Kabbalah expert Dr. Michael Laitman explores the role of religion in navigating a turbulent economy.

Question: How can Kabbalah help confront the economic crisis?

Michael Laitman: Well, in terms of application, it's very simple and it applies to everything that we have in this world.

First of all, by studying the force that exist around our world, which is this kind of conclusive or inclusive force of nature, which is what we call God, but it’s actually a physical nature force, but one that is higher than our own nature because it is all about love and giving. And that’s why we don’t feel it because we’re opposite from it.

But when we begin to come closer in our nature to that, and that’s what Kabbalah teaches us, then we begin to employ that power on ourselves. It gives us a chance to permeate it. And then, it’s expressing all of our actions in family and education of children in the way we perform our jobs and in the professions that we study to.

And I learned a lot of things through it because we learn how this force kind of dresses in matter, how it acts in the inanimate, in the plants and animals and people. It helps us understand all of life systems, political systems, economical systems, psychological ones, human relations, family relations, how to have a better education where culture comes from, say, now, for example.

Now, in my current visit to New York, I met with psychologists, musicians. Just today, we met Moby, politicians, and people who really engage in every area of human engagement. And I find that it have a lot to talk to them about. And I see that they got something to say to them and they have something to add to me. And with my experience in all the places in the world that I’ve come to and engage with people, we, later on, have a lot of work with people from all walks of life and any fields of expertise.

This comprehensive knowledge about the force of nature, which Kabbalah adds to us, we can add it. It’s like a spice that you add to every way of life and especially to education. Because our problem is that if we could educate just a single generation in the right way, they would educate their own kids correctly in the right way. And Kabbalah explains how we can approach education in a way that brings them up as good people.

And I’m very happy that; actually, precisely, because of the current crisis that is affecting the whole world, people are finally beginning to be more attentive and to understand that the main problem is human education, to stop using our egos so wildly like, for example, the financiers and all those folks.

And I can see that it produces good results, actually. Let’s hope that we will see our children and grandchildren having a better life as a result.

Michael Laitman: Our whole world should behave basically as it does. You just have to add a few corrections to it.

Kabbalah says that before we have now coming to the state in the evolution of our egos over the generations and now that we’ve evolved to a state where we’re all kind of closed in together. It’s like cogwheels all tied together, working together. And that’s the state of the whole world right now and it will be even more so.

So we need to learn what is a cybernetic closed system, what kind of laws apply in it, by which formula we have to manage our lives right now. The result is, and that was my first profession, biocybernetics. In such a system, you cannot succeed if you have no consideration of the entire system.

But how can I be considerate of 7 billion people? It’s very simple. What we learned from the science of system biocybernetics and from the wisdom of Kabbalah, you have a very simple formula. Every person, every business in the world from this stage onwards can succeed only on condition that it works without any surplus profit, only when it needs to sustain itself in a kind of normal way. Only in this way can we move forward.

I’m hopeful that, at one time, economists will understand it and, especially, those who are in business just because they won’t have a choice.

Because either we learn it out of troubles and crisis or we will see using science and Kabbalah, both of which speak of the same thing. But there’s a very basic simple formula.

You have a business, you got to pay your employees, you got to pay your insurance, you got to pay your own salary, you got to pay for pension and for holiday, for whatnot, and for vacations but that’s it, not more than that. Leaving nothing that is surplus profits. The rest will come back to you in a negative way.

That’s the law of closed systems, which humanity, today, is kind of emerging into. You’re going to have to learn it in the coming years and let’s hope we learn it not out of troubles but just by obtaining it, perceiving it.

Recorded on: May 7, 2009.