Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What does no one tell you about coronavirus?“

The cause of the coronavirus is human imbalance with nature.

As a system of interdependent and interconnected parts, nature is made up of four levels: inanimate, vegetative, animate and human.

The first three levels of nature—inanimate, vegetative and animate—function in perfect balance with nature, instinctively following nature’s commands.

In contrast, the human level, us, disturbs nature’s balance.

How?

We have an additional egoistic quality that the other parts of nature do not have.

Where other parts of nature operate in order to preserve themselves, grow and survive, in addition to our preservation, growth and survival, we also want to enjoy at the expense of others.

Specifically the exploitation of others for the sake of self-benefit is what causes imbalance in nature.

Before the coronavirus hit humanity, such exploitation was running rampant in our modern consumerist society, and the coronavirus’ blow served to calm us down. It forced us into quarantine, isolation, social distancing and stay-at-home conditions, and while in such conditions, we would be wise to think about how we can restore balance with nature.

If we use the example that the coronavirus gave us, of how it makes no discrimination between people of different status, whether an ordinary Joe or a world leader, then we too would be wise to relate equally to each other.

If we consider nature’s interdependence and interconnectedness, then what would it mean for us humans to act in balance with such a system? Increasing our care and responsibility for each other would be our way of matching nature’s interconnectedness.

Implementing the additional ability we humans have beengranted means setting up systems that prioritize benefiting others over benefiting ourselves. Influencing each other to think and act in such a way will bring us closer to nature’s integral form, and by doing so, we would experience newfound harmony and pleasantness, the likes of which we have never before felt.

I thus hope that we make the most of this coronavirus period in order to bring ourselves closer to each other and with nature.

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Medium published my new article “How Changes in the Workplace Will Change Our Relations”

Life will not be the same after the coronavirus pandemic. That is an understatement, but how could the healing process improve our interpersonal relationships and our perspectives of life? Working from home, being physically apart from other coworkers, but spending more time with family has forced us to reevaluate our personal goals in general. We can emerge from the crisis stronger if we reassess our priorities and realize the potential benefits of the new reality.

In the pre-coronavirus era, on average, an American worker commuted at least 54 minutes a day, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The coronavirus lockdown changed the rules of the game and sent millions of people to work from home and spend less time behind the wheel and more time on rediscovering the family. We have come to know our families in a different way from what we used to and it has transformed us from within.

As we reopen the economy, each of us will bring the family baggage absorbed from working at home to the workplace, and will continue to feel connected to those closest to them. Back at their jobs, beyond their need to make a living, people will feel they are missing the internal connection between them.

Others will have to sort things out differently. 30 million Americans have lost their jobs since mid-March due to the COVID-19 crisis. A solution to this complicated situation will demand a national plan to appraise what industries and occupations are essential for the common wellbeing. Now we need to restore production and distribution in a way that provides humanity with the necessary products and services, but without excessive consumption, which had almost completely destroyed the world.

Such a plan will require setting special value to development programs that place human connection at the top. Why is this change of priorities mandatory? The answer is simple: We have never been so defeated by putting perfection, knowledge, strength, power, and influence on a pedestal. In our arrogance, we considered ourselves the supreme force of nature. Today, we have witnessed how quickly and easily the apparently safe world we had built can crumble.

Therefore, the goal of our time is to introduce a question mark in people concerning their lives, the world, and in general, where humanity is heading.

What Now?

Humanity’s problem now lies in realizing that the only correct exit from the crisis is to transform human relationships from egoistic to altruistic. Returning to business relations without correcting human relations will lead to a bigger crisis because we have not yet fixed the root of our troubles.

We need a global plan for human society to recover from egoism. For the first time in history, humanity is realizing what we thought we knew but never fully grasped: The world is global and interdependent; it is our common home.

We will start evaluating our lives as “before” and “after” the pandemic. This critical period we face seals the history of the egoistic development of humankind and shows that any system that is based on our egoism will produce negative results. Thus, what we need to correct is not the system itself, but our egoistic nature.

As a direct impact of the crisis, the world is moving toward feeling more connected and unified. A common problem that affects everyone brings people closer. They stop thinking about wars, conflicts between countries, exploitations by corporations, or hating other people; the main goal is to survive the common enemy. We should not wait for another wave of COVID-19 to make us react this way and to learn only through suffering. The feeling of brotherhood and unity must prevail if we truly want to thrive and achieve a more fulfilling life.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are some of the most mind-blowing facts about Israel?“

1. The word “Israel” stems from two words, “Yashar Kel,” which means “straight to God.”

2. The people of Israel first received their name as a group of people who gathered around Abraham around 3,800 years ago. Abraham taught them the method of how to love one another above the fierce social division running rampant in ancient Babylon, and by using the method of attaining the ability to love, they acquired the name “Israel” (“Yashar Kel” or “straight to the force of love, bestowal and connection,” which is synonymous to God).

3. The people of Israel had no biological connection to each other. They were originally a gathering of people from around ancient Babylon who felt that society was becoming increasingly divided. They wanted to understand why people were suffering so much, what is the meaning of life, and how people could unite above the social conflicts. After applying Abraham’s method, they received the name “the people of Israel.”

4. During the periods of the First and Second Temples, the people of Israel rose, fell, and then rose again in the attainment of love and unity above division. They prospered most when they experienced this spiritual form of unity. However, since the ruin of the Second Temple, they lost their attainment of the love and unity that glued them together above their divisiveness, and entered a period of exile and dispersion.

5. While in exile, the people of Israel have experienced many different forms of anti-Semitism. They have been blamed for murdering Jesus Christ, killing children and drinking their blood in the Middle Ages, causing the Black Death pandemic of the 14th century, killing Tsar Alexander II that ignited the pogroms of the Russian Empire against them, acting as internal traitors that led to Germany’s First World War defeat, and have been considered as money-and-power hungry conspirators who aim to rule the world.

6. As a Jewish state, despite the many contributions Israel brings to the world, including the Microsoft Windows operating system, the Pentium microprocessor, voice mail, biological pacemakers, cancer treatments using DNA nana-computation, stem-cell technology to regenerate heart tissue, pill-sized cameras for examining the small intestine, the first computerized diagnostic instrument for breast cancer detection, a heart pump synchronization device, as well as treatments for Multiple Sclerosis and Parkinson’s Disease, aircraft security systems, and ecologically, it was the only country in the world at the turn of the century that had more trees than in the previous century…

Israel endures heavy constant criticism.

Israel is treated as the world’s Jew.

In a modern context of globalized anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, Israel finds itself in a losing battle for a positive identity against multiple efforts aimed at its delegitimization and isolation: the application of international pressure in order to restrict its range of diplomatic and military response in the short term, and ultimately, to cripple it by delegitimizing its right to exist in the long term, stunting its ability to conduct diplomatic negotiations and act militarily.

The next three facts, however, are even more mindblowing…

7. The people of Israel experience increasing anti-Semitism, and many people feel the people of Israel as the root of their problems, due to their having once attained love and unity above division, and then having lost that sensation. Since the people of Israel were established not on biological connections, like other nations, but on an idea of love and unity above all differences, then their own division rippled throughout the world, and the many problems people feel stemming from their division, they instinctively blame on the people of Israel.

8. Since the people of Israel’s disunity and division are felt as a cause for myriad problems in the world, they also hold a method to attain unity. If they implement the method of connection, like how they once did in the days of ancient Babylon, where Abraham guided them to unite above division, then anti-Semitism will not only become eliminated—it would invert to a positive form of support and encouragement for a people who spread a positive sensation of love and unity throughout the world.

9. The people of Israel’s role in the world is thus to unite (“love your neighbor as yourself”) above division (“love will cover all transgressions”) in order to spread love and unity to the world (to be “a light unto the nations”).

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Question: Are we now given the opportunity to consciously pray for the whole world through our connection?

Answer: It seems to people that if we address the Creator as a person, then everything will be fine. This is actually not the case.

We address the system of nature; we want to participate in it with the microsystems of each and everyone together. By incorporating into it and striving to be in balance with it, we bring a positive impact on it. This positive relationship brings the whole system into balance.

This is actually a prayer; this is our impact on the system. This is how we need to pray for each other and for everyone, because in the world today, due to the violation of the immense general equilibrium, we are very dependent on each other.

People who are more or less influenced by this disturbance called coronavirus should help each other.
The disturbance is common to all. The system is common to all. We are all in it. Therefore, let us realize how much we influence each other and are dependent on each other. This system begins to teach us quite seriously that we are a small single organism on a small globe called planet Earth, and we must think about this and take care.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah,” 3/15/20

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The Cause of Unfounded Hatred

Question: Our desires, on their own, are neutral. Is egoism the intention of how I use my desire?

Answer: Yes, because actions themselves do not determine anything. The main thing is the intention that precedes the action. Therefore, I cannot say about a person whether he is an egoist or not if I don’t know his intentions.

Question: There is such natural hatred between people called unfounded hatred. Why unfounded? I understand that if someone offends me, I have a reason to hate him. What is unfounded hatred?

Answer: Unfounded hatred is when I want to humiliate another person because I am an egoist and I have such inner impulses.

Question: But still there must be some reason?

Answer: The reason is very simple—my egoism, which acts without any excuse or reason. Since there are still others like me, I want to be above these people, to suppress them all the time, and to feel superior. It brings me pleasure.
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From Kab TV’s “Systematic Analysis of the Development of the People of Israel, Part 8,” 3/24/19

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Lesson Preparation

Lesson on the Topic “Concerning Above Reason” 

Writings of Rabash, “According to What Is Explained Concerning “Love Thy Friend as Thyself,” (1984)

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah,” Item 12

Selected Highlights

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We thought we could subdue nature’s laws. Today it’s becoming clear that we were wrong. Nature is stronger than us, and its laws are inviolable. Only by understanding them and starting to work in accordance with them can we exit the #quarantine and its restrictions into a new life.

We are fully included in nature’s integral system. Therefore, even when we seek to harm one another in thought, in so doing we influence nature’s entire system as a whole. The very thought and desire to harm already impedes the mutual complement of the system’s elements.

For as long as we see a virus and not the Creator, it is a sign of humanity’s incorrect development. The Creator awakens in us the desire to understand Him, to reveal Him as the force of unity and bestowal. If we unify the broken parts into a system, we will discover the mutual connection and reveal the force of love and devotion.

Humanity does not understand how to progress toward an integral form, where two parts of nature are connected together into a unified system, where the Creator is revealed as the common force of correction operating in us.
The more we unite, the faster we will see how the Creator is revealed in the network of connection that we build.

The coronavirus arises in the world because we do not change in time. We are the first generation that must rise to the degree of bestowal, “faith above reason,” where bestowal is above reception. To what extent do we conform to this demand? The world is unwillingly taking on a new form!
From Twitter, 5/2/20

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From My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 5/2/20

COVID-19 marks the beginning of a paradigm shift. Until the end of the previous decade, we lived with a mindset of the survival of the fittest. We couldn’t imagine anything else. The coronavirus revoked it categorically. And the minute we stopped spreading enmity throughout the world, the world began to thrive. The virus has shown us just how poisonous we had been toward our world. We would never have realized this, certainly not so deeply, had it not been for the lockdown imposed on us by the virus.

If we want to cure ourselves from the virus, it is not enough to look for vaccines or drugs. We must adjust to the new paradigm that the virus has imposed on us. Otherwise, the coronavirus, or some other menace, will haunt us until we change.

The coronavirus paradigm is a paradigm of giving. While it tells us to stay apart physically, it will give us no choice but to see to everyone’s sustenance regardless of their status of employment. It will force us to reshape our lives according to a more caring social model, one that regards humanity as a single entity whose members are all entitled to have food, healthcare, clothing, housing, and education. Gradually, people will come to enjoy contributing to the society, and society will come to appreciate its benefactors. Our values will change, our heroes will change, our priorities will change, and we ourselves will change. That new paradigm, a paradigm of giving, will be the legacy of the coronavirus.

[City of Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez loads up food and vegetables during a drive-through food distribution at Goodlet Park in Hialeah, FL, USA as the novel coronavirus pandemic continues on Thursday, April 23, 2020. The City of Hialeah, in partnership with Feeding South Florida, organized the drive-through food distribution. Food is distributed first-come, first-served while supplies last.]

Photo by David Santiago/Miami Herald/TNS/ABACAPRESS.COM]

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are some ugly truths of life?“

While we innately feel that we want to change the world and change other people in order to improve the world, the ugly truth is that the only one who needs to change is myself.

Our desire to change the world and to change others stems from our intuitive egoistic perception of reality, where we want to self-benefit at the expense of others.

By wanting to change people and things around me, I essentially demand, “Give me something different to what I now have!”

However, true change is when I demand nothing of others and of the world, but that I demand to give to others from myself.

This is ugly to our very human egoistic nature, which we cannot escape, and which wants to invert anything it can in the world so that it can reap maximal benefit with minimal effort.

Each one of us feels ourselves to be the sole exceptional creation in existence. Our egoistic nature gives us all a feeling of uniqueness, an exclusive experience where it feels as if I alone exist, and everyone and everything else is secondary in importance to me.

Accordingly, we feel that if anyone should change, it should be others, not me.

However, the only way for the world around us to change is if we each change ourselves.

It’s great if I want to change the world. I just need to change myself so that changes in me influence the world.

This kind of change is doable. I can change myself at every moment, and by doing so, the world will change.

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