Touching the Materialistic, Touching the Spiritual
by Idit Ben-Porat

Yigal Arica is a doctor who holds a variety of degrees and also manages global businesses. For part of the week he wears a suit and tie: the rest of the time he wears shorts and a T-shirt, enjoys the sea, which is just beyond his yard. In his new book, Passport for a Traveller in Time he talks about the balance between the materialistic and the spiritual.

The six days of Creation; Meditation; The Theory of Relativity; Ecological balance; Numerology; Love, and the topics Dr. Yigal Arica deals with this in his book, Passport for a Traveller in Time, published by Ma'ariv Library Publishing House. He combines these and many other topics to each other and explains them in a way that is both refreshingly, simple and well reasoned.
   Arica has a variety of degrees to his credit, which doesn't prevent him from managing global businesses. For part of the week he wears a suit and tie and manages his businesses; the rest of the time he wears shorts and a T-shirt, enjoys the seaside adjacent to his yard, goes out in nature or philosophises with friends about subjects that interest them and him-almost everything.

Balance, according to Arica, is made up of  four components: the material, the spiritual, the emotional and the mystical. It is like harnessing a carriage to four horses: If you want the ride to be smooth, there must be equilibrium amongst the horses. A person whose carriage is only harnessed only to the spiritualism "horse"-as well as someone whose carriage is harnessed only to the materialism "horse"-will not reach the same heights as someone who has the wisdom to harness all of them together. Arica practices what he preaches. He makes sure to delegate powers to his employees to the best of his ability so that his businesses are managed by others and do not occupy all of his time. This provides him with material capabilities, which he harnesses to fulfil  his other occupations. Material things, he says, are a means, not an end.

He intended his book for the "average person." He doesn't aim too high with complex philosophies, but rather gives a general analysis regarding the basic existential problems that worry human beings. After he says that, he reservedly adds, and Jesus didn't write. Only someone who doesn't know everything feels the need to write."