Remark: According to Baal HaSulam, the specificity of the law of bestowal to society is such that, unlike the law of receiving, negative feedback not only does not come immediately, and does not affect us directly, but indirectly.

My Comment: In the material world, I see that the more I get, the better it is for me. But it is absolutely not clear if it will be better for me if I would give more. On the contrary, it seems to me that it will be worse. That is why, in our world, the law works only one way, toward receiving.

Remark: If I think about society, bestow to people, care about them, then I do not see any benefit from this for myself and, obviously, no encouragement from society. Therefore, as Baal HaSulam writes, as a result of the violation of these two laws, humanity is subject to destruction, both from the inside and outside: hunger, cataclysms, crises, viruses, etc.

My Comment: The thing is, we humans are above all other levels of nature and our negative intentions influence biological, physical, and other phenomena.

In such a way, we affect nature and it becomes aggressive in all its parts, elements, laws, and manifestations. This is what we see in our life, in our world.

But we do not understand our connection with nature, and thus prompt it to such rough, incorrect interactions. We break good ties in nature and instead force it to act incorrectly, not in integral correspondence between its parts, in wrong communication.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 8/21/20

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New Life 451 – The Jews In The Diaspora
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Both the Jews in the diaspora and the Jews living in Israel have an important role to be a light unto the nations of the world and lead them to the goal of creation. All the Jews in the world need to connect and thus build a head that will lead all of humanity to the revelation of the force of love and bestowal in the world. We will be hated as long as we don’t do this. What ties all Jews together is not where they live, religious rituals, or the past that is waning, but the future that obligates us and our common spiritual goal.
From KabTV’s “New Life 451 – The Jews In The Diaspora,” 11/11/14

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Preparation to the Lesson

Lesson on the Topic of “Work with Faith Above Reason”

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Study of the Ten Sefirot, ‘Histaklut Pnimit,’ Vol. 1, Part 2, Chapter 1, Item 1″ 

Writings of Baal HaSulam, “Connecting the World in the Last Generation”  

Selected Highlights

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Question: If a society or even a small group wants to find a solution, they will never go wrong by uniting for a higher goal. Will the common solution be more correct than the individual solutions of each person?

Answer: Naturally. But do not confuse two paths: coming to a common decision through many egos put together, and arriving at a common decision through rising above oneself, in faith above reason.

It is characteristic of the wisdom of crowd that under certain conditions they find something in common out of all the opinions, which turns out to be closer to the truth.

But in order to unite a large number of people, everyone must annul their egoism for the sake of a higher goal.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 9/25/20

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Medium published my new article “The Tie between Work and Pay Is Crumbling”

Among various economists, there is a growing conviction that we are nearing the end of capitalism. Personally, I think it’s too soon to proclaim the end of capitalism, but what we are seeing is a growing disconnect between work and pay. That raises important questions that we will have to answer in the near future.

Our meaning in life will not be found in work, but in meaningful and enriching connections with others. Only when we grow through our interactions with others, and when we help others grow through their interactions with us, do we feel satisfied that we have contributed something meaningful and lasting.

First, people have to eat whether or not they work. They have to live somewhere, too, buy clothes, and in a modern country, they have to get medical insurance and education. While it’s true that even today not everyone has these basic needs, it is also true that this state doesn’t reflect a healthy society, hence the growing prevalence of depression and the soaring numbers of premature deaths due to substance abuse, homicide, and suicide. So the first question is how to make sure that everyone gets the basic things that every person needs.

Second, if people don’t work, what will they do all day? If Covid-19 has taught us anything, it is that sitting idle at home is a bad idea. Over time, it makes people agitated, aggressive, depressed (if they weren’t already), and, worst of all, hopeless, since they don’t see an end in sight. In other words, people need a sense of purpose, a reason to get out of bed. If it isn’t work and the need to earn a living, what can it be?

First, people must be informed. They have to know that although they have money in the bank, if they do, it doesn’t mean that they are independent from others. The production and supply chains that provide us with the products we buy at supermarkets and gadget stores entail millions of people. If you break just one link, the whole chain might stop working. This chain affects not only what we can buy, but also our jobs, our possibility to provide for ourselves and our families, national and international politics, and in the end, it can even determine life or death for many people. This is the true meaning of globalization: We have come to depend on each other even for our very lives.

Once people comprehend our interdependence, it is easier to explain that if this is the case, it makes sense that better connections enable better lives. It also makes sense that the current system, which endorses individualism and self-absorption, is the opposite of what we need today, and is in fact the main reason that our society is in such a sorry state.

At the moment, we are indoctrinated to value ourselves by two things: what we do (our job, title at work, etc.) and how much money we make. In the absence of connection between work and income, these gauges for self-esteem will become irrelevant and we will have to find new ways to appreciate ourselves, or we will all feel worthless. In fact, this is already happening to millions of people who are unable to find meaningful engagements.

The new criteria that will determine our self-esteem will be social criteria, since, as we just said, the quality of the connections between us determines the quality of our lives. Therefore, gradually, we will come to appreciate such values as solidarity, mutual responsibility, and contribution to the community.

As we grow into the new paradigm, we will discover that contrary to what we have been taught, man was not created to toil so many hours each day until he or she cannot but want to escape from life. No, we were made to enjoy one another, socialize, challenge one another, and support one another. We were made to help each other be the best individuals we can be and realize our full personal potential, not to be individualistic, isolated, and suspicious of each other.

The physical part of our lives is only here to support the spiritual part of our existence. It’s the spiritual part that makes us human, but we are so exhausted tending to the physical that we have no energy left in us to nurture our spiritual selves. Is it any wonder that we feel frustrated?

Our meaning in life will not be found in work, but in meaningful and enriching connections with others. Only when we grow through our interactions with others, and when we help others grow through their interactions with us, do we feel satisfied that we have contributed something meaningful and lasting.

As the tie between work and pay crumbles, we must hurry and introduce these new values. It will spare us much unnecessary agony and lead us quickly and easily into the new era, where satisfactions are spiritual and lasting rather than material and fleeting.
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The Times of Israel published my new article “The Pandemic Anti-Semites Call Israel”

People react to what hurts them the most and anti-Semites are no exception. A global response to the coronavirus pandemic, which continues to wreak havoc with more than 50 million cases worldwide, apparently is not the priority for the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO). Instead of assessing a global response to the problem, it spent four valuable hours of its general assembly bashing its annoyance, Israel. A similar dose of hatred has been injected by anti-Semites who are accusing Jews behind the companies in charge of the new COVID-19 vaccines of trying to control the world and profit from the pandemic.

More than a million people have died from COVID-19 around the planet. After months of the pandemic, the virus continues to spread uncontrollably, lockdowns have been renewed in multiple cities around the world, the global economy crumbles, the education systems operate irregularly, and every realm of people’s lives has been impacted. So how is it possible that the main concern of WHO’s member nations was condemning the Jewish nation for the “health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan”?

If they were to search for real facts concerning those portrayed as underserved in health care services, they would discover that in fact the alleged victims receive better medical care in Israel than in any Arab country. So, is there any logic behind singling out Israel over and over again? There is none because anti-Semitism is an irrational sentiment.

Conspiracy theories and blood libels against Jews are not new, they are just reignited. The fact that the scientific community has worked around the clock to develop a new vaccine against the deadly virus has only fueled anti-Semitic allegations.

The top medical expert of Moderna, the pharmaceutical company behind just one of the new COVID-19 vaccines, is Dr. Tal Zaks, an Israeli scientist, and Dr. Albert Bourla, a Jew of Greek descent and CEO of Pfizer, which is responsible for another vaccine against the coronavirus. In Greece, a newspaper published a series of articles accusing Dr. Bourla of Nazi-like intentions behind the scientific discovery and of making millions of dollars from the pandemic in coordination with Israel.

The world has a disease: anti-Semitism that particularly resurfaces in times of peril. Why is this so? It is because people feel that Jews hold a pivotal quality to solve the world’s troubles. By attacking Jews, they in fact raise the Jewish nation to the pinnacle, holding them both responsible for the problems and, at the same time, acknowledging them as those able and empowered to repair an aching planet.

It is precisely the role of the Jewish nation, founded upon the tenet of “love your neighbor as yourself,” to lead the way to the attainment of unity and toward recovery of the balance in nature that has been lost as a result of our unruly, egoistic and self-centered human relations. Since the times of Abraham, Jews were the first people to identify and understand the laws of nature, the need to live in a society based on mutual responsibility.

As nature tightens humanity’s connection and more hatred surfaces between people, the time is ripe for learning how to realize our increasing connection positively, how to unite above the growing separation. In the last few months, the need for unity has become pronounced. The coronavirus pandemic illustrates the need for mutual responsibility and consideration to restore and maintain good health, and growing social divisiveness demonstrates the need for unity.

If we fail to progress to unity above our own differences as a Jewish nation, we will continue evoking hatred upon ourselves and people will increasingly accuse us of being the root of the world’s problems, as we now also see with the coronavirus.

The sooner we realize that our unity will have a positive rippling effect the world over, the sooner we will realize that we are treating anti-Semitism at its root. By uniting, we fulfill our role in the world of bringing the forces between humanity and nature back to balance.

If we realize our role and initiate unity between us, we will not only see anti-Semitism diminish, but also, conversely, we can expect love and respect for a Jewish people who radiate a positive unifying example to the world. Then there would be no reason for anyone to hate Jews because people would know how to unite, and united people do not hate each other or the ones who show the way to their unity as the only cure to humanity’s pains.
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Michael Laitman, On Quora: “Why is unity important to us?“

Unity is important because nature wants us to unite.

By uniting, we enter into balance with nature and awaken a positive force dwelling in nature to surface among us. We then feel positive phenomena fill our lives: happiness, confidence, peace and harmony.

On the contrary, by making no motion toward unity, our egos grow unabated, and we let division and hatred separate us more and more. Accordingly, we experience increasing negative phenomena in our lives, i.e., suffering on personal, social, ecological and global scales.

Moreover, it is important that our unity is above all divisions, and not merely the unity of one group against another. The latter is simply a group-inflated ego that serves to increase division and hatred in society, and which also leads to no ultimately positive outcome.

Therefore, the importance of unity is the importance of our very survival, and whether we live our lives harmoniously or painfully.

Establishing the importance of unity in society requires regular education and examples of unity above division. There thus needs to be a shift in the kinds of messaging and examples that we receive through mass media, the television, radio and the Internet. If we receive inputs from all these information sources that exemplify the importance and benefits of unity, collaboration and cooperation—people working together to unite above their divisive drives—then we will all start feeling that unity is important, and our attitudes to each other will become calibrated in that direction. Currently, however, such information sources are abundant with divisive messaging, and we thus see myriad negative outcomes in society.

The process of prioritizing unity in society has yet to start. Nevertheless, those who wake up to the importance of unity sooner than others would be wise to invest themselves in sending out a red alert to society. Similar to how anti-smoking campaigns grew public awareness of the negative effects of smoking on people’s health, likewise “unity above division” campaigns would aim at raising public awareness of the importance of unity, and the myriad detrimental effects of remaining divided.

The key to the transformation from division to unity is to start a process of unity-enriching learning. People will need to reach the realization that nature wants us to unite. We do not demand the impossible from people, nor force anyone to do anything that they do not want to do. We simply organize our socio-cultural influences to bring the need for unity to the center of public discourse, and we will then think about it more and more, and start wanting it to happen.

Eventually, unity above division would become as commonplace as smoking-free zones in various public places: people would simply feel that this calibration to act positively to others above their divisive drives is the correct and socially acceptable thing to do. Moreover, it is important to emphasize that at the foundation of this change is nature: that we understand how nature is guiding us to unite, and by doing so, we do not simply wish for a slightly better life through our unity, but we literally save and upgrade everyone’s lives on the planet by doing so.

Photo by Gary Butterfield on Unsplash.

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Question: A person born in our world, according to his nature, always uses others. Of course, upbringing and genes play a role here, but he will at the first opportunity, without hesitating, prefer personal gain over the public good. Does it mean that he does not have any choice?

Answer: Of course, all our actions are strictly predetermined. The only choice is to move forward all the time and gradually raise the level of freedom: to what extent I can prefer the collective over the individual.

Question: What is the difference between freedom and anarchy?

Answer: There is no anarchy in nature. The fact is that people act at the level of our world without knowing the true laws of nature. There is also no anarchy in human behavior: everything is predetermined, everything is known.

The only thing we can do is to attract the surrounding light upon ourselves. However, this also happens under the influence of the upper force, and there is no anarchy here.

Anarchy is a specific system. But nature does not tolerate it. Nature is a very serious, strict, and absolute law.
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From KabTV’s “Communication Skills” 9/11/20

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Question: How can we create a more precise request through the ten?

Answer: You can create a more precise request if together you discuss among yourselves what you want to ask for, what your essential request really is, in order to connect as one man in one heart, in one desire, to the one upper source. Then it will be a real request.

It cannot be just any request. You can express your positive attitude toward the Creator, your gratefulness that He has brought you together, that He has brought you close to Him, and that He wants to feel your desire to get closer to Him, to respond to Him. He has given you such conditions that now you can learn to speak to Him.

You are inside the system and this system is the Creator, and it is waiting to respond to you.
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From KabTV’s “Fundamentals of Kabbalah” 11/4/18

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