The fact is that by constantly developing, the ego was pushing us forward. We always wanted something new and were always chasing something. But today the ego has become flat; it has reached its maximum and, most importantly, become global. It has retired into its own shell.

As a result, we have become closed between ourselves and totally dependent on one another. We have created a closed analog system between us in which everyone is so dependent on others that through a chain of four acquaintances each of us is connected to all the people in the world. What’s more, today there is no need to fight: It’s enough to cut off a certain country from the mutual cooperation with other countries, and it will immediately collapse because it cannot exist on its own.

This was never the case before. A country could isolate itself and be independent. It could survive on its own. It had enough resources to produce energy, food, and everything the population needed, and there were no special problems.

But today we cannot do anything if we are not connected to tens of other countries. We have to buy, sell, and exchange goods, to constantly receive, send, and so on. We’ve become global, we’ve become closed. It wouldn’t be a problem if at the same time we were changing ourselves.

So, we have remained the same individualistic egoists while the world has become global and closed. Hence the discrepancy between the two systems.

On one hand, there is a discrete system, in which each of us wants to live alone: “I don’t need a family. I don’t need children. I don’t need anyone. I want to be independent and not depend on anyone.” This is how our ego speaks today. On the other hand, nature shows us the opposite: You are totally dependent on everyone. You cannot exist by yourself. You must be connected to everyone, and not only you, but your society, your state, and the whole world.”

This is the contradiction between the two systems: the general system we are in and our personal, individual, internal, system. This is the crisis since the two systems cannot work together. And this is what we feel.

So how can this problem be solved?
[73547] 
From the Vilnius Convention 3/22/12, Preliminary Lesson  

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In a way, we have always known what to do and where to go. Nature has always pushed us from behind: We wanted to evolve, to do more and to expand, to develop science and technology—everything we could.

Today we don’t want anything. We got stuck, turned silent. Our ego, which throughout history was humanity’s driving force, has ceased to work. It doesn’t evoke any urges or impulses in us, it doesn’t push us forward. We’ve been through many changes in society, we’ve developed, built, created, and made revolutions. Humanity has constantly tried to do something, to move forward. We were searching.

Today there is no search. There is no paradigm of thinking, no accurate, clear plan of what we want and in which direction to develop. This is what characterizes our times.

The main problem is that it applies to everyone. There was never something like this in history. All the countries and continents: Oceania, Asia, North and South America, Europe, the Far East, Japan, China, and Africa, all have all developed in their own way, at their own pace and were not dependent on one another.

Suddenly we’ve become so dependent that this problem has become global. We find ourselves in a world where everything is mutually connected. We don’t want it, but the mutual connection is so strong that it manifests daily and affects virtually each of us. If something happens somewhere in the world, it is surely and immediately reflected on us. We see what is happening in the stock markets in New York, Tokyo, Germany, or Frankfurt, what is happening with the oil or metals.… If there is an earthquake, a hurricane, or a volcano that erupts somewhere, it is reflected on everyone. We are in such a changing world that we cannot even imagine what to do next.

If we draw a simple graph of the development of the ego on a time axis, we will see that we used to develop more or less evenly. Only in the 20th century has our ego grown very sharply. We have made a breakthrough in every aspect of life: in technology, education, and upbringing, in developing the lands and conquering space. Suddenly we find ourselves on a “landing.” We’ve achieved the maximum of our ego, and it doesn’t push us anywhere anymore. We’ve reached this state since the end of the last century.

This is a very serious problem, which great men and great minds are dealing with. But today we are starting to research and understand it, and are beginning to realize what has happened.
[73550] 
From the Vilnius Convention 3/22/12, Preliminary Lesson 

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Question: The course of evolution of human egoism can be studied through the example of the four phases of the development of nature. Should we study other subjects in this evolutional context?

Answer: No, from the point of view of the development of egoism, evolution and history are historical forms that gradually accumulate and change thanks to egoism, and do so suddenly, by a leap. Any kind of social activity, interrelationships, engineering, or technology is replaced within a few years or decades by another kind since one obliges the other.

Social relationships change, and thus the post, telegraph, telephone, notaries, parliamentary interaction, and so on emerge. That is, everything changes on the entire level, on the entire dimension of human interrelationships.

We are not simply studying history, but social, political, economic, public, and technological development, as well as instruments of work and production, and agriculture. It is because agriculture determines migration, which determines demography, which determines something else. All in all, everything is so interconnected!

Also linked to this are the glacial age, the minor glacial age, the period of vegetation, and so on. We connect ecology with it, including the climate. We see that all of this is one, whole system.

Question: Why do we need to feel these phases?

Answer: If one does not know what happened yesterday, tomorrow he cannot think correctly. One must see the entire huge system that has always been moving and has brought us to our state today. Although it continues to move our still, vegetative, and animate states, it leaves to us the fourth level of development as free will, because we must complete it ourselves.

It turns out that one can make some approximations already and see that we will be moving forward. However, if one does not add his personal participation by exercising his free will, interacting with others correctly, and voluntary restructuring himself and society in advance, before receiving blows from behind, then his still, vegetative, and animate components push him forward harshly and summon corresponding actions within him. These may be terrible diseases, earthquakes, upheavals of revolution, and so on.

We do not have a clear view of this process as the necessary empirical material has not yet accumulated. However, we can make an approximation as to what kinds of blows we will be experiencing that will push us from behind, “toward happiness by the stick,” so to speak, if we do not forestall it through our unification, with mutual participation and aspiration toward harmony and unity.

This is why it is very important to study the past.
[72860]
From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” #12, 12/16/11

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A group should set a good example for everyone. It is playing what we would like to be, like a child who plays being a grown-up because he dreams of being a grown-up.

In our everyday life, when we advance instinctively by evolution, nature forces us to advance by pushing us from behind by sufferings and by luring us forward with pleasures, by showing us examples from the environment, by evoking our pride, by evoking our passion, our desire to control and other pleasures, making us yearn to grow and achieve more.

This is how nature advances on the levels of the inanimate, the vegetative, and the animate, but man who is the most developed creature on earth advances more than all the other levels. It isn’t enough for him to be born and to acquire the form of a grown-up in a couple of weeks like a beast does. He has to take on a new form in every generation. Nature takes care of that and advances him.

But when he has to grow, as a human being, in a form that is already different from the levels of the inanimate, vegetative, and animate, everything becomes different. We don’t see this difference, because we relate to the human body as to a beastly body; we pay attention to the friend’s face, to the way he behaves in the corporeal world, and to his character. We don’t understand that his spiritual component is totally detached from the body and doesn’t belong to it.

We need this body in order to attain spirituality with it, to attain attributes through it that enable us to connect with the friends internally. But actually, the spiritual form is totally different from the corporeal form, like two different levels. Just as in our world there is an absolute difference between an inanimate stone, the vegetative, and the animate, the human level is also cut by a border called the Machsom, which separates us from the animate level. We can rise to the human level only by urges that we design ourselves. These urges are called: the importance of the spiritual goal, which is the opposite from our corporeal level.

This oppositeness actually exists between all the levels of the inanimate, vegetative and animate. We must understand that in the process of evolution it is impossible to remain in the present state. So you begin to consolidate your powers in order to exit your current state and to move on to the next state, which is more advanced.

The same thing happens in our development. Nature brings us to this point when we feel the need for spiritual development. When we feel the point in the heart inside us, we come to the group. But afterwards we have to find the powers for our development by ourselves.
[70085]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 2/14/12, Writings of Rabash

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Question: What is the fifth or zero stage of the evolutionary development?

Answer: We see that all the laws of nature originate from a single law of the closed system, and so we assume that the zero stage of the evolutionary development is what existed before the Big Bang or during the Big Bang as the Thought of Creation.

Question: That is, everything that happens with us is a certain program that is being realized now?

Answer: If studying the environment and ourselves, we discover relationships, logic, and certain laws, it suggests that we exist within a system of laws, interactions. And if we do not or cannot see some of them, or see but cannot connect them together, this is our problem.

But every day, we discover more encompassing, richer, and interconnected dependencies.
[72795] 
From a “Talk on Integral Education” #12, 12/16/11   

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Question: Were the previous transitions of human development, for example, from the vegetative to the animate level, also accompanied by crises and suffering?

Answer: The previous transitions were smoother, more stretched out. The first, the still period, was the longest because the amount of still nature is much greater than the vegetative.

There is a kind of projection of one level of nature to the next, but it retains its proportions. That is why the still level of human development lasted tens of thousands of years, the vegetative one lasted thousands of years, and the animate one lasted hundreds of years, perhaps five centuries or even less. Our period should be over in just a few decades.

Nature directs all its parts from the Big Bang that started everything to complete rest, to full correspondence with each other. This tranquility will take place when man will reach his highest level and close the entire integral picture.

We are not talking about stars, galaxies, and so on. That does not matter. What matters is that at the highest level, man will be completely enclosed within it, including everything within himself. This is the requirement of nature. Its most important law is the law of balance of all of its parts. Any action tends toward equilibrium, to spending the least amount of energy, the minimal entropy, minimal disorder.

Here we encounter man who causes the greatest disorder. He is the only element of nature that has free will. Namely due to the freedom of will he must understand that he needs it only in order to achieve balance, harmony with nature.
[72676]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” #12, 12/16/11  

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Question: How can the still, vegetative, and animate levels of human development be characterized?

Answer: The still level is the period when a person has very small egoism that is not yet awakening him to connect with others. He passively exists in nature, changing virtually nothing around himself, only working the land a little bit with his hands and primitive tools (actually, even this does not exist yet) and getting food for himself. This is the still level of development, meaning that it does not perfect itself and remains at the same level all the time; it’s not growing yet like at the next level.

The vegetative level is characterized by the fact that a person is already “growing,” but as we say, “he’s still a plant.” Meaning, that he still lacks movement, he’s not capable of great achievement or of various transformations. He organizes the space around himself, but like a plant that spreads its roots and takes a little from everything. He conquers something, but in a very limited form since his egoism, his capabilities, are not letting him “swallow” what he has conquered. That’s why it makes no sense to risk, invest efforts, and suffer.

The animate level is first of all the development of technology, meaning that which is outside of man. We begin to develop instruments that help us conquer the world as far as space. This stage began in the Middle Ages with the invention of printing machines and other novelties.

Indeed, the Middle Ages are not a simple level of development. It was quite a busy period conceived in a somewhat internal form. However, when studying the process of evolution we understand that at that time, very interesting, powerful, albeit concealed, conception processes of the next stage were taking place.

It should be emphasized that this wasn’t observed at the previous stages because there is very little difference between the earth and a plant, and their connection is far too strong. They contain each other, they transform into each other, and so on. While there is a huge difference between the vegetative and the animate states: in free will, movement, personal space, space conquering, and so on.

The internal human development carried on according to this. People have literally rushed to conquer nature and areas, and to discover new lands. Everything changed: working the land, farming, occupations, cities, division of people into groups and clans, and so forth. Then, movement for parliament began, for freedom, and so on. Humanity has become more active on all of the levels relative to past states, and this activity has grown more and more.

During the last century, it has reached unity. We have arrived at integration, at egoistic interaction. This has become the presupposition for the conception of the new level, which began to manifest in the middle of the 20th century. The Club of Rome, the academic Vernadsky in Russia, and various international organizations started to notice that a holistic level of nature is being revealed and it influences society accordingly. If we don’t follow it, then we’ll suffer from the imbalance with nature.

Many people at that time started to write and talk about it. Each one on his level: on the level of biology, sociology, political science, mineralogy, social development, or even the economic and financial development (economics and finance are two different functions of man). All of this has been accumulating gradually and has led to the emergence of prerequisites for passing onto the next level. However, the emergence of these prerequisites, like any movement in development, begins with small revolts which are constantly growing until they reach states where it is impossible to stop, to remain in the previous state, and then a new state is born by a leap.
[72684]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” #12, 12/16/11 

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Question: There is a concept called the contact cycle in Gestalt Therapy. This includes the phases that any person goes through. The basis of human activity in a group consists of four phases. Where does this number come from? How many phases should there be according to the laws of nature?

Answer: According to the laws of nature, there are four phases that result from the fifth, higher one, zero. Zero is the very first level which is nature itself. The four phases of the development of a desire result from it. The fourth phase is the final form of the development of a desire.

So, there are actually five phases, but we don’t take the first phase into account because it is beyond us and relates to higher nature. Thus, we consider only the four phases of the development of a desire. Only the last phase of the four do we feel as ours, as our “I.” We no longer consider it as something that came from outside, but as something that emerged within us.

Question: What are these phases in the context of the course of the evolution of egoism?

Answer: These are the inanimate, vegetative, and animate nature. We find ourselves in the fourth phase today, the phase of human development.

We still are treated as at the animate level today because we care about our animal body and everything surrounding it. We are refined animals, but still animals because all our problems and concerns are inside of our animate life, meaning our physical bodies are important to us.

However, a human is a collective image, Adam, where we gather all our hopes, thoughts, and desires, and, by uniting, we rise above our physical nature. That is something nature awakens and leads us toward. If we properly respond to nature’s call and follow in this correct direction, we come to an integral state of “human” where all our desires and thoughts unite.

Together, we feel this desire and new consciousness that is above the animate level by adapting among ourselves almost to the extent of not feeling our animate existence. We care about our body as if taking care of an animal, only to the extent required for its existence. We give food, sex, and family to the body to the extent of its physical needs. The rest of our needs we raise to the level of unification, integrality, and mutual responsibility.

That is the fourth phase we have to reach. The current cornerstone of the extremely critical crisis is just the point of bifurcation through which we must pass. I hope we pass through it more or less smoothly by realizing that we must rise to the next level.
[72548]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” #12, 12/16/11 

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Question: When we are talking about the four stages of development, how can we explain at which stage we are?

Answer: Today, all of humanity is in transition from the third to the fourth stage. Within each stage, there are sub-stages. For example, if we take the stages of human development without regard to the still, vegetative, and animate natures and the level of “human” because we have existed for dozens and even hundreds of thousands of years, then we can view development along the historical axis as the first, second, third and fourth stages.

Suppose that the 16th century, the late Middle Ages, marks the beginning of the technological revolution with development of cultures, sciences, and so forth. This was the third stage; that is, humanity became intensely concerned about its life, about itself as an animal. This is the bourgeois revolution and, ultimately, capitalism. Before that, humanity was in the vegetative stage. In the Middle Ages, antiquity, we find the signs of the vegetative type, the vegetative character of development. Before that, we were at the so-called still level when people used small forces with low labor efficiency, and only could take care of their food.
[72546]
From a “Talk on Integral Education” #12, 12/16/11 

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Question: Development takes us from the world of consumption to the world of bestowal. Thousands of generations have lived in a world driven by the power of egoism. If the next step of humanity must bring it to the world of bestowal, then what is this world?

Answer: It is only called the world of bestowal, but both forces exist in it. The force of bestowal exists in the world of consumption, but it is only used for reception. The world cannot exist with only one force in it: There must always be two forces.

The main question is which one is the determining force: Who is in charge? If the force of reception decides everything, then the force of bestowal serves it.

I am willing to give a little to receive more. I am willing to invest in a business to earn more. I develop everything only for more profit and benefit.

The entire still, vegetative, and animate world, and man as part of the animate nature, developed through the dominance of the force to receive over the force to bestow. This is obvious when it comes to man who, as a big egoist, uses this force in a way that hurts his neighbor. In man, the dominance of the force of reception over the force of bestowal is clear, but this dominance is more primitive in the entire still, vegetative, and animate levels.

When we look at man, we simply are able to see more clearly that everything we do is intended for personal pleasure, for benefit. I cannot do anything when I do not see a way to benefit. Nature has made me so that I have no chance to make a single move if I don’t get pleasure from it, a benefit: The fulfillment must be greater than my investment. My investment is bestowal, and reception must be greater than bestowal. This means that the power of reception rules over the power of bestowal.

In the end, we completely blow out of proportion the way we use the force of reception that rules over the force of bestowal; we want to make a profit on everyone without feeling any shame. A person is ready to kill, sell, and destroy everyone only to receive one gram of fulfillment and pleasure; at the same time, he does not take anyone into consideration in any way.

This is how much the force of receiving has grown in relation to the force of bestowal. The difference between them has simply become enormous. When we suddenly come to these enormous disproportions between the force of bestowal and the force of receiving and the connection between them has become completely disrupted, then we experience a crisis and the inability to continue to exist.

This is because the force of bestowal no longer comes near the force to receive and does not help it continue to evolve. Egoism has grown so much that it does not allow me to give even a little to others in order to benefit. I want to receive everything for myself.

Egoism no longer allows me to even tolerate another person near me so that I could make a family. It does not allow me to have children because of the price I would have to pay for it: to yield, consider others, and help one another. I am not ready for this. This is how much the power of reception has outweighed the power of bestowal!

We see this in the world today, in any place and on all levels of a person’s life. I always think about ways to gain the most to the point of not even paying at all. It is better to steal.

This is why we create different systems that legally allow us to steal. We distort laws, form corrupt relationships in the government and society, and do all this just to receive as much as possible. In the end, we come to a state where a person is not able to take anyone into consideration, whether it is his family, society, the government, children, or all of humanity.

This is why the common crisis is appearing in education and culture. We have stopped taking nature into consideration completely and we are prepared to do anything we wish with it, discarding poisonous gas and waste into the oceans and contaminating everyone and everything. Nothing concerns me outside of my four walls. The ozone layer is not my business; let others worry about it.

My ego does not allow me to make calculations even one day ahead because it always checks on what I have in my hands right now. If I fail to see an immediate benefit, I don’t care what happens later. Don’t tell me about the future. I do not see or hear anything.

Some 50 years ago, economists and bankers prepared programs for the development of the government for 5, 10, 20, or even 25 or 50 years ahead of time. There is nothing like it today. No one even knows what will happen tomorrow.

The lack of desire to consider one another leads us to the loss of a point of reference. This destroys all the systems that now exist. It destroys the very last remaining minimal balance between the force to receive and the force to bestow, not just balance but also any kind of connection, and even this is lost.

This is why we do not know how to continue living. The solution is to create a system within our community that will help push us and teach us to increase the force of bestowal without which life cannot exist.
[72062]
From KabTV’s “A New Life” Episode 12, 1/10/12

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