioration of our health due to a wide use of hazardous toxic products, overpopulation on the planet, and we only have enough energy resources to provide for the earth’s population for just 29 more years. People have no time to adjust to the changes that are occurring at breakneck speed. Conflicts are now unavoidable.

My Answer: By “upbringing” I mean creating the “glue” between people, which will allow them to reach harmony with Nature. This will, in turn, make us successful and will regenerate new life.

Additional Comment: I have repeatedly stated that as soon as we begin to act in the proper direction, Nature will immediately react to our changes by treating us positively on all levels of our existence. We don’t have to wait until we will completely reeducate ourselves and others to start thinking globally. Let’s just begin, and we will soon find ourselves in Nature’s favorable surroundings, because we’ll no longer be in conflict with it.

(In the photo above, taken in Alaska in1994, I am on one of the planet’s disappearing ancient glaciers.)

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A Teleconference between the Kabbalist M. Laitman and the Russian economist, publicist, and political scientist M. Khazin – December 29, 2008

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In the News (translated from Expert.ru): The global financial crisis has forced the Germans to reconsider their role as the European Union’s milk-cow. The new German egoism can become a serious threat to European integration. “We are not planning on helping everyone,” said the German Minister of Finance, Peer Steinbrück, “Everyone has to take care of himself.”

My Comment: If the EU starts uniting precisely in this situation, if it becomes similar to the global design of the world, it will come out of the crisis faster than the rest of the world. Kabbalah calls this technique, “faith above reason,” which means that you act in spite of your illusory egoistic judgment, making actions toward union and bestowal.

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In the News (translated from Infox): In times of crisis, the large social networks are having a harder time attracting investors. They haven’t had time to develop an efficient business model, yet it’s very costly to support support networks. Projects that still haven’t brought profit to the investors are having a tough time during the financial crisis. Even Facebook is on a verge of losing financing.

My Comment: People today need something different than what the “social networks” have been doing until now. If these networks don’t shift to integration and globalization and become a means of uniting humanity based on mutuality, equality, bestowal, and love – in other words, if they remain opposite to Nature and what It requires of us today – they will “go extinct,” just like the dinosaurs.

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In the News (from The Financial Times): “Governments turn to barter deals as credit to secure food dries up” Countries struggling to secure credit have resorted to barter and secretive government-to-government deals to buy food, with some contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. In a striking example of how the global financial crisis and high food prices have strained the finances of poor and middle-income nations, countries including Russia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Morocco say they have signed or are discussing inter-government and barter deals to import commodities from rice to vegetable oil.

The revival of these trade practices, used rarely in the past 20 years and usually by nations subject to international embargoes and the old communist bloc, is a result of the countries’ failure to secure trade financing as bank lending has dried up.

My Comment: Now all the countries are becoming like that – outlaws of the global government! Our lack of balance with Nature (the regulator) will affect everything we do. To people’s surprise, anytime a person will start doing something, he’ll find that “nothing’s going right,” that things just “don’t work out” for some reason. Even bartering won’t help: despite every person having something to give to another and something he can receive in return, the barter just won’t go through. Why?

Imagine that you did not comply with one of the laws of physics, or you complied with it, but did so incorrectly. Then, you would find that you always fail at everything you do. This is the state we are in. Indeed, people are acting like children, naively believing that everything will fall into place the way they want it to, rather than by the laws of Nature.

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A question I received: The overwhelming majority of people do not recognize “the quality” of the current crisis and the reason for it – that our egoism breaks and distorts all our connections, and that the only way to survive is by attaining the quality of “love for your neighbor.” Moreover, people don’t realize that they need help from the Creator, Ohr Makif, to do this. They do not realize this because they were created on the still level, Domem, and maybe they will never be able to realize this, and they don’t need to.

So what is the purpose of Kabbalah dissemination? If the elite are deaf because they are caught in the vicious cycle of their profiteering interests, and the masses are deaf because of their low level of development, then who are we disseminating to, and what are we disseminating?

My Answer: We are disseminating the science of how every person can correct himself. And every person will apply this science to the extent of his free will, which emerges due to the development of his desire (heart) and mind, through suffering and recognition.

By applying this science, every person will make his path of correction easier, shifting it from the natural one (under Nature’s blows, the way all evolution takes place), to evolution that happens by means of one’s aspiration for the goal, for the quality of bestowal and love for everyone. The global crisis is an indication that this is necessary.

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