Question: Why is one behavior socially approved and another condemned? What is the origin of moral norms?

Answer: Egoism, how beneficial it is to society.

Question: Old people always think young people are immoral. What do you think?

Answer: I believe that young people go through their own path of development which leads them to even higher moral development than the previous generation.

Question: How should morality be assessed from the point of view of evolution: as an invented cultural set of rules or something else?

Answer: Morality is our mutual relationship in the single organism of the soul which we must evaluate, define, and fulfill.

Question: Do animals have any moral standards?

Answer: They are not moral but instinctive, natural.

Question: What is the difference between the concepts of morality, ethics, and spirituality from your point of view?

Answer: None. If these conditions are met correctly, then they are all the same.

Question: Is there a difference between male and female morality?

Answer: No. This is expressed only at the animate level by the fulfillment of these moral conditions and nothing more.

Question: How do you feel about the ethical, moral people who follow all the rules?

Answer: I treat them like little children.

Question: Have you ever done anything that goes against your moral standards?

Answer: Obviously, yes.

Question: What, in your opinion, is most likely to stimulate people’s moral behavior?

Answer: Example.

Question: What should be higher: interests of the state expressed in legal regulations or man’s own worldview, his vision of fair behavior in a particular situation?

Answer: Public opinion. I must obey it even if I am in conflict with it.

Question: How do morality and ethics affect human intelligence?

Answer: To the extent that I can be guided by the ethics and morality of the environment and my personal space, to that extent I go right to the highest goal.

Question: Is it possible to have such a state in society when taking care of oneself is considered immoral?

Answer: Everything that is not for the benefit of society is immoral.

Question: What do you think the public morality of the future may be in developed countries?

Answer: Developed countries are those that constantly and consistently develop and adapt “love your neighbor” as the highest law of development of their societies.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 10/9/20

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Question: You say beautiful words and correct thoughts. But how can we implement them in practice? How can we change the entire world? How long will it take? Millennia? And the result is not guaranteed. Wouldn’t it be better to have a second flood and start all over again?

Answer: If you can, try. However, the fact is that we are controlled. There is nothing we can do. The only thing that is given to us is to understand with the help of our present suffering that we lack connection.

Let’s try it all together. It is possible.
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From KabTV’s “Ask the Kabbalist” 3/20/19

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Question: Do Kabbalists ever lie?

Answer: Yes, but only for the sake of unity, in the name of achieving a special goal.

In our life we lack an understanding of what the highest standard is, i.e., the purpose of nature that created us exactly like that.

The goal is to lead us to absolute unity with each other, so that we all are as one common whole. Moreover, I must see this common whole, understand its laws, customs, motives, and thus educate myself.

As Baal HaSulam writes, the individuality of each person is preserved and, at the same time, you aspire to the common whole.

Question: Does the common whole mean some common goal, common truth?

Answer: The common goal is unity because, according to Kabbalah, we reveal that in this way we become like the Creator. It is in our common unity. Everyone is different and everyone is united.

Question: There are no examples of unity in this world, so it is difficult to understand what it is. Is this some sensory attitude toward your neighbor?

Answer: Yes, the attitude of “love your neighbor,” when I put his desires above mine. “Love your neighbor as yourself” makes a person an element of a common whole, and through this he begins to feel the Creator.

Question: Is this state achieved by a certain number of actions performed by a person?

Answer: Yes. Nullification of yourself, the vision that society is higher than you.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/22/19

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Question: Experts from the University of California found that the main indicator of a good and happy relationship is when the couple uses “we” in a conversation.

The use of the word “we” is an indication of closer relations between people, that they are not bound to their egoism in their relationship, and that they intend to develop fruitful cooperation between them.

Humanity has been constantly living in “I,I,I,” and continues to live this way. Have we reached a dead end by this way of speaking?

Answer: No, the usage of “I” is not a dead end because it is my essence. This is what I stand on, where I am moving, what I want to do to improve this world, and this is the reason that I don’t think that it is a negative way to speak. On the contrary, it depends on what I draw toward and connect to this “I.”

Question: What do I need to attach to the “I?”

Answer: I have an opinion, I have power, I have the capability, I have a good attitude toward others, I want to embody all that, and then the “I” is a positive element.

Question: And what is a negative use of the “I?”

Answer: It is the opposite, of course, when I want to dominate others for the sake of my “I.” It is actually the “I” that needs to be very clear to a person. Who is this “I”?

Question: And how does a person advance from the position of the “I”?

Answer: From the “I” we move toward “we,” but “we” exists only and always as the common denominator of our “I” and not in any other way. When I begin to subdue myself before “we,” but I do it and not someone else who tells me “we” in a familiar way, when I subdue myself and say “we,” which means that I am ready to connect with others, knowing that the outcome will be the one common “I,” this is already a different level.

This is already an ascent above the small “I” to the big “I,” which includes the “we” in it.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/4/18

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Question: In the original sources it is written that the Creator said: “I created an evil inclination.” What is it?

Answer: Egoism. And when we say: “the inclination” and it is evil, then who testifies to it? The man himself, the very bearer of egoism.

Question: What I receive is normal? But the fact that I use others for my own benefit, is this the opposite of the Creator?

Answer: It all depends on how you yourself assess it. This shows shame in relation to the Creator.

Question: It turns out that shame does not arise in still, vegetative, and animate nature. Does it manifest itself only in a human?

Answer: Only in a human, and even then not in everyone. Nature gradually develops us until we begin to feel it. Shame is the keenest feeling. It literally short-circuits a person to the Creator.

After a person has felt shame, true prayer can appear in him so that the Creator will correct his nature. After all, a person can endure everything except shame.

Therefore, the Creator leads everyone so that they are ashamed all the time, a little bit of this, of this, of that. And if He wants to seriously move a person forward, He gives the person such a feeling of shame that he is just ready to die.

Question: Can we say that nature, the Creator, moves us through life through shame?

Answer: Yes. Theoretically, you can take any person, delve in him a little and understand how you can impose such a feeling of trepidation on him from which he would even commit suicide. After all, shame nullifies egoism, and therefore he has nothing to live for. Therefore, there is only one way out: to destroy egoism, which means to kill oneself.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/22/19

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic of “Love Covers All Transgressions”

Lesson on the Topic of “Tu Bishvat (15th of Shevat)

Selected Highlights

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Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
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My new article on Linkedin “The International Holocaust Remembrance Day Does Not Serve Its Purpose”

The International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which occurs on January 27, is always a good opportunity for predictions and summaries regarding trends of antisemitism in the world, and this year is no exception. This year’s report, published by the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, stresses the encouraging fact that no deadly attacks were perpetrated against Jews outside of Israel, though it was mostly because the attacks were thwarted before they were carried out, or were carried out but ended with injuries, some very serious, rather than fatalities. At the same time, the report stresses that Jewish life in Europe is being hampered by bans on kosher slaughtering and other Jewish customs. In essence, European countries are telling the Jews that they are unwanted there. In the US, the Jewish community is growing accustomed to an atmosphere that resembles that of Europe, and nine out of ten Jews are troubled by the growing antisemitism there. But perhaps most notably, online antisemitism has become ubiquitous, and conspiracy theories against Jews spread like brushfire whenever negative developments occur, and 2020 had plenty of those.

It is a very detailed report, covering more than 140 pages. But all those details cannot hide the fact that it is meaningless. It solves nothing, changes nothing, and serves nothing other than the people who wrote it. And since this report changes nothing, its writers can rest assured that next year, they’ll have a job compiling another such “alarming” report, which will be just as (in)effective.

For the past two millennia, since the ruin of the Second Temple, we have been blaming the world for our woes while we ourselves have done nothing to solve them. Instead, we count the times we were tortured, expelled, and exterminated. But for the past two millennia, documenting the nations’ cruelty toward us has done nothing to abate it.

Our forefathers were not like that. They did not blame the ruin of the First Temple on Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon, although he was the conqueror who destroyed it. Likewise, our forefathers did not blame the ruin of the Second Temple on Titus, the commander in chief of the Roman legion in Jerusalem. Instead, they blamed both devastations—the second of which was in many ways as horrific as the Holocaust—on themselves, and their own misconduct toward each other.

Even though our forefathers knew that Titus breached the walls of Jerusalem and exiled the people, they wrote that the Temple was ruined because of unfounded hatred, because we hated each other for no reason. Even some years afterwards, the great Rabbi Akiva, whose disciples wrote the Mishnah and The Book of Zohar, taught that “Love your neighbor as yourself” is the gist of the Torah. Nevertheless, since that time onward, we have been cultivating a narrative of victimhood, that it’s not our fault that we are tormented, expelled, and murdered. Why is the narrative different? Did Nebuchadnezzar and Titus not expel and murder us? They most certainly did, so why did our forefathers place the blame with us and not with them?

The fundamental difference between Jews today and Jews back then is that our forefathers, both leaders and regular folk, knew why they belonged to the Jewish people. They knew that being Jewish does not mean superficial observance of customs, but rather an oath, a commitment to be a role model nation. They knew that being Jewish means striving to love your neighbor as yourself, forging mutual responsibility within the nation, and setting an example of unity above divisions for the world to see. Back then, we had countless disputes, as we do today. But back then, we knew we had to keep our nation’s unity above the rifts, whereas today, we vilify each other for not admitting that we are right, and hunker down in our opinions.

Our forefathers knew that we had to project unity, and that if we did not, foreign rulers would come and punish us. We, on the other hand, do not give a second thought to unity, and when foreign rulers come and punish us, we blame each other for it, not realizing that by doing so, we only strengthen and embolden our oppressors.

Nothing has changed since the inception of our nation. We are still beaten when we beat each other, and succeed when we unite. Until we learn this lesson, organizations and offices will continue to publish pointless reports that no one cares about besides the people who make a living writing them. These reports will not prevent the next cataclysm, but our unity will. The choice, as always, is in our hands.

You can find more on the meaning of unity for the people of Israel in my books The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism: Historical facts on anti-Semitism as a reflection of Jewish social discord, and Like a Bundle of Reeds: Why Unity and Mutual Guarantee Are Today’s Call of the Hour.
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My new article on Linkedin “The Flight of the Honeybee”

We may be oblivious, and we certainly are indifferent, but honeybees are disappearing at an alarming rate; their population is shrinking all over the world, and no one knows for certain why this is happening or how to stop it. This may not seem like a big deal or something that should concern us, since there are countless species whose populations are shrinking, and some of which are on the verge of extinction, so what is special about the bees? Bees may not have such good PR agents as the polar bear, for example, but their importance to humankind is far greater than probably any species on the planet. Bees, through their function as key pollinators, are responsible for the production of more than a third of the world’s food. Without bees there will be no pollination of numerous plants that feed humans and livestock. In other words, without bees there will be hunger on a scale we’ve never known.

We may not know why bees are disappearing, but we shouldn’t be surprised that this is happening. On every level of nature, we are tearing the threads that connect the ecosystem that is our planet. We are depleting natural resources, cutting off forests the size of entire countries every year, polluting the air and the water, and destroying the habitat of almost every creature on the planet. How can we expect that in such a state, one of the most vital links in Earth’s life cycles will not be broken? Each day, we are tearing more threads, and at the same time becoming more frightened by nature’s collapse. It seems as though there is no way to end our obtuseness, except, perhaps, when we are faced with empty store shelves, when we have money to buy food, but there is no food to buy. Maybe then we will wake up, but it will be too late for many of us.

If we want to rebuild the bee population and guarantee our own survival, we have to solve the cause of our mistreatment of nature, which is, surprisingly, our connections with each other, our human, social ties. We must establish a network with positive connections, so as to learn how to work with all of nature. That is, the correction must begin at home, with the closest people to us, and grow from there to the rest of the world. If we learn how to positively integrate ourselves into our society, we will also know how to positively integrate ourselves into the whole of nature.

In other words, the problem isn’t with our actions or with our minds. It is not that there is some fundamental knowledge that we don’t know. The problem is with our hearts, or more correctly, with the connections between our hearts. Our self-centered disposition breaks the ties between us, and as a result, between us and nature. When we do not feel nature, we feel no remorse abusing it, and no misgivings about demanding it to serve us while we do so.

Self-absorption and exploitation are therefore the biggest pollutants we are creating, and not CO2 emissions or anything of the kind. If we clean ourselves up from self-absorption and exploitation, nature will clean itself up from the rest of the pollutants we have created. These two narcissistic traits, which none possess but humans, are ours to correct. No one can do this for us, and no one will be able to perform any correction until we correct our egoistic nature. But the moment we correct it, all other corrections will be a breeze.

Bees feel each other and support each other. Likewise, we will have to learn the art of feeling one another. However, what the bees do instinctively, we will have to carry out consciously, and our reward will be that we will understand creation not on the instinctive level, but on the conscious level.

In fact, the whole purpose of our overblown egos is to compel us to exert to feel each other the way bees and other animals do. This will not only teach us the intricate network that we are currently destroying through our foul disposition, but it will also teach us how the “mind” that designed the network works. There is no other way to learn these secrets of creation besides building the connections through our own efforts by learning one step at a time which part goes where. In doing so, we will also understand why certain parts were put together, what they do individually, and how they function in the system. But in order to learn all that, the world had to be broken to the point where by correcting it, we would learn how it was built.

Now we’ve come to it. The world is broken to the core. Now is the time to start correcting through connecting, to focus not on the parts, but on how they work together. This is our way to mend society, revive nature, and heal the planet, including our much needed honeybee population.
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True love begins when nothing is looked for in return. 
(Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

True. Beautiful! Clear, brief.

Question: Can you comment on this?

Answer: No. I cannot. It is expressed so clearly and correctly.

Where will you find this? There is an opinion among people that it is possible.

Question: But man has no power to do it?

Answer: No, it is not in human nature.

Question: By nature, man is unable not to ask for anything in return?

Answer: Of course. We must create this feeling of love for the other from the opposite feelings: from rejection, hatred, from all the negative properties, feelings, and thoughts. I must do it

Then it is possible to say that I love him—because I create my love for him. In general, what I basically feel for this person is that I hate him.

Question: That is, if I could simply, just like that, hate someone and then rise to love him?

Answer: Yes. Turn yourself inside-out. Then you can say that you love him. I love him. And the fact that this feeling arose in me from nowhere.

Comment: It is not easy.

My Response: Yes, but it is called love.

To love is to create an attitude toward another in yourself, an attitude of love toward the one you initially hated. Love can only be above hate! Otherwise it is not love.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 12/10/20

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