Medium published my new article “Total Escapism”

I already shared with you that I get emails all the time from people who have questions they cannot resolve. In one email, a physician wrote me the following question: “Lately, I’ve noticed that people are in distress. There is high demand for prescriptions for antidepressants; people feel insecure and uncertain about their lives, and besides drugs, I have nothing to offer them. They’ve tried coachers; they’ve tried trainers, but nothing seems to help. So my question to you Dr Laitman, is what can they cling to in order to move forward?”

I can understand why people feel this way. For thousands of years, people’s lives changed very little. They lived in small towns and villages, had a craft or a plot of land to till, and they knew their surroundings and the people around them. They were close to their families, married within the town or village, so everyone had the same way of life, culture, and tradition. People knew what to expect. Their lives were hard, but they had a sense of direction, a clear set of values, and therefore, peace of mind — the very thing people do not have today.

Today, material life is very easy, but people feel lost because they do not understand the world around them. They no longer live in small villages because the whole world has become a global village. Even farmers cannot till the land without seeds and machinery from other countries, and the price of their crops depends on global commodity markets. In other words, to be a farmer, you need to understand global systems of supply, demand, markets, climate, and fuels. You need an internet connection, contracts with shipment and supply companies, and accountants to understand your own balance sheet. Is it any wonder that people feel lost?

Because they feel this way and cannot find answers, they have no choice but to try to forget. They dream about the moment they can get away from it all. They take up hobbies, play computer games, and exhaust themselves in sports.
They travel, vacation, and meditate. They drink and do drugs, convert and become extremists, and do whatever they can to avoid dealing with their inability to understand the world they live in. In their effort to suppress their disorientation, they turn to total escapism.

Everything that we have built — the entertainment industry, professional and amateur sports, shopping, tourism, art — we have built them in order not to think about our lives.

But we have run out of gas. We have used up our energy — our own and what we can pump out of the ground — and we are running out of ideas for escapism. Soon, there will be only two options left: a war that will annihilate everything, or to learn about the world we live in.

Assuming that we choose the latter, we will have to learn how we all affect each other, how we are connected around the world, and how we are dependent on each other. As a result, we will realize that we must care for one another.

And if, at the moment, we do not, we will acknowledge that it is harmful to others and harmful to us. Only when we accept that the world has changed for good, and we must embrace the changes and welcome the connection with all of humanity, we will be able to reap the benefits of progress and feel comfortable both physically and emotionally.
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Question: The Theater of the Absurd or absurdist drama originated as a concept in the twentieth century. In absurdist plays, the world is presented as something existing without meaning or logic and our actions or spoken words lead to nothing.

Is there is a lot of overlap between absurdist theater and our life?

Answer: Most likely, that is why the idea to portray what is happening in our world on stage was born. The theater somehow reflects our thoughts about the world, our aspirations, disappointments, and hopes.

The twentieth century is characterized by this. In the middle of the twentieth century, humanity began to feel it was entering some kind of meaningless period of existence. The Club of Rome appeared, then the Club of Budapest, and so on.

Scientists, social scientists, and political scientists have begun to realize that the world is losing its rosy perspective people once had. They always tried to imagine a happier, better, easier future.

If they were not interested in spiritual fulfillment, at least they were interested in material ones. People had some artistic and cultural interests. They tried or hoped to change the social order, to safeguard their future and old age.

In other words, they had some needs from this life, from this world. They believed that someday they would be fulfilled and, most importantly, they would be happy as a result.

While egoism was constantly growing, they were constantly trying to fulfill it. So, they ran like a dog after its tail. But now, the rosy prospects are gone. The tail has disappeared from the dog’s field of vision, it no longer knows where to run, it is in confusion—this is our humanity, this is our current state.
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From KabTV’s “Close -Up. Theater of the Absurd”

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Filed under: Crisis, Egoism, Globalization | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Medium published my new article “Depression Comes Earlier”

The Oxford based research center Our World in Data recently published a report showing that in many countries, “People are being diagnosed with depression at an earlier age than in the past.” The report showed that in Denmark, for example, in 1996, the highest share of people diagnosed with depression were around the age of fifty. Twenty years later, in 2016, the highest share of people diagnosed with depression were twenty-four-year-olds. While the research center attributed the earlier diagnosis to growing willingness to “seek treatment for mental health conditions,” other researchers have found different reasons for the earlier age of diagnosis.

Indeed, we are living in special times. In previous times, people were more connected to the land, to the soil. Today, everything is artificial. We are born and live within the walls of the hospital, then the walls of a house, then the walls of a school, then the walls of a business. As a result, we are different from previous generations, and our approach to life is also different.

To prevent depression, we need to make constant investments with the right approach, since people are no longer adapted to natural living. The investment is not a financial one. Rather, we need to build an envelope that will serve as a mediator between the new generation and the reality they live in. This envelope should prepare them for life on every level — personal, social, and environmental. They need to learn how to communicate and connect with one another and with nature. Otherwise, they will be lost, as is already happening.

Previously, people were more outside than they are today. They communicated with other people, and much of their lives involved interaction with others. Today, they do everything online and indoors, and the outdoors and other people are unfamiliar to them. We must familiarize them with the outside world, make them spend less time on their own and on their phones or laptops, and communicate instead with other members of the family, friends, real friends, flesh and blood ones, and with animals.

The technological advancements of the past several decades have enveloped us in gadgets, and disconnected us from people. Even our food is not real food, and we don’t make it; we only heat it in a digital microwave.

We needn’t shun technology; we only need to help people balance their lives. And the key factor in reestablishing balance is constructive, positive, and supportive human connections. If people find that connections with other people satisfy them in ways that technology cannot, they will nurture them.

Today, people mostly feel that their connections with others are competitive, where each one tries to outsmart, outperform, and generally outdo others. This is very tiring, so people naturally turn to a less competitive and abusive environment: the digital one. If people had positive experiences from their relations with others, if they felt that other people approve of them, appreciate, and welcome their company, they would have no reason to retreat into a virtual environment.

Moreover, connections with other people can give them what no technology can: meaning in life. Life becomes meaningful and purposeful only in connection with other people. The reciprocal giving and receiving gives meaning and purpose to everything we do. When we do something for another person, it stays. The act takes on a life of its own, a new meaning, and it affects our lives and the lives of the other people involved in ways we cannot predict. When we do something online, with ourselves, our act is lost in the digital cloud and leaves us feeling empty and meaningless.

Therefore, if we want to cure depression, we must find ways to encourage people to go out, communicate, and connect with other people. It will give them joy, satisfaction, and meaning, and a meaning in life prevents depression.
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Question: You constantly use the phrase “rise above your body.” What does it mean?

Answer: To rise above the body means to rise in your qualities, desires, and feelings so that there is no connection between what you feel in the body and what you feel in your “I,” in the spirit. No connection at all!

In this case when the body really dies, the “I” remains to exist independently because it managed to break away before the death of this body, it managed to get out of it. And until we realize the exit from the body, we will always return to it and thus regenerate in it.
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From KabTV’s “Close up. Theater of the Absurd” 7/18/10

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Question: Question about the truth. Where is it?

Answer: Truth is the best state of creation because, with regards to creation, we can speak. The perfect state of creation can only be in full equivalence with the Creator.

If we take, for example, a foil and begin to apply it to some statue, then the full equivalence, the full form, the absolute form that the foil will take when it is completely dressed on the statue will be the truth, the verity. Such is its state.

Question: Does it mean that we, dressed on the Creator are the truth? Then, do I need to know what the Creator is?

Answer: Of course! What the Creator is. You do need to attain some element of the truth to measure everything relative to it.

Question: But what is it? What does it mean that I dress on Him?

Answer: To be dressed on the Creator means complete equivalence to the Creator. Relative to us, we cannot give this any other practical definition.

Question: What is the Creator?

Answer: The quality of bestowal and love emanating from my absolute egoism. It is when our complete egoism, precisely created by the Creator, is totally, to the full extent like the Creator.

Question: Does our egoism become material?

Answer: Yes, it becomes a foil dressed on the image of the Creator.

Question: Do I take my egoism and start sticking it on the Creator to become like Him?

Answer: Yes, part by part. In this way, you conclude that, in principle, this is the only thing you need.

Question: What does my egoism turn into? What does the foil turn into if it is stuck in such a way?

Answer: Into the form of the Creator. That is why you are called Adam—like the Creator. That is, this material from which you are created, you must put it on the Creator.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/7/22

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Filed under: Ancient Babylon, Nations of the World, News, Q&A, Spiritual Work | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Question: Today it seems to us that it is me who decides and me who thinks. Does a person really decide anything?

Answer: No, a person doesn’t decide anything, one only executes.

But there is an illusion that I decide, I do things, and I act a certain way. Such ideas about one’s independence are characteristic of people,  but only because the whole universal system is concealed from us.

So who decides for me? Who is acting in my place? Why am I led to believe that it is supposedly me who thinks, I decide, I make? That is the problem.

This is needed for us to come out of our current state, rise above it and above the fact that we do not make decisions, we do not implement them ourselves.

Question: So in our current state, can we say that we don’t exist?

Answer: In our current state, we exist relative to ourselves. We exist, we must take this as a given, but only within the confines of our time-bound sensations. Therefore, the real mind has nothing to do with it.

Our mind is a vast system of general interconnection of the inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human natures of our world and all worlds, all other levels. All this is absolutely interconnected and obeys one single program, one thought, called the Creator or nature.

Question: What are the other worlds?

Answer: Other worlds are the possibilities of existence that we gradually come to as a result of our internal evolution when we finally begin to realize that our world, our existence is finite, faulty, and limited.
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From KabTV’s “Close up. Dissenting Opinion” 8/29/10

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Filed under: Free Will, Perception | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Medium published my new article “The Folly of War”

There has been a lot of talk lately about war crimes. The definition of war crimes is very broad, so there are many injustices that fall under the category of war crimes. What used to be customary for past conquerors is now often considered a war crime. To eradicate war crimes, we must abolish war. Since this is currently unrealistic, we should at least spare those who are truly uninvolved, namely children, women, and elderly men. That would be a first step in the right direction.

In ancient times, a victorious king would plunder and take for himself everything his rival king had. It was considered an inalienable right of the triumphant king, and a reward taken for granted.

As humanity’s morals evolved, it determined that such behavior was unacceptable. Since a large part of the population does not make any decisions or take part in the fighting, that part should be excluded from punishment. Particularly, this referred to children, who do not even understand what the war is about, women, who do not participate in the war, and elderly men, who cannot participate in the fighting. All in all, some 70–80 percent of the population should be exempt from punishment or retaliatory actions. This population is also the main focus of the rules that define war crimes, in order to protect those vulnerable and uninvolved populations.

In previous times, wars were largely over territory, since land meant crops, and crops meant provision and wealth. Today, however, territory does not have any role in determining a country’s wealth, so the only incentives left for war are prestige and self-glorification.

While it is understandable that someone would win renown for being a great commander on the battlefield, today’s wars are often fought in cities, in civilian areas, and the majority of casualties are precisely the populations that have nothing to do with the war: children, women, and elderly men. How will a rocket that demolishes an apartment building help the one who fired it win the war?

The self-centered mindset that paying soldiers to fight my wars and blowing my budget on high-tech weapons proves that my ideology is completely irrational. What connection is there between my ideology and killing other people, who may believe something else or believe in nothing at all and want only to live, have children, and lead their lives in peace?

If anything, such a mindset makes my ideology fundamentally flawed. After all, if the result of my ideology is the aspiration to annihilate all other schools of thought and wipe out the people who believe in them, then my ideology is inherently unjust.

The solution to the folly of war will come only when we overthrow our king: our own egoism. We are gradually approaching the realization that egoism is leading humanity to the edge of a cliff. The question is whether we will realize in time that if we let it keep ruling, it will destroy all of us, or wait until we see with our own eyes that there is no limit to what the ego can do. If we wait, the atrocities we have seen so far will be heaven compared to the hell that the ego will bring upon us.
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Question: Today everyone is demanding punishment; this cry rises from all sides. What really is punishment?

Answer: I don’t think there is an understanding of punishment in our world at all, as people think. There is no such thing.

I believe that a person should reach such a state of empathy, critical empathy, so that all his aspirations and prayers are only about becoming similar to the Creator. And with respect to this similarity, he would measure himself. And the revelation of the difference from the Creator would cause a state of repentance in him, and only this he would like to destroy.

Question: So the punishment is that I do not come closer to equivalence of form with the Creator? That I’m not moving in that direction? Is this the punishment?

Answer: Yes.
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From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 3/7/22

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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Do we live in order to die?“

According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, we live in order to develop our soul. We understand that we have an animal body that lives and dies here on this planet. However, our purpose is not to die in the animal body, but to develop the soul while we live here.

What is the soul?

In the wisdom of Kabbalah, it is written that the soul is “a part of the Creator from above.” What this means is that we have a part of a certain “absolute” within us, and that absolute—called “the Creator,” and which is given other names as well in Kabbalah, such as “nature,” “upper force” and “upper light,” among others—is essentially a quality of love and bestowal.

This part of the Creator from above within us emerges as a small point, called a “point in the heart” or a “desire for spirituality,” among our corporeal desires for food, sex, family, money, honor, control and knowledge. Developing this point into a soul means wishing for it to become formed such that the quality of love and bestowal becomes born in us.

When it writes in the wisdom of Kabbalah that a person is a part of the Creator, it is speaking on the Creator’s behalf. However, the person requires a great effort in order to develop and attain such a reality.

Therefore, we live not in order to die, but to discover true life, i.e., to attain a life of eternity and perfection through the development of the soul—the quality of love and bestowal—while alive in our animal bodies.

Based on KabTV’s “Close- Up, Beyond the Last Line” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman on May 3, 2010. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

Filed under: Q&A, Quora | Add Comment / Ask Question →

Question: When does Israel, as a country, have the right to exist?

Answer: Only when we give the world the key to the happiness of mankind.

If we do not take the science of Kabbalah and don’t begin to disseminate it and present it to all the nations, we won’t become a light for them, we will lose the right to our existence here on this land as a nation, and we will be forced to leave here again.

We got the opportunity to come here just to set an example for the rest of humanity.

Comment: But even according to Kabbalah, there can no longer be exile.

My Response: But this is not exile. We haven’t even returned from it yet. In Kabbalah it is said that if we do not realize the dissemination of Kabbalah in the right way for all mankind, we will have to leave this place.

It has been given to us, but we have not received it yet, so our stay here is not considered a return from exile.

We have not received the Land of Israel, we have not created a Kabbalistic state here the way it was before according to the same principles. We have taken from the English and Turkish mandates the laws on which our state exists to this day. We judge people not by our ancient codex, but by English law.

Question: The State of Israel is a state that exists without a constitution, without a main law. What, then, should be its primary law?

Answer: “Love thy neighbor as thyself”! And nothing else. If we go from the highest point and then begin to arrange from the end to the beginning, then the highest point is to love your neighbor as yourself. As it is said: This is the most important, basic law of the Torah.

By the way, no one in the world argues with this, they just don’t want to implement it.

In principle, this should become the basic law of the state. And based on this, we have books that clearly describe how to implement the law “love your neighbor” at all levels: in education, culture, science, government, judicial, and legal activities—in everything.

Otherwise, we are not a nation. Otherwise, we are not a state. Because we were created exactly on this principle! After leaving Babylon, this is how we formed our society.

And the fact that Jews are now trying to imitate other nations of the world, to follow their path, does not lead to anything good.

We see that this causes anti-Semitism. We want to be like the others, and they subconsciously expect something completely different from us, wanting to see in us an example of how they can be like us.

But I hope, after all the dissemination that we have achieved in Israel, that we will be able to convey to people what we are really doing, what our national, vital, state credo is and how all this should live and work in the world.

Moreover, we see millions of students of our world society, including non-Jews, and there are many of them, and see to what extent they perceive this principle with understanding, joy, and respect. We have something to demonstrate: why and how this should happen.

We just need a little more time to make more efforts on our part. And we will reach a good state where the world realizes that it really has great perspectives and there is a key to happiness.
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From KabTV’s “Close-Up, The Formula of the Creator” 7/18/10

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