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In my column in Ynet: “The Guide To Trumpist America”

The United States of America is divided, showing itself clearly cut into two distinct camps. If Trump has serious intentions to unite America, he must build a social national educational plan to unite the American people. No more nice proposals, but a law that will be approved by the House of Representatives. And who is a better man for the job than Trump?

“I want a country that loves each other, I want to stress that,” said Donald Trump in the first interview he gave the media after the elections. While the President-elect speaks about uniting the nation and declares in a conciliatory tone that it is important for him to be everyone’s president, thousands of people have been protesting against Trump in the streets, carrying signs and calling “he is not my president,” for a whole week now.

During the turbulent campaign, Trump was accused by the Democrats of using messages filled with hatred that divided the American nation during his campaign. But in fact, Trump’s provocative and not politically correct slips of the tongue are not the cause for the breach in American society. They do indeed illuminate and emphasize some of the roots of the malignant disease that has been incubating in America for years, but it is nothing but hypocrisy and disingenuity to claim that such expressions are the ones that have created it.

Whites and blacks, Christians and Muslims, local citizens (who emigrated to America years ago…) and new immigrants, inhabitants of big cities and of small towns, liberals and conservatives, rich and poor, and of course religious and non-religious people all refuse to accept each other. According to a survey conducted by the PEW Institute, half of the American people loathe those who have an opinion opposite to theirs and even see the other side as an actual threat to their nation. This polarization reminds me to a certain degree of the atmosphere during the American Civil War in 1861-1865. But in order to prevent the split into two Americas, Trump suggests mitigating the problem by creating more jobs.

Trump has undoubtedly changed and will continue to change some of rules of the game. There is no doubt about it. But still, if I were asked to advise the President-elect as to how to pave the golden path that will unite the torn American nation, by integrating a sustainable solution to the unemployment problem, the erosion of the middle-class, and the disappearance of the working class, I would advise him to build and lead a national plan for social education to unite the American nation. This isn’t just another nice proposal on paper, but a multi-phase plan, that is comprehensive and empiric, which will include changes in the legislation, and will try to formulate a law to suggest and in some cases even enforce unity as one of the principles of the American Constitution.

The Way to Heal the Schism in America

The law of connection is in fact a government policy that will find the way to impact and create a compelling environment for every American citizen, which aims to give people the tools and creates a supportive environment for them that will help them learn how to connect to one another and to care about others. It is about an educational process that will impact the entire society, will help us know ourselves and the environment we live in, and will enable us to share the knowledge that will create a common consciousness and a feeling of belonging to one system.

A by-product of this initiative can help solve the unemployment problem through establishing an extensive infrastructure nationwide across all the sectors operating in a variety of social frameworks from kindergartens, schools, universities, workplaces, employment agencies, the media, to hospitals and nursing homes.

Such a project should be accompanied by online courses and experiential workshops that will increase people’s awareness of the global world we live in, including questionnaires that will allow a person to measure his advancement in improving his relationships with society. Later we can make use of the media to convey ideas that reinforce the values of unity and use the tremendous influence of the American media to create a digital televised environment that will support the process. In the more advanced stages, communities that have already assimilated the importance of connection and unity as the solution to national problems will naturally develop and they will also be able to find solutions to their personal problems. This kind of learning can take place in different ways and lead the wounded US through a process of socialization and offer the torn American society an ideology of unity.

Gradually whole populations and communities will get to know the story of “the other”; they will undergo practical workshops and acquire tools for building the right connections with others and learn how to behave properly in society. One of the options is to offer people who take part in the social education plan a kind of an incentive and benefits from the state.

The law of connection will first and foremost soften the heart of the nation and bring together and connect the two camps that are dividing America today and are struggling in the town squares. It has been 150 years since Lincoln, the Republican President, led the Union to victory over the seceding Confederate States, but in the 21^st century, when our egoistic nature is reaching the peak of its evolution and naturally deepens the breach between us, no intra-national treaties will help. The values of liberalism, pluralism, mutuality and freedom of every kind have gone bankrupt, and it is enough to say that you are not inclined to agree with someone else’s opinion in order to feel threatened by the environment. The bad and violent spirit that has taken over America today is different from the unity negotiated during the reconstruction at the end of the Civil War that served as the foundation for the united American nation, the United States of America.

Trump’s Era

Trump chose to open his first speeches by using soft, stately, conciliatory language, which is a good thing. He has the talent of speaking directly to the public, candidly, sharply, and with humor, which if he channels to the social networks, which he used so successfully during his campaign, he will be able to appease the public by conveying  a positive unifying messages. If the American President himself sets an example and is the first to give a lesson of unity, it may be an unprecedented move that will bring him closer to the people and will shatter the myths and negative image that have sullied his character. Thus he will be able to rekindle hope even among the masses who doubt him and protest against him on the streets. They will also be affected by the public discourse, and, like it or not, will actually realize that he is there for them, in order to make a difference and lead to equality.

The times America managed to live in equality, in mutual guarantee and concern, were the most beautiful times in American history, but with time, when each one began to pull in his direction and the ties weakened,  America suffered great disasters.

The educational initiative presented here is based on the laws of global nature that the wisdom of Kabbalah teaches. Unity is the underlying structure in nature. Nature aspires for balance, for equality, and for wholeness, and because people are part of the circle of nature, we too are obliged to act in a circle, in equality, and by being mutually considerate of others. The only difference is that in our case, we have to do it consciously by undergoing an educational process. If we build the mutual connections between us that are compatible with life in the global world that is being revealed to us today, we will undoubtedly begin to understand and to feel, which will help us make the right decisions and succeed in everything that we do. This is the bond that I suggest in honor of Mr. President-elect Donald Trump.

In this way, he will be able to establish a country in which people love each other, the American people will learn to make each other feel secure, and give others a feeling of love and warmth and a feeling of life in one nation, not in 52 separate nations. This unique method of connection will not cancel the differences between Americans and will not cover them up with the familiar American pretense of politically correct discourse, but will spread a wide umbrella of connection over everyone that will cover all crimes with love.

In the 100 days of grace remaining to organize a government before the official swearing-in on the 20^th of January, I warmly advise the president to start the initiative of establishing such a plan, or at least seriously consider it and discuss it on the media channels. The success of the American nation in this process is important for the American people, but it is no less important for us and for the whole world.
[198079]
From Ynet 11/17/16

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Question: Could it be that people who attain the upper world simply live in a different illusion that seems to them as reality?

Answer: No, people who attain the upper world exit their state and begin to feel the world that is external to them. This is a world that doesn’t go through their ordinary senses and is not distorted by their personal properties. Therefore, it isn’t an illusion, but the true perception of reality which, in fact, exists externally to our egoistic perception.

Kabbalists say that the question about the meaning of life is what pushes us to ascend above our reality and that if we use it correctly, we will find the method of ascending to the upper reality. Then, we will see our reality from the side.

We swim in the ego like in water, and it is only through our egoism that we see our reality. A person is merely an organ of perception of what exists around him.

The world is arranged so that a person will be able to exist in it for a certain period of time and go from his current state to the next state, to the upper reality, that is independent of the human ego. By neutralizing his egoism, a person begins to exit himself and become totally objective. Then, there are no more limitations of time, motion, and space.
[197515]
From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 8/18/16

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In my regular column in Haaretz newspaper, “Trump, Brexit, Terrorism, and the Hidden Link that Ties Them” The events and processes stirring our planet are linked so deeply that their root causes converge into a single reason.

Since 2008, the world has been hit with one crisis after another. If you look at each of them separately, you might think that nothing connects the 2008 financial crisis with the 2011 Arab Spring, for example, or the rise of Islamic terrorism with the stream of migrants inundating Europe and now the US. You might also think that the victory of Donald J. Trump and Britain’s Brexit are unrelated or that neither has anything to do with all of the processes just described.

Indeed, sobering up is never easy. But luckily, most people already see, or at least feel that the shifts taking place today are all connected. The truth, however, is even more stunning than what the surface reveals. The events and processes stirring our planet are all linked so deeply that their root causes converge into a single reason.

The Pursuit of Freedom

Since the dawn of history, humanity has evolved through various stages. With some fluctuations and irregularities, we evolved from slavery to feudalism (bearing different names in different places), and from feudalism to capitalism.

Now, by all indications, we are on the brink of a new era. As we can already deduce by the emergence of reactionary and nationalistic forces in Europe and the US, the regime that will inherit capitalism will be a fascist, Nazi-style form of totalitarian governance.

Incidentally, Russian communism, in my view, was not part of the overall stream of human socio-economic evolution since it did not emerge from humanity’s natural evolution, but was imposed upon the Russian nation. In a sense, they skipped capitalism and moved directly into the totalitarian regime, which they called, how ironic, “communism.”

The engine behind every stage of development was people’s desire for liberty and justice. The more people felt that they deserved to be treated as dignified human beings, rather than as objects, the more liberal was the economic system they established. People have always been self-centered, but at some point in our social evolution, the ego has intensified to such a level that our notion of personal freedom has turned into a feeling of self-entitlement. We began to feel that we deserve everything, even to exploit others, if we could get away with it. Thus began the time we live in—the age of egoism.

Generation Me, Me, Me

In our new era, the majority of the population shows at least several symptoms of pathological narcissism. Throughout the world, people have enshrined wealth as the sole gauge for measuring the value of people. People fix their gaze on their smartphones hoping to avoid eye contact with strangers. Throughout the world, people are lonely and depressed.

Alienation is separating people and communities to the point of hatred and sectarianism. In post-election US, for example, the rifts within the American society have deepened to the point where, according to The New York Times, Clinton voters refused to celebrate Thanksgiving with kin, even of the first degree, who voted for Trump.

Indeed, when liberalism becomes synonymous with dissension and separation, and neoliberalism becomes a euphemism for exploitative capitalism, you know that a change is imminent. We have gone as far as the ego can take us. From here on, we must either find a new way to develop, or race downhill without any brakes.

Nature’s Two-Force System

Despite the apocalyptic picture just described, we do not have to go downhill; there is no law that mandates it. There is a way that has been waiting all along for us to look in its direction. As long as we believed that the ego-path would get us where we wanted, we had no reason to look elsewhere. Now that things have changed, another way is emerging from the mist.

If we look carefully into nature, we will find that we can satisfy ourselves using a completely different paradigm—one that does not induce its own demise, but guarantees our perpetuation and prosperity. With the exception of humans, all of reality runs on a balanced interaction between two forces—positive and negative. These forces manifest as giving and receiving, connecting and disconnecting, inhaling and exhaling, day and night, and all the other opposites that complement one another. Without this balance, our universe would not exist, and neither would we. By exploiting others and seeking only self-gratification, we use only the negative force, missing out on the huge power that connects atoms into molecules, cells into organs, and human beings into societies. If we could tap into the capabilities of the positive force, we would reveal a new world of interactions and possibilities that we cannot even imagine until we actually discover them.

Even better, when we understand the nature of the positive force, we will see that we need not change a thing about our lives in order to discover it and work with it. All we need is to expand our boundaries. Instead of perceiving ourselves as separated human beings, fighting our way through life all by our lonesome selves, we can think of ourselves as part of a human system consisting of people who care for one another like cells care for the organism which they form together. Just as cells tend to one another, provide each other with oxygen to breathe and nutrients to feed on, a society of human beings connected in this manner would make the life of each individual within it carefree and joyful. If an entire country worked this way, it would become a heaven on Earth.

10,000 People Caring for You

In a previous column, I described the immense impact of introducing the positive force into society, even for a brief session, proving that it can befriend even the most bitter enemies. In this section, I would like to elaborate on the benefits of employing this force in our lives.

In my latest column, I gave the example of the way a radio receiver works in order to receive the frequencies of the stations we want to hear. In a word, to receive a station, we have to create within the radio the same frequency on which the station is broadcasting, and then the radio can pick up that frequency from the environment and play whatever that station is playing.

The positive force is one of connection. This is why it connects everything, such as particles within atoms, atoms within molecules, molecules within cells, and so forth. When we think only in the “me” mode, we deny ourselves the benefits of the “we” mode of thinking. The Connection Circles shown in the links above create a special connection among people, which “resonates” with the positive force of connection just as a frequency within a radio resonates with a frequency on the outside. As a result, the positive force begins to impact the participants. This is why they suddenly feel connected, even making Jews and Arabs feel as parts of one big family.

To tap into the positive force, we need not stop caring for ourselves. On the contrary, we need to extend ourselves and “include” others in our field of vision, so to speak. When we view society as an extension of ourselves, and ourselves as part of society, our perception of reality expands and encompasses our whole environment. When this shift takes place in a community of, say, 10,000 people, you suddenly have 10,000 people caring for your well-being. Caring for the community would become effortless to you because it would be your concern for others compared to 10,000 others caring for you.

The ratio between our efforts toward society compared to the efforts of society toward us is so overwhelmingly in favor of society that it would literally liberate us from worrying about ourselves. Moreover, we would free up the tremendous amounts of energy we currently spend on protecting ourselves from physical or emotional harm at work, with acquaintances, and even with our family, and would be able to use it as we wish. We would finally be able to realize our full potential without concern of failure or ridicule.

In a society that utilizes the positive force, there is no need to work in the sense that we know it. Even today, automation and robotics can do most everything for us. In the near future, human labor will become a burden on production effectivity. This will free us to engage in a new occupation: generating the positive force.

Like any new technology, we can expect the technologies designed to “harvest” the force of connection to improve the more we use them, minimizing our efforts to connect, and maximizing our benefits from it. The time that we will free up with the “demise” of labor and the improvement in our connection techniques will be used for spreading the technologies around the world and to improve personal skills and hobbies.

With a renewed sense of purpose in life, and an expansive vision of our existence, depression will disappear, and all the ailments related to it will vanish. Naturally, the same goes for war and hostilities; people have no desire to fight when they want to connect.

Currently, the future of humanity seems rather bleak. However, it is only so that we will find that there is another way—one that leads to new horizons that we could not previously imagine, yet are very, very real.
[198346]

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Torah, Deuteronomy 13:06: And that prophet, or that dreamer of a dream shall be put to death.

A person can’t trust any of his qualities and senses: neither thoughts nor calculations. He should annul himself to zero, adhere to the upper governance, and begin to receive everything from there.

Disclosure of the upper governance gradually enters his system and only to this extent can a  person conform to the upper force. They are ready to work with the bestowing, and then with the receiving desires.

Therefore it is written: “put to death a dreamer” in you, who will constantly instigate you to go in a different direction. You should eradicate all the qualities that lead you away from the path.

Dreamers are the basis of a person’s lack of trust in the Creator, in faith above reason. After all, all one’s thoughts, knowledge, and experience can change very rapidly to the radically opposite, to such an extent that it is hard to believe.

For example, the results of modern discoveries in quantum physics already prove that there is no time, movement, space, and so on.

Everything in this movie happens in such a way that a person in his macrocosm absolutely does not agree with the microcosm. Nevertheless, he has to agree because the frontier experiments with the microcosm obliges him to do so.

He can’t get away from these results, and, therefore, although he doesn’t understand them, he accepts them. And later he tries logically to attach his mind to it. However, he succeeds only partially and for a short period of time.

Scientists will soon reach a dead end and understand that it is impossible to advance this way further. After all, in our senses we can’t imagine events that take place outside of time and space, and are closely interconnected with each other even though they are billions of light years away from each other.

It is a terrible state when you see the whole cosmogonic picture and compare it with the earthly one: what have we done here with our little animal egoism?
[197784]
From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 7/13/16

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In the News (The Washington Post): “Millennials are the only age group in America in which a majority views socialism favorably. A national Reason-Rupe survey found that 53 percent of Americans under 30 have a favorable view of socialism compared with less than a third of those over 30. Moreover, Gallup has found that an astounding 69 percent of millennials say they’d be willing to vote for a ‘socialist’ candidate for president…”

Answer: It makes no difference what was written about feudalism, capitalism, socialism, or communism, eventually nature is moving according to its plan, and there is nothing we can do about that.

Socialism must gradually replace capitalism. The wisdom of Kabbalah even thousands of years ago said that capitalism  is the highest stage of egoism, which gives a person freedom to do whatever he feels like.   

Therefore, at the end of the development of capitalism, humanity will be convinced that capitalism is leading it to a dead end and that it will achieve nothing through egoism. We can destroy each other and reach a state in which one part of humanity will starve while the other part holds all the riches of the earth, but this will lead to nothing. Therefore, the need for a new, more egalitarian regime is absolutely clear.

The youth feel that. People have this feeling as a result of their internal development, not as a result of the development of society. Society is nothing by itself. It is the consequence of the development of its members. Therefore, we are developing in such a way that we are starting to feel that personal development is destroying us, and this should lead us to the realization of evil.

The next state is a state of complete integral connection between us, just the way it is in nature, which requires that we treat it as a closed integral system in which all its members are absolutely connected.

I believe the emergence of the attraction to socialism is natural. It comes from the depths of nature, and as a result, it will lead to the development of socialism. But the question is: How? And how will the young understand how to advance toward it and what exactly is to come? They need our explanations in order to do so.

True socialism is a society that wants to achieve the right egalitarian unity, in which everyone sees himself as equal to others, so that everyone has concern for everyone else, and through this, it cares for him as well.

At first it will be a reasonable egoistic society, egoistic socialism, in which every one cares about the society so that he will feel good. But egoistic socialism is only the transitory stage. When we approach it and start building it, we will begin to recognize its components, the phases of its development, and the different options for its fulfillment. And then we will also be able to insert Kabbalistic ideas.

I am for the correct socialism, introduced gradually according to society’s development, with the help of setting examples, classes, lectures, etc. So society will gradually develop to a new level.
[197315]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 11/2/16

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Question: For several thousand years, humans have domesticated many kinds of animals. But some cruel and dangerous ones, we have never even tried to domesticate.

Among them is vicious biped that misappropriated himself the nickname “homo-sapiens”; it exterminates its own kind on such a scale that is not seen by other carnivorous and herbivorous inhabitants of our planet.

To domesticate a human requires only one thing: not to kill each other. This quality can be very easily attained through proper education. So why from the day that we are born, are we taught to kill our own species in large quantities through movies, computer games, songs, and stories?

It is because we are being prepared for life in a competitive environment that at any time could turn into war. Such is our present culture that is called Capitalism. And every one who protects capitalism becomes an accomplice to murder.

Answer: The problem is not in capitalism, socialism, or communism, not any of these “isms,” and in general not in any society. Rather, the root of the problem is in human nature that is constantly changing for the worse.

From the time we left the caves, we scattered over the face of the earth and consolidated into peoples, groups, and clans, forming states and kingdoms. This process happened under the direct influence of our egoism that demanded greater grouping, greater subordination, and greater return. And it’s not because we wanted this, but because that is the way our nature develops—from within.

Nature teaches us how to act.  Philosophy and everything else develops after we become different and begin to study ourselves: what happened to us.

Nature creates within us the feeling of competition, the need to rise above each other and defeat others. And we can do nothing about this.

We can see competitiveness among little children, how they fight with each other and don’t want to share anything with others. And we see it in all relations between adults in culture, in science, and everywhere else. It is expressed prominently in beauty contests, sport competitions, and in the Olympics. It blossoms at work, in services, in international trade, and in businesses.

It is so everywhere—competition and struggle. And struggle is considered a norm of our lives. The relationship of a person with the bank, with his boss, with life, and with a vast health care system, education system, etc.—all of this is a constant struggle.

That is, we don’t try to understand the process from the good point of view of how to balance our lives, how to build it correctly; rather, we act as a result of our relationships that someone might snatch a bigger piece.

It’s a terrible life! If we look at it soberly, then, of course, it is a constant war, but at least one that we are used to and not a physical war in order to kill.  

The correct assessment of events is that everything comes from a nature we cannot change. We can just somehow interact with each other better. Nature will continue to push humanity forward in its egoistic development, only through egoism.

Therefore, an anti-egoistic education, which psychologists speak about, will not help humanity. Only the study of proper interaction between them will. We begin at a tender age, sitting a child in a circle and gradually developing skills in him that it is not “I” but “we.”

This training is very serious. I haven’t seen it in a pure form in psychology. And Kabbalah explains this method clearly, and we have used it in practice for long time.

The essence of the method is that a child begins to interact correctly with his team and understands that in this case, the team is his personal “self.” At the same time, he becomes an inseparable part of his, team, his society, it loves him and he considers it to be his home. He begins to feel all of the participants in his society as himself. And this is its mission: to create relationships between people where they feel themselves as one person. 

Later, if the person moves to another society, he transfers these habits there. Of course, such a transition is not easy; it is necessary to learn how to in advance.

Thus, if he reaches the right interactions with others, a feeling of an external person, a friend, appears in him—a feeling of people according to their thoughts, intentions, and the degree of closeness between them. He begins to feel others as himself. With every person he has a momentary contact with, either positive or negative, he at least understands them.

Thus, competion is replaced by cooperation, by common activities, by partnership with friends.

Question: Does he develop a desire for others to succeed?

Answer: This is a necessary feeling because that creates the same great platform for total union where he begins to feel that this is the only truth.

Question: But you said that in principle this is against human nature. How does this work?

Answer: It is against human nature, but is in accord with the education he receives. And specifically with actions contrary to nature, he begins to rise above it. He understands that now there is a greater power in his hands than the rejecting egoistic force. This is an altruistic, attracting, unifying force. When, thanks to his efforts, this force begins to dominate, he sees that the two forces, both the altruistic and the egoistic, produce each other, are designed to go together, like plus and minus in an electrical current or in the poles of a magnet, like an electron and positron in matter. The two forces cannot exist one without the other and a person begins to work with them correctly.

This is the beginning of a higher psychology. Psychologists simply cannot insert the positive force into our world. Yet this is our main task because our world is entirely built on the negative force, as it is written, “I created the evil inclination” (Tractate Kiddushin 30b). This is the only force that acts in our world. And even its positive manifestation that we see is also derived from competition, from the need to acquire, to attract to oneself.

The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches how to insert the  hidden positive force into our world; we can reveal it and bring it into our daily lives. Then we will act with the two forces, the positive and the negative, and will be able to work on ourselves.

Question: Does it mean that the guides must be Kabbalists?

Answer: They must be Kabbalists in partnership with psychologists. Psychologists must understand that alone they don’t have the tools for correcting people. Therefore, psychology is also in crisis today.
[194530]
From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 9/14/16

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Preparation for the Lesson

Writings of Rabash, “Dargot HaSulam,” Article 42

Writings of Rabash, “Dargot HaSulam,” Article 300

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