My new article on Linkedin “Some Lives Are Worth More in Our Egoistic World”

Covid-19 has claimed nearly 350,000 lives in Brazil, vaccinations are infuriatingly sluggish, and thousands of casualties are added to the tally each day. In the meantime, European countries have access to vaccines, and their daily tallies are in the lower triple digits. Yet, the tragedy unfolding in Brazil gets little to no media attention while the struggle in Europe, which, by the way, could have been even more successful if it weren’t for bureaucratic incompetence, is getting the full spotlight. Are Brazilian lives worth less?

As I have stated countless times, we’re in a different time now, when the interconnections between us impose an all-encompassing solution. We will not be healed from the virus, in one mutation or another, until we heal our egoism. Until then, any reprieve from its whip will be short-lived, and every blow that will follow will be more painful than the former.

Judging by the media coverage, the answer is clear. However, in truth, the answer is even worse than “Yes, they are worth less.” The uneven attention that the tragedy unfolding in Brazil, and in a few other countries in South America, demonstrates the level of self-absorption we have reached. It is now at a point where it is impossible to answer the question of the value of life simply because no one gives it a single thought. Life, it seems, is not worth discussing, but only rating and coverage.

This is not news, of course, but when it becomes so patent, it’s still worth mentioning, even if only to remind ourselves of the nature of our being. Humans, we are seeing once again, are selfish to the core.

Let’s ask ourselves a question: If, for the sake of argument, we could do whatever we want, whenever we wanted, and no one, absolutely no one, would know about it, point the finger at us, punish us, or reproach us in any way, what would our world be like? How would we behave if that were the case? As I’m sure you can imagine, we have much more to learn about our nature than has been revealed. Perhaps it would be wise to imagine what we’d do if we could rather than wait for it to manifest, since we see that gradually, what we do not imagine, materializes in reality.

If I could give humanity the best present, I’d make everyone see the real human nature as quickly and as harmlessly as possible. This would make us search sincerely for a correction of our nature rather than apply makeshift fixes that let the fester swell up even worse until it painfully explodes.

Still, the pandemic won’t let up. As I have stated countless times, we’re in a different time now, when the interconnections between us impose an all-encompassing solution. We will not be healed from the virus, in one mutation or another, until we heal our egoism. Until then, any reprieve from its whip will be short-lived, and every blow that will follow will be more painful than the former.

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Question: The parting of the Red Sea is one of the miracles, a supernatural phenomenon, that has been debated for more than 3,000 years: did it actually happen? How would you comment on this?

Answer: I would say that any phenomenon that can spiritually occur to any person during his special spiritual development must happen once in our corporeal world in its physical manifestation.
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From KabTV’s “Spiritual States” 4/2/21

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New Life 1097 – What Causes Disease?
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Nitzah Mazoz

The root of all disease is bad thoughts either about the person himself or about the person’s environment. Imbalance at the level of thought disrupts balance at the corporeal level through the nervous system. New disease appears as the human ego becomes stronger. Cancer, for example, is an endless, excessive desire to receive that causes a cancerous cell to devour surrounding cells. If a person would only want to give to others, think good thoughts about others, and bring about a positive connection between everyone, nothing bad would penetrate that person and the situation throughout the entire network would improve. Healing is also achieved through thoughts. When the principle “and you shall love your friend as yourself” permeates the world, all of us will be healthy, whole, and happy, even in the face of death.
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From KabTV’s “New Life 1097 – What Causes Disease?” 3/21/19

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “How important is sense of humor in one’s life?“

Nature gave us a sense of humor in order to transcend and criticize ourselves, and laugh at what nature does to us.

A sense of humor lets us see ourselves from a higher degree, and thus can also help elevate us outside of our current degree to a higher one. Viewing and laughing at ourselves from aside can spark an inner scrutiny into who we truly are, and whether we can be more than what we currently are.

Kabbalists not only laugh at themselves but also constantly criticize who and what they are, and how they can change. If we know how to laugh at ourselves, then as it is written, “God has brought me laughter” (Genesis 21:6) from which we can grow.

I personally like jokes about human weaknesses and how we can rise above them. Such jokes help us develop, because if we know that we have such negative qualities, then we can work on rising above them.

Everything has been created for our development, including a sense of humor. A sense of humor gives us the strength and the ability to develop.

On the other hand, we should never make fun of others. We should laugh only about qualities that exist generally in humanity, as by so doing, we can highlight weak spots that we can change in ourselves, and as such progress to more and more balance and harmony among each other and with nature.

Written/edited by Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
Photo by Siviwe Kapteyn on Unsplash.

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Comment: A major trend in the world today is loneliness. A minister for loneliness has already been appointed in England and now a minister for loneliness has been appointed in Japan.

Irina writes to us: “What a terrible loneliness! How I came to this, I don’t understand. I was always friendly, open, and suddenly—alone! Empty home, empty heart, the phone is silent. And I do not want to call anyone. So lonely that I have no strength! And so much loneliness around me! How can we live alone?”

My Response: You cannot. Were you to create a club for the lonely, they would not go there anyway.

Question: I wonder why? It is true, she and everyone else sit at home for some reason. You must seek them out, ministries must be built for them. It is a problem!

Answer: The fact is that no ministers will help here, no decisions from above, from governments, will help. These are just pretenses to show that we care for the lonely. It will not help in any way.

People realize that they cannot find the meaning of life in marriage. They cannot find the meaning of life in work, and naturally, not in friendship. Not in anything. So what is the point? Why should I get out of bed in the morning? There is no reason, no stimulus for moving, thinking, talking, or doing anything at all. The world freezes as a result.

And what is the point? Only if we discover the meaning of life, which is above this state. Only if we somehow manage to tell others about it, to show it, to shake people up and awaken them. Otherwise, frankly, it will all end with someone selling pills that will put you to sleep forever.

And people will buy them. No doubt! They will gladly take a pill with a sip of water, lie down, and that’s it. What happens afterward doesn’t matter.

Comment: This does not sound very logical. If a man feels bad, he would logically start looking.

My Response: And what can he do if he does not see any way out? Why live?

Question: And connecting with others, at least some kind of connection?!

Answer: They gather in some clubs, but that ends too.

Question: This is not the solution?

Answer: Of course not.

Question: That is, until a person penetrates into the meaning of life.  Is this happening now and that is why we see this trend?

Answer: Yes. A person has to break through a barrier that manifests itself in complete apathy toward everything. Only then can he discover a whole new life. That is, in a way, it is death. Passing through this barrier, we discover that there is another life, a different kind, and now I can start living it.

A person must realize, agree with, and want to give up this life—this constant egoistic pursuit of something. Once he agrees with this in some form, then he is ready for the next life.

Question: What is your advice to a lonely person who feels all alone to the point of a dire need in his soul?

Answer: My advice: go to our website and read. There is nothing else that I could recommend. From the bottom of my heart, I would prefer not to say this, but I cannot offer anything else.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 2/22/21

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“From the top of Snir and Hermon is Mount Sinai, to which they drew near and gathered at its foot, as it is written, “And they stood at the foot of the mountain.” “From the lions’ dens” are the sons of Seir, whom the Creator invited to receive the Torah but they did not wish to receive it. “From the mountains of the leopards” are the sons of Ishmael, as it is written, “The Lord came from Sinai, and rose from Seir into them; He shined forth from Mount Pharan, and He came from the ten thousand holy ones,” and Pharan are the sons of Ishmael.

What is, ”And He came from the ten thousand holy ones”? When the Creator wished to give the Torah to Israel, the camps of upper angels came and said, ”O Lord, our Lord, how glorious is Your name in all the earth, whose majesty is rehearsed above the heavens.” They asked for the Torah be given to them and not to Israel.” (The Book of Zohar)

The forces called “Esau” or “Seir” are offered the Torah—correction. But they do not want to correct themselves in a person because they are absolutely egoistic and cannot imagine how they can fill themselves without being egoistic: “Then why do I live? My whole desire is to live happily and comfortably.”

And they are absolutely right, because they do not feel any opportunities in themselves to exist in the form in which the Torah offers them—to rise above themselves. A person feels this in himself, in his properties: “What am I doing? I lose everything.”

The next state is “Ishmael” from the word “Ishma El,” “heard by the Creator.” What does Ishmael say? “I also cannot accept the Torah as a means of correction. After all, it offers using myself above my desire to be fulfilled. I am in no way capable of this.”

It turns out that above these two basic, fundamental properties in man, we are in no way capable of rising into the spiritual property in which the upper force, the Creator, is located. How can we still cope with this problem to raise a person to the level of the Creator?

For this, the Creator manifests the third property of these two properties. It gradually arises from within a person and is called “Israel,” directed directly to the Creator. This property, which manifests itself between the forces of Esau (Seir) and Ishmael, can rise above them with the help of the upper force and become equal to the Creator.

Israel is not the right property (Ishmael) and not the left (Seir), but the middle between them. When it rises and connects with the Creator, then it begins to pull and raise both the right and left forces out of their state.
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From KabTV’s “The Power of The Book of Zohar” #9

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Question: What research is Kabbalah based on when it speaks of the relationship between a man and a woman?

Answer: I believe that not a single science except Kabbalah has the basis to talk about a man, a woman, their relationship, their nature, where they come from, why they were created in this way and exist in this relationship.

All this comes from the fact that Kabbalah opens up to us in the upper world, in our roots. Based on them, we can already talk about something.

Why does the Torah say: in the beginning, one man was created and then he was divided in two? Why are there two genders and not one creature that either reproduces or does not reproduce at all? All this is revealed by the science of Kabbalah.

It explores our spiritual roots, that is, the forces from which the spiritual worlds gradually developed. In the process of their development, these forces descended, and then a very small spark, the energy of the spiritual world, burst into the volume of the then empty universe and began to create matter in it: stars, galaxies, nebulae, planets, until, in the end, it created the Earth. So life began to develop on our planet.

These processes are studied in Kabbalah. And if we are talking about the end of creation, which goes from top to bottom, then a man, a woman, their historical development, their relationship with each other, and what they have come to today, all this comes from the same spiritual roots. Therefore, asking a question about the relationship between a man and a woman on the earthly level, we cannot understand the answer.

And although I have great respect for psychologists, sociologists, sexologists, and other scientists, I can say that they have only small fragmentary knowledge from observations in our world, which are constantly changing and contradicting each other. And Kabbalah answers this from a single root.

But the problem is that Kabbalah was hidden until now because the world did not yet have suitable conditions for people to start practicing it. They did not have any need for it.

Therefore, for a long time, Kabbalah did not develop attached to our world. Only now is it starting to be engaged in it.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up. Common Law Marriage” 8/11/09

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic “Connection Into One Ten”

Selected Highlights 

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Every year we mark the Holocaust Remembrance Day to honor the memory of the victims—six million European Jews. However, as years go by distancing us more and more from this event, the memory of it begins to fade.

Many young people have not heard the stories about Holocaust in their families and have never met with witnesses of these terrible events.

Therefore, there is a fear that the memory of the Holocaust may disappear because after a certain number of years there will be no living witnesses of the Holocaust, and there will be no one to pass this story on to the next generations.

This should not surprise us, because these are laws of nature. Things that are not in front of our eyes gradually cease to be important, and if we do not want to lose them, we must constantly renew them as if reviving those pictures.

No matter how much we tried to maintain this memory, arranged study trips to concentration camps for school children, it does not help much. As living witnesses of the Holocaust disappear, a new generation that is not related to this time will no longer be able to observe this tradition the way it used to be.

I was born in Belarus, in a place where Nazis carried out mass executions of Jews. In Vitebsk, the city of my childhood, there was also a ghetto, which was destroyed. Many of my relatives died in the Holocaust.

Although I was born after the war and knew about it only from stories, this memory was still very alive in our family. I was raised by people who managed to escape the Holocaust, and they told me about those who died. This left a very deep impression on me because I have lived in this atmosphere since I was born.

However, if modern young people have not heard about the Holocaust from their loved ones, have not spoken with eyewitnesses, then for them, it is as if it did not happen. We cannot blame them for that. It makes no sense to sit and cry, but it is very important to determine our attitude to the Holocaust, to analyze again its causes and consequences. Otherwise, we will not get rid of the Holocaust or we will even come to a new one.

We must draw conclusions from the Holocaust and change ourselves so that it will never happen again. We must understand why it happened and who is to blame. This is serious scrutiny that we must perform within each of us and ultimately with all of humanity because everyone participated in this.

How did it happen that the nations of the world accepted and readily implemented Hitler’s plan without any questions or doubts?

First of all, we need to understand who the people of Israel are, why they are called that, and what their purpose is. Why did they survive after so many generations of scattering and why did all of mankind pay so much attention to it? Until we answer all these questions we will not be able to understand what we are talking about at all.

Why do all nations make some kind of claims against Jews? It is clear that there are quarrels between neighbors, but why does everyone have complaints against Jews? We need to investigate this phenomenon and understand the exact causes. After all, this is not only history but an actual, global problem that does not disappear but only occasionally calms down a little and then intensifies again.

This intensification does not really depend on the Jews or the nations of the world but simply happens because a suitable period in history comes. We see that anti-Semitism is deeply rooted in nature: there is such a concept as Israel, the people of Israel, the land of Israel. It is a spiritual concept that lives in the world and exists from the beginning of creation to the very end. This problem will continue to exist until Israel brings the entire creation to the correct form.

This is what the Torah and, even more clearly, the wisdom of Kabbalah says. Without the Kabbalistic explanation of the causes of anti-Semitism, we cannot find a solution regarding the Holocaust and, in general, to all of history, to the entire creation. After all, this is not an earthly problem of the people of Israel, but the confrontation of the forces of nature, like a physical, chemical, or mathematical law. There are special relations between the parts of creation as absolute, unchangeable laws that are set and cannot be violated.

The central law among all these principles concerns the existence of the people of Israel, the land of Israel, the beginning and the end of creation, and the entire process between them regarding any particle of the universe. All this is connected together in one system in which we are included as a central force.

Natural anti-Semitism is the consequence of every person’s inclination for bestowal, love for his neighbor, for the Creator, for the upper force. Although this force is hated and rejected by everyone, it exists, and to the same extent there is also a force of rejection and hatred toward those who represent this force in our world, that is, for the quality called Yehudi from the word “Yehud – unity.“
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From KabTV’s “A Conversation with Journalists” 4/6/21

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