Question: Do you think that the current pandemic will change people’s values? Or will a little time pass and everything will be forgotten?

Answer: I think that this will not pass in two weeks or two months, but will stretch for a long time. In my view, this will take from six months to a year, at least. The earth is exhausted, people are exhausted, so human relationships will gradually be leveled. We will begin to wean from past egoistic interactions.

We only have to take care of replacing this interaction with something kind and good; otherwise, people will just be at a loss and will not know how to contact each other.

Previously, we understood from the point of view of selfish gain that we could approach this person, this one is impossible to approach, and that one we can approach only in some certain way. And now, if people stop being even in the correct egoistic communication, very unpleasant things can happen.

Like a child who approaches another, snatches something from him without even realizing why or how, purely instinctively, because he wants to, so too, we can start treating each other if we lose even the egoistic principles of relationships.

Frankly speaking, I am very afraid of these states. They are worse than wars because there is no communication in them. If we no longer understand each other, we will simply cease to pay attention to our actions and the consequences they may cause in other people. This is very scary.

Question: Don’t you think that this situation, on the contrary, unites people? After all, when things are bad, people know how to team up. That is why we are given the current situation from above, so that we understand and feel how important it is to have each other. Or do you think that, on the contrary, it will divide us and be, as you said, worse than war?

Answer: I believe that every nation has its own character, its own attitude to people, to the world. I know the Russians well and feel the depth of their attraction to each other. But the fact is that this all works only at a very small level of egoistic perception.

In terrible conditions, such as concentration camps or the siege of Leningrad, this may not always work. So I would not hope for such an outcome.

I believe that it is necessary to attract the positive force of nature to our world by every possible way. It is concealed, it exists. Nature consists of two opposite forces. The negative force, which is mostly active today, must be opposed with the positive one. This is the only way we can secure the future for ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren.
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From KabTV’s program “Meetings with Kabbalah: Victoria Bonya,” 3/29/20

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Question: What kind of new society can we talk about until the values of the old society are destroyed?

Answer: The values of the old society will collapse very quickly because a person has no way to resist it. See how we are behaving now. Firstly, the blow that hit us is global; it affects the entire population of the Earth. The virus continues to spread, penetrating all corners of the planet.

The press writes that in Africa, on the islands and archipelagos of Oceania there is no virus, because they are supposedly isolated from other countries. No! It reaches the most remote corners of the earth. Tourists or visitors transmitting the virus are completely unnecessary for this to happen.

It’s not that we are at home now, and then we go outside and bring this virus, supposedly from the street. This is actually not the case. The virus is in each of us. The time comes, and it is activated inside a person. And all the signs that we are allegedly infecting each other are purely external.

If, for example, you take a remote island where outsiders haven’t set foot and the people living there don’t even know anything about the existence of the virus, after a while you will find that they too are starting to get sick.

This is not transmitted in the usual way. Of course, it is easier and more convenient for us to explain its distribution by the fact that it is transmitted from person to person, but in general, these are only external, very approximate signs.

It all depends on the people. They are interconnected by their thoughts, feelings, interdimensional intercommunication, and thus, transmit this virus to each other.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 4/5/20

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Question: Let’s say a person has not found a group yet and is studying Kabbalah alone. How can he have descents? Is it some kind of rejection from the books, from the teacher?

Answer: Yes. He feels tiredness, rejection, and sees that he is not achieving anything. This is how the Creator pushes him forward so that he would continue his search even though he falls and is depressed. In principle, the current depressed state of the world suggests that humanity is receiving pushes from the Creator in order to get closer to Him.

Question: How can a person’s descent be manifested in the group?

Answer: In the group, he develops a positive force that moves him forward. This is the only method of advancement. After all, when you start connecting with the entire group, it pushes you forward, you develop the quality of bestowal, the quality of support, you connect with others and use their strength in order to be in constant movement.

Question: Does it mean that descent in the group is manifested in the fact that a person does not have enough energy or fuel to invest in the group?

Answer: Not just that. When you have the desire, where do you apply it? Also in the group.

Therefore, the group here is an accumulator: You give to it when you have extra energy, and you receive from it when you do not have enough energy.

Question: It turns out that there is some kind of bank of accumulated energy in the group. When a person is in ascent, he invests all his energy in the group and tries to make sure that everybody has the greatness of the Creator. And when he is in descent, he receives from the bank of accumulated energy and practically does not feel this descent. Is this so?

Answer: Yes, this is an oscillatory circuit, with the help of which we generate waves and receive them. If I invest in the group without thinking about myself as much as possible, then, in principle, these descents can last a few seconds. That is, they should be there but they are practically imperceptible.

The most important thing is to understand that if I am in the right group, in the right society, in my studies, then all this pulls me forward, supports me, absorbs my descents, turns them into ascents, compensates, and is smooth, and I go forward not on a bumpy road but on a more or less leveled road.

Of course, it should also have all sorts of changes, plus-minus, up-down, but not to such an extent as does a person who is not connected with Kabbalah.

Question: If a person does not feel the descents at all, what does it mean?

Answer: This means he is not working hard enough on himself.

Usually, beginners have such a period when they have not settled yet, have not entered the study. And then the descents begin and a lot of people leave the group, but after a while, they come back because there is nowhere else to go.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 3/27/19

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A good example of faith above reason is contained in the story of David Leikes, a student of the Baal Shem Tov. The student says that they sat with the teacher at a meal late in the evening at the end of the Sabbath, and no one had a penny in their pocket, they were all very poor.

And suddenly the teacher said to him: “David, give me money to buy mead.” And the student put his hand in his pocket, drew out a gold coin, and gave it to him.

How could that be, when he knew that his pocket was empty? But since the upper one had told him to give him money, he didn’t hesitate to reach into his pocket and pull out a coin. And this is not a fairy tale, but a true story.

This is called faith above reason. He knew that there was nothing in his pocket, but when the teacher told him to take the money out of his pocket, he had no doubt that there must be the money that the teacher was talking about because this is a different degree of reality. This is why the student put his hand into his pocket and pulled out a coin.

We cannot judge the spiritual world from the level of this world or judge this world from the level of the upper world. This is exactly the same as with young children: If you want to understand why the baby is crying, what his grief is, then you need to go down to his level and enter into his state. Then we will know what he feels, what he sees, and why he cries. We cannot understand the cause from the height of our level, but only see the effect.

The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us how to dress in the state of the upper and then be able to reveal it, understand and feel where we get all the orders that govern us. So now, when I tell you about this gold coin, about the spiritual state that we have to reveal, can you follow the teacher with faith above knowledge and pull the gold out of your pocket?

I tell you that you are at the end of correction—this is the true state immediately created at the creation of the world, only you do not feel it! But in fact, our condition is perfect, so put your hand in your pocket and pull out the final correction!

A teacher in Kabbalah is a guide on the spiritual path and you should follow him with your eyes shut.
[263665]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/23/20, “Concerning Above Reason”

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Lesson Preparation

Writings of Rabash, “You Stand Today, All of You,” (1984)

Lesson on the Topic “Concerning Above Reason” 

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 23

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

Selected Highlights

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The next #virus will teach us to protect not ourselves but others from ourselves. If I infect someone and the virus returns to me, then I’ll get very sick. It will teach me to care about others. This way we may possibly be corrected, learn not to harm others. #caring
#Nature has means to teach us…
#COVID19

Only through gradually closer connections between people, nations, and countries can we defeat the #coronavirus. It’s better to study this principle now before more sophisticated blows come after the coronavirus, as was with the Egyptian plagues that united the Jews and “squeezed” them out of Egypt.

#Coronavirus is the savior of mankind. It is a revelation of the fact that human society is one integral community to the entire world. It cannot be good for some people and bad for others. Societal epiphany! A #virus is not a disaster, but a medicine. It will heal humanity.

In any circumstances, imagine that despite the fact that you feel deficiencies in yourself and in the world, you received it from the Creator and therefore it is good. And all you need now is to accept your condition above what your mind perceives it to be as coming from the Creator which is good!

Do not ask the Creator to correct you: it is impossible and unnecessary! Ask Him to give you “faith above reason”—to be above the egoistic qualities that He created you with, created, so that you would ask not to change them, but to rise above them.

The #coronavirus reshuffles us like a deck of cards causing us to change a little, we will not return to all our old ways. Then it’ll shuffle us a few more times—and perhaps we will change so much that we will begin to feel ourselves in a new, upper world!

The 1st stage of the coronavirus has passed. Now we can look at ourselves from the side. What happened to us? Being imbued with one problem, have we become one humanity? This is not enough, though. The virus won’t let us go until we uncover the true cure —a concern about us all.
From Twitter, 5/10/20

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Thrive Global published my new article: “A Caring Mother for a Better Humanity”

Humanity’s Labor Pains Could Give Birth to A Healthy World

After the current pandemic, no other power in the world is more crucial for the birth of a new society than the mother figure. The world is now being revealed as an integral, global system. This means that the world is forcing us to treat each other the same way our mothers treat us, creating an environment filled with the qualities of bestowal and love.

Beyond the celebration of Mother’s Day, marked on the calendar as a reminder of the important role of those women who have given birth to every generation, there is a profound significance in their essential contribution to a new world. It is precisely in the quality of motherhood that a special power exists that can change reality for the better.

The global outbreak of COVID-19 has sped up the labor process in the birth of a new reality.
Michael Laitman

Although with the help of the man, we see that it is the mother who conceives, delivers the embryo, nurses, feeds, and raises the baby until it becomes ready for life. In the same way, all the mothers, every woman in the world, needs to see in this critical transition process the world is going through, her opportunity to take humanity to a higher level of existence, to harmonious relations between us, just like an embryo about to be born.

The global outbreak of COVID-19 has sped up the labor process in the birth of a new reality. It is causing pain and hard work, but the outcome could be a robust and healthy world instead of the previous one that brought us to the crisis we are currently trying to overcome.

Humanity Is Learning to Crawl

Our human development has gone through two overall stages. The first stage unfolded through men and was characterized by wars, financial instability, various unfortunate global events, and blows that would not have happened under the care of women. Now we are moving into a stage in which specifically the mother, the woman, must take up the role of educating the world and delineating the future world we have to envision. Therefore, this critical time is the time of the woman. However, in order to implement this noble goal, women must learn how to connect to other women by rising above their personal egos for the sake of the correction of the world. However difficult, there is no choice and the job must be done.

Unity is a nice word but hard to put into practice. Neither men nor women are born with the inclination to unite, but we have reached a stage in our development where we are left with no other alternative but to connect. It’s a matter of survival for our own children and humanity as a whole. Thus, any step toward connection, no matter how small, is a huge step toward truly giving birth to a new humanity and making it grow, inch upward, and stand firm. Only women will be able to carry out this crucial role, educate, and provide an example to follow on how to unite. We will demand that men connect correctly, and by showing the way, we will lead the entire world toward correction.

What kind of connection are we talking about? As part of human evolution we are now required to develop a new quality: concern for all of society. When this shared desire arises to connect as if we are a single person—the desire for the wellbeing of all the people like they are our own children—a special unifying force manifests, a positive force which changes reality for the better.

To connect with one another, mothers must learn to overcome the natural distance between them and transcend their personal interests. Women must gradually come to feel that if something happens to someone, it is like it is happening in their own family. Mutual concern will allow us to build and ensure peace, security, and happiness for all children of all generations.

Through the example of the mother, nature teaches us that by connecting, we can be saved from all the harms . If mothers form a common desire to keep everyone together, if they create a strong demand that everyone truly connects as one, they will be able to change the world. Nothing can withstand a united feminine power. Happy Mother’s Day!
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— Published on May 10, 2020

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Are we overreacting to the coronavirus?“

A tiny particle that our naked eye cannot see has infected and killed hundreds of thousands of people, and shaken the world’s socio-economic foundations.

Are we overreacting to this virus, or is it the dawn of a new system of human relations that was inevitable one way or another?

Before the coronavirus stormed into our lives, we lived on a principle where we each sought to profit from the other, and the better we could exploit others, the more successful we could be.

We were born into and raised in such a system, and tried to make our way as best as we could. While doing so, we became increasingly toxic to each other, and also to the world.

Then, the coronavirus emerged.

The coronavirus has shown us a clear example that when we calm down our struggle to rise above each other, our ecological environment quickly recovers.

Would we have known about that had the coronavirus not entered our lives?

I don’t think so.

Therefore, in addition to maintaining social distancing conditions and seeking a cure, we would be wise to adapt ourselves to a new system of human relations that the virus alerts us to.

What new system of human relations would that be?

It would be one where we primarily acknowledge the necessity to supply for everyone’s needs.

Moreover, reaching such awareness would be achieved through learning about our interdependence throughout today’s global human society, and via such learning, increase our concern for each other.

Instead of merely wishing for ourselves and our own families to be covered, we would increase our concern to others: seeking that all members of society would have the required quantity and quality of food, housing, healthcare and education that they need.

In addition to making sure life’s essentials are in order for human society in general, the new system of human relations would replace the old paradigm of keeping up with the materialistic Joneses with a new paradigm of keeping up with the socially contributing Joneses. In other words, instead of valuing the material possessions we can get our hands on, and wanting “bigger, better and faster” things than our neighbors and friends, our values would shift to appreciating each other’s contribution to society.

We would still compete in such a system, but our competition would be one that becomes increasingly beneficial for society, i.e., by competing to contribute to society the most value that we possibly could.

The coronavirus period presents us with a unique opportunity to make a shift in that direction, from a self-centered world to one where we place society’s benefit at the center.

I see taking that step as the optimal reaction to the coronavirus, and therefore think that it is not a matter of whether we are overreacting to the virus, but of whether we are reacting in the most optimal way to improve our society.

We have been handed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reach more balance and harmony with each other and with nature, and I very much hope that we will make the most of it.

Above photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash.

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Has the Coronavirus impacted small business owners globally?“

Many businesses will fail to make it through the coronavirus period because of people’s changing buying habits, and the subsequent loss of demand for many nonessential goods and services.

The question then becomes, what should those business owners do in order to secure an income?

I think that governments need not pour money into saving businesses that lose demand, and that they instead make sure that all of their citizens are provided with life’s essentials.

I have written extensively in support of universal basic income on condition that it is provided in exchange for engaging in learning programs that would aim to upgrade our awareness of our present-day interdependence, and which would enrich the life of society. If basic income was given with no requirement to learn about how to improve social connections and encourage more positive contribution to society, then society would stagnate.

The coronavirus has illuminated our interdependence all around the world very sharply.

We have been shown how much we depend on each other maintaining personal hygiene and social distancing conditions in order to keep ourselves virus free.

However, we have yet to delve into the depths of what it means to be completely dependent on each other.

Therefore, business owners who will lose their businesses in this period would do well to pioneer a new model of learning how to live interdependently in exchange for a basic income. Then, as the competent, skilled and efficient people they are, they would be able to become leading educators and guides of such learning.

As the demand for all kinds of nonessential items dissipates, the need for positive human connection will increasingly rise, because if we fail to upgrade our relationships, then we can expect much greater problems lurking on the horizon.

Therefore, I hope that we will wake up to realize the importance of creating the foundation of a positively-connected society that could serve as a model for a more harmonious, happier, more secure and confident humanity.

If we see the demise of nonessential businesses as an opportunity to build a new league of educators for leading humanity to better relationships, then we could make a serious shift toward a better world.

Above photo by Marten Bjork on Unsplash.

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