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The whole nature of our world is the desire to fill oneself—egoism. #Capitalism distorts this nature the least. #Socialists want to see the world in the quality of bestowal. However, this hidden force of nature can only be revealed by mastering Kabbalah.
… Otherwise, it leads to a collapse! As we’ve seen in the USSR.

Everyone is advocating for #democracy. This is certainly good, if people know how to use it the right way. But when it is completely detached from the aspiration toward good bonds, democracy turns into permissiveness and crude #anarchy, leading to #wars...
From Twitter, 7/11/21

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Comment: I recently saw a photograph of a prescription given to an elderly woman by a doctor on the Internet. For the past year, she has maintained a distance of six feet from others, even with family members, as recommended. She got vaccinated and still continued to follow these rules. She did not even come close to her beloved granddaughter who was born sickly, and whom she had cared for. It was very difficult for her, but she was more afraid for her loved ones, not for herself.

This woman began to get very sick. They were preparing to say goodbye to her. Medicine did not help, nothing helped, and then the doctor in despair wrote her a prescription: “You are allowed to hug your granddaughter.” She hugged her and began to recover.

My Response: Naturally. That person deprived herself of powerful sensations. It is impossible to live like this. She was already killing herself with this relationship with others.

Question: What is a hug? What is this revitalization?

Answer: This is a great power. If a person is deprived of the feeling of love, even animals—we know this from animals; they perceive it very clearly—it turns their whole life upside down. Nothing can be done, we must love each other.

Comment: In general, this woman could communicate with her granddaughter at a distance, but this was not enough for her. She needed just physical contact—to hug her granddaughter.

My Response: Of course. Nothing else.

Question: Now that we have been separated like this, and then suddenly, perhaps, we will be brought together, we will be able to understand what love is after all. We will understand that if we are deprived of it, this is not life. Was that why we were separated so that we would approach this embrace differently?

Answer: Yes. I agree. The distance was created for us on purpose so that we would have a real craving for each other.
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From KabTV’s: “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 4/1/21

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My new article on Linkedin “What Is Purposeful Criticism?”

Criticism is a trait that exists in all of us, to one degree or another. It is a direct result of our egotistical nature. Egoism constantly pushes us to test and measure ourselves against others in order to gain the best and most comfortable position in relation to them. But this constant comparison sits in our head as a burden, highlights the flaws and promptly locates the shortcomings in every matter.

Compulsive criticism makes us lose patience and forbearance and leads us to reject anything that seems foreign or different to us. According to the perception of the ego, we place ourselves at the center of creation; therefore, we demand to be accepted unconditionally the way we are. Is that something negative? No, it is a natural feeling. But such acceptance does not work the other way around. We judge others and if we see they are in a better position or have better qualities in our eyes, we feel disappointed and even depressed because we constantly aim at being perceived as more successful and superior compared to the rest.

The endless comparisons to other people prevent us from attaining good and healthy relationships. It causes us to be in constant friction between each other and prevents us from reaching agreement and mutual understanding. And if everyone cares only for his or her own goodness and justice, then a beautiful bond with others can never be formed.

There are no tricks for tackling this judgmental approach that our egoism compels us to assume, no panacea works on it, no psychological exercises or philosophical arguments, nor can it be repressed and suppressed. Why is this so? Because human nature pushes us forward to achieve only what is in our own benefit and to look for faults solely outside us.

“One judges others according to his own flaws,” our sages wrote. The imperfections we see in others are actually our own imperfections. They are a projection of what we need to improve in ourselves, what we need to fix by changing our whole worldview from egoistic to altruistic, and learning to see others as an integral part of ourselves.

We need to begin engaging in a new kind of criticism in which we start scrutinizing ourselves, our lives, our nature, in order to balance our overweening egoism that evokes destructive criticism of others. Self-examination will help us to rise and observe our condition from an elevated perspective, and to awaken great forces that lie in the depths of nature to help us discover a new attitude toward our surrounding environment.

Everything that happens in our lives is handed down from above, so we must look toward the future instead of agonizing over the past. The wisdom of Kabbalah teaches us that we cannot truly change anything by ourselves, but can only attract the positive force of nature through our efforts toward good relations with others. This force in nature will be able to counterbalance the negativity that is in us and balance our natural egoism. If we attract the positive force, we will stop being judgmental of our neighbors and there will be no need to “eat ourselves up” with guilt about the past. As it is written, “The fool foldeth his hands together, and eateth his own flesh” (Ecclesiastes 4:5)

Therefore, the revelation of our selfish being as a result of self-scrutiny should act as a springboard by which we leap to act in an opposite loving and caring way toward others, above the ego. If this self-accounting becomes part of our new nature, what is it that we will judge? We will measure the proximity or separation between us and others, and the strength of the efforts needed to bridge that gap and draw us closer to each other. This is the only kind of useful and purposeful criticism or evaluation we should make if we want to reach balance and improve our lives.

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My new article on Linkedin “On Spaghetti, Faith, and Love of Others”

Today, many people tend to think that religion is a thing of the past. Many believe that science is the cure for all our troubles, and that if we only listen to scientists and follow their instructions, all will be well in our world. Others believe in ethical living and root for social justice and equality. The problem is that all believers, religious and otherwise, do so with religious zeal. Many of them regard anyone who disagrees with them as an enemy and will go to great lengths to “defeat” the enemy. The end result of all that is not that religion has ended, but that it has taken on countless new forms, some of which are markedly “unholy.”

Years ago, while I was working on my PhD, I learned that there are approximately 3,800 different religions and belief systems worldwide. Today, there are probably many more than that, as human imagination knows no boundaries. In fact, some people even take the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster seriously!

It is not a problem that people believe in different things. On the contrary, kabbalists relish diversity, since the more diverse we are, the richer our society becomes, as long as we maintain its cohesion. But when we shun social cohesion, when we maintain that our belief is the only legitimate faith, we have a problem. The current belief in science, in Western philosophy, or in other social dogmas, is as religious as the belief in this or that deity.

In the 1940s, the religious belief of the Germans in the superiority of their race led to the most horrendous consequences the world has ever seen. Their belief was purportedly based on science, not on a deity, yet led to worse consequences than any religion has caused so far.

Shortly after the end of World War II, Baal HaSulam, a great kabbalist and thinker who wrote extensively about world affairs and foresaw many of the processes that we are living through today, wrote a collection of “notes” to himself. They were thoughts he had had about the world and its future. After his passing, they were collected under the title The Writings of the Last Generation. Baal HaSulam used that term, but he did not mean that his generation would be the last generation of humanity, but that humanity has reached the final stages of its development and that it is moving toward a new level of existence. His aspiration in jotting his “notes” was to formulate his thoughts on how humanity could spare itself the recurrence of the atrocities of World War II.

Baal HaSulam realized that people are inherently religious. Therefore, he saw no point in trying to abolish religion. Instead, he wanted to add another layer to existing beliefs, which would enable all of humanity to unite above their differences. He called that layer a “religion of bestowal.” With its help, he hoped to avoid what had happened with Germany. In a note titled “Nazism Is Not a German Patent,” he jotted: “If we remember that most people are not idealists, then there is no choice but religion, from which manners and justice naturally emanate.” However, he did not refer to religions as we know them, but to a “religion of bestowal.” Elsewhere, he wrote that since human nature is inherently egoistic, it will “necessarily induce the destruction of the world unless they accept the religion of bestowal.”

As stated earlier, Baal HaSulam did not oppose diversity. On the contrary, he relished it. Moreover, he warned against limiting diversity among people since interactions between views is the engine of growth and development. According to Baal HaSulam, while nations should embrace a “religion of bestowal,” each nation should maintain “its own religion and tradition, and one must not interfere in the other.”

Moreover, in his essay “The Freedom,” Baal HaSulam speaks with reverence about preserving people’s basic tendencies and ideas. In his words, “Anyone who eradicates a tendency from an individual and uproots it from him causes the loss of that sublime and wondrous concept … for that tendency will never again emerge. … From the above-said,” he continues, “we learn what a terrible wrong those nations that force their reign on minorities inflict, depriving them of freedom without allowing them to lead their lives according to the tendencies they have inherited from their ancestors.” In conclusion, he adds, anyone “can understand the necessity to preserve the freedom of the individual … for we can see how all the nations that ever fell, throughout the generations, came to it only due to their oppression of minorities and individuals, which had therefore rebelled against them and ruined them. Hence, it is clear to all that peace cannot exist in the world unless we take into consideration the freedom of the individual.” But because we all inherently believe that only we are right, and everyone else is wrong, even if our deity is spaghetti, for this sublime goal to succeed, we should place the value of love of others above all, or as Baal HaSulam calls it, establish a “religion of bestowal,” as the overarching value.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What would be the best use for the trillion dollars a year spent by the United States and other countries on military budgets?“

The best use of budgets currently used for military purposes would be to move them into spreading the knowledge about humanity’s structure, the science about the general reality, the research on why the world is in such a problematic state, the awareness of the process humanity is undergoing and what it is set to further undergo, the reason and the goal of human development, and how within such a universal picture, we inflict harm upon ourselves.

We should open up this general picture of ourselves, our world, and nature in our times, research nature, and by doing so, discover the extent of harm we inflict upon ourselves and on nature—as a means of correcting the way we think and act.

We need to see how we think and act out of balance with the general law of nature.

Nature relates to us altruistically, in a way that gives and sustains life. In response, we express an imbalanced and opposite egoistic attitude toward this law.

If the knowledge about how nature works in an altruistic, interconnected and interdependent manner, and how we operate in egoistic opposition to it, then we will each understand what we need to do as individuals and as a human society in order to save ourselves from further suffering.

By doing so, we will find ourselves in a harmonious world full of happiness and love, and we will never need to use money and capital for military purposes. On the contrary, we will all share money and capital for the purpose of bringing about a positive, harmonious and balanced life for all.

Humanity will eventually reach such a state. There is a developmental force in nature, which is guiding us to a state where we will see that we need to become positively connected, where human society will function similar to a healthy organism of cells and organs each working individually and collectively for the benefit of the whole. In short, the law of universal love, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” will materialize in our relations, and then all of our forces and qualities will become used for our common benefit.

Therefore, the best use of what is currently being used as military budgets would be to provide us all with a new form of education, where we will learn what nature demands of us.

Based on a Q&A with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on September 9, 2006. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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My new article on Linkedin “Will a City of Torah Save Mexico’s Jews?”

Ciudad de la Tora (City of Torah) is the name of a new small town being built outside the town Ixtapan de la Salle, some 70 miles south of Mexico City. The founders aim to address two problems: housing prices and antisemitism. The affordable housing compound will include all the required facilities for maintaining a Jewish Orthodox way of life, and the community will consist solely of observant Jews. Another reason for establishing the new town is the situation in the capital, where Orthodox Jews say their children are afraid to leave their homes for fear of becoming targets of antisemitic attacks.

In many ways, this idea reminds me of a Shtetl. Shtetls were small Jewish towns that existed all over Central and Eastern Europe until the Holocaust wiped them out. If we are to learn from history, Jewish towns are not a permanent solution to antisemitism.

In fact, even the Jewish state did not solve the problem of antisemitism. Since its establishment, Israel has attracted increasing backlash from the world. Theodor Herzl, the Zionist visionary, had the right idea when he envisioned a Jewish national and political entity that would be a safe haven for Jews. However, establishing a separate city, or even a country for Jews, is not enough to eliminate antisemitism. For this to happen, Jews must commit to carrying out their duty to the world, and they do have a duty.

As I’ve shown in countless essays and two books (see links below), the Jewish nation was not established for its own sake, but for the sake of humanity. This is why as soon as we established our nationhood, at the foot of Mt. Sinai, we were tasked with being “a light unto nations.” We were declared a nation only after we pledged to unite “as one man with one heart,” and the unity we achieved is the light we intended to shine to the nations. Following our initial commitment, it took us another forty years to solidify our unity, but once we achieved a critical level of it, we were given our own land, the promised “Land of Israel.”

For nearly two thousand years afterwards, our annals reflected our level of unity. Every time we divided, we were exiled from the Land of Israel, and every time we reestablished our unity, we were given back the land and thrived. But at some point, during the first century CE, we fell into such mutual hatred that we were exiled for two millennia.

Reestablishing the Jewish statehood took more than two millennia, centuries of murder and abuse that our people suffered during the exile, and finally the extermination of a third of our nation, nearly the entire European Jewry. Yet, our renewed sovereignty did not renew our unity. This is something we must achieve on our own. This is, in fact, the reason that the nations gave it to us following the Holocaust, besides the obvious reason of sympathy after the atrocities we suffered at the hands of the Nazis and their accomplices.

Notwithstanding, since the nations gave us the land, they also expect us to do our duty, to be a role model of unity and exemplify the Jewish motto, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If we do not carry out our mission, we will lose our sovereignty once again. It may happen through another exile, through an influx of Muslims who will change the demographics of the country, or through some yet unknown way. Either way, if we don’t do what we must, and become an example of unity above all our differences and hatred, humanity will hate us and torment us as it has been doing for the past two millennia.

We, Jews, the descendants of outcasts from all over the ancient Fertile Crescent who gathered around Abraham Our Father to hear about love of others, must do now what our forefathers did then: unite above our hatred and thus become “a light unto nations.” As then, so now, if we do this, we will thrive. If we don’t, we will break apart.

For more on this topic, refer to the books Like a Bundle of Reeds: Why unity and mutual guarantee are today’s call of the hour, and The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism, Historical facts on anti-Semitism as a reflection of Jewish social discord
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In order to rise in the spiritual both states are necessary: ascents and descents. The main thing is not to be in an unconscious state or even worse, in a purely corporeal, animal state. The still, vegetative, and animal degrees belong to our egoistic world, and the speaking degree is determined by our attitude to the Creator.

And this is why it is so important to stay in either a state of ascent or descent. The descent is also important because without it, it is impossible to appreciate the ascents and it is impossible to find new vessels for the next ascent. Therefore, both of these states—light and darkness—are correct, legitimate, and move us forward.

It is advisable to pass through the intermediate, gray states, neither this nor that, as soon as possible and try to be in the state of ascent again. And if there is no ascent, then be in the descent in order to prepare yourself for the ascent. It all should be new in our eyes each and every day. The night is necessary in order to approach the next day.

If we appreciate both of these states, then “darkness will shine like light”; we will feel that darkness comes to us from the reverse side of the same Creator and we will attribute both the ups and downs to Him.

They say my “beloved is like a gazelle.” The Creator seemingly runs away from us; however, He turns His head and face back so that we will yearn for Him and chase after Him. This is why we measure both these states, either a state of coming closer to the Creator or a state of being apart from Him.

We do not notice the point from which we begin to descend and change our attitude to spirituality, the group, the Creator. The fact is that our descent is an ascent to the next degree, only in the reverse form. “One is elevated in sanctity and never lowered.” And that is why we call the fall an ascent of the left line. It is an addition of vessels we did not have before, but they are broken and therefore we feel even more darkness in them than ever before.

And we complain that there is no point in working if it leads to such unpleasant states. Is this really the reward for our work? But what can we do if we need additional vessels to attain the Creator? This is the way of our development: left line, right line, and again left, right.

No one likes being in the left line. But if we are in a group, we will be reminded very quickly that the left line must grow, so that by correcting it, we will reveal the Creator, get closer to Him.
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From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/2/21, “Raising Ourselves”

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The first wave of coronavirus mostly hit mostly elderly people. But the next waves are already affecting more and more younger people. It’s like the Egyptian plagues that started from afar and then came to blows that were more and more significant for correction.

The Creator does not change His plan of creation. But if an angel does not perform his work, the Creator puts another angel in his place. Therefore, when several waves of the pandemic pass: the second, third, and fourth, children and even babies may be under attack then. We must understand that the Creator will not compromise with us. We should not hope that the virus will disappear by itself or we will be able to find a miracle cure for it.

We will have to reveal that the good connection between us is the only medicine that destroys the coronavirus. This is not an ordinary virus, but a consequence of our lack of spiritual correction, that is, egoism. Where there is egoism, there will be more and more viruses until Pharaoh himself says that this is the hand of the Creator, like at the time of the exodus from Egypt.

From the beginning of creation the same scenario is repeated, only in different forms and with other characters. In essence nothing changes. Spiritual forces act according to the same scheme and lead everyone to unity. Only the material scenery changes while the spiritual essence remains unchanged.

Our egoism is Pharaoh; the Creator is still the same Creator. Moses is all Kabbalists and the Kabbalistic method that pulls us forward to correction. We need to follow it as much as possible. It is possible to get out of this Egypt, out of the coronavirus pandemic, only by uniting.

It is said that “the physician has been given permission to heal,” and every specialist (financier, economist, lawyer, etc.), leader or individual is given the opportunity to correct the world in his sphere. And since our society is corrupted, every specialist is corrupted, and he is given the right to correct himself, as well as to correct society.

It is so for every person. This is the meaning of the rule: “It follows that the physician has been given permission to heal.” After all, there is the Creator behind every person. And if I want to see it this way, then it will affect me privately in a way that I will be cured.

An economist, a lawyer, or a financier in a corrected form are all doctors who cure the flaws of human society. They are setting up a system for me, not a physical one like a physician, but a universal social one, in order to bring it into a state called Adam, one man with one heart.

And then we will see how everyone acts for the sake of healing and that the Creator has given everyone the right to cure, not just the physiological body, but our common body, the human, social system.

The most important thing is the attitude of the patient to the healer, which means, the patient to the doctor. Each specialist in his field can be considered a “doctor,” and each of us who needs help can be considered a “patient.”

Now there are many complaints about medicine and doctors in regard to the coronavirus, but we ourselves have built this corrupted, egoistic system over thousands of years of human history. Now we have finally seen the light and are beginning to see its shortcomings. This is called the revelation of evil, what is called the “seven hungry years,” in which we begin to feel and reap the results of the egoistic system that we have built throughout our entire history.

All that remains for us is to turn to the Creator for correction. The same story of the exodus of Egypt repeats itself: the blows show us that we are at the mercy of nature, or in other words, the Creator, and we must somehow correct ourselves, change our attitude to what is happening.

The first blow of the coronavirus came just a year ago and look how it has already changed the world. Empty airports, silence all around, one plane per hour and that’s it. And people are gradually getting used to such a life, they see it has its advantages. After all, before we did not stop this irrepressible race moving from place to place. It’s time to think: Why are we running?

The pandemic is gradually getting closer to children. We do not yet know what it is like when children suffer from such a serious disease on such a large scale. It is painful to see children even with masks on their faces, and it is even more frightening to imagine what could happen if the children are on artificial respiration. But if we do not start corrections, then this will inevitably come, because the Creator will not change the program of creation.
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From KabTV’s “A Conversation with Journalists” 6/24/21

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Question: Renowned neuroscientist Bekhtereva, who was the director of the Institute of Experimental Medicine in Leningrad for about twenty years, wrote in one of her works, “I admit that thought exists separately from the brain, and the mind only receives it from space and reads it.”

What is beyond the limits of human intellect?

Answer: Beyond our intellect is the entire spiritual world. After all, what is intelligence? A small egoistic “outgrowth” that does not fit into either the spiritual or the corporeal world. Therefore, what is really happening is our increasing development and frustration: “Who are we? What can we even understand?”

Question: Does it mean that the thoughts that we catch somehow create our reality, what a person feels inside and outside?

Answer: We depict this reality to ourselves by our thoughts. In fact, there is nothing real in it. This is an imaginary reality.

Question: Why does it seem to a person that he thinks?

Answer: So that it would seem to him that he really thinks, exists, does something, creates. Moreover, the act of creation begins with the thoughts: “Who am I? What am I? What am I for? What for? Who created me this way? What am I doing? What is mine in these actions and what is not?” Some kinds of thoughts and inspirations come to me. “Are they mine? They did not exist before, but now they do.”

That is, a person here has something to think about. But this is also useless because he will not discover the truth anyway.
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From KabTV’s “Kabbalah Express” 6/13/21

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