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My new article on Linkedin “The Age of Unhappiness”

A recent article on the global analytics and advice firm Gallup revealed that unhappiness is rising around the world. According to the article, the situation “is concerning because unhappiness is now at a record high. …People feel more anger, sadness, pain, worry and stress than ever before.” While it admits that the pandemic contributed to the rise in unhappiness, the article also states that “In fact, unhappiness has been steadily climbing for a decade.” Studies show that happiness depends on social ties. Statistically, people with stronger and more numerous social connections feel happier, while introverts are more likely to report feeling unhappy.

The correlation between happiness and social connections points to a fundamental element in all of creation. In every part of reality, robustness, vitality, and evolution depend on the connections with the environment. Every change that happens anywhere in reality, happens because of some interaction with the environment. Even ostensibly negative connections, such as escaping from predators, accelerates evolution.

What is true for all of nature, is just as true for our own body. Our body can sustain itself, nurse itself, protect itself from pathogens and pollutants, and keep itself healthy and strong only through the myriad connections between the cells and the organs. The diversity of these connections and their mutual support give the body its strength, resilience, and vitality.

The only place where these connections are broken and flawed is human society. All other communities and all other natural systems function harmoniously, and their parts complement and support one another. In our case, however, there is no mutual support and no complementarity. Our connections are exploitative and abusive, and our goals are not to improve our lives, but to make the lives of others worse.

Therefore, all the negative phenomena that the Gallup poll reported—the anger, sadness, pain, worry, and stress—stem from the corrupt and broken ties between us. The age of unhappiness that has begun is our own making. If we change how we relate to one another, we will emerge from it into an era where everything we currently perceive as negative will be inverted into its positive opposite.

The negative relations that currently prevail in society will become the substrate of a society that insists on closeness and mutual concern, as it knows the price of carelessness and alienation. The age of unhappiness can become a trigger for an age of true enlightenment, of knowledge of nature and of learning from it how to correct human nature and make life good for all of humanity. Alternatively, if we choose inaction, the widespread unhappiness can continue to escalate and become an age of unprecedented misery.
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Michael Laitman, On The Times of Israel: “Abraham’s Wisdom”

“The greatest among the giants,” this is how the sages referred to Abraham. Why did they refer to him this way? What did Abraham discover that others did not? This post is about the biblical Abraham, who deciphered the code of nature.

Animals do not ask questions. They follow instincts. The more man evolved and reached beyond the animal kingdom, the more he began to ask questions about the essence of existence. “What is my life about?” “What governs me?” “Is suffering the result of punishment, and joy the result of reward?” And most importantly, “What is the meaning of life?” “What am I living for?”

These questions engendered faiths. People bowed to the forces of nature, prayed to the wind, to the rain, to the earth, to the sun, the moon, and the stars. They gave offerings and sacrifices to statues, wore ritual attire, tattooed their bodies with symbols, danced around fires, and performed all kinds of rites and rituals. They did these things in order to appease the superior forces they believed in, to make the forces that govern them make their lives better, bless them, protect them, give them confidence, and diminish the insecurity and uncertainty about the future.

Abraham was the son of Terah, a statue maker and among the highest ranking priests in ancient Babylon. People would come to Terah for guidance, and he would advise them and sell them statues. Abraham was intended to take over the lucrative family business, but something happened to him.

At some point, after prolonged reflections, he realized that there is no need to bow to nature’s forces. He realized that these forces are themselves “statues,” false perceptions. We should smash them because they are unreal. All our pictures of nature are fundamentally wrong. All that exists is one singular force, and all the forces we perceive are faces of that one force.

What is more, that one force is opposite from our self-centered nature. It is a force of creation, whose quality is unbounded giving. This force has created and governs all of reality, and this is the one we need to relate to in our lives.

Since this force governs everything, and since it is absolute giving, it wants to give us its own quality, to make us similar to itself. To achieve this, it must make us discover it and know its every facet. This is the purpose of our life, the purpose of our existence in this world.

Abraham discovered all this, but he also discovered that man is governed by an inherent quality of reception, the opposite of giving. He discovered that man is born an absolute egoist, as it is written, “The inclination of a man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Genesis 8:21).

This force is omnipresent, but we do not feel it. It is concealed from us because our qualities are opposite from those of the force. It is the foundation of nature, and the more we reveal it, the more we understand and feel what happened before, what is happening now, what will happen in the future, and why.

Abraham discovered that revealing this force depends on the level of people’s warm connections and bonding of the hearts. For this reason, he realized that the quality we need to develop within us is “mercy.” This is why we call Abraham the “man of mercy.”

Abraham explained what he had found to anyone who cared to listen. People who realized that his words were true gathered around him and became a group of students. Maimonides referred to them as “the people of the house of Abraham,” and there were many thousands of them.

Abraham taught his students how to connect to one another with the quality of mercy rather than form egoistic connections, in line with our inherent nature. After Abraham’s passing, his students continued to develop their connections, each time led by different teachers: Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and then Moses. Finally, after overcoming many levels of egoism, Abraham’s group became a nation. This is how the people of Israel came to exist.

However, the people of Israel, true to their original teacher’s legacy, did not strive to keep their knowledge to themselves. On the contrary, they wanted to share their good fortune with all of humanity, to be “a light to the nations.”ADVERTISEMENT

Over time, the people of Israel fell from their degree of giving into the same inherent egoism with which everyone is born. They mingled with the nations and strove to be like them, instead of aspiring to lift everyone to a life of giving and connection with the singular force in existence.

Since Abraham’s group fell from their degree and stopped leading toward connection and mercy, humanity has begun to resent them for being selfish. This is the essence behind what we interpret as antisemitism.

Humanity expects the descendants of the students of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses, namely the Jews, to keep being givers, to keep the connection with the singular giving force in reality, and to lead the way for all of humanity to reach it, just as the lineage of teachers did for them. This is why when Jews are united and carry out their expected role, the world embraces them, and when they are divided, the world rebukes them.

These days, when there are two great Jewish communities in the world, one in Israel and one in the US, there is an opportunity to rebuild the bonding that made the people of Israel what it is and accomplish our mission in the world. If we revive Abraham’s wisdom among us, we will lead the world to connection, to the end of wars, exploitation and abuse, to the end of misery and loneliness.

In a world that is as connected as ours today, establishing connections on mercy rather than on selfishness is mandatory for maintaining a sustainable society. For this reason, the more we delay our building of a society based on mercy, the more the world will resent us and blame us for its conflicts. No one else has the key to changing human nature except for Abraham’s descendants, and changing human nature has never been as urgent as it is today.

For more on Abraham and Jewish history, read Self-Interest vs. Altruism in the Global Era: How society can turn self-interests into mutual benefit.
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Our entire work is to understand and feel, that is, to reveal the general system of all of humanity and how much we are connected and dependent on each other.

It seems to us that we are not affected by what happens on the other side of the earth, whether in Australia or in America. But with respect to the general system of the world, we are arranged in such a way that there is a connection between all people even though we do not see it.

The world is arranged in a perfect way. Only we people constantly kill each other and fight without trying to establish good and correct relations and bring society to a perfect, circular form like the planet Earth. By this we distance ourselves from correction, from a good life in attainment of the absolute goodness of the upper force of nature.

We need to take into account the law of nature according to which we are all connected, all dependent on each other, and everyone is obliged to take care of everyone, to take care of absolutely all the inhabitants of this world. Until we achieve such a connection in practice, we will suffer. The longer we reject such a connection, the more our suffering will increase.

Humanity is developing and thinks that life will get better because of technological and scientific progress and culture. But if we do not establish good relations between us, we will not establish a good life; rather, we will fall into increasingly unpleasant states, up to a third and fourth nuclear world wars that Baal HaSulam writes about.

Therefore, in order not to come to such troubles, we should hurry up and explain to the whole world that correction lies only in building a good connection between everyone.

We must come to a state where we understand that correct mutual connection is an absolutely necessary condition for our existence. Gradually, this should become clearer. The world is approaching very difficult, critical times. We are facing battles with climate disasters, wars between nations, and famine.

We see that even now the Egyptian plagues are already happening one by one: “blood, frogs, and lice”—all these blows that took place in ancient Egypt should now be revealed all over the world.

But they are given to us not only for suffering, but so that through them we will discover that the only solution to emerge from this suffering is connection and mutual support. Let’s hope that we will be able to explain this to everyone, and in this way escape the danger of a third and fourth world war.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/9/22, “Connecting the World in the Last Generation”

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Question: Does the law of equivalence of forms operate not only on the spiritual level but also on our level? All devices are created according to this principle.

Answer: Absolutely everything! This is the nature we exist in.

Question: Does it mean that I have to tune something inside myself to the wave that the Creator emanates?

Answer: If we can change ourselves, this is already a correction of creation. We can change ourselves only by further transformation of creation.

If the creation begins to feel that its desire is not only to do something for its own benefit, but also for the benefit of the Creator, then I would say that this is already an action that is unnatural, anti-natural for the creation.

But creation can perform such an action, only it will not be considered an action, but rather an intention. Here we are faced with another spiritual quality: an intention.
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From KabTV’s “The Study of the Ten Sefirot (TES)” 9/4/22

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Question: If Kabbalah or even integral education is torn away from all other types of connection and it is explained to a person that light is attracted in it, what kind of light is it?

Answer: Force! The force of global connection is what is attracted, nothing more. It is called light.

The connection is egoistic when I unite against someone in order to break someone or to profit at someone’s expense.

Spiritual, altruistic connection does not imply any destruction or pressure, no one needs to prove anything. Everything is directed only for the sake of spiritual ascent, for the sake of the common good. This is called integral education, which we want to introduce to humanity.
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From KabTV’s “I Got a Call, Correct Connection“ 5/12/13

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Question: Our time is filled with disinformation and lies. It is said that disinformation arises in conditions of political disillusionment, economic crisis, or social turmoil. Today all these factors are evident. In addition there is the Internet where lies can be manipulated. There are companies that can promote it and shape public opinion.

There is a feeling that we live inside misinformation and lies only. Is this feeling correct?

Answer: Yes. But it is controlled by the Creator.

Question: Not by these scribblers?

Answer: The Creator controls the hands and minds of people. He placed us inside a complete disinformation and called it “this world.” Therefore, do not take people seriously.

Let all these scribblers write. Humanity must exist somehow. Therefore the Creator invented all sorts of positions.

Question: Should we at least try to distinguish disinformation and lies from veracity, from truth? Do we need to search for them at all?

Answer: They do not exist, neither one nor the other.

Question: Then the question is: Why did He do it?

Answer: In order for us to get tired of this state so much that we would just want to get out of it by all possible means. This is all.

Question: A parable of Baal HaSulam speaks about a worm inside a worm-eaten apple that thinks: “This is my world.”

Suddenly he gets out and says: “It turns out there is another world!” Is this us who are inside this apple? How can we get out? How can we see the real world?

Answer: It is impossible for a simple person (“simple” meaning ordinary). It is impossible, only out of billions of people.

However there are individual souls who have already matured out of billions of souls, and they are able to hear the call, and like this worm to move toward the exit from the worm-eaten apple.

Question: When he moves to the exit of the worm-eaten apple, does he pave the way for other worms?

Answer: This is none of his business. He does not even know that he is going, how he is going, or where he is going.

Question: Is it unknown where I am going and how I am going?

Answer: Why do you need to know that? What for?

Comment: Toward the light. As they usually say.

My Response: Toward what light?! You would not go toward the light.

Comment: I am used to existing inside this apple.

My Response: In a place where it is dark and dry, this is where you need to be. The rotting apple is sweet.

Question: Does it mean that the desire to get out is given to a person from above? Is he not doing it all by himself? Not through his own efforts?

Answer: No. How could a person do this? Even later when he already understands how he is being controlled, he sees that absolutely none of it is performed by him.

Question: Everything we are doing inside the worm-eaten apple—all our actions, all our economic programs, our wars, the construction of all sorts of new worlds and formations throughout all these centuries and all these years—is this all inside a rotten apple?

Answer: This is in order to accumulate within us a sufficient rotting layer so that later we can still eat it when we leave the “apple.” In short, we will get out and see.

This is when we find out that while being in this “wormy apple,” we surely cannot be guided by other principles, but only by the nature that is within us. That is, we are guided by little egoism, small pleasures, and we continue to grow in this until we create this compost around us.

Question: So I create it all and then does it not even depend on me that I reached out at least a little to get out, that I have already eaten enough of it all and would like to get out of there? After all, there is another world besides this apple.

Answer: The Creator does it if He wishes. He will direct you a little.

Question: Is there some kind of request coming from me to the Creator to direct me? Does He respond to this request when it really matures?

Answer: If this is a true request in a group with other “worms,” then yes.

Question: Is the most important thing to really come to this? Is that why He keeps us in this can?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Why is there so much misinformation about the Creator?

Answer: There are two things: first because He controls everything and everyone. and second because we do not know anything about who He is, what He is, and what He does. Therefore you can do whatever you want indefinitely. And everyone from the point of view of their level of information, from their point in the heart, will be saying anything they want to you.

Question: So I, as an ordinary person, will be choosing. According to what do I choose this or that path to the Creator?

Answer: According to what is more pleasant for your egoism. So that “the worm” would profit.

This helps us go through all the states relatively quickly and to begin to distinguish the state in which there is something new, fresh, and completely unexpected for us, the state that we can select from among all other states to make a new level of existence out of, to approach the exit from this rot.

Question: Does it mean that there still is some hope?

Answer: Not hope, but an absolutely accurate future. If I adhere to this, then here it is already in front of us.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 6/30/22

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When we read in The Book of Zohar about the structure of upper systems, we must always—and this is the most important thing!—think about where these systems are located. They are in each of us. We have to reveal them.

When I listen to the names of Partzufim, Sefirot, and various actions—Atik, Arik Anpin, the Parsa separating one from the other, ascents, descents, connections, and separations—I have to look for only one thing: “When will I feel that all this is happening inside me?! Where are these qualities and actions in me and in my sensations? Here’s Atik. And there is Arik Anpin. And here in the middle of the Parsa it prevents me from feeling!”

All this should be revealed inside a person. After all, the spiritual is inside us. It seems to us that the spiritual world is somewhere far away, in some spaces. But we study in the “he perception of reality that we feel all reality inside ourselves and it is spiritual; it is our deepest inner layer.

Therefore, like a surgeon, I must strive to reveal within myself, in the very depths of my sensations, the upper system that The Zohar tells about.

And then, reading the words ”the upper thought, “RADLA,” “Atik,” “Arik Anpin,” and “rises to Keter,” I should try to feel how it happens within me. I want every word written in the text of The Zohar to have its own feeling in me.

I’m constantly working on it. It is called that I try to reveal spirituality. Do not forget it!

Before every lesson, before every passage that we read from The Zohar, it is necessary to return to this intention, to remember that now we are dealing with the inner part of the Torah, the inner Torah, which is revealed inside a person.

There are various thoughts, desires, and qualities within us, and in their very depths the spiritual reality is revealed, which we read about in The Book of Zohar.

Therefore all my attention and all my expectations should be focused on what I will reveal inside myself.

I take care of this all the time by first of all trying to see inside myself any movements or reactions to these words.

Even if you imagine them, it doesn’t matter. The main thing is to try to feel these inner movements in yourself.

This aspiration is in itself a prayer. We will get used to treating the text this way, and then we will add a connection between us to this habit.

After all, The Book of Zohar was written only to create a connection between us. This connection is not between the bodies, but rather inside me, between the points of all the souls that are in me.

I have to build this connection within myself, between the image of “I” and the image of “others.” In the connection, which I create inside, I build my spiritual vessel of perception, my Kli, and the spiritual will be revealed within it.

Therefore all my attention should be concentrated inside myself. And no matter the words, the texts, or their meanings, they always talk about phenomena inside me.

I don’t want to hear the word itself; I want to feel how it resonates in me. This is its meaning. After all, all words are taken from this world, but they should lead me to the feeling of the upper world that is within me.
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From the 4^th part Daily Kabbalah Lesson 11/25/09, The Book of Zohar, “Noah”

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What does The Zohar teach us? It is known from the science of Kabbalah that the Creator created one desire within which all further development takes place.

This one desire includes a huge number of private desires connected to each other in a single system called Adam, a common soul.

Then according to His program, the Creator began to destroy the connection that exists between the parts of that very desire.

They begin to lose connection with each other, like in a sick body whose organs cease to interact correctly with each other, which leads to an imbalance, and what we feel are the symptoms of the disease: the pressure or temperature increases, the content of chemicals, the composition of blood, etc., meaning, the body does not balance itself. It’s a disease.

Why does the Creator do this to souls? So that we feel the corruption and then correct it.

This disease penetrates into our original state, corrupts the connection between us that make us parts of a single system, and we begin to feel less and less connected to each other.

In this loss of connection between us there are 125 degrees of descent from infinity from where we are infinitely connected to each other to a state in which this connection completely disappears.

And even more than that, when descending the 125 degrees, at the level called Parsa, an even greater damage occurred and instead of a positive connection, following its absence, a new negative connection was formed.

And now everyone wants to use others for their own benefit. The body does not just die, but completely devours itself.

This fall into the desire for the sake of receiving, into the desire to use others, continues further, until it reaches a state in which we absolutely lose all connection with each other, both a positive connection for the sake of bestowal and a negative connection for the sake of receiving, which brings us in complete contradiction to the spiritual and absence of awareness or knowledge of it. This is a consequence of our separation from each other.

And then we feel this world—an imaginary reality. Why is it imaginary? Because it was specially created by the Creator to give us the illusion of His absence.

What should we do? We need to understand that we have to fix the connection between us. As the connection between us increases, the soul rises from the sensation of our world to infinity. Reconnecting between us creates an ascent.

Therefore, as far as we can imagine our states in connection with all souls, all parts of creation together, we will increase our enjoyment of The Book of Zohar.

After all, it is written from the height of infinity. The authors of The Book of Zohar wrote this work from where they were connected together at the height of 125 degrees.

Therefore, when studying The Zohar, we should feel the desire to connect together. There is no need for special wisdom. It is enough to remember that we comprehend everything only in connection with each other.

And in fact, The Zohar speaks only about the connection of souls. It explains to me what my connection is with the universal system called Adam, with all the other souls, and how I must use this to connect them all together into a corrected, healthy, and properly functioning system.

This is all The Zohar talks about. It explains that I am here to perform this correction action for everyone, etc.
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From the The 2010 World Mega-Congress 1/25/10, Lesson 4, The Book of Zohar, “Come Unto Pharaoh“

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic “Rosh HaShanah“

Lesson on the Topic “Connecting the World in the Last Generation”

Selected Highlights

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