My new article on Linkedin “Medicine as Nature Would Have It”

A few days ago, an Israeli doctor wrote that after more than 20 years of practicing medicine, he finds himself too many times having to say he doesn’t know. He says Covid has upended everything in his profession, and he and many of his colleagues find themselves clueless all too often.

If we want to become healthy, we must heal our social attitude. This will heal our society, which, in turn, will heal our bodies, and the world will be a healthy, happy place to live in.

It seems as though reality is catching up with us in every aspect of our lives. Everything we’ve put on a pedestal is crumbling, including, if not first and foremost, modern medicine. We’ve turned being healthy into a business, and in business, money matters, and not people.

Worse yet, in the past year, the struggle against Covid-19 has become a political power struggle, and decisions that cost lives and livelihoods of millions cater to party interests rather than to the interest of the people. As with everything else, Covid has exposed our nature, and it is not pretty.

We have forgotten that in the end, the human body is that of an animal. Just as animals get their healing from nature, so could we, if we only stayed attentive to our nature. Instead of an attitude of cutting open, replacing, and stitching back, we could have known how to maintain our health and how to heal ourselves easily and quickly when we need it. But being healthy isn’t lucrative, so we are taught to stop listening to ourselves and we become ill.

I am not advocating veganism; I am simply pointing out that we have become deaf to the natural needs of our body, which, by the way, are very few and cost almost nothing. If we were more attentive, we would know what plants are good for what problem, and how to keep ourselves more generally healthy.

We are living within nature; nature has engendered us, sustains us, yet when it comes to our health, we have no clue how to use it to maintain or regain our health. It is as if we’ve cut off the umbilical cord that nourished us, and now we’re trying to survive disconnected from our nurturing mother.

Sadly, where our disconnection is most apparent is with each other. We have not only disconnected from nature; we have, first and foremost, disconnected from each other. We are suffering from moral narcissism—thinking about how our actions make us feel about ourselves rather about their consequences for others. Just as we treat every organ in our body as though it is a standalone system, we treat ourselves as standalone individuals, regardless of the society we live in. The same approach that sickens our society sickens our bodies; we are ill from within and from without.

So reconnecting to nature means reconnecting to every thing and every one, feeling that we are all parts of one system, which tends to all its parts, including us. But it does so only if we, too, tend to it. If we want to become healthy, we must heal our social attitude. This will heal our society, which, in turn, will heal our bodies, and the world will be a healthy, happy place to live in.

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My new article on Linkedin “Shaming Offenders Achieves the Opposite Result”

Recently, there has been an initiative to show the names and faces of murderers and sex offenders on billboards in Israel in order to shame them. Raising awareness to crime is great, but giving notoriety to criminals will achieve the exact opposite of the intended goal: It will make them proud of what they did and will inspire other potential offenders to act.

Because our society is growing increasingly narcissistic, and narcissism, as Time magazine correctly observed, is a leading cause of such actions, we must deal with the narcissism in society, if we are to prevent future perpetrators from acting. To do that, we must foster social solidarity.

Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune wrote in a piece titled “Deprive mass murderers of the fame they seek,” that “The more their names are known, the more likely they are to inspire imitators pursuing similar recognition. A 26-year-old man who killed nine people on a college campus in Oregon in 2015 had previously written of another killer, ‘A man who was known by no one, is now known by everyone. … Seems the more people you kill, the more you’re in the limelight.’”

Time magazine also wrote about the problem with giving notoriety to criminals, focusing on how criminals use social media to gain fame by hurting other people. In a piece titled “Why Facebook Live Tempts Fame-Seeking Criminals, Adam Lankford wrote, “According to Pew Research Center surveys, 51% of Americans aged 18–25 say that ‘to be famous’ is one of their generation’s most important goals in life. Similarly, as part of their professional ambitions, many adults now compete to grow their Twitter base and promote themselves online. Unfortunately, this widespread desire for fame has been accompanied by an increased blurring of the distinction between fame and infamy.” Additionally, and this is very important, Lankford adds that “Given this social context, it is not surprising that some people who cannot get fame legally will commit crimes to get fame instead. This risk is especially high for people with narcissistic tendencies, because they are so desperate for attention, and they lack empathy for those they have to trample upon to reach their goals.” Dr. Scott Bonn referred to such people in a Psychology Today article as “celebrity monsters,” and added that some “serial killers actually seek out public notoriety and actively engage in the creation of their public image.”

Clearly, giving offenders the fame they seek will not shame them. On the contrary, it will make them proud and encourage other offenders to act, and act more boldly than they would have had they not seen the fame that other offenders receive. Instead of fame, we must deal with the problem on a more systemic level. Because our society is growing increasingly narcissistic, and narcissism, as Time magazine correctly observed, is a leading cause of such actions, we must deal with the narcissism in society, if we are to prevent future perpetrators from acting.

To do that, we must foster social solidarity. As Lankford noted, people with narcissistic tendencies, which is most everyone today, are “desperate for attention,” and “lack empathy for those they have to trample upon to reach their goals.”

In a society where there is solidarity, everyone receives the attention they need. The members of such a society feel that they are dependent on each other, and therefore cultivate warm relations. The mutual dependence engenders group awareness, where people cater to the needs of their group no less than they cater to their own needs. As a result, they will be careful not to trample on others since it would pain them as if they harmed themselves.

Once people develop group awareness, it becomes easier for them to absorb the idea that their group depends on other groups just as they are dependent on their own group. That would expand their social awareness and broaden their range of social solidarity beyond their immediate group and into the community, or school, or city. Gradually, the circle of awareness will grow until it encompasses the entire country, and eventually, contingent upon the readiness of other countries, it will encompass the entire world.

Crime doesn’t happen because people feel no shame; it happens because people feel no affinity. Nurture affinity, and you have eliminated crime. This should be our main goal in all our education systems the world over. If we achieve this, we will have a safe present and a happy future. If we do not do this, no shaming, warnings, or technological gadgets to ward off criminals will help.
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Comment: Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, Tesla, and now the richest person in the world, announces plans to build an autonomous city on Mars, which can survive independently of the Earth.

He does not intend to abide the Earth’s laws outside of Earth, but instead wants to rely on the principles of self-administration “established on the basis of good will.” By 2050, he wants to send about a million people to Mars and build a city there.

My Response: What for? Even if people live well there, in peace and friendship with each other, they still will be dying, because this is the nature of biological organisms. And then what? So they will live on Mars.

What is the goal? Is it to demonstrate that people in spacesuits can live or bury themselves somewhere underground and live in their own artificial conditions?

Comment: I understand his hope is to build such a city of the future or a country of the future on Mars.

My Response: For this, you need to change people.

Comment: Maybe he thinks that we are going to make a complete mess of the Earth by 2050.

My Response: That’s for sure!

Comment: We will have such wars here…

My Response: This will happen much earlier.

Comment: Everyone will dream of escaping this planet somewhere to somewhere else because they will understand that it is impossible to survive on this planet, that is, when it will be just hell here.

My Response: If there is hell here, then we will build the same hell elsewhere.

Question: So we are not going anywhere from this planet?

Answer: Nowhere. We will have to make the right, good life on this planet. There is no place for us other than Earth. We may with great difficulties reach other planets, but we won’t be able to live there. They are not, according to thousands of parameters, adapted for people. People also will not be able to adapt to them. This is the first thing.

And the second thing is: This is not the mission of man to preserve his animalistic essence. He must rise above it, so that he would be able to fly in his spirit from star to star.

Question: Does it mean that right now I can move to another star?

Answer: Of course.

Question: Can I be on Mars right now?

Answer: You do not need spacesuits, you do not need an atmosphere, you do not need anything. You only need the correct desires, when you do not interfere with any systems, but you can be included in them in such a way that you do not bring any interference into them.

Question: What is interference? My destructive thoughts?

Answer: Of course, they are egoistic.

Question: Is this why this place won’t let me in? Because I have destructive thoughts?

Answer: Yes.

Question: What does it mean that we are so connected to the Earth?

Answer: Such conditions are created here that we can exist in this world, on this planet, in our egoism, which sets us these bodily conditions.

However, this is created artificially so that we could quickly change ourselves and prepare for a state above the earth’s conditions. Then we can move as we please, anywhere.

When we exit the boundaries of egoism, we begin to see a different universe. These planetary and stellar conditions no longer exist there. There are forces there. Matter does not matter at all. We do not see the matter, we just see a field of egoistic and altruistic forces. And it already depends on how much we begin to interact between them.

We then build our universe, the one called spiritual, because it is already built above egoism, on altruism, and we begin to build it ourselves.

Question: What does an ordinary person feel if he is in these forces?

Answer: He feels that he is already living in a system of spiritual, altruistic forces, not egoistic ones. That is, he has a completely different direction of mind, thoughts, feelings, and relationships—toward another, toward one’s neighbor.

Based on this, he already sees completely different states of matter. All this will come.

Why do we want to relocate egoists somewhere to another planet? What are they going to do there? They will make a mess of Mars. All this has neither the possibility nor the right to exist.

Question: Do you think it is better to invest all this money in education, in re-educating people, in correcting them?

Answer: Undoubtedly! This is our goal, it should be our goal—the re-education of humanity and the creation of a completely new, spiritual humanity from it. Humanity the way it is today has no future. We see this more and more clearly from day to day.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 1/11/21

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New Life 1295 – Deepening The Ties In The Groups To Which We Belong
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Bike riders in a group can attain a higher, internal level of connection if they make efforts to unite in one heart and one mind as one man on one bicycle. Leaders will share the feeling that there is a special connection amidst the group and then pay attention to the natural reactions that are invoked without any artificial pressure. Conflicts, which are a part of life, are used to increase the connection.

For example, if someone is late, the time is used to speak about the essence of the connection, concessions, and ascending above the ego. The group accepts the late member and connects even more as a result of his tardiness. If the group aims to increase the connection between them, they will really float together within the harmony of nature and ride on the road to happiness, pleasure, and success!
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1295 – Deepening The Ties In The Groups To Which We Belong,” 1/24/21

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is peace?“

In Hebrew, the word for peace (“Shalom“) comes from the word for wholeness and perfection (“Shlemut“). This implies that if we want to achieve wholeness and perfection, we have to get there via peace.

Peace could thus include the understanding of our past and our current state, as well as truces and various agreements, but what we are most certain about is our final destination: that we would like to progress toward a perfect and whole state.

A perfect and whole state is one where various opposites complement and complete each other. As such, contrary to what is often thought about peace, it is impossible that there would be peace without war, and we should not focus on trying to bring about peace by convincing or forcing others to think like us, because it will not happen.

A state of complementary, wholeness and perfection exists in no person individually, but it comes about when we each detach from our individual selves and create a new entity in our positive connections to each other above our egos.

Peace is thus a long process involving education so that each of us can detach from our current states and reach a state where we are together, where we need to adhere to the new perfect and whole state that we build above—and disconnected from—ourselves, and where we are all connected as one.

In order to reach such a state, we need to draw the positive force of nature into our attitudes and relations to each other, in order to make peace between us so that it will start helping us operate against our egos. This process takes place without suppressing or erasing our egos. On the contrary, together with our egos, nature’s positive force will transform us into beings that have a tendency to love and bestow to one another above the divisive human ego. In other words, we draw the positive force of nature to envelop and cover our egos with its coating of love, bestowal and connection, and it will grant us the ability to behave correctly and reach a state of peace.

Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

Image: Graph representing the metadata of thousands of archive documents, documenting the social network of hundreds of League of Nations personals. Grandjean, Martin (2014). “La connaissance est un réseau”. Les Cahiers du Numérique 10 (3): 37-54. DOI:10.3166/LCN.10.3.37-54

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Prophecy is a state when a person rises above the degree he is at and wants to raise to the next degree, but he has not yet reached it and he simply sees the future.

That is, it is also a dream, but on a higher level when a person can see many degrees ahead.

The period of the prophecy was about 2,500 to 3,000 years ago.

All the prophets predicted what will happen starting from our days and onward because we are the first generation that begins implementing the spiritual mechanics in practice. Therefore, they talked about how we will implement it on ourselves, how we will advance.

Until now, the process of human development happened automatically. However, starting from our time, we incorporate freewill in order to gradually realize the prophetic degrees.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #5

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What is the first step in terms of enlightenment?“

As a background, the study of the wisdom of Kabbalah is a research of our spiritual enlightenment all the way to full spiritual attainment. It explores our thoughts, desires and the reality we attain in our senses. Below spiritual attainment, we also undergo degrees of attainment in our world. During our spiritual preparation period in this world, we start learning and understanding the connections between spiritual objects, however such understanding is incomparable to the sensation of spiritual attainment.

Kabbalists name spiritual degrees after having attained them. If we only partially attain a degree, it is considered that we are its “son,” which is why we are called “Bnei Adam” (“the sons of Adam,” which in Hebrew is the term for “human beings”), since we are all parts of the degree called “Adam,” and our goal is to fully attain that degree—the root of our soul.

When we rise to a spiritual degree, we feel what transpires in it, attain its qualities, and perceive and sense the Creator according to that degree. With further spiritual ascent, what we perceived in the previous degrees will also change.

It is important to understand that only our perception and sensation changes in this entire process. It is not that each of the 125 spiritual degrees are each playing a different film. However, there is a simple upper light that fills reality, and by attaining certain spiritual qualities, we feel part of that light, which we call a “world.” We can also feel a tiny part of that light in our inborn egoistic qualities, and we call it “this world” or “our world.”

From the level of our world, our spiritual awakening takes place when we receive, as is written, the “posterior of the holy soul,” meaning the final and lowest degree of the soul, referred to as a “point.” This point becomes inserted into our hearts, i.e., into our desire to receive, or in other words, amid the human ego.

Without the point in the heart, we would remain as animals, i.e., our desires would not aspire outside our world. The point in the heart, i.e., the beginning of spirituality, is the initial spiritual awakening we get to potentially elevate us above the animate degree into spirituality.

The process of growing the point in the heart through which we attain spirituality is called the process of building what Kabbalah calls a spiritual Partzuf. All of our spiritual attainments take place in this Partzuf. We can identify whether we have a point in the heart if we find ourselves asking about the meaning and purpose of life, why is there suffering in the world, what is reality, where are we from, where are we now, and where are we headed, who are we, and other related existential questions. The wisdom of Kabbalah was made in order to answer these questions by providing us with a method for spiritual attainment, where we receive the answers as a clear perception and sensation of the spiritual reality in a series of stages.

Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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Question: What influence do Kabbalistic books have on us?

Answer: A positive influence. First, they tell a person what one lives in, what is happening in it, why this world is spinning around us, and what influence we can have on it.

We begin to understand how we can change the world and our existence in it with the help of certain actions, how much the laws of nature are adapted for us to use them, and to what extent  people can adapt themselves to the correct application of these laws.

In general, Kabbalah is the science of the correct connection of man with nature.

Question: Does a person feel this influence on himself?

Answer: Kabbalah leads one precisely to a sensory and rational perception so that with the help of both mind and feelings a person would correctly direct the influence on changing his nature.

Is it possible to feel this through a book?

Answer: Not just to feel. The book guides him, explains how to do it. The correct application of Kabbalah should change a person’s entire destiny.

Question: If he knew that, he would probably only read these books, right?

Answer: Yes. However, here everything depends on the strength of the desire. It is not like you pick up a book, open it, and suddenly, like in Harry Potter, everything changes and lights up. No.

Yet, if a person desires, then by changing himself, he changes the influence of the surrounding world on himself.
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From KabTV’s “Questions about Kabbalistic Books” 10/22/19

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Question: Does man remain free by acquiring the nature of the Creator? It is written that he becomes a slave of the Creator.

Answer: This is written to show us to what extent we enter a different state. By acquiring the property of bestowal and love, the property of mutual connection with each other, through this property of absolute mutual support, connection, and obligations, we sign a completely different social contract: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Everyone must achieve this state. By doing it, we begin to feel absolute freedom. It seems a paradox, by choosing the principle of not being free, man enters absolute freedom.

Our egoism is purposely created in such a way that it pushes us to the necessity to reach connection with others so that we in practice “love our neighbor.”

Man is not free, and the evil inclination is his nature. The only free choice that he has from the point of view of Kabbalah is to grasp this and to want to rise above his nature, which is identical to the attainment of the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/29/19

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic of “Prayer” 

Selected Highlights

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