“How Has The Coronavirus Affected You?” (Quora)

Dr. Michael LaitmanMichael Laitman, On Quora: How has the coronavirus affected you?

Personally, it has affected me similarly to how it has affected many people around the world: by placing me into social distancing conditions.

I follow all the instructions of the Ministry of Health, and encourage everyone to do the same.

One of my students asked me, why does a Kabbalist follow the government’s instructions in such situations if Kabbalists are supposed to live above this world, in connection with the root of life?

I observed this example in my own teacher, Kabbalist Baruch Shalom HaLevi Ashlag (the Rabash). When I was with him in the Gulf War of 1991, under missile attack, I saw how strictly he adhered to the government’s instructions to stay at home.

In relation to following laws set by the government, there is a saying in the wisdom of Kabbalah, “I dwell within my people.” It means that we discover the positive unifying force of nature in the accumulation of human desires that aim at some extent of unification.

In short, I follow the government’s instructions, especially in such cases as wars and pandemics, and advise my students and anybody willing to listen to do the same.

In addition, the coronavirus has affected my organization, the Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Education & Research Institute, by placing us into a completely virtual format. We continue our daily lessons and other activities with students connected from their homes. This was no major change, since we have a system setup for virtual lessons that has been running for many years, and many students connect daily from around the world in a virtual setting, so we were well-prepared for that.

Other than the study, we are responding to the coronavirus by rigorously explaining how the wisdom of Kabbalah sees the coronavirus through many posts, articles, videos, and other means.

Essentially, we explain how:

  • the coronavirus emerged as a response to humanity’s over-inflating egoistic-competitive relations;
  • the coronavirus came to save us from a worse man-made disaster that we would have brought upon ourselves if we let our exploitative relations continue growing unabated;
  • we can expect a major long-term change in human society as a result of this period brought on by the coronavirus, one where we will calm down and become more focused on life’s essentials, and less on keeping up with the Joneses;
  • the optimal use of our current social distancing conditions is to engage in learning about how we can better understand our place in the world, where it is headed, and how we can bring ourselves into balance with nature.

I thus invite anyone who wishes to connect to us, to join our lessons (links in my Quora bio) or to visit our website where we update with materials about Kabbalah’s view on the coronavirus.

“COVID-19: Is Nature Fighting Back…More Precisely Was Such An Outbreak Inevitable As A Response To A Disrupted Earth System?” (Quora)

Dr. Michael LaitmanMichael Laitman, On Quora: COVID-19: is nature fighting back…more precisely was such an outbreak inevitable as a response to a disrupted Earth system?

Due to commenting frequently on the coronavirus outbreak as nature’s response to the egoistic and exploitative way we as a human society had been relating to each other leading up to the pandemic, I was asked by one of my students:

How could a virus on a biological level come about as a result of people becoming increasingly egoistic and exploitative? It is clear, for instance, if one country wants to retaliate against another country that was exploiting it, but how are nature and viruses related to negative person-to-person attitudes?

To the naked human eye, it indeed seems as if the biological level and the level of human relationships are separate.

Everything in nature began from a single particle. That particle started connecting with another one, and then another one, and so on and so forth. At some point, this process generated atoms, and with further such development, molecules came about.

Life emerged when energy and information became transmitted between the various particles. This process then further developed into more and more complex forms of life.

In other words, everything in nature has been created such that even its tiniest parts are intrinsically connected with the whole universe.

Within this completely integral system, the human is the most complex and qualitatively highest level of all, and human thoughts, attitudes and relationships hold the most powerful influence over nature’s other levels.

Due to the capacity of human thoughts to impact other levels of nature, there is a Kabbalistic saying that states, “Everything is clarified in thought.”

I understand that we are unable to notice the extent of our thoughts’, attitudes’ and relationships’ influence on nature, and thus when a seemingly negative phenomenon strikes us, such as the coronavirus we now endure, we look like children who point at a broken glass that they accidentally hit while playing around, saying that it fell by itself.

However, the way that the coronavirus has forced us all into a common global situation, with many millions of people under stay-at-home orders, should serve to wake us up to our thoughts, attitudes and relationships to each other as being what ultimately connects us into a single network.

Moreover, we would be wise to reach the conclusion that our thoughts, attitudes and relationships to each other are the most important network that determines how nature responds to us.

If we create balance in such a network, we will then see how other levels of life become balanced. The gates to heaven on earth—a world of absolute perfection—will then open up before our very eyes.

“Reopening The Economy? First, We Have To Change” (Times Of Israel)

The Times of Israel published my new article “Reopening the Economy? First, We Have to Change

There are debates all over the world about how and to what extent countries should reopen their economies in order to prevent a complete collapse. But opening it without first dealing with the cause of the coronavirus outbreak is likely to have horrific consequences that will dwarf the ordeal of the current pandemic.

We think we are at war with nature, that we must fight against it and subdue it. We forget that we ourselves are nature’s creation. Each of our thoughts, plans, words and actions is engendered in nature before it manifests in us. This is true even of the aspiration to subdue nature. But trying to conquer the very thing that planted the thought of conquering in our minds makes even less sense than chasing our own tails.

Just as we don’t understand why nature sends us the thoughts it does, we don’t understand why it has sent us the coronavirus. Yet it, too, had a process that led to its emergence. If we want to overcome the virus, we must know where it came from and why. When we identify the process that engendered the virus, we will see what we must do in order to curb it, and why there are many more in store where that little bug came from, and far more sinister.

Many scientists have already pointed to human behavior as the cause of the appearance of the virus. They explained that the destruction of natural habitats of many wild animals has forced them to migrate closer to humans. This makes what virologists call a “spillover” of viruses from animals to humans easier and more frequent. All the coronaviruses that caused respiratory syndromes in this century have resulted from such “spillovers.” SARS, MERS and COVID-19 were all caused by viruses that migrated from the animal kingdom and caused life-threatening illnesses in humans. So, too, by the way, is the case with the Ebola virus.

But human behavior did not only cause spillovers of viruses. Human behavior has polluted the oceans, lakes and rivers, polluted the air and polluted the earth. It depleted the oceans of fish, the sky of birds and the earth of animals. Human behavior starves and sickens millions of men, women and children the world over, enslaves them, rapes them and exploits them in countless ways. Human behavior inflicts death and torment on millions through war, deportation and destruction of communities and entire countries. Even the affluent and fortunate are so afflicted by human behavior that they find refuge in drugs, suicide, excessive eating and depression. In short, human behavior is the cause of all that is bad and wrong in the world.

Yet, what causes us to be so injurious to everything and everyone around us? And if our behavior is so fundamentally flawed, can we even mend it? And if so, where do we start?

We Start at Home

All animals behave according to their nature. Man is a part of nature; therefore, man behaves according to human nature. If human behavior is flawed, it is because so is human nature.

Hugging trees won’t change human nature, but hugging people will. The change should start at home, with the people meant to be closest to us. We must use the COVID-19 hiatus from baleful capitalism to reconnect with our families, reestablish the bond that made us a family in the first place, but which so many of us have lost along the way.

Afterwards, we should look at our communities and begin to reconstruct them. To paraphrase the words of JFK, ask not what your community can do for you; ask what you can do for your community. It will take mutual commitment to succeed, but if people understand the importance and urgency of rebuilding our communities, they will respond.

Before we take action, we must be aware. We must let the idea of human nature being the root of all problems sink into our minds and the minds of the people in our family and community, and then pull together and change it. We can do it. All we have to do is set a good example and let others inspire us through their example. We can use the added free time we have been given to learn about human nature and then go out and do something about it with our friends and neighbors.

From the community level, we must spread the spirit of friendship everywhere else. Just as singing from porches spread from Italy to porches all over the world, so can good deeds. Don’t be afraid to shoot a video of yourself helping others and post it on social media. Tell the viewers that you’re doing it because you want to be a better person, and the idea will catch on. It’s as easy as that: I help others because it makes me a better person. That’s all that people need to know. You will win people’s hearts and they will want to follow in your footsteps.

If we realize who we are and want to change, we only need to change our actions. This will change our mindsets, which will change our hearts.
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“What Nature Wants From Us” (Medium)

Medium published my new article “What Nature Wants From Us

It may feel like an eternity, but in a matter of a few weeks the entire world has changed dramatically, awakening existential questions and soul searching in us. What have we done for nature to unleash upon us this COVID-19 virus that has paralyzed the planet? Is there something I personally can do to end this hardship, beyond wearing a mask? Let’s take a moment out of our now less-busy lives to consider our situation. What we will discover is that we have been given this breather precisely for such contemplation.

I live in this world and make an impact on all that happens. I influence my immediate surroundings every single moment, but I also impact the distant environment. Each of us creates changes in the entire system of nature since the system is global, integral, and spherical. It is a system, connected in all its parts and moving toward comprehensive balance. When we disrupt its equilibrium, the imbalance manifests in all kinds of phenomena such as the current pandemic. In a sense, it could be said that everything we come up against from nature is actually the reaction of the system to our good or bad influences on it.

How can I relate this to myself, sitting at home with no idea what will become of my work, my children, my future? How can my personal life sway the system? Each day that passes never returns, so before falling asleep it is worthwhile to take stock of how my day went, what I did, did I hurt anyone? Did my actions and thoughts contribute to harmony or to the contrary? I should keep a daily accounting of my life.

When, God forbid, we are hit by a serious illness or loss, thoughts and soul searching about what is happening in life come to the surface and we ask, why me? Today, this blow of the coronavirus has fallen on all of us — regardless of status, origin, or the balance in the bank — and has activated our collective soul searching.

Redeeming the Planet

Nature seems to be telling us now that the best thing for us is to stay at home without approaching anyone until we understand how to interact properly. We are being forced to look at the life we have built for ourselves, the kind of world we have created; the ways we relate to each other, our mutual lack of consideration; how we have destroyed the planet, in complete opposition to the integral system of nature where every part responds to the wellbeing of the whole, and because of such wrecking, how the earth is responding in self-defense.

Nature is demanding that humanity achieves complete integration, to feel and perceive the collective. Why? Because in such a state we become similar in form to nature itself, and this is exactly the compatibility we need in order to perfectly harmonize with the system. In fact, this is the next level in the evolution of humankind. Whether we are aware of it or not, nature will not wait for us and will force us to be considerate of one another. Everyone would have been glad to forgo this coronavirus era, but this option is not on the table.

Therefore, the key question in our personal soul searching should be: Do I understand that I must develop love for all within me in order to fix the global system’s breakage? Without each of us developing this sense of personal responsibility and love inside, it is impossible to start to care properly for each and every one and attain the collective cohesion we need.

Obviously, each of us personally cannot love eight billion people, the entire world’s population, or even the inhabitants of our own country. Sometimes, we can hardly get along with our own family members. That is clear, natural and understandable, but it doesn’t mean that I can’t request it. Each of us needs to request to be given the power of love. From whom? From nature, the supreme power that unites all of reality into one. And why are things organized in such a way? In order for us to address this supreme power consciously, learn to know it, to exert our free will and demand to be connected as one bundle, with mutual love. Then we will attain complete harmony with nature.
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Joy Is The Light

laitman_596Question: Is the joy that comes from serving others the light that you speak of?

Answer: Yes, this is the light. However, it is not the one we feel now. Only when we gain the ability to serve others, to reveal ourselves to them, to give, to influence them, then the upper light will pass through us to others.

This is not a feeling of joy and support that we experience now; it is much higher, it is the revelation of the Creator affecting others through us.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 3/1/20

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What Does The Creator Want From Man?

laitman_283.02Comment: We turn to the Creator all the time. It is said that He reacts even to our egoistic desires.

Answer: The entire system of the universe is built in a way that you do not have any connection whatsoever with anyone but the upper force that surrounds, bathes, and fills everything up. That is why any of your aspirations and hopes are still directed at it.

But prayer is your individual tuning to a personal relationship with Him.

Question: There are eight billion people on earth and everyone wants something. Some lack clothes or food, others health, some want money, and still others, knowledge. And everyone turns to that force at a given moment even unknowingly. Is this also called a prayer?

Answer: Of course. All the created beings, including plants, little bugs, animals, it does not matter what and who, have an absolute connection with the Creator, let alone human beings. But we are expected to reach a conscious connection with the Creator. He desires that we establish a conscious relationship with Him.

Question: But essentially, He senses all our desires, doesn’t He?

Answer: We all exist within Him, completely attached to Him. All our feelings, desires, everything that we do, everything that happens, all of it is within Him. We are within Him.
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From KabTv’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 4/1/20

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Toward Goodness And Warmth

Laitman_177.13Question: According to the sources, upon attainment, a Kabbalist places himself under the influence of the light. I think that I have had such initial attainment in my life. But I received such a blow of energy that I could not even remember myself. It was physically very painful. Do such exceptional states come in order to awaken me?

Answer: No, this has nothing to do with spirituality. Spiritual attainments are absolutely good and colorful. The light that fills us is soft and warm. It is not what you are depicting. But your attainments nevertheless lead you toward goodness and warmth. So carry on.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 1/12/20

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New Life 1216 – Coronavirus, Nature, And Humanity

New Life 1216 – Coronavirus, Nature, And Humanity
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi

Humanity is destroying the world and nature is reacting in the form of the coronavirus. Nature has a plan for the development of all its parts into a good state. Human relationships, thoughts, desires, and actions all influence the system. The pandemic will not end until we stop destroying nature and learn to live in harmony with all forms of life, both internally and externally. We must seek the strength to be in integral relationships like nature before we can leave home.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1216 – Coronavirus, Nature And Humanity” 3/26/20

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Daily Kabbalah Lesson – 4/26/20

Lesson Preparation

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Lesson on the Topic “Concerning Above Reason” 

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Lesson on the Topic “Connecting the World in the Last Generation” 

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Selected Highlights

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