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My Thoughts On Twitter 10/25/20

Dr Michael Laitman Twitter

We have entered a new stage of understanding the pandemic —that it is here for the long-term and perhaps forever. There is an across-the-board fatigue from the coronavirus. People’s tempers are ready to snap. Here is where people might grow cognizant of the egoism that is sending them to their death, and the need to overcome it, even at the price of replacing care for oneself with care for others—as long as one gains the strength and motivation to move, to socialize, to live, and after that, perhaps people will see a completely different future…

From apathy people will reach the realization that there is no point in thinking about yourself. It’s rather by thinking of others that life will acquire new meaning. If everything is about others, then we get a new, spiritual world, one that is opposite to the previous one.

The most significant change in humanity is its disillusionment in life, apathy, the unwillingness to strive for anything. This will eventually lead to a re-evaluation of life, the need to find an aim higher than life. Then the will to achieve it will come back; life will acquire a higher meaning.

The main test is: what does a person aspire to, and how strong is his desire. A change of intention is like switching the car gear from forward to reverse, which determines whether I am moving forward toward the Creator and the creatures, or backward.
From Twitter, 10/25/20

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“Will There Be Another Civil War?”

Dr. Michael LaitmanFrom My Facebook Page Michael Laitman 10/25/20

A student told me he had heard, or perhaps read, the views of serious people recently, who had expressed fear that on November 4, right after the presidential election, a second civil war will break out in America. He said that those pundits also warned that it could spread beyond the borders of America and into Europe and other parts of the world.

In all honesty, I cannot say what will happen the day after the election. Legally, America has done a great deal to cope with racial segregation. Nevertheless, despite a century and a half of abolition of legal slavery and more than half a century after the abolition of the Jim Crow laws, interracial separation, suspicion, and hatred persist. People were not taught how to love one another, how to form solidarity, so the hatred and separation between them remain. In a county where “education” means acquisition of knowledge, where “knowledge is power,” people dedicate no time, effort, or money to learning how to care or sympathize. As a result, the whole country is falling apart and no amount of knowledge will stop it since people didn’t learn the one thing that matters: how to love each other.

There is no American nation. There are American people, but there is no “one nation under God.” In the absence of national unity, every side pulls its own way and the country disintegrates.

So is civil war after the election possible? Since they haven’t mended the problem that caused the first war, we can’t rule out another war. As long as the segregation de facto remains, anything’s possible.

As before, so now, the only remedy can come through education. However, this education should focus on connecting people’s hearts, not on stuffing them with information that does not change their attitudes to one another. If Americans somehow, miraculously, manage to calm things down after the election and launch such a reconciliation program, one that relies on bringing unity and pulling people’s hearts closer, then they can overcome anything. But if Americans maintain partisanship and cancellation of each other, America will fall apart.

Will a civil war in America migrate elsewhere? I doubt it. The racial problem in the US is endemic. There are minorities elsewhere, of course, but the situation that exists in the US between Black Americans and White Americans is unique, so I don’t believe that clashes on that background will cause a chain reaction elsewhere. Ripples, perhaps, but not a full blown chain reaction.

Subtle Units Of Measuring Thought

294.2All viruses are the result of our bad thoughts. But there are no instruments capable of measuring this connection because it is higher than ordinary material perception.

There are many laboratories and studies trying to grasp the connection between the spiritual and the material, but this is impossible. Our good or evil thoughts belong to the human level since they are based on our egoism, the evil principle.

Tell me, what device can be used to measure a person’s egoism, and where should it be connected? Of course, not to the material body because it is only a biological machine that carries out orders. To the heart? But the heart is just a pump that can be replaced with an artificial one. Maybe to the brain? Also no.

Where can a person’s thoughts be extracted from in order to pass them through the device and see which thoughts are good and which are not and need to be corrected? Is it possible? You can build a cardiogram, measure frequencies, electrical processes in the body, but it is impossible to assess their essence. After all, it does not belong to matter. Therefore, science is not able to approach this.

As a student, we had classes at the Human Brain Institute in St. Petersburg. Then I heard from the head of the department, who was a famous scientist, that we do not know where the thoughts and desires of a person are.

Scientists try to trace this connection, but it leads out of the brain into a sphere that we are not able to perceive. There, outside of man, are all our thoughts and desires. The human brain is a modem that connects the spiritual space, where all our thoughts soar, with human sensations.

In our world, it is customary to identify a person with his animal body. But by studying Kabbalah, we build a spiritual Partzuf, ascend to faith above knowledge. It is no longer material. The science of Kabbalah connects a person with his true essence as if separating him from the material body and attaching him to the soul. Therefore, the physical world disappears from our sensations because it is imaginary.

When we reach such a connection between us that we begin to reveal spiritual phenomena, then we will open the book The Study of the Ten Sefirot and we will be able to feel everything that is written there and read it like a musician reads a musical score.
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From KabTV’s “Writers Meeting” 10/15/20

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283.01If I allow an unkind thought about others to come out and be expressed and heard, I give it an opportunity to manifest itself. As long as it is inside me, I can still suppress it, forbid these thoughts to come out of me, that is, make a restriction on my inherent egoistic nature.

A negative thought about our neighbor is like an action. But I can catch and stop a thought without letting it manifest and hurting others. A thought initiates an action even if it is not a material one. If I allow an unkind thought to flow and act freely without trying to control and suppress it, I am harming my neighbor and committing a bad action in the world.

We live in a world of thoughts. A thought is an action. Therefore, by allowing unkind thoughts to come out of me and believing that this is not bad, I act maliciously and thereby determine what is happening in reality. Our entire world, every person will have to check himself and find out how he influences others. This will require deep inner work and a lot of effort from everyone.

Man must change the direction of his thoughts about others from negative to positive. And then, in this positive attitude toward others, he will feel an additional force of nature that he did not feel before.

By changing our thoughts from negative to positive, we will save ourselves from the coronavirus and redeem the entire world from the epidemic and other problems. After all, this is how we bring ourselves in line with nature so that all its degrees: inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human will be in harmony, in good thoughts, mutually complementing each other.

All that prevents this is our evil nature, our egoism. Therefore, we need to turn this egoistic attitude toward others into a good one. To do this, we need to work in groups so that we attract the good force concealed in nature and make it reveal itself. We demand that this good force, good relations, and unity be manifested between us in the group.

If we allow our egoistic thoughts to rule over us and we do not connect, then the coronavirus will spread more and more. We will not have any remedy for this disease because the coronavirus is a display of our bad relations with each other. We just call it a virus.

There will be many more such “viruses” that appear as a result of our evil thoughts, and we will suffer a lot. Six months ago, there was still hope that the epidemic would gradually subside. Now, however, we see that it will only get worse and worse until we say: “Enough!”

Our corruption manifests itself in the form of a virus because the human body is filled with viruses. Viruses are information blocks that are in constant communication with each other at all levels of the body. We call them viruses, but in fact, we cannot exist without them. Each virus is a very complex entity, and we do not even understand a  millionth part of the way it works. We do not know how our body functions.

When such ruptures are revealed in the form of viruses, they can only be corrected by a force that is higher than them. And above the virus is thought. Viruses are carriers that transmit thoughts; they transmit data and information to different parts of the body and to the brain. Since our thoughts and desires operate at very high egoistic levels, they manifest themselves in such dangerous viruses.

If we want to calm them down and bring them into balance, there is the wisdom of Kabbalah for this. Balance is restored by restriction, screen, and reflected light. You need to balance all the forces that activate these viruses so that they fall under the restriction and screen. Then all the viruses that cause the disease today will turn into beneficial ones.
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From the Writers Meeting 10/15/20

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Transition From World To World

537We are all in a state of exile, which is an exile from the perception and knowledge of the Creator, the upper, spiritual world. There are only two states: exile and redemption.

Being in a state where the Creator is concealed, we find ourselves in reality as it appears to us now, that is, temporary and changing under the influence of the laws of nature.

But there is a spiritual reality that we can ascend to. There are other times and definitions active there, and we find ourselves above time, motion, and space.

How can we pass from this world, from the material reality perceived by the physical senses, to the spiritual reality? To do this, you need to develop spiritual sense organs that perceive the spiritual world.

Even while in the animal body, while still living in this world, we can experience spiritual reality along with material reality. In the end, the material reality will melt away and we will all enter the spiritual world.

How can we achieve liberation from our egoism, which now holds us in the feeling of this world only? According to the Creator’s program, egoism gives us various problems and troubles in order to force us to rise and leave this world. After all, if we always felt good in it, we would remain in these small egoistic desires forever.

The Creator wants us to develop, and therefore awakens suffering in us with various problems, forcing us to think about changing our state. He also points us in the direction of change, awakening egoistic relationships between us that lead us to understand the need to rise to a different perception of the world, to a reality above our reason.

The transition from world to world depends on whether a person perceives reality personally, individually, feeling the world as we see it today. Through personal perception, it is impossible to feel the world differently. Or a person begins to connect with others and perceives reality from this connection.

One begins to think not about himself, but about what is good for the group, for the ten, or even for the whole of humanity. He identifies himself with others, outside of himself, and perceives reality through them. This will already be a spiritual perception of reality because he rises above his egoism, the desire to receive, which is called a body, to another perception in the global desire between him and others, which is called a soul.

That is how he gets a new perception of reality. Therefore, the transition from the physical perception of reality to the spiritual one is an ascent from feeling within a person personally to the global sensation of the group, from the sensation of I to WE. The greater this WE, the stronger the sense of spiritual reality, eternal, perfect, and independent of the personal perception of an individual.

This will be a new, true perception of the only existing reality. We now live in an imaginary reality and our entire world is an illusion that arises in our material sense organs due to egoistic desires that pull everything to themselves. This reality exists only in our imagination.

When we ascend from the material world to the spiritual world, we feel as if we are waking up from a dream. We are now in a dream and must wake up.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/19/20, “Bereshit

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From A Passive Observer To An Active Researcher

239Two thousand years ago, the nation of Israel fell from its spiritual level to the corporeal one, from the intention of bestowal to the intention for its own sake. As a result, we have turned into completely different people, into a different nation with a new religion, a new outlook on life, and a different perception of reality.

Previously, we perceived all reality as one single whole in which one force acted, and we all belonged to it. But gradually, together with the collapse of the First Temple and then after a thousand years of the Second Temple, we began to move away from bestowal and unification into perceiving life as we see it today, that is, purely corporeally, egoistically, and recognize the unification of a man only with himself, but not with others.

Today we will have to make a lot of effort to return to the spiritual, true perception of reality.
We must understand that this perception of reality and intention is in conflict with what is accepted in all religions. Each religion wants to establish itself above others, be proud of it, and teach the same to the people who follow it. We, however, need to advertise a union that will raise us above all problems because they are all a consequence of remoteness, separation, and unfounded hatred among us.

If I perceive reality egoistically, care only about my own existence, see others from afar, and do not unite with them through feelings into one whole, then I see the world as it is today, in my five  sense organs.

But if I unite with someone else, at least with one person, for this I need to annul myself and then I will already begin to perceive the reality with different organs of sensation. These will no longer be the ordinary sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, but the Sefirot Keter, Hochma, Bina, Zeir Anpin, and Malchut.

I will see reality as single and perfect. It will already be a reality that does not exist within myself, but outside of me. That is, it will not be limited by my sensory organs. To the extent that I abandon my personal sensation, my desire to receive pleasure, for the external perception, for the desire to bestow, to that extent I will reveal the true reality.

I will reveal the light in the desire for bestowal, which I was able to build within my desire to receive pleasure, the form of bestowal and love, that is, the form of the Creator. From a passive observer of reality, I will turn into its active researcher. This is what the science of Kabbalah teaches us.

We must all receive the form of a spiritual Partzuf, which contains desire, restriction, screen, and reflected light. Then it becomes active, can bestow to the master, unite with Him, and attain Him, as it is written: “And you will be like God, and know good and evil.”

In religion, a person performs corporeal actions and wants to receive a corporeal reward for them. But we want to perform spiritual actions, that is, build a mutual connection, unity, up to love between us. This will be our reward.
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From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/19/20, “Bereshit

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“Ignoring COVID Is Playing Russian Roulette With Our Kids’ Health” (Newsmax)

My article in Newsmax: “Ignoring COVID is Playing Russian Roulette With Our Kids’ Health

For all our efforts to deny its severity, COVID-19 is not a joke. It’s a serious illness and the more we ignore it, the more serious it becomes.

If at first we thought that it affected only elderly and unwell people, we now know that it affects everyone, at all age groups and at all levels of health. But the most frightening aspect about the coronavirus is its impact on children. While most infected children remain asymptomatic, some develop a very severe condition known as Paediatric Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome (PIMS), which affects their brain, and can even lead to death.

Ignoring the risks from COVID-19 is in many ways like playing Russian Roulette. The odds of dying in this case are much slimmer, but the head at the gunpoint is that of our children. Are we willing to take the risk?

The more we stall with dealing with the virus, the more infectious and more violent it becomes. What will happen if we stall for another six months? How much worse will it impact us and our children? Do we want to wait for the mortality rate to rise? Do we want to sit by until hospitals are unable to treat people with any illness because their beds are taken by COVID patients? We really should know better.

The novel coronavirus isn’t here on a brief visit. I said it when it first arrived, and now science is beginning to recognize it. A few days ago, John Edmunds, a member of the U.K. Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, told lawmakers that “We are going to have to live with this virus for evermore. There is very little chance that it’s going to become eradicated.” In simpler words, the life we had until 2020 will never return; we have to build a new and better one.

The first place to start in reconstructing our lives is our society. If we examine each crisis that humanity is grappling with, we will find specific causes for each of them. But behind each crisis, whether it is climate change, forest fires, COVID-19, hunger, war, water pollution, air pollution, substance abuse, poverty, obesity, domestic violence, racism or any other crisis, they are all caused by our lack of consideration, by our alienation from each other.

We patronize some, demonize others, abuse, manipulate and cheat our way to wealth and power. Some are more aggressive, some are less so, but this is the dominant mindset around the world. This is also the mindset that has inflicted on us the countless crises plaguing our planet. We will never overcome them until we uproot our constant mistreatment of each other.

We know that mutual responsibility is great for all of us; we feel it instinctively. But whenever we want to implement it, the “voice of reason” awakens in our heads and says that it is pointless to attempt to implement it since too few people are willing to make the effort, that it’s against human nature, that we’re dreaming if we think that this can ever work, etc.

But is it against human nature to want to feel safe? Is it against human nature to want to be able to trust people? Is it against human nature to build networks of mutual responsibility in order to secure everyone’s health and well-being? On the contrary, nothing is more natural than these behaviors. Every settlement provides its residents with exactly these benefits; it is why people live in settlements and communities, and when we choose our leaders, we look for the ones who can best provide us with these necessities.

But while we are living in systems that secure our lives, we mistreat each other — the building blocks of the systems that sustain us. It does not make sense. It’s as if cells attacked an antigen that came to help them fight a virus, and then complained that they were sick.

We must stop yielding to our egos. They are warping our perception and make us think all the wrong things about each other. They make us hate each other when in fact we’re all dependent on each other and wouldn’t be able to live if it weren’t for all of us.

And if we’re not strong enough to fight our egos for our own sake, let’s at least do it for our children. It is not their fault that we are letting our egos run amok; it is not their fault that we are heartless, gutless and cannot look beyond our noses. Let’s at least give up on our egos for their sake, so they, too, will have a future, and let’s not play Russian roulette with our kids’ heads at gunpoint.
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“The Satire Of Antisemitism” (Linkedin)

My new article on Linkedin “The Satire of Antisemitism

On Twitter and Facebook alone, a staggering 1.7 million antisemitic posts were made this year, said U.S. Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism, Elan Carr. That is no laughing matter. But what if we fight hate with satire like comedians try to do? Could that be an effective way to tackle conspiracy theories against Jews? I think, “Yes.” Regardless of whether it is done in a straightforward fashion or from the flip side, what matters most is to awaken the question of why the endless Jew-hatred exists, as an important step to solving the problem for good.

Only the people of Israel can make a difference in the world because they are the people who received the method of connection, the wisdom of Kabbalah, which describes the means for drawing the unique force in nature capable of neutralizing any disruption and negativity in reality. That force that balances hatred is the power of love created through Jewish unity. When Jews are united and become an example to follow, they will arise as the “light unto the nations,” lighting up the path to a positive future for humanity. That will be the day when fairness, equality, and mutual understanding will have the last laugh.

The coronavirus comes from “a place called Wuhan, which is in Israel” joked Jewish comedian Sasha Baron Cohen on a popular US television show, and was reported in some media outlets. People certainly don’t take him seriously and it is clear that his intention isn’t to stir up provocation, but to use sarcasm as an effective way to disparage antisemitism. Why could this be a great strategy? Because we need a creative approach to address the increasing animosity against Jews around the world. It might help us to highlight this phenomenon bluntly and vociferously on social media where antisemitism crops up and spreads like a virus.

The world’s attention is currently focused on the other epidemic, Covid-19, which has upstaged Jew hatred slightly but not erased it from the playbill, as statistics show. As soon as the plague weakens, the voices of our enemies will intensify again, blaming Jews for the pandemic and other libels, as antisemites so openly do at every first opportunity and through any means at their disposal.

However, we waste our time trying to combat the haters head-on or by struggling to remove unwanted content. These actions will not help, nor do we have the immense power and resources it would take to eradicate the problem. As soon as the measures to eliminate antisemitic posts are implemented in one place, they rapidly reproduce like weeds in a field. Therefore, the only strategy that will bear fruit is to learn how to take the negativity thrown our way and contrast it with all the goodness expected from the Jewish people.

In fact, let’s take a step back and think about this clearly for a moment. When antisemites blame Jews for all the calamities in the world, they are actually pointing to Jews as the only force capable of causing change in the world, as the only people who have the power to solve any crisis humanity faces but who are failing to fulfill this goal.

That is a true statement—they are absolutely right. Only the people of Israel can make a difference in the world because they are the people who received the method of connection, the wisdom of Kabbalah, which describes the means for drawing the unique force in nature capable of neutralizing any disruption and negativity in reality. That force that balances hatred is the power of love created through Jewish unity. When Jews are united and become an example to follow, they will arise as the “light unto the nations,” lighting up the path to a positive future for humanity. That will be the day when fairness, equality, and mutual understanding will have the last laugh.
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“What Is The Purpose Of Life?” (Quora)

Dr. Michael LaitmanMichael Laitman, On Quora: What is the purpose of life?

The purpose of life is to attain the highest and most exalted state that nature prepared for us: to ascend above our inborn egoistic selves and gain a clear understanding, perception and sensation of why we—and nature on all of its levels, inanimate, vegetative, animate and human—exist.

Moreover, the purpose of life cannot be forced upon or shown to anyone, similarly to how we cannot prove mathematical laws to cats. Instead, every person needs to discover the purpose of life for themselves: to elevate themselves in perception and sensation until they gain a complete vision and feeling of reality.

The ascension above our inborn egoistic nature to the discovery of nature’s wholeness is the fullest meaning of becoming a human being. In Hebrew, the word for “human” is “Adam,” which stems from the phrase, “Adameh le Elyon” (“similar to the most high”), which means that if we rise above our narrow egoistic perception and attain a whole perception of reality, we fulfill our role of becoming “human” in the fullest sense of the term.

In principle, there are two forces in nature: reception (egoism, negative) and bestowal (altruism, positive). We are born and raised solely on the force of reception, which is expressed in us as egoism: the desire to enjoy at the expense of anything or anyone outside of oneself.

Our egoism develops and grows over many generations, from a small desire to enjoy that demands nothing more than its basic survival needs—food, sex, family and shelter—to a bigger ego that requires fulfillment from myriad social connections—money, wealth, honor, respect, fame, control, power and knowledge. In our era, we have reached a uniquely significant transition point where we bear witness to our egoistic development reaching a dead end, i.e., feeling it increasingly hard to feel fulfilled from egoistic pursuits, which also gives rise to a plethora of negative attitudes in society—people taking out their dissatisfaction on each other more and more, leading to increasing polarization and hatred throughout society.

Today’s overblown egoism thus points the way to the need for us to draw an opposite, positive and altruistic force in order for us create balanced relations among each other and with nature.

Both our inborn egoism as well as the positive altruistic force stem from nature, and the purpose of life is that we apply ourselves to attract nature’s positive altruistic force above our egoistic one, in order that we live in balance and harmony with nature.