Our sages foresaw humanity’s present development into an interdependent network. They foresaw that in our era, humanity would start needing a method to elevate itself to its next stage of development peacefully and pleasantly.
Our Sages Predicted Humanity’s Present Global State & the Subsequent Deadlock
Baal HaSulam was anxious about the growing global interdependence early in the 1930s, when very few people in the world were even conscious of the process. He knew that it would lead to an irresolvable crisis if humanity did not support that mutual dependence with mutual guarantee, that human nature would not be able to tolerate the contrast between interdependence and mutual aversion.
At the same time, even at that early stage in our globalization, Baal HaSulam realized that the process was irreversible, that because we are parts of a single soul, a single desire, we are inherently connected. He also knew that the goal for which we were created was not for people to be strangers and hateful, but to bond and unite through the quality of bestowal.
Today we see how right he was. We are hopelessly ill-connected, and vehemently resentful of it. Our social systems, such as economy, health, and education, assume that ill will is the foundation of human relations, and therefore each entity shores itself up through regulations, legislations, and solicitors.
But this modus operandi is unsustainable. As good families assume goodwill among family members, all members of humankind must learn to trust one another.
Humanity Is in Dire Need of a Method that Can Adapt Human Nature to an Integral System
Because our egos constantly evolve and emphasize our uniqueness rather than our unity, we need a method to help us achieve unity atop our disparity, without suppressing or nullifying it. That method is rooted in the spiritual patrimony of the Jewish people, and is the gift of the Jews to humanity, the salvation that the nations all await from the Jews.
This gift can be handed down through Integral Education, by the means that Baal HaSulam suggested in his article “The Nation,” or by any other means that will yield a fundamental change in human nature from divisiveness to unity, from animosity to empathy and care. If we achieve that unity, then the more we differ in our character, the stronger and warmer will be our bond.
Israel as a Light for the Nations
Indeed, the beauty of the Jewish people is in its unity, its cohesion. Our nation began as a group of individuals who shared a common desire: to discover life’s essential force. We discovered that it was, in a word, “love,” and we discovered it because we developed that quality within us. That force of love united us, and in the spirit of love, we sought to share our discovery with anyone who willed it.
Over time, we have lost our connection, first with each other, then with the force we discovered through our bond. But now the world needs us to rekindle that bond, first among us, and subsequently among the whole of humanity.
We are a gifted nation, a nation with the gift of love, with the gift of unconditional bestowal. Receiving this gift is the goal for which humanity was created, and we are the only conduit by which this love can flow to all the nations. Since the dawn of humanity, “never have so few owed so much to so many,” to paraphrase Winston Churchill’s words. And yet, never have so few been capable of giving so much to so many.
Indeed, as Baal HaSulam says, “It is upon the Israeli nation to qualify itself and all the people of the world … to develop until they take upon themselves that sublime work of the love of others, which is the ladder to the purpose of Creation, which equivalence of form with the general force of Nature.”
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